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Someone is bouncing on his bed.
“–n’t wake him up this early,” someone is saying, and it’s a different voice to the one Phil is associating with the person bouncing on his bed, and by proximity, him.
He wakes up slowly, digging his head into the blue fabric of his pillow and inhaling. Cottony, homey, dark, and it’s a blessed reprieve from whatever daylight had been streaming in from his window as he’d started to open up his eyes a moment before. Sounds are a background accompaniment to the rolling parade of thoughts in his head, shifting around the room and melting like butter as tiny hands prod at his shoulders and another voice quietly tries to scold. Key word: tries.
“Tommy,” Phil finally says, pushing his face deeper into the pillow and ignoring how it muffles his voice more. “Bug off.”
“I told you,” Wilbur insists, and from the sound of it he’s sitting at the foot of Phil’s bed.
“‘Ime is it?” Phil grumbles, digging his hands under his head and feeling the cool air kiss his fingertips, tipping his head to the side for a breath of it. His eyesight has gone blurry when he opens them, blinking to try and clear it away. Blond hair leans into his sight before it’s completely gone, a fuzzy mess of blue and pale skin and golden hair.
“Ele-ven o’clo-ck,” Tommy enunciates clearly, sharpening the vowels with a click of his tongue. “I woke up at six.”
“You’ve spat on my face,” Phil says dryly, because Tommy has simply by virtue of leaning in so close. Tommy cackles, falling backwards.
“You’ve got my spit on your face,” he shrieks, clearly finding this hilarious as he rolls backwards with a long hacking laughter that cuts short as he slams into Wilbur’s leg, burying his face into the older boy’s side.
“You let me sleep in ‘til eleven?” Phil questions, blinking his eyes to clarity and Wilbur comes into view. They’re both still in their pajamas, one arm casually coming up to hook around Tommy’s shoulders as the younger flails his hands around and giggles.
“Sure,” Wilbur shrugs. “You didn’t have plans, did you?”
“No,” Phil admits, flopping over onto his back and letting the cool sheets depart from his forehead, the heavy weight of his blanket resting on his chest. Then there’s another heavy weight, as Tommy wiggles himself free of Wilbur’s embrace in order to sneak his way up onto Phil’s chest and lie there, the crown of his head bumping the older man’s chin. “Hey, bud.”
“Hi,” Tommy says. “I got up at six.”
“Yeah,” Phil hums. “You said.”
Wilbur is next to him all of the sudden, landing beside Phil on his elbows and hair messy and curling around his face. Phil raises a hand, gently brushing the strands off and away from his face. “He woke me up instead,” Wilbur complains, tipping his head into Phil’s touch and letting some of his weight fall onto his hand. “At six thirty.”
“A half hour unaccounted for,” Phil muses, glancing down at the kid curled up on his chest, fingers twisting just beyond his face, the expression Phil can’t see. “Anything you want to admit to now?”
“No,” Tommy says cheerfully. He kicks his feet, squirming. An elbow slams Phil in the gut and he huffs, hand falling from Wilbur’s face in order to facilitate Tommy shifting around until he’s properly tucked up under Phil’s chin, pressed close. He can feel the puff of hot air when the kid exhales against his throat. He’s awfully clingy.
“Hullo,” someone says, a new voice cutting through their conversation. Three heads turn as one to glance towards the doorway, and Phil smiles. “You’re all in here without me,” Techno grumps, standing with one foot in Phil’s room and one foot out. He’s holding a blanket– the ratty, dingy one he’d shown up to Phil’s apartment with it slung around his shoulder instead of in his garbage bag.
“Consider the invitation extended, then,” Phil says, watching as Techno hovers for a moment before finally committing, stepping into the room and gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed. Wilbur moves over, leaving a quiet space in the middle between him and Phil, and after a second Techno turns and crawls up to occupy it. Beneath them all, the bed groans.
“If you lot break my bed and leave me sleeping on the floor I’ll be pissed,” Phil warns them, and Tommy giggles again, turning over on Phil’s chest in order to face Techno.
“‘Ow do,” he says, and Techno just leans his head against the pillow and stares at Tommy with wide open, quiet eyes. “I woke up at six.”
“I know,” Techno says, and Wilbur snorts. “You woke me up when you crawled out of my bed to go wake Wil.”
“I did not,” Tommy insists, throwing a hand wide and smacking Techno square in the face. The teen lets out a quiet ‘oof’ and Wilbur laughs, leaning over to tuck his chin over Techno’s shoulders. He coos. “I did not!”
“Tommy, you wanted to snuggle with Techno and not me?” Wilbur asks, and he laughs when Tommy turns his scrunched up face to him and sticks out his tongue.
“Okay,” Phil murmurs, turning his head to hide back into the pillows with a muffled laugh. “If you’re gonna be in here, be quiet, you rat bastards.”
“That’s a naughty word,” Tommy says primly, then leans close to Phil’s ear and whispers, “I’m going to teach it to all my friends.”
“You do that,” he says, and hears Techno snort. Wilbur is pressed up close and they are warm, so warm, so small. Little things. Phil shuts his eyes into the fuzzy dark and smiles.
They lie there for a while, together, breathing gently in the mid-morning light. Phil gets sweaty and uncomfortable pretty quickly into their little lie-in, but it’s worth it. Tommy’s weight on top of him, the warmth of Wilbur and Techno beside him– worth it, all the way. Their silence is disquieting in its own sense as well, but when Phil opens his eyes again, he finds that the three of them have theirs shut. Tommy’s breathing deep, and Wilbur’s mouth is slightly open, Techno’s head turned to rest on his shoulder. He watches for another long while, one hand resting on Tommy’s back and feeling the way his chest rises and falls with each and every breath.
