Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Honestly, being dead sucked. 

Tommy lazily lounged around a few stray puffs of non-corporeal mist, letting his feet kick up in the air as he watched Jschlatt, Wilbur, and Mexican Dream have their go at UNO. Tommy had joined in for a few rounds at first, but after Mexican Dream's constant use of the reverse card on Tommy, rendering him quite literally unable to score a turn—Tommy's certainly had enough.

"Must you play UNO all day long?" Tommy quipped from his (un)comfortable position in the air. Wilbur spared a brief glance at Tommy, his eyesight blocked by the teen's worn shoes covering the entirety of his upper torso. Wilbur sweatdropped, but offered a shaky smile as he mulled over his hand of cards. 

"Well, it's not like we have any better games..." 

Tommy smacked his lips. "What about charades? Have you tried that?"

Out of nowhere, Schlatt let out a goose-like screech. "I'm just too good at imitating animals," said Schlatt, adding context to his ghastly cry. Tommy felt his face pale as he stared at the former president, who was now calmly placing down his yellow '2' card onto the growing UNO pile. 

"Man, we've tried charades." Mexican Dream pulled out his green '2' card and smacked it down, clicking his tongue. "Schlatt dominated absolutely everything. I told Wilbur, 'be a table, man! Schlatt will never guess it!' and Wilbur said, 'Mexican Dream, the topic is 'animals'', but guess what? Schlatt still guessed it!"

Wilbur grumbled and reached to grab a correctly colored card as Schlatt bashfully fixed his tie. "Well," he stated, "I'm also good at imitating non-living objects, so it goes both ways." 

"I'll never forget your Elephant Lampshade Trumpet Cry," Wilbur muttered as he pulled two more times from the extra card pile. "It was so on-point—my god, who shuffled this deck?! I'm getting three blues in a row!"

Hearing this, Tommy awkwardly ducked his head. Wilbur sighed and pulled another card, exhaling in relief when it finally came up green. He placed it down and grunted at the unbelievable amount of cards he had on him (it was fifteen, with ten being blue). 

"Uno," Schlatt quickly said as he offered up his second last card. "Ha, never gonna make that same mistake again." Mexican Dream was saddened by this, for he had previously managed to catch Schlatt's lack of an 'uno' for three times in a row, all in the same game.

The quiet battle continued, with Mexican Dream changing the color to red. Schlatt visibly grimaced. 

At the sight of Wilbur's offered red '0' card staring at him, Tommy suddenly felt a sharp sting stabbing into the back of his brain. He hissed, pressing two fingers to massage his temples, annoyed at the increasingly painful headache slowly swelling to life there.

"Tommy? You alright?" what Tommy assumed to be Wilbur's voice asked.

Tommy wrenched open his shut eyes—strange, when did he close them?—to see the world spinning on its axis, wobbling left and right. A hammer was smashing his skull into the ground at this point, and Tommy groaned in response to express that he was most definitely not okay. He collapsed onto the astral floor, sweat dripping down his neck. His nose could somehow smell the ashy, boiling smell of lava and crying obsidian, and his skin felt too hot, the air felt condensed and sticky—

—"GGHK!" His body ached all over. He vaguely registered the other three occupants of this realm scrambling to check on him, and not long after, Tommy felt himself leaving his phantasmic body. His conscience was slowly getting tugged and weighed on by an invisible force, dragging his soul down, back into the land of the living. 

The weight tightened, and Tommy was immediately free-falling through the sky. He streaked downwards, yelling, and saw a brief flash of a ceramic mask covering a certain blond man's glowing purple eyes, his brow furrowed in heavy concentration. The vision disappeared as soon as it came, and instead of waking up in his former body, Tommy heard a deafening sound exploding like thunder through his ears. 

Dream fucking sneezed, and instead of continuing his descent down, Tommy was jerked sideways, shooting across the sky like a horrible comet. 

I'm going to die for real, aren't I, is the unusually calm thought that first entered Tommy's mind when his sight flashed a brilliant white, blocking out his other senses (not like he could feel anything except for the battering wind anyway). Then, the breath was immediately sucked from Tommy's lungs as he found himself in some sort of space vacuum, still continuing his never-ending speedrun across the multiverse. He shrieked in terror when a gigantic asteroid floated towards his line of sight, but Tommy phased right through it, mouth contorted in a silent scream. He continued wailing, screeching, and cursing without any words being sounded as he flew farther and farther into some unknown corner of the universe.

Well, I really am going to die here, Tommy grimly realized. Hurtling through time and space, doomed to be stuck as a shooting star. 

If he's going out, he might as well go out with a bang.

Despite sound not being able to travel through vacuums, Tommy mustered all of his strength to yell one final curse:

"I FUCKING HATE DREAM!"

...Only for the words to actually be sounded out, ripping through Tommy's vocal cords as his eyelids snapped open, revealing a dull wood board around half a meter high above his head. 

Tommy processed this with slow stupefaction worming its way into his gut. 

"I'm alive," Tommy weakly rasped out, and he moved to sit up. "I'm alive!"

He patted down his super-physical, one thousand percent not transparent body. 

"I'M ACTUALLY ALIVE!"

Tommy then felt that something was askew. He inspected his arms. 

...No scars. The faded marks of his Lichtenberg figures that used to span across his arms were gone. Tommy checked his face, palming his cheek with confusion when he realized that it was smooth and unblemished, lacking complete proof of his survival through countless battles and wars.

"Alright," Tommy breathed out loud to himself, "alright, let's see here. No scars, huh. Maybe my body repaired itself."

He then turned to look around the room, searching for a reflective pool to use. He found none, and instead, his eyes scanned over countless things he had no idea how to name or how they even worked.

Shakily stumbling to his feet, Tommy slipped into a pair of red plastic slippers he assumed were for him, their rubbery selves placed near the foot of his bed. His jaw dropped upon looking behind him. 

"It's—holy shit, it's a bed with two layers!" 

He gaped at the double-decker bed and the ladder that connected the top layer to the bottom one. 

"This is so innovative," he marveled as he scaled up the ladder, and he realized that he was supposed to be sleeping on the top bunk, judging by the enormous horde of plushies that looked like music discs laying on the sheets. 

