Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It has been a long time since Tommy has had to hide a bruise.

Part of him wishes that, after a year of solace and softness, it didn’t come so easily to him still.

The other part is grateful—if it were any more difficult, maybe the Watsons would’ve already peeled back his fragile, paper-and-glue facade and revealed the painful secret beneath it. Maybe Tommy wouldn’t have to be hiding in a bathroom, up earlier than everyone but Phil, fumbling to open a first aid kit as his ribs pulse with a violent, aching pain.

Maybe there’d be someone but himself to protect him this time.

But there’s not, there never has been, really, and he can’t let them know—no matter how badly his heart weeps for it.

Biting his lip, Tommy winces as the plastic latch on the kit pops impossibly loudly in the quiet, and his hands take on a fine tremor as he eases out the bruise cream. It’s almost empty—he needs to get more. Maybe Phil will give him some pocket money. He’ll say he’s going to the cinema with Tubbo.

He’ll be lying. And his foster father will believe him. He always does.

(The only one who hears his silent pleas for respite, burning and aching in his head, is himself. Is Tommy. It’s only ever Tommy.)

He likes it that way. And if that’s a gilded lie, fed to himself in a pitiful attempt at keeping himself together, then at the very least, he needs it that way.

“Tommy?”

Wilbur isn’t yelling, but his voice spilling in from right outside the door catches Tommy off guard anyways.

Tommy jerks, hand spasming into the plastic red box perched precariously on the countertop edge. It topples to the ground, medical supplies spilling everywhere. He swears under his breath, dropping to a quick crouch to retrieve it and instantly regretting it as nausea and pain rush through him at once.

Fuck, he thinks to himself through hitched breaths. Fuck fuck fuck.

Tommy balls his hands into tight fists as he’s forced to kneel against the cool tile, catching his breath until the spiky throb throb throb consuming his torso eases. When he unfolds his shaky limbs and stands, it’s hardly any better.

Tommy pretends it is, though. He has school in an hour.

Wilbur pounds his fist against the door. Tommy stiffens.

He knows that, even despite all the scathing, mocking remarks he likes to shoot Tommy’s way, that Wilbur would never hurt him. None of them would. It’s been over a year, after all. If the Watsons were going to hurt him, if they were shaped out of cruelty in any volume, they would’ve done something by now. Tommy knows that.

But his body reacts like each harsh knock is landing against his skin, contributing to the violent mural he is attempting to keep hidden. It makes his heart pound so hard it hurts.

“The fuck you want?” he hisses eventually, forcing more emotion into his voice than he feels truly capable of producing.

Wilbur’s irritation melts through the door.

“Are you showering?” his foster brother demands. There’s a strand of curiosity there, bleeding over the annoyance, and that’s what Tommy clings to to keep himself upright. “Why are you up so early?”

Tommy’s heart does a frantic little dance in his chest.

“I’m pissing!” he yells back. “Go away.”

Wilbur groans. “Hurry up. You know I need time for my hair—”

“Fuck off.”

Silence.

Tommy waits, breath held carefully in his lungs. He waits and waits, maybe for Wilbur to persist, and push. It would be heatless, Tommy knows. They are well past the awkward “I don’t like you and you don’t like me” stage. The, “you’re here because my dad is fostering you and I am putting it up with it” stage.

But the last few weeks have drawn out the messiest, sawtooth, most primal instincts from him, instincts that he’d worked so hard to bury. It’s difficult to convince himself that he’s anything less than safe.

He tries, though. He kind of has to, if he wants to get away with this.

If his heart could get the memo that he’s fine, encased securely in the bathroom, in his own home, that would be great.

Wilbur finally leaves, and Tommy breathes again. His lungs ache with it, and then he’s moving: quick but efficient, slathering bruise cream up his torso too quickly to really let his eyes focus on the individual marks. He doesn’t want to see them.

It’s almost pitiful how good he’s gotten at this. Of all the secrets he had expected to keep from his foster family when he was deposited on the Soot-Watson porch a year ago, something like this would never even have crossed his mind.

But this is what he is now. He’s getting used to becoming himself again—his old self. His more-fractured self.

(He’s not.)

Tommy finishes layering the cream over his weeping skin right as he hears Wilbur’s footsteps start back up the stairs. Shit. He fumbles to get his shirt back on, and fumbles even more to get the cream back in the stupid red box. When everything is shoved back under the sink, hidden, he is ashamed at how relieved he is.

To distract himself from it, Tommy locks eyes with his tired reflection. The pink smudge on his left cheekbone is hardly noticeable. Nobody should be able to tell that it’s anything more than a flush. Nobody could possibly trace the splotch back to the cruel palm that had put it there.

Tommy inhales, slow and deliberate and painful.

I’m fine, he thinks forcefully.

Exhale.

I have to be fine.

The footsteps stop right outside. Tommy tenses.

He rips away from the mirror and swings the door open, just in time. Wilbur looms in the doorway, fist raised to knock. Without the door in the way, his irritation seems less intense. It’s not enough to quell the fear gathering in Tommy’s stomach. The position of his fist, poised above him, looks too much like he’s mid-strike.

Tommy feels vaguely sick.

“All done?” Wilbur asks, eyebrow raising up a fraction when Tommy fails to move.

He swallows, trying to puppet his lips into the shape of a smile but electing to just nod instead when that takes too much energy. He ends up trying to sidestep Wilbur, but a hand comes out, hovering over Tommy’s shoulder.

When Tommy stiffens, angling his head up in a way that he hopes isn’t as fearful as he feels, Wilbur’s face has already twisted into worry. Gentle scrutiny combs over his expression, and for a moment Tommy is sure that Wilbur can somehow see the colorful marks peppering his skin beneath his clothes. Why else would he look so concerned?

But he doesn’t. Wilbur doesn’t.

Though, brows furrowed close, he does ask, “You alright?”

Tommy’s heart kicks in his chest, almost like it knows the poisonous answer he is gathering on his tongue.

“Yeah,” he answers plainly. He shoves his hand in his trouser pockets, the picture of brutal innocence. “I’m good.”

It always gets easier to lie to that question.

– a few weeks ago –

“Is today the day?” Tommy asks, leaning forward in his seat as he grins. “Are we finally going to die?”

The car sputters again, engine protesting weakly as Wilbur frantically twists the keys. He slaps his palm against the steering wheel, groaning with the engine as it continues to stall.

“Shut up,” he hisses over his shoulder. “It’s fine.”

“I like how unconvinced you sound,” Tommy remarks, knee pressing into the back of Wilbur’s seat as he leans closer. “It’s a real power move.”

This time, Wilbur breaks away from attempting to start the car to flick his eyes up, meeting Tommy’s gaze through the rearview mirror and offering him a dull glare.

“I will drive this car through the house.”

“At least that means the car will be running.”

In the passenger seat, Techno snorts, and Tommy lifts his chin, a tiny strand of pride flowing through him. Wilbur only cuts Techno a piece of the same icy glare.

“Sally runs just fine,” Wilbur insists, as the engine does everything but. “She just needs a little… love.”

He slaps the dash. Tommy contains a laugh in the center of his throat.

As if Wilbur can sense it, irritation emanates from the front. “Fuck off, Tommy. Sit back— and put on your seatbelt.”

Tommy leans back, dragging his seatbelt over his shoulder, and wriggling as he clicks it into place. He has no clue how Wilbur hears his leg accidentally brush the stack of papers beside him, but he whips his head around, eyes flashing.

“Watch the posters.”

Tommy scoots to the left, flashing an amused look towards the stack of papers next to his leg.

Soot for Class President! reads the bold headline. Vote Soot!

Tommy doesn’t bother reading the rest, not when he looks down to instantly be met with Wilbur’s smiling portrait. Idiot.

“You can’t hang up posters if we’re fucking late,” Tommy drawls, as Wilbur mutters curses like prayers under his breath. “You know that right?”

“I know that I’m going to do violent things to you if don’t shut—”

He’s cut off as Sally lets out another cough, right before the engine comes to life.

“—up.”

Heatless threats forgotten, Wilbur whoops, and he thinks he sees Techno manage a smile as they peel out from the driveway. Tommy slams back into his seat, seatbelt constricting. But the breathlessness that surges faintly through him isn’t fear as they careen onto the road, it’s something like elation.

Look at us, he thinks. Kind of like a family.

It’s a fleeting thought, and a stupid, unnecessarily sappy one at that.

Tommy doesn’t have to remind himself that he has earned himself one good thing—not anymore. Not when he gets Wilbur’s endless stream of banter or Phil’s endless capacity for his antics or Techno’s endless ability to listen to his (similarly endless) ramblings to remind him each and every morning.

Sure, it’s not adoption papers but it’s enough. Tommy couldn’t ever ask for any more than what he has (because what he has is already so much, is one inked signature away from everything.)

Still, Tommy is not surprised that his first instinct is to bury that thought somewhere between his ribs and his lungs, and stomp it down until he can’t feel the twisting, bitter sensation it leaves as it fades. But it’s an old instinct, not quite appeased but not so overwhelming either.

He manages to ignore it, and that warm feeling sticks to his chest as they whip down the road far faster than any normal person should drive. It tints everything, especially the endless flow of banter between all three of them, a soft shade of gold.

By the time they arrive at school, and Tommy climbs over Techno’s fencing bag so he can stumble out of the car, full off the feeling of being able to turn stupid simple moments into so much more now, Tommy’s cheeks hurt from smiling.

“You’re helping me.”

Tommy’s face flattens. “No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are,” Wilbur insists, waving the stack of posters in front of Tommy’s face. Tommy shoves them away, and Wilbur yanks them back with a tiny yelp before Tommy can crumple the precious paper. When he laughs, Wilbur counters it with a scowl, posters tucked tight against his chest. “You’re an idiot.”

“Still not helping you,” Tommy retorts, crossing his arms and leaning against the row of lockers behind him smugly. “You get to do your propaganda yourself, Mr. President.”

Wilbur squints his eyes, and Tommy already knows his mouth is forming the words, It’s not propaganda!

But before he can say another word, Techno clears his throat.

When their eyes turn to him, Techno hikes his thumb towards the double doors at the end of the bright corridor. “I’ll be waitin’ for you in the car.”

He makes to turn around, and Tommy’s jaw drops. Desperation courses through him as he pushes off the wall.

“Techno, wait, you can’t leave me with him.” He makes a frantic gesture towards Wilbur, who bats at the back of his head. Tommy yelps and stumbles forward until he’s out of Wilbur-range. It only makes his next whispers that much more emphatic, “He’s insane.”

Techno raises an amused eyebrow as Tommy tugs half-heartedly on his sleeve. For a second, Tommy is sure he’ll crack, since he skims over the both of them with consideration.

But then, “Sounds like a you problem.”

He pulls his sleeve away from Tommy’s clinging fingers, taking a shard of Tommy’s heart with him. “Techno—”

“C’mon,” Wilbur groans, snagging the back of Tommy’s collar and pulling him out of his exaggerated show of annoyance. Tommy coughs as his collar snaps against his throat, scowling as he whips around to meet Wilbur’s unimpressed stare. “The more you help me, the faster we can get home.”

Tommy casts one last glance towards where Techno is retreating, but—

Techno doesn’t turn around, and that—plus, secretly, the casual way that Wilbur’s tongue forms the words, we can get home (as in, all of them, together, in one home)—ultimately, is what breaks Tommy’s will to resist. He heaves a groan, turning around.

“Fine,” he mumbles, adjusting his shirt collar. “I guess I’ll be your stupid human tape dispenser.”

Wilbur beams. “That’s what I like to hear.”

Tommy wants to punch the slightly-smug, mostly-pleased smile right off his dumb face. But he doesn’t, because hanging with Wilbur isn’t as awful as he enjoys pretending it is, and Tommy hardly has any homework anyways since school is just getting started, so it’s not like he’s in a huge hurry to get home.

Fine. He’s committed.

Well… for about ten more minutes. The impatience seeps in again the longer that they poster-up the hallway, until Tommy has devolved to trying to kick the back of Wilbur’s ankles as they walk.

“Wilbur. Wil. Wilbur. Wilbuh. Are you done?”

Silence. Wilbur is ignoring him.

Tommy groans again, loud and annoyed. “Wilbur, for fuck’s sake. Let’s go.”

Tommy manages to get one last good kick at Wilbur’s ankle before he whips around, eyes flashing.

“Fuck off,” he groans as Tommy steps back, a satisfied grin twisting his lips. “You’re ruining my campaigning.”

Tommy snorts as Wilbur turns, fumbling with the stack of posters in his hand and attempting to plaster them to the wall. Tommy leans forward, pressed obnoxiously close so he can peer over Wilbur’s shoulder.

“Tape,” Wilbur demands, twisting his head and nudging Tommy back a few steps.

Tommy sighs, but he hands him a rectangle of Scotch tape anyway. Wilbur rips it off his fingertip and sticks it on the wall. He steps back to appraise it, and Tommy dares to let himself be momentarily relieved.

“There,” Tommy exhales. “All done?”

Wilbur admires the poster, scrutiny heavy on his expression, before finally nodding. Tommy sighs again, breathless and put-upon as impatience seeps out of him.

“Good,” he chirps, sidestepping Wilbur. “Because school got out half an hour ago, bitch—”

A short gasp cuts him off, and Tommy whips around in time to watch the collision happen. All he sees is a green hoodie and an expression carved out of something angry before Wilbur goes stumbling.

His foster brother staggers back as his posters take messy flight, slipping out of his startled hands and fluttering to the ground in an explosion of flapping white. His back hits the rippled metal of the lockers behind him, and Tommy winces, eyes wide as he watches the collision happen.

Wilbur sags against the wall, looking stunned.

Tommy’s heart becomes a ball of pulsing magma.

“What the fuck?” Tommy shouts, watching Wilbur blink shock out of his eyes as the random guy jerks away from him, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie, lips tugged up on one side. “Hey, dickhead—”

Tommy takes two deliberately-sharp steps forward, sudden fierceness beating out the perplexion consuming him.

But before he can make it far, something snags his sleeve. He tears his eyes away from the green hoodie and sandy blonde hair walking hurriedly away from them—as if he hadn’t just slammed Wilbur into the wall—only to see that the person who had stopped him was Wilbur.

The urge to ask Wilbur why he’d just stopped him slams into Tommy at once, but he stops when he sees the serious look that has taken over Wilbur’s face.

He’s sitting on the ground, surrounded by the posters that he’d almost crucified Tommy for merely bending just that morning, yet he’d chosen to grab Tommy before he could do anything too drastic anyway.

Tommy frowns, heart beating quickly in his chest as he watches the guy just… go.

His hands ache to form fists, and it’s only Wilbur’s pressure on his sleeve that stops him from doing just that.

It’s probably for the best. Historically, all the times that Tommy has tried to fight anyone, it’s ended miserably. This time though, he thinks that a bit of misery would be a worthy price to pay to stop someone from being a dick to Wilbur.

Speaking of—Wilbur.

“Help me up,” is all he says when Tommy looks down at him, and Tommy blinks at him incredulously.

“Who the fuck was that?” Tommy gasps, even as he does what Wilbur says and helps him onto his feet.

Wilbur rises unsteadily, brushing at the thighs of his trousers as he regains his footing. Tommy instantly crouches down to scoop up the fallen posters, not missing the way that a dusty sneaker footprint has been stamped onto a few of them. He winces as he gathers them up and presses them carefully into Wilbur’s hands.

Wilbur who is… staring off into space, eyes unfocused towards the corner of the hallway that the guy, now out of sight, had turned down. His gaze is strangely flinty, sharp and contemplative. And weirdly: almost smug?

There’s some sort of underlying victory, smoldering in the deep brown, that puts Tommy on edge. He doesn’t quite get what Wilbur is seeing.

But he hasn’t given Tommy a response, and Tommy bounces anxiously on his feet as he waits for one. For some reason, there’s a cage around his tongue, stopping him from asking twice.

“Nobody,” Wilbur eventually answers, tongue curling slow and deliberate over the words. “It was nobody.”

A startled laugh bursts out of Tommy’s chest. “Bull-fucking-shit, Wil. He just—”

Wilbur bats away his concern, straightening his posters almost obsessively in his hands.

Some of the corners are bent, and Wilbur smoothes them out carefully. Tommy watches him in disbelief. He doesn’t voice it, not instantly—he’s too busy working through his frazzled thoughts—but Wilbur addresses it anyway, somehow.

“Drop it, Tommy,” he sighs, even though Tommy can tell that he’s a bit frazzled too. The theatrical sharpness of his posture has melted down at the edges. “Seriously.”

Tommy swallows hard. “No way,” he replies, scraping his teeth against the inside of his cheek. “No, no, you—” His face twists, voice lilting up with it, “You aren’t going to explain that?”

“There’s nothing to explain. And if there was—” Wilbur eyes his puffed chest and righteous anger, and some of that hardness softens on his face, “—it wouldn’t be your problem.”

“I’m your brother,” Tommy shoots back, ignoring the way his throat tightens over the words. “Your problems are at least half my problem.”

He wonders if Wilbur can see his hesitation too, even after a full year, and hopes that that’s the reason why Wilbur suddenly drops his gaze.

“At least half, huh?” Wilbur half-smiles, still not-looking at him.

Tommy doubles down. His other option is to break down, and that’d be uber-embarrassing, especially after how nice this morning was, so he doesn’t. “Wilbur.”

Wilbur’s eyes flick over to him, and he sighs again once he takes in Tommy’s stubborn resilience. He finally breaks.

“That’s Dream,” Wilbur explains dully. “He’s my only other viable opponent.” He gestures to the posters—Vote Soot!—and his eyes glitter like malicious brown-amber. “It’s fine. Shit happens in elections.”

Tommy blinks at him for what is probably the third or fourth time. He has half a mind to stop and ask, Dream? What kind of name is that? But he shoves the urge down, instead sticking with the incredulity at his brother. “This is— Wilbur, this isn’t a real election. This is school.”

Wilbur snorts, brushing past him to hang up another poster.

“It’s a competition,” he counters coolly. “And plus, I need it for university.” He smacks a poster onto the wall, paper rattling at the force. There’s a vicious edge of determination in his actions as he stomps down the hall, leaving Tommy to trail weakly after him. “Which means that I need to win.”

Tommy rolls his eyes. His lungs push out his next breath with more of that worried constriction, but he tries—because Wilbur isn’t giving him much of a choice—to breathe past it. “You’re an idiot.”

Wilbur shrugs, and the faint, dopey smile he gives him over his shoulder proves Tommy’s point. None of that weird smug-sharpness lingers on his face. It’s as weird as it is reassuring.

“I’m okay with that,” he says.

That, finally, is enough to rid most of the tension from Tommy’s shoulders. He sags against the nearest wall, back to impatience and exaggerated annoyance.

In that moment, it’s simple. In that moment, he thinks that’s all it will ever be.

(In that moment, he’s wrong.)

—

On the first day of school, one year ago, Wilbur had slung an arm around his too-tense shoulders and grinned brightly at his crowd of friends, gathered around them as if Tommy was a trophy to be presented on a stage.

“This is Tommy,” he’d introduced, eyes cutting over him with a soft sparkle. “My brother.”

The words had instantly grown uncomfortable vines in Tommy’s throat, making it hard to swallow around them.

It’s safe to say that, before the Watsons, Tommy had been a walking shard of glass. He’d been uneven and irregular and all sorts of words that his case worker liked to use on him whenever she chucked him into a new home.

He’d been scared, not that he ever would’ve admitted it. Scared of a new school and a new family to let down—and most of all—scared of kindness. Kindness had never been gentle with him, only covered in strings that Tommy always failed to notice until they were wrapped around his throat.

So he’d done what every broken foster kid does when faced with a new danger, no matter how pretty: he’d pushed it away.

In this case, he’d shrugged it away—shifting awkwardly until Wilbur got the hint, arm sliding off of his shoulders, giving Tommy the space to move a step to the right, hands shoved anxiously into his hoodie pockets.

“Foster brother,” he’d corrected quietly, not appreciating the eyes on him. His foster brothers being popular, so egregiously liked in a way he’d probably never be, had been the worst part about them, in those early days. He’d tried to smile; it was strained, eyes downturned above it. “Just foster.”

Wilbur’s smile had only died for a moment, light fading from his face, before he’d recovered.

“Right,” he’d amended, a note of apology slipping into his voice. “Foster brothers—we’re fostering him.”

The weight on Tommy’s chest had lifted at the same time as it had doubled.

It would only be later, after months of laughter and light, that the regret would come for him: wriggling into his brain like snakes, poisoning this moment so potently in his mind that he’d never be able to think about it without writhing in a pool of remorse.

It would be his own fault. He would know that, even as he wished he could undo it. Even as he became self-penitence, personified.

None of that would change the fact that, from that day forth, Wilbur never calls him his brother again.

—

Sometimes, Tommy and Phil have movie nights.

They are little things, flecks of gold during the week for Tommy to look forward to.

Today, he hesitantly settles onto the sofa, so caught up in thinking over that weird interaction that Wilbur had had with that Dream guy that he doesn’t notice he’s placed himself as far away as possible from Phil as he could’ve managed.

But Phil only tosses him a blanket and laughs when Tommy startles. He never makes Tommy do more than he feels comfortable doing, and for that Tommy is grateful. Still, the urge to repay that small act itches at his chest. The very least he could do is pay attention to the movie.

So Tommy tucks the blanket around his shoulders and tucks his jumbled thoughts away.

The last thought clinging to his mind, before everything else is washed away by the chatter of the television:

Tommy listens to Wilbur (when it’s convenient) and if Wilbur says that it was nothing, then it was nothing. Tommy just has to let himself believe him.

—

It happens again.

This time, it’s unmistakable.

The only difference is that, this time, it happens to Techno.

They always meet for lunch, always—all three of them. Wilbur and Techno and Tommy.

It had been that way since Tommy’s first day of school, when he’d sat alone at a lunch table, fresh out of his last foster home, in a cafeteria that seemed intent on reminding him how horribly alone he was—a stark contrast to the table beside him, where Techno and Wilbur had sat.

Their table had been packed, filled with students all around it, and that had been the first indicator of how obnoxiously popular his foster brothers were (and still are.) Where Tommy’s table had seemed infinite beneath his singular lunch tray, theirs had seemed way too small.

He’d been jealous—of course he had. He’d been with the Watsons for only a few weeks at that point, and they were already proving to be well-liked in a way that Tommy had always tried and failed to be (because contrary to what his social worker seemed to believe, Tommy did want to be liked.)

The jealousy had stung almost as bad as the anxiety had mounted, and the cafeteria walls had begun to press around him. And that’s when Techno had appeared like a knight in a shining fencing uniform: steady, kind, and with fencing practice the next block.

He’d appeared beside Tommy’s table and offered him a hand, lips tilted into the whisper of a smile. And he’d offered Tommy a spot at their table.

“Phil told us to look out for you,” he’d explained, after it finally registered to Tommy that the open palm extended before him was an invitation. Tommy had always thought there was more to that day, and the tint of worry in Techno’s eyes made that clear. “Pretty sure that includes not leavin’ you to the wolves.”

It doesn’t, Tommy remembers thinking, gut curling with contemplation. These are hardly wolves. This is hardly necessary.

But Techno was kind, had been even when Tommy had only known him for a few short weeks.

“I saved you a seat,” he’d added.

Ultimately, that was what had done it.

Techno had used the foster special—had presented an offer as a debt, so that Tommy could trick himself into believing he was allowed to have that. So that Tommy would accept the good deed.

And Tommy had, and Techno’s smile broadened infinitely inconspicuously, and Wilbur had grinned at him so happily, and both of them had burned away all of Tommy’s poisonous anxieties, his clinging dread.

There’s not a lot that sticks with him from those early days.

Most of it had blurred by the time the awkwardness between his foster family had begun to ease, fusing down into just flashes of emotion: anxiety, brashness, and eventually laughter. So much laughter.

But that kindness remains, nestled in his brain. That kindness remains—Wilbur’s too, but first: Techno’s.

And it’s that kindness that burns with a vengeful fury in him now as he watches Techno go stumbling in the lunch line. As he watches that guy—Dream—slam into him from behind, checking his shoulder harshly.

His empty tray, held carefully in his hand, drops. It clatters against the floor as Techno easily regains his footing and turns. Tommy, before it even makes it to the sticky cafeteria tile, jolts up to his feet, heart trembling.

He stands up so quickly that his own lunch tray is nearly knocked off the table, drawing an alarmed gaze from Wilbur—who drops it for a narrowed one the minute he follows Tommy’s wide-eyed gaze to Techno.

Dream laughs as he watches Techno’s face flatten into one of cool disinterest. Tommy is pretty sure that only him and Wilbur can detect the subtle edge of irritation there, captured near-imperceptibly by the slight flare of his nostrils.

Dream’s dumb, jock-y smile only widens when Techno leans down to pick up his lunch tray.

And oh. Tommy is angry.

It overtakes him suddenly and ferociously, that blistering wave of heat. He is so angry he doesn’t know where to put it, ears ringing, vision blurring at the edges. He blindly attempts to walk forward, disentangling himself from the seat when—

“Don’t,” Wilbur murmurs, stopping him in place. “Leave it.”

Chest roaring, Tommy turns, facing him with all the confusion he can manage to lift above the magma burning him. But Wilbur doesn’t look… concerned. His eyes are sharp, sure, but with scrutiny. He stares straight ahead, head tilted dangerously, just like before. And he doesn’t get up.

It’s… not the reaction Tommy had expected. Tommy had expected anger from him, too. That’s his brother—his actual one—being shoved around. Surely Wilbur should be up in arms just the same as Tommy is prepared to be.

(And okay, maybe Tommy is different than Wilbur—less refined, irregular in all the places that being in the foster system means he would be. But still. Still. That’s Techno.)

But Wilbur remains sickly cool, utterly unmoving, and so Tommy remains glued in place (by confusion, if nothing else.)

He swallows as he observes the interaction: watches Techno stand, watches him flick his pink hair over his shoulder with an air of nonchalance that, if Tommy were regarded with it would piss him off, and—

He mutters something under his breath, something incomprehensible to Tommy’s ears but something that is undoubtedly a pointed barb. Why else would Dream go from puffed-up and asshole-ish to flinching back, anger rippling over his face like he does?

Techno smirks as Dream’s jaw takes on an angular tension that Tommy can see even from halfway across the cafeteria. But where Techno remains hard and unmoving as a rock, it’s Dream who slinks back, eyes flitting downward with defeat.

Tommy blinks. Beside him, a satisfied smile stretches across Wilbur’s lips like a lazy cat.

“See?” he hums, turning his glittering eyes down toward his salad and stabbing at a red tomato with his plastic spork. “He can handle it.”

There’s no room for argument in his voice, syrupy satisfaction wiping out any protest Tommy could even try to summon. And Techno is, well, fine. He exchanges his empty-but-dirty lunch tray for a new one, and the chaos that had momentarily interrupted the rhythm of the lunch line disappears.

Dream doesn’t try to shove Techno again.

Tommy slowly sinks back down into his seat.

Techno eventually joins them with a faint jauntiness in his step that throws Tommy for a complete loop, and he doesn’t mention that anything was amiss. He just sets his lunch tray down across from Tommy’s and digs into the questionable chicken sandwich on top of it.

If Tommy hadn’t seen Dream fuck with him, he never would’ve guessed that anything occurred. It doesn’t help that the broken little voice in his head, sculpted by too many bad occurrences to be particularly trustworthy, is telling him that something is wrong here. Tommy can’t tell if he should indulge it or not.

So Tommy shields his frown away, he’s getting used to doing that, even as the uneasiness lingers: rolling in his skull until the bell rings and breaks him abruptly out of the cage of his own head.

It’s as he’s leaving that he catches Dream’s gaze from across the cafeteria, lasered on his brothers’ backs. The magmatic heat from before ignites, and hardens, leaving a sturdy obsidian shell in his chest.

Tommy realises, then—through a rush of defensiveness that is too big for his skin and bones—just how willing he is to do whatever it takes to keep this.

—

Tommy waits until they’re halfway home to bring it up.

He’s tired of the furtive glances, the unspoken conversations. Clearly, there is more to the mysterious Dream-grudge than they are telling him, and he wants to know about it. Trapped between the four doors of Wilbur’s car, they have to answer him.

“Is everything alright?” he asks, knee bouncing nervously in the backseat.

It’s, admittedly, probably not the best way to breach the topic, because he catches Wilbur’s brow wrinkle in the rearview mirror.

“What?”

Wilbur’s confusion almost manages to drag out some sort of… embarrassment or something from the depths of Tommy’s chest, but he shoves it down. In this moment, he doesn’t care how stupid he sounds. He needs to know.

“You know,” he hedges, wetting his lips. “With that Dream guy, and all.”

It goes silent in the car, even with the gentle music playing through Wilbur’s shitty speakers. Tommy’s words absorb all sound as Wilbur takes a second to digest them. Then, he snorts.

“Oh, him,” he drones, and he does it—he glances to the side, casting Techno an amused glance before reverting his eyes back to the road. “He’s just a dick.” Meeting Tommy’s scrunched gaze in the rearview, “Don’t worry about it.”

Tommy chews on his lip.

But he pushed you, he almost says. Both of you. Isn’t that concerning?

He must not do a fantastic job of keeping that line of thought off of his face because Techno glances up from his phone, twisting in his seat to face him.

“He’s never liked us,” is all he offers. “But we make him too nervous for him to actually do anythin’.”

Tommy tries to digest that information. He really does try to let Techno convince him that that’s as far as it goes.

And he fails miserably.

“Does Phil know?”

It’s like an electric shock hurdles through the air.

Tommy instantly earns a sharp look from Wilbur, lips thin and verging on irritated. Shit.

“What?” Wilbur all but hisses. “No. Why would he?”

Tommy sits up straighter in his seat, seat belt snapping over his chest. “I thought—”

“Don’t tell him,” Wilbur interjects, dragging his annoyed gaze away to focus back on the road. His knuckles are red around the steering wheel. “Seriously. Let us deal with it.”

