Chapter Text
Parents who say they have no favorites are liars, Tommy knew that much. Phil was a great example. No, he never straight up told Tommy that he hated him, but he would always show it.
When Tommy was four, he proudly brought home a painting he made at school. He expected Phil to like it and hang it up on the fridge, just like he always does with his older brother’s works or high test scores. But Phil just took it from him, looked at it and handed it back without a word.
Tommy didn’t directly understand why Phil didn’t hang it up, praised him or just said anything. He assumed Phil didn’t like the drawing, so he practiced for hours on end until his poor little hands started to cramp.
Phil never hung anything Tommy made up for anyone to see.
When Tommy was six, school called his dad to inform him that Tommy was sick and needed to be picked up. Contrary to what Tommy had expected, Phil had actually shown up. However, when they got home Phil scolded him for wasting his time.
Howeverwhenever Techno or Wilbur were sick he’d get all worried and take care of them, get them ice cream, let them watch tv on the couch, or make them chicken soup.
Tommy hated chicken soup, but he couldn’t stop wishing that his father would’ve done the same for him.
When Tommy was eight, he got his first 100% score on a really hard English test. He had mentioned it the evening before, how hard he had studied, but Phil didn’t bat an eye. Wilbur, on the other hand, came to Tommy’s room that evening and told him that he was proud of him.
Tommy simply thanked Wilbur before watching him leave his room. He could hear Wilbur’s guitar playing as their rooms were right next to each other. He could also hear Phil coming in and praising ten year old Wilbur for his skills.
From that moment on Tommy decided that he’d also start practicing music. Phil clearly loved Wilbur for it, so if Tommy did the same maybe Phil could love him too? Even if it was just to get a little bit of love, Tommy would see a little bit of love as enough. It would be more than he had received so far.
When Tommy was ten, he had his first piano recital. He had practiced for days on end in the school’s music classroom. Yes, they did have a piano at home but he wanted to surprise Phil with what he had learned.
He had mentioned that he had been practicing piano to Phil so many times but he never seemed to care. But when the evening rolled around and Tommy looked into the audience, trying to spot his family. He only saw Techno and Wilbur with an empty seat next to them.
Sure, he’d played his heart out, everyone applauded him, Wilbur and Techno even standing up and cheering for their little brother, but it just didn’t feel right. His dad, The man who raised him, the man who was supposed to love him unconditionally didn’t come and watch. When Techno and Wilbur took Tommy home, he directly went to look for Phil, finding him on the couch watching some reality show.
That broke Tommy.
For the first time, Tommy realized that Phil didn’t love him like his brothers, he never had. Tommy could finally look in the past and recognize that Phil had always been like that. He could recall every moment, every second he had tried to win his father’s approval, but never got it.
That evening Tommy went into his older brother’s room and just bawled his eyes out into Techno’s chest. Wilbur walked in on the scene, a confused Techno and a sobbing Tommy. He had asked Techno what was going on but he was just as clueless. Eventually Tommy calmed down and managed to get some words out. The words stung as they fell out of his mouth. Shocking both of the boys.
“Why does dad not love me?”
Wilbur almost started crying with Tommy. He had seen how Phil treated Tommy differently, it wasn’t a secret and their father didn’t try to hide it. Phil despised Tommy, that much was obvious. But seeing Tommy so upset about it just hurt him.
Techno just stayed quiet for a solid five minutes, staring at the wall behind Wilbur, Tommy still sniffling into his chest. Neither of the twins knew how to respond, but they would try for Tommy.
Because they did care about him. They didn’t hate his guts for simply existing.
They told him that their father does love him, but just had a hard time expressing it. Tommy believed them at the time, he would continue trying to gain Phil’s approval, handing Phil the opportunity to love him on a silver platter.
But Phil never took it.
On Tommy’s twelfth birthday, Phil took Wilbur and Techno to the mall, leaving Tommy home alone. He cried a lot that day. No one in his family remembered that it was his birthday. Fucking no one. Not even Techno and Wilbur seemed to care anymore. It was like the kind words they had spoken before didn’t matter anymore.
Tommy ended up eating ice cream alone in his room. His friends did remember, but they weren’t his family. He knew they cared about him. But all he wanted was for his family to do the same.
When they finally came home Tommy was passed out on the couch. Phil woke him up rather harshly and told him off for falling asleep on the couch. Tommy simply took the scolding, not reminding him that it was his birthday.
He knew better.
Before when Tommy's birthday would come around, Phil would get upset. Tommy knew why, he wasn’t that stupid. The only stupid thing about Tommy was that he’d manage to ignore one enomously important factor all of his life.