Quietly, Tommy went back down to inspect the gadgets lying on a rather large table up against a corner with countless books and paper strewn across it. He picked up a sleek black object and tested its weight in his hands. It looked a lot like his communicator back at home, but this thing was way lighter and more compact. He tapped it once. To his shock, it lit up, and the screen didn't show blocky, pixelated text messages: it showed him a very detailed picture of him, Wilbur, and Techno leaning on the railing overseeing a beach, a summer breeze tousling all of their hair.

It was something unthinkable, how well those tiny little details and the impeccable lighting was captured in the photo. 

Tommy solemnly placed down the black object and set his sights upon the open books. Immediately, he stopped reading after realizing that despite taking in one entire page of font-size twelve passages, he had ingested completely nothing, for he understood jack shit. 

Using a trembling hand, Tommy reached out and flipped the book shut, inspecting the front cover. 

The second he read 'The Legal and Ethical Environment of Business', his brain disconnected and refused to reboot.

"What is this," he whispered flatly beneath his breath. "What is this."

Also on the table was a boxy thing displaying four numbers: 06:42, and the letters 'PM'. Tommy guessed that was some weird caricature of a clock. Which meant it was almost nighttime. Surely whoever shared this room with him would be back before seven.

Tommy swept past the table and approached the room's door. With sweaty hands, he turned the round handle and stepped outside. 

The hallway was empty. 

Peeking his head out, Tommy checked the right end—which lead down to an unoccupied bathroom—before swiveling his head around to look left, seeing three more doors and a large living room area beyond that. Tommy stepped out and padded over to the living room, and instantly froze in his steps when he saw who was lying on a leather sofa, snoring rather loudly. 

What the fuck, it's Phil but older and more DILF-ified, Tommy thought with fright. Why is he here?! 

Out of sheer coincidental timing, an alarm coming from Phil's silver thing wrapped around his wrist (Tommy was deathly afraid of the weird gizmos this unfamiliar place had) beeped to life, and Phil awoke with a yawn, who noticed Tommy standing quite awkwardly past a corner, staring at him dumbfoundedly the whole time. Phil popped his joints and flexed his wings. 

"Evening, son."

"Hello, Phil."

Tommy did not notice the way Phil's eyes darkened. 

"...What did you say?" asked the man with a low growl. Tommy frowned in confusion.

"I-I just said hello?"

"No, after that." 

"Phil?"

Phil stood up, and Tommy finally realized that something was wrong. He silently inched backwards as Phil rose to his full height.

"So," he began with a cold tone, "who died and made you king, huh?"

"Sorry, what?"

"Who died and made you head of the house, huh? You eighteen yet?" 

Tommy meekly shook his head. 

"EXACTLY! WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION TO USE MY NAME?" Phil thundered as Tommy visibly winced. "EVEN WHEN YOU REACH EIGHTEEN, YOU STILL REFER TO ME AS 'DAD', GOT IT? YOU THINK YOU'RE SO BIG AND MIGHTY? GONNA GO GRADUATE FROM HARVARD WITH 5 GPA?" 

What the hell is a Harvard?! Tommy yelled in his head, too stunned to be able to formulate proper words.

Luckily, before Phil could potentially spiral into a six-hour-long lecture, the front door slammed as Wilbur—with an overloaded backpack around his shoulders—entered the living room with a light, "Hey Dad, hey Toms, I'm back—oh dear god, what happened this time?" 

Wilbur's face pulled into a frown, and Phil sent an electrifying glare at Tommy.

"Tommy, did you start an argument with Dad?" 

Tommy thought it over.

"...No," he finally replied. Wilbur heaved a sigh. 

"If you don’t mind, Phil—come with me, Tommy, to our room." Wilbur dumped his stuffed backpack on a wooden chair, and Tommy swore he heard a faint sound of wood cracking when the bag hit the seat.

Apparently, he and Wilbur shared the same room, with Techno occupying one and Phil occupying the last. Tommy dry swallowed when Wilbur pulled the door shut behind him. The brunet crossed his arms, creasing his eyebrows. 

"So, care to tell me what happened?"

With a half-hearted, awkward laugh, Tommy tried to explain his way out of his weird predicament. "Wilbur, listen—"

The said man stilled. His previously scrunched-together eyebrows rapidly soared up. 

"Wil...?"  Tommy cautiously prodded, afraid that the man would burst into another smoldering lecture just like Not-Really-Phil had.

Instead, Wilbur began sniffling and hastily wiped the corner of his eyes. "You've never said my name since you were twelve," he emotionally whispered, trembling. "I thought you were going to call me dipshit forever!"

Wow, I am horribly cruel to my own brother, Tommy sullenly grumbled to no one in particular. What came out of his mouth, however, contradicted his thoughts: "You kinda are one, though."

Wilbur chuckled. "That's more like you." Then a shadow befell his features. "Okay, confess. Who are you and what did you do to the original Tomathy Innit-Minecraft?" 

Blinking, Tommy replied, "Would you believe it if I said I came from a war-ridden universe and was somewhat unsuccessfully brought back to life?"

With a curl of his lip, Wilbur replied, "I'd believe it better if you said you won the Nobel prize today."

“But I'm not lying! I literally shot through the universe and ended up in this body, not my original one—which, by the way, is probably getting beaten around by Dream, that slimy bitch—"

"First off, don't insult the bossman Dream," Wilbur soothingly cut in, stopping Tommy mid-ramble. "If Phil heard you calling Dream a 'slimy bitch', he would've brought out the belt already."

Recalling some extremely old joke conversation he had with Phil on the SMP, Tommy weakly asked, "I-I thought the belt was a joke thing?"

"Tommy, the belt was and will never be a joke thing, nor will the slipper, the 40cm ruler made to slap your palms, and the"—Wilbur's voice dropped to a gravelly whisper—"cane."

"What is the cane?" Tommy whisper-shouted back. Another dark shadow fell over Wilbur's face.

"Dark memories. Will get back to you soon," he said lowly before later brightening up. 

"Well, I guess this confirms it." Wilbur assuredly patted Tommy's shoulder. 

"Confirms what?" 

"That you're definitely not lying about that resurrection part. Tell me then, how did you make Dad mad?"

Tommy felt a half-laugh half-choke tumble out of his mouth. "I called him Phil, that's all." 

The absolute look of revulsion and alarm on Wilbur's face was, if put in perspective, incredibly funny.

"Y-you... you called Dad by his name?" Wilbur whisper-shrieked. "Tommy, do you have a death wish?!"

