Chapter Text
Some people weren’t meant to have a family, and Tommy thought that he was most definitely one of those people. A skinny twig of a teenager with disheveled red and white wings hanging limp and useless from his back, and a mouth rash enough to make even the most hardened of sailors blush: he wasn’t exactly the picture of a perfect son.
So he decided quickly that he wouldn’t be.
He didn’t remember his parents in the slightest: maybe the ghost of a memory when he was rubbing his eyes harshly in the cold morning light of wherever he’d chosen to sleep, or the bone tired evenings when he’d grip a sword in hand, hoping that the firelight would be enough to ward off the mobs. Even though he’d been on his own since he was what, thirteen? Fourteen? Whatever. Ever since he’d run away, he’d made it through the night, but even with all of that luck, he’d known to stay vigilant.
So yeah, maybe he dreamt of having a family to call his own, and a warm bed, and fresh food to eat, but well… those were nothing more than wishful thinking. The world was cruel, and vicious, and punishing, and Tommy had learnt that the hard way.
The late winter wind bit at sunburned skin through a thin trenchcoat, raising goosebumps on the flesh underneath. March was his least favorite month: icy rain fell every other day, making it nearly impossible to find dry firewood, and sending the game scurrying into the safety of their nests and burrows. Tommy’s stomach grumbled, the boy himself muttering about his disdain for the weight that the falling ice added to his feathers as he trodded along a well-worn path through the forest.
His endurance was beginning to give up on him- he hadn’t eaten in three days, what with the endless cold and sleet, and his body was beginning to shut down. It was annoying, really, how pitiful of an end that would be.
Not that anyone would even notice that he was gone.
Tommy’s brow furrowed as he took a break, his body weight supported by the wide trunk of a spruce tree beside the trail. His fingers were tinged blue when he lifted a hand to run through soaked hair, and his breath puffed quickly in front of him, keeping up with the rate of fast breaths.
“Fuck you, bitch.” He cursed at mother nature under his breath, turning crystalline blue eyes up to face the partially tree-bough covered sky. “Fuck you and all your fucking ice shit.” He continued. His eyelids closed for a few moments: resting in the brief time he allowed himself. A warm hearth came to mind, filled with a crackling fire that would warm him to the bone: if he thought hard enough, he could almost feel the heat on his frozen skin, and the ice melting from his feathers. That was what he’d felt in the last tavern he’d visited.
A frown settled on Tommy’s lips as he regained sight, and pushed his body off of the tree, and looked down the slush-covered path before him.
The last village he’d come across was nearly a week ago: surely there had to be one ahead, if he just kept going.
“This is child abuse, mother nature. If there is a God, I don’t think they’ll be pleased when they find out about this.” Tommy mumbled. Mother nature gave no response when he paused to hear what she had to say: all that happened was more whistling of wind gusts between the boughs, and more rain soaking through his coat.
He walked until the sun went down: at least, he assumed that the sun had gone down, because suddenly the light was quickly fading from behind the clouds. Even in his weary state, Tommy knew that if he were to stop for the night, he probably wouldn’t have the strength to continue on the next morning. It was concerningly hard to get his legs to move.
He was shaking with cold.
He couldn’t feel his feet.
His wings were dragging on the ground.
There were zombies growling nearby.
He was dying.
And then there was a light in front of him.
He thought he was imagining it at first: a mirage to goad him into walking himself to death. The little blip against the black backdrop was far too warm to be a bright star: that bitch was not Betelgeuse or Rigel. That motherfucker was man made.
He stumbled blindly forward still, the hunger gnawing in his stomach felt like it was ripping him apart from the inside out. It was slightly unpleasant.
He was so close that the light was getting brighter, and behind it was the outline of a house, a cottage.
Tommy felt a pull in his heart.
Home.
There was a warm light emanating from the bottom floor windows of the cottage. The closer he stumbled, the more details of the now snow-covered area were becoming clear to an exhausted gaze. Tommy gripped his ribs, a stitch in his side starting to carve pain through his torso. A few more steps, and he’d be safe.
Maybe, if he was lucky.
Tommy approached the cottage as quietly as possible, trying not to alert the people inside to his presence. The glass was hazy from the frost, but he could hear at least two male voices carrying through the wooden walls. He let out a breath, pressing his body to the wooden panels and digging his fingernails into the slats as he came up with a course of action. A violent shiver wracked through his frail body, causing his wings to knock lightly against the siding with two small thuds: If he was lucky, they’d have a cellar he could crash in until whoever lived inside went to sleep, and then he could do a little bit of pillaging for food and supplies. They wouldn’t know he was there until he was gone, it was the perfect plan-
“Hello?” A voice sounded from the nearby doorway, pulling Tommy out of his hunger-imposed planning trance.
Fuck.
He scrambled away from the front entrance, sloppily, almost tripping over his own frozen feet in his desperation to get away, and not be potentially killed by this strange person. People meant death, and pain, and guilt. Tommy didn’t like being around people, unless it was a crowd that he could get lost in.
His breaths were frantic when he fell to his knees around the back corner of the house, curling into as small of a ball as a 6’3 teenager could create.
The sound of footsteps approaching his locating in the icy snow sent a tremor through the teenager’s entire body. “You know you leave footprints, mate.” That same voice said.
Tommy slowly peeled his head out of his arms, hot tears pricking the back of his eyes. His brain was too foggy to think up an escape plan, so all he could do was stare frozen at the silhouette of a person in front of him.
The voice sounded kind enough, yet when an arm shot out toward him, Tommy yelped and flinched back against the wall, terrified of being struck.
