Some nights are harder than the others. Some nights he can’t handle the absolute stillness of the trailer, and on those nights…
On those nights he finds a new way to hate himself.
Indianapolis isn’t too far from Hawkins and it takes only a few nights of desperation for noise and people and dancing that he doesn’t feel wrong about to find the right people to ask the right questions. Which is how he ended up at Essence the first time. Right away it had felt closer to home, closer to his time, closer to his people. The lights and the music, the mixed drinks, the bodies. People smile at him, and he can smile back and not have to feel like someone will get the wrong idea.
It’s the only place Tommy feels comfortable not wearing the wig, the Midwest approved clothes, and all the things that make him pass for normal. Here he can take a few minutes, a few hours, and just be.
“You’re looking stressed, beautiful. Maybe I can buy you a drink to make that a little better?”
The man that sits next to him radiates real Daddy Bear vibes, and Tommy would normally say no. He isn’t here to get picked up, to be pampered, to fumble around eagerly in a bathroom. He’s here for fruity drinks in little cups with umbrellas and no one who is going to judge him for liking what tastes nice. Yet there were moments like this, with a guy sidling on up to him and smiling like it’s going to get him somewhere.
“You’re welcome to buy a drink, but I feel it’s fair to be upfront with you and say I’m not putting out for it. Just not here for the romance tonight.”
The man offers a chuckle of understanding, perhaps even approval. Then he’s sitting next to Tommy, waving the bartender over. There’s that perfect little unspoken sort of exchange Tommy has seen regulars pull off with their bartenders in a way Tommy has never perfected. Some gestures, a point at his tequila sunrise, some nods and a gesture that probably indicates just what the guy himself is looking for. Then they’re alone, or as alone as anyone can be in a gay bar that’s absolutely bouncing for a Wednesday night.
“So what’s his name?”
It’s the sort of question that, in another place or time would make no sense. Here and now…
“Billy,” he says with a shrug and a sigh.
“Straight?”
Ah, wouldn’t that be the far more manageable problem? Tommy laughs, fingers coming up to drag through his hair. It feels so nice, not to have the itchy wig on his head.
“I’m guessing that’s a story you hear all the time. Some poor guy falling in love with a straight guy. That’s probably the first rule, right? Never do that?”
The big man nods and gives him a curious, perhaps even pitying look. Yeah, first rule then.
“Course none of us can help it, yanno? It’s who we fall for,” the big guy says. “Ain’t easy though. Because-”
“It’s not like that,” Tommy cuts him off as he finishes his drink. It’s not like that at all. “He’s not straight, it’s more complicated.”
“Ain’t it always?”
There’s silence for a while as the new drink arrives and Tommy takes an appreciative sip. Yeah, that’s just what he needed. No buzz, but it’s still tasty and it burns going down and he feels alive.
“Maybe talking it out will help?”
Tommy snorts. How do you talk this out? Alien abductions, alternate realities, time travel, demons, magic… Fuck, his life is a damn soap opera. Then again, had it ever not been one? Shit, he was born before he was ever born, and that was a headache even for him some days. And don’t get him started on the baby-hands.
Still, maybe the guy is right. It’s been five months since Tommy’s been able to talk to literally anyone about anything. About how much it hurt to see Billy every few days and know the guy doesn’t know him. Sure, he recognizes Tommy in passing at this point, but he doesn’t know Tommy. Can’t know Tommy like he should, like he had. Doesn’t know that Tommy knows the taste of his skin, or the feel of his hands, or the softness of his hair. That he thinks if he was given a piece of clay he could shape it into Billy’s face without looking.
And holding all of that inside, being the only one that knows, being the only one to hold it all in, it hurts. It’s eating at him and he’s still only on the road to his path home. Home. Billy Hargrove was his home and he needed to get back to it.
“I fell in love with this guy. He’s… Well, I won’t say he’s amazing. He’s an asshole. Irreverent and angry and pigheaded. And also charming and protective and he burns like a bonfire with every breath he takes. He loved me too. I know it. We didn’t… Sometimes it’s hard to say the words, you know? To put them out loud? You start to fear that if you let them out then everything will immediately fall apart.”
The stranger nods like he’s been there before. LIke he knows this little song and dance, like he’s been there before. He hasn’t. Not like this. But that’s fine. He doesn’t have to know the whole this, doesn’t have to have been the whole thing himself to listen. So Tommy takes another sip and takes a deep breath and tries to think about how to continue.