The day Tommy was born, their mother, Phil’s wife, passed away. It wasn’t even related to Tommy’s birth, but when they drove home from the hospital, the car crashed. Everyone made a full recovery, except for her.
Maybe Tommy was ignorant for ignoring that his entire life, or maybe Tommy was just too young and blind to see that Phil was going to disapprove of his existence no matter what he did or tried, obviously blaming him for their mothers death, even when the actual antagonist in that story would’ve been the drunk driver that hit the passenger’s side.
Phil would never love him.
But Tommy was also told to ‘Never say never’.
When Tommy was fourteen, he got bored and decided he wanted to go outside and hang out with his brothers, back to the treehouse Phil had built for Techno and Wilbur six summers ago. Phil had made it clear that it was Wilbur and Techno’s treehouse and not Tommy’s.
Their names were painted on the wooden door, not his.
It read ‘Wibur & Technoblade’s treehouse’ not ‘Wilbur, Technoblade & Tommy’s treehouse’.
But when Tommy knocked on Techno’s door he received a harsh “I’m too busy for your shit right now”
And when he knocked on Wilbur’s door his brother responded with “For the love of Christ, fuck off, Tommy”
Wilbur’s response hurt the most out of the two. Tommy understood that Wilbur mightn’t want to hang out with his younger brother all the time, but Tommy still looked up to him. And having your number one roll model talk you down like you’re nothing but an annoying little bug in their ear hurts more than anyone would like to imagine.
That was also the moment where Tommy actually started noticing his brothers started to change. Where in the past they’d comfort him when Phil had been rude to him, they’d now give him the cold shoulder and only interacted with him when necessary.
So, Tommy went by himself. He filled his backpack with a blanket, pillow, a bottle of water, and some snacks and decided he was going to have a sleepover at the little structure. He didn’t think he needed to tell anyone. After all, Phil hated him, Techno thought he was not important enough to spend time with, and Wilbur had just informed him that he was unwanted. What more confirmation did he need?
So he slept over in the treehouse, and in a fit of rage he took a black marker and wrote his name on the door, right in between ‘Technoblade’s’ and ‘treehouse’. It looked stupid, and probably ruined the entire thing, but Tommy loved it. It made him feel as if he was part of the family.
The family that didn’t want him, but he did want.
When Tommy was sixteen, he was still playing the piano everyday. He had started playing at home after his first recital, hoping Phil would hear him playing at home and compliment him, but he never did.
Phil would always ask Tommy to stop playing because he thought the music sounded bad, even if Tommy was sure he was playing the right notes. It didn’t matter, even if it was the same song Wilbur would play on his guitar. Phil would always hate it.
But Tommy would continue to try, he didn't want to give up on being loved just yet.
He wasn’t ready for that.
When Tommy got home from school, his plan was originally to play piano, to practice the new sheets he had gotten from Mr. Foolish, his music teacher at school, but as soon as he sat down and played the first note he could hear his father from across the house swinging open the door.
Within seconds, Phil was standing in the doorframe between the living room and hallway, staring daggers at Tommy, like his son had committed some terrible crime, but instead Tommy was just warming up, trying to play some goddamn scales.
“Can’t you find something else to do, other than making these false noises that you call music? I’m pretty sure you’ve got that English test coming up, can’t you study for that?”
Tommy stared at Phil with an annoyed face before responding. Who did his father think he was trying to tell him his music sounded like shit? It didn’t, he knew that. Tommy wasn’t cocky by any means, but the applause he got after every recital -the ones even his brothers didn’t show up to anymore- proved that Tommy knew damn well what he was playing.
“I had that test last week, got an eighty-seven” Tommy responded harshly. Phil didn’t seem to like Tommy’s tone as he crossed his arms and let a few seconds of silence pass.
“Don’t talk to me like that! How am I supposed to keep up with all of my son's lives all at once?” Phil’s defense was weak and could be brought down within seconds. Seconds Tommy didn’t waste.
“You don’t seem to have trouble with keeping track of Wilbur and Techno’s life” Tommy said, standing up and grabbing his schoolback off the floor that he had dropped next to the piano.
Phil shot him a dismissive glance before turning around and going back to his office. Their conversations always went like that, harsh, not understanding and fast. Phil never took time to listen to Tommy, he never had, so Tommy didn’t listen to Phil either.
Tommy didn’t mind that things were that way, after all, they always had been. But it just got worse over time, as did his grades.
Phil was right, he was failing his classes, but that was only because he kept skipping classes to practice piano at school since he wasn’t able to play at home. Tommy wasn’t actually sure if Phil knew he skipped all those classes. Maybe he didn’t care to say anything or maybe he just never got called.
