Module 4 - Part 3
Nobody answers at 43 Millner Street, not even when Tommy pounds his fist against the window by the door. The glass rattles alarmingly, and Adam makes an attempt at a soothing “Tommy,” but Tommy’s not having it. Not right now.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Adam starts, but Tommy shouldn’t a lot of things and he’s tired of it. He silences Adam with a glare and folds his hands around his face to peer inside. There isn’t anybody inside but the back door is wide open, and that’s all the invitation Tommy needs right now.
“Tommy,” Adam grouses when Tommy steps off the porch and into the flower bed next to it.
“Shit, seriously?” Tommy hears him say, but then he’s around the corner of the house and Adam has to hurry to catch up with him, radiating disapproval but thankfully silent.
He’s right, the back door is wide open. There’s no sign of any crime though, past or in-progress, so he pokes his head in and whisper-shouts, “Hello?”
Nobody answers him this time either, but there are definitely voices coming from downstairs, and whatever. Frank said anytime, so anytime it is.
He wipes the worst of the soil from his shoes and tiptoes across the carpet and down the stairs, ignoring Adam’s steadily more pointed sighs. The basement door is open. This close, Tommy can make out Gerard’s voice along with a few others, and he steps all the way into the room before he hesitates.
“Oh hey, look, trespassers,” Frank says lazily. He’s lying sprawled out on the couch, taking up a lot of space for such a small dude, apparently deeply engrossed in drinking his beer and playing Madden at the same time. Tommy’s not sure what Mikey and Gerard and Ray are doing, sitting crosslegged in a circle on the floor, but it looks like a really, really vicious version of three-person Red Hands that somehow includes a set of cards.
At least Frank tucks in his legs a little bit so Adam and Tommy can squeeze onto the couch side by side. Adam, on the end, drapes his arm around Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy wriggles his arm between Adam and the couch and up onto his stomach. A moment later, he slides his hand underneath Adam’s shirt and gets a quick grin in return, and an eye roll from Frank, but Frank can suck it.
Somebody yells from across the room and then Ray’s scrambling back against the wall while the Way brothers roll around on the floor, not really fighting but still struggling for the upper hand, scattering cards everywhere.
Frank’s pretty unfazed by it all, lifting his feet right before Gerard’s back slams into the couch below them. Mikey manages to get on top for a split second, pining one of Gerard’s hands while his brother slaps at his torso with the other.
Tommy tucks his feet onto the pillow he’s sitting on, eyes drawn to Mikey’s back. The bite on his neck is hard to miss from this close, jagged scars where teeth tore the skin. It makes Tommy’s fingers itch to reach up and slide them across his own. It makes him wonder if Gerard is like this on full moons, too - if he rough-houses with Mikey then, if he can see past that tiny little elephant of a snag in treating his kid brother like everyone else when any minute, Mikey might lose grip and infect him, too.
It definitely doesn’t seem to bother him right now - he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally manages to get Mikey flipped around, and then digs his fingers into Mikey’s armpits. Mikey doesn’t really make a sound, even, which would be odd if it were anyone else, but he sort of writhes and flails and finally stills under the onslaught.
“Knock it off, Gee,” he says. Tommy can’t really tell if he’s amused or annoyed, and for a second he thinks Gerard will just keep going, but then the guy presses a quick kiss to Mikey’s forehead and gets up. He even reaches down a hand to help Mikey to his feet and Mikey doesn’t even try to yank him back down, which makes him a better person than Tommy and most likely Frank. Instead, he brushes at the knees of his jeans, pulls his t-shirt down where it’s ridden up past his hips, and heads for the stairs, giving the basement door a yank as he goes.
“Where are you going?” Gerard calls after him.
“To get ready for work,” Mikey calls back. “It’s not like I can get out of it just because I’m hanging out with jailbait.” The door swings shut and then bangs open again, and they can just see the last of Mikey’s legs and his battered sneakers disappearing up the stairs.
“You’re a dick!” Gerard yells, and then gives Tommy and Adam an apologetic shrug. “He’s a dick.”
“He’s right,” Adam says softly.
“Still a dick.” Frank grins.
“But.” Adam waves his hand between himself and Tommy, what the fuck. He can be all noble if he wants, but Tommy would totally kick him in the thigh for dragging Tommy into it, too, if Frank and Gerard weren’t both watching them.
“We’re like, high schoolers, you guys. You could get into so much trouble.”
“Yeah, ‘cause the weed and the underage drinking -“ Frank points at himself for that one “-and the occasional pills and the noise complaints are just no big deal at all.”
“At least you’re over eighteen,” Ray says. He doesn’t look at Tommy or Adam when he gets to his feet. “I’m gonna head out too,” he says. “Michaels at the grocery store said he’d pay me time and a half to carry all his heavy shit into the cellar.”
“You got it, man,” Frank says, apparently unconcerned by the nasty look Tommy sends Ray’s way. “Carry heavy shit. Go forth and be productive.”
“Maybe you can be productive, too,” Ray says, nudging a beer can that topples over with a hollow clunk.
“Never,” Frank exclaims. He presses his hands to his heart. “Why must you say such things?”
Ray rolls his eyes, but he’s totally smiling a bit while he collects his shoes and disappears out the door.
“Dick,” Tommy mutters under his breath.
Adam gives him a look, half shocked, half sympathetic, but neither Gerard nor Frank seem to have heard. Which is, you know, probably a good thing.
“Okay, wow, mood killer,” Frank says. “Who wants beer?”
“Frank thinks beer cures everything,” Gerard adds. He nudges Frank aside so he can sit down next to him.
“You can’t drown your problems,” Adam counsels wisely, which, what the fuck? Way to come off as a pretentious ass.
Thankfully, though, Frank just laughs. “But I can damn well try,” he says. “Cheers.”
“Do you have problems, Adam?” Gerard asks, leaning forward. He’s swaying a bit. “Because you can tell us, you know? We won’t judge.”
Adam gapes at him, eyes going big. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. Or maybe it’d be painful if it weren’t so hilarious.
“Yeah, man, tell us all your problems.” Frank burps, laughs. “Except the gay thing. That’s not a secret.”
“Oh, you’re gay?” Gerard asks while Adam sputters. “That’s completely okay, I promise. My Chemical Romance doesn’t discriminate.”
“I, I,” Adam sputters. He shoots a help-seeking look at Tommy, but there’s no way Tommy’s getting involved in this. Adam’s on his own with this one.
“No, seriously.” Frank reaches over Tommy to bump his fist into Adam’s shoulder. “We don’t care who you stick your dick into, Adam,” he says. He waggles his eyebrows. “Or who sticks his into you.”
“Right.” Adam goes bright red, like, fire-engine red, but he manages a smile. “Thanks, Frank.”
“It’s all good.” Frank arches off the couch to fiddle with the twenty-four-pack sitting next to it, hanging upside down. Gerard slings an arm around his waist to keep him from tipping off entirely, but he doesn’t look too bothered. Eventually Frank resurfaces with a handful of cans stacked together between his hands, but he doesn’t actually move away, just settles himself more comfortably in Gerard’s lap before he holds out a beer.
“Have a brew.”
Tommy pops the top and drinks, pretends not to notice the fuzzy bubbles creeping up his nose, pretends not to notice how Adam’s mouth twists with reluctance when he takes his own can. Guy can take care of himself. He’s a big dude, he can handle it.
The next Monday, Mrs. Mackenzie hits them with a pop quiz that everyone except Tommy seems to know about it. It could be that she announced it last class when Tommy’s head was full of riffs and chords and the beat of drums, or maybe everybody else just practiced their poker face a whole bunch since the last test she sprung on them. Far more likely, though, is that somebody caught wind of the thing and let everybody know except Tommy, because why would anybody tell the resident freak anything?
Tommy ends up guessing a whole bunch of shit about Napoleon based on the timeline he vaguely remembers from last week, and squinting at the test sheet of the girl sitting next to him, and probably doesn’t do as badly as he could. At least he knows the Battle of Waterloo wasn’t in 1914.
It doesn’t help him any when he gets a - too well-aimed to be accidental - volley ball to the face in P.E. and has to sit out the rest of the class period and half of Spanish because his nose won’t stop bleeding. Adam comes to the nurse’s office during his break and sneaks him a Snickers bar and eats three of his own sitting next to Tommy on the cot, wide-eyed and pale. He flinches when Tommy elbows him in the side, and his smile is nothing more than tentative when Tommy says, “Hey, man, I’m fine, alright?” around the wad of tissues he’s pressing to his nose.
He manages to barely get out of lunchtime tutoring when he gets his History quiz back with a 76% inked at the top in stark red, thank fuck, and spends two seconds resolving to crack open his books again at some point before he heads over to Adam’s room to talk him into going down to see the guys on Friday or Saturday. Being in Clarkenwell is turning his brain into mush. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to take all this bullshit much longer.
Adam hems and haws but finally his eyes catch on the bruising across the bridge of Tommy’s nose and Tommy knows he’s won even though Adam says he has to think about it.
Fuck thinking about it. If there’s anything Tommy needs to do, it’s to not think about anything.
“I think we’re getting good at this,” Tommy says when they get to Millner Street with only a minimum of scrapes and strained muscles to show for their troubles.
“Good at breaking the rules,” Adam says. “Great.”
“Would you rather get caught every time?” Tommy asks him, jogging ahead to climb the three steps up to the porch. There’s a crookedly torn sheet of notebook paper taped to the door.
Tommy&Adam - come on in, door’s open
sales people, cops, jerkfaces - fuck off
“Charming,” Adam says, hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth.
“You like it, don’t lie,” Tommy says, reaching for the doorknob.
“Yeah, sure,” Adam says on their way down the stairs. “I like, totally love it. I can barely contain myself.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Tommy says. He’s got a headache, nothing major, but it’s annoying enough for him to reach up and try to rub it away. “God damn it,” he says. “I think Mrs. Mackenzie like, fucked with my brain or something. Feels like it’s melting.”
“Sounds gross,” Adam says noncommittally, and pushes open the basement door.
Only Gerard and Frank are there, Frank playing some fighter game on their PlayStation and Gerard half-melted into his couch, face buried in the cushions.
“Yo guys,” Frank says. “What’s up.”
Adam sits down on the couch, then gets back up again and gingerly removes an empty cookie tray from the seat. “Prep school is melting Tommy’s brain,” he says once he’s comfortably settled.
“Gee, really?” Frank doesn’t look up from his button-mashing. “Color me surprised.”
“Not just mine,” Tommy says, perching on the back of the couch and kicking Adam lightly in the side. “Adam’s just too chicken shit to actually admit it.”
“I am not,” Adam huffs.
Tommy rolls his eyes. “So you’re not bored out of your fucking mind doing Twinkle Twinkle or whatever in choir for the third year in a row?”
Gerard, predictably, pushes himself vaguely upright. “Choir?” he asks.
