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The first thing Phil noticed when he walked in was Tommy curled up in his bed.
Feathers fluffed out, Tommy let out a soft sort of purring noise. Poor thing, Phil thought, shaking his head slightly. Alright, mate. Let’s see what you need. He walked over to the bed. Tommy wasn’t just snuggled up in Phil’s blankets. He was wearing one of Phil’s hoodies, too. The pale blue fabric clung to his skin and he let out a soft noise as Phil brushed a hand through his hair. Nuzzling his nose deeper into the blankets, he shifted.
Huffing softly, Phil sat down beside his son and nudged him. Then, he checked for a fever. There was a slight one, Phil’s icy hand warming up quickly. “Oh, mate. Hey, wake up for me?” Tommy hummed and stretched out. Made grabby hands for his dad. Ducking his head down, Phil let Tommy’s arms wrap around his neck and then he yanked Phil down beside him. “Mhmm, alright. Cuddles are okay.” Tommy pulled his arms to his chest. Shuffled his feathers slightly and then draped his wings over Tommy’s body. His son chirped a little bit, then started peeping. “Hi, mate. How do you feel?”
Tommy tucked his arms next to his chest a little more, then buried his face into Phil’s chest and kept peeping. “M sick.” He mumbled. Stroking his son’s hair, Phil hummed softly and then kissed his head.
“That’s alright. Happens sometimes. Do you want me to get you something?” He felt Tommy shake his head and start mumbling softly. Then, he shifted slightly. “You want to stay here and keep cuddling?” Tommy nodded and hummed softly. Then, Phil pulled the blankets a little closer and tucked them around Tommy’s body. He seemed perfectly fine with it, so Phil gently pushed an arm under his head and let Tommy use it as a pillow for a moment. “That’s alright, sweetheart. We can just stay here. That’s okay.”
Tommy hummed softly. Tugged him closer. Phil laughed when the peeping started up full-force. This is alright, he decided. Tommy snuggled closer to him yet again, fingers buried in Phil’s hoodie sleeves and chest. There was a gentle touch from a familiar hand, he smiled and whispered a greeting.
Replying softly, Kristin settled down beside him and Tommy. Raising his head, Phil turned and looked back. Met her gaze and smiled. She wasn’t really there, not quite. Just a sort of form that cast pale brown light over their little room. She brushed a hand over Tommy’s cheek and then rested her chin on Phil’s shoulder. “He should meet you one day.” He whispered to her, trying not to wake up Tommy. She smiled softly.
“I would love to.” Looking at him, she shifted and added, “Do you think he would like to?”
“Well…maybe not right now.” Laughing, Phil whispered, “He knows who you are and what your powers are, and he might worry that you’re trying to take him away to the afterlife. I don’t think that would be a good idea.” She smiled softly. Leaning over, she kissed the side of Tommy’s temple and then settled back. Looked down at him with a smile.
“Probably not.”
+++
When Tommy stirred, he was on the couch and Phil was making them both tomato soup.
Humming, Tommy lifted his head where he was on the couch. Phil smiled at him, stirred the soup a little bit. “Hey, mate. How do you feel?”
“I want you.” Tommy mumbled softly. Snuggled into the blankets even more. Smiling softly, Phil turned back to the soup he was making. Apparently, he decided that it was good enough for them to eat. He brought two bowls over, and Tommy raised his head a little bit. The cold immediately pressed into his side where he had been lying against the couch in the blankets, and not in a pleasant way either. Humming in annoyance, Tommy dropped his head down onto Phil’s leg the second he had the chance. Sniffed abruptly at the feeling of his scrawny dad’s hip bone knocking against his temple. “You’re skinny.”
“Oh, I’m the skinny one?”
“I inherited it from you. You’re the avian.”
“Mmm, true.” Nudging him, Phil teased, “You also got my appetite. Think you can eat some soup?” Tommy lifted his head slightly. “Hey, lie on your right, use the back of the couch to prop yourself up.”
“You’re not spoon feeding me.”
“Watch me.”
Short story even shorter, Phil did end up spoon-feeding Tommy. Not because Tommy was that weak, but because his hands were shaky as shit and neither of them wanted to deal with the inevitable scolding that would result from spilling tomato soup on the couch. Still, they finished the soup, Phil finishing first and then playing with the curls at the back of Tommy’s neck while he kept eating. The kid seemed to enjoy it, so kill him. Actually, don’t. Phil would very much prefer to watch Tommy at least reach adulthood before he died. Even more preferably watch Tommy reach his twenty-first birthday without him getting killed by hybrid hunters or monsters or traps or the various amount of illnesses that avians were susceptible to that made them such rare commodities once they reached Tommy’s age. Once they got their wings, they were a bit safer, but in the meanwhile Tommy needed help. A lot of help.