"Look, I just—I don't get it, alright? What's wrong with calling Ph—I mean Dad by his name?" Tommy grumbled. When he heard that, Wilbur decidedly ran a tired hand through his curls, muttering unintelligible things beneath his breath the entire time.

"Okay, listen up, this is very important life advice," Wilbur said. "Lesson number one: when you call your parents with their name, you're dead. If your parents call you by your full name, you're dead. And finally, if you say 'what' or 'huh' with the slightest bit of aggression or disrespect in it, you're dead."

"That's solid life advice," said Tommy. 

"Lesson number two: do NOT call Dream a slimy bitch," Wilbur practically begged. "And lesson number three: never mention anything about school or work or anything along those lines, or else Dad will rant about how he climbed eighteen mountains, swam through the Atlantic Ocean, braved three blizzards, flew over nineteen plains, and ran through a jungle just to get to school."

"Are you actually being serious?" was the disbelieved reply that Tommy uttered, mouth agape.

"Dead serious," said Wilbur, and Tommy knew that he was dealing with a professional here. They fell into silence. Tommy spoke up after a while of consideration.

"By the way, Wil, what's in that massive backpack of yours?"

"I study med,” Wilbur sulkily provided, “like how former you studied law."

"I... see."

A soft ding chimed out of nowhere, and Wilbur fumbled for his strange sleek device that was placed in his pocket. He took one look at it and immediately clicked it off.

"7 PM," Wilbur huffed. "Not-Really-Tommy, you best know how to make rice." 

"I can attempt," Tommy provided, and Wilbur covered his face with his hands. 

"That's good enough. Don't burn or poison it," Wilbur advised, and Tommy shrugged nonchalantly, grinning the whole time.

"It's just rice. How hard can it be?"

Famous last words.

Chapter Text

Wilbur ushered Tommy out of their bedroom, pointing down the living room area to reveal a rather large kitchen blocked by a sliding glass door. Upon entering, Tommy nearly felt his eyes drop out of their sockets when he saw the multitude of gadgets lying around. He ran a careful hand over the smooth surface of a strange, square thing that had little braziers stuck on it. 

"What is this?" he asked, pointing at the brazier-box-thing. 

"It's a stove," Wilbur said with a tinge of confusion in his voice as he turned on the air vent. "You, uh... you sure you know how to cook?" 

"How hard can cooking be?" Tommy shrugged, ignoring that he had no idea what rice was until only a few minutes ago. "I've prepared steak and bread dozens of times."

Hearing this, Wilbur visibly relaxed, shoulders untensing.

Sadly, what Wilbur didn't know was that the 'steak' Tommy meant was raw beef thrown haphazardly into a roaring furnace to be charred into borderline meat briquettes. What Wilbur also didn't know was that the 'bread' Tommy meant was definitely not made for modern-day human consumption. 

Suspecting nothing and forgetting that Tommy had no idea what a 'phone' or 'YouTube' was, Wilbur told him, "I'll leave you be to teach Dad how to use a TV projector he bought on Taobao. Erm, the rice container is in the cupboard over there, use your phone's YouTube if you need help. Bye!" 

Wilbur turned tail and left, sliding the glass door shut behind him, leaving Tommy to digest his words like they were some sort of treasure cipher.

"What the fuck is a YouTube?" he muttered, befuddled. "Is it a book?" 

Tommy's eyes scanned the equipment in the kitchen like he was in an armory. His sight landed on a tall, metal cuboid (what is with this world and boxes?), its coat silver and sleek, standing rather proudly. He approached the rectangular prism, eyeing the little black interface slapped in the middle of it.

Using a hesitant finger, Tommy tapped on the black part. It beeped to life, and the elongated box said with a female voice, "Hello. I am your Samsung Smart Refrigerator. How may I help you?" A microphone appeared and hovered on the bottom of the screen, pulsating with a teal aura.

Tommy gasped softly. "You're a woman?"

The fridge said nothing. Tommy tapped the screen again, and the microphone went away, revealing a different screen left open in the background.

"YouTube," Tommy read aloud, inspecting the words in the far left corner next to a weird-looking logo. "Oh, is this what Wilbur meant?" 

Tommy scrolled through the open app. He ended up passing a lot of recipes and some questionable, eyebrow-raising titles. After two minutes of mindlessly scrolling through the home page, Tommy remembered with a jolt that he was supposed to be cooking rice. After much trial and error trying to figure out how to look for new videos, he tapped the magnifying glass located on the top right, hoping for the best. A keyboard popped up, similar to the one his communicator had. Tommy exhaled in relief. He typed in 'rice cook how to' and pressed enter.

Thumbing the very first video with a strange title (這個人在做什麼？！- BBC Rice Cooking Guide 反應視頻 #Fail #Reaction )*, Tommy went and opened the cupboard to gather the necessary materials for his very first cooking adventure in a different universe. The video started, and immediately, he found himself not understanding anything a guy with glasses was saying with a strangely excited attitude regarding white rice. Grumbling, he turned around and shot a glance at the screen. The video switched with perfect timing, and Tommy could finally hear words that he understood. 

"Today, we are going to be learning how to cook white rice," said a nice-looking lady around her mid-thirties with fancy blonde hair. She extended her arms and showed a glimmering bowl of rice. "It's very simple and easy, so let's get started!" 

Tommy observed the woman as she tore open a new packet containing rice, pouring the contents into a white cup. He grimaced. Already failed step one. I don't have packet rice. He looked around the kitchen and grabbed a mug with an 'I ♡ Dubai" print on it.

"Okay, let me try this." Tommy dunked the entire mug inside the large plastic container holding many kilograms of rice. He filled it to the brim, careful to avoid spilling any grains. 

"Now, a lot of people are afraid of cooking rice," said the lady, and Tommy nodded along. The video suddenly paused, and the glasses guy was ranting about something again. Tommy waited for it to finish, thinking that it was some sort of side-note for experienced chefs that he was obviously not qualified for. The man finished his speech, and soon, the video switched back to the woman. 

"Remember that the universal rule is two cups water, one cup rice." The woman grabbed a frying pan-ish pot-thing and poured the rice inside. She went over to a tap and got two cups of water, adding it to the pot. Tommy began digging around the kitchen to look for a similar item. He found a frying pan being hung up to dry on a rack above the sink, and Tommy, not knowing what a saucepan was, nor the differences between one and a frying pan—decided that it'll do. 