Adam shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Kind of,” he says. “I mean, I had some lessons in San Diego, and my teacher said I was pretty good, but obviously the choir teacher doesn’t quite agree, and who am I-“
“It’s retarded,” Tommy insists, cutting through Adam’s self-depreciating babble. He slides down into the seat. “He’s the best singer in our entire school, and he’s stuck in the last row because he’s got the gene.”
“The gene,” Frank echoes him, voice pitched all spooky and waggling his fingers before he cracks up.
“You can sing?” Gerard asks, undeterred.
Adam picks at the hem of his shirt. “Like I said…” he mutters.
Tommy slouches across the couch to kick his ankle. “He’s amazing,” he tells Gerard. “Seriously, make him sing something. Anything. He’ll blow your mind.”
“Sing Want of a Nail,” Frank says, like that’s even a challenge.
Adam hems and haws until Tommy elbows him in the side, and then he opens his mouth and delivers the chorus flawlessly. Adam likes to show off. It’s buried deep, underneath his lack of self-esteem and his self-consciousness and complete and utter terror of public embarrassment. So it’s no wonder that it took Tommy forever to figure it out, but. Adam likes attention. Positive attention. It makes him glow.
And he may deny it, but Tommy can see the pleased flush on his cheeks when Gerard nods, says, “That’s really good,” when Frankie whistles through his teeth. Tommy doesn’t say anything. He already knew Adam is awesome - he just has to make the rest of the world see it, too.
It ends up sneaking up on him.
It’s usually impossible for him to forget, for him to do anything but watch the symbols on his calendar steadily creep up to a complete, blank circle, but there’s so much going on and he’s having fun, he actually is for the first time in a long time, and he just totally forgets. He’s bumming around homeroom, trying to look like he’s doing his homework and half-watching the sun tilt down towards the treetops and when the lady on the PA calls for Anderson, Maria he actually wonders what she’s supposed to have done before the list runs down a set of familiar names and he remembers.
It’s like being dunked in ice water. Everybody’s eyes are on him while he shoves his book and notepad into his bag and heads for the door, for the cellars. Nate nods at him when he comes out of the gym and falls into step beside him, damp hair curling at the base of his neck, but they don’t speak.
Nate holds the door to the basement open for Tommy and some mousey little sophomore who comes up behind them to slip through. The door falls shut behind them with a hair-raising thud, one that practically spells out trapped and doomed forever. Sometimes Tommy really misses California and its flimsy architecture.
Adam’s waiting at the foot of the stairs, shifting from foot to foot. He manages a smile for Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t even have time to react, to mutter something reassuring, before Clarkenwell’s guard dogs shows up behind him and snaps at them all to get a move on. And then it’s time to strip down, eyes always on him, and shuffle around on the cold floor while the heavy lock snaps shut like it’s the door of a high security vault.
Tommy takes a deep breath. It stutters out as a sigh.
There’s not really a whole lot left for him to do at this point except pace around and wait for the sun to set. He hates this part, it’s always the worst. At least there’s a breath of fresh air sweeping in through the cracked-open window, though, and Tommy breathes it in for a moment, imagining himself running through the fields, feet/paws hitting the packed dirt, before he shakes himself out of the fantasy. It’s not gonna help him any if he turns into a total pussy while no one’s paying attention.
Instead, he turns and tries to peer out through the spy-hole. It’s pointless, which he knows because he does it every time, but he does it every time because it gives him something to do. It’s routine. It doesn’t even matter that he’s locked up in a dark, cold, lonely cellar with nothing to protect his feet from the cement below him and not even bricks to count to entertain him, because Tommy can still peer out that spy-hole like a motherfucking champ.
“Well, this is fucked up.”
Tommy whirls around at the sound of Frank’s voice, and there he is, the crazy bastard, peering through the window with his hands on his knees.
“What are you doing here, are you crazy?” Tommy whispers. He still edges closer.
“People have assumed so, yes.” Frank rattles the metal on the window a little bit. “So much for not shackling you to the wall,” he comments.
Tommy lifts his wrists into the air. “Shackle-free,” he says.
Frank nods. “Also buck-naked, and stuck in a three-by-three cell. Seriously, fuck this shit.”
“Nothing to fuck, either,” Tommy says, attempting a smile that Frank barely returns.
Instead, he mutters something about disgrace and something that sounds decidedly bloodthirsty, and then he kicks at the window hinge a couple of times. “Ready for a night of freedom?” he asks. “I think I can get this open.”
“What?” Tommy asks, voice flipping hysterically. “You can’t just let me out, Frank. It’s a full moon tonight.”
“I’m well aware,” Frank says . He bends down to peer at the damage he’s done. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re going to shift, too,” Tommy remembers. “Shit, you need to get out of here.”
“I do, yes,” Frank says gravely. “I was thinking you might want to accompany us.”
Tommy’s eyes damn near bug out of his head. “What?”
‘”You want me to leave you down there to rot?” Frank asks, deadly serious, and no, Tommy doesn’t want that at all. He probably couldn’t even convince someone of that if he had to.
He shakes his head. “Get me outa here,” he says.
Frank nods, grins. “Stand back,” he says, and starts kicking at the window frame until it’s so bent out of shape that Tommy can squeeze past it with the help of Frank and a second hand that appears through the frame.
It turns out to belong to Mikey, Gerard’s brother. Tommy climbs to his feet and dusts himself off before he dips his head in Mikey’s direction. “What’s up, Frank,” he says.
“You’ve met Mikey,” Frank says, gesturing.
Mikey nods.
“You’re both completely fucked in the head,” Tommy tells them. “Seriously, I’m not kidding. You could get arrested.”
“You could get expelled,” Frank throws back. He crosses his arms. “Do you want us to stick you back down there?”
The sane answer is yes, but Tommy takes one look at the tiny window and the grey-tinted darkness beyond it and knows he could never actually ask to go back there.
“Fuck no,” he says, turning away and crossing his arms. He gestures at the next window over, entirely closed. “Adam’s down there.”
“Great,” Frank says, all teeth, and delivers a sharp kick to the bolt. He barely has time to attack it again before Adam’s face appears at the window, eyes startled and wide.
“Frank,” he mouths, inaudible through the pane.
“Hi Adam,” Frank says loudly. “We’re gonna spring you, if that’s okay?”
“What?” Adam mouths back.
Frank motions for him to stand back and aims a kick at the metal frame. Tommy really hopes those boots of his are steel-capped, because he really doesn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of broken toes tonight. Maybe he does, because Frank doesn’t even flinch, just kicks at it over and over until the metal’s loose enough for him to wrangle it out of the frame.
“Come on then,” he tells Adam, motioning.
“But!” Adam protests, even as he lifts his hands for Tommy and Mikey to haul him up. “What are you doing? We can’t just climb out! What if we hurt somebody?”
“We’re not gonna,” Frank says. He sounds so sure, so damn sure, that Tommy can feel himself relax into it. They’re not gonna hurt anybody. They’re gonna be fine.
Frank gives Adam a sharp yank to haul him through the window (he almost doesn’t fit) and then drops him to the ground, letting him land with a soft noise. Mikey lets go a moment later.
“There could be campers in the woods,” Adam insists, scrambling to his feet. “We’re not gonna be ourselves - we won’t have control. What if we eat them?”
“Wolves don’t eat people,” Frank says.
Mikey rolls his eyes in agreement.
“We hunt game, like every fucking wolf does. People only get hurt when they get caught in the crossfire, and anyone dumb enough to be out in the woods on a full moon kind of deserves it.”
Adam throws Tommy a help-seeking look, but Tommy just shrugs. He’s made up his mind. Adam can stay here without him if he wants.
“Maybe you won’t have control,” Mikey says slowly, startling all of them, “but we do.”
Adam blinks. Tommy can feel himself mirror the movement. “You do?”
Mikey nods. “We’ll keep you in check,” he says, tiny little smirk gracing his lips.
“Well then.” Tommy bounces on his feet a little. He thinks he’s picking that up from Frank. “If Mikeyway says.”
“Mikeyway says,” Mikey says, and then he turns and just starts walking away and they stare after him like idiots until Frank motions for them to hurry the hell up.
Mikey finally calls a halt in a thicket of trees that affords at least some kind of privacy when the sun’s already blood red on the horizon. He looks around a little bit and then starts stripping his shirt off, just like that, ribs showing as he stretches.
Tommy can see Adam gaping and he wasn’t want to do that, be that guy, but he’s already naked, so he turns and watches the sun disappear, sliver by sliver, and then it’s gone and the moon’s at his back and he can feel the shift creeping up his spine.
Usually this is where he fights, hanging onto his consciousness until it’s wrenched from him violently, but it’s different out here. Like this. It doesn’t feel quite as bad, as unnatural, out in a forest surrounded by three other naked guys who are all waiting for the same thing to happen to them. More dignified, perhaps. Less like a punishment, and more like a way of life.
He smiles at himself for that, because way to sound like a fucking hippie, and ducks his head when he feels his bones begin to change. Shifting doesn’t hurt. It never does - his body is designed for the changes now, after all. It feels weird, that’s all, skin stretching to accommodate his growing bones. The first time was weird, terrifying, but it’s almost normal now. He’s expecting this. He’s all prepared for his vision to blur, too, for his mind to go blank, but for some reason, it doesn’t.
He twists his changing skull around, looking for the others. They’re mid-shift, too, and Mikey’s got yellow eyes in a human face that are fixed on Tommy, bright and aware, and Tommy drops his head and shudders in confusion.
It’s never like this. Usually, Tommy’s mind just… goes away halfway through the shift, when he’s cowering on the floor so he won’t lose his balance but he can still see fingernails clawing at the concrete. He remembers snatches sometimes, the smell of damp and dark or the light of the moon through the window, but usually, he wakes up at first light, curled on the floor in a shivering heap, his mind blissfully blank.
This time isn’t like that. He still doesn’t catch all of it, but he catches some things. It’s disjointed, like a badly cut movie - he’s running, pads of his feet slapping against the moist ground; he’s surrounded by brethren, by friends; he’s splashing into a stream with a happy sound that can only be described as a yowl; he’s pouncing on a big, big wolf that he just knows is Adam, Adam who’s just as playful, rolling around the underground with him and trapping him with his paws, still careful in his victory.
For the first time since he crossed over, Tommy doesn’t wake up hating himself. Instead, the sight of the pink sky through the window, awkwardly bent back into shape, makes him smile. He pushes himself to his feet and looks himself over, but there aren’t any of the usual bruises and tears where he assumes he claws at the walls. The pads of his feet are sore and he has to stretch his hands a little bit, but he feels good. He feels great.