I thought there was nothing to deal with, Tommy almost snaps back, but he keeps his mouth shut, no matter how much he wants to keep this going.

He doesn’t want to argue with them—as in really-argue, not like the fake arguments they have every other time they speak—and the tension electrifying the air makes him uneasy. So, trapped between the force of Wilbur’s hard look and Techno’s deceptively-soft urging, Tommy is forced to accept that. He slumps back in his seat, arms crossed stubbornly over his chest.

It keeps him docile, for now. Docile as they pull into the driveway, docile as Techno and Wilbur instantly ditch him the moment he’s inside, docile from pressing them about those cruelty-laced interactions that cut too close to home for Tommy.

But they can’t keep his mind docile. They can’t keep Tommy from thinking about it, from indulging the faint blend of worry and perplexion and, yeah, still a bit of rage. They can’t stop him from doing that.

And for the next few hours, as he finishes chores and homework, that’s all that Tommy does.

“Did you tell Phil?” Wilbur asks him, voice hushed as he stops from entering the kitchen.

Tommy frowns, startled. “What?” He casts a look towards the dining room, where Phil and Techno are setting the table for dinner. Then, sensing Wilbur’s doubt and not appreciating the sudden distrust, Tommy crosses his arms and narrows his eyes. “No, I didn’t say shit.”

Wilbur’s expression melts from distrust into relief. “Good,” he breathes, and then he ruffles Tommy’s hair, ignoring the indignance that breaks out across his face. “Thanks.”

“Thanks?” Tommy echoes under his breath, but Wilbur is already gone, bounding past him and heading towards the table.

Tommy, blinking confusion out of his eyes, drags himself after him.

—

Dinner goes great. Really great.

It’s a relaxed fair, just like it usually is, and Tommy spends half of it eating and half of it forgetting all the weirdness that had haunted him all day. It’s easy when it’s all four of them, gathered around the dinner table, laughing and joking (and only almost choking on broccoli one time after trying to shove Wilbur out of his seat.)

In fact, the worst thing that happens is Phil assigning him dish duty once everyone’s plates are on their way to clear.

But Phil’s endeared smile at the way that Tommy kicks his feet melts away what little resistance he’d summoned, until he’s scrubbing away at red tomato sauce on porcelain while Wilbur and Techno slink off to their rooms.

That shocks some life into him.

Tommy hurries, finishing the washing at record pace and not even bothering to dry his hands as he bounds up the stairs—quieting his footsteps the minute he approaches the top of the stairs.

He hears, bleeding through the door, the way that Wilbur and Techno are clearly having some sort of important conversation, both of them huddled in Techno’s room. He’s sure, as he lingers in front of their doorways before eventually giving up, leaving to shower and brush his teeth, that they are talking about Dream.

Nothing’s wrong, he thinks bitterly to himself as he passes. Yeah fucking right.

By the time he emerges from his shower, their lights are off.

Tommy tries not to let the combination of disappointment and worry drown him as he falls into bed.

—

Things go from bad to shit before he knows it, and that’s sort of the way it always goes for Tommy, but it throws him off when it happens to Techno and Wilbur.

Tommy doesn’t catch the start of it this time, only the aftermath. Only the smug, poisonous grins that Techno and Wilbur share—twins down to the grudges they bear—as Dream stands being lectured to pieces by a teacher; only the venomous glint in Dream’s eyes, shining lowly like a snake scale gleaming in dim candlelight.

He watches as Techno’s spine straightens, watches how Wilbur’s chin tilts upwards, and watches Dream stumble away from the pure righteous victory facing him.

And he watches that venom shift onto him, onto Tommy, hovering on the sidelines, just over his fosters’ shoulders.

Tommy gets close before he’s aware he should’ve stopped about three meters back. The sparse crowd of students form a loose semi-circle, almost a humiliating spotlight around the confrontation. Tommy probably should not have breached that circle, should not have thrust himself beneath its metaphorical light.

But he does, because he can’t help himself from getting close when clearly something went down and Techno and Wilbur were involved and they can help themselves, he knows that, they’re fucking— they’re untouchable, and everyone knows that—but he does anyway.

And Techno stiffens when Tommy waltzes into his peripheral, composure rippling. Techno steps back, hardly losing eye contact with Dream, only shifting in front of Tommy as easily as a lung contracting over a breath, and a rough, gentle hand encircles his wrist. It’s light, and a fleeting touch—there just long enough to steady him before Techno’s hand is gone.

It’s almost… protective. It makes Tommy’s chest hiccup as he watches the aftermath of the confrontation in a new light.

It does something. It changes things. It changes things in the way that is only obvious after the bad things happen.

Because the bad things? They happen. They happen far too swiftly and far too harshly for Tommy to hope to avoid.

—

Tommy yelps as his back smacks into the harsh brick wall, only rendering the hand around his collar when it’s too late to do anything but gasp as he is shoved backwards. Pain skitters up his spine, dots of heat bloom across his shoulder blades, and Tommy curls back as he’s held, painfully, in place.

An angry, semi-familiar face swims into his frame of vision.

Tommy’s heart drops into his stomach.

“Tommy, isn’t it?” that Dream guy sneers, pressing him harder against the wall, knuckles pressing into Tommy’s collarbone as the neckline of his shirt is twisted and twisted. “You’re the new Watson, right?”

For a moment, shock steals all of his breath—as well as any remark that Tommy would usually attempt to summon. It’s followed swiftly by fear, as he casts a glance to the left and right and realises exactly how alone he is.

He’s very, utterly alone. School got out maybe twenty minutes ago? But Wilbur has a thespian meeting for the next ten minutes, meaning Tommy had to stay behind with him, meaning Tommy is trapped.

Fuck.

Dream yanks him forward and shoves him back, startling Tommy to the present. His head knocks painfully against the wall, and the sneer on Dream’s face becomes vicious and bloodthirsty. A million memories swarm Tommy’s mind at once, drenched in terror.

He doesn’t understand what is happening.

He understands what is happening with aching clarity.

“Answer me,” Dream hisses, knuckles turning white. “I said—”

“We’re foster brothers,” Tommy manages quickly. Then, trying to summon some ounce of strength and coherency, “What do you—”

Dream laughs, and it’s high and strained with irritation. Tommy hesitates.

“Right,” he breathes. “I forgot they liked to take in charity cases.”

Tommy flinches. Dream’s smile sharpens.

He leans close, allowing Tommy to get a too-good look at how angry he is. Tommy can feel it, trembling in his skin, like it’s aching to be released. And all he can think is, What the fuck happened?

“Tell me,” Dream asks smoothly, even as the danger emanating off of him is anything but, “is it official?”

Tommy’s heart understands what he is asking before Tommy does—it flips violently in his chest. His next words are anything but violent. They quiver and shake just like the rest of him.

“What?”

He half-expects another impatient outburst, and Tommy squirms, wishing more than anything that he could run. But there is nowhere and nothing for him to run to. Not unless he wants to bleed for it.

(And Tommy—weak, weak Tommy—doesn’t want to bleed. Not after he’s finally earned himself one good thing, not after he’s already shed that sturdy skin, the kind that could take hits and cruelty. It’s somewhere on the Watsons’ doorstep, walked on and ground to oblivion, forgotten, for the most part.)

“The adoption,” Dream murmurs.

Tommy flinches. He may as well have thrown gasoline onto a fire, the way that Dream’s eyes light up.

“Oh,” he laughs quietly, as if he’s surprised, as if he hasn’t reached into Tommy’s chest, dug through his organs, and dragged out all his worst fears. “There isn’t an adoption. That’s… sad.”

The faux pout on his face renders his words shallow, as mocking as they were meant to be. Somehow, these words scare him more than the fist around his collar.

“Do you think they will?” Dream asks, some curiosity there. It’s wicked, shaped like a knife. “How many birthdays has it been? Has there been a Christmas yet? I heard—”

That, finally, drags a bolt of fury through him, so white-hot that it’s impossible to ignore. Tommy gets his arms between their chests and shoves, sending Dream back half a step. It only earns him another slam against the brick, but it’s worth it, if only for the small amount of life it lends Tommy.

“What do you want?” Tommy finally asks, balling his hands up, concentrating on the sting of his nails against his palm to keep his glare in place. He wishes he could make his voice as loud as his raging heartbeat. He can’t. But he can at least make it sharp. “I didn’t fucking do anything.”

Dream tilts his head. “No,” he admits, frighteningly eerie for someone only a few years older than him. His eyes are two pools of malice. “No, you didn’t. But they did.”

Tommy sinks his teeth into the inside of his cheek. He knows who they are. They’d driven him to school that morning.

Dream must mistake his silence for ignorance, because he keeps going with hardly more than a pause.

“Your brothers have been pissing me off, you know that?”

Tommy does. He’s seen the glimpses of the not-fights, soaked in so much tension it could iron a shirt. But he only closes his face off, tries to swallow back the fear threatening to burst out of him, and shakes his head.

“What does that have to do with me?” he bites out, letting his lips curve into a sneer.

It’s not a fair fight, being pinned to the wall like this, but Tommy imagines himself throwing Dream off, shoving him back. If he tricks himself into thinking he has some amount of control over all this, maybe it won’t end so bad for him.

(He’s always been cruelly optimistic. Dream flattens his optimism in one fell, brutal swoop.)

“Everything,” Dream hisses, low and grating. “Everything. Because I can’t go after them, can I? They’d just throw a hissy fit, cry to a teacher, and then where would we be?”

Tommy doesn’t say a word, only glares dully and tries to ignore the building ache in his back.

Dream doesn’t seem to need him to talk anyways. “But you, Tommy—that’s your name right?” Tommy doesn’t feel himself nod, but he must, because Dream keeps going, keeps fucking pushing. “You are perfect. You can help me out, yeah?”

There’s a shaking sort of thrill to his voice, one that replaces all of Tommy’s blood with ice. The implications lacing that statement are heavy, and painful, and bladed.

It takes everything in him not to relent.

“So you’re a coward,” Tommy remarks with a humorless laugh, molding his face into his best approximation of a sneer. Dream tenses, Tommy can feel it from his forearm is braced against Tommy’s collarbone to keep him pinned. “Going after me to what— get back at them?” Dream’s throat bobs, a silent answer. Tommy shakes his head. “That’s bitch behavior, man. You’re—”

It takes one hard, stinging slap to wash away all of Tommy’s bravado.

Dream grins as Tommy’s face whips to the side, fire spreading across his cheekbone. An ache grows roots under his eye, and Tommy chokes on a gasp as he faces Dream again.

“I’m not going after you because I’m scared,” Dream hisses, and Tommy doesn’t believe it for a second, but the sight of his ugly anger keeps his mouth fused shut. “I’m going after you because it’s convenient.” He wets his lips, eyes taking on a feral sort of glint. “I’ve seen you following them around like a lost puppy. I’ve seen them protecting you.”

He spits those last words out like they’re poison, like they’re not Tommy’s ambrosia—everything he’s ever wanted since it became clear, before he could even walk, that his real family was as good as dead. Tommy swallows hard.

“Maybe I can’t go after them directly,” Dream laughs breathily. “But I can go after their soft spot. And that’s even better.”

Soft spot, Tommy thinks, tucking those words—as much as he shouldn’t be right now—against his chest.

And then, he snaps back into himself, back into reality, and tilts his chin up.

“I’ll say something,” Tommy threatens quickly. “You can’t—”

Dream tightens his grip on Tommy’s collar, and Tommy gasps as his spine screams. It’s like Dream is trying to fuse him with the mortar of the brick. Tommy’s words die on his tongue.

“And then what?” he snarls, words shaped like a taunt. “I get a week’s suspension but you— you get sent away, don’t you?”

Everything in the world goes completely still.

Tommy seizes, lungs deflating. Fear more potent even than the initial rush after Dream had surprised him overtakes him absolutely. He can’t breathe.

“What?”

Dream’s eyes flash with satisfaction, like sunlight bouncing off of a fishing hook. “That’s what they do to the foster kids who fight, right? They get rid of them.”

Dream’s words yank Tommy’s heart out of his chest. He can’t even wrangle a proper breath in, nevermind a gentle heartbeat. Every single fear that Tommy has ever had ravages his mind, weaving poison ivy between his ribs, drizzling cyanide across his brain.

No amount of denial sprung from the last year can hope to erase it. It’s over for Tommy before it even really begins.

“Say a word,” Dream breathes, not bothering to raise his voice anymore. He doesn't have to—he’s won. He has him. “And kiss your ‘family’ goodbye.” He grins. “There’s no adoption papers to save you.”

In the end, that’s all it takes to break him.

Fifteen minutes later, Wilbur finds him in the car park in front of his car, staring aimlessly at the cracked concrete beneath his battered trainers.

Every single inch of his skin that the fabric of his hoodie can hide throbs. The watercolor painting that Dream’s knuckles had painted across his arms and chest and ribs deteriorates him. Tommy wills the pain away.

It doesn’t work—hasn’t since he dragged himself up off the floor and outside to wait. He tries anyway. Dream’s threats are imprinted on him as surely as the bruises.

“Sorry I’m late,” Wilbur apologizes in his peripheral, clearly frazzled as he unlocks the doors, fumbling to drop into the front seat. “Meeting went over.”

Tommy just shrugs—not too heavily—and eases himself into the passenger seat. He leans his head against the cool windowpane and empties his mind out.

Pain takes the place of the thoughts he lets fizz out of existence.

Wilbur doesn’t notice a single thing.

Chapter Text

If there is one thing that Tommy knows, it’s that he is temporary.

He wouldn’t be surprised if that was printed in his file, right next to his name, his birthdate, and a list of every demerit he’s ever earned in (and out) of school:

Thomas Innet, 16 — temporary. Read: never truly meant to belong, to stay and be kept.

(Read: never truly meant to be loved.)

Except, if there is one thing that he has come to learn about the Watsons, it’s that they are… different. Good-different.

Tommy is temporary, but the Watsons have a way of making him forget that.

And that, Tommy thinks, is why he inevitably chooses to stay quiet.

—

He aches.

It doesn’t feel so bad until he wakes up, clawing past the shroud of drowsiness clinging to him and blinking his eyes open the next morning.

Instantly—pain.

Tommy drags a hitched breath through his teeth the minute he’s upright. Fire rolls through him, and Tommy sinks back down against his pillows, breathing hard.

Fuck, he thinks, blinking quickly at the ceiling swaying above him. Fuck me.

Whatever composure he’d summoned as he’d forced himself through all of yesterday unravels now that he doesn’t have tasks to occupy him, aches to disguise, affection to distract himself with. It’s too bad he has no choice but to get up now.

Now before they come knocking, now before they start to wonder, now before he risks messing this up.

So Tommy does.

And as he steals Techno’s coffee and ducks away from Wilbur’s swatting hand and snatches his lunchbox out of Phil’s hands, Tommy keeps himself by reminding himself how lucky he is.

He’s lucky to keep this, really. To keep them. No matter if it means waking up before even Phil so he can barricade himself in the bathroom with the first aid kit.

(No matter how bad it hurts.)

Lucky to have brothers to prod and a father to annoy into affection and all three of them to heal him as far as their words reach.

If they find out, he loses all of it.

Tommy is determined to make sure that never happens.

His composure slips again halfway through the day, and that’s probably because the ibuprofen he’d stolen from Wilbur wears off after lunch.

The ache comes back angrier, like it’s unhappy that he’d tried to get rid of it at all. The pulsing of his sore skin focus eats away at his focus, impossible to ignore the way he used to.

So Tommy does what he does best with emotions that are too difficult to brush away. He converts his self-contained suffering neatly into anger, and lets his blood run hot as he stumbles down the hallway after school.

(It’s either that or give in to the small prick of long-dormant fear awakening inside of him. He knows which option is easier.

He doesn’t have to be afraid of being cornered again—not right now anyway. He’s waiting for Techno to get out of fencing practice, and Dream is in practice with him, which means Tommy has a good thirty minutes to fuck shit up, only his own paranoia hanging over his head like a low storm cloud. Nothing real.)

Rip. Dream’s face crumples under Tommy’s fist as he yanks the Vote Green poster off of the wall, squeezing it in his hand. It’s a shallow satisfaction, and it’s not going to undo whatever yesterday was, but it does scratch the angry-fearful itch in Tommy’s chest, begging to be answered.

Rip. Another poster—gone. Only sticky tape residue clings to the locker. Win for Tommy.

Rip. His backpack is beginning to become full with how many posters he’s stolen.

“Tommy,” a voice says right beside him, shocking him out of his skin. Was practice over already? Shit. “What are you doin’?”

Tommy whips around, smiling bashfully (but not at all regretfully) as he meets Techno’s dull gaze.

“Techno!” he greets with a sharp grin, closing his backpack. “Technoblade, hey man. What’s up?”

Techno’s eyes slowly dip down to the blank wall beside Tommy’s face—well, the almost blank wall. The corner of Dream’s poster clings to the painted brick. The jig is up, and the implications are less than friendly.

“Tommy,” Techno repeats. “What are you doin’?”

“Campaigning,” Tommy answers, pretending that his heartbeat isn’t beginning to snowball into a fury.

If Techno is out, that means Dream is out, and that’s not good for Tommy. Not at all.

Well, maybe it’s not all bad, a little voice in his head whispers to him. Techno’s here. Dream’s scared of Techno.

Techno will protect me.

That’s the only thing that lends him the strength to keep up this faulty bravado. Tommy clears his throat, eyes scrunching up as he wiggles his eyebrows.

“Wilbur says all is fair in lover war,” Tommy explains.

“Love and war,” Techno corrects, a prickle of amusement creeping into his voice. Then, his eyebrow arcs up. “Is he at war?”

Tommy frowns at him. It only lasts a second, only enough to say, Aren’t you both?

And then he remembers that neither Wilbur or Technoblade have given him any answers about this mysterious grudge, and realises he has to go about this a different way.

“He is in so much war, Technoblade.” Tommy tilts his head. “I mean, well. It’s that Dream guy, innit?”

The obvious answer is yes—Tommy had literally seen them together yesterday. But ignorance always makes for a longer outpour of information.

Techno’s brow wrinkles. “Dream?” Tommy nods. He’s incredibly confident that there is not another Dream for Techno to be confused with. “Right.” A furrow nestles between his eyebrows as Techno inspects Tommy’s face. “You’re not still on about that, are you?”

Tommy’s shoulders raise, curling forward. His heart tick tick ticks away, anxiety bundling in his stomach. Techno seems suspicious, maybe even irritated. And that succeeds in making Tommy thoroughly nervous.

Has he pushed too far? Said too much? Surely not. He’d barely said anything at all.

Which means he has to have at least a little more of Techno’s patience to eat up (if only to sate the fearful monster joining the angry one nesting between Tommy’s bruised ribs.)

“You don’t like him, right?” Tommy prods, keeping his pasted-on grin in place. “So I’m at war for you, too.”

He tries not to sound too hopeful, but he’s a little less on his game today. Almost desperate for Techno to agree with him, to crucify the guy outright, and make this all a little more worth it. Maybe he can have asylum here, in Techno.

But Techno just shrugs.

“Eh, it’s like I said yesterday. He’s alright.” Tommy deflates. Techno’s eyes comb questioningly over him. “He doesn’t like me, though,” he offers slowly. His lips curl up. “He’s a sore loser.”

Ah, Tommy thinks, as some more pieces click into place. Dream’s bitterness from the day before, the malice coating the words, the Watsons, flood back through his mind.

“And you’re a supreme winner,” Tommy remarks once he realises he’d been silent for too long. “It makes sense why he fuckin’ hates you.”

Techno hums a tiny, noncommittal sound. It feels flat and grating against Tommy’s eardrums.

“You got something to say?” Techno asks finally.

Alarm flares through him instantly—a bone-deep instinct to retreat. He’d wanted information, clarity, but it wasn’t supposed to go the other way around. Shit.

Tommy chokes down every bad emotion threatening to drown him. His backpack, chock full of posters and pretty much nothing else, feels like an anchor glued to his back. There is no more satisfaction in this petty attack anymore.

The corner of Dream’s face mocks from where it sticks to the wall. Tommy’s eyes tilt down towards the floor, the tile he’d bled over.

“Nah,” he answers, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Nothing at all.”

He makes a valiant attempt at leaving it at that: neat and only messy on the inside. But apparently Techno isn’t as emotionally-reserved today as Tommy had hoped, because he catches Tommy’s arm as he tries to walk moderately-nonchalantly past him.

“Tommy,” Techno says lowly, as Tommy’s brain helpfully chants, ow ow ow.

Tommy freezes, looking up. Techno’s grip is featherlight, but it hurts. All of him hurts. Tommy doesn’t move, though.

“Yeah?” he croaks. “What’s, uh, what’s up?”

Techno just stares at him. Like, really stares. Tommy can’t tell if he’s deluding himself or not when he sees concern swirling around his pupils.

Techno’s eyes have always been warm, brown and comforting, like a glowing hearth. A bed of coals, tantalizingly tempting to fall into and rest. This close, Tommy can see those flecks of red he has, like fly-away embers. It makes that maybe-concern seem brighter.

And now, his warm gaze seems to reach inside of Tommy. Sifting. Searching.

“Don’t go to war for me, kid,” Techno eventually murmurs, stepping back. “That’s my job.”

He gives Tommy a halfway smile, adjusting the weight of his backpack. His fencing bag dangles from his other hand.

Tommy’s arm drifts limply back to his side once it's released. He nods in silent agreement even as the clipped motion sends phantom, bitter slime sliding down the back of his throat: poison, because he’s lying.

It’s a little too late, not that he could ever tell Techno that. How does he explain that to his brother?

Tommy’s number has already been called.

He’s on the front lines, wearing a uniform shaped out of black and blue and violet, and all there is to do now is hike up his boots, stomp through the mud, and pray he earns himself a white flag before he loses himself altogether.

—

His reckoning comes the next day, and it’s as he’s being thrown to the ground that Techno’s voice, strangely, floats through his head, a shard of the conversation they’d had over dinner last night:

Practice was great, he’d remarked casually. Beat Dream, again. He wasn’t too happy about that.

Wilbur had snorted over his next bite. Yeah, no shit.

Phil had shaken his head, fondness and exasperation fighting for room on his face.

Tommy, even though his brain had latched onto that tidbit of information like a gnashing wolf into a chunk of raw meat, hadn’t seen it as the warning it was.

Dream corrects that mistake swiftly and harshly. Not even the school bathrooms are sacred from him, apparently.

The tile is hard and cold beneath him as he rolls onto his back, backpack yanked away from him and tossed to the side. Tommy swallows hard, trying to see past the blinding white lights above him so he can keep track of the bully above him.

“I see you kept quiet,” Dream greets him with an amused curl of his lips, boot hovering over Tommy’s heaving chest. “That’s good.”

He doesn’t press down, not as much as he could, and Tommy doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s grateful his ribs aren’t being stomped in.

Tommy nods quickly, the threat of pressure over his already-hurt ribs dizzying.

“I didn’t say anything,” he breathes, heart hiccuping. “I swear I didn’t.”

Dream presses down a shade harder. Tommy’s breath hitches, lungs tangled up in knots. A million pleas get tangled up with them, stuck between his ribs and his throat. He doesn’t think Dream would lend him the air to breathe them out anyway.

Dream scoffs. “I know,” he drawls. “That’s what I just said.”

Tommy’s chest burns, a half-shapen attempt at anger that dies quickly.

Before, he’d indulge it, fire off a round of insults, ramble until he burrowed himself a way out of whatever situation he’d landed himself in.

But before, Tommy didn’t have anything to lose. Now, he has everything: his family a spiral galaxy and all the stars and planets and light inside it, and he the stray comet that had managed to stumble into their orbit.

Dream could send him spiralling out of it if he wants to.

Tommy is not fragile. He can take a lot of things; he can take hits and he can wear bruises like medals. But losing his family… he doesn’t think he can take that.

He won’t. Not unless they take it from him.

Sorry, Techno, he thinks blearily, when it starts. Sorry, Wil.

He’s not as good at staying away from battles as he thinks they want him to be.

—

“Tommy? You coming down?”

Tommy blinks, rolls over in his bed. He can practically feel his body yelling, Fuck You at him as his eyes flicker towards the door, towards the sound of Phil’s questioning voice.

“What?”

Phil hesitates; Tommy feels it through the door.

“I put the movie on,” Phil clarifies. And, in the beat before the pieces click into place, “For movie night?”

Tommy whips onto his feet so quickly he nearly passes out. A jumbled curse bursts out of his mouth as he trips, ankle tripping over his duvet. He holds onto his footing, though not quietly.

“Tommy?”

“Coming!” Tommy assures him quickly, hoping it doesn’t sound as strained as it feels. “Just— one second.”

He’s halfway to the door when his eyes catch on the flash of mottled blue stretching past the edge of his t-shirt sleeve. Tommy hesitates before snatching a hoodie off of the bed and wrestling over limbs that protest even that.

It’s a little warm for one, but it’s a sacrifice he makes without missing a beat. This is his reward, after all. His battle medallion, for fulfilling the fight. What’s the point of any of this if he doesn’t claim it?

“You sure?” Phil questions—voice riddled with far more uncertainty than Tommy would ever allow. “We can—”

“I’m coming,” Tommy repeats, yanking open the door so fast that Phil jumps, and smiling until Phil’s concern washes away. “Let’s get our fuckin’ movie on.”

Tommy wouldn’t miss it for the world.

—

He’s being a little obvious. Even he can feel that.

And if Tommy can feel that, then Wilbur can definitely feel it as he shuffles behind him, feet dragging lethargically towards the library.

He makes it to the doorway before Wilbur stops abruptly, spinning around and thrusting an arm out in front of him. Tommy is too caught up in his own mind to avoid it. Wilbur offers him an amused smile as Tommy clutches his neck, glaring dully at him.

“What the fuck?” he demands.

Wilbur’s smile doesn’t fade, but he does appear more confused. “What do you want?”

Tommy frowns, shifting uneasily on his feet. Dream has left him alone these past few days. Tommy thinks it’s because he’s been too busy preparing for that fencing tournament with Techno. Whatever the reason, Tommy doesn’t question it.

It gives him more room to breathe, and better yet, time to heal. His bruises don’t hurt so bad today, and his mind has been weirdly soft. Like, willingly-study-with-Wilbur soft.

No wonder he’s suspicious.

“What? Nothing,” Tommy answers instantly, and Wilbur tilts his head to the side. Tommy doubles down. “Nothing.”

“Mhm,” Wilbur hums, and he hasn’t even called him out for his lie yet but the syrupy tone of his voice does. “Then why are you following me around, child?”

There goes that softness. Tommy scowls.

“Fuck you, I’m not a child,” he counters gruffly, folding his arms over his chest. Then, after a beat, “And I don’t even want to be around you anyway. You’re boring.”

Wilbur smirks. “Then leave.”

“And stupid,” Tommy insists, ignoring that completely.

His heart doesn’t, ticking anxiously once the word leaves Wilbur’s mouth. Leave, his brain repeats in a poisonous hiss. Wilbur wants you to leave.

Tommy is quick to remind himself that Wilbur doesn’t mean it. Why would he? Tommy has been good, as far as Wilbur is concerned.

Wilbur spreads his arms. “Nobody’s keeping you here, Tommy.”

He wets his lips, chest puffing. “I’m keeping me here, dickhead.” Wilbur opens his mouth, no doubt whipping up a too-eloquent remark to fire back at him. Tommy cuts him off, suddenly not wanting to take it. “Besides, I tore off all Dream’s posters for you.”

Wilbur’s eyes light up, two coffee-colored Christmas bulbs bursting with excitement.

“I did so much sabotage,” he continues. “You kinda owe me, you know. O-W-E me, Tommy. Big Man Tommy, you do—”

Wilbur cuts him off with a jauntily-thrown arm around his shoulder, pulling Tommy close and patting his back before releasing him. For the first time in a few days, Tommy preens instead of flinching.

“That was you?” Wilbur hisses, casting him an excited look. He bumps Tommy’s shoulder, and Tommy mirrors his grin, bouncing him back. “Oh, I adore you.”

Sometimes, Tommy wonders how Wilbur does it. How he knows exactly what to say to make Tommy’s heart swell, to make his blood fizzle with euphoria all the way down to his fingertips.

I adore you. I adore you. I adore you.

Mostly, he wonders how he does it so easily: says things that mean everything to Tommy as if it’s effortless, as if it means nothing.

(And finally, he wonders what Wilbur would do if he knew that each time he scoops out a piece of Tommy’s chest—filling it with light and gold and all those pretty things that Tommy doesn’t really deserve—he digs Tommy a deeper grave.

It’s a nice grave. One he happily drapes himself across the wet-rough soil of, but a grave all the same.)

“C’mon,” Wilbur says, blazing forward towards the oak-rows of books with glossy plastic covers, “You can hang out with me I guess.”

Tommy almost gives out.

He’s practically skipping behind him as Wilbur claims a table for his laptop, and his heart is still doing that same nice skipping as he follows Wilbur towards the bookshelves, watching him skim through some titles about old dead kings and battles-already-fought, and that’s what they are both doing when a familiar smash of green and blonde appears around the corner.

When he sees Wilbur, Dream comes to an abrupt halt, and snarls.

When he sees Tommy with him, leaning against the shelf right next to him like a summer shadow, Dream smiles.

“Soot,” he greets, a caricature of relaxation as he saunters forward.

His hands are shoved leisurely in his pockets, tilted smile fixed dangerously on his mouth. And though he’s looking at Wilbur, Tommy feels every bit of exposed skin on his body prickle with alarm. A strange tightness tugs at his chest, like there’s a physical thing in there trying to make both rows of his ribs intersect.

Wilbur loses every ounce of warmth, and Tommy, behind as he snaps a book shut and inclines his head curiously towards Dream. Tommy shifts on his feet, trying to remain as still as possible, but also behind his brother. He shuffles closer to Wilbur’s back, feeling… remarkably young.

Young in a way that Wilbur has never known him as. Young in a way he never will.

Young in a way that Tommy really wants to be right now.