Tommy dumped all of his mug rice onto the frying pan and moved it onto the largest stove. He grabbed some tap water and only added half a cup because the pan almost overflowed. The lady placed a lid on her revolutionized frying pan, and Tommy went on another scavenger hunt around the room in search of a lid as well. The one he found was a little oversized, but it still fit, so naturally, he took that as a win. Tommy followed the lady in suit and lit up his gas stove, dialing it to maximum heat.

Tommy let the rice sit. He continued watching the video, skipping over the high-level chef bits. 

"Once your rice is done, take off the lid and let it simmer on low heat for about ten minutes," the lady directed. The scene cut, and soon, it showed a cooked pot of rice. The lady grabbed the pot, a net thingy, and said merrily, "Now drain it with a colander." She poured the rice into the colander, letting all the excess water flow out. Then, she turned on the tap and soaked the cooked rice in some more tap water to clean it.

"Now your rice is perfect and fluffy!" The woman plated—or, bowled her masterpiece in a phoenix-ornamented bowl. "You can add garnishes to your rice to make it taste better. Personally, I like eating it like this!"

The woman snapped her fingers, and the rice was suddenly mixed with a shade of dark brown. She held up a bottle of something, apparently named 'Lee Kam Kee', which Tommy had a grand total of zero ideas regarding what it was or where to find it. Scene change. The glasses guy saw the 'Lee Kam Kee' bottle and nodded. He added something with a respectful tone.

So rice tastes better if it's darker colored, Tommy rationalized. I mean, steak is almost black when we eat it back home.

With that information now logged in his brain, Tommy let the frying pan rice boil(?) for around fifteen minutes on continued maximum flame, taking his leisurely time to browse through his newfound addiction, YouTube on the Samsung Smart Refrigerator. When the rice eventually became a nice shade of almost black, Tommy slightly removed the lid and let it simmer, just like how the woman did it, forgetting to turn the fire down as he did so.

The rice finally finished simmering and the kitchen was smelling like L'manburg right after its detonation, meaning very, very bad.

Tommy turned the stove off with a smile, grabbed a colander, and poured all the lumpy rice into it. He then added fresh tap water to the mix, straight from the source, just like the inspirational lady. Grabbing the seared frying pan, Tommy dumped the rice back into it and grabbed a spoon to fluff it up.

He turned his head when he heard muffled footsteps approaching, and beyond the glass sliding door, he saw Wilbur nearing the entrance. 

Wilbur slid the glass door to the kitchen open. He peeked into the room, observing his brother, whose figure blocked the entire stove. "Tommy, are you done? It's almost been half an hour." 

He then instantly smelled an extremely acrid stench of smoke, the scent slamming into his nostrils with the force of a truck. Wilbur's face immediately morphed into one of pure terror. He crossed over to look at what was burning, and upon seeing what Tommy had cooked, he blanched.

"I don't know you," was all Wilbur commented before hastily leaving the kitchen, pretending he saw absolutely nothing at all and had no familial relations with Tommy.

The blond innocently held the frying pan containing a smoking mass of what was formerly uncooked and unwashed rice. 

He pitifully mumbled to himself, "Isn't this how you cook it?"

From afar, Wilbur began sobbing silently, praying that Phil wouldn't beat Tommy's ass into the nth layer of hell.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?" Phil screeched, wings flaring. He stared at the discolored assemblage of scorched rice in the middle of Tommy's frying pan. "I—WHAT DID YOU COOK? NEED TO SEE DOCTOR? YOU OKAY?"

Tommy wisely kept his mouth shut. Phil's eyes did not move a millimeter, trained completely still on the burnt heap of inedible food. 

"Dad," Wilbur peaceably piped up from the side, "it's okay. We'll just throw it away and cook a new batch." 

Phil jabbed a finger at the family's Toshiba rice cooker quietly placed in a corner. "I have no words. Do you need me to get the manual? Your brain got fungus from lawyer textbooks?"

"Maybe," Tommy silently said beneath his breath, faux tears welling up in the corner of his eyes.

Phil went away for a moment and returned with the Toshiba rice cooker instruction manual. Tommy winced.

"I can't read this," he mumbled guiltily. Wilbur's eyes widened in both shock, realization, and upcoming sympathy.

"Can't read—what you mean can't read?" Phil disbelievingly squawked. "YOUR DAD TAUGHT YOU CHINESE TWO WEEKS AGO! JAPANESE IS FINE, I DON'T KNOW JAPANESE—BUT YOU USELESS SON, FORGETTING EVERYTHING I TEACH YOU! ALWAYS WASTING MY TIME AND PATIENCE, JUST LIKE—" 

Tommy's ears automatically blotted out the rest. Funnily, despite Phil saying he was at a loss for words, he continued vehemently scolding Tommy for the next eighteen minutes. 

Phil took a deep breath after a long-winded ramble. "I can't deal with you anymore." Finally, Tommy thought. Phil is done.

Phil was not done. "Not only did you burn the rice into the color of my childhood ox's butt, but you also forget how to read Chinese—haiya**, what son are you? Can you be more like Techno? He gets good grades, almost a CEO now, and here you are—"

Tommy's ears continued filtering out the rest of Phil's incessant complaints. Once again, despite Phil saying he couldn't deal with Tommy anymore, he still yelled at him for twenty more minutes.

When the twenty-first minute rolled around, a light-hearted and cheerful tune played out in the background. Phil and Tommy both turned and looked inside the kitchen, where Wilbur was silently manning the rice cooker as he scrolled through Samsung YouTube. 

"You didn't seem like you were going to stop anytime soon," Wilbur provided as he pointed at the clock on the Samsung fridge, reading '8:02 PM'. "I've even microwaved last night's vegetables and chicken, we can have dinner now." 

Phil huffed. "Thank you, son." He then shot a withering glower at Tommy. "Go throw away the burnt rice yourself. Don't make everyone do everything for you."

Tommy took a spoon and scraped all of the blackened rice into the garbage can.

Phil shrieked at once, "WHAT YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU USING METAL ON A NON-STICK PAN?!" 

At that sentence, Wilbur's sight trailed over to stare at Tommy's hands holding, true to Phil's words—a metal spoon scraping against a non-stick pan. The med student cringed in pain.