Their school wasn’t some kind of crack school, so Tommy assumed he had been informed about him not attending classes and just simply didn’t care. That didn’t bother Tommy too much though. He’d much rather have his father ignore his bad behavior than his father yelling at him for that as well.
When Tommy got back to his room he let himself fall onto the bed, pulling his stuffed cow close to his chest. Was this childish behavior? Perhaps. Did Tommy care? No.
The cow -he was named Henry, since three year old Tommy was such a creative little kid- was a gift from his mother. She had picked it out for him when they were putting together his nursery. Phil told him the story on his fourth birthday when both Techno and Wilbur weren’t home and he got bored.
Tommy liked Henry a lot, it reminded him of his mother. Even if he’d never known her. He would say he missed her, he had actually when he was seven he said “I miss mommy” and Phil snapped back at him in a harsh tone, clearly not caring about Tommy’s feelings.
“How can you miss someone you ’ve never met?! Stop saying these stupid things, Thomas! It’s annoying and no one thinks it’s cute!”
Techno w as in the same room at the time, just sitting across from them, reading a book. Tommy turned to him with teary eyes, ready to start crying his eyes out when he got the chance. Techno had motioned for Tommy to come over and so Tommy curled up into a little ball, burying himself into Techno’s side.
Techno had given Phil a death glare. Phil had simply shrugged when Tommy got upset, but seeing Techno upset about Tommy’s feelings getting hurt made him go weak.
He was quick to walk over to them, brushing a hand though Tommy’s blond curls. Saying something along the lines of “I’m sorry Thomas, I didn’t mean it” It was an apology, but not a good one. Not one that he actually meant, which only made Tommy cry harder.
But Tommy had gotten over that incident after enough time passed. He just didn’t bring up their mother, or his own birthday anymore.
Tommy hadn’t had an actual birthday since his eleventh. The twelfth was the first they forgot, and since then they never remembered. He’d just buy himself a cupcake and eat it next to one of them. In hopes that they’d look at him and ask him why he was eating one. So he could say that it was his birthday.
But no one ever asked him about it. No one ever cared enough about Tommy to ask him anything for that matter.
Tommy rolled over, ending up on his stomach, looking around the room, trying to find something to do. Besides the fact that his room was the smallest in the house, there was also not a lot in it. It was just a bed, desk with chair, closet and drawers. Not that Tommy needed more, these were pretty much basic needs anyways. Phil never took him shopping, ever. All his clothes were either Wilbur or Techno’s hand-me-downs that were always too big on him.
He didn’t hate the clothes, they were nice. Wilbur’s were mostly band tees, flannels and simple jeans while Techno’s were more sophisticated. They were dress pants, shirts and blazers, or simple jackets. Of course, he also received some hoodies that didn’t match up with the other pieces. He liked those the most. Because you wouldn’t always be able to tell that the clothes used his brother’s. They didn’t always fit the style, creating their own style, Tommy’s style.
Not by choice, but by chance.
There was this one hoodie that wasn’t a hand me down from his brothers, it was a simple hoodie with the school's logo on the left side of his chest in the front and a G key on the back of it. It was a bright red with white strings and sleeves and Tommy loved it more than life itself. He got it since he was a part of the school’s music programm.
Now, if Tommy thought about it, Wilbur probably also owned that hoodie. Wilbur was also in the music programm, but he was two years ahead, graduating pretty soon. Then Tommy would be the only one who could wear it. At least, in his eyes it worked like that. Tommy didn’t see Wilbur ever wear it anyways. It probably didn’t fit his ‘Aesthetic’.
Prick
Tommy got an idea. What if he just took it? Who was going to stop him? Phil didn’t love him to begin with, Wilbur was practicing with his band and Techno was at fencing practice.
He left his room, tiptoeing over to the door to the right of his own. When Tommy opened it a wave of some smelly cologne came racing towards him, almost making him puke. Who told Wilbur this smelled good?
He walked over to Wilbur’s closet, pulling the doors open without a sound. He looked around for a solid minute, trying to find the damned hoodie. After another minute of him just digging around he finally lifted up some flannel and found it still in the plastic bag, the one it came in when they were delivered.
Wilbur hadn’t even worn it! Then he surely didn’t mind if Tommy took it, right? Wilbur might be a dick, but he would be okay with Tommy taking something he wasn’t using anyways.
Tommy took the hoodie, closing the closet doors and leaving the room, making it seem like he hadn’t been there in the first place. When back in his room, Tommy put the hoodie in a drawer. If Wilbur didn’t mention he lost the thing in the next week, Tommy would just keep it.