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clay and tommy hang out one last time
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Clay's graduating later this week.

They're going to hang out later today. Tommy doesn't get to hang out with Clay much, anymore; he's busy with graduation prep. Sometimes in the alchemy lab, but mostly drilling in the seniors-only section of the gym, which Tommy can barely even be mad about it because Clay's so fucking cool; he pulls off stunts that turn heads, not just getting to the end but showing off, parkouring around the course with Nick and George and the rest of them while chanting under his breath, making it look easy and fun instead of a death trap. All of Tampa's seniors are quickly becoming a well-oiled team, but Clay--Clay's the star, and he knows it. It reminds Tommy of watching Terrence, before the Scholomance. He had dreamed of being that good, one day.

But today Tommy doesn't go to the gym to watch Clay; he goes to his room.

The first thing he does is poke at his shoes with a needle and thread, nominally because they've got a big hole in them but mostly because he should be building mana for Clay.

Only for fifteen minutes, though. He doesn't care that much.

When he dies, he doesn't want everyone looting his room like they did with Wilbur. That was--he had stood by Wilbur, until the end. Nobody stood by him, except Clay. They don't get to have his things. So he sorts his items into two piles, which he mentally labels TO BE USED TODAY and TO BE HIDDEN OR DESTROYED.

TO BE USED TODAY: Toby's water bottle, his spare tokens, a couple of peanut butter cups still left over from the party-that-wasn't, the clothes on his back, the blanket on his bed, the shoes on his feet, his mana storage.

TO BE HIDDEN OR DESTROYED: his abandoned attempt at a knife, Phukkit, Over the Rainbow and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, his music box, one pen, his baby blanket, the unfinished draft of How to Sex 3, Linda, Alex's rosary, some half-started attempts at final projects and essays.

It's not very much. It all fits under his pillow. Before he dies, he can throw it all in the void, along with Toby's water bottle and the clothes on his back.

Henry and Shroud give him pause. They're--well, they're alive. He shouldn't kill them just because nobody else deserves them. So they can be a third pile. It works out, anyway; Clay would notice and get suspicious if his room was too empty.

He says goodbye to each of the items in the second pile, plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and then switches the cylinders and plays Over the Rainbow. He apologizes to How to Sex 3 for not finishing it. He apologizes to all of them, as a group, for throwing them into the void, which he hasn't done yet but probably will. He's probably throwing himself in the void too, so it's equality, but he gets it if that doesn't really feel any better, especially since he's putting them all under a pillow first.

When the time comes, he brings all his tokens to meet Clay at the snack bar. Clay's bringing all his tokens, too; no point in saving them for later anymore. Neither of them have any future left in here.

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"Hey, Tommy!"

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"Hey."

There's a pause. When the silence stretches out for too long: "I brought tokens."

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"That's great! I did too, not a ton or anything because, y'know, I've been sharing with Nick and George, but. Want to head back to your room after? It's safer."

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"It doesn't matter." He starts feeding their shared tokens in.

A bag of oreo cookies.

A plastic bottle of vitamin water.

A stingy handful of apparently shiny lemon drops.

A bowl of ramen noodles, crumbling with age.

A 12oz can of plum-a-granate sierra mist, with no visible date.

A packet of maple candy, at least fifty years old.

A can of bully beef that looks like it dates back a hundred years.

A single handful of unfortunately dusty yogurt-covered marshmallows.

A fortune cookie.

(Everything gets given to Clay on autopilot.)

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Which works out, given that Clay's the one of them with an actual bag and not just pockets. He passes Tommy the last of the tokens, recieving in return some trail mix and dry cereal, and then Tommy is done receiving dubious food items.

"I mean, I'd rather be safer, so. Let's head back."

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"You're the boss." His room's not that far, anyway. "You know, this reminds me of, like--I used to take candy and shit and go over to Wilbur's and we would eat it all before they caught us. Pretty sure we gave Phil a heart attack a few times but Terrence thought it was funny. I mean, not that he'd admit to thinking it was funny, but he covered for us and called it practice or whatever."

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"Really?" They're at Tommy's room; he puts his bag down, starts laying the food out on the floor.

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Tommy puts one hand on his chest, holds three fingers on his other hand up. "Really. Scout's honor."

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"It's just--it's Terrence. It's so weird to me that you, like, knew him."

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That earns a smile and an exaggerated hair flip. "I'm kind of a big deal."

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Clay grabs the dry cereal and the vitamin water, shoves some of the candy towards Tommy. "Eat."

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"I don't have an appetite. Besides, you need it more."

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Shrug. "Fine, more for me."

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"Yeah, because I'm so jealous of your....expired cinnamon toast crunch with purple soda? That just sounds--mmm mmm, delicious, exactly the combination I've been craving."

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"Oh, shut up, Tommy, I've seen the things you've eaten."

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"But you don't see all the things I don't eat. I could be so much worse."

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"I guess. I mean, I've seen Nick and George, you can't get that much worse."

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"Never doubt my power. Is cereal good with soda?"

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"It's fine? It's not like I'm using it like milk."

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"Yeah, but it's the same thing, innit? 'Cause it gets all mixed up once you eat it anyway."

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"I am, like... 99% certain that is not how that works."

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"No, it is." He goes to put a yogurt-covered marshmallow in the enclosure with Shroud and Henry, then pauses. "Do you know if spiders have, like, allergies? Like dogs and chocolate."

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"I don't think so? I mean, they live in houses all the time. I think they mostly eat bugs, though. And, uh, yours eat mana, I guess.

Did--when Terrence got out, did he have any familiars?"

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"You're like--you're such a middle school girl at a sleepover. Oh, oh, Terrence, tell me about Terrence!"

(He did. He had practically a whole zoo of familiars, by the time it was Tommy's induction; dogs and foxes mostly, Steve and Fool and Hubert and Bob and Edward and Blitz and Apollo and Jonathan Swift and who even knows how many unnamed strays, but also a turtle that Toby named after himself, and two horses, Andrew and Carl, not to mention Tommy's pretty sure some of Phil's crows ended up attached to him, and--

--Tommy's not thinking about how he isn't going to see any of them ever again. He's not.)

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Eyeroll. “I am not. You're such a--you're such a child."

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