“He leave you? Because you didn’t say it? Or was it that he got sick?”
“Shit man, not that. Nothing like that. It’s just…”
How does he explain that it’s just that Billy hasn’t fallen in love with him yet? That time hasn’t let him get there? Hasn’t let him make that choice?
“This is going to sound so stupid. But there was an accident. And now he doesn’t know me from Sunday. Plus he’s so far back in the closet that it’s actually almost sad.”
Back there because he hasn’t even left. So he’s never going to see Tommy as something beautiful. Something he can have. Something that was his already.
The man… Considers. Nods. Sips his beer. Seems to consider again.
“Sounds like a hell of a lot of shit.”
Makes him laugh. God Tommy hasn’t laughed like this in a while. Just such an understatement and he doesn’t know how to face it.
“You’re choosing to wait for him?”
And there it was. The greatest question of all of them. The one that Tommy asked himself so many times. Was he choosing this? Was it worth it?
“Yeah,” he says, and the word is so easy. It’s just there, so quickly.
“I could wait a lifetime for him,” Tommy says with a smile and a shrug. “Just hard some nights.”
“Well, if you ever need some companionship to see you through it…”
That gets a chuckle. Tommy throws back the end of his drink and shakes his head.
“Nah. I’m good. I’ve got a very experienced right hand to keep me in line while I wait. And with that, I think I need to be hitting the road. Miles to go before I sleep and all that shit.”
The man offers a nod and Tommy stands.
“Drive safe.”
“Always do.”
- - - - -
There were certain advantages to living in the 1980s that Tommy really hadn’t anticipated. The serious reduction in levels of security in places like schools definitely ranked up there. No real serious locks on the doors, big open windows, reduced presence of anything resembling real computer systems.
All things told, getting into the high school and then into the office was small potatoes for him. He didn’t even have to trip any locks. Just vibrate through a wall, and bam, access to the office and all the paperwork. It took a bit more effort to get into the locked filing cabinets, but hey, there had been a time where he’s been in juvie before the whole super part and so he had some skills he might not be fully proud of. Just some careful application of arms from a certain kind of aviators that were pretty amusing to use as a basic set of rake and tension bar, and there they were.
Locker combinations.
Okay, so he probably could have broken one open but breaking wasn’t the goal here at all. From the buzz at the diner and the reduced number of people who were actually brainy students, it was clear that finals week had arrived. Which meant stressed seniors everywhere. Including one that Tommy had a personal intention of taking care of.
Tommy shifted the backpack he wore as he started the slightly more involved task before him. Which was composed almost entirely of the process of trying to find one locker amid a school of them. Annoying as fuck, and he couldn’t go too fast given he had already risked some stuff with the whole vibrating through the doors thing. Ruining the surprise over a lack of patience wasn’t really an option for him.
At last he found it, the locker that matched the records in the office. A few quick turns of the dial later and he had the thing open.
It smelled of cigarettes and that woodsy sort of cologne that Billy used. There wasn’t much in it besides text books that apparently hadn’t been taken back for studying. Well, who was Tommy to judge that? Not like he was much of a sturdier himself (blame it on a brain that had started to retain things a lot faster when his mutation came to the fore), so he couldn’t say anything.
What he could do was push things around just enough to set up a clear area. Into that he put the Tupperware he’d wrapped in several pieces of colorful paper. Ribbons and bows festooned it, and he’d taken hours to get the handwriting on it right. Just fancy enough to look feminine, not so girly as to be annoying or point to any one particular girl in school. He hoped.
There wasn’t much to it of course. Tommy just remembered what sorts of things Billy had liked as treats back on Temba. He couldn’t make the same things here of course, there was as much of a problem in translating Temba cuisine to Earth as there was in translating Earth dishes to Temba, but Tommy had been practicing on these for a while. Cookies, fruit breads and other little savory things that wouldn’t really be at risk here in a locker overnight before Billy showed up for classes tomorrow.
A nice little package of treats that Billy wouldn’t have to take home but could keep him energized for the coming week. The note on it would claim it was from an admirer, a little box to cheer him on for his finals. Tommy had heard girls around town plotting out these very sorts of gifts.
It had felt right, after that conversation, to do this.
Hopefully Billy wouldn’t get too much grief for it.
Tommy looked from one side of the hall to the other, a point of paranoia that he laughed at immediately after. He lifted the envelope to his lips and kissed it lightly. After that he closes the locker. Time to head home.