He startles at the sound of keys turning in the lock, and then footsteps, shuffling away, stopping every couple of feet. Finally they come closer again and then away. Tommy listens until the dull thuds that are heavy boots on the stairs have faded away completely, and then he eases open the door. His clothes are on the floor just beside it, where he left them, and while he’s squirreling into his underwear Adam pushes his own door open and reaches around for his uniform. He hides his body behind the wall, just a sliver of bare shoulder visible, but he somehow looks more naked for it than Tommy feels, standing there in just his skivvies.
But then Adam catches his eyes and this wide, exhilarated smile spreads across his face, and Tommy can’t help but smile back. He bounces around while Adam gets into his clothes and barely remembers to get his own pants on and shirt thrown over his shoulders. He probably looks ridiculous, and he’s not even offended when Adam emerges, impeccably dressed, and bursts out laughing.
“Come on,” he says, tugging on Adam’s wrist. It’s still only six or so - maybe they can sleep for an hour (two if they skip breakfast) before they have to get to class.
Tommy manages to toss and turn his way through a couple of disjointed dreams before his alarm goes off, and just barely gets himself dragged down to the classrooms before the bell rings. He stares blearily at the board during Spanish and copies down the homework off the girl next to him while she’s doodling hearts in the margins of her notebook because he can’t make out which part of the scribbled mess on the blackboard is actually important. In Bio, he gets back a B+ on a test he thought he’d fucked up and that’s actually kind of nice, but then he has Mrs. Sallivan and the day takes a sharp downward turn again. He dozes through her lecture until she catches him at it, snaps at him that he shouldn’t expect preferential treatment just because of the bracelet on his wrist and that if the rest of his classmates can stay awake, then so can he. One of the guys behind him kicks his chair when her back is turned, and Tommy pays attention after that, if only because he can’t unclench his jaw enough to go back to sleep.
Mrs. Sallivan gives him the evil eye when he stumbles out of the room, but at least it’s lunchtime now. He’s free for a whole forty-five minutes, which is pretty much a three-day-weekend at this point as far as Tommy’s concerned.
Adam waves at him when Tommy stumbles into the food hall, from Ryan and Freshman’s table. There’s enough space for three people between him and Ryan, so they’re probably not sitting together together, but Tommy’s got glassy eyes and almost falls over some chick’s bag on his way over, so he’s not really willing or able to contemplate the intricacies of the way Adam and the two others are sitting.
At least they all look just as wrecked as he does, and nobody tries to make conversation. Freshman almost falls asleep in his garlic pasta. It makes Tommy feel absurdly better.
He really wants to blame his state of near-delirium on what happens next, but that’s probably a lie. Just - Adam reaches for the salt sitting by Ryan’s elbow, and Tommy sees the way his muscles bunch and stretch underneath the fabric of his blazer, and his brain goes, hot. Which is completely ridiculous, and Tommy stares at Adam’s arm for a little bit, trying to figure out what happened that would warrant that kind of reaction from his clearly ridiculous mind.
Eventually, Adam notices him gaping and smiles uncertainly. “What?” he asks, salt shaker poised over his plate.
“Uh.” Tommy shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mutters.
Adam smiles then, bright and real, and an expression that used to be cute and nothing more now has Tommy’s mouth going dry. It’s fucking freaky, is what it is.
He pushes his chair back, mumbling something about getting something from his locker.
Adam just nods and gets up too, of course. He doesn’t say anything else while they walk, but he keeps glancing at Tommy, and Tommy doesn’t dare look again until Adam’s bent into his locker, pants stretching over his ass, legs long and lean, and Tommy’s brain promptly sputters out again.
Rationally, Tommy understands that Adam hasn’t changed. He’s still a bit pudgy and fidgety and a total scaredy-cat, but every time Tommy looks at him, he sees the wolf instead, mid-jump, stretched and graceful and so fucking badass.
Adam catches him looking again, after a while, flushing at the attention. He’s gonna have to get over that if he really wants to be a singer, Tommy thinks idly, and then tries to make himself be less obvious, but it’s hard. He obviously doesn’t succeed because by the time sixth period rolls around and they’re fiddling with their lockers again, shoving their books inside and, in Adam’s case, sweeping out all the little paper balls someone poured inside as a joke, Adam glances at Tommy every couple of seconds, looking increasingly twitchy every time. It probably doesn’t help that he always catches Tommy staring back.
“Seriously, what?” he asks after a while, dropping his gaze to the floor.
Tommy shrugs and pushes away, strides down the hall and tries to ignore Adam stumbling after him and pleading, “Come on, Tommy, tell me what’s wrong.” And then Adam’s scrabbling for his arm, tugging insistently. “Shit, Tommy,” he hisses. “Tommy. That’s Frank.”
It is, it actually is. Tommy thinks his eyes might bug out of his head. He blinks a couple of times, but it’s still Frank, wearing a Clarkenwell uniform down to the fucking shined leather shoes. He looks over his shoulder a couple of times, casually like he’s just waiting for someone, and Tommy probably would have bought the act if he didn’t know better. Then he gets out a tube of superglue, unscrews it, pops open the locker and begins to line the inside where the door matches up with the frame with the liquid, quickly and efficiently, across and down. He disappears the tube into his pocket, checks his reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door, snags a pack of gum lying on top of a stack of textbooks, and casually pushes the locker shut.
“He’s crazy,” Adam breathes next to Tommy’s ear, and much as Tommy would like to defend him, it’s really kind of the truth.
Frank still hasn’t noticed them, bobbing around on his feet, unsubtly looking around for something else to fuck with. “Hey, man,” he even says to somebody, and grins brightly when the guy gives him a startled look. God, Frank’s such a dumbass. He’s gonna get them killed. He’s gonna get himself killed.
“Yo! Frank!” Tommy whispers, once Frank’s not-friend is gone.
Frank turns, grinning wide when he sees them, and ambles over. “You guys caught that, yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, we caught that.” Tommy shoves at Frank’s shoulder. “You fucking psycho, what is wrong with you?”
Frank looks a bit taken aback by that, but then he bounces on his toes and grins. “You just wish you had the fucking balls to do that,” he says.
The problem is, he’s not entirely wrong. But Tommy and Adam, they’re here on scholarship, and as fun as it would be to go around causing shit, Tommy can admit - to himself, if nobody else - that he’s too chicken-shit to risk getting thrown out. He just hopes no one hears his voice waver when he says, “You’re crazy.”
Frank shrugs. He looks around but the hallways are nearly empty now, everybody in their classrooms already, and he purses his lips. “You guys should take off,” he says. “Wouldn’t do if somebody noticed you missing and thought you had anything to do with that.”
He gestures vaguely over his shoulder at the superglued locker, and then he grins a bright, satisfied smile and shoos them down the corridor with his hands.
“I can’t believe that was your first time running,” Frank says around the rim of his beer.
“That was craaazy,” Adam says before Tommy can. He’s practically bouncing around on the basement’s ratty couch. “That was so amazing, you guys have no idea.”
“I’m pretty sure they were, you know, there,” Tommy says, but he’s grinning, because Adam’s right. It was insane. Tommy’s still flying high almost a week later.
“Yeah, but they do that every time,” Adam tells him, elbowing him in the side. “Dude, I’ve never been outside during a moon before. I can’t wait to do that again.”
“You will,” Frank assures him. “We’re not letting you wallow away in that dungeon up there anymore. Those days are over.”
“You’re gonna keep springing us?” Adam asks, grinning. His smile is a mile wide.
Frank nods seriously. “Until somebody stops us.”
“You’re insane,” Adam says, but he sounds delighted, and Frank grins.
“Certifiable,” he says.
“A doctor actually certified him,” Gerard adds, dry.
Honestly, Tommy wouldn’t be all that surprised. He tries to grin at Frank, but Frank’s not exactly grinning back. The expression’s there, sure, but something’s off.
“Hey,” Mikey says, distracting him by knocking a knee into Tommy’s. “Felt different, didn’t it?”
And that easily, all the overflow of feelings from the other day is back, making Tommy’s heart thrum in his chest. “It was incredible,” he says. “I’ve never remembered anything after the shift. Do you-” He chokes on his own spit in his excitement, has to pause and take a deep breath. “Do you guys like, remember it all?”
“Not all of it,” Mikey says. “There’s still a couple of hours that go missing sometimes. But most of it, usually, yeah.”
“You can train yourself to,” Frank adds. “We’ve both gotten better at it with time.”
Mikey nods. “And you guys have like, zero training whatsoever.”
“Training,” Tommy echoes. Well, sure. It’s not like he isn’t going to be stuck doing this every full moon for the rest of his life.
Frank cuts him a quick glance but then looks away, and then Gerard starts talking about how he kind of wants to know what shifting’s like - no disrespect or anything, just curiosity - and Mikey throws in something about Gerard’s drawings and how they kind of capture the feeling, and Adam’s practically wagging his tail in excitement when he asks to see them.
“They’re not, I mean,” Gerard says, but he’s already getting to his feet. “They’re upstairs, in my room.”
Adam bounds to his feet, shifting in place like a toddler who needs to pee, but Tommy kind of gets it. He’d probably want to see too if he wasn’t getting this bizarro vibe from Frank.
“You wanna come?” Gerard asks, Adam wide-eyed at his side, but Tommy shakes his head.
He lifts his beer can. “I’m good,” he says.
“Okay,” Gerard says. He shrugs and struts out the door, Mikey and Adam in his wake, leaving Tommy and Frank sitting there in silence.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” Tommy says after a while. “Anytime now, seriously.”
Frank shakes his head. “I can’t believe you let them do that to you,” he says.
“I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” Tommy bites out. “It’s the fucking law, and it’s not like Clarkenwell is all that different from California, in that respect.”
“Oh, please,” Frank says. “You can’t tell me your parents locked you in a fucking dungeon every moon before you got here.”
“There are places around town you can go,” Tommy says. “Safety houses.”
“Prisons,” Frank says.
“Safety houses,” Tommy insists. “They’re to protect people.” He can’t help scowling. Yeah, those places had sucked, and Tommy hated them. But that was when everything was still new, when the shift itself was still terrifying, and at least the rooms were warm and comfortable and nobody watched him take his clothes off.
“To protect gene-free America.” Frank rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to tell me those fucking lock-ups are there to protect wolves.”
“And what’s so wrong with protecting gene-free America, huh?” Tommy spits. “What’s so wrong with making sure we don’t hurt anybody?”
“If they left us to shift in peace, we wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Frank hisses back at him. “Places like Clarkenwell are a disgrace to our kind, Tommy. I can’t believe you’re defending them.”
“You know that’s how I fucking got bit, right?” Tommy cuts in. “Because of some wolf running wild?”
Frank opens his mouth, jaw tight, but then he catches sight of Tommy’s expression and snaps it shut again. He looks down at his hands, but it isn’t in embarrassment or shame or anything. Tommy’s getting the feeling Frank doesn’t do shame.
“I’m gonna go upstairs,” Frank finally grits out, and then he gets up and walks away.
“Fuck,” Tommy murmurs, letting his head fall back against the backrest, and closes his eyes.
