Chapter Text
Sam’s hands were firmly clutching his shoulder when the man opened the entry of the house.
Tommy would be sleeping while standing if he weren’t so tense. The moment Sam dragged him out of the community house, he knew it was going to be the last time he’d see that place—with all the mats scattered over the floor, people whether sleeping the night or suffering with sickness, altogether in the same disgusting place—, he wasn't too relieved about it.
He knows his social worker hates to see him like that: all filthy, and weary. Damn it, he woke up with the pity gaze of Sam. But Tommy also grew up in the foster system, and he’s too old to be gathered with the little children of the group homes—too much a teen to be adopted—, also too “immature” to live in group houses with the other homeless population.
So, he can’t help but say this placement is an unpleasant surprise.
It was around 3AM when they left the core of the town, just to drive for hours in an eternal highway, among the trees that rose from the ground bigger at every run mile.
Sam didn’t talk much. On second thought: he didn’t talk at all. He offered water, and Tommy drank it, fervently, because people would always steal each other’s bottles (he doesn’t judge it); Sam gave him a snack, and Tommy inhaled it. He didn’t explain anything but Tommy’s need to gather all his stuff and leave with him.
He was confused—still is—, and partially startled. As well, he was cold as the freezing breeze entered the car through the wide-open windows. The clouds were far from being seen, and the star shone above them during their ride.
Tommy could have slept inside the car, even scared he trusts Sam with shut eyes, but he wakes up at a not-looking-so-good neighbourhood.
Sam’s car arrives slowly, dodging the holes in the street. Bins are inexistent ahead the houses, just trash tossed inside of plastic bags, and Tommy catches himself thinking about the raccoons. The houses are poorly built, and Tommy had seen enough of this to realize the houses are made by residents, meaning it is not a planned neighbourhood by the government, but a stormed place by the population.
Tommy had seen loads of zones like this, he was born out of the capitals, and raised on the edges of the bigger zones. Sam looks like hasn’t, and even visiting kids what Tommy thinks it’s daily, he stills wrinkles his nose at the whiff of garbage, Tommy rolls his eyes backwards.
The house they stopped ahead is the only structure with two floors but looks like the smallest one of the ways they’d ranged. Made of wood, and it is not painted at all, and the front yard is very badly cared for—Tommy thinks he stepped in poop three times because he couldn’t see his feet. The front window on the first floor is being covered by a sheet in lieu of a curtain, and Tommy cannot see the windows of the second floor. Nonetheless, the house is fully lit by the bulbs that made the light slip through the chinks.
Steps walk downstairs, Tommy recognizes, and he shivers in Sam’s hold.
The grip tightens, then softens right after.
“You know what to do, Toms, if something gets wrong,” Sam whispers.
It makes Tommy more tense, because he has never said it before; he’s so used to “be good, Tommy”, or “try harder this time, Simons”, but never “run away in case of danger”.
Tommy straightens his posture, his shoulders rigid.
He has no idea how late it is, but he is tired, and sort of edgy, and it makes him want to cry a little bit.
He doesn’t because he isn’t a little bitch. He’s done this many, many times before.
It is just… Sam is scared, it seems like, and Tommy trusts Sam.
“Run away, scream for help, find the closest payphone,” Tommy recited, humming, “I know the drill, big S.”
He prays for Sam to not spot his voice flaw as he whispers the things that never worked before. (If he was going to get hit, it was going to happen anyway, and running makes the punishment worse, and shouting for help makes him more frustrated when people just ignore his cries.)
“You know my phone.” Sam says laying the chin over his head, then tidying his posture again.
Tommy has no chance of repeating the number he memorized by heart, the door is opened by a tall man.
If Tommy thought he was tall for his age, the man would still be, at least, three inches taller than him at his age, with green, faint eyes and brown hair. He is in his pyjamas, and Tommy thinks it is a little pathetic of a grow-ass, bearded man wearing blue PJ’s—however, the man still looks a bit intimidating for him.
Sam pushes him a bit forwards, and Tommy slightly stumbles on the slope of the doorway.
“This is my Tommy,” Sam introduces.
The man hums, then reaches out a hand to Sam. “Jack Clacker,” the man mumbles. He has a deep voice that cracks on the borders.