He doesn’t— he doesn’t want to see Dream, and he doesn’t want Dream to see him. Wilbur is his childhood blanket, pulled naively over his head to keep out the same childhood darkness. It’s a useless blanket, probably, in the long run, but absolutely impenetrable at the same time.

“Dream,” Wilbur announces coolly, fiddling with his book like a panther flicks its tail. “It’s not too late to beg for my vote, you know.” He leans forward, a laugh evident in his voice. “I’d hate for your vote to be the only one you get.”

Dream doesn’t scowl. He doesn’t even flinch.

“Mm,” he hums uncaringly, rolling his eyes. Wilbur’s words go right over him. Tommy’s heart begins a knowing sinking motion down to his stomach. “Always a pleasure, Wilbur.”

He steps forward, and Tommy’s muscles ache with the force that it takes to keep himself still the closer the lion stalks towards him. Dream hasn’t looked at him yet, but that’s— it’s almost worse. It’s worse because he knows that Dream sees him, right? He’s not exactly hidden, and—

“I guess I’ll see you when the votes are drawn, hm?” Dream hums lightly, reaching past Wilbur’s face to pluck a book from the shelf.

Wilbur’s rich sarcasm collapses like a house of cards, grace falling with it. He steps back, nearly bumping Tommy. Tommy can’t see his face, but he can imagine what’s painted on it, the way that Wilbur has probably wrinkled his nose, the way he does when Tommy wipes his hand with his mouth or Techno insists on putting that fancy creamer-stuff in his coffee.

“I guess so,” he responds, voice wobbling into uncertainty as it pitches up, fumbling for the grace he’s lost.

It’s a first probably, but the effect is all the same. Wilbur is stumped, Tommy knows he is. He’s holding a royal flush in his hands, but it’s all the winning cards to a game that Dream isn’t playing anymore—not that Wilbur knows that.

Dream is smiling. He’s still smiling as he sweeps past Wilbur, eyes finally sliding to Tommy.

Just that one look vacuums all the air out of his lungs. His lips part wordlessly, lungs uselessly flapping like gills in his chest. Dream just huffs a silent laugh out as he eclipses Wilbur to pass them both, sauntering easily down the narrow corridor that is feeling tighter by the second.

Dread drenches each footstep. Tommy’s head spins.

Wilbur frowns at Dream’s receding back, that analytical glint that Tommy has grown to hate, the one he knows will find its way back to Techno—not Tommy, never Tommy, he can’t be trusted with this even as he bears the burden of it—the one that promises more of this.

He squints and frowns and dissects the bully’s exit, and Tommy gets the feeling he is trying to solve a puzzle, to decode a secret message.

Tommy, lungs still choking, gets the feeling that he is Wilbur’s missing cipher.

—

“No, no, wait— Dream, wait—”

He slams back-first into the locker, the impact shoving coughs past his throat. Tommy doesn’t let himself fall though, not before he can get his hands up in front of his face, not even though it hurts.

Dream takes another step forward, shaking out his wrist, and Tommy swallows as he shoves him back against the row of lockers behind him.

“Not my face,” he manages to squeeze out, half-crumpling against the rippled metal behind him. “Not my face, please, don’t— not there.”

Dream’s fist hovers in the air and Tommy cringes, eyelashes fluttering as he forces his eyes down. He knows, he knows, that Dream doesn’t have to listen to him, that Tommy is the one hanging off the side of the cliff about to fall—away from the Watsons, away from the only people he thinks really care about him—that Dream can let him go and his sky will remain intact as Tommy’s world crumples inward.

It makes him want to let himself collapse.

But he doesn’t. He tries to hang on.

“I don’t want to go,” Tommy whispers, eyes squeezed shut. “They’ll— I don’t want to leave them.”

There’s silence—tense stinging silence. Tommy doesn’t open his eyes. His deepest confession floods the air between them, turning it electric, and yet all he can do is cast a prayer to gods that never listen to him and hope.

Dream laughs.

He laughs, mocking and so horribly bitter, the way knives sound when they clash together. Tommy trembles even more, humiliation carving through him so deeply.

He only risks opening his eyes when the silence persists. When he does, he finds that Dream has lowered his fist.

“Fine,” Dream grants him, and Tommy sags into the wall against the will of a body that screams at him to remain tense, braced for the onslaught about to find him. “I’m feeling nice.”

He ends up sitting down, a mess of crumpled limbs, against the lockers, head bowed so that strands of blonde hair hang over his eyes.

Tommy presses his lips together over the shaky breath that shudders past them, nodding dizzily. The relief that washes over him is followed by a wrenching shame. He’s almost… happy, that he was spared. It’s a sick sort of happiness that seeps into the semi-circle indentation his clenched fists etch into his palms.

“Well?” Dream’s voice cuts through the haze he starts to tip into, drawing Tommy’s lowered head up. “Is that all you have to say?”

Tommy’s lips part. “I don’t…?”

Dream crouches down, and Tommy doesn’t even have a chance to wince away from the rough hand that grips his jaw.

“What do you say to the person who is letting you keep your… family,” he croons softly. “Because make no mistake, I’m letting you.”

Tommy doesn’t feel his lips move. They do anyway.

“I know.”

“I don’t have to do that, you know.”

He swallows. “I know,” he whispers.

Dream’s eyes glint. “So?”

Tommy’s eyes glaze over. He can’t tell if he’s even here anymore, can’t tell if he hasn’t floated off the planet already.

“Thank you.”

The fingers tighten on his jaw. Tommy’s heart jumps (the rest of him is too paralyzed to do more than that.)

“Hm?”

“Thank you,” Tommy repeats quickly, blinking hard.

Dream’s hand leaves his jaw, but that hand just ghosts over Tommy’s hair. Tommy tries to shrink away from him, ending up choking on a gasp instead.

“You’re welcome,” he smiles, patting Tommy’s head twice.

(He flinches twice.)

And then Dream stands; leaves, satisfied with dangling Tommy’s entire world over his head, satisfied with leaving him crumpled on the floor, barely hanging onto reality.

Feeling like a wrung-out rag, Tommy breathes through his nose and tilts his head back, eyes tracing absently over the ceiling. Fire wraps his ribs in a vice, squeezing and burning all at once.

For once, Tommy is grateful for it. Better his ribs, than his face. Better this, than leaving.

Briefly, as he drifts back down down down, Tommy thinks about how many people have begged for their own undoing.

He wonders if he is the first.

On the walk home, Tommy thinks about coming clean.

He thinks about what it would feel like to just… break. Spill out onto the floor and let his— let the Watsons mop up the glimmering shards into a nice pile.

It shimmers in his head like a dream, foggy around the edges. The fog grows foggier every step he takes, every bolt of fire that lances over his skin, mounting the closer he gets.

Until finally, he breaks. He’ll do it. He’ll tell them everything, and they’ll believe him, believe him when he says that he didn’t ask for this, that he didn’t fight this time, that they don’t have to send him away.

And maybe Wilbur will feel bad enough for him that he’ll let Tommy pester him more at dinner, and Phil might make his favorite food (curry and rice, but only the way he makes it), and Techno will let him sit at the end of his bed and listen to all the cool things he says and–

Tommy’s dream splinters when he sees the note.

Out to grab dinner! Phil’s handwriting denotes. Back soon!

It feels as much like a punch as Dream’s fist had earlier that day. Tommy sways on his feet.

He’s alone. Again. Sure, they’re just out for dinner, but—

Being alone has never seemed so suffocating.

He swallows, wobbles on his feet, before a surge of something better than him hardens over his skin. It’s resilience, or at least, resilience’s distant cousin, and it tells him that it doesn’t have to end here. He can still tell them.

That, too, dies when the Watsons actually get home.

The door pushes open, and Tommy jolts to his feet from where he’d tense as a toothpick sculpture at the kitchen table for the last half hour, waiting for his opportunity. The bruises he’d earned today had pulsed the whole time: proof.

The secret bubbles up his throat, creating a noxious brew in his trachea, but when he prepares himself to open his mouth, nothing comes out.

And when Wilbur, Techno, and Phil stumble inside, they’re laughing, voices blending together like a delicate chord. They’re carrying pizza boxes and a big bottle of Coke and broad grins that fill the den with warmth.

Wilbur spots Tommy standing frozen in the doorway almost immediately. It’s as he pulls him close that the truth he’d tried to deny settles over him. Tommy can’t bring himself to ruin this.

So he doesn’t.

He smiles back and forces pizza down his dry throat and basks in laughter that only make how cold he is that much more pronounced.

And when they notice he’s drifting, caught in a torrent of contemplation, because they always notice that stuff about him, even when they don’t know quite why, Phil asks, so agonizingly concerned, “You alright, kiddo?”

Worried. He’s worried.

Tommy wants to put it in a jar and bottle it. Better yet, he wants to just keep it.

Even solidly situated in a chair, he wants to keel over right there. Kindness splits him open far more than Dream had earlier that evening and it shoves the confession as far away from his tongue as it can possibly be buried.

He lies. “I’m fine. Just… tired.” And no longer hungry. He pushes his plate away, wondering why his vision has started to wobble. He flicks his eyes up. “Can I go to bed?”

Phil answers by reaching out to him. Tommy jolts, but Phil’s hand has never been cruel, and it isn’t now as it flattens over Tommy’s forehead.

“You’re not feverish,” Phil remarks with a frown. “Are you feeling alright?”

Tommy nods. He’s feeling alright in the way that Phil means, so it must be enough.

Phil retracts his hand carefully, and Tommy would miss it if he wasn’t so concerned by the doubt sprinkled over his face, written in his pursed lips.

It’s doubt enough that Tommy is suddenly, deliriously sure that Dream was right. Phil doesn’t believe him, and he wouldn’t believe him about that, wouldn’t think anything but that he’d tried to ruin this on purpose.

Tommy’s been so good lately. He can’t let that happen (a mantra that is starting to become him.)

He nods again. “I’m always fine.”

A hand slaps over his forehead aggressively—Wilbur’s.

Tommy jerks his head to the side, squinting at the way his brother is leaning halfway over the table, grinning like a maniac. Grease clings to the corner of his lips.

Tommy scowls half-heartedly. “What are you doing?”

“Checking your fever.” Wilbur pulls his hand away, frowning. “But no, you don’t feel hot.”

A faint burst of warmth sparks through him, a familiar bravado—as fake as it is a lifeline. He seizes Wilbur’s hand again, slapping it over his forehead.

“Try again,” he demands. “I’m always hot.”

Wilbur yanks his hand back with a roll of his eyes, but not before he flicks Tommy in the center of his forehead. Tommy blinks and reels backward, forgetting everything enough to grin. Wilbur snorts as he turns back onto his pizza.

Tommy spins around in his chair, and Techno groans before he even gets a word out.

“Techno,” Tommy orders determinedly. “Check.”

He drags Techno’s limp hands, maneuvering it so he can flop his forehead against it. Techno just snorts, raising his eyebrows as Tommy leans against his warm palm.

“Am I hot yet?”

“That’s not how it works,” Techno informs him, taking a bite of pizza as Tommy continues to slump against his other hand.

“You don’t know that,” Tommy argues, dropping all of his body weight forward. “Fever equals hot.”

“Whatever you say, nerd.”

But it’s apparently not whatever Tommy says because he lightly shoves Tommy back, reclaiming his own hand. Tommy frowns, scowling at him.

“Prick,” he mumbles, just because.

Techno chooses the garlic knots over acknowledging him. Double prick.

As he spins back around in his chair, Tommy catches Phil smiling at them, which means Tommy has to smile too, and in that tender quiet is when the awareness settles back in.

Slowly, so slowly, the warmth accompanying the smile begins to decay.

He tries to keep it glued-on though, the smile at least, as Phil permits him to go to bed early, and that smile is the only thing that allows him to get upstairs. It’s what allows him to stumble into his bedroom, forcefully ignorant of the bad thoughts even as he has to hold his breath to ease his shirt off.

But the minute his head hits the pillow, and laughter continues floating up to him from downstairs, it’s just Tommy and his thoughts, and Tommy’s thoughts instantly spiral back down into bad.

In the hollow quiet of his bedroom, the first room he’s ever owned entirely for himself, there is nobody to save him from them.

—

Sally sputters out a wicked cough—even Techno flinches at the sound that reverberates through the car as they careen into the car park.

Tommy doesn’t. He barely hears it at all, the same way he barely catches Wilbur’s embarrassed smile in the rearview, shining down at him. Tommy finds that he doesn’t have a quip for Sally today.

(He doesn’t wonder, until later, if that’s why Wilbur’s smile falls.)

Tommy jumps as the backseat door yanks open.

Wilbur leans down, wiggling his eyebrows at him, until he notices that Tommy hadn’t moved.

“You alright?” he asks.

He’s making the same face that he does whenever Sally rattles and shakes and threatens to fall apart. That same Oh God please don’t fall apart where will I put the pieces of you? look.

Tommy inhales. “Yeah.”

Exhales. Wilbur steps back, making way for him to pull himself onto his feet. Tommy does, with only a little difficulty.

“Just fine.”

His chest hurts.

He doesn’t want to be here. He comes to that conclusion that an hour into school, when he makes it through the exam he’d been stressing about the night before and is forced to acknowledge that the dread clinging to him doesn’t end there.

It’s all he is now. Dread. A mess of limbs, waiting an endlessly for a blow, praying ceaselessly for someone to pick him up after.

(Getting one constantly and not enough of the other.)

He gets lucky today. Somehow.

Tommy hardly sees Dream the whole day, and ends up going as far as to stick close to his brothers whenever he sees them, to the point that Techno asks him about it, and he knows it gets weird. It’s that uneasy look on Techno’s face, and the amused-but-questioning smile on Wilbur’s face, that forces Tommy to pull away.

Nothing happens that day.

Tommy goes home and goes to bed early, even before Techno has gotten out of fencing practice, body impossibly sore—not from the bruises he’d already earned but because of how tense he’d been, waiting for something to give.

Nothing had.

It does the next day.

He hears them in the morning talking about some sort of accident; Dream getting mad. He is too tired to realize what it means, mind blue-screening with a vicious cold the minute he hears that name, body shutting down under a flood of pure fear.

But fear is a fool’s quality. Tommy needs to stop forgetting that.

“They’re waiting for me,” Tommy tries, throat straining not to collapse in on itself, cut off all his air. “At— at the car.”

“Tough luck,” Dream hisses, pushing up his sleeves. “Tough fucking luck.”

(Tommy only has a chance to bathe in the hope that Dream will only go for what his clothes can cover before it starts.)

When it’s over, he’s dizzy. He may even be bleeding this time; his scalps stings where it had glanced off the brick of the wall just a little too hard. He all but crawls over to the car, and Wilbur’s irritation at his lateness dies on his lips when he sees the state of him.

(The bruises aren’t showing. They’re covered, and he knows that even if they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t be any more than aching, red splotches with how young they are. But he feels dead, so he knows he must look like it.)

“Not feeling good,” he chokes out before the questions can start flying at him.

Tommy collapses in the back seat, too out of it to notice or care about the worry flooding over him from the both of them.

His eyes are sewed shut by pure exhaustion by the time they get home.

—

His social worker visits later that week.

Tommy nearly collapses in his chair when she leans forward and asks, under a charade of privacy, if anything is bothering him.

“Mr. Watson is worried for you,” she tells him, as if she cares. “He says you’ve been a little down recently.”

Tommy flinches so hard he chokes on air, chest heaving.

“He what?” Tommy chokes, genuinely fearful that he’s about to throw up. “He— no, no. I’m fine.” His burst of panic must startle her, because she leans away, eyes widening. Tommy’s head spins. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. “Seriously, nothing’s going on. I’m just… having trouble at school.”

He bites his tongue so hard he tastes copper, but he doesn’t unclench his jaw until she nods, understanding creasing her powdered face.

“Of course,” she hums, scribbling that down. “That’s totally understandable, with a case like yours.”

Tommy’s heart won’t stop racing, eyes lasered on each line of ink she scrawls. He’s more terrified than he’s ever been about what she’s writing.

Don’t be about Phil. Or Wilbur or Techno or any of them, he wishes he could spit out. I’m the messed up one.

But that’s as much of a death sentence as the truth, so he keeps his mouth clamped shut and tries not to collapse until she finally deems him good to go.

Bad news: she nor Phil mention anything about adoption, nothing about immortalizing Tommy’s presence in their lives to anything beside guardianship.

Good news: she’s just as good at noticing bruises as she’s always been.

(She notices nothing. She leaves.

Tommy can keep doing this.)

He’s a little bit okay with that, he thinks.

Tommy has always had to pay for love. It has never come free to him.

This time, it comes at the price of himself, at the price of being a human canvas for whatever painful colors an overly-egotistical high school bully wants to put on him.

That means it may as well be free, for how willing Tommy is to make that sacrifice. It’s nothing compared to what losing the Watsons would feel like.

It’s nothing.

“A file like yours?” Wilbur echoes, pacing obsessively in front of him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His face is set in a deep frown, lip chewed raw by worried teeth. He turns on Tommy, like he’s supposed to have the answers.

Well, he does, but so do all of them. They’ve probably all seen his file.

He tries for a joke. “She said that to you too, huh?”

Wilbur doesn’t match his amusement, and in fact, the weird look on his face deepens. Tommy swallows, shrinking back against the couch. Wilbur goes very, very still. Shit.

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

For a moment, Tommy is stunned. He blinks, shoulders curling up as Wilbur borderline pouts at him with the force of his concern.

“That I’m fucked up because of my file?”

Wilbur doesn’t look like he wants to nod, but he does anyway, slow and tentative.

(It’s almost pitiful that Wilbur could ever hope otherwise.)

Tommy lets out an awkward laugh, unable to grace Wilbur with the optimism his expression is begging of him.

“Eh,” he tries lamely, “Kinda comes with the terrority of being a traumatized fuck-up, doesn’t it?”

Wilbur doesn’t mimic his laugh. Even Techno, who usually appreciates his self-deprecation, flattens his mouth into a thin line, utterly bleak. Tommy’s teeth sink into the inside of his cheek, fingers beginning to fiddle with a loose thread from the sofa.

“I’m joking,” he hastens to correct, smiling at the both of them. “Of course I don’t believe that—” He coughs. “Of course I don’t believe her.” When Wilbur just continues to sink into his self-contained contemplation, Tommy’s throat tightens. “I mean look at me. I’m fuckin’ awesome.”

He spreads his arms half-heartedly then lets them fall with a dull slap against his thighs when he gets nothing. His fingertips instantly scramble to continue pluck, pluck, plucking at more loose threads.

“You are,” Techno agrees softly, but somehow the affirmation makes the tightness spread from his throat to his ribs.

Wilbur nods emphatically. “Seriously Tommy, you’re our…” He cuts himself off—purposely. Tommy knows because he trips over syllables that sound suspiciously like bruh— and then his eyes go wide. “You’re just… I love you a lot.”

Stop, Tommy wants to say, but he must’ve swallowed superglue or something because his jaw doesn’t obey him. Stop.

He gets his wish, in a bittersweet way, because Wilbur suddenly blinks, and then turns abruptly on his heel. Tommy watches him go, still a little frozen, still a little stunned. He marches robotically down the hall, whispering vehemently under his breath.

Tommy catches none of it.

He does, however, realize that Wilbur has done it again. The brother-thing. He’s taken it back. Tommy hadn’t even had it and he feels the stinging loss anyway.

A lump crawls up his throat. Tommy doesn’t have the right to do anything but shove it down.

Feeling more break-y than he wants to be, Tommy looks at Techno, who stands. His eyes flicker between Tommy on the sofa and the scrap of hallway that Wilbur had disappeared down, truly conflicted.

Static prickles across Tommy’s jaw. He jerks his head towards the corridor.

“You can go to him,” Tommy remarks, gentle permission. When that feels a little too bitter on his tongue, he lets some of his own worry poke through. “He was… acting weird.”

Just like he always does with me—what he doesn’t say.

Techno hesitates. “He’ll be alright.”

He doesn’t look like he believes it, which means Tommy doesn’t believe him. But before Tommy can actually tell him that, Techno takes two steps forward until he’s right next to the couch. He clears his throat. Tommy braces.

Techno shoves his hands into his sweatpant pockets as he stares down at him.

“I can help you with school,” Techno mumbles. “If you’re having trouble.” He clears his throat again, shoulders raising with more certainty. “You can always come to me. You know that, right?”

Tommy’s heart twists like a rag in his chest.

“I— I know,” he pretends, slugging Techno’s waist since his shoulders are too high for Tommy to reach without getting up. “Don’t get all soft on me now.”

Techno doesn’t react. Tommy feels his heartbeat reverberate through his whole body.

“Go,” Tommy insists, clenching his fists. He keeps them tucked in his lap where Techno can’t see them. “Seriously. I’m fine. Magnificent. Splendid, even.” He hesitates, “Uh. What’s another big word for fine?”

Techno’s lips twitch. “Grandiose might—”

Tommy nods delicately. “Yes. What you said. Grain-fuck. Yeah.”

“That’s not what I—”

Tommy grins. “Bye, Technoblade. Goodnight, Technoblade. Love ya, Technoblade.”

Techno holds him tenderly in his eyes for a lengthy second before huffing.

“‘Night Tommy,” he murmurs, eyes flickering towards the floor, no matter how much Tommy feels like he’s silently begging for Techno to meet his eyes. “Love you too I guess.”

Tommy snorts as his heart flies—before sinking right back down. He’s too clammy to let the warmth live for long.

“Now go away.”

Techno huffs again and does, though not without casting another lingering glance onto Tommy, who acquits with him another insistent nod.

Techno goes.

Tommy hates himself for wishing he wouldn’t have.

—

It doesn’t stop.

It doesn’t stop.

It’s a mercy that Dream and the twins only get into every few days. Tommy doesn’t think he’d be able to keep doing this if he didn’t have that time to breathe, to fall into his family’s gentleness and pretend the pain away.

He’s distantly grateful that whatever he’s doing for Dream is working. This violent ego-boost is keeping him at bay.

(From what? his mind tries to ask him, sometimes.

Dream’s fists erase every doubt. He ignores it.)

Tommy keeps quiet. He has to keep quiet.

Even as he begins to picture each jeer his brothers’ throw as a splotch of blue and violet, Tommy keeps his mouth shut. Even as he knows that every interaction his brother’s have will find its way back onto his skin, Tommy decays silently.

It’s the only thing keeping him from really, truly falling apart.

—

“I was wrong, Tommy,” Dream tells him one day, standing over him with Tommy’s blood staining his knuckles.

He’d worn rings today. Tommy hadn’t noticed until his ribs had.

“You’re better than them,” Dream informs him, grinning wickedly. “The Watsons.”

I’m not, Tommy wants to say, but he knows better. And he hurts too bad to feel up to talking anyway. They are so much more than me.

“You’re fun,” Dream continues, pushing his sleeves up. “I’m so glad we were able to come to this agreement.”

Tommy just nods hazily and wishes he could sink into the floor.

—

“You should’ve seen him, Tommy,” Wilbur jests, jabbing a playful elbow at Tommy’s ribs. He is hardly able to snap his teeth shut, silencing the pained gasp that tries to escape. He manages. “He went silent, he was so angry.”

I did see him, Tommy thinks, but he’s floating around in his own brain, absentmindedly scraping his fork against his lunch tray. He was so mad.

Wilbur swivels his head to Techno, who nods, lips twitching minisculely upward in sharp agreement. “He was.”

Wilbur’s eyes light up, a flame catching. “Yeah! I reckon if we keep at it, he might leave us alone.” He laughs, chesty and hopeful. “Hell, he might even drop out of the race altogether–”

“Please,” Tommy chokes out suddenly, hardly louder than a whisper. Beneath his lowered eyes, the cafeteria table begins to blur. “Don’t.”

Wilbur frowns, stopping in his tracks. He peers at him inquisitively. Tommy can feel his gaze on the side of his bowed head, but doesn’t lift his eyes to meet it right away.

He squeezes his hand around his plastic fork, feels it bend against his clammy palm.

“Don’t do anything to Dream,” Tommy manages, heart throbbing and throbbing. There’s a pressure on his lungs, on his skull. He couldn’t look up if he wanted to. Can’t suck in a good breath either. “Please, just—”

He has to choke before he does something stupid like sob, but he comes close. He’s grateful that they’re eating lunch alone today. Just the three of them.

“Don’t make it worse,” he finishes breathily. “Don’t make it worse.”

He tries, at the last second, to lift his voice out of terror and into concern or, really, just anything else, but he falls flat. Techno notices that, he must, because he reaches out. He reaches out, and his gentle hand lands on Tommy’s shaking one, stilling it.

Tommy’s breath hitches. Just that point of contact, that gentle anchor, lends him enough strength to meet his alarmed gaze, a mirror of Wilbur’s, just more diluted.

“Tommy, he’s not going to do anything,” Techno tells him cautiously, throat bobbing. “You don’t need to worry about us, alright?”

He casts a glance at Wilbur, at Tommy’s side, who hurries to nod. He abandons his show of rebuke altogether. And, in a movement that Tommy barely manages not to flinch away from, Wilbur ruffles his hair.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Wilbur agrees, trading his frown for what Tommy thinks is supposed to be a comforting smile, rich with fondness. Like Tommy’s worries are sweet things, as opaque and childish as cotton candy. It might work if anything, concern included, could pervade the cold reaching piercing claws into him. “Yeah?”

To you, Tommy would say, if he was stronger. If his lungs weren’t wheezing, if his throat wasn’t clamping off on its own. Nothing’s going to happen to you.

But he can’t risk breaking the peace his brothers think they command. He can’t risk getting sent away again.

And why should he? Trading bruises and blood for getting to keep the only real brothers he’s ever had? It’s a simple decision. One he’d make every time.

One he’s making now.

“Yeah,” he whispers, smiling past the warning prick of tears, the bruises that ache and ache beneath a shirt that is nearly too small to cover them all. “Yeah.”

Without thinking, he leans against Wilbur’s shoulder, and Wilbur lets him. Tommy sighs, shutting his eyes as Wilbur’s arm comes up tentatively around him. He brushes away the concern plaguing the small, questioning noise Wilbur makes in the back of his throat with a half-coherent mumble.

(He hopes they don’t hear his voice break.)

Tommy deludes himself into thinking he can make it the rest of the day without a problem—just a few more hours—so it makes sense, in an existentially-cruel way, that he doesn’t even make it past lunch.

He’s halfway through the panic attack before he realizes what’s happening.

All he remembers before he shuts down is walking between Techno and Wil—between, because it’s safer that way, even if it isn’t—and hearing footsteps, and a familiar drawl, and turning and meeting olive-green eyes and a cruel smile that focuses right on him, digs right into him—

All it took was one look.

And then everything went blank.

When he floats back down to the Earth, barely grazing it, he’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall. His head is between his curled-up knees, face pressed into it, and the fact that Tommy doesn’t even remember getting here makes him panic more.

Yelling breaks out around him.

“What the hell did you do to him?” slips sharply past the cracks of his mounting panic, followed by a defensive, “Cut the crap, Wilbur! You saw me! I didn’t fucking touch him.”

“Liar,” Tommy gurgles into his knees, choking on his lungs themselves, he thinks.

“Don’t try to talk,” Techno’s voice rumbles, and Tommy jerks his head up. “Just breathe.”

Techno is crouching in front of him, hand hovering over Tommy’s shoulders. He’d seen all of this; he’d– oh God. Tommy almost just fucked up. He almost just– he–

Techno’s face becomes panicked. “Breathe, Tommy, breathe. I’ve got you.”

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut, shaking his head. But he tries, because it’s Techno, and Techno is being so soft with him, hands hovering above Tommy’s shoulders, and if his lungs could listen that would be great. That would be–

“Fuck,” Techno curses under his breath– curses? Techno doesn’t curse. “C’mon. Please, Tommy.”

Please. He’s saying please. Fucking listen to him.

Tommy tries, and instantly collapses. Techno jerks as he falls forward, but he catches him. Tommy’s sweaty forehead lands against his chest, and Techno immediately moves to hold him: one hand grasping the back of his head, the other anchored over his spine.

Tommy shakes as he presses his face into Techno’s collarbone, feels his chest heave just as violently as Tommy’s.

“I think you’re done for today,” Techno murmurs shakily into his hair.

Tommy stills, fingers digging into Techno’s shirt. “No, I’m fine– I’m—”

He gasps again, chokes. A black hole has opened in his lungs and it’s impossible to breathe past it. Tommy’s head spins.

Techno hastily tries to release him but Tommy shrugs him off, unable to bear the contact as much as he needs it. A shell of ice flashes over his skin. He slips.

And then Wilbur is there.

“Tom,” he breathes, dropping to his knees beside them. Tommy raises his dilated eyes, staring at him over Techno’s shoulder, still choking for air. “Tommy–”

“Wil?” he wheezes, feeling how badly Techno wants to push him off, let him get the proper air in, but he doesn’t. “What are you–”

“Slow down,” Techno advises, a touch too sharply, worry like a blade. “Breathe, Tommy.”

Tommy shakes his head; the room sways violently in his frame of his vision.

“You were arguing—”

Tommy’s eyes pop over his own words, panic renewed at once. He tries to straighten, get a look over Wilbur’s shoulder, find out where Dream went, but Wilbur shuffles in front of him. Tommy stops trying.

“You were arguing,” Tommy tries again. “I thought you were–”

Wilbur falters, shoulders and expression falling into disbelief. “What? I don’t give a fuck about him. Not when you’re–” He swallows deliberately, eyes raking over him. Tommy trembles. “You’re not okay. I would never– you think I would–?”

Tommy tunes out the rest of his sentence, but even if he hadn’t, he thinks Wilbur would’ve dropped it anyway, clearly frazzled. But Tommy doesn’t want to think about how easily he does, in fact, think that Wilbur would leave him, or any of the possible answers to that question, really, so he doesn’t.

Tommy shakes his head. “I’m fine, man,” he directs to Techno carefully, because Techno is the one still holding him like he’s going to shake like a car engine and fall apart. “I’m fine.”

“We’re leavin’,” Techno responds to that, not even budging. Tommy’s breath hitches. Techno ignores that too, in a protective way, Tommy thinks.