They never talk about it. Maybe that’s not the healthiest approach to the issue, but Tommy’s certainly not going to be the one to initiate a conversation about his feelings, and definitely not with Frank. So he just pretends like nothing happens and Frank does the same and after a while their forced easy interactions melt back into the real thing, easy and light and completely immature, and Tommy loves it. He really fucking loves it.
Tommy heads for the fridge the minute he gets into the basement. Adam, with his complete and utter lack of a survival instinct, trails after him uncertainly, not even getting the memo when the handle creaks alarmingly in Tommy’s hand.
There’s only two beers left; two beers and a bottle of vodka and a half-empty jar of hotdogs. Tommy takes the beer anyway. Whatever, he’ll leave a fiver on the table or something. They can always buy more, or like, most of them can. Tommy’s legally alcohol-free for another three years.
“Hey now,” Gerard says, pushing a half-open sketchbook off his chest.
Frank surfaces behind the couch, cobwebs in his hair and a couple of playing cards in his hands. “Hi guys,” he says. “Wanna play Uno? Loser has to do a grocery run.”
Adam grins, drifting closer to the couches and the pile of battered cards on the coffee table.
Gerard nods. He looks like he’d been asleep, or at least drifting in and out, for a while. “Mikey’s coming home soon,” he says. “And he said he’d kill us if we were still out of milk then.” He flattens his mouth into an I’m-not-scared line. “He can be kinda mean when he wants to be.”
Tommy has a hard time imagining Mikey as anything but carelessly agreeable, but he shrugs anyway. The beer can is crumpling in his grip, so he sets it down on the fridge before anyone notices.
Adam sits down on not-Gerard’s-couch and starts pushing the sticky cards into a somewhat orderly pile.
Gerard sits up and pats the cushion next to him. “Come sit,” he says to Tommy. “I’d make a comment about not biting, but that’s probably inappropriate, huh?”
Tommy shrugs again, perches on the edge of the seat. Adam tries to catch his eye but he turns his head away, too slowly to miss the look that passes between Gerard and Frank.
“You know what he needs?” Gerard asks Adam, nodding his head at Tommy.
Adam shakes his head. “What?”
“Tickles,” Gerard says, throwing himself across the couch, the quick movement startling Tommy almost as badly as the sharp fingernails digging into his ribs.
Tommy jerks away. “Stop it,” he snarls, and Gerard draws back with wide eyes.
“What the fuck,” Frank says. He pats himself down for his cigarettes and pushes the entire pack into Tommy’s hands. “Go smoke it off.” He points at the door. “Go.”
Tommy slinks out the door, trying not to feel too much like a little kid being sent to his room. He hates feeling stupid. And it totally is stupid, what he’s doing, but it’s not like he can just turn it off.
It wasn’t even anything big, really. Just Mrs. Mackenzie making some off-hand comment how werewolf history ought to be taught in their bio class, not hers, considering they’re, you know, animals, and then almost making Tommy leave the room when he disagreed, and then Adam saying “You sure know how to get yourself in trouble, Tommy,” and he’s had to physically unclench his hands several times on the walk over.
Just, since when is this his fault? Any of it?
He smokes the first cigarette too fast, feeling his lungs ache with the intensity even though his jitters are still there. He’s eyeing the pack, debating whether he should risk incurring Frank’s wrath by having another or just sucking it up and going back inside, when the front door opens and Adam eases onto the porch.
Tommy manages not to roll his eyes, but it’s a close call.
Adam gives him a little wave. “Hey,” he says uncertainly.
Tommy lights a second cigarette, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
“Seriously, what is up with you?” Tommy asks, once he can’t stand it anymore. “You’ve been acting like a weirdo all day.”
Adam scoffs a bit, like he’s thinking Oh, I’vebeen acting like a weirdo, and Tommy really can’t fault him for that, but he’s just mad enough to tell his conscience to fuck off.
“It’s not funny,” he says, “and I’m not in the fucking mood for games. So tell me whatever you came out here to tell me or leave me alone.”
“Seriously?” Adam asks, looking like he’s about to roll his eyes, but Tommy flashes a look at him, sharp and a bit mean, and he sets his jaw instead.
“God, you’re such a dick around these people, sometimes,” he says.
“I don’t act different here,” Tommy says. That’s a lie, kind of, but Adam’s still wrong. Tommy’s lighter, here. More like himself.
“Uh, yeah you do,” Adam says. “You act like you’re one of them, like we’re like them, but an act is all it is.”
“What are you talking about,” Tommy says, voice flat.
“You know what I’m talking about.” Adam’s gaze is sharp. “Tommy. We don’t belong here and you know it.”
“Fuck you,” Tommy says. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips over his tongue, but he has absolutely no desire to take it back. “Fuck. You.”
Adam flinches. He looks miserable now, and Tommy should maybe stop talking before he fucks everything up beyond repair, but he doesn’t.
“Maybe you’re posing around, but I’m not,” Tommy says. It’s like watching a replay of a soccer goal or something: He knows the words are coming, but he can’t do anything to stop them. “This is my life, okay, and maybe you’re too much brainwashed middle-class to see what the fuck’s going on here, but I need this, okay, I need it, and if you’re just here to rain on my parade, then you can damn well fuck off.”
“Tommy,” Adam says. He lifts a hand, hovers it awkwardly just shy of Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy can’t help but step back, slide away from the touch.
“Seriously, Adam. Just fuck off, please?”
Adam stares at him, eyes big and wet, and then he nods and goes inside and comes back a minute later with his shoes on, laces untied on one of them, and shuffles down the garden path and down the road and out of sight.
Tommy bites his lip. He’s tempted, really tempted, to run after Adam and apologize, but it wouldn’t change anything, would it? Tommy would still be annoyed, and Adam would be able to tell, and then they’d just have another awkward conversation and end up right where they started anyway. No. It’s better this way.
So he doesn’t run after him. Instead, he sits down on the porch and slides his legs through the gaps in the railing and lights up a cigarette.
“He do something to deserve that?” Frank asks.
When Tommy glances over his shoulder, Frank’s leaning against the porch door, arms crossed in front of his chest. His face is all in shadow, and his voice is completely neutral, and Tommy has no clue if he’s pissed or not.
“Yes!” he says, turning back to his cigarette before he looks back over his shoulder. “No. I don’t know.”
Frank smirks humorlessly. “No wonder the poor kid’s all confused,” he says.
Tommy doesn’t mutter to himself, but it’s a near thing. He doesn’t get why it’s always Adam that gets the sympathy. Or maybe he does, because he’s a giant sucker for those big, dark eyes himself, but he can’t deny that it can get really, really annoying at times. Or, like, all the time. And Adam doesn’t even know, is the thing - he doesn’t even get it, he just waltzes through life and everybody falls in love with his Bambi eyes and then everything’s fine.
“Sometimes he just pisses me off,” Tommy murmurs.
“So does Gee, sometimes.” Frank sways on his heels. “Doesn’t mean I go around breaking his fucking heart.”
“Oh, like you’ve never made him look at you with those teary eyes,” Tommy snaps, and then clenches his hands and breathes really hard because it’s not Frank he’s pissed at, it’s not, and he’s already done enough damage for one night.
“Just, I don’t know.” He rests his forehead against the sleeve of his shirt. “It just gets to me, I guess. The way he just rolls over and takes it. Like, there’s no fight in him. Not in him, or freaking Maria, or Ryan, or any of the kids at school. They all just sit and beg and roll over like they’re not secretly dying inside.”
“Maybe it’s ‘cause they don’t know any better,” Frank says. He plops down next to Tommy and sticks his legs through the railing. “You ever think about that?”
“They’re not five-year-olds, Frank,” Tommy sighs. “They fucking know better.”
Frank shakes his head. Tommy has a feeling it’s at him, not what he said. “You know something like 70 per cent of wolves are bred true, right?”
Tommy knows - he’s doing the module on it, isn’t he - but he has no idea where Frank’s going with that, so he just gives him a blank look. “So?”
“So,” Frank says, flipping open Tommy’s pack of cigarettes, “they have no idea what it’s like to not be treated like shit. There’s so many security systems in place now, and like, bite-proof clothes and shit, so unless you get the short end of the stick like you and Mikey, you’re either human or you’re wolf. People don’t cross over like they used to.”
He flicks on Tommy’s lighter, metal crackling, and lifts it to his mouth.
Tommy rubs his sleeve over his forehead. “Will you just get to the damn point already?”
Frank drops the lighter in Tommy’s lap. “What I’m saying, you smart-ass, is that maybe they don’t know that they can fight the system. Hey, I got lucky with my folks, but you said Adam’s been raised believing he’s inferior. And maybe it bugs him, but that doesn’t mean that somewhere, deep down, he doesn’t believe it. And the other kids at your school, they’re not exactly the social elite, are they - they’re from shit backgrounds, they have issues coming out their ears, and being a wolf is just one more factor in all the reasons they’re worth less than everyone else.”
Tommy blinks at him for a moment, breath caught in his throat, before he shakes his head and manages a shaky grin. “Man, when’d you get so deep?”
Frank stares at him. Then he laughs. “It’s a side effect of hanging out with Gerard,” he says. “Occupational hazard.”
“I can see how that would happen,” Tommy admits. He rubs at his forehead again. “I just,” he murmurs. “I just don’t think I can take it a whole lot longer, you know?”
“You won’t have to,” Frank says, utterly self-assured. “We’re on the brink of revolution, anyway.”
Tommy scoffs.
“Seriously.” Frank takes Tommy’s cigarette from his fingers and takes a long drag. He waves his hand, casually, like it isn’t a big deal. “We’re on the brink of something huge. Maybe those fuckers at that school of yours don’t want you to know that, but we are. New York City, there are riots every night. In Portland, three people died during protests after a werewolf got elected onto the city council, but she’s still on it and holding her fucking own. Even the Heartland’s starting to turn sympathetic. It’s fucking massive, this thing.”
Tommy takes a drag from his cigarette to hide the fact that he is, in fact, fucking speechless. “Why don’t I know about any of this?” he asks, and Frank rolls his eyes, and then Tommy rolls his eyes, because yeah, he knows, but what he’s really asking is why aren’t people shouting it from the fucking rooftops?
“Because they’re scared,” Frank says, when he asks. “The humans are scared they’ll get lynched by the freaking oppressed and the wolves are scared they’ll get their heads bashed in, and really, it’s not like you’re announcing to your dictator principal that you’re breaking her rules every other night.”
“It’s not that often,” Tommy mutters, for lack of anything better to say.
Frank scoffs and doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, fine.” Tommy cuts him a glance. “I’m gonna go and like, apologize. Tomorrow. Okay?”
“Peachy,” Frank says, straight-faced.
Tommy figures that’s as good as it’s gonna get.
