Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tommy was at the police station again. It wasn't his fault that there was a security guard outside of the shop when he snatched some guy's wallet! 

It might've been his fault, actually. He was the one who frequented that particular street whenever he needed some quick cash. 

Why wouldn't he? It was right along the edge of the only good park in the city, so all the upper class and snobs would hit the clothing outlets and cafés that lined the streets outside of the park. 

If someone was waltzing around with enough cash to let him crash in a decent motel for at least a week, that was on them. It was probably also the reason why they were so quick to report him. 

In his defense, it was his first time snatching a wallet. He was mostly into petty theft. Most of the stores he grabbed things from had workers that were so underpaid that they didn't seem to mind even when they did catch him. 

Or maybe that was just because of how much of a people person he was. He could talk his way out of pretty much any conversation. If the other person didn't suck, that was. 

The officer that was speaking to him seemed desperate enough for human contact that the half-assed eye contact and occasional noise from Tommy was enough for him to go off about his dark past. If the blond didn't know any better, he would bet that Jamison was trying to get him to consider a career in law enforcement. 

But he did know better, and that was exactly what the guy was getting at. The guy was obnoxiously yellow, even as he watched a teenage boy nurse the bruise on his face with a popsicle. 

He heard about all the funding the police got, and none of it went to proper ice packs? It was a load of shit. Especially since it was watermelon, and clearly the only decent flavor was red. 

Tommy liked red. It was a good flavor, a good color, and a good type of person to interact with. Red people were easy to read and agitate. The reaction from them was always predictable. Red meant pain, which usually gave him a minimum of three seconds to tense up. 

Speaking of red, he could feel the spite pooling off of Mariah far before she entered the kitchen area. Jamison said something about him needing breakfast, which had been an absolute bounty of buttered toast and a pudding cup he watched the brunette steal out of someone else's lunch. He put a five dollar bill in its place, so Tommy was pretty sure it was fine to eat. 

Oh! And his lovely styrofoam cup of chunky orange juice. It smelled and looked as expired as it tasted. The only reason he had been sipping at it was to see if it would graciously end him before Mariah got the chance to. 

He wasn't nearly as blessed as the Jehovah's witnesses that harassed the resident every Wednesday seemed to think, considering it didn't work. 

" Tommy ." 

Her voice was steady, without a sliver of fury to it. It was impressive, actually. If her standing behind him didn't give him a headache from the miasma of grotesque anger and dissatisfaction, he would've assumed that she was as calm as she presented.

The grip on his shoulder was chilling despite how warm she was. The woman put off heat like a fire, but always managed to make him feel like he had hypothermia with how empty her words were. With how empty she was. 

“Seems my ride got here. See ya’ round, James.” Tommy gave a curt nod to the man who was looking between him and the woman who he would bet money was looming over him. He didn’t hear whatever sheepish reply the poor guy got out because of how he was being led out of the building by the shoulder. 

He felt like he was a disobedient puppy being dragged to whatever piddle he left on the carpet, barely seconds between where he was and having his nose shoved in his piss. He took another sip from the cup, hoping desperately that the abominable sludge of orange juice that was probably a year old would hurry up and kill him. To spare him from the fate that awaited him in the car. 

As his footsteps started to thud against the concrete of the sidewalk instead of the sickeningly pale tile of the station lobby, he began internally begging every god he could think of for mercy. Even if there weren’t a lot of them that he actually remembered. The green one was named Locket, wasn’t he? Locket would surely help him, right?

His pleas to Locket seemed to fall on deaf ears, since he was strapping himself into the passenger seat of Mariah’s old beater. Tommy didn’t know much about cars, but he could tell the symbol on the front meant it was a Toyota. That, and the horrible stench of artificial lavender that was trying (and failing) to cover up the smell of burning fluid meant that Mariah’s car was a piece of shit. 

He focused his gaze into the line of Febreze clips she had in her car vent, trying to decipher the serial numbers that seemed to have been bleached from the cheap plastic under the wear of the sun. 

Maybe her car wouldn’t smell like shit if she didn’t use a bunch of empty ones. 

The driver’s side door finally opened, and he watched her settle into the seat before slamming it shut with too much force. He would’ve flinched from the sharp noise if he wasn’t actively holding his breath in fear of what she was about to say. 

The drop hit him square in the chest, forcing the wind out of him and making him shudder. The broiling rage was replaced by a bone chilling disappointment and apathetic loathing that made him sick to his stomach. It felt like everything was spinning, his fingers shaking as he tried to keep from dropping the cup on himself. 

The visceral abhorrence from her reminded him of what she really thought of him. No matter what mask she put on to try and connect with him, these were her true feelings. 

The sound of her weeping was the only sound he could hear over the blood rushing in his ears as the world seemed to close in around him. 

---

Mariah apologized to him, the bitter gray that consumed her words making them sound as hollow as her cheap air fresheners. Tommy just nodded and kept silent. He hated her, and he knew that she felt the same goddamn way. The sound of the engine was at least a decent enough background noise for him to block out the sound of her residual sniffles. 

He hated the pity that came from whenever Mariah blew up, even if she only ever internalized it. It didn’t make her feelings about him any less real. She despised him, and he knew she was the reason she was looking to be transferred to a different district. 

If the anger she let build up stung, the pity felt like a thousand needles pricking him in every goddamn nerve he had. It made his skin crawl, especially with how personal it always was. Pity being directed at him made him want to jump out of his flesh to escape the feeling of acid-tipped pins and needles shooting through him. 

Trying to focus on the sight of a smaller car trying to cut off a semi and almost paying for it was the only thing keeping him from jumping out of the car. He seriously considered it, but then a truck that was much too big for being in the city whizzed past at not the speed limit. It lost its appeal of being a quick and easy death. 

He didn’t want to be splattered like roadkill. If he was pitied for being a fuck-up while alive, he was sure the pity that followed at him being a smear across the interstate might just be enough to stir him from the dead. If he did become a ghost from that, he would haunt the shit out of so many people. 

He suppressed the snort that came up from the idea of that, not wanting to break the tense silence between him and Mariah. The sharp beige of whatever mix of annoyance and stress she was feeling kept jabbing him whenever she would glance at him out of the corner of her eye. 

He didn’t want her to know he noticed. She surely would’ve said something if she thought he was ready to talk. He hated how patient she was with him. It usually just ended with silence between them as her disgust for him only flourished.

He made the mistake of glancing over, her stress sending sharp stabs of discomfort into his shoulder every time she directed it to him. He could tell she was opening her mouth even after he focused back on his window. 

Shit .

“We have the phone call with Phillip today. He reached out to us about you. It’s a rare opportunity.” Her voice was almost robotic from how empty it was. He hated how blank she kept herself when interacting with him. He knew she was just bottling it up. 

He wished some days that Pat was still working with him. Getting smacked whenever she thought no one was looking was a lot more pleasant than this fake bullshit Mariah had going on. It was his fault for mentioning it, anyways. He couldn’t go back and fix it. 

“When?” It was just a pissing match of who could be the fakest at this point. If she was short with him, he didn’t have a reason not to do it to her. 

Tommy could understand why Mariah hated him, honestly. 

“Two. I need you in my office ten minutes before.” She stopped peaking over at him, so that was an improvement. If only she took her eyes off the road long enough to crash. With his shitty luck, he was sure that he would end up surviving it with horrible injuries. 

He didn’t need to be more of a fuck up than he already was. 

---

“You’re late.” It was only a quarter past when Mariah told him the actual phone call was supposed to be, so he didn’t know what she was so pissed about. Even if her tone only had the slightest inclination of how she was feeling, there was a disproportionate amount of disgust coming from her as he took a seat across from her.

The panic that shot through her was funny, the phone pressed to her ear almost being dropped as she looked back at the paper in front of her. 

