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He’s not having a good time. Sleeping has become so far from a priority that his work becomes desolate at best when he tries. Things aren’t going as well as they should be and he doesn’t know how to cope.
It’s hard, he learns. It’s hard to need so much from yourself that everything you do will never be enough. He wants people to look at him and be happy with the progress he’s made, he wants to look at himself and be happy.
It’s hard though. Sleep doesn’t come easy when all he can think about is how he’s fucking up everything he should be working really hard on, but he doesn’t really sleep anymore and it’s hard to do anything when he feels like he’s moving through jelly.
On a Thursday, right before the end of the school year, Wilbur asks to hang out. It’s not like Tommy had been avoiding his friends, not really. It just has been really hard to be around people when he can’t stand to be around himself. Seeing potential in others– his friends, the people he looked up to– when feeling like he was amounting to nothing despite his success would only serve further his self-hatred.
He’s tempted to say no, but Wilbur sounds really tired and Tommy would find a way to hate himself more if he’s not there for Wilbur. So they make plans and on the last day of school, instead of taking the train home from college, he goes to Brighton.
They had sorted everything with his parents already and he had a weekend’s worth of clothes in his bag. It was a bit awkward to haul around a bag full of clothes at school and shuffle through it every time he needed a schoolbook.
Tommy really wants to see Wilbur but at the same time, he wants nothing more than to melt into the ground and for all of his burdens to inflate so wide that they explode and he never has to think of them again.
Wilbur was meant to meet Tommy at the station but was running a little late so the blonde stumbled into one of the closest shops and ordered a coffee before plopping down at a table and resting his head on the cool surface. He barely remembers to text Wil to tell him where he was, and he doesn’t even bother with the coffee that he had mostly just ordered so it felt a bit more justified to rest here.
The ringing of the bell on the shop’s entrance shocked Tommy out of his daze and when he looked up he saw his brother figure walking through the door and straight toward him.
“I’m proud of you,” the brunette says as soon as he gets to Tommy. The younger of the two nods, blinking away the tears barely forming in his eyes– it’s unprompted and everything he’s wanted to hear for the longest time, he just can’t believe Wilbur. “No, look at me. I’m serious” he says, pulling the blonde up out of the chair and into a hug. “I am so fucking proud of you, sunshine.”
That’s all it takes for Tommy to break. It's kind of pathetic how little it takes, but it feels like so much.
Tommy has done so much– so fucking much . It’s stupid to say but it hurts how much he’s done, how much he’s poured himself into his work without any true recognition from people he cares about.
For all the work Tommy does, nobody ever says they’re proud of him, proud of his progress. Sure, they tell him congratulations, but that feels like nothing compared to the way his brother holds him at this moment and tells him that he’s proud.
Tommy made Wilbur proud.
As Tommy silently cries into Wilbur’s shoulder this becomes apparent. Wilbur is proud of Tommy. It’s a fact and anyone who states otherwise is purely diluted. It doesn’t even really matter that he’s crying into Wil’s shoulder in the middle of some random coffee shop, Wilbur is proud of him.
Once his tears have mostly dried and the shoulder of Wilbur’s sweater is decently soaked through, Tommy allows himself to be dragged out of the coffee shop and in the direction of Wilbur’s apartment.
He finds his way to the couch pretty easily once they finally get there– it’s not the first time he had been to Wilbur’s apartment and even if it’s been a while he still finds solace in the memories he’s made on this couch.
Wilbur wanders off and Tommy doesn’t really have half the mind to question the brunette and instead just stares blankly at a stain on the coffee table. He doesn’t notice Wilbur return until he feels the couch settle next to him slightly.
The beginning chords of Perfume– his fucking song as he had deemed it– filled the air and a smile makes its way to his face. Tommy can’t even remember the last time he had smiled, or at least he couldn’t remember the last time smiling had felt so effortless. Smiling, like sleeping and working, had just become another challenge that he would inevitably fuck up.
In a way, it’s hard to be here, next to Wilbur. To be so incredibly happy because he knows it’s temporary– knows that the temporary joy that comes from Wilbur’s words and actions are temporary and it’s not going to fix sleepless nights or his depletion of self-worth.
In the same way, it’s so easy. It’s easy to accompany Wilbur’s boisterous singing of its three forty-five with a softly whispered AM. It’s easy to live in the moment, to not think of the crippling weight of expectation he’s placed on himself.
Tommy… he’s done a lot– a lot that seems worth being proud of, but there’s always room to be more . More doesn’t really matter at this exact moment though. Wilbur is proud of him and even if his therapist could go on for hours about how he should limit his self-worth based on others’ opinions of him, Wilbur is proud of him .
It doesn’t fix anything– not really, he’s still going to think his progress is shit when he gets home– but for now, it means the world.