“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Adam starts, but Tommy shouldn’t a lot of things and he’s tired of it. He silences Adam with a glare and folds his hands around his face to peer inside. There isn’t anybody inside but the back door is wide open, and that’s all the invitation Tommy needs right now.
“Tommy,” Adam grouses when Tommy steps off the porch and into the flower bed next to it.
“Shit, seriously?” Tommy hears him say, but then he’s around the corner of the house and Adam has to hurry to catch up with him, radiating disapproval but thankfully silent.
He’s right, the back door is wide open. There’s no sign of any crime though, past or in-progress, so he pokes his head in and whisper-shouts, “Hello?”
Nobody answers him this time either, but there are definitely voices coming from downstairs, and whatever. Frank said anytime, so anytime it is.
He wipes the worst of the soil from his shoes and tiptoes across the carpet and down the stairs, ignoring Adam’s steadily more pointed sighs. The basement door is open. This close, Tommy can make out Gerard’s voice along with a few others, and he steps all the way into the room before he hesitates.
“Oh hey, look, trespassers,” Frank says lazily. He’s lying sprawled out on the couch, taking up a lot of space for such a small dude, apparently deeply engrossed in drinking his beer and playing Madden at the same time. Tommy’s not sure what Mikey and Gerard and Ray are doing, sitting crosslegged in a circle on the floor, but it looks like a really, really vicious version of three-person Red Hands that somehow includes a set of cards.
At least Frank tucks in his legs a little bit so Adam and Tommy can squeeze onto the couch side by side. Adam, on the end, drapes his arm around Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy wriggles his arm between Adam and the couch and up onto his stomach. A moment later, he slides his hand underneath Adam’s shirt and gets a quick grin in return, and an eye roll from Frank, but Frank can suck it.
Somebody yells from across the room and then Ray’s scrambling back against the wall while the Way brothers roll around on the floor, not really fighting but still struggling for the upper hand, scattering cards everywhere.
Frank’s pretty unfazed by it all, lifting his feet right before Gerard’s back slams into the couch below them. Mikey manages to get on top for a split second, pining one of Gerard’s hands while his brother slaps at his torso with the other.
Tommy tucks his feet onto the pillow he’s sitting on, eyes drawn to Mikey’s back. The bite on his neck is hard to miss from this close, jagged scars where teeth tore the skin. It makes Tommy’s fingers itch to reach up and slide them across his own. It makes him wonder if Gerard is like this on full moons, too - if he rough-houses with Mikey then, if he can see past that tiny little elephant of a snag in treating his kid brother like everyone else when any minute, Mikey might lose grip and infect him, too.
It definitely doesn’t seem to bother him right now - he’s grinning like an idiot when he finally manages to get Mikey flipped around, and then digs his fingers into Mikey’s armpits. Mikey doesn’t really make a sound, even, which would be odd if it were anyone else, but he sort of writhes and flails and finally stills under the onslaught.
“Knock it off, Gee,” he says. Tommy can’t really tell if he’s amused or annoyed, and for a second he thinks Gerard will just keep going, but then the guy presses a quick kiss to Mikey’s forehead and gets up. He even reaches down a hand to help Mikey to his feet and Mikey doesn’t even try to yank him back down, which makes him a better person than Tommy and most likely Frank. Instead, he brushes at the knees of his jeans, pulls his t-shirt down where it’s ridden up past his hips, and heads for the stairs, giving the basement door a yank as he goes.
“Where are you going?” Gerard calls after him.
“To get ready for work,” Mikey calls back. “It’s not like I can get out of it just because I’m hanging out with jailbait.” The door swings shut and then bangs open again, and they can just see the last of Mikey’s legs and his battered sneakers disappearing up the stairs.
“You’re a dick!” Gerard yells, and then gives Tommy and Adam an apologetic shrug. “He’s a dick.”
“He’s right,” Adam says softly.
“Still a dick.” Frank grins.
“But.” Adam waves his hand between himself and Tommy, what the fuck. He can be all noble if he wants, but Tommy would totally kick him in the thigh for dragging Tommy into it, too, if Frank and Gerard weren’t both watching them.
“We’re like, high schoolers, you guys. You could get into so much trouble.”
“Yeah, ‘cause the weed and the underage drinking -“ Frank points at himself for that one “-and the occasional pills and the noise complaints are just no big deal at all.”
“At least you’re over eighteen,” Ray says. He doesn’t look at Tommy or Adam when he gets to his feet. “I’m gonna head out too,” he says. “Michaels at the grocery store said he’d pay me time and a half to carry all his heavy shit into the cellar.”
“You got it, man,” Frank says, apparently unconcerned by the nasty look Tommy sends Ray’s way. “Carry heavy shit. Go forth and be productive.”
“Maybe you can be productive, too,” Ray says, nudging a beer can that topples over with a hollow clunk.
“Never,” Frank exclaims. He presses his hands to his heart. “Why must you say such things?”
Ray rolls his eyes, but he’s totally smiling a bit while he collects his shoes and disappears out the door.
“Dick,” Tommy mutters under his breath.
Adam gives him a look, half shocked, half sympathetic, but neither Gerard nor Frank seem to have heard. Which is, you know, probably a good thing.
“Okay, wow, mood killer,” Frank says. “Who wants beer?”
“Frank thinks beer cures everything,” Gerard adds. He nudges Frank aside so he can sit down next to him.
“You can’t drown your problems,” Adam counsels wisely, which, what the fuck? Way to come off as a pretentious ass.
Thankfully, though, Frank just laughs. “But I can damn well try,” he says. “Cheers.”
“Do you have problems, Adam?” Gerard asks, leaning forward. He’s swaying a bit. “Because you can tell us, you know? We won’t judge.”
Adam gapes at him, eyes going big. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so painful. Or maybe it’d be painful if it weren’t so hilarious.
“Yeah, man, tell us all your problems.” Frank burps, laughs. “Except the gay thing. That’s not a secret.”
“Oh, you’re gay?” Gerard asks while Adam sputters. “That’s completely okay, I promise. My Chemical Romance doesn’t discriminate.”
“I, I,” Adam sputters. He shoots a help-seeking look at Tommy, but there’s no way Tommy’s getting involved in this. Adam’s on his own with this one.
“No, seriously.” Frank reaches over Tommy to bump his fist into Adam’s shoulder. “We don’t care who you stick your dick into, Adam,” he says. He waggles his eyebrows. “Or who sticks his into you.”
“Right.” Adam goes bright red, like, fire-engine red, but he manages a smile. “Thanks, Frank.”
“It’s all good.” Frank arches off the couch to fiddle with the twenty-four-pack sitting next to it, hanging upside down. Gerard slings an arm around his waist to keep him from tipping off entirely, but he doesn’t look too bothered. Eventually Frank resurfaces with a handful of cans stacked together between his hands, but he doesn’t actually move away, just settles himself more comfortably in Gerard’s lap before he holds out a beer.
“Have a brew.”
Tommy pops the top and drinks, pretends not to notice the fuzzy bubbles creeping up his nose, pretends not to notice how Adam’s mouth twists with reluctance when he takes his own can. Guy can take care of himself. He’s a big dude, he can handle it.
The next Monday, Mrs. Mackenzie hits them with a pop quiz that everyone except Tommy seems to know about it. It could be that she announced it last class when Tommy’s head was full of riffs and chords and the beat of drums, or maybe everybody else just practiced their poker face a whole bunch since the last test she sprung on them. Far more likely, though, is that somebody caught wind of the thing and let everybody know except Tommy, because why would anybody tell the resident freak anything?
Tommy ends up guessing a whole bunch of shit about Napoleon based on the timeline he vaguely remembers from last week, and squinting at the test sheet of the girl sitting next to him, and probably doesn’t do as badly as he could. At least he knows the Battle of Waterloo wasn’t in 1914.
It doesn’t help him any when he gets a - too well-aimed to be accidental - volley ball to the face in P.E. and has to sit out the rest of the class period and half of Spanish because his nose won’t stop bleeding. Adam comes to the nurse’s office during his break and sneaks him a Snickers bar and eats three of his own sitting next to Tommy on the cot, wide-eyed and pale. He flinches when Tommy elbows him in the side, and his smile is nothing more than tentative when Tommy says, “Hey, man, I’m fine, alright?” around the wad of tissues he’s pressing to his nose.
He manages to barely get out of lunchtime tutoring when he gets his History quiz back with a 76% inked at the top in stark red, thank fuck, and spends two seconds resolving to crack open his books again at some point before he heads over to Adam’s room to talk him into going down to see the guys on Friday or Saturday. Being in Clarkenwell is turning his brain into mush. He’s honestly not sure how he’s going to take all this bullshit much longer.
Adam hems and haws but finally his eyes catch on the bruising across the bridge of Tommy’s nose and Tommy knows he’s won even though Adam says he has to think about it.
Fuck thinking about it. If there’s anything Tommy needs to do, it’s to not think about anything.
“I think we’re getting good at this,” Tommy says when they get to Millner Street with only a minimum of scrapes and strained muscles to show for their troubles.
“Good at breaking the rules,” Adam says. “Great.”
“Would you rather get caught every time?” Tommy asks him, jogging ahead to climb the three steps up to the porch. There’s a crookedly torn sheet of notebook paper taped to the door.
Tommy&Adam - come on in, door’s open
sales people, cops, jerkfaces - fuck off
“Charming,” Adam says, hint of a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth.
“You like it, don’t lie,” Tommy says, reaching for the doorknob.
“Yeah, sure,” Adam says on their way down the stairs. “I like, totally love it. I can barely contain myself.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Tommy says. He’s got a headache, nothing major, but it’s annoying enough for him to reach up and try to rub it away. “God damn it,” he says. “I think Mrs. Mackenzie like, fucked with my brain or something. Feels like it’s melting.”
“Sounds gross,” Adam says noncommittally, and pushes open the basement door.
Only Gerard and Frank are there, Frank playing some fighter game on their PlayStation and Gerard half-melted into his couch, face buried in the cushions.
“Yo guys,” Frank says. “What’s up.”
Adam sits down on the couch, then gets back up again and gingerly removes an empty cookie tray from the seat. “Prep school is melting Tommy’s brain,” he says once he’s comfortably settled.
“Gee, really?” Frank doesn’t look up from his button-mashing. “Color me surprised.”
“Not just mine,” Tommy says, perching on the back of the couch and kicking Adam lightly in the side. “Adam’s just too chicken shit to actually admit it.”
“I am not,” Adam huffs.
Tommy rolls his eyes. “So you’re not bored out of your fucking mind doing Twinkle Twinkle or whatever in choir for the third year in a row?”
Gerard, predictably, pushes himself vaguely upright. “Choir?” he asks.
Adam shrugs and doesn’t look up. “Kind of,” he says. “I mean, I had some lessons in San Diego, and my teacher said I was pretty good, but obviously the choir teacher doesn’t quite agree, and who am I-“
“It’s retarded,” Tommy insists, cutting through Adam’s self-depreciating babble. He slides down into the seat. “He’s the best singer in our entire school, and he’s stuck in the last row because he’s got the gene.”