“Hey, woah there mate: I’m not gonna hurt you.” The voice soothed. Tommy stayed quivering against the cottage, hyperventilating and vision swimming. He was too weak to fight, too slow from hunger to run:
He was trapped.
“I’m just a figment of your imagination.” He said, voice scratchy. “This is an illusion. Go back inside.” A chuckle sounded above him, and there was a slow introduction of pressure on his shoulder where the man rested his hand.
“I don’t think my imagination could conjure footsteps up from thin air.” Tommy stayed silent, his muscles tense. “Come inside and warm up: there’s a storm coming in.” After a long few moments, Tommy nodded his head, and reluctantly accepted help with getting to his feet. “I’m Phil, by the way.” The man said, receiving merely a grunt in response as the hybrid he was supporting focused on putting one foot in front of the other.
It felt like forever before they’d reached the front porch and climbed the three steps it took to approach the front door. The light streaming gently through frosted windows revealed that the man helping him to walk was wearing some sort of green robe, and his blonde hair was partially covered by a striped green and white bucket hat.
He looked quite like a dad, Tommy decided, and acted like what he imagined one to be, what with all of the coddling:
“Watch your step, there!”
“Careful, hold onto the railing!”
“Your hands are freezing- I’ll have Will put the kettle on so we can get a bit more blood circulating.”
Even though history would say that Tommy hated it, it took only two minutes of fatherly care for the kid to trust that man with his entire being.
That was dangerous.
The door creaked open on iron hinges, and the first thing that Tommy was greeted by when walking into the cottage was an arrowhead to the nose.
He squeaked and cowarded back, the only thing keeping him under the doorjamb being the strong arms supporting his frail body.
“Stand down.” The kind man ordered, Tommy’s eyes stayed squeezed shut until he heard the unloading of a crossbow, and a disgruntled sigh following it.
“If you insist.” A new voice remarked. The young hybrid’s eyelids cracked open slowly at his protector’s coaxing, being immediately met with a house full of not only the orange-yellow light of candles and a roaring fire, but also two tall men who looked only a few years older than himself: one with curly brown hair hidden partially by a maroon beanie, and a wary gaze accented by round glasses, and the other with a long, pale pink braid, small tusks, and a rosy tinge to his skin.
“Boys, this is-” There was a pause. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.” Tommy blinked away the dark spots from his vision before answering, his weight shifting back and forth on his feet.
“Tommy.” He mumbled. His ears were beginning to ring, and his hands and feet felt disturbingly numb.
The one with the pink hair looked him up and down with scrutiny; one eyebrow raised while his arms were crossed menacingly across his chest. After a moment, he spoke.
“I don’t like it. Put it back outside.” He said, deep voice rumbling out of his chest. The blonde man, Phil, shot him a dirty look as Tommy slouched a little bit.
“Techno.” The man scolded. Techno, (stupid name) simply shrugged and scrunched up his nose.
“He’s dirty.”
“You were dirty too when I found your sorry ass wandering around in the Nether. You’re not special.” Techno narrowed his eyes when Phil turned back to Tommy with a kind smile on his face. “Don’t mind him, he’s not good with new people. Or people in general.”
“Yeah, I can tell.” Tommy said under his breath.
“I wouldn’t be talking about first impression ability when your wings look like that.” The other man bit back. The tips of Tommy’s ears heated in embarrassment. He subconsciously pulled his wings in closer to himself, folding them in as tightly as possible.
“Wilbur.” Phil’s voice was low, the smile that he’d had on turning swiftly into a frown. The brunette shrugged nonchalantly and turned on his heel to disappear up the nearby staircase.
“Just saying.” He threw back over his shoulder. Techno followed in his wake, not even sparing Tommy a second glance.
Good riddance.
Phil turned sheepishly back to the young hybrid, guiding him swiftly to the couch. “Don’t listen to my asshole sons, they’re very… territorial. This is the first home either of them have ever had so they uh, don’t like to share.” He coughed at the end of his sentence, causing a flare in great black wings that somehow Tommy hadn’t noticed in all of the commotion.
“Woah…” He let out the word like a breath, head cocking to the side. He’d never met another avian hybrid before, not to mention one with such healthy looking feathers. Phil looked at him confusedly for a moment before the realization dawned on him, and he spread them out so that Tommy could get a better look.
“Pretty cool, eh?” He grinned proudly, back straightening in pride.
“Fuck yeah.” Tommy replied tiredly. Phil seemed to notice the shift, because he immediately relaxed his wings again and slowly drew closer to the boy, whose chest was rising and falling much more rapidly than what could possibly have been healthy.
“You look like you’re fucking freezing-” Tommy’s stomach rumbled painfully, and Phil grimaced. “-and starving.” He straightened up, eyes grazing over the boy in front of him, who looked like nothing more than skin and bones. “Why don’t you stay the night? I don’t feel comfortable with you going back out into that storm in this condition, and it seems like you’re overdue for a good rest.”
Tommy wanted to refuse- he really did. Phil was nice enough, but his sons, or wards, or whatever the fuck they were didn’t seem to be overly fond of him, and being beaten to a pulp by what looked to be a piglin hybrid, alongside just another stupidly tall human, sounded like a shitty plan. But, well….
He looked around the room: plush, worn furniture draped with furs and flannel blankets, and a fire burning warm and bright enough to bring feeling back to his fingers and toes, and felt the weight of the compass in his back pocket warm against him instead of freezing, and well…
One night couldn’t hurt, could it?