Chapter Text
Tommy was fine.
Splendid.
Terrific.
Amazing.
Everything in between.
As okay as he consistently assured everyone he was.
It was week two of school. Being fine, it turned out had its downsides, one of those being rendered well enough to return to school. He could have pulled the “but woe is I a poor child” card but that would defeat the whole purpose of being fine.
So alas, here he was, biology class with Mr. Pat, half way through the day, brain having dissolved to mush hours ago the second he entered the building.
By all means this class should be a piece of cake. What with previous teaching methods he’d been subjected to proving significantly more trying then these, and considering certain advantages he retained. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to care enough about such menial things.
He fiddled with his earring, a simple gold stud, an oddity both Wilbur and his father had brought up a few times, before giving up in favor of avoiding his overtly vague and closed off answers. After all, it was just an earring. What could possibly happen.
The metal was cool between his fingers, smooth and slick. Among other things, he thought it looked sick.
He sighed.
Boredly studied the board.
Mr. Pat was droning on. And on. And on.
In the corner of his eye he caught a flash of brown hair.
Tommy pointedly ignored that one kid that kept “discretely” glancing at him. He’d been doing it for all of the past four or five school days. Tommy had no clue who he was but he was kinda starting to freak him out.
He frowned to himself, staring tiredly “at the bored” wondering which was a worse thing to dwell on, his boredom, or his stalker.
He wished dryly that he could face plant into his desk without drawing any attention.
Stalker kid was short, styling a mass of brown hair stuffed beneath a baseball hat that did not look comfortable on the kid, a pair of blue jeans that were to long, and a light green t-shirt.
He actually wouldn’t be all that noticeable if he hadn’t been completely and entirely terrible at discreteness.
In a fit of boredom and desperation, Tommy made a decision.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Somehow, after biology had ended, so had the kids existence.
As Tommy had not been able to catch him before he had completely disappeared, he had had no choice but to head to his next class (geography with Mr. Tsits) and hope for better luck next time.
Next time came, and the kid was no where to be found.
The irony of his stalker disappearing as soon as Tommy actually wanted to see him was as annoying as it was ironic.
It took another three class periods of frantic searching of the halls, having no luck, before his opportunity arose.
Lunch.
He knew stalker kid had his same lunch break because it was very difficult to eat your sandwich in peace with some creepy kid staring at you from across the cafeteria.
Hence, operation confront stalker to appease the ever pressing boredom, and mild curiosity.
Tommy strode into the cafeteria like a lion stalking its prey, flitting his gaze round and about in search of his target.
The lunch room was busy as all heck, bustling and busy despite their being six separate lunch periods. L’manburg high was literally the only respectable high school in the whole main city. L’manburg high also needed a bigger cafeteria so that also added to the general chaos of the under supervised war zone.
Tommy weaved between groups and bunches of friends and acquaintances, chattering in all manners and levels of volume and emotion, adding a gleaming variety to the cacophony of noise. He gave polite and awkward nods and smiles as he traversed the room, making eye contact in a seemingly too deliberate way on accident as he scanned the room several uncomfortable times.
He stood a good few inches above many of the other students, so inspecting the room in theory wasn’t to great of a challenge.
What was a challenge however was figuring out which shorter brown haired kid was his shorter brown haired kid. Apparently the look was far more common then he’d originally thought.
He found his way to the back of the room, leaning against the back wall, wings folded neatly behind him, pristine feathers shimmering ivory in the harsh artificial lights overhead. He frowned looking this way and that with scrutinizing blue eyes as he took a fairly aggressive bite from his sandwich.
No luck. No brown haired kid. NO LUCK.
He took a even more aggressive bite.
“Hey!”
Tommy was evidently to focused on focusing on the crowd in front of him to notice that someone had crept up on him.
He just barely managed to retain his surprise to only a small jump and not a squawk screech thing accompanied with a sandwich thrown to the air. He was a jumpy person okay?
He swiveled around to meet his attacker, whoever had dared to sneak up on him, feathers ruffled, already on edge nerves practically bounding back and forth like a frenzied cat locked in a box to find-
“YOU!”
Brown haired stalker was in fact right in front of him, not in his usual place of no where or across the lunchroom “discretely” staring at him like a creep. Replacing his normal very extremely suspicious shifty eyed demeanor is a too sweet smile and an outstretched hand.
Tommy eyed it suspiciously.
“Hellooo”
Stalker kid apparently has the AUDACITY to speak to him with a cheery polite tone. Tommy begrudgingly shakes the kids hand, still eyeing it suspiciously.
“…Hi”
Stalker kid is shaking his hand very enthusiastically, and despite them already haven shaken for a reasonable amount of time, he does not appear to be planning to stop anytime soon.
Over the symphony of yelling, and laughing and moving, stalker kid takes in a deep breath and basically screams at Tommy.
“IM TOBY!”
Tommy winces at the unnecessary loudness of the exchange, and in a significantly quieter tone replies.
“Uhh, im-”
Or at least he tries to reply.
“TOMAS CRAFT”
Because why wouldn’t stalker kid know his full legal name. (despite numerous occasions in which he claimed various attributes of bravery, strength, and general manliness as his middle name, the truth was he had no middle name)
Tommy eventually forcibly retracts his hand from the hand shake, meeting wide excited brown eyes with his own unsure, blue.
“yeah, uh huh, so uh, why have you been stalking me?”