“The gene,” Frank echoes him, voice pitched all spooky and waggling his fingers before he cracks up.
“You can sing?” Gerard asks, undeterred.
Adam picks at the hem of his shirt. “Like I said…” he mutters.
Tommy slouches across the couch to kick his ankle. “He’s amazing,” he tells Gerard. “Seriously, make him sing something. Anything. He’ll blow your mind.”
“Sing Want of a Nail,” Frank says, like that’s even a challenge.
Adam hems and haws until Tommy elbows him in the side, and then he opens his mouth and delivers the chorus flawlessly. Adam likes to show off. It’s buried deep, underneath his lack of self-esteem and his self-consciousness and complete and utter terror of public embarrassment. So it’s no wonder that it took Tommy forever to figure it out, but. Adam likes attention. Positive attention. It makes him glow.
And he may deny it, but Tommy can see the pleased flush on his cheeks when Gerard nods, says, “That’s really good,” when Frankie whistles through his teeth. Tommy doesn’t say anything. He already knew Adam is awesome - he just has to make the rest of the world see it, too.
It ends up sneaking up on him.
It’s usually impossible for him to forget, for him to do anything but watch the symbols on his calendar steadily creep up to a complete, blank circle, but there’s so much going on and he’s having fun, he actually is for the first time in a long time, and he just totally forgets. He’s bumming around homeroom, trying to look like he’s doing his homework and half-watching the sun tilt down towards the treetops and when the lady on the PA calls for Anderson, Maria he actually wonders what she’s supposed to have done before the list runs down a set of familiar names and he remembers.
It’s like being dunked in ice water. Everybody’s eyes are on him while he shoves his book and notepad into his bag and heads for the door, for the cellars. Nate nods at him when he comes out of the gym and falls into step beside him, damp hair curling at the base of his neck, but they don’t speak.
Nate holds the door to the basement open for Tommy and some mousey little sophomore who comes up behind them to slip through. The door falls shut behind them with a hair-raising thud, one that practically spells out trapped and doomed forever. Sometimes Tommy really misses California and its flimsy architecture.
Adam’s waiting at the foot of the stairs, shifting from foot to foot. He manages a smile for Tommy, but Tommy doesn’t even have time to react, to mutter something reassuring, before Clarkenwell’s guard dogs shows up behind him and snaps at them all to get a move on. And then it’s time to strip down, eyes always on him, and shuffle around on the cold floor while the heavy lock snaps shut like it’s the door of a high security vault.
Tommy takes a deep breath. It stutters out as a sigh.
There’s not really a whole lot left for him to do at this point except pace around and wait for the sun to set. He hates this part, it’s always the worst. At least there’s a breath of fresh air sweeping in through the cracked-open window, though, and Tommy breathes it in for a moment, imagining himself running through the fields, feet/paws hitting the packed dirt, before he shakes himself out of the fantasy. It’s not gonna help him any if he turns into a total pussy while no one’s paying attention.
Instead, he turns and tries to peer out through the spy-hole. It’s pointless, which he knows because he does it every time, but he does it every time because it gives him something to do. It’s routine. It doesn’t even matter that he’s locked up in a dark, cold, lonely cellar with nothing to protect his feet from the cement below him and not even bricks to count to entertain him, because Tommy can still peer out that spy-hole like a motherfucking champ.
“Well, this is fucked up.”
Tommy whirls around at the sound of Frank’s voice, and there he is, the crazy bastard, peering through the window with his hands on his knees.
“What are you doing here, are you crazy?” Tommy whispers. He still edges closer.
“People have assumed so, yes.” Frank rattles the metal on the window a little bit. “So much for not shackling you to the wall,” he comments.
Tommy lifts his wrists into the air. “Shackle-free,” he says.
Frank nods. “Also buck-naked, and stuck in a three-by-three cell. Seriously, fuck this shit.”
“Nothing to fuck, either,” Tommy says, attempting a smile that Frank barely returns.
Instead, he mutters something about disgrace and something that sounds decidedly bloodthirsty, and then he kicks at the window hinge a couple of times. “Ready for a night of freedom?” he asks. “I think I can get this open.”
“What?” Tommy asks, voice flipping hysterically. “You can’t just let me out, Frank. It’s a full moon tonight.”
“I’m well aware,” Frank says . He bends down to peer at the damage he’s done. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“You’re going to shift, too,” Tommy remembers. “Shit, you need to get out of here.”
“I do, yes,” Frank says gravely. “I was thinking you might want to accompany us.”
Tommy’s eyes damn near bug out of his head. “What?”
‘”You want me to leave you down there to rot?” Frank asks, deadly serious, and no, Tommy doesn’t want that at all. He probably couldn’t even convince someone of that if he had to.
He shakes his head. “Get me outa here,” he says.
Frank nods, grins. “Stand back,” he says, and starts kicking at the window frame until it’s so bent out of shape that Tommy can squeeze past it with the help of Frank and a second hand that appears through the frame.
It turns out to belong to Mikey, Gerard’s brother. Tommy climbs to his feet and dusts himself off before he dips his head in Mikey’s direction. “What’s up, Frank,” he says.
“You’ve met Mikey,” Frank says, gesturing.
Mikey nods.
“You’re both completely fucked in the head,” Tommy tells them. “Seriously, I’m not kidding. You could get arrested.”
“You could get expelled,” Frank throws back. He crosses his arms. “Do you want us to stick you back down there?”
The sane answer is yes, but Tommy takes one look at the tiny window and the grey-tinted darkness beyond it and knows he could never actually ask to go back there.
“Fuck no,” he says, turning away and crossing his arms. He gestures at the next window over, entirely closed. “Adam’s down there.”
“Great,” Frank says, all teeth, and delivers a sharp kick to the bolt. He barely has time to attack it again before Adam’s face appears at the window, eyes startled and wide.
“Frank,” he mouths, inaudible through the pane.
“Hi Adam,” Frank says loudly. “We’re gonna spring you, if that’s okay?”
“What?” Adam mouths back.
Frank motions for him to stand back and aims a kick at the metal frame. Tommy really hopes those boots of his are steel-capped, because he really doesn’t want to have to deal with a bunch of broken toes tonight. Maybe he does, because Frank doesn’t even flinch, just kicks at it over and over until the metal’s loose enough for him to wrangle it out of the frame.
“Come on then,” he tells Adam, motioning.
“But!” Adam protests, even as he lifts his hands for Tommy and Mikey to haul him up. “What are you doing? We can’t just climb out! What if we hurt somebody?”
“We’re not gonna,” Frank says. He sounds so sure, so damn sure, that Tommy can feel himself relax into it. They’re not gonna hurt anybody. They’re gonna be fine.
Frank gives Adam a sharp yank to haul him through the window (he almost doesn’t fit) and then drops him to the ground, letting him land with a soft noise. Mikey lets go a moment later.
“There could be campers in the woods,” Adam insists, scrambling to his feet. “We’re not gonna be ourselves - we won’t have control. What if we eat them?”
“Wolves don’t eat people,” Frank says.
Mikey rolls his eyes in agreement.
“We hunt game, like every fucking wolf does. People only get hurt when they get caught in the crossfire, and anyone dumb enough to be out in the woods on a full moon kind of deserves it.”
Adam throws Tommy a help-seeking look, but Tommy just shrugs. He’s made up his mind. Adam can stay here without him if he wants.
“Maybe you won’t have control,” Mikey says slowly, startling all of them, “but we do.”
Adam blinks. Tommy can feel himself mirror the movement. “You do?”
Mikey nods. “We’ll keep you in check,” he says, tiny little smirk gracing his lips.
“Well then.” Tommy bounces on his feet a little. He thinks he’s picking that up from Frank. “If Mikeyway says.”
“Mikeyway says,” Mikey says, and then he turns and just starts walking away and they stare after him like idiots until Frank motions for them to hurry the hell up.
Mikey finally calls a halt in a thicket of trees that affords at least some kind of privacy when the sun’s already blood red on the horizon. He looks around a little bit and then starts stripping his shirt off, just like that, ribs showing as he stretches.
Tommy can see Adam gaping and he wasn’t want to do that, be that guy, but he’s already naked, so he turns and watches the sun disappear, sliver by sliver, and then it’s gone and the moon’s at his back and he can feel the shift creeping up his spine.
Usually this is where he fights, hanging onto his consciousness until it’s wrenched from him violently, but it’s different out here. Like this. It doesn’t feel quite as bad, as unnatural, out in a forest surrounded by three other naked guys who are all waiting for the same thing to happen to them. More dignified, perhaps. Less like a punishment, and more like a way of life.
He smiles at himself for that, because way to sound like a fucking hippie, and ducks his head when he feels his bones begin to change. Shifting doesn’t hurt. It never does - his body is designed for the changes now, after all. It feels weird, that’s all, skin stretching to accommodate his growing bones. The first time was weird, terrifying, but it’s almost normal now. He’s expecting this. He’s all prepared for his vision to blur, too, for his mind to go blank, but for some reason, it doesn’t.
He twists his changing skull around, looking for the others. They’re mid-shift, too, and Mikey’s got yellow eyes in a human face that are fixed on Tommy, bright and aware, and Tommy drops his head and shudders in confusion.
It’s never like this. Usually, Tommy’s mind just… goes away halfway through the shift, when he’s cowering on the floor so he won’t lose his balance but he can still see fingernails clawing at the concrete. He remembers snatches sometimes, the smell of damp and dark or the light of the moon through the window, but usually, he wakes up at first light, curled on the floor in a shivering heap, his mind blissfully blank.
This time isn’t like that. He still doesn’t catch all of it, but he catches some things. It’s disjointed, like a badly cut movie - he’s running, pads of his feet slapping against the moist ground; he’s surrounded by brethren, by friends; he’s splashing into a stream with a happy sound that can only be described as a yowl; he’s pouncing on a big, big wolf that he just knows is Adam, Adam who’s just as playful, rolling around the underground with him and trapping him with his paws, still careful in his victory.
For the first time since he crossed over, Tommy doesn’t wake up hating himself. Instead, the sight of the pink sky through the window, awkwardly bent back into shape, makes him smile. He pushes himself to his feet and looks himself over, but there aren’t any of the usual bruises and tears where he assumes he claws at the walls. The pads of his feet are sore and he has to stretch his hands a little bit, but he feels good. He feels great.
He startles at the sound of keys turning in the lock, and then footsteps, shuffling away, stopping every couple of feet. Finally they come closer again and then away. Tommy listens until the dull thuds that are heavy boots on the stairs have faded away completely, and then he eases open the door. His clothes are on the floor just beside it, where he left them, and while he’s squirreling into his underwear Adam pushes his own door open and reaches around for his uniform. He hides his body behind the wall, just a sliver of bare shoulder visible, but he somehow looks more naked for it than Tommy feels, standing there in just his skivvies.
