Light at the End of Your Tunnel
Don't own Toby, JT, or Rick. If I did Rick probably wouldn't be dead, I liked him towards the end.
Author: Dimitri Aidan
Rating: T or PG-13.
Series: One-shot.
Pairings: Rick/Toby and one-sided Toby/JT
Warnings: Underage sex, homosexuality, cutting, eating disorders, general insanity type things and…yeah. All crammed into under three whole pages. I'm good.
Summery: Toby, Rick, and all of those beautiful gaps in between, just begging to be filled.
Notes: Toby doesn't get enough love. He's so adorably dysfunctional and, in this, adorably dysfunctional and co-dependent. Completely random, disjointed, and one of my favorite stories of my own creation thus far. Plus indulging my latest fascination with self-mutilation. Damn psych classes.
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Light at the End of Your Tunnel
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Rick is damn smart, so smart it makes Toby stare and wish that he were like Rick, just for a second before he catches himself and blushes. Rick's eyes slide over to him, eyebrow quirking playfully, before he goes back to his answer, which includes quoting Emily Dickinson's poem about death, one her better known ones.
"Because I could not stop for Death, Death gladly stopped for me." Rick's voice is smooth, confident. Outside of this room, away from the questions and Mr. Simpson and Emma, Rick was a blushing stuttering mess only a few steps above cowardice.
Unless it was just the two of them, like it'd be later tonight. Then Rick was like this, sure of himself and unwavering because he knows…knows that Toby isn't judging because Toby certainly doesn't have the right. Knows that Toby seems more than a spazzy kid with some anger issues who should be run out of school and doesn't deserve to live.
Rick knows when he and Toby are alone they are equals and he only has to be himself when they are together. Toby wouldn't want him any other way.
Because Rick knows Toby's secrets and Toby would do anything to keep them hidden.
It's funny that Rick knows. JT and Ash think the little 'problem' was only for a short while, when he was on the wrestling team, but it'd been so damn easy to just keep going. Everyone thought he'd just gotten taller and thus his skinner appearance was natural.
Only Rick had been the one to know what Toby really did.
Yellowing fingertips, red eyes, constantly chewing gum to hide bad breath, bright red and sensitive gums, and yellowing teeth. Rick had rattled off the signs to him, eyes dark and intense as he all but backed Toby into a corner. And, Rick had added with that strange quirky humor of his, the fact he'd heard Toby retching in the boy's bathroom the day before didn't hurt any.
Toby had demanded to know why Rick gave a damn, it wasn't like they were anything except teammates in this stupid knowledge bowl thing and Rick had blinked, having the nerve to look hurt. He whispered, eyes downcast, that he'd thought they were friends. That he was worried. That he was hoping that maybe Toby could trust him with his secret, so that Rick could trust him with his.
Ash had told Toby about Ellie and her cutting but it was completely different to see it, the marks and patters covering Rick's flesh. The anger wasn't really gone, Rick had said in that same whispery tone that crawled right into Toby's skin and burned him on the inside, he'd just learned to control it differently. He'd never really been mad at other people, least of all Terri (His eyes grew soft and distant when he spoke her name) but himself and…
Well, maybe he should take his anger out on the right person for a change? He hadn't stated it, but he had asked it, voice raising hopefully at the end as if he was hoping for Toby to confirm this and make it okay for him to do what he did.
Toby had been speechless, silence stretching out for him like the miles of ocean between California and Japan, eyes riveted to the marks that danced along Rick's shoulder blades. Rick's shoulders had slumped after a few moments and Toby had smiled, mind catching onto the irony.
The first person to notice wasn't going to turn him in or try to fix him or force him to stop what he doing, but rather was offering to protect his secret with a secret of his own.
He'd touched Rick's shoulder, fingers feeling the smooth scars under his fingertips and the way Rick drew in a sharp breath at his touch. A sharp breath that went straight to Toby's groin for reason's he'd never be able to understand and reminded him of the time he'd foolishly kissed JT in the darkness of his basement.
That had been the beginning of the end of JTandToby. It wasn't so much that JT had never friends and was more 'popular' now or something. It was that Toby had dared to kiss him, cross that line between close heterosexual friend to disgusted heterosexual friend and confused potentially homosexual friend.
He'd tried to distract himself with Kendra but she'd dumped him, claiming his mind just wasn't with her when they were together.