“Not you! I’m so sorry, Mr. Watson.” She wasn’t sorry. She was just more pissed off at Tommy now. Which felt like the opposite of being sorry, actually. 

“No it’s- My apologies. He’s just-” Mariah cut herself off, her gaze and hatred for him stinging as their eyes met. The brown pools held enough hostility behind them that he could feel a headache starting. 

Tommy settled back in the shitty leather chair that was probably older than he was, picking at the frayed outer layer as he half-assed listened to her. He knew what she was going to say about him. It’s what everyone said. 

Because it was true. 

“He’s a problem child.” 

He choked back a scoff, instead tearing a larger hole in the terrible upholstery. 

“Yes, but ple- Of course! Here he is.” Mariah held the phone out to him, her knuckles white from how hard she was gripping the plastic. He was surprised it didn’t snap. 

“‘ello?” Tommy didn’t bother introducing himself. If Phil asked for him to be put on the phone, then he would know it was him on the phone. That, and he also didn’t want to be talking to this guy. It was almost time for his afternoon nap. 

“Whose this?” The voice on the other end did not sound like it came from a thirty year old man. Was Mariah seriously stupid enough to fall for a prank like this? 

He couldn’t decipher what the asshat was feeling since the invasive amount of information he got about people’s feelings seemed to only work face to face. Which was part of the reason he loved movies and TV shows so much. The only time he had been to a play had been a shit show. 

“Whose this?” He spat back, ignoring the dagger of apprehensive distaste that he got in his gut from Mariah. She would’ve preferred that he was more cordial, as she had told him multiple times before. 

But he would’ve preferred if she didn’t suck, so they both wouldn’t get what they wanted. 

“I asked you first, you gremlin .” The insult was thrown at him in a way that caught him off guard, especially since it was such a stupid thing to call someone. It wasn’t even a real insult, and yet here he was. Getting offended. 

“Piss off, man!” Tommy was considering handing the phone back to Mariah to get away from the asshole on the phone and to help sate the migraine she was giving him before there was suddenly shouting on the other end. 

Followed by the sound of something shattering, and then by what was probably the phone dropping. 

“Hello?” The voice that followed was noticeably out of breath, but considerably older. Probably around thirty, if he had to make an educated guess. 

“Hi? What the fuck ?” Tommy was tired and his temple was starting to throb, so he really didn’t want to deal with whatever bullshit was happening on the other side of the phone. The sooner he could make this guy hang up, the better. 

“Sorry, Wilbur’s just pissed that we told him to clean the spare room out.” The guy on the other end chuckled, his airy laugh not doing much to cushion the pit in Tommy’s stomach. 

“Whose ‘we’.” He tried to keep it casual, but he felt like he was about to puke on himself. It was a horrid mix of anxiety and the expired orange juice coming back to haunt him. 

“You weren’t told about my sons?”

Chapter Text

Tommy tried to keep his answers bland and short, not being able to focus his gaze to glare at his feet like he usually did. The pain behind his eyes from Mariah’s sharp disgust for him was making him nauseous. He was also going to take a wild guess and assume that the orange juice he had wasn’t doing much to settle his stomach. 

“Listen, I’m about to puke on myself. See you never, old man.” Tommy recoiled at the rage his words stirred from Mariah. Her gaze was making the room spin. He haphazardly tossed the phone at the top of her desk before he bolted, not waiting to hear whatever strained reprimand she would hiss at him through her teeth. 

No matter how much she tried to choke it down, her words burned more than just her gaze. With how dull her tone usually was when she spoke to him, it felt like her poorly concealed enigma of negativity she held towards him pressed into his flesh. He was surprised he wasn’t bruised from it. 

Especially when he knew for a fact he would bruise from pretty much everything else. Which worked to his advantage sometimes. Not that he could rat on Mariah for beating him if she wasn’t. 

He couldn’t bother reminiscing about how much nicer being injured felt since he was trying to keep his feet underneath of him. He stumbled down the hall, ignoring the cold gaze he got from the few other residents that kept their doors opened during the day. 

Why was the bathroom the entire way down the hall?! It was bad building design, considering how he always ended up puking after being trapped in the office with Mariah. Not that she was the only social worker that had that effect on him. 

He didn’t bother to close the door behind him, his knees giving out as his cheap sneakers caught the slippery tile the wrong way. He didn’t have time to be concerned about potentially kneeling in someone else’s piss since he knew no one bothered to mop the floors. He was much more focused on turning his head as he hit the ground, not wanting to knock his teeth out. 

He could deal with a lot, but he knew that he couldn’t get his teeth fixed if he smashed them all. He definitely couldn’t if Mariah found out it was because he broke them on the seat of a dirty toilet. Maybe if he got a disease from it, it would have the decency to kill him. 

His fingers dug into the plastic seat as he heaved, the acid from his stomach having mixed with the abomination that he was stupid enough to consider a beverage, making it feel like liquid plasma and glass was searing his throat. His body continued to convulse even after the few sips of orange juice and bile left his system, making him dizzy as he tried to get in gulps of air in between. 

It was chilly in the bathroom, the fluorescent bulbs casting a harsh white over the ugly dark green floor. It seemed to soak up all the light before it could reach the stained walls, making the room feel a lot more suffocating. The atmosphere seemed to be fighting him as he tried to get air in, the dots in his vision being more than enough evidence to prove that the room was closing in on him. 

Or maybe that was just because he wasn’t breathing. 

---

Tommy jolted awake to the noise of knocking. It was harsh and clearly meant to wake him up, which it unfortunately did . His mouth tasted horrendous, and his tongue stuck to the roof of the mouth like he had gurgled craft adhesive. The pounding in his temple was nothing compared to the gnawing of his gut. 

He wasn’t awake enough to tell if the migraine was from not eating or if it was its own annoyance. He didn’t quite give a shit, since knowing wouldn’t make him feel any better.

The only thing that pulled him out of his stupor was the bright mildewy confusion that was brushing against him. He cracked his eyes open, his eyelids feeling as crusty and disgusting as his mouth. 

It was just Susan standing in the doorway, the sundress she wore being the only splash of color in his grayscale cell. He had most of his things confiscated for one reason or another, and he didn’t have ‘decorating privileges’. Not that he would have anything to put up if he did. 

“Mariah needs you. Said it's super important.” Susan was still untainted by the horrors of the system, her smile and pastel yellow halo of unadulterated joy for life being a clear indicator. 

The bitter inky pool that dripped into her actions were to be expected, though. Even if she didn’t understand everything that happened to her, he could guess that her night terrors and screaming fits were a direct result of her trauma. The way she was paralyzed with a stark slash of ashy gray and blaring neon that hurt to look at whenever someone made sudden movements towards her were also a pretty decent, although severely depressing, indicator. 

“What time is it?” He croaked, his throat protesting the words he managed to choke out. He coughed into his palm, ignoring the thin blanket of concern that leaked from her. She was shifting back and forth on her feet like she did before she usually ran, so he tried to ramrod any other noises back to keep her from trying to escape him before he got an answer. 

That was the only reason. He did not feel bad and actively tried to be as kind as possible to her. She was nice to him, so he was nice back. That was it .

That’s what he told himself, at least. 

“It’s an hour past breakfast. You missed it.” Her eyes darted around, and the chill from a sliver of worry made him shudder and she crept further into his room. Her panic was palatable as she inched closer, clearly terrified of whatever she was doing. 

He could understand why. From what he overheard, it was her father that got her taken away. She had every right to be scared of men, Tommy included. Men were absolute trash. 

She moved fast enough that he didn’t have time to sit up the whole way before she was darting out of his room, disappearing as quickly as she possibly could. It registered only after he propped himself up against the headboard that there was something sitting in his lap now, crumpled packaging being the only thing between it and the blanket Tommy was still tangled in. 

He fought the smile tugging at his lips as he tore open the Kind bar. Sarah either stole it from the kitchen for him, or she had saved her evening snack for him because she didn’t see him at dinner. She was a good kid. 