- - - - -
The fact of the matter was that he didn’t belong here. Tommy knew that, and he knew that just about anyone who knew who he was would know that too. But when he woke up that morning, Tommy found it wasn’t at all possible for him to not be there.
The good news was that there were enough people there for Tommy to sort of… blend in with the crowds. He took a seat in the back corner of the gym, on the benches just short of the top row. Made it easier to blend in. Made it easier to jump down and disappear in a flash as it was needed.
While this wasn’t the first graduation he had been to, Tommy definitely hadn’t been to very many. There had been Teddy’s and Kate’s and Billy’s, but Eli had moved away and hadn’t told anyone when his graduation would be. There had been David’s one for college with America, and Tommy had been at that too. But he’d never graduated himself, he’d gotten a GED instead because no school ever would have let him into their walls.
So Tommy had a pretty vague idea of how this was going to go, but he didn’t understand what it was like to be down there. Would Billy be anxious? Would he be annoyed? Would he be ready to jump ship and head out of town? Hard to tell. The one thing Tommy was certain of as he watched the graduates enter and sit was that Billy had to be at least slightly annoyed, sitting next to Steve Harrington as he was.
Graduation was more energized here than it was at Kate’s school, but about what Tommy had experienced at Billy and Teddy’s. There were people that shouted and roared with pleasure at the graduation of their friends and family members. Hell, the one for Harrington was particularly noisy, thanks to a group of kids that Tommy had seen at that last basketball game. And then it was Billy’s turn.
The noise was… sedated. Polite. Probably underclassmen who were attending and other seniors who liked Billy. But nothing from the gathering of families. Which meant nothing from Billy’s father.
How was he not even remotely surprised by that?
Once Billy’s back in his seat Tommy slips off the bleachers. The fall isn’t enough to upset him. And it’s easy enough to slip out through the doors.
It was warm for late May. Almost time for June to be upon them. Which meant Tommy needed to be preparing. Soon. He knew it had to be soon. Billy had arrived in a tank top from what Tommy’s brother had said. Chances were that his Cali Boy had not fallen in the fall.
Three months. He didn’t have much of a window before things hit the fan. Tommy needed to be ready. Ready to save the guy he loved.
Ready to be the witness to the worst moments of his life.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
May 1985
Date: 2023-09-28 11:56 pm (UTC)On those nights he finds a new way to hate himself.
Indianapolis isn’t too far from Hawkins and it takes only a few nights of desperation for noise and people and dancing that he doesn’t feel wrong about to find the right people to ask the right questions. Which is how he ended up at Essence the first time. Right away it had felt closer to home, closer to his time, closer to his people. The lights and the music, the mixed drinks, the bodies. People smile at him, and he can smile back and not have to feel like someone will get the wrong idea.
It’s the only place Tommy feels comfortable not wearing the wig, the Midwest approved clothes, and all the things that make him pass for normal. Here he can take a few minutes, a few hours, and just be.
“You’re looking stressed, beautiful. Maybe I can buy you a drink to make that a little better?”
The man that sits next to him radiates real Daddy Bear vibes, and Tommy would normally say no. He isn’t here to get picked up, to be pampered, to fumble around eagerly in a bathroom. He’s here for fruity drinks in little cups with umbrellas and no one who is going to judge him for liking what tastes nice. Yet there were moments like this, with a guy sidling on up to him and smiling like it’s going to get him somewhere.
“You’re welcome to buy a drink, but I feel it’s fair to be upfront with you and say I’m not putting out for it. Just not here for the romance tonight.”
The man offers a chuckle of understanding, perhaps even approval. Then he’s sitting next to Tommy, waving the bartender over. There’s that perfect little unspoken sort of exchange Tommy has seen regulars pull off with their bartenders in a way Tommy has never perfected. Some gestures, a point at his tequila sunrise, some nods and a gesture that probably indicates just what the guy himself is looking for. Then they’re alone, or as alone as anyone can be in a gay bar that’s absolutely bouncing for a Wednesday night.
“So what’s his name?”
It’s the sort of question that, in another place or time would make no sense. Here and now…
“Billy,” he says with a shrug and a sigh.
“Straight?”
Ah, wouldn’t that be the far more manageable problem? Tommy laughs, fingers coming up to drag through his hair. It feels so nice, not to have the itchy wig on his head.
“I’m guessing that’s a story you hear all the time. Some poor guy falling in love with a straight guy. That’s probably the first rule, right? Never do that?”