Stalker kids- or Toby’s he supposes, already bulging eyes, go even wider (since that as somehow possible). This time his expression is incredulous. Apparently as shocked by discovery that he was a stalker as Tommy was that he had one.
“Stalking you????”
“Uh yeah, staring at me during lunch like i can’t see you?? Peeking my way every thirty seconds in biology??? “Discretely” (he made air quotations in the air) following me around the hall like i’m stupid??”
Toby stares at him a little harder. Tommy returns the gesture.
Toby sighs in apparent defeat despite the fact they spent a total of two seconds in their stare down.
“Okay, maybe i was observing (he put great emphasis on this word, leaning in closer to Tommy in a conspiratorial fashion, causing Tommy to lean back a bit in concern) from a reasonable distance”
Somehow this did not ease Tommy’s concerns.
“…”
“…”
“…why?”
“…”
“…”
Toby blinked at Tommy.
“no reason”
Tommy was torn between removing himself from the conversation with the weird stalker kid and being impressed.
“Honestly..”
Tommy slowly started nodding.
“Respect”
—————————————————————————————————————————
When Tommy was finally freed, trudging tiredly through the front doors of the school, into the outside, he was met with the all to familiar sight of Wilbur’s rinky dink old car that seriously needed to be replaced. (Tommy wasn’t sure why it hadn’t been, it wasn’t like Wilbur was short on cash, him being a whole super hero or whatever).
Wilbur and his father, over the past few weeks, had been increasingly, annoyingly, extremely, stupidly, entirely overbearing. And Tommy was very much tired of it.
He sighed, marching in defeat to the vehicle.
He was scowling at Wilbur when he swung the car door open, popping his bag into the front seat, and immediately dropping in after it. He continued displaying his displeasure as he pulled the door firmly shut (otherwise it wouldn’t stay shut) but Wilbur seemed to distracted with something on his phone to give him much more then a grunt of acknowledgment.
Great, overbearing and ignoring him. The audacity.
Tommy huffed, pulling his seat belt down and jamming it into the seat belt thing (otherwise it wouldn’t stay).
Wilbur, still staring at his phone, scanning the screen wildly, scrolling with one hand, pulled his own buckle down, jamming his even harder (the drivers seat buckle was even more broken)
Tommy watched him for a few moments more, blinking slowly, waiting to be acknowledged.
Wilbur made no move to do so.
“AhEM”
Tommy cleared his throat very loudly.
Wilbur hovered over his phone for a moment more and then tore his gaze away to meet his eyes questioningly.
“hm?”
“hm?”
Tommy mocks. Wilbur seems to absorbed in though to be offended.
“whatcha lookin at?”
Apparently that's enough to draw Wilbur’s attention because he scowls a bit at the question.
“work stuff…”
Tommy raises a prying eyebrow.
Wilbur sighs.
“Just some gang wreaking havoc in weird places nothing that interesting”
Tommy does in fact find that interesting but based on Wilbur’s distracted, distant look he won’t be getting much more out of the man. He rolls his eyes and pray’s Wilbur is at least in the here and now enough to not get them killed driving home.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Over the next few days nothing of much interest really happened, though Tommy did find himself suddenly friends (??? It was more Toby followed him around talking and Tommy kinda just went with it) with stalker kid.
It was a very touching story of redemption, in which a terrible creepy stalker reformed from his ways.
At least, from his stalker ways. Apparently he blew some stuff up in chemistry somehow despite them not using actual explosive materials. Tommy heard the science teacher commenting on how it was objectively really impressive that he manged to do such a thing, but he also almost wiped out half the class so he was put on very strict watch over chemistry, and given pretty much a lifetimes worth of detention.
It was a miracle he hadn’t been expelled.
Tommy, while still a bit weirded out by the guy, figured it could be nice to have friends his age, and not all garbled up in politics.
So hence his lunch breaks were filled with a short brown haired ex stalker, who was surprisingly smart for how stupid he acted sometimes.
And his text messages were filled with whatever garbage Toby threw his way via text.
What time wasn’t spent at school or giving odd looks at the obscure things landing in his messages, was spent “not being coddled” by the fervent mother henish-ness that was his father and brother.
They would pretend and he would pretend. At a stale mate, neither wanting to initiate a conversation about… well… something that one of them was fighting to bury beneath him in favor of reclaiming his life and self, and the others were trying to gently pry from the depths of himself. It was exhausting and awkward at first, but over time the two party's seemed to settle down, content to let things be in favor of other things for the time being.
And so his life was mostly back to normal. Save the way he was sometimes being hovered by a father or brother with concerned eyes, cast wondering looks at certain things or reactions that were apparently odd, given to much leeway or leniency, held like he was a sheet of glass or something and-
It was normal. Perfectly, awfully, genuinely normal.
Not a detail was off, not a word he said was wrong, all of it was normal. Because he was fine, so why wouldn’t it be?
His life, was normal again.
To many moments spent staring at himself in the mirror, wondering how far a person had to go before they were no longer themselves, and someone else entirely.
Perfect.
Nights spent tossing and turning as he smiled to himself. Chiding words muttered beneath his breath because fine people don’t cry.
Splendid.
Forever spent running fingers over ivory feathers, blond hair, smooth unblemished skin. Assuring himself that the painting was not only outward. That he could be who he looked like once again.
Still the child who would stare in awe at his hero’s.
Still who he swore he would become.
Still fighting and going for the same reasons as before.
And nothing else.