He bit into it as he flung the covers off of him, making a face as the taste and scent of coconut assaulted his senses. He hated coconut. Not that there were any real flavors he could tolerate outside of cherry. Sometimes strawberry. 

And Coke, even if it was rare to score a can of soda. It was hard to get a pack open in a store without being spotted. Not to mention that he couldn’t risk letting it chill in the fridge available to residents. It would be gone the second he closed the door. 

 His shoes and pants were still on, and he was painfully aware of how wet his legs still were. He didn’t remember much outside of flopping around in piss and almost breaking his teeth, the rest of his memory being supplemented by the way his abdominal muscles screamed in protest to movement. 

If he had to guess, he would say he just landed a new record of how quickly he knocked himself out from puking. He snorted at the thought as he kicked his shoes off, hating how stuffy and goddamn moist everything felt. 

He really hoped he was away long enough for someone to wash his piss sheets, because he was sure that he couldn’t get away with throwing another set out. Not having a cover on a mattress would make it a lot harder to ignore how disgusting everything in his room was. He’d rather try to sleep on his broken desk ‘chair’ than the browning mattress that was concealed under a torn and bleach-stained sheet.

If he wasn’t already disappointed in the system, he would’ve been appalled at how something that looked like it was peeled out of a crack house got approved from the donation box. He didn’t get to be choosy, though. 

He peeled his jeans off, shooting a quick glance at his door as he bit into his breakfast to free up his hands. He shuffled a bit closer and kicked it shut with a tad more force than he meant, flinching as the noise struck him like a fist. 

Hopefully no one was close enough to have heard that. 

He was wrong, considering that the door was flung open barely a moment after he peeled his nasty shirt off. It either got some of the floor piss on it, or he puked on himself. He wouldn’t risk sniffing it to figure it out. 

Mariah’s shock hit him harder than his own, and he whipped his head in her direction just in time to catch her slapping her hand over her eyes. Good, she should’ve felt that embarrassed. Tommy would say she should’ve felt twice the embarrassment she was currently fighting. Not that it did much to cover up the stress fueled slew of bitter and dark annoyance. 

“Get decent and get to the office. Mr. Watson is here to sign paperwork.” Her voice was cold despite how much her face was burning. She should feel ashamed of walking in on a changing young boy. 

What a creep. 

He grunted a response out around the Kind bar, which was thankfully enough to satisfy her. She at least had the decorum to close the door behind her as she left him alone. 

He decided that he suddenly had enough time to take a shower. 

---

Tommy didn’t take long to shower, which was impressive considering how raw he had scrubbed himself down. He taken the time to brush his teeth while he was under the cold water. His mouth not tasting like burnt ass and the fact that he didn’t smell like piss anymore made him feel less shitty. 

The freezing cold water had also helped to sooth his migraine, which helped make up for the fact that he could still taste coconut on the back of his tongue. He couldn’t get his toothbrush any further back to scrub it out without losing the only thing he had eaten in what must’ve been two or three days. 

Not that he didn’t consider it. But, alas, it had been a gift from Susan. He would’ve felt worse from doing that to her than he ever could from the annoyance of coconut breath. 

His hair was still damp as he dragged his bare feet towards the office. The residents were supposed to wear shoes outside of their rooms, but he was pretty sure that they had the same piss-soaked fate as the rest of his outfit. He would’ve been more concerned about someone managing to piss all over the floor of the bathroom without being caught, but he could bet that passing out in the puddle of it was more on him. 

He had just gotten a grip on the handle before he was hit with a wave of visceral rage, making his eyes sting from the way it physically unbalanced him. It was yanked out of his grip as Mariah stood in the doorway, her face blank despite the fury she held in her gaze. Her expression didn’t soften, but she had the gull to feel ashamed. 

She was probably about to drag Tommy out of his room, since she would’ve assumed that he just went back to bed. Or ran, since she was an asshole and didn’t expect any better from him. Which might’ve been because he did both regularly whenever he was meant to be participating in visits like this. 

“I was just about to come get you.” Her tone was warmer than her words, her eyes still burning as she stepped aside for him to enter the room. He could feel the moment she saw him barefoot, since the stinging quickly increased into a full-out blaze. The cold loathing didn’t do much to spare him from the heat. 

“Yeah.” He hissed, stepping past her into her office. He felt like it was stepping into a wall, his breath leaving him at the impending force that hit him square in the chest. He managed to fight it enough to get air in, but it felt like he was trying to walk forward into a stone barricade. 

It wasn’t cold, it was just empty. There was absolutely nothing. Just an impending wall of blankness . 

“You must be Thomas!” The voice startled him considering how there wasn’t anything behind it. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, lowering his gaze to where it had come from. There was the slightest hint of sunflower yellow there, which was not enough for the three people he saw before him. 

Calling them people seemed to be a bit of a stretch, actually. The one that was sitting on the floor had bright pink hair. When the figure looked up at him, he couldn’t help but stare at his eyes. 

They looked wrong . They were a pinkish-red, with snow white lines running over them. The guy(?)’s eyebrows and eyelashes were only visible because of how the light caught the hair. Why was his(?) hair white?!

“Staring's rude, gremlin.” A snide but vaguely familiar voice spat from the chair that was Tommy’s . He always picked that chair because it was the one not next to the dirty ass window in Mariah’s office, which meant that the sun didn’t make his ass adhere to the cheap leather whenever he was forced to sit in it for an extended period of time. 

He swung his head at the voice, fully prepared to say something that would most definitely get him in trouble. He paused when the wave of empty hit him again, stealing the air out of his lungs as he made eye contact with the brunette. It felt like something was trying to feed off of him. The pit of nothingness was hungry . 

The brunette’s smirk dropped to a deep scowl as he ran a hand through his curls, his eyes being the only thing that gave Tommy a hint of worry. The guy was blank in a way no one he has been around had ever been. Even people who didn’t feel guilt or anything had an aura of confidence and sick satisfaction from their actions. 

“Wilbur, stop it.” The voice that had initially greeted him spoke up again, and the man who had apparently been in the only other chair on their side of the desk swatted at him. He was noticeably older, the crows feet and smile lines betraying the frown he had from trying to correct the guy in the ugly mustard sweater. 

“Sorry about him, he’s just cranky from being woken up before noon.” The man let out a small chuckle that didn’t seem forced, and the warm sunflower yellow managed to slip past the cracks of the confusing and terrifying pit of nothing that was being put off by one of them. 

If he had to bet, he would say it was the anime vampire looking fucker. He knew vampires weren’t real, but he imagined that they would feel something like what the freak felt like. 

“It’s a two hour drive.” The brunette, ‘Wilbur’ was a stupid fucking name by the way, hissed. He crossed his arms in a pout like a child, and Tommy would’ve laughed at him if he wasn’t still trying to remember to breathe. 

“You slept the whole way.” The man countered, which had just gotten him a huff in response. 

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t suck.” Tommy felt Mariah move him a bit to the side in order to get back to her seat, but kept most of his focus on the scene playing out in front of him. 

Now that the Wilbur guy had turned back around in his seat, Tommy could see that his hair wasn’t severely fucked up in the back. It was just an ugly hat that looked like a sock. Beanies were gross. 

If he wasn’t lacking in every nutrient he needed and severely dehydrated, he would’ve felt stupid for assuming it was the guy’s actual hair in the first place. 

As if responding to his thoughts, the man cleared his throat while fishing around in his pocket. He produced a set of keys and a wallet, passing them to the hentai vampire who was still sitting on the floor like a creep. 

“Why don’t you three get breakfast? I can stay here and get everything settled.” The guy smiled at him, and he felt an odd sense of peace from the simple gesture. There was a slash of panic that permeated Mariah’s side of the room. 