“Sam Vault,” Sam clutches the hand and swings it once, “I’m his social worker.”
Whoa, if it isn’t intimidating.
“He’s gonna’ be fine here,” the man—Mr. Clacker—humbles morbidly. “It’s late. Get inside.”
He tried to touch his shoulder through Sam's hand, but Tommy winces nearer to Sam.
The hand doesn’t back off, though, and this is how Tommy realizes it was going to be a long, upsetting, stay. The hand pets his head instead, and Tommy swings his head to get away from it.
Mr. Clacker’s lips twitch downwards, nasty, with all that fulfil brown bear, and Tommy wants to die.
Sam, nonetheless, drags Tommy into a hug. Tommy drowns in it, wrapping his arms around Sam’s shoulders, his social worker smells like deodorant, and hair spray. Tommy narrows his grip, breathing the scent of a home he will never have—if feels like home, besides.
“Go there inside, I’ll bring your backpack from the car and have a talk with Mr. Clacker, okay?”
Sam requests, in a low-pitched voice, pushing him again towards the door. Again, Tommy stumbles.
“Goodbye, Sam.”
It is not the first time he says goodbye to Sam, but it always feels like cracking him a little bit.
“See you, Tommy.”
Tommy ducks Jack’s arm, glad for the narrow space between him and the doorframe; at the side of the man, Tommy can evidently see how he towered Tommy, and he widens this space as fast as he can, the moment he enters the house.
He faces the living room, a wooden staircase leads to the second floor right behind the couch that is messy, and it has a big spot of a liquid that must have stayed on its surface. The TV is on and playing a football game, on which he isn’t really interested. The tile that constitutes the floor are white, and dust covers it like a blanket.
There’re no corridors, and the kitchen barely has a wall to divide it and the parlour. Altogether it doesn’t smell nice, it does smells like an abandoned household, like a place that is waiting for someone to dwell it anew, and old, putrid food. He hopes to exist a general neglect towards the house, and the people that live in it doesn’t expect to him to become a house cleaner—he done it before, and he’s terrible at chores—because he will pick a fight with whoever condition him to clean the dishes.
Tommy stands, clueless, in the middle of the parlour. It seems like no-one is awake but the man that answered the door, and the house is full of silence but the whir of the conversation between Sam and Jack that Tommy can’t hear.
He’s quite distracted, although, just standing pointlessly when he could just sit on the couch.
The door bumps close, making Tommy's heart hitch when the character Jack passes him, imposing him on high, stopping ahead of Tommy with the backpack hanging on his shoulder.
Mr. Clacker doesn’t hand over the backpack to Tommy, if just tosses it onto the sofa, gazing at Tommy with a bad masked annoyance.
This man is already irking about his presence and Tommy didn’t even start to be a problem, yet.
“I don’t have a room for you,” Jack starts, “you can either sleep on the sofa or in my son’s room. He won’t be bothered. If you decide to pick the couch, you’ll need to wake up earlier, my wife likes to watch the news before going to work.”
Wonderful, Tommy deadpans.
“Don’t touch anything, especially the TV. If you want food, you can just take it yourself, it’s not because you’re a foster that you’re any special here.” Jack continues.
Tommy wants to roll his eyes and shoot this man on the face.
(He’s already missing Sam.)
“Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Mr. Clacker.” Tommy responds, automatically.
Satisfied, the man arrives upstairs; his footsteps squeaking with his weight—being smooth here will be a problem for the latter.
First and foremost, he was given two awful propositions; he doesn’t want to sleep on the couch, where he would be exposed to the door and the passers-by, walking early is not such a big problem, but he’s exhausted of today’s ride, and needs to sleep before starting to blow up shit.
Sleeping with a foster brother is also something he does not want, he has been in his quintillions of households, and he’s shielded against creep siblings, and weirdos in general.
Second of all, he wasn’t informed he had a son to deal with.
Better, he wasn’t informed about any of this. About Jack, and his mysterious wife and kid.
He deliberates followed Sam to a foster family he doesn’t know anything about—how fucking great it is!
Tommy sat on the couch; it also grits with his weight—looks like nothing here can be silence—, he snorts, enraged.
He wants to punch something. He wants to wrap his hands around Sam’s neck and squeeze.