He helps Tommy up to his feet, because Tommy is grasping his leave too tightly to untangle, and Tommy leans on him gratefully even as protests pour out of him.

“But Phil–” he tries again, knees wobbling–

“Won’t care,” Techno grunts, as Wilbur scoops both of their bags up off the ground.

Tommy makes Techno stop as they wobble forward.

“Promise?”

Techno hesitates, surety vanishing. The hands steadying Tommy falter.

“I– of course I do, Tommy. Of course.”

It’s enough for Tommy to let go, just this once.

“Okay,” he mumbles, brushing his shoulder against Techno’s hesitantly.

He tries not to feel the eyes of the crowd on them, on all of them really, but the two pieces of light at his side make it easy. Techno has his fencing-expression on, the hardened one that goes, I’m going to fuck you up really, really eloquently if you get in my way. He leads him forward, and Wilbur slots into place at Tommy’s side, shielding him from all the eyes and everything else as they make it to the car.

If Tommy weren’t so tired, he’d try to figure out what he said to make Wilbur go all quiet.

Wilbur doesn’t so much as utter a word on the whole way back.

Tommy drifts to consciousness slowly, like a half-popped floatie bobbing to the surface of a pool.

He can still feel panic clinging to him, dregs of it tugging on all his limbs and most of his brain. But he awakens enough for pieces of conversation to wash over him, like pinpricks of light bursting through thick darkness.

He thinks he’s on the sofa. He can’t remember why, but he feels that he is. He’s sprawled across it selfishly, legs propped up in someone’s lap, body slumped against someone else’s, face pressed into their shoulder.

“I’m scared,” someone whispers. Wilbur, he thinks. He’s too tired to open his eyes and confirm that, but he’s mostly-sure. Wilbur has a way of sounding very fragile when he’s scared, not that Tommy has heard it that way often. Shaky and trembling like a lit fuse, and not a good fuse. “I think something is wrong.”

Tommy almost stirs at that, awareness poking at him. He doesn’t want Wilbur to be afraid for him. But before that alarm can bring him up, fingers scrape across the top of his head, carding through his hair, and he floats back down.

“He fell asleep during movie night,” the voice of the warmth holding him remarks quietly, roughly, and that’s Phil. Always, Phil. “Didn’t think that was possible.”

A gruff, dead laugh rumbles from a little bit away, maybe the armchair. Techno.

“He was so tired today,” he says lowly. “I’m surprised he was even able to make it as long as he did, after… earlier.”

It’s the harsh silence that threatens to pull Tommy up the most. Somehow. It rings, scrapes.

“I’m scared,” Wilbur repeats, shifting anxiously from the other end of the couch. “He– he hasn’t acted like this since we first got him. So… pulled back.”

Phil neatly deflects his worry with a chastisement at Wilbur. “Don’t phrase it like that,” he chides. “You make him sound like a dog that we got from the pound.”

“You know what I mean,” Wilbur shoots back. “He’s– I feel like whenever I talk to him, I’m talking to the Tommy I met a year ago.” The whole room seems to flinch at that. The hands threading through his hair still. Wilbur rages on, panic spiralling out of him, “The one who had a panic attack when he broke a cup on accident or– or lost his shit at me that one time for hiding his stuff as a joke, who– who offered to call his social worker after a dumb argument so we could send him away, who–”

“Who didn’t know we cared,” Techno adds. “Yeah, I’ve… I’ve noticed the same thing.”

Phil takes a good, long second to start combing his hair again. “I know,” he eventually admits. “I’ve seen it.”

Tommy almost falls back asleep again in the pause that follows. He’s still so, so tired. He doesn’t remember ever being so exhausted.

“What do we do?”

That’s Techno. That’s Techno, quiet and contained, speaking like he’s talking around his heart to even get the words out.

That’s Wilbur, holding his breath as he awaits an answer, so infallible and sure at school but still Phil’s son, still craving direction and just as young as Tommy when it actually matters.

These are the people that Tommy loves. These are who he is bleeding for.

And this is why he can’t let himself regret it.

Phil sighs, light and heavy at the same time.

“We just have to be there for him, mate,” is the quiet verdict he deals them. “He’ll come to us when he’s ready.”

Another bout of silence; they’re being so careful about not waking him up.

“I hope so,” Wilbur eventually murmurs, sinking back against the sofa as faint movie-chatter reclaims the room. “I hope so.”

Me too, Tommy thinks. I hope so too.

He falls.

Chapter Text

The month of September ends.

The presidential race comes to a close.

Wilbur is squeezing the life out of his hand when the results come in, face shaking in and out of cool expectation and shuddering nervousness. Beside him, Tommy is cloaked in a clammy layer of nervousness himself, for all the wrong reasons.

“You got this,” he thinks he says at one point, ash flaking off the back of his dry throat. He wonders how Wilbur can’t feel him shaking beneath his grip, the unsteadiness of him altogether. “Easy clap.”

He really, in a most selfish horrible way, does not want Wilbur to have this.

Wilbur barks out a half-strangled laugh. “You’re an idiot.”

Tommy huffs a laugh and summons a smile. It doesn’t make it to his eyes.

“Yeah, well, you–”

Wilbur jolts, laptop almost flying off his lap as he leans sharply forward.

“Shut up!” he shouts out, and Tommy is almost offended before he catches the gleam in his eyes and realizes what had happened. If there was any sliver of light left in him, it dies now. The email notification glares threateningly at him, Tommy’s fate wrapped up in blue and white pixels. “It’s here.”

Tommy inhales carefully, sinking back against the couch. There is no charade for him to hide behind anymore; this is it. He can’t tear his eyes away from the blinking screen – no matter how much less painful it might make it later. His chin trembles, and Tommy has to swallow hard around a sudden weight in his throat.

Wilbur’s hand slips away from his, grip relinquishing. His circulation remains starkly cut off, though, this time from terror. It’s pure terror filling the spots in him where his heart is refusing to pump blood into.

He hopes it’s not obvious. Tommy will ruin himself for Wilbur, but he won’t ruin this, never this.

The mouse cursor crawls towards the email. Tommy tenses. All of this entire, gruesome month will be over in just one click. Everything–

Wilbur slams the laptop shut.

Tommy blinks, paralysis breaking. He casts his eyes over to Wilbur, brows furrowing. He’s met not with unmoving determination, or anything resembling confidence. Wilbur has suddenly gone three shades paler, eyes wide and unblinking.

Helplessly, Tommy throws a look at Techno, leaned over the couch, arms braced on the back of the sofa so he’s hovering above Wil’s head. He’s staring down at the now-closed laptop, face a contained mask.

Tommy recognizes the look. It’s the Techno-special, that I’ll catch you look that Tommy finds himself wishing were given to him more often. It means he’s ready, win or lose, to pick Wilbur up.

Techno is much better than Tommy, in that regard. All Tommy is good for here is cheering if Wilbur wins or cussing out Dream’s name if he doesn’t. Even if he was strong enough to carry the weight of what would be Wilbur’s crushing disappointment, Wilbur wouldn’t trust him to. This last month has been proof enough of that.

(A month ago, that harsh truth would’ve burned. Now, it just sort of… falls. Falls inevitably and impersonally like a wave of snow, only barely stinging. Tommy is left to grow cold beneath it. But the cold only burns if he lets himself think about it.)

“C’mon, Wil,” Techno murmurs, eyes taking on a sharp glint. “Accept your presidency with grace.”

It’s almost funny how Wilbur’s ambrosia is Tommy’s ruin. Techno extends Wilbur a reassurance that splits Tommy open. And Wilbur accepts it. Of course he does, and Tommy could never ever ask him to do otherwise.

Wilbur swallows. Determination hardens over his face, and he swipes his tongue over dry lips before letting out a harsh exhale. Tommy pats his back as he eases the device back open, screen flickering to life.

He’s not strong enough to get the words out, but he hopes the sturdy pats sort of get the message across.

Here I am, Wil, he thinks, as Wilbur’s hand shakes and the end of everything soars towards him. I’m here, I swear I am.

Time stops, shakes, and explodes like a bottle of Coke.

Wilbur wins.

Tommy hardly registers it. He wouldn’t have at all, maybe, had Wilbur not shot up from the couch like a firecracker, bursting into a loud yell. Tommy flinches back, eyes widening as his brother whips his body into odd, vaguely dancelike shapes of celebration.

“Call me Mr. President, motherfucker!” Wilbur yells at the top of his lungs, so loud his throat must be rattling around it.

Tommy forces himself up to his feet, latching onto Wilbur’s excitement like a leech. He seems to have enough for the both of them, oozing out of the wild expression on his face, and it fills even the coldest parts of Tommy up.

“Fuck yeah!” he shouts, slugging Wilbur’s arm. Wilbur shoves him, and Tommy stumbles back grinning. “Fuck that green bitch!”

Wilbur throws a fist into the air, beaming and beaming and so happy that it drowns out most of Tommy’s fear. This moment is for Wilbur. It’s all his.

Behind them, Techno whoops low and proud, and Wilbur about throws himself into Tommy trying to crawl over the back of the sofa. Feeling utterly disconnected from his body, Tommy cranes his head over, neck aching, and watches them slam into each other in a mess of clumsy victory.

Techno catches Wilbur’s flailing arms by the wrist, but he’s grinning, unbothered by Wilbur’s excited, attempted assault. Wilbur jumps in place, face splitting open with light.

“I was so worried,” Wilbur confesses in a messy spill, only to Techno, always to Techno. “But I fucking– I did it.”

“You did it, Mr. President,” Techno agrees, and Wilbur is back to beaming.

(There is a rot in Tommy’s chest, choking out the part of him that should be cheering just as loudly.

He hates himself for it.)

Wilbur pulls away from Techno, falling back onto the sofa with a breathy laugh. Tommy drops down beside him on instinct, suddenly wanting to be close. He thinks if he pulls too far away from Wilbur’s light, he’ll disintegrate altogether.

“I fucking knew it,” Tommy grins, leaning close and slinging an arm around Wilbur’s shoulder. “I knew you’d smash this.”

Wilbur swivels his head his way, eyes shining like carnival lights, and sinks against Tommy’s shoulder. It sends dull aching bursts up Tommy’s side, but like this, the pain is easy enough to ignore.

Leaning against his brother feels like a prisoner’s final meal, and Tommy’s heart is full off it at the same time as his body is bracing for something still in the process of coming for him.

Because Tommy was not lying. He knew Wilbur would win – his brother gets what he wants and this is all he’s wanted. Tommy has seen every minute of the election, and only some of it was with his eyes.

Wilbur’s gradual victory is painted across his skin, bursts of twilight that show exactly how frustrated Dream had become with each day that passed. Tommy understands each tinge of pain and twist of bruising like it’s hieroglyphics, and he’s the canvas.

“You’re the only president I trust,” Techno declares, and Wilbur breaks off into laughter.

His face is all flushed and bright, like fireflies are trying to break past his skin from the inside of his face. He deserves it, deserves to feel like that. Tommy will bleed a thousand times for it.

“Wait,” Wilbur blurts out, jackknifing upright and dislodging Tommy, slumped against his shoulder. “I gotta call dad.”

I gotta call dad. Why is that Tommy’s killing blow?

Wilbur scrambles away for his phone, and Techno pulls back from where he’d been keeping some sort of watch over the both of them and it’s the perfect opportunity, the gap in a stage curtain.

Tommy makes his exit, and he goes quietly, but he does not go gracefully.

The house he’d attempted to engrave his worth into shakes and warps in his vision, and the walls twist unfamiliar and cramped as he stumbles through them. He’d befriended the bathroom for its first aid kit throughout this whole month, but even this surpasses what he’s had to do.

Tommy lands unevenly on his knees in front of the toilet, and this is when he finally breaks.

Tommy throws up until his throat is raw, chest heaving. This time, he can feel the panic attack coming on, and this time, he’s prepared to let it ruin him. Tommy is too tired to fight this. All he is and all he’s been is tired.

At least Wilbur won. At least Techno has something to hold over Dream tomorrow.

His stomach heaves again, and Tommy’s lunch and all his energy empties into the toilet.

As he clings to the linoleum tile, heart a dying thing in his chest, Tommy wishes he could spit out his terror with it.

—

There’s a celebration that Tommy attends in everything but soul.

Phil takes a picture of them, all of them, and that’ll probably float to the surface of his Facebook with a caption that Tommy barely qualifies for and Tommy won’t look at it because he will be able to see how untrue his smile is.

“My boys,” Phil says, and Tommy’s heart cries, because he doesn’t feel like one of his, and he doesn’t share in this celebration and he doesn’t want to lose this and tomorrow he will be a dead boy walking.

“I still can’t believe I did it,” Wilbur says, staring disbelievingly at his hands, somehow unsure even though this truth has already imprinted itself into Tommy’s head with a ferocious certainty and he is losing the pieces of himself capable of keeping this act up.

“You okay, Tommy?” Techno says, always finding him right when he is at his lowest, face twisted into concern that is so damn tempting, and Tommy smiles and nods for Techno, and that lie tastes the sweetest.

—

Tommy doesn’t remember most of the next morning.

He thinks that’s his brain’s way of revving up, getting ready for what he knows is going to happen. For every waking second that he drags himself through, fear taints it, spills forward images of a steel face contorted into anger, red-knuckled fists turned redder, a pain that comes from everywhere and nowhere and never stops.

Tommy does remember how he’d opened his eyes the next morning in a bed that cradled him like a cold burial plot. He’d gotten no sleep last night, but he hadn’t woken up tired. There was no room for exhaustion, not when all of him was being taken up by panic.

Tommy’d even considered calling in sick, and the worst part is, they would probably have let him. The Watsons are always careful with him in that way – tantalizingly careful. That unending goodness is what allows him to offer himself up to the oncoming badness.

No matter what happens at school, he gets to come back and keep this. Dream can’t hurt him forever and if he does, well. They make it worth it. Tommy’s okay with this forever.

Still, though, he thought he would have more time than this.

Keeping close to Wilbur and Techno as they walked into school that morning was supposed to be his saving grace. In his stupid, childish clinginess, he only guarantees himself a front-row ticket to the oncoming collision.

“Wilbur.”

Everything from his footsteps to his heart stutters at the sound of Dream’s voice.

Tommy watches in slow motion as Dream stops in front of the three of them, eyes flitting agitatedly over his brothers’ faces. There’s a tense smile carefully carved onto his face. It feels Tommy up with dread from his toes to his throat.

He shifts back into Techno’s shoulder without thinking. Techno shoots him a quick look that Tommy doesn’t catch more than a glimpse of before slotting neatly closer. The pressure circling Tommy’s lungs loosen, just a bit. Techno feels like protection.

Dream won’t do anything in front of him. Tommy is fine. Unlike Techno, Wilbur does not stay in place. Instead, he grins – full and courteous and so obviously exultant – and offers Dream a condescending dip of his head.

“Dream,” he greets, tongue running over his teeth as glee bleeds past his gums. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Dream’s smile, tense as it may be, doesn’t falter.

In all the ways he’d pictured this very moment, Tommy hadn’t expected Dream to be so… contained. He’s never contained with Tommy: all angry strikes and messy emotion. He wonders how he’s able to do it when the shame of it all must be burning him alive.

How long had he spent tormenting Tommy just for this stupid, unimportant title? How long had he done that, only to lose? Tommy has never seen such a restrained wildfire.

“Well done,” Dream grits out. He extends a hand between them, and Tommy can’t help but feel like it’s a threat. “I put up a good fight.”

Wilbur doesn’t take his hand. Dream’s eyes flash.

“Something like that,” Wilbur agrees.

There. Dream’s jaw ticks – a crack racing through the blank mask he’s wearing, composure slipping.

Dream’s hand tightens into a fist. He draws it back towards him, lowering it at his side.

“I’m trying to be polite, Soot.” Wilbur swallows a scoff. Dream runs a scathing tongue over his teeth. “Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

“Don’t blame me for being surprised.”

A splash of gasoline. Dream shoves his hands into his pockets with an unnecessary fury. Finally, the dam he’s been maintaining breaks. The words that rush out of him are dipped with the same mad, incoherent glaze that he uses whenever he’s rambling to Tommy between punches.

“This isn’t over, Wilbur.”

Techno shifts closer to Wilbur at that. Tommy can’t help but feel utterly exposed, skin turning slowly to ice. He doesn’t call Techno back though – that would be stupid. Tommy just swallows and wraps his arms around himself.

Wilbur’s eyes flash. “I think it is, Dream,” he retorts coolly, mimicking the venom Dream had used on his name. “You lost.”

Dream just laughs, high and ragged. Desperate. Goosebumps prickle across Tommy’s skin.

“Not yet,” he breathes. “Not yet.”

Wilbur finally, finally, pulls back. It’s not really a surrender so much as it is confusion, and impatience.

He frowns. “You know, man, denial is not a good look on you.”

Dream scoffs, shaking his head. He’s almost jittering on the balls of his feet now, shaking out his fists at his sides. It’s nothing short of predatory, a wildcat bracing to go for the kill. Tommy has never felt more like prey.

“Just wait,” Dream insists, that reedy, razor-blade quality still sharp in his voice. “There’s still so much more for you to lose.” His eyes swivel to Tommy, stealing his breath. Every word he utters is delicate and calculated and pierces into Tommy with surgical accuracy. “So much.”

And Dream might be speaking to Wilbur, but his words are for Tommy. He knows that like he knows how to breathe, knows in a way that is primal, and fearful.

(Dream won’t stop looking at him.)

“Suuure,” Wilbur drawls. He eyes Dream warily. And he might not understand the intentions lacing Dream’s rants, but anyone with eyes could see that Dream looks one spark away from blowing up like a fuse. “...That’s a completely normal thing to say.”

Dream doesn’t bother justifying that with a response. Instead, he just continues to hold Tommy in place with a scarily blank gaze. Tommy, even surrounded by his brothers, can’t help but feel trapped, pinned like an insect. Except he doesn’t have any butterfly wings, so his heart takes the pins instead. Each thundering heartbeat hurts, and terror leaks through the holes.

Dream finally releases him to turn, storming off without another word. Tommy doesn’t quite breathe when he’s gone, but his lungs make an attempt at it.

Wilbur’s frown deepens, brows furrowed as he watches Dream weave between the thickening groups of students in the hall.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Wilbur grumbles, shouldering his backpack.

Tommy is lightheaded. “No fuckin’ idea,” he lies, barely opening his mouth.

Strike one, whispers a voice in his mind, one that sounds like snakes hissing and punches falling. Strike one.

A timer hangs over his head for the rest of the school day.

Tommy’s hope to ward off Dream by hovering obnoxiously close to his foster brothers is shattered before lunch.

“Tommy,” Wilbur says, slapping a hand on his shoulder from behind and nearly sending his heart ripping from his chest. Tommy wheels around with wide eyes and a heaving chest, none of which Wilbur seems to notice. “Are you okay walking home today?”

Tommy blinks. Brain moving slowly, his eyes slide over Wilbur’s shoulder and onto Jack and Niki, huddled behind him. Niki has always been nice to him, even before he’d… adjusted, and she’s nice now. Niki waves with a little smile.

Tommy tries to smile back, hand lifting lamely at his side. Whenever he’s with Wilbur’s friends, Tommy tries extra-hard to not be the same stomped-on foster kid they’d met a year ago, the one with ratty trainers and a hood up all the time. It’s harder than usual. The stomped-on and scrappy skin is always an easy skin to fall into. It’s even easier now.

“Tommy,” Wilbur repeats, and he blinks.

Oh, right. Wilbur had asked him a question.

“Uh, what?”

“Walking home,” Wilbur says slowly, scraping his eyes over Tommy like he’s not sure he’s all there. (To be fair, Tommy isn’t sure himself.) “Once school ends. Are you okay with that?”

That wakes him right up. Dread like ice crawls through him.

“What?”

Wilbur huffs, winding up to ask again with no small amount of irritation, “I said–”

But Tommy steps forward, closer to him, swinging his eyes wildly between his brother and his brother’s friends.

“No, no, I fuckin’– I heard you,” he interjects, swallowing hard. “Just–” He takes a breath, not letting panic shove out of his mouth like it wants to. His throat is so dry. “Why?”

It’s not a plea. He refuses to let it sound like a plea. He doesn’t know if he succeeds, but Wilbur doesn’t react.

Wilbur shoulders his backpack, motioning to Niki. “We’re going to hang out.” He puffs his chest. “Celebrate my victory, and all.”

“That means we’re going to party,” Jack sings, wiggling his eyebrows at Tommy. “Niki here always throws–”

Niki punches his shoulder. Any other time, Tommy would grin at Jack’s faux-indignation, mouth snapping shut.

“Shut up,” she jabs, but there’s a guilty, pink flush dusting her cheeks. Like she doesn’t want Tommy to know, maybe because he’s so young, like his youth has ever really protected him from the bad things of the world. “Don’t listen to him.”

Tommy nods, only half-comprehending.

At least it’s not a malicious lie. Niki’s too sweet for that. Wilbur’s dumb grin exposes the truth in her denial, and it’s playful and stupid and so happy that a long-dead part of Tommy wishes he could wipe it off his face. Something about misery and company.

Focus.

He digs his nails into his palms. Rocking back and forth slightly on his feet somehow makes him feel more balanced. “Well, can’t you drive me home first?”

He doesn’t mean to pout, and doesn’t realize that he is until he sees the syrupy look of pity that Wilbur gives him.

“We’re leaving early.”

Jack nods his head. “Like, right now early.”

Strike two, wells a deadly feeling in his gut.

“Oh.”

Wilbur nods. “Yeah.”

Tommy wets his lips.

“Right,” he murmurs through the building nausea. “Well… what about Techno? Can’t he take me?”

That syrupy-pity is back. “He’s going too.” Wilbur snorts, brushing a loose brown curl out of his face. Fondness shimmers over his expression. “He promised he’d be social one time if I won.”

It sounds like something Techno would say. That hardly makes it better.

He can’t bring himself to leave it at that. Even if it’s annoying Wilbur, which he’s sure it is, he can’t. As his heart begins a steady crescendo, he throws one last plea into the void and hopes Wilbur will catch it.

“Can I come with you?” Tommy blurts out, heart clawing up his throat like it wants out of the mess that he is. “Please?”

Wilbur winces, pain twisting across his face. “Tommy…”

Ouch. That’s a no, if he’s ever heard one. Wilbur lets him down gently enough, but Tommy’s heart still cries out when he hits the ground.

“Right,” he mutters. “Yeah, I get it.”

Nobody likes little brothers tagging along anyway. Especially not ones like him.

Silence swells, heavy and awkward even in the large hallway milling with other students. Tommy stares at the linoleum and wishes he could sink down into it like mud.

Wilbur shifts his weight back and forth between his feet. “So…?”

Tommy briefly, briefly considers the possibility of saying no. He briefly wonders if Wilbur would actually let him, if this isn’t a question at all. If this isn’t a question because it shouldn’t have to be, because Wilbur making him walk home shouldn’t strike terror deep into him, shouldn’t be anything more than a fifteen minute inconvenience.

A million thoughts flurry for attention in his skull. Thoughts like, Please don’t. Just this once, don’t make me be alone. I’m scared. Questions, too. Like, Why can’t I skip? Why can’t you just drive me home now? Why can’t you wait two hours?

And finally–

That’s not good enough, a vicious part of Tommy insists. None of this is a good enough reason to leave me to the wolves.

But that’s not fair to Wilbur, is it? Wilbur isn’t leaving him to the wolves – he doesn’t even know the wolves are there. Or rather, the wolf.

Wilbur is just celebrating. He’s happy. How could Tommy ever, ever take that from him?

He can’t. Saying no was never a possibility. Just like it hasn’t been for this entire month.

And, lilts a twisted voice in his brain, what good will running get him? What, except a moment to catch his breath – a delay and nothing more.

(Humans are selfish, primal creatures, and Tommy is no exception. He takes the option that will hurt less. He doesn’t run.)

And maybe, maybe Dream won’t bother him. Maybe today is where it ends. Maybe now that the dumb presidency is over, he can come to his senses. Maybe Tommy doesn’t have to hurt anymore.

(But while Tommy is a lot of things, he’s not stupid or self-deprecating enough to really believe that.

He pretends, though, tucks that excuse against his chest like he’s a corpse in a coffin and that’s a bouquet of black roses he’s cradling: a bouquet that’ll follow him right into the ground when it’s time.)

Tommy stops trying to save himself. He lets his protests die.

Just be home later, he almost makes Wilbur say. It’s going to hurt so bad.

But he doesn’t say a word. He never does.

“Fine,” he mumbles, kicking at the linoleum floor with the toe of his sneaker. “I guess I’ll walk home.”

Wilbur cracks a grin. Tommy is too busy staring at the hazy blobs of light bouncing off the linoleum to see it, but he feels it. Catches Wilbur’s anxious posture going a little slacker in his peripheral.

“It’s fifteen minutes. I’m sure it won’t kill you.”

The walk won’t, Tommy thinks, and it’s gallows humor. That’s all this day has been.

“Yeah.” He cranes his head back up, wondering why it suddenly has become a bit more difficult to breathe. The hallway distorts violently in his vision. “Yeah, I’ll be, uh, fine. Yeah.” Deep breath. In, out. You’re not a baby. Breathe. “See you later?”

Tommy clears his throat when it starts to tighten, trying to hide the waver he feels rippling through his voice. It’s not enough. Wilbur’s smile falters, storm clouds descending over his gaze. Storm clouds that pierce into Tommy, so gently concerned.

A strange, grave sort of tension holds every molecule of air hostage. The school hallway suddenly feels less like a paper mache construction of tile and brick, and more like the edge of a precipice, an abyss stretched menacingly between them. It feels like the end of things.

Tears sting Tommy’s eyes. He doesn’t know why. It takes everything he has to keep himself together.

Don’t cry in the fucking hallway, Tommy. Don’t be a bitch. This is nothing.

Wilbur’s visible, but perhaps unclear, worry flays him alive.

“Yeah,” Wilbur agrees softly, somehow making that sound like a promise. “See ya.”

And then he reaches out, ruffles Tommy’s hair like he’s done a million times before, and that revives something in Tommy. He shoots forward, shoving away Wilbur’s arm and hugging him instead.

Wilbur startles as Tommy slams into his chest, burying his face into Wilbur’s collarbone, holding him. But he relaxes just as quickly, arms coming up around Tommy to hold him back, even if he’s confused.

Tommy exhales raggedly, squeezing his eyes shut until there is just this.

Wilbur’s laugh shakes his chest. “You’re awfully clingy today,” he mumbles, chin flat on top of Tommy’s head.

Tommy doesn’t respond to that.

He just stays there, wrapped in peace and Wilbur’s arms, for a few more precious seconds that barely last a heartbeat. And then he pulls back, sniffling and maybe shaking, and wishing desperately that he didn’t have to bear himself to cruelty to keep this. All of this, all of them, the Watsons, the world. His world.

Jack elbows Wilbur’s side, breaking the moment. “Ready?”

Wilbur nods slowly, eyes snagging on Tommy, who ducks his head and steps back.

Blinking hard, Tommy watches his brother open his mouth to say something, falter, swallow. Try again. He forgets about Jack for the moment, eyes only for his foster brother, it seems.

“Do…” he starts, brows furrowing like Tommy is a puzzle he cannot decipher. “Do you wanna play Minecraft when I get back tonight?”

Tommy blinks, momentarily thrown. Minecraft…? He doesn’t understand why Wilbur is asking him about Minecraft.

“Like old times,” Wilbur adds. “I– I bet we can get Techno to join. Like, you know, we all used to.”

Like old times. Like they used to. Like Tommy’s first few months in the Watson house. All of that seems astronomically far away from Tommy.

Shared blankets and cramming around Techno’s PC or being on the same Discord call and still screaming at each other from different rooms, staying up until Phil knocked on their doors with a fondly exasperated smile to send them to bed (devolving into hushed whispers instead of listening) – it’s like it belongs to another person.

Tommy can’t even remember when the dread of this last month had finished him off, but it must’ve, because his skin doesn’t even feel like his own anymore. Tommy’s old skin wasn’t so colorful.

And he finally understands that Wilbur is asking him about Minecraft for the same reason that Tommy hugged him. They are dancing around a gravestone neither can see, can only feel, and Tommy might not actually be dying, but he thinks that in trying to live, he’d brought himself closer to it.

But Minecraft. Old times. That would be so… nice.

“I– yeah,” Tommy admits. A breathless little laugh escapes him. “Yeah, yeah, I’d– I’d like that.”

Wilbur’s lips quirk. “Good.” He shoulders his bag, affectionate look not dropping even as the moment ends. “See you later, loser.”

“Bye, prick.”

“Bastard child.”

“Dickhead.”

“Love you.”

“Love you, too, idiot.”

And then he’s gone, a meteor shimmering out of existence, taking its light with it.

And then it’s just Tommy, and the linoleum, and a hallway of students on a different plane than him, and a bully he can’t outrun, and the end of the line.

Strike three.

—

When Dream hits him, all the grief he’d been carrying that morning shatters.

Gone is the dread, the predisposed grief, the weight that had clung to him. Dream throws a hard fist into the side of his face, and it sends Tommy whipping back through time, invoking something old and dead and not-healed inside him.

The self he’d spent the month ruining for the Watsons is finally, finally pushed over the edge.

When Tommy slams into the wall, numbness prickling over his jaw, he is at his most ruined. And the self that hits the ground is not the thing that Dream had whittled him into.

It is the slumped-shouldered, sharp-eyed, glaring foster kid that had been dumped onto the Watsons’s porch like a lost wallet.

It’s the kid with nothing to lose, nothing to give. The jagged kid, the scrappy kid. The version of Tommy that had been so angry at the world he had fought and kicked and flailed against every attempt at love that was extended his way.

The Tommy that was mean.

And for just a moment, for the first time in a long time, in a way he doesn’t understand–

Tommy forgets how to be afraid.

“Motherfucker,” Dream screams, slamming Tommy to the ground with a reckless rage. He lets himself crumple, blood humming, his veins a network of live wires under his skin. “Fuck!”