“Actually, he can’t leave the premises until-” She was cut off suddenly, and the same sunflower yellow warmth that Tommy had felt snippets of were suddenly bleeding through her usual collage of atrocities. Her expression sincerely softening made him panic since he had never seen that woman without worry lines deep enough to count as canyons. 

“I think they’ll be okay, actually.” The man’s voice was warm, and Tommy would’ve enjoyed the splotches of yellow it made him feel if it wasn’t quickly overshadowed by his panic. 

“I suppose you’re right, my apologies.” Mariah hummed, a sincere smile stretching across her face as she shuffled through Tommy’s folder and the stack of release forms. The usual pity and worry she put off whenever she read through his papers was nonexistent. 

He didn’t have time to question it before the brunette was getting up, the lanky jackass apparently being tall enough to loom over top of Tommy when he wasn’t slouched over in his seat. 

Tommy’s heart skipped a beat as he realized that the all empty feeling was coming from this guy.

Chapter Text

Tommy couldn’t breathe. It was like he was stuck in a wind tunnel, the air being pulled from his throat before he could get it down in the first place. It was an all consuming hunger that was staring him down, challenging to snuff out everything before it. Threatening to consume him. 

A snap in front of his face jolted him out of his trance, the chill not quite leaving him as his eyes decided to focus. He made eye contact with the brunette looming over him, the shiver that clawed up his spine making his knees feel weak. He was fighting against the need to vomit, especially since he knew that coconut was infinitely worse coming up than it was going down. 

“You’re in the doorway.” Chocolate brown eyes bore through him, making him feel queasy from the intensity of it. The glimmering shreds of sunflower serenity that broke through the haze did little to quell the itch under his skin.

He couldn’t get his body to react, the vacant hunger that was staring him down making his fight-or-flight response just shut off. There definitely wasn’t any fight, but he couldn’t get himself to run even if he wanted to. He was fighting just to breathe against the soul-sucking leviathan that was baring it’s metaphorical teeth in his face. 

“ Wilbur .” The tone that came from the blond man who was still lounging back in the chair had hickory and ugly orange undertones. It was dark and ugly, but the venom that dripped from his lips was soon lost in the haze of alluring pastel yellows that hung around the man like a cloak. 

“What? I’m not doing anything.” He didn’t realize that the adult cartoon character looking fuck had gotten to his feet until he was peering from behind his counterpart. He would’ve thought they made a funny pair if Tommy was trying to figure out why Crack Skellington was making him feel sick to his stomach.

“Go get lunch, and be nice .” There was a note of danger to the guy’s tone, making the hairs on the back of his neck raise as the bitter orange and neon reds permeated the air. It was a poorly concealed threat, even as they were drowned in the sea of positivity. 

As the yellows reached to flood the corners of the room, Tommy wasn’t sure why he felt like he was about to drown in it. 

---

The feeling seemed to mellow out the larger the gap between him and the brunette got. The pink haired man(?) seemed to be trailing between them, the blank wall situated behind him being infinitely preferable to the consuming void that was at the back of their little freak train. 

Tommy didn’t mean to take the lead, but the other two seemed more content on following him. And if they weren’t, it seemed as though none of them were able to pierce the veil of false silence that filled the eerily empty halls.

He didn’t blame anyone for avoiding them. He would’ve avoided them if he had seen anything like them wandering down the street. Actually, that was a lie. People who dressed like the pink haired horror were usually the people who went to those comic book events, and they always carried a stupid amount of cash on them. 

A stupid amount of cash in a city they weren’t able to navigate well. They were the perfect target to snag upwards of sixty dollars that was virtually untraceable, and they usually had snacks and stuff in their bags. Food and cash was more than enough for him to disappear for at least a week. 

It usually didn’t get messy until Mariah filed a missing persons case on him. 

“You’re not wearing shoes.” The deadpanned monotone that broke the air of unease made him halt all movements. He shot a look over his shoulder, ignoring how painfully aware he was of the cheap hardwood under his bare feet now. 

"I need to get my shit anyways." He tried to keep his tone steady, but the idea of being backed into a room by the amalgamation of all-consuming hunger and the hentai vampire made the bile rise in his throat.

Hopefully he had something in his room he could take a swig of to help choke it down. 

---

Tommy didn't like being in the car with them. His instincts kept screaming at him to throw open the door and see if flinging himself into traffic would make him feel safer than the ravenous void that kept staring him down. Literally. 

The pink haired disaster was the one driving, so the brunette was free to turn around in his seat to stare at him as he pleased. It made his skin crawl, but digging his fingernails into his arm didn't seem to sate the itch.

The wall of emotionless apathy that was sat in the driver's seat in front of him was the only reason he hadn't dove head first out of the window. It was something stable to focus on, even as the esurient aura of the grumpy teen threatened to crush whatever false sense of calm he was clinging desperately to. 

Both of them seemed oblivious to his panic. Which was to be expected, honestly. Neither of them felt human in any sense of the word. What they put off was downright otherworldly. Their 'father' didn't seem much better, though. 

The way he completely snuffed out any remaining embers of Mariah's putrid rage was alarming. It was unnatural, actually. He had seen people who didn't respond that way to drugs altering their moods. Though, to be fair, it was either from watching someone getting sedated or getting wasted. Those tended to react differently depending on why it was happening to someone. 

Even then, it was like a drug. The way he craved that pastel serenity life preserver as he drowned in the sea of all consuming nothing and indifference was worse than any withdrawal symptom he had ever had before. 

Which hadn't happened a lot. Not that quitting Seroquel cold turkey felt good. He had spasmed so bad that another resident thought he was having a seizure and reported him. 

That wasn't a fun conversation. 

---

Tommy felt bad for their server. He knew he was clammy and probably sweating bullets, and he was trailing behind a shonen anime boy with his druggie counterpart. Anything anyone could've assumed about them, he wouldn't have blamed them for. 

The stares they got as they made their way to the table made his skin itch uncomfortably. It was a Friday at noon, so most of the customers at the Denny's in the shit part of town were either night shift workers or teens who were skipping. 

Or druggies. The way their mind bounced around, flicking little pebbles of instability against his skull even as he wasn't looking at them was a good indication. 

They also had a lot of the same mannerisms as the brunette, like the twitching. The way his eyes went between darting around and staring blankly were the only thing he could use to gauge his mood. It was hard. 

Any time the brunette's eyes clung to him in particular, they were so hazy with that emptiness that Tommy could've sworn they seemed black. It was never a good sign when he could see the colors hanging around people. Anything that was enough to distort them visually was enough to give him a splitting headache. 

But the brunette made him feel hypothermic, in a sense. Any time his gaze landed on him, it sent a shiver down his back that made his knees feel weak. The idea of hitting the floor and having either of the freakshows trying to help right himself was more than enough motivation to keep from passing out. 

Tommy didn't notice that he had somehow gotten himself situated into the booth until a sharp sting of annoyance pierced the wall of monotone nothing that hung around the pinkette. He crumbled under the stare as it increased, the feeling of the ice pick of dissatisfaction slowing being tapped into his skull making him nauseous. 

He hadn't been listening, so he wasn't sure what she wanted. Did she ask for their drink orders? Did she ask for their food orders? Did she ask if they needed time? He didn't get to sit down and eat at restaurants a lot, but he usually fucking hated it and this was why. 

He was about to try and let some jumble of nonsense slip over his tongue to try and alleviate the migraine he had starting, before someone speaking clouded the air with a chill. 

"One of each milkshake, and cheer up." The tone was friendly enough, but had an edge to it that made him feel like he had just slotted a razor between his teeth. The drop of his stomach from the forceful change of atmosphere was the same as him chomping down. 

The effect on the waitress was instantaneous. Her body language contorted into some kind of visceral giddiness despite the way she felt like nothing . It soon passed, but he didn't realize he had pressed himself flat against the back of the seat to try and get away from it. 