Even if he wouldn’t admit it. Looking down at his son, Phil carded his fingers through blond curls again. He had Kristin’s hair texture, Phil’s hair color. At some point, Phil had asked about it. Kristin sheepishly admitted making Tommy and Wilbur look a bit more like Phil than they should have with her own powers. She wanted a reminder of him just by looking at the boys, which was…wildly entertaining to hear.
The boys weren’t aware of it, and in the end Wilbur ended up mimicking Kristin in a way none of them expected (or wanted, in Phil and Kristin’s case).
Tommy let out a soft mumble. Shifted onto his stomach, shoulders flexing uncomfortably. He was eighteen, almost. His wings would take about a year to split the skin, then another two getting to a size where he would properly be able to fly with them. To be fair, they had a lot of catching up to do. Tommy was hardly short, either. Wilbur’s wings had done the same.
Now, if Tommy stayed the same size that he currently was, roughly six feet and one inch, then Phil had a rough guess for his wingspan when they were fully grown. Which would be…large, to say the least. If they stuck to regular avian statistics, the math was pretty easy…and something that Phil did not want to do.
So Techno did it for him.
Because, apparently, Techno liked math. And math Techno did. Calculated. Something. So, as Phil gently ran a hand down between Tommy’s shoulders to rub at the sore, uncomfortable sections where his muscles were slowly beginning to adjust to the new bones growing beneath his skin, he thought about said calculations. Now, math wasn’t Phil’s strong suit, but he was actually pretty good at remembering important things. Also, the numbers were practical knowledge.
See, Phil would end up with the smallest wings, no matter what. Sure, Kristin should technically have smaller wings, since she was shorter than he was. But Kristin also should have died centuries ago and should not have the abilities she did, so she was an outlier and couldn’t be counted. But they knew how avian wings worked with a survey done of some visiting avians who’d stopped by for the night before flying on, as well as numbers taken from Phil and Wilbur’s own wings.
For avians, phantoms, and elytrians, the average wing size was about three times their height. For Wilbur, that meant a forty foot wingspan. Phil’s was almost thirty-seven feet, off by just a couple inches on either side. Specifically, Techno (who decided to be ridiculous and go with feet and inches, inches only, meters, and centimeters) had commented that Wilbur had a four hundred and eighty inch wingspan, compared to Phil’s four hundred and forty-two. If Tommy kept with that pattern, and he probably would, he’d have about a thirty-seven foot wingspan. Almost thirty-eight, Techno estimated around four hundred and fifty-five inches of wing. Counting shoulder width in that number, “obviously”.
It was not obvious. But Phil let it be, he wasn’t going to have that argument.
Inhaling, he looked down at Tommy and smiled again, started trying to preen his son’s hair without even realizing until Tommy mumbled something about it. Which, yeah, Phil did that to him. And Wilbur. Kristin. Sometimes Techno or Ranboo. Never Tubbo. He’d learnt that lesson the hard way. “Do you want me to stop?” Tommy shook his head, and Phil laughed. “Alright. I’ll get you a pillow, you can rest your head on that. Sound good?” There was a hum, and Phil helped him get a pillow and helped Tommy settle down again. He was still in one of Phil’s hoodies, legs kicked out all the way. At least, until it got to the point where his feet could be dangling off the couch, then he had them tucked under some blankets. Because Tubbo could be a dick, apparently.
Tommy’s peeping, predictably, came back about two minutes after Phil went back to carding his fingers through Tommy’s hair. There was a long cut along the side of his head, one they’d treated and bandaged and known about. Still, it had left a bit of dried blood in Tommy’s hair. Phil carefully began picking out some of said dried blood, made sure he wasn’t hurting the young man. Tommy didn’t seem to mind. Just kept peeping and purring like he did, arms wrapped around the pillow.
At one point, he did stop to suck in a sharp breath, and Phil glanced over. Saw him shifting his shoulders again. “Jus sore.” There was a pause. Then, Tommy tipped his head to the side. Blue eyes met Phil’s own, a little worried even where they were glazed with fever. “Will this affect my wings?”
“Mmm…” Tipping his head to the side, Phil thought for a second. “No. Worst comes to worse, Tommy, you might have some stress bars on your feathers, but that’s honestly if this lasts for, what, six months or so?”
“Only a week til I’m old enough.” There was a genetic thing, Phil guessed. One that caused the change in elytrians, avians, and phantoms, giving them their wings. Unlike Tubbo, a bee, it didn’t happen when they went through a metamorphosis. It started the moment they turned eighteen, down to the second.
“Yeah, but you won’t have them splitting the skin for a year, Tommy. Then there’s another six months for your real feathers to grow in. The down’ll be there, sure, but you’ll be alright.” Tommy nodded. Shifted. Then, he laid down. Pressed his head into Phil’s hip and closed his eyes.
“Thanks, dad.” Tommy whispered, and Phil brushed his curls back.
“Anytime, baby bird.”