The locker room is silent, and empty, but Dream’s rage fills every inch of it up. He paces, clenching and unclenching insatiable fists. Curled against the wall, Tommy takes this moment to breathe.

Numb hand disconnected from his body, Tommy wipes the back of his hand across his stinging nose, feels crimson smear the side of it, red and angry.

Oh, he thinks belatedly, blinking hard as Dream paces maniacally in front of him, body shaking. The side of his face throbs and throbs, and Tommy presses a cold hand to the swelling bruise. He’s not being careful anymore.

Hands seize his collar, dragging him up off the floor. Tommy grunts as he’s pressed up against the wall, air almost cut off.

Dream’s face, made out of vitriol, swims in front of his eyes. Tommy only registers it distantly.

“Your brothers are scum of the fucking Earth, you know that?”

It’s so violently untrue that it rolls right over him. Dream would have an easier time convincing him that the sky was fucking red. Tommy’s brothers are the Earth – they’re everything.

The impact of the wall against his spine should hurt, he knows that. When Dream shakes him, starving from the reaction he doesn’t get, it should hurt. But it doesn’t. Not yet.

“That presidency was mine,” he sneers. “Mine. He took it from me.” The raggedness of his voice fades, dropping into something quiet and dangerous, the sharp swish of a blade through the air. “That means I get to take something back from them.” A wild look that almost manages to break past the shroud keeping his fear contained. “Right?”

Tommy swallows, throat pulsing uncomfortably. He knows he’s the something.

“I’ve been careful for too long,” he breathes. Cruel fingers grip Tommy’s chin. His breath hitches, heartbeat thundering in his ears as Dream studies him with dilated eyes. “What’s the point of any of this if they don’t get to see?”

Tommy cringes away, throat bobbing as he tries to get away from Dream’s hands. He has nowhere to go, lockers and raised metal pressing in on him from all sides. School had ended – Dream had made sure of that when he’d cornered him. There’s not even a witness to bear this.

“So, what do you say, Tommy?”

The question is for him as much as it isn’t. Surely Dream has slipped far too deep into some sort of hysteria to really be talking to him anymore. Still, his voice scrapes over Tommy’s eardrums like melodic knives.

Tommy remains silent, jaw clamped shut. His silence is the stage Dream has been building, one he too-happily moves himself across.

“One last… lesson,” he finishes in a hiss, thumb pressing into Tommy’s jawbone where he cradles it, “to put your brothers in their place. Show them what happens when they get in my way. How does that sound?”

Tommy spits in his face.

The manic light in his Dream’s eyes dies, snuffed out like a flare losing life. Dream reels back just enough to give Tommy a bit of air, surprised and disgusted at once. One hand releases from the crumpled collar of Tommy’s shirt, Dream swiping at his face with the sleeve of his hoodie.

Tommy revels in his shattering composure. He bares a wild grin.

“Fuck you,” Tommy sneers, heart thumping loud against the cruel hands braced over his collarbone. “Fuck you, you piece of shit.”

Nobody says fuck you better than a foster kid with too much anger and nowhere to put it. Dream, for all the messy fury that he usually is, is shocked into silence.

“What?”

Just the tone of his voice throws up bright, crimson flags screaming, DANGER.

But Tommy has never been good at following orders.

“You’re pathetic,” Tommy hisses, ribs aching under the strain of keeping his heart from beating out of his chest. He pushes up into Dream’s grip, sneering. “Hurting me because of what? Because Techno is better than you at fencing?”

The grip tightens, a warning. Tommy doesn’t heed it.

“Because Wilbur won that stupid fucking presidency? Because it’s the only fight you have a chance at winning?”

A gasp is torn from his throat as Tommy is slammed harshly down onto the floor. The air is punched out of his lungs and kept out as Dream gets his knee down on Tommy’s chest, pushing. His face is red, nostrils flared, as he presses down against Tommy’s collarbone.

“Shut. Up.”

Tommy does, only to gasp at the sudden pitch of the world around him, the slam to the floor. Blood pools on his tongue. He’d bitten his lip on the way down.

Tommy grins through it.

“It’s not Wil’s fault you have to have a good personality and a brain to be a student president, you dumb f–ah–”

A warning slam against the tile, head bouncing off, more pressure on his chest that takes his breath away. Tommy winces, clinging hard to his momentum.

“There’s not a single bruise you can put on me that’ll make your bruised ego hurt less,” Tommy laughs raggedly. “But keep trying. That’s what you’re good at right? Failing? Losing?” The laughter dies, leaving only an icy glare on his face. If Dream’s knee wasn’t crushing his ribcage, Tommy would headbutt him.

“Get fucked, Dream.”

Dream freezes, and so does time, just for a moment. The room itself holds its breath as Tommy’s words slam into Dream like an actual blow. He watches, grappling for air under a crushing wait, as Dream’s expression crystallizes into ice.

A glacial, hollow laugh scrapes off Dream’s throat. Chills prickle over Tommy’s skin.

“I am going to fuck you up.”

He throws a fist towards Tommy’s face.

Tommy moves.

He twists to the side, adrenaline seering his veins. Dream’s fist sails past his face, and Tommy reels back only to slam his forehead into his nose.

The swear Dream shouts out mixes with the sound of a deliciously sickening crack. Tommy rolls to the side as Dream falls backward, releasing him from the cage of his heavy limbs. Pain reverberates harshly through his skull – his own doing – but the adrenaline numbs the worst of it.

Take that, bitch, he’d say if his lungs weren’t already working overtime. How does that fucking feel?

Dream recovers quick enough to squash any chance of Tommy making it out the door of the locker room – not that he’d tried to. He’s too keyed up, fists aching with the need to enact a gritty revenge, even if it’d pale in comparison to everything Dream has done to him.

And that need is so strong that Tommy can’t even feel his older, unhealed injuries flare under his clothes as he tackles Dream back onto the floor.

Tommy’s the one on top now, and he wastes no time in showing Dream exactly how it feels to get punched in the face by a kid who's been fending for himself for most of his life. His knuckles sting, and Tommy inhales the rush.

He doesn’t get the chance to do more before his legs are being kicked out from under him. His breath hitches as Dream trips him, body toppling clumsily forward– directly into him.

A hand closes around his arms, another threading through his hair, and then Tommy’s moment of victory is over.

He can’t help but yelp as Dream yanks him by his hair, tossing him into a row of lockers that clang violently as Tommy slams into them. A broken sort of sound leaves him as he falls into a graceless heap, landing harshly on his side.

Limbs prickling with static, he manages to roll himself on his back, then heave himself upright. The raised metal of the locker behind him groans as Tommy sits up against it, breathing hard as he tries to orient himself. The wrist that had tried to catch his fall aches like no other.

Fast, heavy footprints slap off the tile towards him.

Panic breaks his mind into a thousand fragmentations.

Tommy tries to get his knees up and his arms in front of his face as Dream stomps over, sure that he’s about to get his face kicked in, the room hasn’t even stopped spinning yet–

But instead, Dream kneels, hand finding its way back into Tommy’s hair, twisting and yanking, head wrenched up and back, an ache already spreading–

The beautiful shadow of what is going to be an excellent black eye stares at him. It mashes harshly with the murder that is Dream’s expression.

Blood drips from his nose, and that’ll bruise too, but Tommy’s pride is stolen with the breath from his lungs as Dream kneels over him, a human-shaped bomb about to explode, and Tommy the only casualty to take the damage.

“Good one,” he breathes, tightening his grip in Tommy’s hair and seeming to relish in the little sound of suppressed pain he lets out. “You learn that from the streets?”

Tommy chokes out a bitter, coppery laugh. The streets. Sure.

“Nice black eye, dumbass,” he chokes back in response, grin lopsided on one side like a broken hanging sign. “I didn’t think you could get fuckin’ uglier. Guess I was wrong about that too.”

It’s a playground insult, meant to rub salt in the wound more than to really hurt his feelings. Tommy is losing energy too quickly to come up with anything truly clever.

To his surprise, Dream grins.

He releases Tommy with one hand to brush his fingertips across the red, puffy under eye flesh. Tommy squints, watching him probe the wound with the pads of his fingertips, watching his grin widen.

“You didn’t think this one through, did you, Tommy?” Dream hums, lowering his hand. He clicks his tongue, shaking his head like a condescending parent, and Tommy curls back against the wall as much as he can. “I thought you knew better than to leave a mark.”

Tommy swallows. Caution creeps over his skin, a flimsy shield.

“...what?”

Dream leans back, and Tommy’s scalp weeps in relief once his hair is released. Tommy sags back against the metal wall behind him, free, but locked in confusion all the same. He doesn’t like the threat that seems to linger just under the surface of what Dream’s saying, like a shark fin.

Dream gives him a horrible, pitiful frown. “Do you think they’ll be surprised?” he asks. “When they find out you attacked another student?” Tommy’s heart drops into his stomach. “Do you think they’ll be disappointed?”

He laughs, loud and cruel. Tommy flinches away from it and finds he has nowhere to go. The room closes in, folding on top of him like a collapsed house of cards. 

The sparkling twinkle in his eyes mocks him. “Do you think they’ll bother to hear your side before they send you away like every other kid they’ve taken in?”

Panic weaves vines in his throat, squeezing and constricting and smothering and–

Tommy shoots forward, limbs flailing as he tries to stand, escape from the horrible horrible accusations assaulting him, but he’s still blocked in by Dream’s kneeling body.

Dream plants one splayed hand against the center of his chest, holding him still. Tommy shakes, splitting along his raggedy seams. His lungs won’t rise all the way.

“The way I see it,” Dream sings, a dissonant melody that scrapes claws against Tommy’s eardrums, “You assaulted me.” Tommy’s breath hitches, then disappears from his lungs altogether. Dream grins, leaning closer. “I, for one, doubt that anyone won’t have seen it coming.” Tommy can’t tell which is compressing his chest more: Dream’s hand, or the pressure of what he’s saying. Either way, he’s left to suffocate. “Foster kids always snap.”

He finally leans back, giving Tommy more space, but no more air rushes to him. He’s still dying. And even with Dream relaxed, and not so oppressive, Tommy doesn’t try to move. The weight of the threats – not threats, venomous truths – are enough to keep him pinned in place.

“No,” he finds himself choking on. “No, no, they wouldn’t–”

He almost keels over, grappling for air and any scraps of goodness or golden memories he can summon, any proof that the Watsons wouldn’t just kick him out because of one thing.

(As if it’s ever taken more than one thing before.)

Dream raises an eyebrow. “They wouldn’t what? Wouldn’t trade you out for a kid who knows how to listen? One whose existence isn’t a fucking burden?” Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. Dream’s voice floods into his skull, filling every inch of it up with poison. “God, Tommy, I knew you weren’t smart but I didn’t think you were that stupid.”

They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t. They wouldn’t.

Over and over to himself he chants, not strong enough to say it out loud and subject it to Dream’s ridicule but too weak, too clingy, too stupid to let go.

“The proof’s right here,” he adds, voice coming more distant under the haze of Tommy’s spiral. He doesn’t even need to talk loudly, sharply anymore. Tommy is listening. “I guess I should thank you for that.”

His eyes flutter open, puffy and red and framed by wet eyelashes and all he can see is that blooming shadow of a black eye.

All he can see is another line on his file, another house gone, another round of shoving the clothes he’s allowed to keep into a black trash bag, another family gone, another heartbreak to confine to unfocused smudges of memories (because facing them in their painful clarity will be too much–)

They wouldn’t, he swears to the universe, even as that secret prayer unravels. They’d believe me. They love me.

But Tommy can’t say it out loud. He can’t. His throat clamps up before he can even think about it.

Because Tommy hasn’t known much love in his life, but what he knows about love is that it isn’t always enough.

Wilbur will say he loves him before he calls him his brother, and Techno seems to love him but never as much as he loves Wilbur, and Phil loves him but hasn’t even tried to adopt him and there’s a lot of things you can love and stand to lose, like birthday presents and nostalgic TV shows and foster kids you only committed to loving and not to keeping.

And just like that, Tommy remembers what it feels like to be afraid.

He doesn’t realize he has buried his face into his hands, shielding himself from the reckoning that Dream has become, until his arms are being wrenched away by angry hands he’s come to know too well.

He snaps his head up, ruined and fragmented and teary-eyed and fearful, and Dream studies him like an insect.

“Much better,” he remarks, gripping Tommy’s chin harshly. “Maybe there’s hope for today after all.”

Tommy trembles, a sob clawing up his throat.

“Please,” he whispers, shrinking away, curling up, wishing to be anywhere else in the world, but especially with his family, in Wilbur’s old ass car or Techno’s too flat mattress or Phil’s gentle embrace even if he doesn’t deserve any of it. “Please, don’t, please Dream, don’t, please–”

Dream stands with a disgusted scoff. “Sorry, Tommy,” he responds airily, pushing up his sleeves, thick silver rings glinty harshly beneath the cold white light, promising to make this hurt even more. “But we’ve got some lost time to make up for. And I still have a message to send.”

He peers down at Tommy, his smile wondering where exactly to plant the first blow, where the colors will be the most brutal. Anger creeps sneakily into his expression, potent and violent, thirsty from being put off for so long.

Dream draws his arm back, and Tommy swallows a whine.

“Tell your brothers I said hello.”

Tommy stops really fighting after that.

Tommy doesn’t remember when it ends.

Pain blots out everything, world narrowing to just this – to Dream and the locker room floor and the horrible blows that never seem to stop and Tommy who can’t fucking take this in anymore, I’m done please, I’m done, it’s enough, it’s enough.

It’s only the frail mercy that Dream’s not going to actually kill him that keeps him conscious. It hardly helps in any other way.

Pain becomes all he is. His head aches and ribs scream and he stops being able to brace and his limbs are still aching when Dream eventually stops having fun and that’s why he doesn’t realize it’s over until he hears a satisfied laugh, followed by the tapering sound of footsteps, and then the door closing with a loud click.

Five minutes go by before Tommy is able to convince himself that it is done.

He waits another five minutes before his body seems to believe it.

There is blood in Tommy’s mouth.

It got there and never left, and now when Tommy forces his aching throat to swallow, copper is the only thing he takes. Nausea rocks through him, but he’s too exhausted for even that. He won’t be surprised if he forces his eyes open to find his curled-up limbs melted into the locker room tile.

But he has to go home.

He can’t stay here – not where someone might see him, not even though school ended. He wants to go home.

He wants the Watson house, even as empty as it’ll be when he crawls back (because his brothers are partying and Phil is working, and Tommy is alone but the house will dampen the loneliness.)

“C’mon,” he grits out, but it’s nothing more than a choked-up whisper. “F-fuck. Up you go. A-ah-ow-”

A helpless sob wrenches out of him the minute he manages to push his upper body up. Tommy instantly slams his teeth together, trying to snuff it out. He can’t cry. Not yet. Not yet. He won’t.

Even though it hurts. Everything hurts. His ribs the most, they’d taken the blunt on it, and now a hoard of wasps has been released under his skin, stinging and stinging and aching and aching. But Dream had gotten a few good hits to his face, too, before he’d managed to shield it in his curled-up arms, and his wrist stings and he’s a living bruise when he gets up onto knees that almost give out under him.

Fuck. Tommy doesn’t know how he’s going to pick himself up this time. How he’s going to hide this.

He knows he’s weak when gets to his feet and careens into the lockers for stability and nearly crumples all over again, with bruises he will not be able to hide, and he knows he’s weaker when he realizes that even though his family is not going to want him after this, he wants them.

Tommy has always been good at chasing his own destruction, at loving things that only bury him deeper.

Maybe that’s why he can’t bring himself to do anything but yearn for his family as he limps out the door.

He hopes they let him get in one good, proper goodbye before he has to go.

—

He doesn’t remember the walk home.

He remembers pulling his hoodie up as he’d stumbled into cool, outside air to hide the bruises littering his face. Remembers squinting up into the purple-tinted sky, watching the orange streaks of a dying sunset recede below the horizon. Remembers cursing the concrete under his feet for how fucking hard it was below his aching body, remembers clutching his head when he’d took one step and set the parking lot swirling in his frame of vision.

Remembers tucking his head down and hunching his shoulders and hoping he was strong enough to make it.

But Tommy doesn’t remember the walk. No, he doesn’t remember that.

—

It takes a good five attempts to get the key into the front door lock.

Tommy slumps against it the entire time, fumbling to unlock the door with less grace than a half-rotted zombie, blinking hard when his focus starts to lag and getting the door open one attempt before he would’ve just given up.

It creaks open, letting him trudge into the hollow husk of an empty house. Most of the lights are off, basking most everything in eerie shadow, except for a lamp in the living room that someone must’ve forgotten. The yellow light crawls up into the hallway, too harsh on his eyes even from a distance.

As he sways in the tall door frame, Tommy’s backpack slips limply from his shoulder, landing awkwardly in front of the door where it’ll surely earn him a chastisement later. He’s too fucked up to care.

His eyes, bruised and swollen and red, slide vacantly towards the staircase down the hall. The idea of even forcing his broken body up those fucking things is enough to send nausea shooting up his ragged throat, but he forces it down.

He just has to make it upstairs. That’s it.

That’s barely anything. Tommy gets told off for running up the stairs at least twice a day. This is nothing.

This is–

“Tommy?”

A shadow falls over him right as he manages to wrap a shaking hand around the banister. Tommy freezes, eyes flying up, head whipping towards the living room archway, shocking ripping through him like an earthquake splitting ground–

“...Techno?”

Chapter Text

“...Techno?”

Tommy can barely hear himself over the roar of blood rushing in his ears.

Even time holds its breath when Tommy speaks. And with time frozen, there is nowhere else to look but at Techno – the shock, the worry, the faint edge of horror not-yet-realized blooming across his face.

This isn’t real.

Tommy has stumbled into a dream — that’s what happened. He’s still in the locker room. He’s still curled on the cold floor. There’s blood running out of his mouth, and Dream is still hurting him. He must be. This isn’t real.

Techno shouldn’t be here. Nobody should. It should be just-Tommy, the way things always have been and the way he’d tricked himself into accepting they always would be. Reality has never bore any mercy for Tommy. Which is why this isn’t reality.

And then Techno’s hands are grasping for his shoulders, and Tommy still doesn’t feel real. But the hallway floor does when his knees finally give out and strike it, and so does the bile that shoots up his throat, the pain of his aggravated injuries–

And as all the noise in Tommy’s head fucking crescendoes at once, time is moving like it’s in a hurry.

He falls.

“Tommy? Woah– hey–”

Tommy blinks through swollen eyes, lifting his head. It takes too long to realize he hadn’t made it to the floor. He figured the impact would just sort of… blend with the rest of the aches pounding at his skin. But there’s no impact to brace against.

Techno caught him. Techno is… holding him? He’s keeping him up, against his chest.

Time is fast but his brain is slow. Everything is so loud.

Techno’s arms. Those are real, aren’t they?

“–hey, hey, look at me,” Techno pleads, fingers digging into Tommy’s shoulders to keep him upright. “Jesus Christ–”

“Techno?” Tommy mumbles, marveling at the grip on him. All the colors blend together in front of him. He tries to grip onto Techno’s shirt: help him help Tommy stand. His fingers are clumsy and stiff. “Techno.”

Is this what crashing is? Tommy hadn’t even registered letting go, but his mind is floating away from him, playing keep-away from his outstretched fingers. The world has narrowed down to just this: the cramped hallway and the unfeeling hardwood and his brother who shouldn’t be here but is.

“That’s me, Tommy,” Techno rushes out. “I’ve got you. I’ve–”

Tension flakes away from Tommy in tons. Good. He got it right. He’s not totally off the planet.

But he is tired. Tommy wants to sit down. Techno doesn’t let him, one hand reaching for his face. Tommy shies away, pushing his face into Techno’s shoulder. He doesn’t– even through the mess he is, Tommy doesn’t want Techno to see him.

Techno’s next breath is rattled. “Hey, look at me, please. Tommy, look at me, let me see you.”

It sounds… horribly difficult to lift his head when Tommy can just…

His knees give out again.

This time, instead of holding him, Techno goes down with him. Tommy is dimly aware of the hallway melting around them as they sink to the ground, Tommy’s fist tangled in his sleeve. Techno guides him against his chest. Tommy can hear his heartbeat thundering and thundering like it’s being chased.

For him? Did Tommy stress him out? Oh, God, he must have. He feels himself falling apart even though he doesn't feel enough to try to stop. He’s an avalanche. Still, Tommy hopes that’s not the case. He really, really hopes so.

(It cuts through the shroud consuming him, a bolt of clarity: Techno wasn’t supposed to be here. Techno can’t know–)

Tommy leans into his foster brother’s shoulder. He tries to pat Techno’s back. He doesn’t get his arms up enough to give him more than just a clumsy bump.

“‘m okay, Te’no, ‘m okay.”

If he’s not in the locker room anymore, even if this is a dream, he’s okay. Techno’s here, so he’s okay.

Techno lets out a strangled, shrill laugh. “No, no, you’re not, you’re covered in–” Tommy frowns, nudging into him more. Techno calms for the second it takes to resituate his arms around Tommy– and then un-calms. “I need– Christ, I need to– the police, I need to–”

Tommy snaps his head up so fast he gives himself whiplash.

Everything – his thoughts, the hallway, Techno – sharpens at once.

Energy he thought was beaten out of him rushes into his aching limbs. It’s sensation that belongs to something far more primitive than him. Sensation like terror. Sensation like realization. Sensation like the end of the world.

Police, police, did he say police–

He pushes back like he’s swimming through oil. And then he sees, in nauseating high-definition, as he whips his head up to turn wide eyes up at Techno–

Fear.

Techno is afraid. His pupils are blown up in panic, lips parted to guide horribly staccato breaths, face three shades paler than he has any business being, and every emotion Tommy is feeling triples at once. The noise becomes cacophony.

That is what convinces him, suddenly and disturbingly, that this is real. Because never in any of his fantasies about this moment – about falling and being caught, about confessing and being held, about resting and being allowed to – has Techno looked afraid.

Tommy made it out of the locker room.

And he did the exact thing he’d been destroying himself not to do.

Tommy lunges out of Techno’s arms. It’s with all the panicked grace of a lamb being escorted to slaughter – which means it’s clumsy, and stilted, and the entire room fucking spins the moment he so much as twitches, but it’s enough.

Techno rears up the minute Tommy moves, but Tommy’s always been slippery. Even with everything swirling around him, he manages to throw himself out of arm's reach, staggering for the living room.

Techno tries to grab him. Tommy is faster. And suddenly they’re facing each other: Techno’s unstoppable force of confusion and shock against Tommy’s immovable panic, his all-consuming fear.

Police, he wants to call the police, they’ll take me away, he wants me away–

The dance leaves him instantly out of breath, half-doubled over but stubbornly standing. Debatably upright, but standing. At the current moment, it’s really all he can ask of himself.

Tommy presses a hand against his flaming ribs. It hurts so much that for a second, he has to squeeze his eyes shut and just breathe until the fire dulls from a volcanic eruption into a bonfire. Techno’s eyes burn into him with the same fury. Tommy has to allow it, but he lets his head hang low, messy fringe falling over his eyes.

“Tommy…” Techno hedges, voice painfully contained.

Tommy’s shoulders jerk. “Don’t,” he rasps, blinking hard. “I’m– I’m okay, Techno.” He swallows, and realizes his throat doesn’t sting from dryness, but from earlier. From yelling and shouting and screaming and crying and, eventually, just whimpering. “No–” He coughs; it’s all copper, “No police.”

“Tommy,” Techno swallows, “What the hell happened to you?”

Tommy presses his lips shut. He can’t say. He can’t he can’t he can’t–

In his peripheral, Techno shifts. Flinching, Tommy takes a step backward. And like a newborn horse, he’s tripping again.

He tries to pick himself up. There’s a primal instinct in him, telling him that he cannot fall right now. If he wants even the slightest chance of convincing Techno to let him lick his wounds on his own, it’ll be broken if he can’t even walk properly.

But Tommy’s always been good at breaking things he shouldn’t, hasn’t he? Not even Dream could beat that habit out of him.

Techno is the faster one this time, arms looping around Tommy’s waist, and that– that ignites the starving street dog in him.

He shouts, flailing and thrashing in an instant. Techno grunts as Tommy’s leg connects with his shin and tightens his grip, and Tommy’s chest compresses, and he fights harder, and it hurts, everything hurts, he needs it to stop but he can’t–

“Let me fucking– go–”

“Tommy, it’s me!”

It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter–

“Calm down!”

It’s never mattered, not then, not now–

“No police!” Tommy shouts, clawing at the hands around his stomach. He can’t breathe with them there. It hurts too bad. “No– Techno, don’t–”

He breaks off with a helpless cry, curling forward.

“Okay!” Techno relents jaggedly, and he loosens his grip, though he doesn’t quite let go– “I won’t! If you stop, I won’t–”

That’s all Tommy needs. Or maybe, that’s all his body and mind are able to withstand.

The fight dies out of him (had it ever returned?) and the overexertion makes itself clear right away. He’s lightheaded, swooning, but Techno refuses to let him fall a third time. Between one shaking breath and the next, Techno is taking all of his weight.

The next thing Tommy knows, he’s being eased onto the couch.

He’s crying the minute his back touches it, completely rung out.

It’s too much. The pain is too much, the lights are too much, today was too much, getting caught was too much, everything is too much. He’s tired of his entire fucking world being carved out of a million shades of hurt.

Keeping his sobs in is too much too. For once, Tommy can’t be strong. There’s not enough left of him to be.

“I’m sorry,” he cries, squeezing his eyes shut. He can’t face Techno, not like this, but Techno has to know. “I'm so sorry, I didn’t– I didn’t do this, I didn’t– please–”

“Tommy,” Techno croaks, right next to him. His voice shakes. “Tommy, it’s okay, you’re okay–”

“Please,” he whimpers, the words clawing out of him, “Don’t– don’t send me away, please– I tried to– I tried to get away–”

Techno’s teeth click together. The next blurry flash Tommy catches of him is of panic, panic that’s quickly suffocated, buried, behind a wavering snap of his jaw. Lips pressed together, two thin lines, the Band-Aids over a bullet hole, a bullet hole Tommy put there.

He feels sick. This wasn’t supposed to go like this.

Techno takes another deep breath and lets it out. He reaches out, places a strong, heavy hand on top of one of Tommy’s. It’s the one he hit Dream with, a cut over his middle knuckle.

“Calm down, Tommy. Please, breathe. Just–” Techno swallows. “Breathe.”

Tommy nods quickly. He doesn’t really feel like nodding, or breathing for that matter, because even breathing hurts right now, but Techno told him to, and if that’s one thing he can do right, he has to try.

“Good,” Techno whispers, the muscles in his lips twitching towards the attempt of reassurance. “Good job, Tommy. Keep breathin’.”

Tommy pulls rattled breath after rattled breath in his lungs just like Techno tells him to. It’s either that or fall apart, and he doesn’t think Techno wants him to cry.

“What happened to you, Tommy?” The words come out of Techno’s mouth like an afterthought. Tommy stiffens, pulling away– “No, don’t– I shouldn’t have asked that. Just calm down.”

Tommy sags back down against the sofa arm. His teeth sink into the inside of his cheek.

Staring at the ceiling makes it easy to pretend that none of this is happening. So that’s what Tommy does. For a few, endless seconds he lets his body be the thing in pain and lets his mind slip out of it. He concentrates really hard on getting his chest to rise evenly, though static prickles over his skin, making it difficult to focus. Or maybe it’s the ringing in his ears doing that.

He’s dimly aware of Techno standing over him like a suit of armor, quiet and unmoving. His silence reeks of questions that Tommy refuses to acknowledge. The longer he can draw this out, the better. He doesn’t want to face the music quite yet.

It takes too long to realize that the heavy, stilted, panicked breathing Tommy is hearing isn’t just his own.

Tommy snaps his eyes away from the ceiling right as Techno begins to stumble back, blinking hard. His shoulders jerk quickly and unevenly. Fear creeps over Tommy’s skin.

“...Techno?”

Slowly, oh so slowly, Techno looks at him. Or he tries. Eyes strangely glossy, Techno’s gaze lands somewhere on Tommy’s bruised cheek. It’s the only crack in an otherwise contained expression, a fracture in a mirror.

“Yes, Tommy?”

His voice is dull. Hollow. Quiet. Why does that make Tommy so afraid?

“Are you okay?”

Techno blinks. No focus returns to his gaze, no sign of life. Just that same, eerie detachment. In front of him, Techno begins to fall apart.

“I’ll be–” He swallows deliberately, throat bobbing. “I’ll be right back.”

Tommy sits up, body screaming. He kicks his legs over the side of the sofa, and that hurts more. But whatever is happening to Techno is bigger than him, it’s so much more than the pain. Tommy bears it easily. “Tech–”

“I’m not– I’m not callin’ the police,” he says, leaning away from Tommy’s outstretched hand like he’s holding out a knife. He won’t look at Tommy, and his breaths are coming faster. “Just– give me a second.”

He walks– staggers away towards the kitchen. The terror ravaging Tommy fucking quadruples. He was supposed to be the only broken one in the house. Now– now there’s two of them. And both of them are Tommy’s fault.

His lungs shrink. Each breath becomes an effort. For the sake of Techno and Techno alone, Tommy forces himself to breathe.

Tommy cranes his ears toward the kitchen when the sound of shuffling and cabinets opening goes silent. Each limb stiff as rods, Tommy leans over, sneaking a glance at the kitchen.

Techno’s silhouette is haloed by the glowing yellow kitchen light, meaning every ounce of tension in him is highlighted in painful definition. He’s braced against the counter on his arms, back to Tommy and head hung low.

His shoulders still ripple with panic. Looks like they’re both doing breathing exercises.

Oil floods his stomach. Tommy whips himself back onto the sofa. He twists his fists into the couch, grasping at anything to keep him anchored to the surface. He caused this. Whatever Techno is feeling right now, the things that seem to be trying to claw out of his skin… Tommy put them there.

