Chapter Text
Tommy had grown up watching his father fly, large strong wings that could push the air down around him and launch him into the air, and Tommy, at the tender age of 5, was determined to be just like him. His own wings were small dark gray things, not quite big enough yet and still growing, much like the child they were attached to, but Tommy didn’t quite understand that, and he didn’t quite understand why his father and brother alike told him he wasn’t ready to fly.
When Wilbur told the small, determined child, who had run up to him with a bright grin that was made even cuter by the fact that he was missing his two front teeth, said child waved him off as not understanding. Wilbur didn’t have wings and wasn’t a hybrid like his sibling, a trait that was instead dormant in him, so Tommy pretended to listen to him when he said, “Tommy, under no circumstances are you allowed to throw yourself off the roof like the birds do.” Wilbur may have been in the double digits, but Tommy knew he didn’t know everything, and chalked knowing when to fly as one of the things he didn’t know.
When Phil told Tommy that there was no way he was going to let him jump off the roof, the small kid was heartbroken, and tears were welling in his eyes as soon as the words were out of his father’s mouth. “Why not? If I don’t learn right now I may never fly! I wanna fly like you!” he shouted, his temper flaring as it would so many times in the future. Phil had reached out to comfort him, but once Tommy had become upset it was often very hard to calm him down, and he didn’t like being hugged when it wasn’t on his terms, so the small, now very angry child, pushed Phil’s hands away and stormed up to his room, already forming a plan to get around the variety of nos he had heard.
“Toms?” Techno’s voice called from outside his room, a small knock on his door signalling the other boy's presence, “Phil said you're throwing a fit or some sh- thing,” the older boy said, trying not to swear in front of his already verbal brother. It was with that sentence that Tommy threw his door open and glared up at his already very tall 10-year-old brother.
“I am not having a fit, you stupid jerk,” he spat, his blue eyes still red from the angry tears that had escaped them during his departure from the kitchen. “If you only came up here to say the same stuff as Wilbur and Dad then you can just leave.” Tommy crossed his arms, sticking his tongue out through the small gap in his teeth much to Techno’s disgust.
“Calm down, Toms. Phil didn’t tell me why you were being so moody anyways,” he said, pushing past the shorter boy and going to sit on his bed, Tommy punching him lightly as he walked by, so he could say the older boy’s intrusion was unwelcomed.
Techno stared at him from the bed, waiting for the boy to elaborate, which he eventually did with all the annoyance a 5-year-old could muster, “I want to fly,” he said, his wings puffing out slightly to help prove his point, “I think I’m big enough, and when I suggested to Dad and Wilbur that they let me jump off the roof like the birds do they both said no,” he explained, frowning as he tried to comprehend why they would be so against his learning to fly, not really considering the fact that he was asking for them to let him jump off the roof of their house and potentially break his neck. Techno’s sudden burst of shocking laughter drew up Tommy’s attention and his anger, “Why the heck are you laughing?”
“Tommy, your wings aren’t big enough yet, not to mention you asking Phil to let you throw yourself off a building, of course, he’s going to say no,” he laughed, his pink hair falling slightly in his face as he laughed at his younger brother, who was glaring up at him with a hatred far beyond his years, a look the hybrid would grow used to and miss when it turned pathetic and scared. “Just wait a little bit longer,” Techno said after a moment, standing a ruffling his hair, ignoring Tommy’s attempt to slap at his hand.
Then Tommy was alone and left still trying to figure out why his family was so against him throwing himself off the roof. “Maybe the roof is too high?” he wondered out loud, his eyes going to rest on the window of his bedroom. His bedroom was lower than the roof, but still high enough to get him air time. They couldn’t get bad at him for jumping out his window because it wasn’t the roof, they had said no to the roof, but no one had said anything about the window.
Phil found him sitting stubbornly in the grass with a broken arm and a multitude of bruises, a few tears slipping out of his eyes from the pain, but other than a few sniffles he was silent as his Dad fixed him up and talked at him, until the very end, “I’m going to try again, Dad, so you should probably teach me how to do it properly.”