If Phil was about twenty years older, he would've passed out from high blood pressure. 

Tommy got another earful. They ate dinner at 8:49 PM.

At night, right before bed, Tommy heavily massaged his temples. 

"Wilbur," he called out, alerting the man beneath his upper bed bunk. 

"Yes, Toms?" 

"Believe it or not, I kinda miss my old world where you blew up a nation and killed many, many people."

Wilbur fell silent.

"You know," the brunet finally replied, "I think I'd rather blow up a nation than continue studying med."

And with that, Wilbur turned off the lights, dousing the room in darkness. 

The next day, Tommy went and ransacked their house's study room and started reading every available book that taught Mandarin. And for good measure, he asked Wilbur the basics on how to navigate a phone, downloaded Duolingo, and started taking Japanese.

Chapter Text

Cracking his knuckles after downloading Duolingo, Tommy immediately began heading towards the bedroom study table to borrow Wilbur's computer. 

Before Tommy had drifted off to sleep the previous night, he had asked his brother if he could borrow his computer for the day to search up a few important things. Wilbur had given him the go after much reluctance. 

"What? Why would you need that?" Wilbur asked, scratching his head. Tommy clapped his hands together, doing his best puppy eyes. "Pretty please, Wilby? Just this once?"

Wilbur hid his face at the 'Wilby' nickname, his little heart unable to take anymore pseudo-affection due to getting too used to Tommy addressing him as 'asshole', 'fucker', 'bitch', 'dickhead', 'cunt', 'son of a bitch', 'goddamned brother', and the occasional 'not-so-big man'.

"Fine, fine," Wilbur conceded after much thought. "I'll just go find Uncle Schlatt or something tomorrow. I have zero friends."

Tommy cocked his head slightly to the side. "I thought you don't normally go out of your way to visit any relatives. Is this another culture thing?"

"No, don't worry, I'm pretty sure no one voluntarily schedules and meets their relatives, considering our more than fifteen uncles and aunts," Wilbur assured as Tommy choked on his own spit. "He said I'm welcome to come over whenever, and he lives just down the street. I can take you to visit him if you want?" 

Tommy, still flabbergasted at Wilbur's offhanded 'fifteen uncle and aunts' comment, kindly turned the offer down. 

"Thanks, but I think I'll teach myself some technology first."

Wilbur gave him a thumbs up. "Have at it, Toms. Don't trash my search history."

"What's a search history?"

"...Nevermind."

Once he turned on the computer via following a detailed list of instructions provided by Wilbur, he logged in, opened Google Chrome, and started going through the recommended list of things he should search up first (also recommended by Wilbur, his eternally helpful savior).

Banging it into the search bar, Tommy inputted 'how to use phone' and hoped for an in-depth tutorial for absolute beginners and potential reality hoppers. Once again, he found himself back on YouTube, thanks to the suggested first result. He sat through a long, long video explaining the mechanics and shortcuts of an iPhone before Tommy numbly realized that he was using, lo and behold, an Android device.

He eventually got around and found a similar video, this time definitely being the same processor as his own phone. Tommy sat through another twenty minutes before, again, realizing that this person used a Huawei, and he was using a Samsung.

Frankly, Tommy was feeling quite stupid.

He set the topic on 'how to use phone' aside for later and decidedly searched up the next item. 

'How to use computer', he smacked into the search box with ferocity.

This one was much easier, and he was directed to an actual website. After tedious scrolling and reading countless passages, Tommy came out much more enlightened than he was initially and decided that this world was still inherently in love with their boxy-McSchmoxy tools.

Next, Tommy quickly chided himself. I need to go through this list before lunch. He sent a peek at the computer's clock. Three and a half hours. I'll be fine.

He was not fine. Three hours slipped by like sand, and Tommy was only halfway through the list, constantly getting sidetracked and distracted by the most mundane things like video game ads and beauty cream banners.

"SON!" Phil hollered from the living room, "LUNCH!"

"WAIT A MINUTE!" Tommy hollered back, clacking more things into Google. "I'M BUSY!"

Phil surprisingly went quiet.

...For about twenty seconds.

"SON!" Phil roared again. "EAT LUNCH NOW!"

"I SAID I'M BUSY!" Tommy roared back, again, still clacking more things into Google. "WAIT JUST ONE MORE MINUTE!"

Ten seconds passed.

"IF YOU DON'T COME HERE AND EAT, DON'T THINK ABOUT HAVING FOOD FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!"

Tommy was fucking done.

"I SAID," he shrieked at the absolute top of his lungs, his voice box nearly exploding, "I'M FUCKING BUSY! GIVE ME ONE MORE GODDAMN MINUTE!"

Phil came and slammed the door to his bedroom open, causing Tommy to scream. 

"COME HERE RIGHT NOW. WHAT ATTITUDE ARE YOU USING, HAR*? WHY ARE YOU SO REBELLIOUS THESE DAYS? SWEARING AT YOUR PARENTS, YOU WATCH YOUR MOUTH BEFORE I BELT YOUR TEETH OUT CLEAN!" 

Phil stared at the open computer on Tommy's desk.

"AND YOU'RE NOT EVEN STUDYING! PLAYING COMPUTER GAMES, BEING BUSY, HUH?" He jabbed an accusatory finger at the screen showing a huge slab of text with not even one tiny indication that he was playing Roblox or Animal Jam or anything along those lines. "COME AND EAT NOW! OR THE FOOD WILL GET COLD!"

With a heavy heart, Tommy slunk out of his seat and went to eat lunch. 

"Can we not eat rice?" he grumbled, sliding into a ladderback chair. Phil's hands clenched so hard around his chopsticks that they nearly shattered into two. 

"There are thousands of starving children outside wanting to eat what you have," he snarled, and he thrust the tip of his chopsticks right in front of Tommy's line of sight, causing the teen to go cross-eyed in shock. "You eat my rice, or you cook yourself."

With a gulp, Tommy silently gobbled up his rice and two side dishes consisting of healthy green veggies and fried river fish, with neither of the two making a sound following the rest of the entire meal.

Wilbur's eyes scanned over his browser's search history with muted amazement.