The ravenous void was apparently a goddamn vacuum . He could feel the whatever shreds of her that were torn away being dissolved against the backdrop of inky danger. He had never felt anything like it before, but that wasn't the issue. 

The issue had been that he had seen it.

Chapter Text

It felt liminal, honestly. Anything that passed over his tongue he couldn’t taste, and he couldn’t tell what he had even eaten because nothing felt real in those moments. He was honestly surprised he hadn’t just passed out, because he might as well have. There was a gap in his memory and it was terrifying . 

He could make an educated guess about what had happened, since the ache in his chest was lined with a bitter cold. He really wished he was stupid enough to believe that it was just from having too much of a shitty Denny’s milkshake. His fingertips wouldn’t be numb if it was. 

He couldn’t tell if he was shivering, but he could piece together that he was back in the car. The stench of smoke and hash browns assaulted his senses. He recognized the brand, unfortunately. He didn’t like the taste of the red Marlboros. Or any Marlboros, actually. 

They all tasted like cancerous shit. Not that he made a habit of smoking. It was really bad and made it harder to run, which was one of the few things that got him out of whatever bullshit he managed to land himself neck deep in. 

But he wasn’t one to turn down a free hit. 

“-lucky he didn’t pass out. What were you thinking?” Even without having any kind of read from the pink haired guy, he could still hear the mahogany venom that leaked into voice as he spoke. 

“I was thinking ‘hey this kid is having a panic attack in Denny’s’, so I fixed it .” The brunette was the one driving, and his words were eerily empty as they hit his ears. He could make a guess as to what they held, but they might as well have been played off of a speaker with the lack of life behind them. 

“I think you were just hungry. I saw how pale that lady got when you did it to her.” Tommy kept his eyes shut as he listened to the two of them, and realized pretty quickly that the brunette was the one smoking. He wasn’t pausing when he spoke, and the breaths of acidic clouds were flooding the car as the weird one spoke. 

Not that either of them were normal. The brunette might’ve seemed decent on the surface, but there was something wrong . He wasn’t alive. It was as if his very personality was nothing but a need to consume any and all life it came into contact with. 

And it was terrifying. He could feel the residual effects of whatever toxicant that he was assuming they slipped into his drink. The alternative was much, much scarier. 

He couldn’t have been infected by the brunette. He didn’t like the chill that was lurking under his skin, itching to get out as it nibbled away at whatever body heat he had left. It felt like it was spreading, and he was powerless to stop it. His eyelids felt like they were weighted, blanketing him more than his thin clothing did. 

He wondered briefly if this was how he was going to die as he slipped into unconsciousness. 

---

The ground felt wrong. It was gluey, suctioning his feet to it as he walked down the path. Something grimey had mixed into the mud, giving it such a vile appearance in the low light. It seemed to shimmer with a tainted carmine. He pushed down the bile that rose at the idea of what it could’ve been. 

The ground was littered with white chunks bathed in crimson, and pinkish-grey blobs that were mixed into the mud. He tried his best to not step on them while also trying to ignore the fact that he could probably guess what they were. 

The air held the scent of rain and fresh pine, barely covering the scent of rotting and copper. He couldn’t stop it from burning his sinuses as he walked, even as he tried to hold his breath to escape it. It was slithering down his throat like creeping tendrils, forcing the perfume down into his lungs. 

He wasn’t sure where he was walking to, but he knew he had to keep moving. The trees were blocking out the sun above him. The warmth of the sky taunted him, his tattered clothing barely keeping any heat to his frame. It denied him light in the same way, holding it out of his reach. 

He was a pretty lucid dreamer, so it pissed him off that glaring into the canopy wasn’t making it bend to his will. The leaves didn’t budge, simply fluttering in a breeze that wasn’t there. Narrowing his gaze didn’t do much. 

“Fuck you.” He hissed, his tongue burning as the enigma of intense leaf smells rolled over his tongue. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, like tea that had gotten steeped too long. 

He felt it before he saw it. The way the air seemed to drop in temperature as his breath became visible. Not that it was blocking much of his vision, since the slivers of precious sun he had to guide him were completely nonexistent. He didn’t realize that it was from the flora taking over until he felt it’s grip on him. 

He jerked away from it, fighting to tear out of the thorns that had clamped down over his flesh. They didn’t pierce him as he defied them, but that was the least of his worries as something loomed over him. Then he heard it. 

The way the voices seemed to mix together, the sound of neon laughter mixed with beige and gray sobs. They weren’t all English, but it didn’t matter. He could feel the longing that came from them as they spoke. It seemed to grow from a simple whisper once they realized he heard them. 

It wasn’t until his hand was coming up to clamp over his ears that he realized they weren’t on his right side. A light he hadn’t seen was nestled off there, a clearing almost. He fought against the ivy and freezing sludge that was trying to drag him back into the abyss, a feeling of hope blossoming in his chest. 

The clearing was radiating heat, the quiet of his right ear slowly drifting over the rest of him as he reached for the oasis of warmth and tranquility amongst the sea of hopelessness and wailing. He could see the emerald leaves and fuchsia petals that greeted him as he approached. 

He felt something digging into his leg, tugging him back towards the dark. Shooting a look over his shoulder rewarded him with nothing but a sense of dread as something he couldn’t perceive stared him down from beyond the trees. Something he wasn’t supposed to perceive. 

He threw his gaze back ahead of him and dug his nails into the dirt, fighting against the biting cold that was forcing the appendages to go numb as the crisp ooze sucked the warmth out of them. The ground had gotten cold enough that he had to jam his numb fingers through a thin sheet of frost in order to claw them back into the disgusting mud. 

He didn’t know when he started sobbing, but the tears rolling down his cheeks were steaming from the frigid malodor of the biting pine scent hitting the warm liquid. He couldn’t tell if he was making progress until pain shot up his arm, his fingers grasping at something that seemed almost painfully warm. 

The cries of fear soon turned to relief as the darkness seemed to quiet around him, leaving him to crawl into the heated clearing. The golden sun cast a heavenly glow over everything, making it look ethereal. He seemed so out of place amongst the divinity of the golden grass. 

He saw the bush from earlier, beautiful roses the size of his head blooming amongst the perfect leaves. He couldn’t tell why, but they were drawing him closer. He was shuffling towards them, the radiant sanctitude luring him towards them. 

The leaves were unmarred, and the pink roses were brilliant enough that their true shades bled through the golden glow that was cast by the gentle sky that hung over him in the coffer of a glade. He felt his cries ease as he reached towards the petals, his fingertips having the feeling return to them as he just barely graved their divinity. 

Until the petals snapped shut, digging into his wrist. 

---

Tommy jolted awake, flinching away from the pain in his wrist as he fought to keep the panic from flooding his chest. The grip that had formed on his right hand loosened, giving him a brief moment of relief. Until he turned and saw that the culprit was hentai vampire. 

If the wall of blank wasn’t good for grounding himself amongst his own anxiety attack, he would’ve been exceptionally more pissed. Not that he wasn’t already losing his cool. It was just a lot easier to hide it when he had something to focus on rather than his lack of breathing. 

“We’re home. I was told to wake you up.” The monotone was as devoid of emotion as he was. He also turned and left him alone in the car after a moment of tense eye contact. Tommy wasn’t sure what he was expected to say, and he couldn’t tell because of the lack of feeling from the guy. 

He threw his head back and let out a dry laugh, trying to keep his freaking out to a minimum so that no one caught him. He took a few more moments to compose himself, sucking in a few deep breaths to try and fight his racing heart. He wasn’t sure if the adrenaline was going to go away any time soon, seeing as he had the ever-loving shit scared out of him. 

The door was unlocked, so it was just a simple matter of getting out of the car and into the house he would be trapped in for at least a week. He froze when he got a decent look at his surroundings. The long stretch of a gravel driveway looked like something he’d see in a horror movie. 

