{Willams Family Shenanigans

[manicmisanthrope]

There is magic in your soul

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{Sometimes quiet is violent » Ellie » 2yrs ago

[manicmisanthrope]

Some days are harder than others. Some weeks. Months. Some are always worse. Today is one of those. He dipped off his med schedule weeks ago now, there's no denying when he does it, he doesn't even try to hide it any more like he used to, when he was younger. He's twenty-two. He can do whatever he wants. No one can dictate how he lives anymore and it makes everything so fuzzy and useless. When he takes the medicine, he can't feel it, that subtle, warm buzz under his skin that connects him to the magic inside him. It steals it from him, so he throws it away every few months or so. It starts with a slip. A genuine forgotten dose that tumbles into three days without it and then, it's suddenly habit to just ignore the bottles on his bedside table when his alarm goes off in the morning.

It's never an immediate drop off the edge of a building like he, for some reason, always expects it to be. It's fine in those first days, even the first week, without the medication that keeps his brain normal and in line. Fine enough he almost forgets why he takes the stuff in the first place.

But everything sort of creeps in slowly. Two or three days and he can't keep still or focused for long, but even the meds only curb that by so much anyway so it's not as noticeable. Toby's always been a busy body, bouncing, tapping, in constant motion of some form or another. By the end of the week, he's restless, and worse yet, reckless. It's boys. Girls. Parties. Anything with everyone. He at least never went beyond drinks or weed in his dalliances with substances. None of the much worse options he could have chosen the path of so easily. But for Toby, those are secondary to people. That's his real drug of choice. People and connection and he just wants everyone to care as much about him as he does about them, and it doesn't ever really work out. He attaches too quickly and it freaks people out, makes them leave. He always makes them leave, but he doesn't know how to stop it. How's he supposed to stop being him?

The medicine does enough of that for him. He doesn't want to help its cause in that particular fight. He wants to be himself, but he wants to be normal, too. At least a little. He wants to not feel everything so big all the time, and he wants to think at a normal rate, instead of an over-normal sort. Everything designed to help the spiders that make static in his head ruins the part of him that hums the same song as the universe. How can it all be so terribly opposite? Why can't he make the pieces fit in the puzzle of him?

The crash is the worst part, of course, and there's no guarantee when it'll strike. Could be the start of week two, could be a month later. Toby's pretty good at ignoring all the things he doesn't want to look at about himself. But it always hits eventually. And it always feels the same. Like a boulder shoving its way on top of his chest. Or making a home inside of it. A knife perched precariously between his ribs. It's heavy and it's sad and it's empty and it hurts, not in a physical way, not really, but it does. Hurt.

He knows Ellie is at home today. Actual-home, Mom and Dad's-home, not her place that she got because she's totally a grown up and doing adult things like a responsible person now. Not that she was ever irresponsible, exactly. She's good like that. Like Michael. Hell, sometimes, he feels like Chloe has her life more together than he does, and she's ten.

Point is. Ellie is at home. It makes it an easy choice to wend his way upstairs when he gets home. Not from a party, not tonight, but from a walk that started over an hour ago that was supposed to clear his head, but it didn't. He's bad at knocking, but it's mom and dad's, and she has her own space for hook ups, surely she won't have anyone crashing tonight, right?

He slips into the room, only the click of the door shutting behind him, and the soft thump of his shoes being kicked to the floor being the only true tell that he's here– but it's all so Toby, isn't it? She probably knows even before he crawls into the empty side of the bed, where she's reading. Probably some trashy bodice-ripper romance or something, which he absolutely would have teased her about pretty much any other time.

Tonight, though, he just melts into her space, laying his head in her lap and wrapping his arms around her middle, like when they were little kids and he didn't feel good and mom was busy, but he needed somebody to cling to, to feel better the way all kids do when they're sick. And in a way, he supposes, he is sick tonight. Just a different kind.