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tom and william have a good thing going for a little while. their ‘thing’ is made up of summer nights on tour, sharing laughs and breaking guitar strings, tom’s dirty blonde hair falling just above his eyes and the choker he gave william, a thin black cord that means nothing to anyone else but means everything to them.
and if william falls into love with tom headfirst, like when he was a kid and his sister’s friend pushed him off the diving board at the public pool and he cried and cried because he thought he was going to drown and die, then no one has to know. least of all tom. he never should have told him.
“i-i l-l-lo-love you,” the words stumble from william’s tongue, nothing like the lyrics that come so easy, and he hates his stutter and the way he always has to wear his heart on his sleeve, but most of all he hates the way tom looks at him with narrowed brown eyes that shone like the stars, back when they were tom and william, william and tom, and not a lovesick mess and a disgusted former friend.
tom spits out a “what the hell?”, and he says something else after that, but william doesn’t hear him because this isn’t how it’s supposed to go. this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, and tom’s choker around his neck feels suffocating in that moment.
the bunks aren’t usually easy to sleep on, but that night they’re even worse. william doesn’t even close his eyes all night, because how could he, and the next morning he digs out his sunglasses to hide the mess of tears and dark circles on his face.
“i’m leaving the band,” says tom, and william can’t pretend that he wasn’t expecting this, so he just nods, nods like his world hasn’t come crashing down around him.
it’s past noon by the time william drags himself out of his bunk yet again. “tom left,” he says softly, and he feels so weak, like nothing is in his control anymore. and the guys all frown and say they’ll miss him, but they only mean that he was a good guitarist. they don’t understand, and william just feels worse and worse. he feels a sob wrench its way up from his chest and all the way into his already aching throat, and he lets it out.
“hey, what’s the issue? we can get a new guitarist,” carden asks gently, and william wants to cry out the issue is that his fucking heart feels like it’s cracked in half, but he swallows and works up a little smile. his voice sounds foreign to him, raspy and wounded and a little too young, when he says “yeah.”
when he tells pete, he looks at him with a knowing sadness that hurts in all the right places. “i’m so sorry, baby. you wanna make out?” he asks, and william nods quickly, “yes.”
pete doesn’t taste anything like william imagined tom would have tasted, but he tastes good, and he gets his mind off of tom for a minute, and that’s all that william wants right now.