Tommy doesn’t do any of that, but he places his almost empty backpack in the corner of the sofa, turning it into a pillow and lays his head on it. The ceiling is ugly as well.
At least, if Tommy wasn’t communicated with absolutely nothing, it means this application is an emergency, and temporary. Commonly, these types of applications don’t last a month or two. Unless they decide to expand it, what Tommy prays for it doesn’t happen.
The light is still glowing on his face, he sees red beneath his eyelids, but he sleeps anyway.
0
A talk is what brings Tommy back to reality.
It sounds more like a monologue, deep inside his brain it blurs with his forgetful dreams, slowly dragging him out of his head.
A feminine voice wobbles volume as it paces around, Tommy hears the aluminium of the pans as it jingles against each other.
He opens eyes with little to no determination. He is still tired, and all his bones feel like they are made of rocks, instead of calcium, his throat is like sandpaper, and Tommy can almost close eyes again and fall back to a sweet sleep.
Almost.
His head is hit by a flit of a dishrag—it is sort of humid, and it snaps his face—and Tommy scoots sat.
The woman in front of him, he reasons she’s Jack’s wife, has straight, brunette, long hair, freckles over her face covered by foundation. She’s wearing a lot of makeup, it makes her eyes look bigger, and her cheeks pink.
She makes a face to him, disgusted, and Tommy breath stutters. He can almost see himself: wide-eyes and dishevelled hair.
“I need to see the news. Back. Off,” she commands, and loads of Tommy finds her more likeable to be an angsty teenager than an adult.
Tommy gets up, swiftly. The floor wobbles under him, and Tommy resists the will to bend his hands over the armrest.
The woman jumps over the couch, bouncing on it as the springs compress and depress. She at once turns the TV on, and the journal is already talking about Clime. The hour in the corner says it is 06:58 AM, not too early, but Tommy can genuinely pass out whether he stays awake a little longer.
He grabs his backpack before she can even think about touching it.
“Where should I go now?” Tommy asks.
She ignores it.
Now, he’s not having that. He’s too tired to think straight, and he would rather be acknowledged with a chastise than with silence.
“Hey, where should I go now?” She keeps ignoring him. “I will break this goddam TV if you don’t tell me.”
Usually, it’s not good to have an attitude on his first day in a foster home. Nevertheless, Tommy is not willing to make this endure.
He wants foster homes to be over. He wants to live in a group house, and asks for Sam to sign his emancipation request, and finally be free from the system.
He’s sixteen, it can be hard, but if he stays in line away from the police, he may be able to do it.
She gazes at him, the woman with too much makeup, and something in her eyes shine in rage with his threat.
I’m gonna’ be beat up on my first day here, Tommy thinks.
“Go to the first room after the staircase,” she leads, with a rigid posture, “there is Wilbur’s room—tell him to do the chores if he isn’t already awake.”
Tommy nods.
“Don’t think that I won’t be tellin’ Jack about it. You indolent fucking kid.”
Something inside Tommy burns with rage, he clenches his fists.
Away from the police.
He won’t be wasting his patience with this fucking bitch.
Tommy walks upstairs.
Different from the first floor, the second one is just a corridor and doors, at the end of this corridor has a window aiming outside.
The first door is simple, Tommy doesn’t know why he expected something more contrasting. It is just a wooden door.
With no funfair, Tommy opens it. It is the first thing in the house that doesn’t crack or grind with movement.
Ahead of him: a person. A brown-haired kid, face looking downwards at the guitar connected a headphone, unaware of his presence. The blue jumper is almost too little for his frame to be using. He’s a tall character.
Tall, sat on the floor with his legs crossed.
Tall, as his fingers play a melody Tommy can’t hear through the headphones, just the harmony of the strings being pressed and ribbed.
Tall, when he looks up, crossing eyes with him.
“Hullo’?” The man says, pulling off the headphones.
Tommy doesn’t say anything, with the backpack hung on his shoulder.
Then the guy grins—brilliantly, shinny, annoying.
God, he won’t get a pause.
“You must be the foster children?” Wilbur affirms, though it was voiced more like a question.
Tommy scoffs. “Well, obviously. How many unknown kids do you receive into your room?”