The quaint house settled into a decently clear yard wasn’t the problem. The suffocating amount of trees that hung around the property line like a foreboding fence was. Just looking at them made his lungs burn, like the miasma of overwhelming pine had followed him from his dream. 

A warm breeze carried the unfamiliar scent of flowers he couldn’t name, and helped to clear his mind a bit. They weren’t pine trees, clearly. Not that he could tell what they actually were. He did grow up in the middle of cities and suburbs, after all. Most of the forest-y areas in those places were for buying drugs. 

Sometimes doing them depending on the time of day and shits given by the buyer. If they were buying coke in the middle of a suburb, the amount of shits given were usually zero. 

Tommy shot another look at the house. The flowerbeds were pristine and clearly well-kept. There were also planters around the yard, some holding flowers while others held vertical bushes that seemed mostly decorative. 

He was so focused on the scenery that he didn’t see the beast approaching him until it was too late.

Chapter Text

It came out of nowhere, honestly. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t notice until it was weaving between his legs. Tommy looked down and saw the most fucked up cat he had ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with in his life. It was mostly black with some patches of fur seeming more brown as the sun shined through them. The blue collar around its neck was the only indication that the thing was supposed to be there. 

He hesitantly reached down to pet it, still waiting for a feeling of life from it. It gave off nothing, with no signs of life to it. His fingers brushed against it’s back, and even as it arched to beseech him for more attention, the warmth of it was the only sign that the thing was breathing. 

It stared up at him with the intelligence of something that had to be alive, and yet there was nothing there. It was different from both of the freaks he had met earlier. The brunette felt like a ravenous inky void, and the pinkette was a wall of indifference that seemed incapable of being pierced through. But this thing didn’t feel wrong. 

It just didn’t feel . 

---

Tommy had eventually sated the thing’s unending need to be pet, and managed to make it the rest of the way to the house. It seemed satisfied to fuck off into one of the flowerbeds outside of the house to chance bugs. Which was disgusting of it. It was making him feel ill to interact with it, even if the broken-spined cat itself seemed groomed and bathed. 

Everything about these people just felt wrong . He didn’t know how to describe it, but the fact that all three of them set off different kinds of panic in him was equal parts horrific and mildly impressive. They probably didn’t know they were doing it, either. Most people weren’t able to change their feelings even if they were good at masking them. 

It was part of his issue with Mariah’s bullshit. 

He had been reaching for the door when it suddenly swung open, the blond man standing there with a warm expression. The pastel yellows clouded his senses, making it harder to reminisce about what had been bothering him. It made his fears feel fake and distant, like they had simply been fleeting notions that had crossed him from an outside influence. 

“Tommy! Long time no- Friend !” He didn’t have it in him to flinch away from the man suddenly shouting to something past him, the blanket of sunshine and gold suffocating and burying anything other feelings that dared to arise within him. 

Not that he cared, oddly enough. 

He didn’t have a chance to break from it until the man grabbed his shoulder, the smoldering annoyance burning under his skin searing him through the mist of sunflower yellow at the contact. It snapped him out of it, even if the yellows came back to drown him once he was moved aside. 

“Get out of the passion flowers! Bad Friend!” A black snout popped out of the field of purples that the fucked up cat had disappeared into, followed by the rest of it’s head. It simply flicked an ear before it submerged itself back into the flowers, obscuring itself from view. 

“Don’t make me come after you.” The man spat, his tone threatening with sickening neons as he pointed an accusing flower at where the beast had disappeared to. 

His mind was still clear, but he could feel the fog dulling his senses the longer he allowed himself to stand in it. It became harder to feel the venom dripping from the words the man was shouting at the cat hiding in the flowerbed the longer he allowed the yellow to seep into his brain. 

Tommy decided that it would be safe to continue into the house since the cat apparently was going to make the man retrieve him manually. His breathing felt more filling once his senses started to return to him, his mind draining of any of the obnoxious highlights that seemed intent on forcing themselves into his mind. 

The decor was rather mild, and the only thing that stood out was the blue cat bed that was shoved against the wall next to the fireplace that had a TV mounted above it. Everything for the weird fucking cat seemed to be the same shade of bright cerulean, actually. 

Everything for the cat was the shade of it’s collar. 

It didn’t clash with the dark wood of the floors or the periwinkle of the walls, so maybe they just decided the cat’s shit needed to be ‘aesthetic’. He had seen people do it before, so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. 

All the furniture seemed to be the same shade of forest green, too. Overall, it seemed like the house was decorated with either muted or dark colors. Which set the stage for everything to go catastrophically wrong. 

He knew from experience that the types of people who didn’t own any lamps were usually the kind of people to throw lamps. 

---

A bit more exploring had led him into the kitchen, which had a glass sliding door out to a deck area. He didn’t see anyone out there, so he assumed that he would be fine if he investigated. It would be easier to get distance between him and the walking mustard cloud if he was in an open space, rather than cornered in a house he couldn’t navigate. 

The breath of fresh air was full of pollen and fresh-cut grass, full of a cleanliness he didn’t realize his life in the city had been depriving him of. It was oddly refreshing, especially since it was clear of any of the weird fucks he would have to be living with for the foreseeable future. 

“Tommy?” The voice came from further into the yard, obscured by a shed that seemed to blend into the tree line. It was small and almost nonexistent unless he made a point to look for it, as if it was hidden on purpose . 

It felt wrong to let his eyes linger on it too long, actually. Like it was something that wasn’t meant for him to perceive. He averted his eyes from it, not liking the way it made his skin crawl. 

“Tommy.” The voice called again, the gravely tedium voice being much clearer as the pink freak emerged from the shed. He had something strapped across his chest and arms, but Tommy didn’t get a good look at him until he emerged from the shadow of the tree line. 

It looked like the leather armor people wore in video game and movie posters. He knew the guy was weird as fuck, but he didn’t think he was weird enough to be cosplaying in a dark shed. 

Actually, that was a lie. It didn’t surprise him in the slightest. It just lowered his opinion of him further. 

“What’re you doin’ out here?” The pink haired man(?) caught his attention more as he spoke, emerging into the sunlight. Especially when he hefted the metallic object he had apparently been carrying to rest against his shoulder. 

It took his brain too long to catch up to what he was seeing, enough time for the armored and armed fucker to cross the yard and stand at the base of the deck to stare up at him. 

It was a sword. Like, a real sword. He had seen enough fake weapons to know the difference. It looked the same as any knife he had seen or had pulled on him, but bigger. Much, much bigger. The edge even had the tell-tale wear that came from use. 

It was big. It was a big fucking sword, and the man wielding it was in a sweatshirt and fucking armor like he was going to some Percy Jackson meet and greet. He didn’t even read those fucking books! 

“You wanna spar? I’ll let you pick something from the weapons shed, and Wilbur’s old stuff should fit you.” The voice and face of him were devoid of any notion of feeling, but he could still feel the spark of hopeful lavender that slipped from his lips. 

He almost felt bad for how harshly he judged the guy, since deep down he seemed to goddamn excited about the chance to ‘spar’. Until the fact he said he wanted to get him into the fucking weapons shed seemed to click. 

“The fuck?” He had meant it as more of an inside thought, but he didn’t not mean it. It seemed pretty appropriate for the situation. 

The fucker had the audacity to simply tilt his head at him, a few loose hairs that seemed to escape his ponytail framing his face and making him seem less threatening despite the fact he still had a fucking sword . He raised a nearly nonexistent eyebrow, the white hair only perceivable because of how the sunlight caught it. 

“Phil said you were like us, don’t know what the attitude’s for.” The pinkette huffed at him, the corner of his lips threatening the start of a smile despite the false annoyance in his voice. 

Tommy was pretty sure that he would only be able to tell what these freaks were thinking by their voice, and even then he had to fight to get through whatever miasma hung around them. It was fucked up and concerning because of how unnatural it was. 