This is why he shouldn’t have come home.

No, this is why Techno shouldn’t have. None of this would’ve happened if he had left Tommy just like Wilbur did, just like the entire fucking world always has.

Tommy’s knee jitters as the quiet of the living room swallows him whole. It’s too quiet. He should get up, turn the TV on. Do something, anything, to make his own brain take mercy on him. Like this, he’s feeling too much. White noise would be ambrosia.

So would leaving.

The thought occurs to him half-consciously, but once it’s there, it sticks like chewed gum.

He could leave. Tommy could leave, right now, while Techno is in the kitchen. Slip out the backdoor quietly, unobtrusively, and out of their lives altogether. His case worker would be on his ass, and he’d never make it far, but he wouldn’t have to face the Watsons’ disappointment. The questions, the frowns, the potential hatred as their unfounded faith in him shatters.

But he doesn’t. Stupidly, weakly, Tommy is frozen in place. Part of his mind hasn’t even become unfrozen from where Dream left him on the locker room floor. Part of him is still there, staring listlessly at the tile.

He’s too tired to keep running. Too tired to keep hiding. He’s done it all month. Somehow, Dream beat the want to fight out of him. He did what his social worker has been trying for Tommy’s entire life.

This is victory, Tommy thinks, doom swelling around him. He won.

It’s not like there’s anything to run to. It’s not like he can get more ruined than this.

In fact, maybe there’s a silver lining in being caught after all. Maybe he can convince Techno to keep this a secret. This can be theirs, the way that the thousand moments Wilbur and Techno keep to themselves are Techno-and-Wilbur’s.

(Somehow, he doubts that it’ll happen. And it has everything to do with the way Techno held him like he could love the bruises off of him.)

At some point, he starts humming a song in his head. A shapeless tune that switches every second to something else. A weak attempt at lending Techno privacy; a weak attempt at lending himself a distraction.

The closest he gets to motion is when the urge to check on Techno becomes nearly impossible to ignore. But it fades, like most of his energy, when Techno reappears in the doorway.

Tommy blinks back to life as Techno’s shadow spills onto the living room carpet. There’s a first aid kit in his hands, and an ice pack. Most importantly, whatever emotions had leaked onto his face are gone. It’s just Techno: lips pressed into a determined line, jaw tight, fencing-stance-Techno.

Techno drops down in front of him, body moving a shade too robotically for Tommy’s comfort. He’s cracking open the first aid kit before Tommy knows it, hands awfully practiced. Is he– is he going to patch him up? Techno reaches a hand out.

It’s shaking.

Tommy shies away, nerves humming–

“I’m this close to losin’ my mind right now,” Techno whispers, stopping him. He won’t meet Tommy’s eyes. “Let me do this. Please.”

And has Techno ever begged for anything in his life? Certainly not from Tommy.

Hesitantly, Tommy nods.

Before him, Techno melts. Tommy’s words seem to take some weight off him. And that’s– that’s weird. He shouldn’t be being so gentle with Tommy. This is the time to accuse, to shout, to rip Tommy apart. At the very least, he should be demanding an explanation. It must be killing him to hold his questions back. Tommy looks like he got hit by a truck.

But Techno is none of that. For all the fury that Techno can be – while fencing, while facing off against Dream, while competing – he’s only soft now.

And his hands are soft too as he places the ice pack against the biggest, most tender bruise on Tommy’s cheek.

Tommy hisses through his teeth, biting his tongue. Techno goes rigid, eyes snapping up, silently intense. His hand jerks away from Tommy, fingers curling harshly around the ice.

Tommy winces. “Techno…”

Techno avoids his gaze, locking in on his own hand. “Can I keep going?”

Please. Don’t stop being nice.

Tommy nods jerkily. Techno, looking half-convinced, lowers the ice back down. Tommy holds his breath and cages his reaction between gritted teeth.

“...sorry,” Techno adds, like an afterthought.

“Don’t be,” Tommy says.

Tommy’s the only one who should be throwing out apologies right now.

And it’s quiet again. Quiet as Techno navigates through the bruises mapping Tommy’s skin. Quiet as he guides Tommy’s hand up to hold the ice pack in place. Quiet as Tommy crashes.

Until it’s not. Until Tommy’s mouth moves for him, words ripping out in a croak.

“You were supposed to be with Wilbur.”

The words are too simple to capture all the emotions that bleed into them.

You were supposed to be with Wilbur. Because he always is. Techno and Wilbur against the world, always. Tommy’s lucky to ever be included with them.

I was supposed to be alone. Because he always is. The world against Tommy, always. Tommy’s lucky to even have a setup as good as the Watsons.

None of this was supposed to come out.

This could’ve been Tommy’s last act of defiance: keeping Dream’s final message from ever, ever bearing down on the twins. It wouldn’t be their fault if they didn’t know. But Tommy fucked it up. He can’t even fall apart correctly.

Techno laughs, quiet and strained. “I know.” He takes a deep breath, pausing. “Social battery ran out, so I came back early.” He swallows, eyes going unfocused. That bitter laugh rings again. “...glad I did, huh?”

Tommy swallows.

Not really, his brain urges, because his brain has been chiseled into a fearful thing.

But his heart, that once-dying thing, is louder, surprising him. And it agrees with Techno. It’s grateful that, for once, Tommy isn’t locked in the bathroom nursing injuries that never seem to end.

…Tommy is grateful. He wants Techno here.

He caught me, Tommy’s heart says. He didn’t leave.

Warmth opens up in his chest. It’s frail, just a seedling. Just enough for Tommy to feel it.

Tommy leans forward, meeting Techno’s gentle touches halfway. Techno looks at him, and he doesn’t take this moment to dig for answers. No, he just makes room for Tommy to lean against him, halfway off the couch.

And then the front door slams open.

Tommy jolts, shooting up before he fully registers the noise, eyes wide. His head swivels to Techno, instinctively searching for answers there–

But Techno does not seem nearly as surprised as him. In fact, he looks like he expected it. Tommy’s heart drops. The front door slams closed.

Wilbur staggers into the doorway.

It stuns Tommy in his panic. He expected Phil, or his case worker, or the police, or anyone else. Why is Wilbur here?

Wilbur’s eyes pop. “What the fuck?”

He’s looking right at Tommy’s face. At his very bruised, barely-not-bleeding-still face.

Tommy ducks his head, but the damage is done. Wilbur stumbles forward, steps a little uneven, and Christ. How did this go from bad to worse? Whatever peace he thought he found in the quiet with Techno dies. Tommy mentally stomps it into a grave, six feet under.

“Tommy,” Wilbur breathes, not wasting any time to wobble towards him. His lips part over words that take eons to form, struggling to make sentences at the sight of how awful Tommy must look. “Tommy–”

The minute he’s close enough, Tommy’s mind breaks down – right back into locker-room-floor mode. Because Wilbur smells like alcohol. It reeks off of his jacket, drawing Tommy’s focus up to his too-glossy eyes, the stumble in his steps.

It ignites a panic in him that had only ever belonged to pre-Watsons Tommy. The Tommy that Dream turned him back into.

Before he knows it, Tommy can’t breathe again.

Techno curses under his breath, standing up. Tommy flinches back into the couch, lips trembling. Techno spares him a glance, but then his face is swallowed up by a cold stone mask that he levels at Wilbur.

“Wilbur,” Techno bites out, grabbing his shoulder. “Did you just drive home?”

Wilbur blinks hard. “I– no.” He can barely register Techno’s question. “No, Niki drove me, I– Techno?” He swivels his head to the right. “What happened to Tommy?”

Techno’s throat bobs. “I need you to go call Dad.”

“What?” Wilbur shakes, still stricken. Between that and the slight drunkenness, it’s a wonder he hears Techno at all. And the way he looks at Tommy, like he’s about to throw up, like he’s witnessing the end of the world… “Tech–”

Techno sighs and shoves his own cell phone into Wilbur’s hand. “Call dad. And don’t stop calling until he answers.” A little harsher this time, sharp with panic. “It’s been going straight to voicemail.”

Wilbur blinks a few more times, but he eventually nods. He stares at the phone in his hand like he’s never seen it before, sure, but he manages to stumble away. He doesn’t break eye contact with Tommy until he’s tripping past the doorway.

For some reason, that makes Tommy lift out of his seated position. He’s leaving, why is he leaving, where is–

“He’s coming back,” Techno reads his mind. “He’s staying.” Tommy blinks at him, gasping for air. The intensity sharpening Techno’s expression eases. “I’m staying,” he says. “You’re staying. I’ve got you.” His hand closes around Tommy’s, firm. “I’m never lettin’ you out of my sight again.”

Tommy’s breath hitches. Those words are the only thing in the world capable of cutting through the pressure choking him, but it’s still not enough. Techno wets his lips.

“Have I ever lied to you?”

Tommy thinks about that. It’s… hard. His thoughts are moving at less than a snail’s pace, and they’re not whole either. It’s just choppy shards of panic and a whole lot of what the fuck is happening why are they acting like this, but–

The question forces him to think about everything but the bad stuff.

Tommy shakes his head. Techno hasn’t. Not knowingly, anyway. He’s too good for that. All the Watsons are.

“Good,” Techno says. “Because I’m not starting now.”

Tommy bites the inside of his cheek. He relishes the good type of pressure that draws. His skin is made of ice, all of him is. The hand Techno holds is the most real thing about Tommy right now. Everything else is an illusion, or a fantasy, maybe.

“Come here.”

Tommy looks up. Techno holds his arms out, and– oh. It’s an invitation, clear as day. One that Tommy’s terrified to accept.

It doesn’t matter. Techno must read that on his face, because he just ambles forward and wraps Tommy up, and oh. Techno holds him; Techno hugs him. Easily, warmly, and without refrain. Just the barest amount of restraint to stop him from hurting Tommy further.

Not that Tommy would push Techno away even if it did. This is worth more to him than fixing a little pain would be.

Tommy shoves his face into Techno’s collar, and that’s when the dam finally breaks. He sobs. Relief and peace spiral out of him. Tommy’s hand twists into the back of Techno’s shirt. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let go of this. Even when the Watsons send him away.

“I’ve got you,” Techno murmurs shakily, rubbing his back. “We’re gonna– we’re gonna figure this out.”

We’re real, the hug says, the promise pressed into him. You’re okay.

For once, Tommy lets himself believe it.

“Where is he?”

“Careful,” a voice murmurs, rousing him from a dreamless sleep. “I just got him to calm down.”

“Oh, Christ. Oh, my boy–”

Phil’s voice instantly undoes all of Techno’s good efforts.

“Dad?” Tommy murmurs.

Phil is here. Is this movie night? Did Tommy fall asleep again? He’s been so tired lately. It’s hard to stay present, to cherish the very thing he destroys himself every day for. He tries, though, of course he does. This is all for the Watsons. What’s the point of letting Dream–

Tommy’s eyes snap open. Awareness electrifies his veins.

His memories rush back into him in a flood: staggering home. Finding Techno. Fighting Techno. Being patched up. Wilbur coming home. Wilbur going away. Techno holding him, Tommy crying, Tommy exhausting himself into sleep–

Wait. Did Tommy just say dad?

“I’m here,” Phil murmurs. “Jesus, kiddo, I’m–” He cuts off, face oddly pale. “What happened?”

Tommy forces himself upright, and holy fucking shit. He never should’ve slept. His body aches with a new fury. It takes everything in him to get upright, but he does.

“Nothing,” he blurts, “nothing. Just– you know, I fell–”

Across the room, Wilbur makes a choked noise. It’s the only reminder he’s there at all, hovering as far away as he can be, all the way in the corner. Tommy turns to him, flinching. His petty excuse dies on his tongue.

Techno shoots Wilbur a look that makes him recoil, but then he eyes Phil warily.

“Dad, wait–”

“This isn’t nothing,” Phil stammers. He looks more unraveled than Tommy’s ever seen him since he started fostering Tommy in the first place. “A fall?” he echoes, brain catching up. “You’re covered in bruises, and– no. Absolutely not.” He kneels in front of Tommy, gaze trapping him. All of them are trapping him. “Who did this to you?”

Tommy’s throat tightens. “No one. No one, I swear.”

Phil’s jaw ticks. “I need you to be honest with me, Tommy. I know these didn’t come from a fall.” He looks Tommy over, seeming more horrified by the second. “Jesus, you–”

“It’s just– a bully,” Tommy stammers. “But it’s– it was an accident.”

He steps carefully over the name. He doesn’t want them to know. They can’t know. But if he’s honest, Phil will get off his back, and they can bond over Tommy obviously having provoked this, and then everything will be okay.

This won’t be the end of things for him.

Phil jerks back. But rather than accepting that answer, like Tommy prays, he only grows sharper. “Who, Tommy?”

“Dad,” Techno warns, trying to get between them–

“It doesn’t matter,” Tommy whispers, “Phil, please–”

Phil jolts to his feet. The room wobbles, bending around him like a funhouse mirror. Tommy’s so afraid he can barely see straight.

“Fine,” Phil says, voice flat and detached, and Tommy’s heart lifts for just a fraction of a second– “Then I’m calling for an ambulance.”

Everything combusts at once.

Tommy lunges upright, but he only ends up colliding with Techno, who anticipated the collision. Tommy spins to the floor, white-hot heat striking over every inch of his body. Wilbur shouts and trips forward, startled; his foster father gasps, as if not knowing that the words he uttered are a threat to Tommy’s very existence in their lives, as if he of all people doesn’t know what’s at risk for broken kids like Tommy–

“Tommy–”

Phil reaches for him, but Tommy whips away, betrayal flooding him in a bath of fire. But Techno is faster, leveling a steady hand onto Tommy’s shoulder, keeping him in place. Tommy all but bares his teeth at him, heart galloping. Techno winces.

“You’re goin’ to hurt yourself more. Please–”

“Just give me a name, Tommy,” Phil pleads, distracting him. “Kiddo–”

“We’re not going to send you away,” Techno rushes out, and Phil flinches. “I promise–”

“Then they will!” Tommy shouts, chest splitting open. “They always–”

“Tommy–”

“I had it coming,” Tommy gasps, keeling over. “I didn’t– it was fair, it was–”

Phil hardly flinches. Techno does, as Tommy lunges upright and nearly slams into him all over again. He needs to get away. He still has time to save this.

Techno’s elbow accidentally connects with a soft spot on his ribcage. Tommy goes down with a furious shout, flailing, tearing at the seams–

“It was Dream!”

Tommy freezes.

Because that wasn’t him that said that. Techno’s face softens in pity as he lowers Tommy to the ground.

And Wilbur–

Wilbur steps forward, the dirty confession ripping off his drunken lips. His glazed eyes only have focus for Tommy, who stares at him in abject horror.

“It was Dream,” Wilbur repeats softly. “...wasn’t it?”

Tommy’s mouth snaps shut. Horror spills out from his gums, sealing them together.

No, he wants to say, but his lungs fail him. No no nononono.

Beside him, Techno releases a heavy breath. Tommy doesn’t have to look at him to know what that means. But he does, anyway, because Tommy is a masochist. Which means he doesn’t miss the way that Techno’s heart breaks across his face in a terrible, resigned grief. Head tipped down, eyelids fluttering shut, mouth parting around a pained breath.

One that screams that Techno already knew. One that grieves for the confirmation that Tommy’s silence gives him.

Tommy hadn’t uttered a word about him, he thought he’d been careful, but…

Wilbur wets his lips, trembling on his feet. “Who else would it be, right?” Wilbur croaks, eyelashes fluttering. A tear slicks down his cheek, one that makes Tommy’s chest fucking pang. “It’s always him. He… he did this.”

It doesn’t sound like a question anymore.

Any protest would be better than Tommy’s silence.

But his silence is all he can offer. And his silence is a death knell.

Tommy, as his world comes down around him – debris and smoke choking his lungs – forces himself to do something.

“I hit him back.”

The world goes quiet. Well, Tommy’s world anyway. Techno and Phil and Wilbur. All eyes are on him, and it’s the last thing he wanted, but now it’s what he needs. They need to know. Tommy spills himself out for them.

Wilbur’s face, barely out of the shadows he’d tucked himself into, crumples. “Tommy…”

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut. “It was a fair fight,” he croaks. “I hit him back, we–”

A throaty, sardonic laugh tears out of Techno’s throat, startling him. Techno levels him with nothing short of steady anger.

“You hit him back?” he echoes. Tommy nods meekly. The confession feels so much bigger when Techno asks him like this. But Techno’s face just grows steely. “Tommy, when I see him, I’m going to do worse.”

“Techno,” Phil bites out, but it sounds more like a reflex than a true chastisement. He looks far too rattled to do much scolding. “That’s… that’s…”

Phil tapers off. Wow. Guess Tommy finally found the one thing his foster father can’t handle. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

“Dream,” Phil finally says, testing the name. Tommy tries not to tremble. “Is that…”

He looks over to Wilbur, whose shoulders come up towards his ears.

“He ran for class president,” Wilbur confirms in a rasp. His voice grows very, very small. “...he lost.”

“He’s on the fencing team,” Techno adds hollowly, not looking at anyone.

Guilt. The twins have never looked more identical than they do now: with guilt marring every feature. For some reason, that guts Tommy. Absolutely hollows him out.

They shouldn’t look like this. It’s not their fault. It’s Tommy’s – always Tommy’s, only Tommy’s.

“He wanted to get back at you for winning,” Tommy whispers, the explanation spiralling out of him like a cut ribbon. “I– I told him it was stupid. I told him to stop.”

That was all he did. Until Dream took that fight out of him too. Until it was easier to give in and count the seconds ‘till it was over.

“I…” Tommy’s voice cracks. His mouth is so dry, which is funny, because there’s still enough moisture in him to cry forever. “I didn’t want to be sent away, so I… I kept it to myself.”

And it was for nothing. All for nothing.

He hurts. From the inside out, Tommy hurts. Curled up on the living room floor, flanked by his family… there’s only enough left in Tommy to feel pain. That’s his default emotion nowadays, isn’t it? Pain with no ending. No start or beginning.

“You’re not.”

Tommy blinks, looking up. Techno steps forward, losing his grief for more sheer determination. Where, Tommy finds the time to wonder, the hell does he get that strength from? And why can’t Tommy be more like that?

“What?”

“You’re not being sent away,” Techno tells him– promises, almost. His eyes flick to Phil meaningfully. “Nobody’s calling anyone.”

Phil’s brow furrows, protest rising instantly. “Techno, I can’t promise that.” He waves his arms helplessly. “I– look at him.”

They do. Tommy burns under the three gazes, wishing he could sink into the floor. This much attention was much easier to handle when he didn’t have it. When it’s all he wanted.

Techno’s shoulders deflate. Tommy, fear rising in him, is able to appreciate the attempt at least.

Phil exhales harshly. “And the amount of trouble I could be in if I don’t say anything–”

“Can we wait?” Wilbur asks. All the attention flips to him, still swaying slightly in place. Wilbur curls his hands into fists at his side. He’s shaking. “Just… y’know. Wait. And– and talk about it more when Tommy’s feeling better.”

Wilbur does not look like a class president right now. He doesn’t look like the force that stared Dream down in the library, or shielded Tommy from a panic attack in the hallway. He just looks… scared. He looks like Tommy’s lame foster brother.

Phil’s shoulders rise. “I don’t…”

He struggles to find the right words. Tommy bites his lip hard, mentally praying for him to agree. Please. Please. Phil studies Tommy, still awkwardly on the ground. Tommy forces his features to smooth out.

And whatever Phil is looking for, he must find, because his shoulders slump. “Okay,” he concedes, quietly. Everything about him contradicts the words he speaks, but he doesn’t take them back, and Tommy breathes. “I’ll wait the night,” he compromises curtly. “But only if you let me look you over again.” He scrubs a hand through his hair. “I can’t– I’m not risking it.” He levels him with a firm stare. “I respect your boundaries, Tommy, I always will. But I won’t let one of my kids end up in the hospital. I won’t.”

The strain in his voice suggests that this is the best compromise Tommy is going to get.

Relief ballooning in his chest, Tommy nods. He can’t say he doesn’t understand. He’s been in the system long enough to know that some things don’t belong to him, even if they’re his. Bad things, especially, always find their way to his case worker before he can say, Please don’t make me leave this house.

Tommy slowly rises to his feet. Techno shifts. His arms twitch in an aborted motion, maybe to help him up. But Tommy just sinks back down onto the sofa. His fingers are made of ice as he reaches down and pulls up his shirt.

He squeezes his eyes shut. That doesn’t shield him from the distorted chorus of gasps and swears he hears as his family sees.

The bruises mapping his chest, wrapping his ribcage, splotching up towards his shirt, sting in the open air. Tommy can pinpoint each one even with his eyes closed. He hasn’t stopped hurting.

“Jesus,” Phil hisses, startling forward.

Tommy hangs his head. “Some of them are old,” he assures them. “It’s– it’s probably worse than it looks.”

That’s supposed to be a relief, but all he gets is more silence. When Tommy risks a pale glance up, Techno is murderous. His fingers retract endlessly at his side. Phil’s reaction he expects: more of that undeserved, gentle concern, cut with horror.

Wilbur is the one who throws him off. He goes from shocked to ice cold.

“How long?” he bites out, startling Tommy.

Tommy almost lowers his shirt again. “What?”

Wilbur steps forward, cheeks hollow. Phil casts him a warning glance– one Wilbur is too out of it or too uncaring to heed. “Wil, not–”

“How long, Tommy? How long has he been hurting you because of me? Because of us?”

Anger on Wilbur has always been a fiery, serpentine thing. A blaze, the slow roll of magma popping out of the grand. A spark that becomes a bonfire. A fuse you never know when is going to catch. And sometimes, his anger looks remarkably like Dream’s.

Tommy drops his shirt down. “All month.” Terror rips the admission out of him. Whatever it takes to appease Wilbur. “Every time you– you insulted him, or beat him at fencing, or– or pissed him off, you–”

Wilbur’s eyes widen, mouth opening. Tommy barely sees him.

His tongue is leaden, tripping over simple syllables. Tommy wants to die. One thing, Wilbur only asked him one thing, it’s the least he deserves, why can’t he–

“—if I tried to say something he made it worse, I don’t– is that what you want to know?” He rocks back and forth, throat squeezing, “I don’t know what you want from me, I don’t–”

“Wait,” Wilbur stammers, the fire dying. He’s back to pale and stricken, hands out. “You don’t have to finish, Tommy, you don’t have to tell me–”

Tommy snaps his mouth shut. His skin prickles with heat. A keen builds in his throat. Mercifully, panic chokes it off.

Wilbur blinks hard, backpedaling. He clenches his jaw, like he’s surprised at himself. Then, before he knows it, Wilbur is turning and leaving the room. Tommy watches him go, still struggling to breathe.

Wilbur doesn’t spare any of them a farewell glance. He even avoids Techno’s outstretched hand – nearly tripping with how jerkily he ducks away from it. Tommy knows, with a guttural, pitted sensation, that it’s all his fault. Wilbur can’t seem to get away from him fast enough.

“That’s enough for tonight, I think,” Phil murmurs, a little helplessly.

Phil scrubs at his face again, tipping his head and staring up at the ceiling like in prayer. When he looks back down, his eyes are red-rimmed and exhausted. “I’m going to patch you up, and then…” His lips twitch, an attempt at a smile. “We’ll work it out from there, I suppose.”

It’s a nice way of saying, I don’t know where the fuck to go from here.

Tommy’s always been good at earning that specific reaction.

“Okay.”

Phil sighs. Not at something, Tommy doesn’t think, just… breathes. Lets a little chunk of the world off his shoulders, a little hiss of pressure out of a boiling valve.

“Techno,” Tommy whispers in this moment of peace, hand snapping out. “Will you stay?”

He expects it to be like before. Techno should go after Wilbur: that’s the natural marching order in their dynamic. Even thinking about that makes Tommy feel sick.

But this time, Techno doesn't even hesitate. His voice is low like gravel, but unmoving, like stone. “Of course.”

Tommy doesn't know how much he needs that until he has it. Until Techno is settling down beside him, silent and steady, and Phil is watching them with a faint, pain-tinged wonder in his eyes before he remembers himself and grabs the first aid kit out of Techno’s grasp and cracks it open.

With his head on his shoulder, Phil’s hands aren’t so scary. Tommy bears the poking and prodding. It’s easy when Phil’s so tender with him, fingertips only grazing skin when he has to. Lips endlessly murmuring apologies, and questions, Can I touch that one? Is that feeling okay? Do I need to stop? Let me know if you need a break, kiddo.

Not bad questions, though. Not the ones Tommy knows bubble under the surface of his comfort, the ones that beg for an explanation Tommy can’t provide. Mercifully, Phil keeps those back, and that’s a balm in itself.

For tonight — however long it lasts — Tommy just wants to exist in one place. The Watson house, now. Here, Dream can’t touch him. Here, he can fall apart the proper way. And he doesn’t even have to deal with his bruises this time.

(Tommy, dimly, wonders what will happen when the shock wears off. When Phil blinks and sees he is cradling a mess. That the bruises aren’t something to be worried about, but evidence of how utterly horribly Tommy has fucked up. Evidence so damning it tattoos his skin.)

A shake rolls over him. Phil’s hands freeze immediately.

“Is that–”

“Fine,” Tommy rasps, pressing more into him. “It’s… just fine.”

Tommy wouldn’t ever tell Phil to stop, even if he did need a break, but the option comforts him. All of this comforts him, in a way he can’t explain. Or maybe he could: If he gave the words time to fester and form and break out of the exhaustion weighing every part of him down like a weighted blanket.

It’s weird, isn’t it? That the weirdest reaction he has ever had to a bruise is… love. Care. It’s foreign to him. Tommy’s skin prickles.

He’s allergic to it. He hates it.

He’s weak to it. He loves it.

One of these days, he’ll need to find a way to repay the Watsons for giving so much to him. For now, he leans against Techno’s side in a way that almost, almost feels permanent. He lets Phil study the broken pieces of himself and pretends not to see the strange darkness capture his expression the longer it takes him to plaster bandages over Tommy’s body.

Techno squeezes his hand: silent support. It warms him.

There’s a storm barreling towards Tommy. Inevitable, brutal, inescapable. Some of it has snuck into the house. There are dark, heavy clouds in Phil’s eyes and rolling thunder lying in wait in the sharp clench of Techno’s jaw, the severe lines of his stature. Wilbur’s absence stings like lightning has struck the air and left it choked with sulfur. Tense. The storm whipped through Wilbur, too: sharp and frantic, winds that tore him far away.

But Tommy’s storm shelter surrounds him now. If only temporarily, Tommy has a space to breathe. Dry walls and warm hands and nothing to fear except what’s outside.

Tomorrow, he knows the walls will fall.

Tonight, Tommy rests.

<Dream from fencing> [three hours ago]

hey Techno.

did you like your gift?

Chapter Text

They hold a sort of vigil over him.

Whimsical, dreamlike: it’s everything he swore he’d only ever get in his deepest fantasies. And in the hours that drag by after his worst secret is cracked open in front of everyone, Tommy is still half-convinced he’s dreaming.

Hell, if his body didn’t ache like he’d been shoved through a meat grinder, maybe he’d still think he was.

But he can’t. Because in those hours – those dreary, domestic hours where nothing quite happens but everything changes, those hours his dreams never seem to keep track of – the Watsons stay.

Phil stays. Maybe it’s not what he wants to do. Maybe the reason his hands tremble is because he’s itching to slip away and call for his case worker (“I’m tired of him. Can you rid this burden from me?”).

But for once – and maybe it’s the pain blurring his mind – Tommy doesn’t think so. Any other one of his foster parents would’ve left him where he stood. Natural punishment, they might say. But Phil never says that. He only draws Tommy against his side when Tommy confesses he’s too riled up on leftover adrenaline to sleep (too scared to be with his own mind) and puts on a movie until golden warmth saps the pain away, the domestic peace a medicine of its own.

Techno stays. He stays when Tommy’s legs shake too much to carry him upstairs. He doesn’t seem fazed at all by the way Tommy leans on him, fists digging into his sleeve again. Tommy probably owes him a new sweatshirt, but Techno never complains. He’s a pillar, Techno is. Tommy wonders how he walked around him this whole time and still missed him.

Wilbur… stays. Floating like a mirage in the corner of Tommy’s vision, endlessly present but horribly absent, keeping guard without keeping touch– he’s there. Tommy’s too hurt to condemn him for keeping his distance. He wouldn’t want to be around this weak, needing version of himself either.

But Wilbur is there when his brain gets too tired to keep thinking. He's there as Tommy’s eyes flutter shut, sleep lulling him down. He’s there creeping Tommy’s door open every fifteen minutes, checking in where he thinks Tommy has already drifted into unconsciousness: monitoring his condition with steady, stolen glances.

Where all of Tommy’s fantasies ended with a grandeur display of comfort that never lasted once he opened his eyes, the Watsons are there to find new ways to surprise him. To care for him. Ways he never even thought of.

This is how he knows he’s not dreaming.

—

Tommy gets one night of peace before everything breaks again.

He knows something is wrong the minute he hobbles out of his room only to be greeted by Techno’s grim expression.

He looks like he hasn’t slept, smudges under his eyes, hair unkempt in a distinctly not-Technoblade manner. But Tommy knows that’s not why he’s standing guard outside Tommy’s bedroom waiting for him to wake up: jaw tight, shoulders tensed, arms crossed like a bouncer.

Tommy stops in the doorway, eyeing Techno warily.

Voices float up from downstairs. Tommy turns his head to the side to listen in.

Techno steps in front of him. “You shouldn’t go down there.”

Tommy glances at him, then ignores him. That’s Phil’s voice he’s hearing, low and restrained. And then Wilbur’s, sharp and tense. And someone else, a woman–

Tommy’s blood drains out of him. That’s his social worker.

That’s his fucking social worker.

“Yes, I should.”

He shambles past Technoblade far faster than he probably should, panic thumping between his ribs. The walls press in on him, suffocatingly tight. When Tommy blinks, the floor sways like he’s walking on top of a train.