"Tommy, what did you..." He trailed off. The searches started out normal enough. Questions about phones, the internet, WiFi, stuff like that. But they slowly became stranger and stranger. Wilbur's index finger began automatically scrolling the mouse wheel, going through a multitude of nonsensical searches as he pieced together a barely coherent timeline, eyebrows climbing higher and higher as time passed.

CHROME HISTORY

10:29 AM

>'what is meme'

>'what is pogchamp'

>'pogchamp in sentence examples'

>'urban dictionary'

>'ben shapiro'

>'elon Musk'

>'is Elon Musk alien true or false debunking'

>'fortnite'

>'chug jug song?'

>'fortnite and markass brownie'

>'2018 youtube rewind'

-

11:43 AM

>'drugs'

>'is drugs legal'

>'non-illegal drugs'

>'non-medicinal drugs'

>'where to buy marohwana'

>'marihuwana'

>'maruujhana'

>'marijuana'

-

12:12 PM

>'reality hopping'

>'what to do if swapped realities'

>'what is a subliminal'

>'how to return to original reality'

>'reincarnation'

>'is reincarnation real'

>'multiverse theory for dummies'

>'closest book store'

>'Help'

Tommy snapped a library book shut with a tension headache blooming across his forehead. 

"Got anything useful?" Wilbur asked from the side, clutching a salmon recipe book in his hands. He indiscreetly looked at the piling amount of reincarnation, quantum physics, astrophysics, and reality transcension books being stacked into a little basket provided by the library workers hanging around Tommy's wrist.

Tommy wordlessly shook his head. He placed the book in his hands back on the shelf and continued pilfering the entire aisle about the universe and beyond, his hands sweaty despite the library blasting air con cold enough to resemble the arctic.

"Do you er... need help sorting those out?" Wilbur pointed at the basket. "'Cause I don't think they'd let you borrow twenty-two books at once."

"I never said I would borrow them," Tommy retaliated, "because I'll be reading these today. In the library." He chucked another hardcover book into his stockpile. "You can leave me here if you want."

"You don't know how to use the subway," Wilbur gently reminded, and Tommy dropped another book into the basket. "Really, Tommy, we can just—"

"I am done," Tommy proclaimed, cutting Wilbur off. "We have... what time is it?"

"One thirty-two," Wilbur said. 

"We have six hours until the library closes, and the font of these books are so easy to read. In my universe, they were all written by hand, and some people"—Tommy's voice dropped, acting as if he weren't supposed to gossip about some alternate reality version of Wilbur or something—"had really bad handwriting. Like Dream, for example. I'd rather read Enderspeak for the rest of my life than go through one page of his notes. Your handwriting was passable, and Ranboo's"—Tommy stopped again for a second—"assuming that we even have a Ranboo in this universe... well, his handwriting was all loopy and cursive. You had to squint to read it. Not to mention Tubbo's, they were practically chicken scratch—"

Realizing that he had to power through twenty-four books before the library closed, Tommy snapped his mouth shut. "You know what? I'm going to start reading now," he said, and Wilbur let him scramble away.

Eventually, they ended up taking home seventeen books, which was just shy of the limit (eighteen).

"Why is your brother reading so many books about the universe and astrophysics?" Phil suddenly asked Wilbur a day after their book-borrowing spree. The brunet shrugged. 

"He's probably curious, that's all."

"It's the summer holiday. He should be studying more," Phil grumbled, crossing his arms as a way to show that he was displeased.

Wilbur said, "Don't worry, Phil. You know, if law doesn't suit him, he can always change careers to become a scientist, or a quantum physicist if he's really good at math."

"Since when was Tommy good at math?" Phil skeptically asked. "It was you and Techno who were good at math. Tommy was more of a humanities person."

Wilbur shrugged again. "Since when has Tommy backtalked?" he challenged in response.

Phil hummed.

"You're right. Maybe someone switched my son with an alien. Could use some work, but at least this one can become a scientist. First scientist in the family. Nice change of pace."

Wilbur sweatdropped.

Tommy exhaled in relief once he finished the seventeenth and final book, his brain completely fried. Palming his pockets, he took out his phone and decided that this was definitely a feat that could earn himself a nice hour of relaxation. 

He opened up a reading app and began a book about some cheesy romcom-type high school drama, but when his finger flicked downward to continue to the next chapter, he was greeted with something else entirely.

Staring in shock at his phone, Tommy observed with muted wonder as his device played a video showcasing a drowning man with a balding haircut.

In bubbly, obnoxious, and popping letters emblazoned across the screen: 'SAVE THE DROWNING MAN! 99.99% OF PEOPLE CANNOT SOLVE THIS!!!'

Tommy clicked on the button that showed a toaster, confused. The man got electrocuted and died.

Infuriated, Tommy decidedly downloaded the game, determined to prove that he was, in fact, part of the 0.01% who could actually save a drowning person who needed a better hairstylist.

The game was strangely addicting, and so were match-three games and the barrage of ads being bombarded at Tommy on a daily basis. 

Wilbur had confusedly asked about his sudden jump in phone usage, and Tommy showed him his newfound source of entertainment. 

"You—Tommy, why do you have so many..." Wilbur cringed at the apps. "There is no way you'd unironically play these."

Tommy blinked innocently. "Soda Crush is fun. So is Gardenscapes."

Wilbur kneaded the in-between of his eyes. "Yes, but—come on, how is Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, Dot n Beat, Clash Royale, Fishdom, Piano Tiles 2, Dancing Line, Tap Tap Dash, Bee Factory, Dancing Road, Talking Tom, Talking Angela, and fucking Episode and Choices fun?" he incredulously squeaked. "Who even plays Episode anymore?!"

"Hey," Tommy said, "it was intriguing. I could either pee in someone's mouth or divorce them. And I can get many women."

"Motherfu—I can't deal with this anymore." Wilbur handed the phone back to his brother, exasperated. "I'm going to go and cool down."

Wilbur exited the room to start angrily strumming on his guitar. Tommy plugged in his earphones, unbothered, humming the Soda Crush OST the whole time.

Needless to say, Tommy was progressing very fast on all of his match-three games, because whenever one ran out of lives, he could just play the other.

By the end of the week, he was nearing level two hundred on Candy Crush, level three hundred and ten on Soda Crush, and level four hundred and sixty-two on both Gardenscapes and Homescapes alone. 

Wilbur was, simply put, mortified. 