The big man nods and gives him a curious, perhaps even pitying look. Yeah, first rule then.
“Course none of us can help it, yanno? It’s who we fall for,” the big guy says. “Ain’t easy though. Because-”
“It’s not like that,” Tommy cuts him off as he finishes his drink. It’s not like that at all. “He’s not straight, it’s more complicated.”
“Ain’t it always?”
There’s silence for a while as the new drink arrives and Tommy takes an appreciative sip. Yeah, that’s just what he needed. No buzz, but it’s still tasty and it burns going down and he feels alive.
“Maybe talking it out will help?”
Tommy snorts. How do you talk this out? Alien abductions, alternate realities, time travel, demons, magic… Fuck, his life is a damn soap opera. Then again, had it ever not been one? Shit, he was born before he was ever born, and that was a headache even for him some days. And don’t get him started on the baby-hands.
Still, maybe the guy is right. It’s been five months since Tommy’s been able to talk to literally anyone about anything. About how much it hurt to see Billy every few days and know the guy doesn’t know him. Sure, he recognizes Tommy in passing at this point, but he doesn’t know Tommy. Can’t know Tommy like he should, like he had. Doesn’t know that Tommy knows the taste of his skin, or the feel of his hands, or the softness of his hair. That he thinks if he was given a piece of clay he could shape it into Billy’s face without looking.
And holding all of that inside, being the only one that knows, being the only one to hold it all in, it hurts. It’s eating at him and he’s still only on the road to his path home. Home. Billy Hargrove was his home and he needed to get back to it.
“I fell in love with this guy. He’s… Well, I won’t say he’s amazing. He’s an asshole. Irreverent and angry and pigheaded. And also charming and protective and he burns like a bonfire with every breath he takes. He loved me too. I know it. We didn’t… Sometimes it’s hard to say the words, you know? To put them out loud? You start to fear that if you let them out then everything will immediately fall apart.”
The stranger nods like he’s been there before. LIke he knows this little song and dance, like he’s been there before. He hasn’t. Not like this. But that’s fine. He doesn’t have to know the whole this, doesn’t have to have been the whole thing himself to listen. So Tommy takes another sip and takes a deep breath and tries to think about how to continue.
“He leave you? Because you didn’t say it? Or was it that he got sick?”
“Shit man, not that. Nothing like that. It’s just…”
How does he explain that it’s just that Billy hasn’t fallen in love with him yet? That time hasn’t let him get there? Hasn’t let him make that choice?
“This is going to sound so stupid. But there was an accident. And now he doesn’t know me from Sunday. Plus he’s so far back in the closet that it’s actually almost sad.”
Back there because he hasn’t even left. So he’s never going to see Tommy as something beautiful. Something he can have. Something that was his already.
The man… Considers. Nods. Sips his beer. Seems to consider again.
“Sounds like a hell of a lot of shit.”
Makes him laugh. God Tommy hasn’t laughed like this in a while. Just such an understatement and he doesn’t know how to face it.
“You’re choosing to wait for him?”
And there it was. The greatest question of all of them. The one that Tommy asked himself so many times. Was he choosing this? Was it worth it?
“Yeah,” he says, and the word is so easy. It’s just there, so quickly.
“I could wait a lifetime for him,” Tommy says with a smile and a shrug. “Just hard some nights.”
“Well, if you ever need some companionship to see you through it…”
That gets a chuckle. Tommy throws back the end of his drink and shakes his head.
“Nah. I’m good. I’ve got a very experienced right hand to keep me in line while I wait. And with that, I think I need to be hitting the road. Miles to go before I sleep and all that shit.”
The man offers a nod and Tommy stands.
“Drive safe.”
“Always do.”
There were certain advantages to living in the 1980s that Tommy really hadn’t anticipated. The serious reduction in levels of security in places like schools definitely ranked up there. No real serious locks on the doors, big open windows, reduced presence of anything resembling real computer systems.
All things told, getting into the high school and then into the office was small potatoes for him. He didn’t even have to trip any locks. Just vibrate through a wall, and bam, access to the office and all the paperwork. It took a bit more effort to get into the locked filing cabinets, but hey, there had been a time where he’s been in juvie before the whole super part and so he had some skills he might not be fully proud of. Just some careful application of arms from a certain kind of aviators that were pretty amusing to use as a basic set of rake and tension bar, and there they were.
Locker combinations.