Tommy is breathless before he even gets to the top of the stairs. He’s still in pajamas, exhaustion coating him like bruises, but there’s not a force on earth that could stop Tommy from going down there.

He has to see. He has to know what the fuck he did, has to know exactly how he just fucked everything over.

Tommy takes one step and nearly doubles over.

He grits his teeth and keeps going, wrapping a bloodless grip around the banister.

“Tommy, wait–”

Techno’s hand catches his forearm right as Tommy tries for step two. Like a feral dog, Tommy whips his head up, teeth practically bared.

“Techno,” he warns, shaking.

He’ll give Techno half a second before he tries to pull himself free. Techno can decide if he wants to watch Tommy trip down a staircase or not. He doesn’t know if his body would allow him to pull away that hard and stay standing.

Techno tilts his chin up. For once, his brown eyes are steel.

“I’m not stoppin’ you,” he says, and Tommy stills. Techno sighs. “I told Phil it would be pointless anyway.”

Tommy swallows, eyes flicking to the landing below. Even just a few steps closer, the voices are louder. He has to get downstairs. Right fucking now.

“Then let me go.”

“I said I’m not stoppin’ you,” Techno says. His eyes gleam. “Doesn’t mean I’m lettin’ you walk down these stairs when you’re barely upright as it is.”

Tommy wets his lips. “I’m fine.”

He’s not fine. Techno doesn’t even flinch.

“Hold onto me. Don’t make me carry you.”

And Tommy – needing to get downstairs more than he needs to prove anything to Techno – does.

“Wilbur,” comes Phil’s voice once he’s close enough, “Stand outside the room.”

A sharp inhale. “Dad–”

“Leave.”

Tommy hobbles faster. Techno sighs, trading his hand on Tommy’s arm for an arm around Tommy’s waist. Tommy leans into him the second things get blurry.

Wilbur storms into them right as they make it to the bottom. He comes up short, blinking at them, and– oh. Wilbur’s angry.

He’s in pajamas too, curls askew, glasses lopsided on his face. None of that eases the winter storm consuming his expression. The only thing that ebbs the tempest is pity, once his gaze moves to cradle Tommy.

Tommy ducks his head, embarrassed. He’s been avoiding mirrors, but he still knows how fucked up he must look. Each of the million bruises on him ache like nothing else. It’s only bearable because of how utterly, absolutely afraid he is.

Tommy prepares to resist another round of stay in your room, Tommy, you’re too hurt to be out here, Tommy. Instead, he gets something else.

“That fucking bitch,” Wilbur seethes.

Tommy barks out a startled laugh, eyes jerking up.

Wilbur clenches his fists at his side, weight shifting quickly from foot to foot. “Tommy’s barely fucking standing right now and she wants to come here, accusing him–”

Tommy slides past him. Wilbur’s words roll through him like an encouraging gust of wind. Wilbur breaks out of his anger, rant cutting off harshly. He’d been looking at him the whole time, but it’s like he’s just now seeing him.

“Wait–”

“Just follow him,” Techno says under his breath, nudging Wilbur forward. “We’re not winnin’ this one.”

Wilbur blinks, expression hardening once again. Tommy pays him no mind.

All he cares about is the doorway to the kitchen, the shadows spilling out of it (Phil and her), and the distance between them and Tommy. Within seconds, he has each twin flanking him. Silent support. Tommy finds, in this moment, a heavy gratitude for them that he’s too wound up to voice.

He stumbles into the kitchen. No, he stumbles into a nightmare.

The conversation dies when he staggers in, but even just the sight of his social worker at the dinner table, mouth half open around whatever she was saying, is enough to make him dizzy. There’s a stack of papers next to her. Her nails click impatiently against the table.

Tommy can’t breathe.

Is this it? Is she sending me away? Did I finally break it, did I finally fuck everything up, did I finally–

“Tommy,” Phil breathes, holding a hand up. His social worker looks instantly irritated that he paused the discussion for him, but Phil doesn’t waver. He only has focus for Tommy. “Kiddo, are you sure you should be–”

“‘m fine,” he grits out quickly. “I’m–” His eyes slide over to his social worker, the scrutiny that picks him apart where he stands. Tommy swallows. “Just fine.”

He tries his best to mean it. It hurts to stand up straight, to breathe, to speak these words, but he ignores the pain. He has to.

If he’s not fine, she’ll make him leave. That’s how it goes. That’s how it always goes. Good foster kids stay. Bad ones get chucked into the dirt. And with half of his skin covered in a lovely array of violet, he knows he’s already one foot into bad one territory.

“Mr. Watson,” his social worker strains, clearing her throat and pointedly avoiding his very presence, like usual, “as we were discussing.”

Her hand hovers over that stack of papers. Tommy tries his best to read them, but can’t glean a single word from as far as he is. Maybe that’s a good thing. He doesn’t want to see whatever the hell she wrote about him. It’s all poison, surely. Worse: most of it is probably true.

Phil hesitates, lips parting. Tommy can practically see the gears in his brain turning as his foster father’s eyes scrape over the three of them: exhausted and exasperated at once, then broken when he gets to Tommy, conflicted.

Tommy nods. Whatever is happening, he needs Phil to finish it. That’s the only way he’s making it out of this alive. Phil inhales, shoulders broadening. Then, he’s turning to Tommy’s social worker like a general about to command an army.

“Miss, I hope you understand my concern here. My kid was assaulted.”

Tommy’s breath catches. Assaulted. Such a heavy word to attach to him. He hates it. It undoes everything he’s been trying to hide these last few weeks.

Assaulted. Was it really that bad?

His social worker lets out a weighted breath. “I understand how you’re feeling right now, Mr. Watson.” She slides a paper over the table. “That’s why I’ve taken the liberty of reaching out to the school.”

Tommy leans forward, even more desperate to get a glance of that paper. Techno’s arm snaps around his chest quick as a flytrap, holding him up before he can stumble. It doesn’t matter. Phil snatches up the paper too fast anyway, skimming over it, knuckles white–

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking with me.”

Her eyes widen. “Sir–”

Phil slams the paper down hard enough for the edges to wrinkle. “Academic probation?” he reads, jaw slack. “Suspension?” Phil shakes his head, laughing, strained and bitter. “No, no, this– we’re not stopping there.”

Tommy’s social worker draws in another heavy breath. That special Tommy-one, the one she reserves for whenever he fucks up, or begs to be let out of a bad home, that, You’re being too much right now. Stop it breath.

“Dream’s parents have asked you to hear them out,” she says carefully. She shrugs sort of lamely. “Since they’re both under eighteen, we can settle this in school.”

Phil’s hand, braced over the paper, curls into a tight fist. “This is assault,” he bites out. “Horrible, prolonged assault.” (Tommy flinches over every word.) “The only place we’re settling this is in a courtroom.”

“Mr. Watson–”

“–they can’t give that psychopath enough detentions in the world to make up for what he did to my boy. This is ridiculous.”

“Mr. Watson!”

Tommy recognizes – in painfully familiar definition – the exact moment his social worker snaps. Phil goes quiet, but his body shakes. A bomb containing itself. Gunpowder and skin.

He looks an awful lot like Wilbur does right now.

“Look, sir,” his social worker grits out. She glares daggers at Tommy, who automatically raises his chin. No weakness. “They say it was a mutual fight.”

Techno’s arm around his shoulder goes rigid. Tommy vaguely wonders if he can feel Tommy’s heartbeat through his skin, pounding and pounding.

His social worker sighs lightly. “And knowing Tommy’s record–”

“Fuck his record!”

Every eye in the room snaps to Wilbur.

Phil’s mouth is open, a lecture no doubt forming, and Tommy is totally frozen in shock. None of that stops Wilbur when he takes two ragged steps forward. He stares down Tommy’s social worker like he’s the one her words are tearing apart.

Like this, even under the shitty kitchen lights and silvery daylight spilling through the window–

Wilbur is aflame.

“Fuck his fucking record,” Wilbur repeats, chest rising quickly. “That’s all bullshit, and you know it.”

Phil’s eyes narrow – not in disagreement, necessarily, but still some sort of warning. “Wilbur–”

Wilbur looks at him, and then instantly away.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tommy’s– he’s not a delinquent. He’s– he’s good. He’s a good kid.” Wilbur’s throat bobs. “And he didn’t deserve this. Not for a second.”

Tommy’s chest squeezes. It’s suddenly much more difficult to breathe. For once, though, that’s not in a bad way.

Wilbur is… defending him? The faintest whisper of a sunrise opens up in Tommy’s chest.

Oh. Wilbur is defending him.

That renders him speechless in a way nothing Dream did to him ever could. Tommy blinks, only able to watch. His social worker fumbles for a response.

“I– I’m not saying he deserved it–”

“Then– then stop fucking talking about him like that,” Wilbur bites out. “Do your job. Fucking help him.” He scoffs, scrubbing a shaking hand through his hair. “At least pretend like you’re on his side for five minutes.”

Silence.

Fragile, flaming silence. Nobody, not even Phil, can break it.

Tommy stares at Wilbur, skin prickling. He feels like he’s looking at a supernova: something wonderful, bright, explosive. He can’t look away.

Tommy’s social worker fidgets in place. The tension must get to her – that, or the three pairs of murderous glances bearing down on her like a heat lamp – because she jerks to her feet. The kitchen chair skids loudly against the tile.

“Well,” his social worker finally clears her throat. “I see emotions are running high right now.”

She scoops her manilla folder up, shuffling papers into it. They all watch, hardly daring to breathe. The kitchen is a dollhouse, frozen in stasis, and Tommy’s foster family the pieces arranged stiffly inside it.

“We can continue this discussion another time.” Her eyes flick to Phil. “The principal agreed to hold a meeting on Monday.”

The silence shatters.

Phil steps forward, brows pulling together, “I never said–”

The social worker is faster, backing up towards the door. “You have my number. I’ll be seeing you.”

And then she’s gone, excusing herself just like that. All Tommy can do is watch as she jerkily makes her way to the door — only stopping once to cast a long, hard look at Tommy before the front door closes, swallowing her whole.

When the silence comes for them again, it’s much less fragile. The calm after a storm, except Tommy can still feel the choke of lightning in the air.

“I hate that chic,” Techno drones.

Tommy chokes on a laugh, leaning into him. He’s dizzy, all of a sudden. He just stepped off a rollercoaster, he must have, because his stomach is somewhere by his throat and his skin is all tingly and he’s high off the thrill of everything Wilbur said.

He didn’t deserve this. Not for a second.

Tommy’s heart climbs up his throat and beats there, gentle. Exhilarated.

He’s good. A good kid.

Those words ring and ring through his ears, becoming less and less warm the longer he mulls them over. Or maybe that’s just him spiralling down from the high. Ice begins a slow crawl over him.

A good kid. Right. Maybe to Wilbur. Wilbur who finds character in even the ugliest sweaters he pulls from the thrift stores. Wilbur who won’t throw away any of the stupid gifts Tommy gives him. Wilbur who loves broken things.

Maybe, improbably, Phil and Techno have that in common with him. But what does that matter?

Wilbur can love broken things all he wants, but he can’t love the broken out of Tommy. And that’s what it comes down to.

When the principal sides with Dream, Tommy knows he won’t be able to handle it. If a family court judge does…

It will kill him. Well and truly, it will kill him.

In the end, that’s what makes him turn to Phil, movements slow and stiff and resolute. All the grace of a possessed, mausoleum statue.

“Phil,” Tommy rasps, head hanging low. “...She’s right.”

In his peripheral, Wilbur’s head snaps to him. Tommy can’t see his face clearly, but he knows if he turned, all he’d find there is flaming betrayal.

“Tommy, what? How–”

Phil holds up a hand. Wilbur goes silent.

Tommy shakes as he tries to keep himself together. He steps out of Techno’s gentle but firm grasp. Techno, looking for all the world like he’d rather do anything else, reluctantly surrenders his grip.

“Tommy,” Phil says. “What do you mean?”

Tommy trembles. “We don’t have to take it that far.” He tries to keep his head high. “Court, assault– it’s– we don’t need to go there.” He lets out a shaky breath. Calm composed. Then he slams the final nail down. “I forgive him.”

“No.”

“...What?”

“No,” Phil repeats, firmer. “No, he hurt my kid. I’m slapping him with every charge that’ll stick, you hear me?”

Tommy blinks incredulously up at him. Phil spares him no reaction — only more blue fire.

When Tommy manages to summon up a protest, it’s frail.

“No, Phil, you don’t get it. We don’t have to do anything.”

Not for me. Not over this.

Not if it means potentially losing them.

Phil’s expression splits open. “Tommy, son– yes we do.”

“No,” Tommy shakes his head, fists curling. “We don’t. I swear we don’t.”

“Tommy,” Phil whispers. It’s grief. All grief. “We can’t let this get brushed under the rug. We can’t, Tom.”

Tommy nearly crumples right there. “Phil–”

“I love you, kiddo,” Phil laughs out, high and broken. “That’s why I can’t let you brush this under the rug.”

“It’s fine,” Tommy croaks, voice cracking. His eyes sting. Fuck. He stares at the tile, that’s easier, and watches it blur and blur. “It’s– it’s okay, I’m not–”

“No,” Phil disagrees lowly, shaking his head. “It’s not.”

Tommy’s chin trembles. Phil smiles, jagged. His foster father seems so old in their tiny kitchen. He stares at Tommy like Tommy is breaking him. Or his heart. Tommy is breaking Phil’s heart.

“You deserve,” Phil breathes, “so much, Tommy. You deserve to be okay. And I am so mad at myself for not seeing this sooner.”

Copper explodes on his tongue. He’s biting his cheek too hard but he can’t stop. He can’t. Phil’s words cut him down: loving, heartbroken syllable after loving, heartbroken syllable. It’s sweet pain on another level. Tommy can’t bear it.

Mostly, because he doesn’t understand it.

“Why?”

Phil’s eyes shine. “Because you’re my kid, Tommy. You’re my baby, just like these guys.” He nods to Wilbur and Techno. Tommy gasps for air. “And I can’t let you let him do this to you. I– I can’t, kiddo.”

Salt tinges his lips. Tommy sniffles, choking down the sob that tries to build in his constricted throat. He’s pretty sure he fails.

My kid. Kiddo. My baby.

“Stop– stop saying that.”

You don’t mean it. Not the way I want you to.

Phil just keeps that same, broken smile. “I can’t. You’re my baby, Tommy. Maybe not by blood, but by everything else.”

Not everything. Not everything.

He clenches his hands to fists, nails digging into his skin. He doesn’t feel it. Tommy is in free-fall.

“And if you want to forgive him, which you shouldn’t,” Phil continues, somehow managing to wrap sharp words with silk, “Then wait for him to be sorry. Because he’s not.”

Tommy hangs his head. From the corner of his blurry vision, he sees Techno tug Wilbur out of the room. They take their leave, silent, and that only cracks Tommy open like an oyster. There’s so much more room for him to fall apart.

Especially with Phil looking at him like he’s ready to catch him.

“Phil,” he mumbles, the words punching out over a numb tongue. “I don’t– I don’t like court.”

There. The confession tears out of him like a tangible thing.

It’s the closest he can bring himself to say, I am so fucking terrified to lose you guys. Court’s only ever taken good things away from me.

But Phil doesn’t get mad. Doesn’t laugh or patronize him or any of the million things his frazzled mind expects.

Instead, Phil’s face softens. “I know, Tom,” he says, reaching out. Tommy numbly, shakily, falls into him. Phil holds him close, breathing like Tommy’s safety is oxygen to him. “I get it. I’m not saying this will be easy.”

Tommy’s lungs shrink. “I’m scared.”

Phil cups one hand behind Tommy’s head. “That’s okay. We’ll be there, all of us.”

We’ll be there. We’ll be there.

God. Is there even enough left of Tommy to come apart?

Phil gets his arms around him right in time for the sobs to break out. It’s… an avalanche. He’s crashing. It’s everything he wanted to say these last few weeks but couldn’t. It’s all the tears he covered up as surely as the bruises.

And Phil holds him all the way through it. He probably shouldn’t, this definitely isn’t what he signed up for, but he does. He does, and he soothes the sounds of Tommy’s crying with his own simple chorus of, Let it go, kiddo. I’ve got you, kiddo. You’re okay.

For once, Tommy might actually believe him.

Only when he’s coming down does Tommy wonder if Phil knows just how much he is holding Tommy up right now — and not just physically.

“I– I don’t forgive him,” Tommy mumbles into Phil’s chest. “I was lying.”

And lying was easier.

Phil laughs quietly, stroking Tommy’s hair. “I know, kiddo. I know when you’re lying.” All the levity drops out of his voice, leaving guilty gravel behind. “...usually.”

Tommy wrenches back. Or rather, shame wraps an icy hand around his shoulder and pulls him away.

“Phil–”

Phil closes his eyes, sighing. “Don’t apologize for that, Tom. Please.”

“It wasn’t because of you guys.”

He has to know. They all have to.

“I know.” His fingers comb and comb through Tommy’s hair. Tommy doesn’t know if he’s reassuring Tommy or himself. “I’m… upset–” And Tommy’s heart fucking screams– “that you had to go through that alone. But I can’t say I don’t see why you thought you had to do it.”

“You do?” Tommy croaks.

Phil presses a kiss into the crown of his hair. God, if this isn’t everything Tommy’s ever wanted. God, if it still doesn’t feel like a mirage about to tear apart.

“Yes. But I’ll keep learning. So that next time, you know you can come to me.”

Unsaid, but what Tommy hears anyway: So that next time, I don’t find you crumpled on my sofa, a living bruise.

Shakily, Tommy pulls back. As much as he wants to melt into his foster father and waste away – and fuck, a hug is the best pain reliever Tommy’s ever had – he has to face the world. His world. Techno and Wilbur. And then the rest of it.

Phil smiles downward as Tommy wipes at his red eyes, ducking his head. He looks… proud. As if Tommy hasn’t just fallen apart in front of him.

“Does, uh, that mean we’re waiting?” Tommy asks hesitantly.

Phil’s brow dims. His jaw threatens to sharpen.

“...we’ll go talk to them Monday,” Phil relents. Tommy exhales, somewhat relieved. He has time to bask in this. “We’ll take today and tomorrow to think. And for you to get better.” All of Tommy’s bruises pang at once. “But then we’ll fight for you, Tommy. Because that’s what family does.”

Family. He tosses the word out so easily that Tommy almost flinches.

That age-old question blooms on his tongue. Then why haven’t you adopted me yet?

Just like he has all the other times, Tommy kills it on the spot. He’s too tired for accusations. And frankly, if Phil just wants the temporary version of him, he’s… he can grow to be okay with that.

This is the best temporary he’s ever had.

Phil must read his somberness as something else, because he frowns. “Would you let Techno and Wilbur–”

“No,” Tommy blurts, panicked. Just the thought of them being in his position rattles him. It’s fear like being slammed into a locker room floor. “Fuck, no–”

Phil smiles, strained. Ah, he got Tommy where he wanted him, then. Tommy cuts off at the realization, words dying. It’s probably for the best. He doesn’t think Phil would want to hear him say what he was going to. They wouldn’t end up like me. They’re better.

“Monday,” Phil emphasizes. Tommy nods. “For now, you need to sit your ass down.”

Tommy blinks. “Phil?”

“Uh-uh. I don’t want to hear it. You’ve been up for way too long.”

Phil slides an arm around him, sweeping him toward the living room. Tommy protests half-heartedly, mostly out of pride. Scratch that— perplexion.

“I’m not a baby–”

“I don’t care.” He tilts his head. “This is the compromise you wanted, Tommy. No hospitals? Fine. But for the record,” and his eyes sparkle as he leans in real close, sharing that joke between them like a fire to warm cold hands, “I’m much more of a worrywart than a doctor would be.”

Tommy sputters out a laugh, full and real and warm.

Phil turns away again, looking decidedly proud that he’d made Tommy laugh. That just makes Tommy warmer.

He lets Phil usher him back to the couch – which has apparently become his permanent residency; he should let the school know – and when he settles down onto it, suddenly exhausted, even his bruises don’t hurt so bad.

Tommy has a storm to face in two days. He can feel the thunder building in the sky. But for now, if the Watsons want to give him peace, well. Dead men always get last meals, right? This could be Tommy’s.

“Take this,” Phil murmurs, throwing a blanket on him. “Prepare to be coddled, you shit.”

Tommy manages a smile.

While it lasts, he thinks he’s okay with this.

—

It’s kind of sad that the weirdest reaction to a bruise Tommy has ever experienced is what the Watsons give him: affection.

The next two days last forever. The next two days don’t last at all.

He’s doted on. That’s… weird. The Watsons dote on him — and not just in big ways. In hugs and Are you doing okays and bandages. In all the tiny, meaningful, easily-forgettable ways that can only come from people who’ve known it all their lives. It’s painfully, euphorically domestic.

It’s this:

Tommy dragging his rickety gaming chair from across the hall and into Techno’s room, settling down beside him, a stolen blanket wrapped around his hunched shoulders, as Techno boots up Sky Wars on his PC. It’s barely past noon, and the house is only barely recovering from the sour arrival of his social worker — and the bitter sting of her departure.

Tommy is exhausted from how much rest he’s gotten, but he doesn’t dare deny himself the steady comfort of being lazy with Techno. Even if there’s still a jagged shard of instinct lodged in his brain, telling him that the rest is temporary, telling him that he may not be in the locker room anymore, but he’s still got one foot inside it. Multiple times — as he’s lounged or napped or sipped honeyed tea — he’s found himself fumbling to cover his bruise-mocked skin from the Watsons’ sharp attention, only to remind himself that he doesn’t have to.

He’s getting better at telling that splintered voice to fuck off.

He’s getting… better.

They know.

Tommy’s secret is as cracked open as all of his carefully-assembled defenses. He’d be lying if he said he knows what to do with himself anymore, with the harmless hands and long, sorrowful glances and unending affection.

The Watsons know. And a day passed and he’s still with them. His social worker came, and he didn’t go with her. Twice, Tommy has slipped away to stand in front of his dresser drawers, eyes blurry and a black trash bag bunched in his hands, considering.

Do it first, so it hurts less. Do it before they pull the rug from your feet. Do it now.

Twice, he’s walked away. Tommy shoved the trash bag under his bed. Minutes later, Techno knocked on his door.

Tommy’s head droops. A yawn crawls out of his throat, brain lazily taking in Techno’s frantic gameplay. After a long second, Techno’s chair moves. Syrup coats the inside of Tommy’s chest as Techno lets Tommy’s head drop onto his shoulder. Tommy bites the inside of his cheek, swallowing the urge to vomit out a slew of appreciation that would only make Techno awkward. So he just grows comfortable as his blinks grow slower, and his heart keeps swelling to an uncomfortable mass when Techno’s fingers dance out to lower the volume of the monitor for him.

Tommy releases a light breath.

Forget Monday. Forget the meeting. Tommy could waste away in the quiet of Techno’s room, thawed by his steady presence, and he’d only be thankful for it.

A pang runs through him as the quiet melts his thoughts. But one cluster of anxiety remains untouched, like an iron core in a molten bath of peace, stubbornly persisting.

“Techno.”

“Hm?”

“Is Wilbur mad at me?”

Techno stills, hand stuttering, fingers flinching — his character goes careening off the edge of the map. Tommy almost laughs. He’s too worked up.

He may have spent most of the time since Friday only half-aware, but he’s not blind. He’s noticed the surgical grace with which Wilbur makes sure to avoid him: practically leaping to duck out of a room the minute Tommy enters; shooting him weird, pensive looks when he thinks Tommy’s not looking but never opening his mouth to talk about them; defending Tommy from his social worker and then shutting himself in his room.

In the day since he’s peeled himself off of that grimy, coppery locker room floor, where Tommy has overdosed on affection from Phil and Techno, he’s only been starved of it by Wilbur.

The person at the center of Tommy’s ruin has done everything in his power to make a ghost of himself in his own house. Half of the reason he’d thrown himself willingly before Dream’s wrath has cut Tommy off so utterly that it’s consumed his every waking thought. Not just consumed — wrecked.

“What?”

Tommy peels himself off of Techno’s shoulder. He misses the point of contact instantly, but at least he can look at him properly. Techno swivels his chair around to face him, shock splayed across his face in an open, un-Techno-like display.

Tommy rolls the words over in his mouth. Easy now; don’t stutter. “Is he… upset with me?”

Even he cringes at how frail he sounds. For his credit, Techno just stares.

“No,” he eventually says, right before Tommy is convinced the silence is going to make him shrivel up. His voice is rough. “God, no. He’s just… Wilbur.” Tommy doesn’t know what to make of that. His gut curdles. Another twin thing, then. Techno clears his throat. “I promise. He’s not mad.”

Tommy frowns, but he has already spent the weekend trusting them. What’s one more promise for him to bet his heart on? And Techno sounds so sure, even if Wilbur has been so hauntingly absent…

“Okay.”

Tommy leans against him again. His weight seems to allow Techno to breathe. He eventually loads up a new game of Sky Wars, but not before wrapping one arm around Tommy. It bends his elbow, making it awkward to hold the mouse, but Tommy doesn’t ask him to let him go. How could he?

Still, as Tommy loses his millionth battle against sleep, he can’t help but wonder if Techno’s idea of protection extends to lying about this:

Making sure Tommy doesn't have to recover from both his injuries and the curling wrath of Wilbur’s disappointment.

—

He drifts back up sore, but content.

The blinds are drawn over the windows, killing the light. Tommy shifts. His muscles ache, but he snags a look at Techno, slumped back in his gamer chair, sound asleep. It can’t be comfortable. But he’s here. If there was any fear to be had, any panic at waking, it goes dormant.

Tommy draws his blankets tight around his shoulders, relaxing again. He doesn’t think there’s a doctor on earth that could prescribe him a better pain relief than this.

—

Tommy sneaks away after it’s clear that he won’t be falling asleep again, leaving his blanket draped on Techno.

Daytime still spills in through most of the windows, but the house is quiet. It’s been a while since the calm was anything other than daunting. Tommy savors it as he roots through the kitchen for a snack.

The distant shuffle from upstairs signals when Phil enters his office. Tommy half-listens to it as he goes through the motions of rinsing a mug in the sink. He wiggles his fingers under the warm water, sensation awakening in his hurt skin.

He doesn’t know how long he stands there, wasting water and soap and time. Only that the thing to break him out of it is the scuffled shove of the door being wrenched open, and the plasticky jingle of Wilbur’s keys clinking against the doorknob. He turns.

Wilbur halts to a stop in the doorway. “Tommy.”

Tommy forces his shoulders not to curl at the rough scratch of Wilbur’s voice. He offers him a hesitant, soapy wave. And when Wilbur’s features narrow into sharp scrutiny, scanning Tommy up and down like he’s a sculpture to be checked for cracks, Tommy does the same thing right back.

Wilbur’s got his typical brown jacket on, though the sleeves are as rumpled as his mess of curly hair. His hands are shoved in his pockets, and his lips pursed in a way that draws out the gauntness of his pale face. Violet smudges ring his undereyes, so dark that Tommy is convinced — for half of a gut wrenching second — that Wilbur got into it with Dream. Then, Wilbur tries to swallow a yawn, and reality stabilizes. He’s just exhausted.

Tommy nods at him, and then slowly goes back to washing his cup. With his back angled toward him, it’s the perfect opportunity for Wilbur to take his leave like he’s been doing since Friday, if he wants to. Tommy wants to be bitter, but he can’t find the energy. He’s not owed Wilbur’s attention. Even if he wants it.

Wilbur doesn’t leave.

He closes the front door behind him, ushering away the sunlight trying to sneak inside. His keychain clanks again as he drops it on the kitchen table, but his silhouette remains stubbornly in Tommy’s periphery. Tommy holds his breath. Don’t let me scare you away wars with: Don’t let guilt be the reason you linger.

Tommy stares at his mug, but it’s impossible not to let his attention snag on Wilbur’s pacing. Especially not when he feels Wilbur’s eyes burning into the back of his neck. He sounds one quiet, frustrated breath from stepping in and washing Tommy’s cup for him. Tommy lets him pace, not wanting to interrupt his hand-wringing or contained glances or the way he’s clearly gearing up to say something that he can’t find the words for.

Tommy can’t stall anymore. The cup gleams, clean. He shuts the tap off, shaking off the excess water—

And stops when Wilbur suddenly appears at his side. Without a word, he takes Tommy’s mug and pats it dry with a dish towel. Tommy raises a sore eyebrow. Wilbur smiles tensely, like it’s his first time.

Then, it’s quiet. Awkward, tension-riddled, quiet. But Wilbur didn’t become class president for no reason. Ever the spokesperson, Wilbur writhes in pauses just about as much as Tommy does.

“I keep thinking.”

Tommy braces himself against the edge of the sink, not daring to interrupt. He gives Wilbur all the space he needs to form his words — and prays he’ll be left standing at the end of it.

“I keep thinking,” Wilbur repeats, not looking at him. “...you knew.”

Tommy’s spine locks. “What?”

Wilbur sets the dry cup down on the edge of the counter hard enough to make Tommy’s teeth rattle. His hands are curled into bloodless fists, one closed around the dish rag like he’s trying to squeeze the life out of it. Tommy’s heart is experiencing the exact same sensation.

“You knew,” Wilbur tastes the words, mouth twisting over the poison of them. “You knew what he was going to do to you when I left you alone on Friday.”

It’s not a question. There’s no, Didn’t you? Just cold, cold truth and frigid accusation.

Tommy can’t breathe around it. “Wil…”

“You knew,” Wilbur whispers, like it’s all he knows how to say. And maybe it is. How many times has he rolled these thoughts over in his head since Friday, Tommy wonders? How many of those hours spent avoiding Tommy were hours spent ruminating over every detail? Wilbur speaks like speaking is killing him. “You knew, and you let me leave you.”

He finally, finally faces him. But Tommy almost wants to be the one to turn away. The sight of Wilbur with shining eyes and shaking hands…

“Wil,” he tries, all wobbly and fragile. “Wilbur, you couldn’t have–”

“I could’ve,” Wilbur snaps. His anger fades as quick as it appeared, leaving only Wilbur to be victim to it, leaving only Wilbur to smolder in its embers. He lowers his voice. “I could’ve. If I was trustworthy enough to tell.”