He'd dismissed that as, in the relative safety of the school bathroom, Rick turned and leaned down, bringing their lips close enough to almost be touching and then…stopping. Toby had closed to gap, kissing Rick and feeling his heart leap up into his throat because…because…
Just because.
"Toby? Are you in there?" Emma waves a hand in his face and he blinks unfocused eyes before reached up and sliding off his glasses to rub at his eyes. He nods and she smirks before gathering up her purse and flouncing off back into her world of semi-popularity. Rick is still sitting, staring at him with those eyes and waiting.
Toby grabs his bag and, without another word, follows Rick out of the school. They're going to Rick's house today, to spend the weekend because his parents will be suspiciously absent until Tuesday. Toby had told his father and stepmother they'd be studying.
He'd lied of course.
The door was shut and locked and Toby was on the couch, Rick's mouth on his and hands fisting into long wavy brown hair.
In a logical sense Toby knows this is wrong. Rick allows him his 'thing' and Toby allows him his and they both know what they do is wrong and that they are wrong and not just in the sense that they are two guys and probably shouldn't be making out on Rick's parent's expensive looking couch.
They're like…the halves of two completely different broken glasses, trying to be put back together even though they so obviously aren't meant to fit together. They wouldn't hold a drop of water like this, cracked and shattered and splintered and being together, shoved together, only forced the cracks to run deeper as they pushed against each other, grinding the shards down to until they snapped away and more shards developed.
They broke each other more every time they breathed the same air or dared to touch each other or locked eyes for a moment because…
Oh, because it wasn't so much of a secret anymore and he thought maybe he feed off of knowing that someone knew and didn't look down on him or think him sick and weak and crazy. It was almost like it wasn't bad anymore because it wasn't a secret and if it wasn't a dirty little secret in the back of his closet he couldn't exactly be ashamed, could he?
Rick was the same. Toby made it okay to do what he did, didn't say anything about it or argue that hurting himself couldn't solve anything or try to convince him not to be angry at himself like every shrink he saw did.
Toby doesn't know why he does it. Just does. Doesn't think he needs a reason; motives are highly overrated anyway. It was the new millennium after all.
Rick's tongue latches onto a sensitive part of Toby's neck and he makes a noise he doesn't think could really be coming from him while his hands find themselves touching the skin of Rick's back, shirt having become part of the décor of the room. He can pick out new marks; having memorized the maze of cuts and scars on Rick's back.
Rick sighs softly, nuzzling him, and Toby sighs back, legs wrapping around Rick's waist.
They really don't fit together well at all. There are all of these gaps and holes and cracks that are begging to be filled but can't be filled by each other because…they won't, and they're both on the edge and threatening to shatter even more but…
Sometimes they fit. In the silence stillness, with Rick's eyelashes fluttering over his skin and hot wet breath on his neck he can pretend they're normal, just a normal gay couple (There may have been an oxymoron there)
He thinks about stupid things, like what Ash would think. She's not exactly gay-friendly at the best of times, still smarting that her dad had left her and her mother to find happiness with a man and Marco…well Marco had broken her best friend's heart and that was all she needed to hear of the matter. Would she hate him or accept him…
Really the fact it was Rick he was with would probably be more upsetting than that gay thing- thing. what kind of thing was it really? Animal plant or mineral- could ever hope to be. She was even less Rick-friendly than gay-friendly because Terrie had been of her closest friends.
He wonders about his mother and father and stepmother and JT and Kendra and what they would say if they knew there was more than the strange friendship only two outcasts could share between them, if they knew how much more there was.
Later, in Rick's room-in Rick's bed- he can convince himself that Rick fills his cracks just fine and that it's okay to be like this; sweat and skin and nails and teeth and those noises and that feeling so deep inside of him and wanting more and oh god he hadn't known it was like this.
He can close his eyes, listen to Rick breath and act like something other than their inability to hold water is what bonds them together and that there is something beyond keeping secrets and a eerie kind of comfort in the other's presence. He can act like its fine.
It's not.
But for the love of god he can pretend. Lets Rick hold him tight until they fit together all there are no gaps between them, begging to be filled.
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…Yeah. I don't know why I love this, but I do. Maybe I'm a little dysfunctional as well. I blame lack of sleep, I have to work at eleven AM but instead of sleeping at one AM I'm writing this little piece of strangeness.