He’s certainly distressed from how positive the man still is, although his comment, as Tommy is not being irritating. Perhaps it is just too soon. Nonetheless, the man laughs.
He has brown eyes as well, and freckles that look more like acne scars.
This is the most wake he has been since he entered the house, and now that the tiredness is drained off his bones, what is leftover is just an electrical anxiety that makes his hands tremble. Tommy rubs his palms over his jeans—the texture isn’t great and makes his hands itch.
“Not children itself,” Wilbur chuckles, “but you would be surprised. Come— come inside! You can leave your backpack here. Did you just arrive?”
He’s weird, Tommy judges.
He enters the room anyway.
Just like the rest of the house, it doesn’t smell good. Smells like cats and stowed clothes.
“Not really,” Tommy responds, shrugging. “I came yesterday, early morning.”
The happy expression on the guy’s face flaws.
Tommy notices, at once, how expressive the guy is, how he smiles so widely then frowns his face, how he just laughed with his whole body, but chuckle shrugging. Happy, then timidly asking him to enter the room.
This is a happy guy—Tommy doesn’t know how to use this information, just yet.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the guy apologises.
Tommy arches his eyebrows, his heart stuttering. “What are you sorry about?”
“You slept on the sofa?” He asks, softly. “It is not nice—” Wilbur ruffles his own hair, interrupting himself—he sounds distressed, pacing around, and Tommy can’t understand the intensity this man is feeling. “What time is it now?”
“Seven AM?” Tommy sounds startled.
“Oh no, Rebeca woke you, then.”
“She did—; your mom’s a bitch.” Tommy suddenly speaks, attempting to wipe out the face he is doing right now, it almost looks like the man is going to cry.
He chuckles, dully.
“She’s not my mother, really. Rebeca is just a new girl my dad has been seeing, and she just sticks around because she can’t pay her own flat with the money of a journalist,” he tells Tommy, then sits again on the floor, looking embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
Tommy waves. “She looks very young.”
“Rebecca really is, I think she’s almost my age.”
“You don’t know how old?”
“I’ve no idea. I’m too scared to ask.” He admits. Then he glimmers, eyes widening. “Oh, I’m Wilbur, by the way.”
The place where the bulb should be on the ceiling is missing, but to compensate for that, wire lights are hanging all over the wall where he was sitting earlier, rather than climbing the other walls until circling the bedroom fully. At his left, the closet and a bookshelf are settled, some colourful sticky-notes are glued on random places, and the clothes are leaking out from the drawers. On his right, is a king-size bed, the bedside made of wood, chaotic and the covers are almost all tossed over from the mattress, it looks cosy.
Tommy would kill to sleep there.
“Tommy,” Tommy reaches out a hand, bending forwards to Wilbur to pick it from the floor. Wilbur reaches his hand—the hold is not too firm. “I could say it is a pleasure to meet you, but I’d be lying.”
Wilbur giggles, grinning widely.
Tommy is puzzled by this new character, (and he really needs to sleep), then throws his backpack onto the ground. “I’m stealing your bed, big man.”
“Oh, alright, feel free to do it,” Wilbur mutters.
He’s so nice, Tommy reasons. So, so nice, so happy.
“You’re annoying,” Tommy scoffs, then limps towards the king-size bed.
The bed is cold, the pillows are cool. Tommy wraps himself with the cloak.
“Oh,” Wilbur sighs.
“It’s like having a roommate.”
Tommy falls asleep before earning an answer.
0
When Tommy was twelve, he lived at a house with older siblings.
Tubbo was thirteen years old; he was a chaotic, socially awkward little guy, he was something else, with brown hair and brown eyes. He liked to play Rust, and jump trampoline, and to build machines with leftovers from broken technological stuff.
He was smart, but grumpy, and odd.
He was Tommy’s best friend.
That was the first and last good house.
0
“What the fuck did you do, Tommy?” Niki whispers. She sounds distraught, floorless, her voice waves as magma ready to crack the crust of the Earth.
Tommy is still on time.
“I won’t ask you again, Tommy. What did you do? What were you thinking?!” She shouts, disregarding knowing damn-well what he just committed. Voice increasing, the volcano finally snapped.
Niki strides in his direction.