“Like you? Whose Phil?” A pit of fear-induced rage he didn’t know, or bother to acknowledge, was bubbling up and threatening to burn his throat. He could taste the burgundy as it flooded his words. He hoped the red-eyed freak could feel it too. 

“Really? Man of the house?” The beginning of a smirk dropped from his expression, and his eyebrows knit together as he planted his free hand on his hip. The bundle of white veins in his pupils dug into him as the asshole seemed to be looking for something out of him. 

“The blond guy? Why’re you calling your dad Phil?” Tommy hated this conversation and he hated this guy. He didn’t know why it was so infuriating to have his confusion met with cold indifference, but it fucking was . 

“Because that’s his name?” The edge of a smirk was growing back, and the airy baby blues that came from his mouth made Tommy feel nothing but mocked. He just wanted to go back and be safe and be out of the goddamn woods, and he wanted to leave the freak shows behind. 

“You’ll need to be able to defend yourself in case the woods get you, come on.” The guy turned around and beckoned for him to follow, like he was a dog waiting for it’s command. He wanted nothing more than to spit at the guy and go back to his shitty room at the group home. 

“Fuck off. I’m not going into your murder shed.” If they were like him at all, he really hoped that his words and glare made the guy feel nauseous. He hated the conversation and this guy.

He went to step closer, his fists balling at his sides as his feet carried him to the grass. The wind changed directions for a second, and the scent of pine burned his senses strongly enough that his eyes watered as his nose stung. It hit him like a truck, the imagery of the dream he had in the car coming back to him full force. 

The pink haired guy didn’t stop walking, his hair swaying with his movement and catching the glow of the sunlight like a false halo. A crown of ethereal gold that reminded him of the wailing from within the dark trees. 

The roses had been his only notion of safety. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to stick to the guy. While he was outside. 

Just while he was outside.

Chapter Text

His bones hurt. The strain went past an ache in his muscles and straight into making his ribs throb. Groups of tendons he didn't know existed screamed in protest at his movement. 

Yet strangely, he was still smiling. Techno had given him a really cool knife that he said was a mix of iron and silver. He was told that it was something to do with 'not needing two weapons', whatever that meant.

He also read out the weird carvings along the blade to him, explaining the science behind why two metals were so soft. He mentioned that he could help him to put an enchantment on it if he wanted, whatever the hell that meant.

It was… nice. 

He was having trouble keeping his grip on the glass of water in front of him, the cold easing the sting of bending his fingers. It felt like his palms were rubbed raw. But he also wasn't upset about it for some reason. He wasn't one to enjoy exercise, but it felt oddly like a game? 

Maybe it was why kids played outside on TV shows and shit. It seemed a lot nicer than any of his prior experiences. Especially since Techno didn't take his pants off at any point. Or kill someone's dog and throw it at him. 

Or kill someone's dog, throw it at him, and then call the police on him for it after he was splattered with the still-warm entrails that were hanging out of an eviscerated poodle soaked in it's own blood and piss. 

His appetite was suddenly gone, the aroma of whatever was in the oven suddenly seeming much less appealing. The thought of trying to get anything other than the cold water to slide down his throat seemed like a chore. 

"Dinner should be ready soon. Phil probably won't come out of the basement until he hears the timer go off." Techno's melancholy drone pulled him from the memory, his fingers trembling against the glass he was gripping too hard. 

He wasn't there anymore, and he needed to accept that. Any memory of that place was just that. A memory . It was stupid of him to let himself live there. The only reason it trapped him was because he kept stepping back into it. He sent himself back there. 

It was his fault. 

 Any feelings of resentment that he couldn't direct at anyone other than himself was interrupted by the looming hunger that threatened to overwhelm him. He could feel it reach it's icy tendrils out to chip away at what little warmth he still had. The pinpricks of the mosquito-like bites piercing his skin to devour what was within made him feel nauseous. 

It brushed past him, dragging its talons through his shoulder as Wilbur waltzed past him. The brunette didn't give him any sense of acknowledgement, but he could feel the frost creeping up his spine as the fucker side-eyed him. It was nothing more than a glance, but it was enough to make him feel dizzy. 

The vertigo was staggering to the point that he didn't realize the taller male had taken a seat across from him until he cleared his throat. The noise was grating, making his vision swim with the undeserved intensity of it. Or maybe it was just the migraine that was making his temple pulse. 

"So what's your deal?" 

The question didn't register as being directed at him until he felt the brunette's gaze raking down his face. It made his skin crawl.

Maybe digging his nails into himself would force it out? 

"Wilbur." Techno's voice dripped with indifference. The apathy of his tone slithered between him and the void that was staring him down. 

Even then, it held glittering flakes of warning, glistening against the stale gray that permeated the air around the pinkette. The colors of the figure didn't match the haze that cloaked him. 

Wilbur dressed darkly, albeit not enough to mirror the emptiness that oozed out of him like a venomous miasma. He wasn't sure that there were any colors dark enough to properly reflect it. Not that it would help. Poisonous animals were usually bright to ward off predators. 

He didn't swing one way or the other in palette. Wilbur was clad in neutral grays and browns, the only splash of color being the mahogany beanie he hadn't seen him without. It seemed odd for him to be in a sweater with how warm it was outside.

Not that anything about him seemed normal. 

" What can you do ?" It felt like he bit down on a tuning fork, the vibrations threatening to rattle his teeth apart. It made his jaw ache and his ears ring, his own heartbeat seemingly deafened by it. 

The bile rising in his throat reminded him of how goddamn empty he felt all of a sudden. The chill running through him reminded him of that time he had to get an IV, the liquid ice flowing through his veins and straight into worsening his headache. 

"I don't know." It didn't feel like his voice as it left him, the warmth against his lips from his own breath feeling foreign. He could've sworn he saw the fog of it if his eyes were even remotely focused. 

Wilbur's glare was distinguishable even though everything looked fuzzy. The biting cold was stealing the air from his lungs, and his cheeks burned as though he had gotten windburn. He couldn't tell if he was legitimately shivering from the cold, or if the adrenaline surging through him was making him quiver. 

"What's that supposed to mean? Phil wouldn't take you in if you weren't fucked up." Wilbur's voice was oozing venom. But something cut through the chorus of panic and cold. 

It was rage . 

Tommy was not a fuck up. There was nothing wrong with him, and he was sick of people telling him otherwise. The ice seemed to melt from his marrow as he tightened his grip on his glass, his nails digging into the table. 

"Shut up." His voice sounded broken and weak, but his lips didn't burn from the heat of his words. It felt natural to let his anger overcome him. To let the red hues stain his teeth like blood. 

It felt warm . 

"You should watch your tone, you're a guest ." Wilbur hissed, his voice laced with reflective malice. But there was something underneath it. A hint, almost like the brunette wasn't sure if it himself. 

Something that felt like fear. 

"Wilbur. Stop it." Techno's voice didn't have the same influence as it did before, the haze surrounding the man doing dishes seemingly drowned out by the void he was facing. The edge of a soft warning it held made it feel like he was begging rather than demanding. 

"It's true! Are you going to pretend this kid isn't just another fuck up to add to the pile?" Wilbur's voice was losing the chill to it. It felt like it was having the opposite effect, actually. 

His rage felt warm . 

"Is it your place to say anything? He hasn't even been here a day." Techno's movements at the sink had completely halted. There were the smallest slivers of indignant rage slipping through the cloak of apathy he wore. 

"If he can't last here a day, then he can go back to his cushy little life. Insignificant and ignorant like the rest of them." Wilbur's words sounded distant. He couldn't tell if it was because the brunette turned to face his brother or if it was because his head was absolutely pounding . 

"Shut up ." Tommy's throat was tightening in the way that threatened tears. He couldn't cry in front of either of them. He couldn't afford to. 

"Make me. You're not one of us. You're being sent back once Phil realizes his mistake. Count yourself lucky, brat ." Wilbur talked down to him like he was nothing but a worm. Like Tommy was just shit on his shoe. An inconvenience that didn't deserve his time. 