But then Adam catches his eyes and this wide, exhilarated smile spreads across his face, and Tommy can’t help but smile back. He bounces around while Adam gets into his clothes and barely remembers to get his own pants on and shirt thrown over his shoulders. He probably looks ridiculous, and he’s not even offended when Adam emerges, impeccably dressed, and bursts out laughing.
“Come on,” he says, tugging on Adam’s wrist. It’s still only six or so - maybe they can sleep for an hour (two if they skip breakfast) before they have to get to class.
Tommy manages to toss and turn his way through a couple of disjointed dreams before his alarm goes off, and just barely gets himself dragged down to the classrooms before the bell rings. He stares blearily at the board during Spanish and copies down the homework off the girl next to him while she’s doodling hearts in the margins of her notebook because he can’t make out which part of the scribbled mess on the blackboard is actually important. In Bio, he gets back a B+ on a test he thought he’d fucked up and that’s actually kind of nice, but then he has Mrs. Sallivan and the day takes a sharp downward turn again. He dozes through her lecture until she catches him at it, snaps at him that he shouldn’t expect preferential treatment just because of the bracelet on his wrist and that if the rest of his classmates can stay awake, then so can he. One of the guys behind him kicks his chair when her back is turned, and Tommy pays attention after that, if only because he can’t unclench his jaw enough to go back to sleep.
Mrs. Sallivan gives him the evil eye when he stumbles out of the room, but at least it’s lunchtime now. He’s free for a whole forty-five minutes, which is pretty much a three-day-weekend at this point as far as Tommy’s concerned.
Adam waves at him when Tommy stumbles into the food hall, from Ryan and Freshman’s table. There’s enough space for three people between him and Ryan, so they’re probably not sitting together together, but Tommy’s got glassy eyes and almost falls over some chick’s bag on his way over, so he’s not really willing or able to contemplate the intricacies of the way Adam and the two others are sitting.
At least they all look just as wrecked as he does, and nobody tries to make conversation. Freshman almost falls asleep in his garlic pasta. It makes Tommy feel absurdly better.
He really wants to blame his state of near-delirium on what happens next, but that’s probably a lie. Just - Adam reaches for the salt sitting by Ryan’s elbow, and Tommy sees the way his muscles bunch and stretch underneath the fabric of his blazer, and his brain goes, hot. Which is completely ridiculous, and Tommy stares at Adam’s arm for a little bit, trying to figure out what happened that would warrant that kind of reaction from his clearly ridiculous mind.
Eventually, Adam notices him gaping and smiles uncertainly. “What?” he asks, salt shaker poised over his plate.
“Uh.” Tommy shakes his head. “Nothing,” he mutters.
Adam smiles then, bright and real, and an expression that used to be cute and nothing more now has Tommy’s mouth going dry. It’s fucking freaky, is what it is.
He pushes his chair back, mumbling something about getting something from his locker.
Adam just nods and gets up too, of course. He doesn’t say anything else while they walk, but he keeps glancing at Tommy, and Tommy doesn’t dare look again until Adam’s bent into his locker, pants stretching over his ass, legs long and lean, and Tommy’s brain promptly sputters out again.
Rationally, Tommy understands that Adam hasn’t changed. He’s still a bit pudgy and fidgety and a total scaredy-cat, but every time Tommy looks at him, he sees the wolf instead, mid-jump, stretched and graceful and so fucking badass.
Adam catches him looking again, after a while, flushing at the attention. He’s gonna have to get over that if he really wants to be a singer, Tommy thinks idly, and then tries to make himself be less obvious, but it’s hard. He obviously doesn’t succeed because by the time sixth period rolls around and they’re fiddling with their lockers again, shoving their books inside and, in Adam’s case, sweeping out all the little paper balls someone poured inside as a joke, Adam glances at Tommy every couple of seconds, looking increasingly twitchy every time. It probably doesn’t help that he always catches Tommy staring back.
“Seriously, what?” he asks after a while, dropping his gaze to the floor.
Tommy shrugs and pushes away, strides down the hall and tries to ignore Adam stumbling after him and pleading, “Come on, Tommy, tell me what’s wrong.” And then Adam’s scrabbling for his arm, tugging insistently. “Shit, Tommy,” he hisses. “Tommy. That’s Frank.”
It is, it actually is. Tommy thinks his eyes might bug out of his head. He blinks a couple of times, but it’s still Frank, wearing a Clarkenwell uniform down to the fucking shined leather shoes. He looks over his shoulder a couple of times, casually like he’s just waiting for someone, and Tommy probably would have bought the act if he didn’t know better. Then he gets out a tube of superglue, unscrews it, pops open the locker and begins to line the inside where the door matches up with the frame with the liquid, quickly and efficiently, across and down. He disappears the tube into his pocket, checks his reflection in the mirror on the inside of the door, snags a pack of gum lying on top of a stack of textbooks, and casually pushes the locker shut.
“He’s crazy,” Adam breathes next to Tommy’s ear, and much as Tommy would like to defend him, it’s really kind of the truth.
Frank still hasn’t noticed them, bobbing around on his feet, unsubtly looking around for something else to fuck with. “Hey, man,” he even says to somebody, and grins brightly when the guy gives him a startled look. God, Frank’s such a dumbass. He’s gonna get them killed. He’s gonna get himself killed.
“Yo! Frank!” Tommy whispers, once Frank’s not-friend is gone.
Frank turns, grinning wide when he sees them, and ambles over. “You guys caught that, yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah, we caught that.” Tommy shoves at Frank’s shoulder. “You fucking psycho, what is wrong with you?”
Frank looks a bit taken aback by that, but then he bounces on his toes and grins. “You just wish you had the fucking balls to do that,” he says.
The problem is, he’s not entirely wrong. But Tommy and Adam, they’re here on scholarship, and as fun as it would be to go around causing shit, Tommy can admit - to himself, if nobody else - that he’s too chicken-shit to risk getting thrown out. He just hopes no one hears his voice waver when he says, “You’re crazy.”
Frank shrugs. He looks around but the hallways are nearly empty now, everybody in their classrooms already, and he purses his lips. “You guys should take off,” he says. “Wouldn’t do if somebody noticed you missing and thought you had anything to do with that.”
He gestures vaguely over his shoulder at the superglued locker, and then he grins a bright, satisfied smile and shoos them down the corridor with his hands.
“I can’t believe that was your first time running,” Frank says around the rim of his beer.
“That was craaazy,” Adam says before Tommy can. He’s practically bouncing around on the basement’s ratty couch. “That was so amazing, you guys have no idea.”
“I’m pretty sure they were, you know, there,” Tommy says, but he’s grinning, because Adam’s right. It was insane. Tommy’s still flying high almost a week later.
“Yeah, but they do that every time,” Adam tells him, elbowing him in the side. “Dude, I’ve never been outside during a moon before. I can’t wait to do that again.”
“You will,” Frank assures him. “We’re not letting you wallow away in that dungeon up there anymore. Those days are over.”
“You’re gonna keep springing us?” Adam asks, grinning. His smile is a mile wide.
Frank nods seriously. “Until somebody stops us.”
“You’re insane,” Adam says, but he sounds delighted, and Frank grins.
“Certifiable,” he says.
“A doctor actually certified him,” Gerard adds, dry.
Honestly, Tommy wouldn’t be all that surprised. He tries to grin at Frank, but Frank’s not exactly grinning back. The expression’s there, sure, but something’s off.
“Hey,” Mikey says, distracting him by knocking a knee into Tommy’s. “Felt different, didn’t it?”
And that easily, all the overflow of feelings from the other day is back, making Tommy’s heart thrum in his chest. “It was incredible,” he says. “I’ve never remembered anything after the shift. Do you-” He chokes on his own spit in his excitement, has to pause and take a deep breath. “Do you guys like, remember it all?”
“Not all of it,” Mikey says. “There’s still a couple of hours that go missing sometimes. But most of it, usually, yeah.”
“You can train yourself to,” Frank adds. “We’ve both gotten better at it with time.”
Mikey nods. “And you guys have like, zero training whatsoever.”
“Training,” Tommy echoes. Well, sure. It’s not like he isn’t going to be stuck doing this every full moon for the rest of his life.
Frank cuts him a quick glance but then looks away, and then Gerard starts talking about how he kind of wants to know what shifting’s like - no disrespect or anything, just curiosity - and Mikey throws in something about Gerard’s drawings and how they kind of capture the feeling, and Adam’s practically wagging his tail in excitement when he asks to see them.
“They’re not, I mean,” Gerard says, but he’s already getting to his feet. “They’re upstairs, in my room.”
Adam bounds to his feet, shifting in place like a toddler who needs to pee, but Tommy kind of gets it. He’d probably want to see too if he wasn’t getting this bizarro vibe from Frank.
“You wanna come?” Gerard asks, Adam wide-eyed at his side, but Tommy shakes his head.
He lifts his beer can. “I’m good,” he says.
“Okay,” Gerard says. He shrugs and struts out the door, Mikey and Adam in his wake, leaving Tommy and Frank sitting there in silence.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” Tommy says after a while. “Anytime now, seriously.”
Frank shakes his head. “I can’t believe you let them do that to you,” he says.
“I don’t really have much of a choice, do I?” Tommy bites out. “It’s the fucking law, and it’s not like Clarkenwell is all that different from California, in that respect.”
“Oh, please,” Frank says. “You can’t tell me your parents locked you in a fucking dungeon every moon before you got here.”
“There are places around town you can go,” Tommy says. “Safety houses.”
“Prisons,” Frank says.
“Safety houses,” Tommy insists. “They’re to protect people.” He can’t help scowling. Yeah, those places had sucked, and Tommy hated them. But that was when everything was still new, when the shift itself was still terrifying, and at least the rooms were warm and comfortable and nobody watched him take his clothes off.
“To protect gene-free America.” Frank rolls his eyes. “Don’t try to tell me those fucking lock-ups are there to protect wolves.”
“And what’s so wrong with protecting gene-free America, huh?” Tommy spits. “What’s so wrong with making sure we don’t hurt anybody?”
“If they left us to shift in peace, we wouldn’t hurt anybody,” Frank hisses back at him. “Places like Clarkenwell are a disgrace to our kind, Tommy. I can’t believe you’re defending them.”
“You know that’s how I fucking got bit, right?” Tommy cuts in. “Because of some wolf running wild?”
Frank opens his mouth, jaw tight, but then he catches sight of Tommy’s expression and snaps it shut again. He looks down at his hands, but it isn’t in embarrassment or shame or anything. Tommy’s getting the feeling Frank doesn’t do shame.
“I’m gonna go upstairs,” Frank finally grits out, and then he gets up and walks away.
“Fuck,” Tommy murmurs, letting his head fall back against the backrest, and closes his eyes.