His body feels like it is hanging, being kept standing by nature’s force. His spirit was unable to reach the tip of his fingers. He floats in somewhere between reality and space. This is the sensation he won’t be capable of forgetting, regardless of the infinity of time.
He stares, nonetheless, forever staring at the curled figure on the edge of his vision. Tommy can’t remember the full image anymore, a blessing from how it was tattooed on his eyelids months after the event, it is now a puzzle Tommy lost most of the pieces inside the mess of his brain. As it was only one more check mark over the list of tormented things he saw.
But what he remembers is insignificant.
Niki raises her hand and slaps his face, it clicks, and leaves his ears ringing. He falls.
She cried, sobbing, and Tommy saw her fidgeting her hands as she just touched a demon, something cursed.
(The first time Niki hit him, Tommy's drunk thoughts were proud, and satisfied.)
An event.
An accident.
Indifferent of what you will call it, what the files decreed with printer ink, here’s what she said:
“YOU KILLED HIM. YOU MURDERED HIM, TOM.”
0
Differently you might think, Tommy doesn’t wake up screaming, jostling, and kicking.
He shakes with his whole body. One good shiver, as a taut thread being slightly rubbed.
He shifts his pose under the covers, his body feels like he was starting to fuse itself with the mattress. He’s sweaty, Tommy is disgusting.
It is nauseating how lucid he is within seconds after he wakes— the remnants of sleep crumbling completely, then he hears everything, and his heart palpitates. Tommy calls it his “spider-sense”, and doesn’t matter how happy laughs of the termination, Sam always brings up a face that makes him look as if he was about to choke with some disgusting food. Nonetheless, he can tell he’s not alone in the room.
It must be obvious, it is Wilbur’s bedroom, the owner of the squared space, and he won’t just leave a child to dwell in the place as Tommy is part of it now. Yet, Tommy wants privacy, but he must plan how to conquer it, firstly.
It is not a day yet.
He’s terribly angry for giving up and limping in a stranger's room, despite how “friendly” the stranger acted up. He explicitly said to himself to won’t do this, sleeping was a bright red flag to show vulnerability, and the odd one could be a weirdo.
Tommy picks a pillow and presses it over his head, bellowing.
He hates himself. Fuck this.
“Are you awake?” Wilbur asks.
No, idiot, I’m sleepwalking.
This time, though, he’s awake enough to chase the sarcasm out of him.
“Be good, Simons,” Adults always said. It is, really, one of the few things he listened to.
Be good.
“I am,” Tommy responds, the voice softened after the long sleep. He sat up, stretching with his arms upwards, hating how his top unglued from his chest and the hem lifted upward in his belly.
The spider-instincts. He just covers his torso with the blankets wrapping his arms around the fabric above his chest.
Wilbur is sitting with crossed legs on the floor. Now that Tommy analyses the room, sober, he spots the lack of chairs or places to sit overall. He sits on the bed, or on the floor.
Odd.
Huh.
He’s eating, holding a plate over its base, grabbing a fork with the other hand. No knives to be seen.
“I have food for you,” Wilbur says. His expression changes to something more apologetic, “I made it on my own, sorry if it is not the greatest.”
“Don’t worry, big Man,” Tommy slips on the “big man” bit, whatever, “I’m not used to fancy food.”
Wilbur chuckles. “Neither do I.”
Wilbur reaches up to him a plate, and a fork. No knife.
Rice, beans, pork. It looks cold.
Tommy grabs the fork, so the plate, and puts the food into his mouth. Teste like soot. It all does. He frowns.
“Bad?” Wilbur asks, his own plate being forgotten, emplacing all his attention on Tommy’s back.
He doesn't feel safe at all. But the man looks a bit stupid, as biological children usually are—alienated and confident—and Tommy wants to scrape the kindness off his face with scissors, and then feel bad about it: whine about he doesn't get nice things. It's never true enough to be profoundly good
“Terrible,” Tommy says, looking at Wilbur.
He feels like a kid, challenging an authority—even if it is a silly authority—, the conceit burning inside of him when Wilbur blinks first.
“Get used to it, then,” Wilbur pauses, looking to the other side, “dickhead.”
Tommy doesn’t know if Wilbur is really pissed at him or not. He doesn’t care.