Tommy feels like his head just got bounced off locker room tile. Wilbur’s heart is a bleeding wound in front of him, and he needs to patch it up.

“He was going to do it anyway,” he tries weakly. “If not Friday, then Monday. If not because of you, then–”

Wilbur winces. Tommy’s throat revolts.

“And that’s another thing,” Wilbur cuts in, before Tommy is finished tripping over how to say, No, no– not because of you– “You didn’t tell us. Not just this time: any of the times.”

Wilbur’s nails dig into the countertop. He hangs his head. When he lifts it, it’s to fix Tommy with a horrible, red-eyed, pleading stare that digs knives into his chest.

“What was it, Tommy? What did we do that made you think we’d ever, ever want you to hide this from us? How did we fail so fucking miserably that you didn’t want to talk even when you were covered in bruises? What was it?”

“Stop,” Tommy chokes out, eyes burning. “Wilbur, stop.”

“I keep replaying that look on your face,” Wilbur rasps, unhearing. Or worse: content to let the flame of his guilt scorch himself to ash. “In the hallway. I– I knew something was wrong. You were so…” His jaw flexes, a vocal flinch. “Something was wrong. You were begging me to take you with me, and you don’t– you don’t do that. But I ignored it.” He throws his head back. The bitter laugh that peels off his throat splits Tommy open. “I got drunk. He did that to you, and I was busy getting drunk.”

Tears threaten to fall freely down Tommy’s cheeks now. Tommy thought he was done with crying, done with resting, done with grieving himself. But Wilbur cracks him open all over again.

“All this time you were warning us. All this time you were begging to be saved. But you didn’t– we never–”

“It’s not your fault.”

Wilbur casts him such a potently disbelieving look that Tommy has to resist the urge to barrel into him, hug him. That, or slap that look off his face for all eternity.

“It’s not,” Tommy insists, forcing down every drop of salt that wants to escape him. “I was scared, Wilbur. I didn’t say anything because I was scared.”

“...Of him?”

Tommy clenches his jaw. “No.”

If only it were that easy. He almost doesn’t understand how Wilbur can look at him and think it’s because of Dream. It almost makes him angry, in a backward way. The old Tommy would’ve been; he’d be burning himself to the ground with Wilbur. Then he remembers that not everything comes with chasms carved through them, with chips broken off them, with pieces taken from foster homes that never heal through. Just over. Never through.

“Then what?”

“Losing you guys.”

Wilbur’s mouth snaps shut. His demeanor doesn’t lose that manic edge, but it’s only an opportunity that Tommy needs. This has been building up in him for too long to stop it. Tommy inhales deeply, gathering strength. This is the time to say it. Now, when everything is already fucked.

“Dream doesn’t compare,” Tommy says slowly. “In my head, it’s just… nothing compares. Nothing he could’ve done to me— nothing he did was worse than what it would feel like to be sent away. Nothing was worse than that.”

Panic brings Wilbur back into life. Panic, and a syrupy pity that Tommy has seen a thousand times before.

“We wouldn’t,” Wilbur swears. “We would never–”

“Every other person in my life who has said that has.”

Tommy ignores the euphoric rush that threatens to fizz through him. We would never. We would never. Could he mean it? He forces himself to get back on track even if all he wants to do is make Wilbur say that to him over and over and over again, until he never forgets what it sounds like.

“I’m an only child, Wil, but I’ve had brothers. I’ve had sisters, and parents. I’ve had everything that was supposed to make me okay, and they left. Every single one of them.”

Pity feels so different coming from Wilbur. It doesn’t feel like an empty grief; it feels like a push: keep going. I’m listening.

“I don’t… I don’t expect you to know what it feels like to lose everything all of the time, all for the dumbest shit. For existing, it feels. I’ve been too much for everyone I’ve ever met. Half the time they were looking for a reason to show me the door. Coming home with one bruise would’ve been enough to send me packing.”

It shouldn’t hurt, after so long. Tommy wishes his heart could remember that.

“I haven’t put roots down in so long.” Warmth slips into his words against his will. “Until you idiots.” Only for them. “If you think this,” he gestures lamely to his body, “hurt me, then that would’ve destroyed me. And maybe it’s irrational to you, but that’s how I felt.”

The words are barely out of him— finally, sings his heart, finally finally— before Wilbur is barreling into him. It’s the hug Tommy didn’t have the courage to give. Tommy clings to him, not realizing he’s shaking until he feels Wilbur mimicking the tremors.

Wilbur jerks back, sending Tommy’s heart wailing.

“Wait,” he breathes, “Is that fine? Can I hug you?”

Tommy thinks they would both fall apart if he said no.

“Please.”

Wilbur goes right back to squeezing him. All of Tommy’s fears dissolve at once. There is no panic that can reach him here.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wilbur murmurs endlessly, rocking him back and forth. Tommy just holds him tighter and prays he understands: You’re forgiven. You were always forgiven. But Wilbur is one stubborn bastard, because he doesn’t.

“I’m so grateful you’re here,” Wilbur whispers into his scalp. “I don’t know what I’d be doing with my life if Phil hadn’t fostered you, but it would– it would be shit, man. I think I’d just die.”

Tommy chokes. “So pretentious,” he manages, over the leap of his heartbeat at that imagery. At least he knows it's an exaggeration. Even in the best foster home he’s ever had, Tommy’s presence couldn’t ever be worth that much.

Wilbur pulls back, smiling at him. His hands never leave Tommy’s shoulders; a grasp they both rely on. “I can’t help it,” Wilbur says. “I swear my life changed when Phil brought you home.” His lips twist to the side. “Even if you were a total twat.”

“Fuck you man,” Tommy barks out, but he’s laughing. He’s able to do that now. “I was hilarious. I spiced up your cozy little lives.”

“I distinctly remember you trying to poison my soup with excessive amounts of salt. Multiple times.”

The memory makes his head fizzy, brain replaced with cherry Coke. “Yeah, and it would’ve worked too, if your tastebuds weren’t so fucked up.”

Wilbur rolls his eyes. He steps back, letting him go, and… Tommy doesn’t miss it. Not that much. Not when he’s ridiculously, irrationally sure that he could say the word and Wilbur might do it again.

God. Either he’s deliriously broken, or whimsically lucky. Either way, the Tommy from a year ago would laugh in his face. And then keep laughing, because he wouldn’t recognize the Tommy he is now.

Wilbur’s laughter eventually fades from the lines of his face, but even the somberness that replaces it is peaceful.

“I’m glad you’re okay, Tommy,” he says quietly. “It– it killed me seeing you like that. Even drunk.” He huffs, brushing a fallen curl out of his eyes. “It’s nice to see you laugh.”

Wilbur steps away. He departs that statement so easily, so effortlessly, and then makes to turn around, like Tommy is just supposed to be okay after that, like he’s ever supposed to accept that his being happy is someone else’s balm.

“I would tell you,” Tommy blurts out, right before Wilbur can go. “If it happened again, I would tell you.”

Wilbur’s eyes glimmer. “Good,” he says. “Not that it’ll ever happen again.” He tilts his head, considering. “If it did, though, I wouldn’t hold Techno back a second time.”

Tommy manages a half-smile, though that imagery scares him. Had Wilbur really held Techno back?

Wilbur must read the question in him, because his face lights up: an abyssal darkness flickering behind mischief. “You should’ve seen him Friday night, Tom. When he got that– well. I don’t know if that’s mine to tell you.” Tommy frowns, lips parting, but Wilbur is heading for the doorway too quickly to catch him. “He would’ve marched over to Dream’s house and knocked him on his ass right there.”

“He would’ve gotten arrested,” Tommy says tightly.

Wilbur shrugs with one shoulder. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

Tommy really must be an awful person for that to set his inside ablaze with gold. He steadies himself on the counter. Techno would’ve fought for me.

“And Tommy,” Wilbur says, snagging an apple from the fruit bowl as he swings toward the doorway, “If it happened again, I would take you with me.”

Then, he’s gone.

Tommy lets Phil take him to the hospital the next day.

—

Time passes with no regard to him, as time tends to do. Monday arrives, no longer a brewing storm on the horizon but a hurricane raging around him. His period of rest expires. It’s time.

They leave early for school, and Tommy tries not to give in to the lightning strumming in his veins as Wilbur shuffles him into the car. The Watsons treat him especially gently this morning. For once, Tommy can’t loathe it.

He needs them by his side, needs to wear their affection like armor, otherwise he’s going to fall apart. The only thing that keeps him from throwing up every time he so much as thinks of sitting across a table from Dream is the fact that he has his foster family beside him.

The hallways are silent, utterly vacant. The first block is far from starting; Dream’s parents had insisted on starting the meeting ridiculously early — a power play which Phil did not take gracefully.

But they’re here now. Tommy exhales a rattling breath when they stop in front of the office.

“Go put your stuff in your locker,” Phil tells him quietly, laying a solid hand on his shoulder. “Then meet back here.”

Tommy nods without focus, though Phil wasn’t talking to just him. His eyes linger particularly long on the twins like, Don’t let him out of your sight. Tommy almost scoffs, but Techno straightens. Techno and Wilbur have their books in their hands and a simmering rage under their skin, one Tommy senses just from being so close to them. It makes him anxious and secure all at once.

When they get to the segment of the hallway where they have to split off — Tommy’s locker being in one hall, and theirs in the other — the twins act like they’ve just confronted doomsday.

“Go,” Tommy insists, batting at them with a lazy hand. “It’s like, right around the corner.”

Wilbur’s expression sours. Techno’s jaw ticks. Tommy’s chest opens up, slightly pleased.

“Go.”

If he can’t walk by himself down one hall, this entire weekend of recovery would be for nothing. Tommy’s spent his entire life seeking protection. And when reality hit, he’s spent the rest of the time learning to live without it. He can wean himself off of the Watsons’ hospitality, just this once.

Wilbur grumbles something under his breath that Tommy can’t make out, but they leave him. He doesn’t miss the way their steps pick up speed. He’d laugh if he wasn’t also convinced that he is watching the sun walk away with the moon, leaving him cold and alone. Then, he shakes sense into himself and hurries his own way.

The quicker he gets this over with, the quicker he can start the meeting and put an end to this all.

…On second thought, maybe prolonging this isn’t such a bad thing.

He’s too caught up in his own head, in trying to work his clumsy fingers around his padlock, to be aware of his surroundings, of the flash of movement heading his way. Or to remember the cosmic rule he’s spent his entire life learning:

Nothing ever, ever goes right for Tommy.

Weight slams into him from behind.

The violent force tosses him, fresh wounds and all, against a wall of rippled metal. Tommy’s gasp of surprise quickly breaks into one of pain. And even the pain hurries to make way for the horror consuming him when a desperate face flashes in front of his vision.

“What the fuck did you do?”

Dream’s hand twists in Tommy’s collar, dragging them nearly nose to nose. He chokes for air, mind whiting out. In the span of two seconds, the courage the Watsons built for him shatters. He can’t speak. Can’t think.

“I’m going to kill you,” Dream hisses, a whisper that twists a knife right into Tommy’s lungs. “You’re dead for that.”

He raises his fist. Reduced down to the barest instincts of a starving dog, all Tommy can do is cower and brace and resent himself for being so fucking stupid for ever leaving the twins’ sides.

“Oh, fuck no.”

It happens in the space of a breath:

One moment, Tommy’s fate is written into the harsh, angry contours of Dream’s face, and his skin is weeping in advance. The next, Wilbur is there.

Wilbur tackles Dream like a monster let loose from its primordial cage. It’s almost a delirious sight: the student body president wrestling a nightmare incarnate onto the ground. They both slam into the opposite wall in a graceless heap. But Tommy’s still breathing, and his senses haven’t failed him yet, and the scene doesn’t change. Wilbur punches him.

Dream’s head bounces off the tile, and then again off of Wilbur’s knuckles. That’s all the damage he’s able to do before Dream is yelling, kicking. A sneaker slams into Wilbur’s chest, throwing him back in a way that makes Tommy’s heartbeat spike. But when Dream’s fist clips Wilbur’s cheekbone, when they both try to shove themselves to their feet, when Wilbur stumbles and Dream releases a ragged, manic breath–

Dream is ripped away and tossed to the side.

Dream instantly wrenches upright, a living mass of rage, eyes that gleam dangerously like two embers— and Tommy can see the exact moment that Dream realizes it was not Tommy who intervened—

But Techno.

“You–” Dream hisses, eyes flickering around wildly, breaths short. “You–”

If Dream’s eyes glimmer with fiery anger, then Techno is a volcanic eruption in motion: cataclysmic, blistering, unstoppable. He stands between Dream and his brothers, and that pause is all the mercy that Dream gets.

The brawl breaks out like an astronomical collision.

Techno stabs a punch into Dream’s eye, sending him reeling. He hits him again before the first punch is even finished landing, and he finishes Tommy’s job of breaking his nose. The crack that sounds and the blood that sprays can’t mean anything else.

Dream kicks feebly at Techno’s knee — an old injury from when he played soccer, a weakness he must only know from fencing. Techno sidesteps it with a mean grimace. He swallows one of Dream’s punches to his jaw just to hit him back twice as hard. Blood gushes. Dream’s nose shatters.

Dream lets out a horrible roar, ducking low and barreling into Techno’s stomach like a football player. He gets his arms around Techno’s waist. They surge backward in a mess of limbs and blows that Tommy can’t keep up with.

At some point, he feels Wilbur stagger over to him, breathing hard at his side. But Tommy can’t look away, not even to inspect the damage, not even for a second. He can’t stop watching his foster brother and his biggest tormentor brawl like they’re dying.

It’s almost a fair fight until it’s not.

Tommy blinks, and Dream is on the ground, bloodied shirt pulled halfway over his head. And Techno, above him—

This is the rage Wilbur spoke about.

Techno doesn’t hold back. It’s written into every harsh line of his sharp-edged silhouette: a vicious reciprocity, a stature that screams, One punch for every one you dealt this month.

“This is what happens,” Techno spits through bloodied teeth, “when you mess with my brother.”

He punctuates that with another punch. Dream groans, head rolling back.

“Foster brother,” Wilbur pipes in quickly, sending a frightened look at Tommy. Tommy gapes at him; so does Techno. Wilbur scratches at his neck. “He– he doesn’t like it when we call him that.”

Tommy finds a second in the chaos to go completely still. Can Wilbur possibly still think that? After it’s been months since Tommy protested—

Techno rolls his wrist. “Foster brother,” he amends, slamming his fist down again.

“No!” Tommy blurts, heart rocketing up his throat. Wilbur’s head jerks to him. “No, I do like it. You can call me that.”

Tommy’s cheeks burn. Pleasant surprise flickers over Wilbur’s face.

“Oh,” he breathes. “Really?”

Tommy nods, biting the inside of his cheek. It’s probably the wrong time to say it, but Tommy has to. Wilbur beams.

Techno rolls his eyes and punches Dream again. “Brother,” he finishes— unrelenting this time.

Dream, still hanging out Techno’s grip, looks horrified. “Your family is fucking crazy,” he tries to sneer. It gurgles, comes out bloody, and the flickering of his eyes betrays his fear.

Techno shrugs. “I’m okay with that.”

He gets one last punch in, and Dream sags against the ground. He’s not out, much to Tommy’s merciful relief. Just dazed, chest heaving as he stares up at the ceiling. Blood leaks from his nose, dripping into his mouth, leaving each shallow breath jagged and nasally.

He looks so small on the ground. Nothing like the monster that had broken Tommy so thoroughly.

The panging of Tommy’s own barely-healed bruises disintegrates the bolt of sympathy that tries to form. That, plus the way that Wilbur slings an arm over his shoulder, tucking him into his chest. Tommy goes numbly.

“Tech,” he breathes, and Techno snaps to attention. “Did you– you didn’t–”

“I didn’t hurt him too bad.” Techno shakes blood off his knuckles and pins Dream with a look of pure steel. Dream can’t even glare back. “He still needs to confess.”

Chills burst over Tommy’s skin. The good kind, he’s mostly sure, but chills. To have provoked this side of Techno… Tommy doesn’t know how Dream even found the courage to fight.

As if on cue — while Tommy’s thoughts trip over themselves in a messy tangle that mostly equates to, He protected me he protected me he protected me — hell breaks loose. A group of shadows appear at the end of the hall, walking quickly. It can’t be anyone other than–

Techno kicks Dream in the side, drawing out a clipped grunt.

“Get up,” he hisses without sympathy, dragging Dream onto his feet and not flinching when Dream stumbles. “Be grateful you can stand.”

Under the venom in his tone is a sliver of accusation, an unspoken, Tommy couldn’t.

Techno doesn’t let Dream lean on him, either, seeming to relish watching him struggle to walk. From his perch with Wilbur, Tommy waits for pity to bloom in his chest. He waits for the guilt he was trained to feel to ravage him. He gets nothing. Just vindicated, relieved satisfaction. The kind that always marks him as the troubled kid, the kind that means he’s probably fucked up, the kind he can’t regret.

Every road is the high road, here, when Dream paved his highway straight in hell.

Dream drags his feet, looking murderous through the coat of blood. Tommy’s heart hiccups as a horrible scenario unfolds in his brain. Dream, feigning the victim. Dream dropping to his knees and pleading at the approaching crowd. Dream winning, again.

The corners of his vision ripple and distort. Wilbur casts him an alarmed glance. Tommy didn’t realize his breaths were coming so fast, or so shallow.

Then, Techno inclines his head down, whispering something to Dream that Tommy is too far away to hear. But whatever Techno says…

Dream stiffens, face going impossibly paler. He shoves Techno off of him, limping forward. Techno catches the back of his shirt, holding him in place. Techno’s face sparks a challenge, a question Tommy doesn’t understand.

Dream’s eyes flash, a rage so hateful it makes Tommy shiver. But he spits blood onto the ground, and then nods, clipped. Techno lets him go the way an executioner lets a man walk up the steps of a gallows, crossing his arms. Dream comes to a docile stop a few feet away. He never stops casting nervous looks at Techno, even as the small crowd spills out around him.

Phil, Dream’s parents, the principal, Tommy’s social worker, and a police officer.

All of them stare in abject shock at the four of them:

Tommy, leaning heavily onto Wilbur; Wilbur who swallows a smug smirk behind a mask of neutrality and a bad split lip; Techno flushed with exertion but barely hurt, knuckles raw and red and bloody; and Dream, barely upright, blood dripping grotesquely from most of his face.

“Inside,” the principal barks, attempting to preserve the peace that lays in a shattered pile at their feet. “All of you, now. And– and you. Get the school nurse.”

Tommy’s social worker balks at being addressed like an intern. The principal scowls, and she forces down the complaints, scurrying off. Tommy distantly hopes that she takes her sweet time. Let Dream stew in his injuries for once.

“It was self defense,” Techno drones emotionlessly as he sweeps past the police officer. He pauses only to intone, voice like a knife’s edge, “He threatened to kill my brother.”

The principal’s eyes widen. Dream’s parents, dressed in the same icy hatred as their son, stiffen. And, Phil– oh. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. The rage simmering behind his front of calm makes Techno’s beat down look tame.

“Inside,” the principal repeats weakly. “We’ll deal with this… inside.”

Tommy almost, almost feels bad for the guy. What a day on the job.

He’s too afraid to summon up any real pity though. Tommy hangs back, ignoring Wilbur’s confusion as he tries to tug Tommy down the hall. Tommy waits, forcing Wilbur to do the same. He lets everyone get in front of him, until it’s only Tommy and Wilbur and Techno holding up the rear.

Techno. That’s the one he needs.

“They’re gonna expell you,” Tommy whispers, chest seizing at the thought. “You shouldn’t have done that. Not for me.”

Techno jerks them to a halt, right there. Tommy freezes, eyes widening. Nervously, he hopes they don’t get yelled at for taking too long. Then, he’s distracted as Techno places both hands on Tommy’s shoulders and speaks to him, face deadly serious.

“Tommy, I’ll say this one time.”

Tommy doesn’t dare breathe, doesn’t risk missing a word.

“I don’t regret doing a single thing I just did. Especially not for you.” Fuck. “If I get expelled today— which I won’t—” Techno emphasizes, “then I will walk out of here knowing I showed you that I’m willing to fight for you. That we all are.” Techno swallows hard, throat wavering. “Dream deserves so much worse than I’m allowed to do to him.”

Tommy’s head spins. Euphoria makes him dizzy. Techno doesn’t even budge as he unleashes the world onto Tommy, as he unleashes everything Tommy has ever wanted to hear.

“But I’m not getting expelled today.”

“How do you know?” Tommy chokes out, as the distance between them and the other crowd grows wider. “How do you know that?”

Techno smirks, blood flecked on his chin. “Because Dream is going to walk in there and confess.” Tommy’s brow furrows. Despite how Techno says it, like it’s some universal law, he can’t imagine a world where Dream would do that. “And if he doesn’t–”

Techno angles his chin up subtly.

Tommy follows him, up the wall and even further to where, tucked almost imperceptibly in the ceiling—

Cameras.

Tommy’s ribs expand. Yellow roses weave between them, golden and dizzying with a slow-blooming hope. Static hums in his fingertips, spreading over the rest of him, consuming him.

“Phil pulled a month’s worth of footage,” Wilbur says, as the universe forms under Tommy’s skin. “He’s presenting it with the hospital images from yesterday, and a few incriminating text messages.”

The last part doesn’t mean anything to Tommy, but he’s too busy spiralling into freefall to care. Tommy’s throat tightens. This isn’t real. This can’t be real.

Reality is not this nice to Tommy. Nothing ever closes this perfectly.

But now he’s thinking of Phil. Of how much of this weekend he spent holed up in his office, phone never leaving his hand, light on well into the morning. Every second that Phil wasn’t checking on Tommy, he must’ve been compiling this.

“And now,” Wilbur continues, reaching out to squeeze Tommy’s hand, further proof that Tommy’s not dreaming, “He has video footage of Dream threatening to kill you.” He tilts his head, and the danger there makes Tommy afraid for whatever goal Wilbur pursues in the future once he’s done with destroying high school bullies in class presidency elections. “He’s as good as done, Tommy. If Dream doesn’t want to take the lightest sentence a judge would offer him, well. No jury will side with him.”

The room is spinning. It’s spinning like cotton candy, spinning like a galaxy, spinning like light.

“It’s over, Tommy,” Techno liberates him quietly, tucking his chin on the crown of Tommy’s head. “It’s over.”

Still, Tommy can’t help but search for his dad, search for the one thing that will prove that Tommy isn’t hallucinating. He stretches his neck, strains his eyes, desperate to catch a glimpse—

Phil happens to look back right as Tommy seeks him out like an SOS beam. His eyes glitter, and the manilla envelope in his hands seems to gleam. And Phil–

Phil is grinning.

THREE MONTHS LATER

Tommy is never wearing a suit again.

The fabric clings to his skin, glued there by sweat, which was put there by nerves. It crinkles uncomfortably as he stumbles out of Phil’s car (not Wilbur’s deathtrap with wheels) and forgets trying not to wrinkle it.

The last day of the trial has left Tommy a mess: a tangle of emotions he can’t put a name to. Maybe later, as he cherishes the last dregs of winter break, he’ll go over these last few weeks and dissect each moment like a puzzle. Maybe he’ll split his thoughts apart and try to map how much things have changed. How much he has changed.

For now, he just needs this damn suit off of him.

Tommy is peeling it off before his bedroom door is even finished closing. It’s done. For better or for worse — and this is definitely leaning towards better — Tommy never has to see Dream again. He’s getting better at understanding that to be reality.

From downstairs, whoops of joy bleed through the floor. Laughter follows, light and melodic, a chorus of success. A chorus for the verdict; a chorus that Tommy only choked up a little bit as he recounted everything to the judge. A chorus that he walked out of the courtroom with his head high and Dream… didn’t walk out at all.

Tommy squeezes his eyes shut as if he can preserve the memory there. Thinking of it feels like looking directly into the sun. He doesn’t know if he can face it quite yet, but he can feel the warmth basking his face, and he knows it’s there when he’s ready. Maybe once he gets some of the celebration pizza in him. Maybe if he shoves Wilbur’s face into the ice cream cake that the Watsons think they’ve managed to hide from him.

The thought warms him, inside and out. His anxiety shrinks away, leaving hunger curling in his gut, the first time since this morning. Tommy starts shuffling into pajamas — nevermind that it’s barely five in the evening. Today is a no-rules day. Today, everything goes.

More laughter bubbles up from downstairs. Tommy finds himself grinning, eager to join them. He barrels towards the door, leaving his suit in a crumpled pile of nice fabric by his dresser. And, in fact, he’s going so fast that he almost misses the flash of white of—

The papers lying innocently on his bed.

Time stops to let Tommy catch his breath.

The world narrows down to just Tommy, and his bedroom, and those papers, and the distance stretching infinitely in front of him. The faint sound of laughter and bickering cuts off, eclipsed by the rush of Tommy’s heart against his eardrums.

He takes a tenuous step forward. Then another. And another. Until he is standing over his bed and can take the papers into his trembling hands, thumb brushing over the ink. He knows what it says even before looks at it.

Knows because these papers have haunted his dreams for years, have been the center of every fantasy he’s ever had. Still, Tommy reads each letter twice, until there is no mistaking the ambrosia in front of him:

ADOPTION ORDER.

Tommy’s vision blurs. He swipes quickly at his eyes, needing to read through, needing to make sure. His heartbeat echoes in every facet of his body, loud and growing louder. That’s his name, there, scrawled in Phil’s scratchy handwriting. That’s his birth date, his age.

And that’s–

That’s Phil’s signature, looping across the bottom.

Tommy’s chin wobbles. His fingers dig into the sides of the paper, the floor suddenly unstable beneath him. Right when Tommy thinks he’s fallen apart – well and truly and absolutely – he finds a way to unravel further.

Because there are two sticky notes on the top of the thin packet: one for Wilbur, and for Techno.

You are permanent, reads Wilbur’s elegant handwriting. He signed his sticky note with his name, and a smiley face.

I’ve always wanted a little brother, reads Techno’s promise, right above where he signed his name.

The world splits apart in front of him, fireworks exploding across his vision. They want him. Not just Phil, but Techno and Wilbur. He curls his hand over his mouth and tries, very hard, not to cry right there.

This is Tommy’s decision. This is Tommy’s decision but the acceptance of all three of them bleed over the pages in his hands. This is Tommy’s decision, and it was made a year ago.

He staggers downstairs with his heart in his throat.

He gets there too fast. Wilbur is still setting up streamers, and Techno is setting the ice cream cake down the table, and even when Tommy careens downstairs like a drunken man, he can see the writing shakily iced out onto the cake:

Happy Adoption!

This is why they hid the cake. Tommy’s heart, impossibly, swells.

He skids to a messy halt. “Is this real?” Tommy chokes out.

All eyes swivel to him. Wilbur swears, fumbling for a confetti popper, and Techno winces from where the ice cream cake is still halfway inside the box. Tommy doesn’t care. Their imperfection is his perfection. He doesn’t need streamers or ice cream cakes or confetti poppers.

He needs this, them, for the rest of his life. That’s all he’d ever ask.

Phil’s eyes crinkle as he steps in front of him. His voice is choked with emotion, and his watery smile casts sunlight beneath Tommy’s skin.

“You might have to pick that suit up again, son,” he croaks in answer. “For when we get that notarized.”

Tommy slams into him hard enough to send them both reeling. Phil catches him like he weighs nothing, like Tommy’s always been a part of him, fused together in an embrace that’s gentle in everything but emotion. A million words roar in Tommy’s ears: things he should say, reactions he’s supposed to have. But Tommy’s never done anything by the book. He takes this moment to hug his dad like the hug is oxygen, because it kind of is.

He takes this moment to hug his dad. He didn’t have one fifteen minutes ago.

“We’ve had those papers for ages, you know,” Phil murmurs into the crown of his head, stroking his hand along Tommy’s back and pretending, politely, like he can’t feel Tommy crying. “We were waiting for the right moment. We were scared of making you uncomfortable.” (He doesn’t like it when we call him that.) A laugh hitches sorrowfully in Phil’s voice. “Seems we waited a bit too long.”

“It’s perfect,” Tommy croaks out. He whips back, blinking hard, fighting with everything to keep himself together. He still has to eat that ice cream cake. “I love you guys.”

His cheeks burn the second he says it, but if anyone has earned the right to be sappy — just this once — it’s him.

“Okay, come on. Don’t hog him, Phil.”

Phil’s laugh rings like bells, but he makes room for Wilbur to pile in around them, then Techno. The hug encompasses every part of him: every unhealed scar, every invisible wound, every fissure he’s ever earned.

“You were always my brother,” Wilbur whispers. “Those papers don’t mean anything. I always would’ve fought for you.”

Tommy sniffles. He gets it. Maybe before, he wouldn’t have. Maybe before, he would’ve argued that the papers meant everything.

But he gets it. He gets it because they are holding him, and he still hasn’t said yes (not with words anyway), but they know. He gets it because the hug feels exactly the same as it had before the papers. It’s only made better by the dawning certainty that Tommy will never have to question them again.

This, he learns breathlessly, is what being permanent feels like.

“I can’t wait to bother you for the rest of your life,” Tommy whispers.

His bruises are long-faded. The memories linger, but even those don’t send him panicking quite as often anymore. He’s healing, and the three reasons for it surround him with dopey smiles and shining eyes and promises that never really needed to be immortalized in ink but are anyway.

Wilbur grins, quick and easy—

And accidentally explodes the confetti popper in his face.

Horror consumes his expression, followed swiftly by regret as Tommy staggers back. Then, it’s gone, as Tommy’s slew of curses breaks into laughter. He laughs through his tears, laughs with his family, laughs because he’s done fighting, done hurting.

He laughs because this is the worst adoption party anyone has ever thrown ever.

And Tommy laughs until he can’t breathe because he wouldn’t have it any other way.