TW: self harm, fighting, death, suicide attempts, scars and anger
Tommy struggled a lot in life. He was never good at sharing his feelings, never knew how to say what he felt.
This made it so Tommy dealt with his feelings in not so nice ways. Self harm, angry outbursts and physical fights were all too common. He almost died several times from blood loss from all of those things. Phil was disappointed in Tommy way too often.
But when Tommy hit the age of 17 he found something good, a poetry group.
As cheesy as it sounds Tommy loved it. They weren't doing boring problems about love or loss, they did slam poems about the things going on in their life. They talked about sex, and gender, and anger, and grief, and everything under the sun. And Tommy loved to listen.
There was a specific group in town that Tommy could listen to all the time. There was a handful of them, Dream, George, Sapnap, Puffy, Hannah, Niki, Karl, and Quackity. They all seemed so cool and Tommy wished he could write things like they could.
He wished he could join the group, and they technically did hold auditions when someone dropped from the group, but you had to be 18 to join. Tommy was only 17, so he couldn't quite yet.
That didn't stop him from writing his own poetry, keeping it in a notebook that he kept with him a lot. Tubbo and Ranboo, Tommy's best friends, didn't push Tommy to share the poetry but loved it when he did. They would listen to all of the words he said and it was a positive outlet for Tommy.
He began to count down the days until he was 18. Excited for what was to come because he knew that day, the group would be holding auditions for one more person to join the group. Hannah was leaving, so Tommy might be able to join.
In the meantime he would listen to what they had, watching every live show and listening to the poems on Youtube on repeat. He felt okay sometimes, dinner time was never really one of those times.
"So Wilbur is going to be back for your birthday." Tommy's dad, Phil, casually mentioned one night at the table together. Tommy looked up from the notebook that he was writing in.
"Why?" Tommy asked, confused on why his brother would suddenly just come home from college across the country to come see him on his birthday. He hadn't done it the past three years, why did it matter now?
"He said he is struggling with his mental health, so he wants to push back his last semester to this fall." Phil said carefully, eyeing Tommy's sleeves gently. Tommy looked away and pushed his sleeves down more.
Self harm scars covered his arms top to bottom, the skin bumpy and uneven. There was a few scars from fighting, but mostly just from Tommy's own thoughts and blade. Wilbur hadn't seen Tommy's arms, he hadn't even seen Tommy since Tommy was 13. Tommy huffed slightly and put his pen down.
"Mental health my ass, he just misses Sally and wants to graduate at the same time as her." Tommy grumbles and Phil sighed.
"Either way, give him some space and try to be careful about." Phil said weakly, dropping the end of his sentence in favor of gesturing to Tommy's arms. Tommy rolled his eyes.
"Right, don't want him to know that the freak is covered in scars right?" Tommy snapped, grabbing his notebook and leaving the table. Phil heard the door upstairs slam and he flinched at the noise.
He hated when Tommy got snappy, got in a mood and would just storm away. It used to be a safety issue, but at this point Tommy didn't seem to be hurting himself so there was no great harm in it. It just still wasn't pleasant to deal with.
Tommy upstairs grabbed his laptop, pressing the call button on a group chat on discord. Few moments later Tubbo and Ranboo both picked up.
"I'm fucking angry." Tommy said as a greeting.