Eventually, he has to get up. He can lie in, sure, but he can’t stay in bed all day. Kids gotta eat. With the utmost delicacy, Phil moves, first detaching himself from Techno and Wilbur by shifting off the bed to the left, feet hitting the cold floor and sending a shiver up his spine. Tommy is still against his chest and he carefully keeps him there, cradling his head against his collarbone as he moves and then leans over, rolling carefully to place Tommy down into the warm spot he left behind in the sheets. The kid’s asleep, limp as a doll as Phil moves him except for the way his fingers curl into his sleep shirt as he sets him down. Phil pries him off gently, and with a contented little sigh Tommy latches on to the next closest person: Techno, whose face immediately scrunches up and he grumbles.
“Shh,” Phil mutters, and all three of them settle at that. He grins. Good. Nice to know they listen when asleep. He’ll take his small victories where he can get them.
From there, Phil drags himself to the bathroom and cleans himself up for the day. Shaves, teeth, pisses. Washes his face and hands and heads out into the kitchen, small and cramped with various drawings tacked up on the fridge alongside polaroid photos and grocery lists. He grabs a pan from where it’s kept under the counter and makes sure to keep quiet as he pulls down the pancake mix from above. Listening, always listening as he mixes together water and oil and then drips it into the pan. Before long, the apartment smells like coffee and warm pancakes, a pile of which are steaming on the counter.
(He may have already had one. It’s fine, there’s plenty for the boys, and besides. They looked good.)
It doesn’t take long for someone to shuffle in. A bedhead of crumpled pink– Techno shuffles in, staring with groggy eyes at the pancakes on the counter.
“Food?” he asks.
“Food,” Phil assures. “Grab a plate.”
Techno does, getting on his tiptoes to pull down a chipped ceramic plate from their cupboard. Phil stays where he is at the stove, even as Techno piles pancakes onto his plate and douses them in syrup. As he leaves, Techno brushes against Wilbur and Tommy, who stand in the doorway with disgruntled expressions.
“You didn’t wake us up?” Wilbur asks, setting Tommy down from where he’d been carrying him on his hip and rubs his eye. Tommy darts forward, grabbing a pancake off the plate on the counter and ripping it apart before stuffing it into his mouth. Phil makes a noise, alarm running through him as he reaches up and opens the cabinet.
“Hey,” he says. “Plates, Tommy. I figured you’d wake up on your own time, Wil.”
“Pancakes!”
“Use a plate. Here.” Phil places it down for him and Tommy grins up at him, waiting as Phil makes him a plate. Wilbur is still grumbling, but he’s also getting a glass of milk so Phil supposes he can’t be that mad. Tommy takes his plate and disappears into the living room, and Wilbur soon follows. When Phil emerges, the stovetop turned off and pan in the sink, a plate of warm food in his own hands, all three of them are sitting in front of the TV with a Youtube video playing.
“Car crashes,” Tommy informs him when he sits down on the couch next to Techno.
“Police chase,” Techno corrects, shoveling another bite of pancake into his mouth. “Some guy stole a school bus.”
“Damn,” Phil says. “Nobody get any ideas, please.”
“I’m gonna steal so many school buses,” Tommy proclaims from his spot on the floor, throwing a fist into the air. Clenched between his fingers is a piece of pancake, soggy with syrup. “All of ‘em!”
“Your stubby legs won’t reach the pedals,” Wilbur teases, leaning forward. “You’d have to use a carseat.”
“I would not!!!”
“He just hit a cop car,” Techno mutters, and all three of their eyes snap back to the screen as Tommy gasps dramatically.
“ACAB,” Wilbur says as he leans back, spinning his fork around in his syrup.
“What’s that mean?” Tommy asks.
“Tell you when you’re older,” Phil interrupts. “Two of you need to walk down to the laundromat today. Sort it out yourselves, yeah? Whoever stays behind helps me clean up.”
He leans back into the couch cushions, soft from overuse, as the three boys start to debate over who gets to go where. The TV flashes police lights and he tunes out a bit, still half-asleep in the recesses of his mind, stomach warm and full from their late breakfast. Informal brunch. Phil doesn’t think he’s had a fancy brunch in years, let alone ever. What do they serve there? Mimosas? He’d like to get mimosas sometime. Not with the boys, though, no, they’re too young and he’d have to get them home somehow. Brunch is overrated anyway, he thinks, setting his plate on his lap and glancing over. Techno’s got Tommy in a headlock, Wilbur grinning behind them as he watches, their plates abandoned on the floor. In one swoop, Phil reaches down and picks them all up, stacking them on his empty one with a clatter and kicking out a foot. He latches on to Techno’s elbow and pulls, dragging him off and onto the carpet as he stands up.
“Knock it off,” he says through the intermittent screeching. “Figured it out?”
“I win,” Techno gasps from his new spot half on the couch, half on the floor.
“Tommy and I are going to the laundromat,” Wilbur says cheerily and Tommy wails, splaying out against the carpet and scrunching his face up. “Techno’ll stay with you.”
“Fair enough,” Phil says. He stands there in the doorway to the kitchen as Techno drags himself off the floor and piles himself on top of Tommy, whose complaints are immediately muffled but only seem to get louder. Wilbur joins in the pile only a second later, and Phil just grins as he turns away to start the dishes up.
Crazy things. Oh, how he loves ‘em.