Okay, so he probably could have broken one open but breaking wasn’t the goal here at all. From the buzz at the diner and the reduced number of people who were actually brainy students, it was clear that finals week had arrived. Which meant stressed seniors everywhere. Including one that Tommy had a personal intention of taking care of.
Tommy shifted the backpack he wore as he started the slightly more involved task before him. Which was composed almost entirely of the process of trying to find one locker amid a school of them. Annoying as fuck, and he couldn’t go too fast given he had already risked some stuff with the whole vibrating through the doors thing. Ruining the surprise over a lack of patience wasn’t really an option for him.
At last he found it, the locker that matched the records in the office. A few quick turns of the dial later and he had the thing open.
It smelled of cigarettes and that woodsy sort of cologne that Billy used. There wasn’t much in it besides text books that apparently hadn’t been taken back for studying. Well, who was Tommy to judge that? Not like he was much of a sturdier himself (blame it on a brain that had started to retain things a lot faster when his mutation came to the fore), so he couldn’t say anything.
What he could do was push things around just enough to set up a clear area. Into that he put the Tupperware he’d wrapped in several pieces of colorful paper. Ribbons and bows festooned it, and he’d taken hours to get the handwriting on it right. Just fancy enough to look feminine, not so girly as to be annoying or point to any one particular girl in school. He hoped.
There wasn’t much to it of course. Tommy just remembered what sorts of things Billy had liked as treats back on Temba. He couldn’t make the same things here of course, there was as much of a problem in translating Temba cuisine to Earth as there was in translating Earth dishes to Temba, but Tommy had been practicing on these for a while. Cookies, fruit breads and other little savory things that wouldn’t really be at risk here in a locker overnight before Billy showed up for classes tomorrow.
A nice little package of treats that Billy wouldn’t have to take home but could keep him energized for the coming week. The note on it would claim it was from an admirer, a little box to cheer him on for his finals. Tommy had heard girls around town plotting out these very sorts of gifts.
It had felt right, after that conversation, to do this.
Hopefully Billy wouldn’t get too much grief for it.
Tommy looked from one side of the hall to the other, a point of paranoia that he laughed at immediately after. He lifted the envelope to his lips and kissed it lightly. After that he closes the locker. Time to head home.
The fact of the matter was that he didn’t belong here. Tommy knew that, and he knew that just about anyone who knew who he was would know that too. But when he woke up that morning, Tommy found it wasn’t at all possible for him to not be there.
The good news was that there were enough people there for Tommy to sort of… blend in with the crowds. He took a seat in the back corner of the gym, on the benches just short of the top row. Made it easier to blend in. Made it easier to jump down and disappear in a flash as it was needed.
While this wasn’t the first graduation he had been to, Tommy definitely hadn’t been to very many. There had been Teddy’s and Kate’s and Billy’s, but Eli had moved away and hadn’t told anyone when his graduation would be. There had been David’s one for college with America, and Tommy had been at that too. But he’d never graduated himself, he’d gotten a GED instead because no school ever would have let him into their walls.
So Tommy had a pretty vague idea of how this was going to go, but he didn’t understand what it was like to be down there. Would Billy be anxious? Would he be annoyed? Would he be ready to jump ship and head out of town? Hard to tell. The one thing Tommy was certain of as he watched the graduates enter and sit was that Billy had to be at least slightly annoyed, sitting next to Steve Harrington as he was.
Graduation was more energized here than it was at Kate’s school, but about what Tommy had experienced at Billy and Teddy’s. There were people that shouted and roared with pleasure at the graduation of their friends and family members. Hell, the one for Harrington was particularly noisy, thanks to a group of kids that Tommy had seen at that last basketball game. And then it was Billy’s turn.
The noise was… sedated. Polite. Probably underclassmen who were attending and other seniors who liked Billy. But nothing from the gathering of families. Which meant nothing from Billy’s father.
How was he not even remotely surprised by that?
Once Billy’s back in his seat Tommy slips off the bleachers. The fall isn’t enough to upset him. And it’s easy enough to slip out through the doors.
It was warm for late May. Almost time for June to be upon them. Which meant Tommy needed to be preparing. Soon. He knew it had to be soon. Billy had arrived in a tank top from what Tommy’s brother had said. Chances were that his Cali Boy had not fallen in the fall.
Three months. He didn’t have much of a window before things hit the fan. Tommy needed to be ready. Ready to save the guy he loved.
Ready to be the witness to the worst moments of his life.