Chapter Text

A week had passed after multiple fiascos at once, and really, Tommy was adapting quite well to his new lifestyle. Sure, he might've taken twenty years off Phil's lifespan from the number of borderline-heart attacks he had given his father, but it was better to focus on the happier things, like how Tommy could now man a rice cooker without potentially exploding the kitchen.

Speaking of exploding the kitchen, Tommy was certain that he was completely banned from the stove. The last time he had attempted to fry himself some potatoes to eat, Phil had yelled at him to shut it before his gas bill reached record numbers. To add insult to injury, he had also said that he'd rather give birth to a 'char siu' than Tommy, and when Tommy went and looked up what a 'chair siu' was, he was horrified to learn that Phil meant barbecued pork.

"SHUT THE FIRE! ANY MORE AND WE'LL BE PAYING BY THE TEN THOUSANDS!" came Phil's voice from the living room. Tommy numbly rolled over a few sizzling potatoes on the frying pan. A beat passed before he replied, "Can't I finish cooking these potatoes first?" 

Hearing this, Phil flew into yet another episode of rage. "5 PM!" Phil thundered. "WHY ARE YOU EATING SNACKS AT 5 PM? DON'T LIKE MY FOOD IS IT? EATING POTATOES INSTEAD OF REAL FOOD?" 

Tommy was left confused, solely because Phil had inadvertently called potatoes 'not real food'. Despite Tommy being in a completely different dimension, he could hear the pitiful sobs of DreamWasTaken, who was currently choking down his daily dose of 'shitty raw potato'. Dream painstakingly agreed to Phil's fact-bending statement of 'potatoes bad'. Especially raw ones, Dream added as a side note, since raw potatoes tasted like plain earth soil and the occasional worm.

"I was just hungry," Tommy defensively grumbled, but he turned the stove off anyway. He padded out of the kitchen to see Phil lounging on a recliner with today's newspaper in his hands. "Wilbur ate some shrimp crackers at four."

Honestly, Tommy should learn to keep his mouth shut when it came to arguing with Phil. 

"4 PM is okay, 5 PM is not! Dinner hours! Seriously,"—Phil straightened the newspaper he was reading, adding emphasis to his words—"you should know better. Since how old have I been telling you this?" 

When Tommy did not reply, Phil only clucked his tongue and straightened his newspaper harder, and Tommy was getting worried that if Phil did said action one more time, the paper would tear in half. "不知所謂*。Staying quiet? Aiya, I would rather give birth to a char siu than give birth to a son like you**." And with that, Phil harrumphed with the wrath of a pissed-off lion, stood up from his recliner, and went to lie down in his room.

After learning what in the world a char siu was, Tommy was feeling a total of two emotions—one being disbelief, the other being shame, because comparatively, he was sure that some plate of roasted pork did not have more achievements than him (but honestly, this was up for debate). Despite everything, Tommy was also curious to know how a char siu tasted like, so he mentally noted to himself that he should try some the next time he went out.

It was a quiet night inside the Philza Minecraft household. Inside a certain bedroom, Tommy was having a fantastic time matching candies on his mobile phone while Wilbur slaved over some extracurricular reading materials. The quiet sound of pages flipping and the occasional 'Divine!' sound from Tommy's Candy Crush was unceremoniously broken upon Wilbur's sudden decision to say, "Techno's visiting tomorrow."

By comedic coincidence, Tommy ran out of Candy Crush moves, and his device played a sad tune. In response to both his defeat and Wilbur's sudden reminder, he shrieked, "WHAT?"

"Yes," Wilbur nonchalantly said as he flipped another page. "Thought you would want to know."

"I—the Technoblade? He's visiting? Tomorrow?" Tommy wheezed out breathlessly. Wilbur slowly turned in his position at the study table to stare at Tommy, who was leaning down from the upper bed bunk, his wide eyes burning holes into the front of Wilbur’s sweater.

"Is there something surprising?" the brunet innocently asked, and if Tommy had water on him, his mouth would've shot fountains via. an incredible spit-take.

"Something wrong?!" Tommy was borderline hyperventilating at the moment. "You—the scary Technoblade, who, according to Phil, is my brother—visits TOMORROW?! And you don't even give me the slightest mental preparation to process this?!"

"I wouldn't call him scary," Wilbur commented, and Tommy's hands flew up to blindly grasp at his hair. 

The blond took in one big, deep breath. Very big and deep. Fill-your-lungs-to-the-brim kind of deep.

"You and I," he finally said, "share very different views on this man."

"That's obvious. Big and scary. Ha."

Wilbur turned back to face his fat stack of books and papers, letting Tommy go do his own thing, which now consisted of delaying an upcoming mass mental breakdown.

To be honest, Tommy was quite curious to learn how this batshit insane world affected Technoblade. 

He knew that Dream—his former tormentor—was now an apparent 'bossman' or whatever that meant. Wilbur was an insane arsonist turned coffee-fueled med student, and Tommy, who was once a war-hardened survivor, became a fledgling practitioner of law. There were no guarantees about how much of a mile this world went with Techno—in Tommy's eyes, he was a vicious fighter; someone with the ability to knock your skull out clean and still have the energy to pulp your jaw into the upper roof of your corpse's mouth as good measure.

Perhaps he became a boxer. Maybe even a wrestler, if Tommy were to be less realistic.

Tommy anxiously stood near the front door. He stared at the barely-past six feet doorway, anticipating the telltale ding-dong that'll herald the arrival of Technoblade, the fearsome anthropomorphic warrior with eyes so cold one stare your way was enough to send you to the arctic.

Techno is eight feet tall, Tommy thought to himself, still staring dead-on at the closed door. There is no way he can fit through that.

When the door finally swung open—not after a doorbell sound, but because Techno had a key—(Of course he had a key, Tommy lamented)—the blond's jaw promptly dropped open at the person taking off their shoes, already stepping into the house.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" Tommy yelled.

A six-foot man with braided pink hair, warm red eyes, and the complete lack of a pig head grunted with a delicately raised eyebrow, and if Tommy could describe him with one sentence on Urban Dictionary, it would be 'pretty bishounen anime boy in his early twenties'.

"Tommy?" Techno—no, not Techno, definitely NOT Techno—asked. "Look," he chuckled, "I know we haven't seen each other for half a year, but I'd hoped that you would’ve recognized me if I walked through this door." 

Dry as always. But that was absolutely not Technoblade. There was no way. 