They never talk about it. Maybe that’s not the healthiest approach to the issue, but Tommy’s certainly not going to be the one to initiate a conversation about his feelings, and definitely not with Frank. So he just pretends like nothing happens and Frank does the same and after a while their forced easy interactions melt back into the real thing, easy and light and completely immature, and Tommy loves it. He really fucking loves it.
Tommy heads for the fridge the minute he gets into the basement. Adam, with his complete and utter lack of a survival instinct, trails after him uncertainly, not even getting the memo when the handle creaks alarmingly in Tommy’s hand.
There’s only two beers left; two beers and a bottle of vodka and a half-empty jar of hotdogs. Tommy takes the beer anyway. Whatever, he’ll leave a fiver on the table or something. They can always buy more, or like, most of them can. Tommy’s legally alcohol-free for another three years.
“Hey now,” Gerard says, pushing a half-open sketchbook off his chest.
Frank surfaces behind the couch, cobwebs in his hair and a couple of playing cards in his hands. “Hi guys,” he says. “Wanna play Uno? Loser has to do a grocery run.”
Adam grins, drifting closer to the couches and the pile of battered cards on the coffee table.
Gerard nods. He looks like he’d been asleep, or at least drifting in and out, for a while. “Mikey’s coming home soon,” he says. “And he said he’d kill us if we were still out of milk then.” He flattens his mouth into an I’m-not-scared line. “He can be kinda mean when he wants to be.”
Tommy has a hard time imagining Mikey as anything but carelessly agreeable, but he shrugs anyway. The beer can is crumpling in his grip, so he sets it down on the fridge before anyone notices.
Adam sits down on not-Gerard’s-couch and starts pushing the sticky cards into a somewhat orderly pile.
Gerard sits up and pats the cushion next to him. “Come sit,” he says to Tommy. “I’d make a comment about not biting, but that’s probably inappropriate, huh?”
Tommy shrugs again, perches on the edge of the seat. Adam tries to catch his eye but he turns his head away, too slowly to miss the look that passes between Gerard and Frank.
“You know what he needs?” Gerard asks Adam, nodding his head at Tommy.
Adam shakes his head. “What?”
“Tickles,” Gerard says, throwing himself across the couch, the quick movement startling Tommy almost as badly as the sharp fingernails digging into his ribs.
Tommy jerks away. “Stop it,” he snarls, and Gerard draws back with wide eyes.
“What the fuck,” Frank says. He pats himself down for his cigarettes and pushes the entire pack into Tommy’s hands. “Go smoke it off.” He points at the door. “Go.”
Tommy slinks out the door, trying not to feel too much like a little kid being sent to his room. He hates feeling stupid. And it totally is stupid, what he’s doing, but it’s not like he can just turn it off.
It wasn’t even anything big, really. Just Mrs. Mackenzie making some off-hand comment how werewolf history ought to be taught in their bio class, not hers, considering they’re, you know, animals, and then almost making Tommy leave the room when he disagreed, and then Adam saying “You sure know how to get yourself in trouble, Tommy,” and he’s had to physically unclench his hands several times on the walk over.
Just, since when is this his fault? Any of it?
He smokes the first cigarette too fast, feeling his lungs ache with the intensity even though his jitters are still there. He’s eyeing the pack, debating whether he should risk incurring Frank’s wrath by having another or just sucking it up and going back inside, when the front door opens and Adam eases onto the porch.
Tommy manages not to roll his eyes, but it’s a close call.
Adam gives him a little wave. “Hey,” he says uncertainly.
Tommy lights a second cigarette, waiting for him to say something, but he doesn’t.
“Seriously, what is up with you?” Tommy asks, once he can’t stand it anymore. “You’ve been acting like a weirdo all day.”
Adam scoffs a bit, like he’s thinking Oh, I’vebeen acting like a weirdo, and Tommy really can’t fault him for that, but he’s just mad enough to tell his conscience to fuck off.
“It’s not funny,” he says, “and I’m not in the fucking mood for games. So tell me whatever you came out here to tell me or leave me alone.”
“Seriously?” Adam asks, looking like he’s about to roll his eyes, but Tommy flashes a look at him, sharp and a bit mean, and he sets his jaw instead.
“God, you’re such a dick around these people, sometimes,” he says.
“I don’t act different here,” Tommy says. That’s a lie, kind of, but Adam’s still wrong. Tommy’s lighter, here. More like himself.
“Uh, yeah you do,” Adam says. “You act like you’re one of them, like we’re like them, but an act is all it is.”
“What are you talking about,” Tommy says, voice flat.
“You know what I’m talking about.” Adam’s gaze is sharp. “Tommy. We don’t belong here and you know it.”
“Fuck you,” Tommy says. He doesn’t mean to, it just slips over his tongue, but he has absolutely no desire to take it back. “Fuck. You.”
Adam flinches. He looks miserable now, and Tommy should maybe stop talking before he fucks everything up beyond repair, but he doesn’t.
“Maybe you’re posing around, but I’m not,” Tommy says. It’s like watching a replay of a soccer goal or something: He knows the words are coming, but he can’t do anything to stop them. “This is my life, okay, and maybe you’re too much brainwashed middle-class to see what the fuck’s going on here, but I need this, okay, I need it, and if you’re just here to rain on my parade, then you can damn well fuck off.”
“Tommy,” Adam says. He lifts a hand, hovers it awkwardly just shy of Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy can’t help but step back, slide away from the touch.
“Seriously, Adam. Just fuck off, please?”
Adam stares at him, eyes big and wet, and then he nods and goes inside and comes back a minute later with his shoes on, laces untied on one of them, and shuffles down the garden path and down the road and out of sight.
Tommy bites his lip. He’s tempted, really tempted, to run after Adam and apologize, but it wouldn’t change anything, would it? Tommy would still be annoyed, and Adam would be able to tell, and then they’d just have another awkward conversation and end up right where they started anyway. No. It’s better this way.
So he doesn’t run after him. Instead, he sits down on the porch and slides his legs through the gaps in the railing and lights up a cigarette.
“He do something to deserve that?” Frank asks.
When Tommy glances over his shoulder, Frank’s leaning against the porch door, arms crossed in front of his chest. His face is all in shadow, and his voice is completely neutral, and Tommy has no clue if he’s pissed or not.
“Yes!” he says, turning back to his cigarette before he looks back over his shoulder. “No. I don’t know.”
Frank smirks humorlessly. “No wonder the poor kid’s all confused,” he says.
Tommy doesn’t mutter to himself, but it’s a near thing. He doesn’t get why it’s always Adam that gets the sympathy. Or maybe he does, because he’s a giant sucker for those big, dark eyes himself, but he can’t deny that it can get really, really annoying at times. Or, like, all the time. And Adam doesn’t even know, is the thing - he doesn’t even get it, he just waltzes through life and everybody falls in love with his Bambi eyes and then everything’s fine.
“Sometimes he just pisses me off,” Tommy murmurs.
“So does Gee, sometimes.” Frank sways on his heels. “Doesn’t mean I go around breaking his fucking heart.”
“Oh, like you’ve never made him look at you with those teary eyes,” Tommy snaps, and then clenches his hands and breathes really hard because it’s not Frank he’s pissed at, it’s not, and he’s already done enough damage for one night.
“Just, I don’t know.” He rests his forehead against the sleeve of his shirt. “It just gets to me, I guess. The way he just rolls over and takes it. Like, there’s no fight in him. Not in him, or freaking Maria, or Ryan, or any of the kids at school. They all just sit and beg and roll over like they’re not secretly dying inside.”
“Maybe it’s ‘cause they don’t know any better,” Frank says. He plops down next to Tommy and sticks his legs through the railing. “You ever think about that?”
“They’re not five-year-olds, Frank,” Tommy sighs. “They fucking know better.”
Frank shakes his head. Tommy has a feeling it’s at him, not what he said. “You know something like 70 per cent of wolves are bred true, right?”
Tommy knows - he’s doing the module on it, isn’t he - but he has no idea where Frank’s going with that, so he just gives him a blank look. “So?”
“So,” Frank says, flipping open Tommy’s pack of cigarettes, “they have no idea what it’s like to not be treated like shit. There’s so many security systems in place now, and like, bite-proof clothes and shit, so unless you get the short end of the stick like you and Mikey, you’re either human or you’re wolf. People don’t cross over like they used to.”
He flicks on Tommy’s lighter, metal crackling, and lifts it to his mouth.
Tommy rubs his sleeve over his forehead. “Will you just get to the damn point already?”
Frank drops the lighter in Tommy’s lap. “What I’m saying, you smart-ass, is that maybe they don’t know that they can fight the system. Hey, I got lucky with my folks, but you said Adam’s been raised believing he’s inferior. And maybe it bugs him, but that doesn’t mean that somewhere, deep down, he doesn’t believe it. And the other kids at your school, they’re not exactly the social elite, are they - they’re from shit backgrounds, they have issues coming out their ears, and being a wolf is just one more factor in all the reasons they’re worth less than everyone else.”
Tommy blinks at him for a moment, breath caught in his throat, before he shakes his head and manages a shaky grin. “Man, when’d you get so deep?”
Frank stares at him. Then he laughs. “It’s a side effect of hanging out with Gerard,” he says. “Occupational hazard.”
“I can see how that would happen,” Tommy admits. He rubs at his forehead again. “I just,” he murmurs. “I just don’t think I can take it a whole lot longer, you know?”
“You won’t have to,” Frank says, utterly self-assured. “We’re on the brink of revolution, anyway.”
Tommy scoffs.
“Seriously.” Frank takes Tommy’s cigarette from his fingers and takes a long drag. He waves his hand, casually, like it isn’t a big deal. “We’re on the brink of something huge. Maybe those fuckers at that school of yours don’t want you to know that, but we are. New York City, there are riots every night. In Portland, three people died during protests after a werewolf got elected onto the city council, but she’s still on it and holding her fucking own. Even the Heartland’s starting to turn sympathetic. It’s fucking massive, this thing.”
Tommy takes a drag from his cigarette to hide the fact that he is, in fact, fucking speechless. “Why don’t I know about any of this?” he asks, and Frank rolls his eyes, and then Tommy rolls his eyes, because yeah, he knows, but what he’s really asking is why aren’t people shouting it from the fucking rooftops?
“Because they’re scared,” Frank says, when he asks. “The humans are scared they’ll get lynched by the freaking oppressed and the wolves are scared they’ll get their heads bashed in, and really, it’s not like you’re announcing to your dictator principal that you’re breaking her rules every other night.”
“It’s not that often,” Tommy mutters, for lack of anything better to say.
Frank scoffs and doesn’t say anything.
“Okay, fine.” Tommy cuts him a glance. “I’m gonna go and like, apologize. Tomorrow. Okay?”
“Peachy,” Frank says, straight-faced.
Tommy figures that’s as good as it’s gonna get.