I wish you would write a fic where... Tommy confronts a monster (maybe they're of his own making)
Tommy's a strong guy, physically. And he's no slouch at compartmentalizing - at filing the sludge away, locking it up until he's not thinking about it, until it doesn't even touch him anymore. He broke up with Evan a week ago and he's sealed that up so tightly he hasn't felt anything at all about it. This should be a piece of cake in comparison.
His feet still feel weighed down with lead as he steps into the hospital.
It's an odd hour of the morning between shift starts and lunch, so the lobby isn't exactly bustling. His footsteps carry in the wide open space. A woman behind the counter at the gift shop smiles at him as he passes. His own expression feels odd on his face, a frozen rictus grimace, and he hurries on before she gets the chance to start a conversation.
Tommy makes it to the elevator bank and hits the button. It's no time at all before he's in the elevator car, picking the floor he needs, and watching the doors close. The lead in his feet spreads upwards, like capillary action, finding his stomach and settling there in the pit of it. For a brief moment he doesn't know what he's doing there, in the elevator, in the hospital. He almost convinces himself to just leave and go home, but by then the doors are opening.
He follows signs down the hall into a small room with a desk, where he checks in and sits to wait in a stiff plastic chair. He isn't waiting long before a woman in a lab coat calls his name. Tommy follows her into a cold, windowless room. His entire body feels heavy now, overfull with dread as he approaches the metal table in the middle. The woman pulls back a sheet.
"Yeah," he rasps. "That's him. That's my dad."
Tommy feels - he doesn't know quite what he feels. His dad's face is ashen, lifeless; strangely distorted by its own stillness. Like it's just... collapsed, without the scaffolding of life holding it in place. Tommy's eyes instinctively skip down to his dad's hands, an old habit so deeply ingrained in him that he still can't help expecting blows, even as old as he is, as big as he is. Even though his dad is dead.
The woman says something. The awareness of another voice in the room is all that Tommy's able to process behind the sludge oozing out of its carefully constructed containment, dripping black and tarlike through the ridges and valleys of his brain. He feels like he shouldn't be breathing, between the sludge and the lead and the room occupied by his dad's dead body and unlit by the sun.
Tommy signs some forms. He moves on autopilot and the only thing he can think about is the wry little smile Evan would have given him if he'd ever said that, told him I was on autopilot and maybe Evan would have carried the joke, maybe-
Forms signed and copied, Tommy excuses himself in a haste, bursting back into the hall and tearing for the stairs. He takes them two at a time, lunging up them like he's being hunted, and once on the main floor he shoves his way through the first exterior door he can find. He manages to take two steps and lean over some bushes before he's vomiting, bile crowding up his throat and nose and forcing its way out.
As he watches it drip to the ground, he's surprised it's not black.