Tommy uttered out, voice almost cracking, "Why are you not a pig?"

It came out airy. His head was going to explode. He probably wouldn't be as frazzled if Techno had walked in with a whole mob of mafia members behind him. Human Technoblade? It was something that probably crawled out of the depths of whatever cursed website Tommy had accidentally stumbled across through his days. The thought was too much to handle, much less be real.

With a loud cough, Techno violently cleared his throat. 

"This is a surprise. I, er, I didn't know you knew about my fursona." Almost sheepishly.

This was the tipping point for Tommy.

Numbly, he reached into his pockets and pulled out his phone. He opened the lock screen and stared at the photo of him, Wilbur, and Techno leaning over a railing, enjoying themselves. All of their backs were facing the camera, and Tommy could not tell if Techno had pig features or human ones if he tried.

WELL, SHIT! was the only thing he could think in reply to this horrible horrible revelation.

With a defeated inwards sigh, Tommy put away his device and turned to look at a slightly embarrassed Techno, his arms awkwardly crossed, unsure if he should speak up or not.

"You should talk to Wilbur," Tommy weakly heaved out, feeling lightheaded. "Because—you should just—I think I'm going to faint."

Which he did. Tommy swayed and collapsed onto the floor, and with a panicked yell, Techno summoned Wilbur into the living room, who had just woken from his sleep at eleven in the morning to make sure Tommy did not crack his head open on the ground.

Thankfully, Phil had gone outside to play mahjong with his friends. If it were not the case and Phil was unlucky enough to see Tommy faint, Tommy would've dealt the finishing blow to give his father a fatal heart attack once and for all.

When Tommy was rudely woken, screeching, as a pail of ice water was dunked on his head, Techno gave him a solemn look as he adjusted his glasses in an almost-scrutinizing way.

"Where am I?" Tommy wheezed out, lying on a tiled floor.

"The bathroom," Techno replied straightforwardly.

"On Earth?" 

"Where else?"

Slowly, Tommy sat up. He wiped away the droplets of water dripping down his curls. Cautiously, he looked at Techno. Still a human being. Although jarring, Tommy found out fainting really did help process reality when the inevitable moment of 'waking up' arrived. 

"Did Wilbur tell you everything?" Tommy asked, hoping that his brother was not an idiot.

"That you're a time traveler slash dimension hopper? He sure did." A bathing towel was thrown in Tommy's direction, which he caught with skill. "I'm not surprised that you are one. No one," he said lowly, "except Wilbur, of course, knows about my pig character."

"You're a furry," Tommy said, less of a question and more of a statement.

"In the closet," Techno added. 

"What is a 'furry in the closet'?"

Tommy reconsidered his inquiry.

"Actually, don't tell me. Why can't you be out of the furry closet?"

With a long, hard sigh, seemingly as if he had been asked this question many times already, Techno explained, "Phil would be mortified if he learned I spent fifteen grand on a fursuit. I think any father would be mortified too, if I were to be frank with you."

That was all Techno said (with a shiver, no less) before moving on to the next topic. 

The air seemed to grow a little colder. Or maybe Tommy was tip-toeing around the very beginnings of catching a cold. Technobalde placed a contemplative hand on his chin. He asked Tommy if he had heard about Phil's old wife, apparently named Samsung, which Tommy did not question. 

It was a strange subject. Tommy shook his head in reply.

"Ah, so Wilbur never told you. I'll explain."

Tommy held a hand up. 

"Wait," he said. "Is it going to be a long, tragic story?"

"Long? I don't think so." Techno ignored the other adjective. "I mean, their divorce happened very quickly. How long of a story could that be?"

"We're not including the backstory behind their divorce?" Tommy skeptically grunted. 

"That was quick too. Samsung was horrible. She'd yell at our father all day and complain that he wasn't earning enough to support five-year-old me, despite her only knowing how to spend and drink all day. Phil was only twenty-three at the time."

"Wha—twenty-three?!"

"Samsung wanted kids. They decided to adopt me on her whim right after getting married. Phil was really dedicated to raising me, but her, after the initial excitement faded... not so much."

Tommy closed his hanging jaw, afraid of catching flies.

"Yeeep. They finally broke it off one night when Phil nearly got hit by a beer bottle in her hands. She had spent his paycheck on some fancy items that only she used, and that finally sparked the long-awaited argument that ended in a divorce. Around two years after she left, Phil adopted Wilbur, then he adopted you. He'd always tell me that we were the only reasons he still kept going." Techno paused to pass a shaky hand over his face. "He was really protective of us... sometimes too protective. He was hurt by her. I guess it's understandable. He wasn't the best of fathers—too young, too naive—but he tried really, really hard. You might think he pushes us too hard, but he pushed himself the most. Besides"—a sad smile surfaced on Techno's mouth—"if it weren't because of his urging, I wouldn't be where I am right now."

Hearing the narrative, it felt like a bunch of missing puzzle pieces had at long last decided to click together.

"I didn't know that... that Phil..."

"It's hard to believe, right?" Techno said. "But it's the truth. He cares for us. Just a little strangely, since he’s a little old and cranky now."

"Bad things happen to the best of us," Tommy said softly. 

It was something he had personally learned in his old world—that the good died young and evil can go unpunished. 

Techno made no response. He then sighed through his nose and opened the bathroom door.

"Alright, go change." Techno nudged his head at the doorway. "You'll get sick if you don't."

Tommy followed the orders. After some thinking, he also gently reminded Techno that Phil had no control over the money he earned and that it was all his decision to spend fifteen grand on a fursuit. He also thanked Techno for the backstory, albeit it being a very heartbreaking one.

Techno huffed in agreement, then chased Tommy out. Though the blond couldn't see it, Techno seemingly had a eureka moment after mulling over Tommy’s first sentence. However, his facial features soon went back to their normal deadpan expression.

Although it was his money, Techno did not want to experience any more 'Phil Lectures'. It was why he moved out in the first place, after all.

Techno went out of the bathroom and shut the door behind him. Right on time, the front door’s lock clicked, and Phil returned home with ruffled feathers, mumbling about how he shouldn’t have lost the last game of mahjong. Techno exhaled a breath of laughter. He walked into the living room.

"Hey, Dad."

Alright, maybe there was a downside to moving out of the house. 

Techno missed the hugs Phil could give. They were always warm.