" Wilbur . Stop it." Techno's voice was drowning anything out. It wasn't helping. 

Techno wasn't helping. 

"I'm right! You know I'm right. He's nothing ! He shouldn't be here and you know it!" Wilbur was getting progressively louder, his voice enveloping the room like a mist. It was pissing him off, honestly. 

Maybe he wouldn't have let it consume him if it didn't fill him with a warmth that the brunette's very presence seemed to try and steal from him. Being in the same room as him was like balancing his weight on the trigger mechanism of a bear trap, waiting for the jaws to finally snap and tear him to shreds. 

He could feel it rising in his throat, the heat burning his tongue as the words finally left him. The overwhelming warmth that surged through him for it ate away at the frost Wilbur poisoned him with. It felt so much better to give into the raw anger, to let it swallow him whole. 

" Shut up. " His words stung his own ears, and it felt like a dose of caffeine had just been shot into his system. His fingers were shaking from the rush rather than the exhaustion. 

He couldn't tell if that was an improvement. 

His euphoria made it more difficult to see the dark liquid seeping from his mouth, the ink threatening to stain his skin as it clawed its way to the brunette. The reality of what he was looking at didn't seem to register until it retreated back to him, morsels of life that weren't his being dragged back to his chest. 

It was nightmarish, watching the foreign slime slip back to him. It had been the same sight he had to bear witness to in that godforsaken Denny's, before that same sludge lurched across the table at Wilbur's discretion. That same muck that slipped into his pores and tore away shreds of himself. 

He couldn't tear his eyes away from the table, his fingers groaning in protest at how he dug them into the wood. It didn't do much to stabilize him, no matter how grounding the pain was. It didn't do much to slow his erratic heart, especially with the overwhelming energy that was still trickling into his system. 

The exhaustion he felt from being outside with Techno was non-existent, the stiffness being the only indicator that he had been moving prior to coming inside. His thoughts were too much, his mind racing as it tried to settle on something worth focusing on. His tongue didn't fit in his mouth, and his breath was too abrasive. 

The sickening crack of something hard connecting with the linoleum tile gave him enough of a reason to focus his vision, trying to process the situation before him. The noise had been Wilbur. 

Or, more specifically, it had been Wilbur's skull connecting with the floor. 

---

Tommy wasn't sure when he had been moved to the couch. Or when the fucked up cat had taken refuge in his lap. The ceiling fan being on was the only thing helping to combat the heat that seemed to be pooling off of him. His clothes stuck to him, an ever-growing layer of sweat adhering them to his skin. 

His breath was wrong. His vision was wrong. He was wrong . 

It felt like the time he had gotten roofied, his body overactive while being painfully lethargic. Every little thing grated against him, like his skin had been peeled away and his raw nerves were forced to drag across whatever was against him. 

The ugly cat was helping, strangely enough. He didn't have a good track record with animals. They usually had a vendetta against him, despite how he tried to walk on eggshells around them. The household pets were usually the first to reject him. 

He could've sworn something was said off to his left, the notion of obnoxious sunlight brushing against him for barely a moment before it was drowned out by the overstimulation. Tommy could barely focus on the inbred cat that was nibbling at his fingertips. 

The voice didn't cut through the haze, but the hand that grabbed his shoulder definitely did. The overwhelming calm that assaulted him didn't leave him enough sense to feel violated. The flash of indignant panic was quickly drowned out, lost in a sea of those sunflower yellows. 

He didn't have it in him to think of how sickening the color was. 

"You're okay, Tommy." The soothing voice swallowed all of his worries, and the overwhelming heat from the energy that wasn't his seemed to be swept away with it. 

His breath stopped burning his nostrils as it left him, and it felt like his heart wasn't threatening to tear out of his chest. He wasn't sure if that would've been a bad thing at this point. Especially once Wilbur got ahold of him. 

Wilbur didn't seem like the type to simply 'forgive and forget'. The little bits of personality he could gather through the ravenous beast that was his energy seemed to hold nothing but malice. He could recognize the rotten olive green of trauma from a mile away. 

"Don't worry about Wilbur. He's asleep, and you didn't hurt him." Phil's voice was oozing a sense of comfort, but even through the haze he could pick up the ugly droplets of uncertainty that slid down his words like condensation. 

The hand on his shoulder left for a moment, making him realize that his eyes were in fact open. The dandelion cloud he had been surrounded by had been a legitimate cloud . It hung thick enough in the air that it had obscured his view. 

He could feel the remnants against his skin, the warmth dissolving into an itch the longer it was against him. It was the same feeling he got when a cut was healing and the raw gore underneath felt like it needed a good scratching. 

Not that sating it did any good. 

Looking around the room made him realize that he was in the living room, and that it seemed to have gotten darker out. He couldn't gauge time based on how bright it was outside, but he could confidently say he had been losing his shit for more than an hour. 

"Juice box." 

It wasn't a question. The red and white box was tossed haphazardly into his lap, bouncing off of the fugly cat who seemed determined to not leave his side. It made an offended noise at the assault, opening it's weird little mouth to hiss at the offender. 

Techno was at the edge of the living room, leaning against the wall. He had his own box, although it was a purple color. He quirked an eyebrow at him, his red irises seemingly dissecting his movements. Like he was looking for something. 

Whatever it was, he didn't get the chance to find it before Phil was back. The man was basically billowing a cloud of goldenrod shade, suffocating anything else around his silhouette. Tommy was having trouble looking at the blond himself. His eyes kept getting lost in the repetitive swirling of the colors. 

It was almost like an optical illusion, watching the shades swirl and dip throughout each other. Or maybe it was more like hypnotism, since the scene felt like it was consuming his thoughts as it devoured his vision. Maybe it would come for his sense of smell next. 

"Now, Tommy." Trying to focus on Phil's face was a hassle. His features were distorted behind the mask of marigold and copper flakes. He couldn't tell where his eyes were. 

"What happened?" His voice was soothing, an extension of the blanket of safety that seemed to extend from his presence. But the words themselves seemed empty. Husks with no shred of humanity to them, just simple seed pods threatening to burst if he approached them wrong. 

But that was stupid, wasn't it? Tommy was safe. The feeling that was chipping away at the back of his mind, threatening to shatter the sense of security he had was nothing more than a fleeting bit of anxiety. What else could it be? 

"I spat ink and everything went too fast."

It didn't sound as coherent once he actually said it. Judging by the way Phil seemed to be holding back laughter, he would say the man would probably agree. 

It wasn't his fault, really. The miasma was absolutely intoxicating . It was like he was drowning in a breeze packed with sun-warmed pollen, the simple warmth making his thoughts slow and lethargic. It felt like he was sleeping, his body wrapped with comforting heat as his mind travelled separately. 

Maybe he was dreaming. It would make more sense, especially the whole hallucinating thing. He knew that feeling the colors from people wasn't normal, but he was told it was especially bad if things like that became visible. And with the cloud coming off of Phil making him feel drugged, he would agree with that sentiment. 

"Tommy, are you okay?" Phil tried again, his laughter barely contained. His expression warped and twisted behind the shades of yellow, swallowing any signs of his surroundings.

Did he get drugged? 

"Yellow." His tongue was heavy and lethargic in his mouth, and the words felt thick. It was like he was choking on molasses just to get those two syllables out. 

Yellow was all he could see. It was all he could feel . Hell, he would bet he could taste it with how it permeated the air around him. The atmosphere of sunshine and daffodil shades swirling together was the only thing he could distinguish about his surroundings. 

Which was probably why he didn't notice the hands around his neck until it was followed by pressure.

Chapter Text

The click of something around his neck rang like church bells in his ears, resounding a lot louder than it ever should've. The vibrations seemed to sink into his throat from the source, advancing like a cancerous growth. It crawled through his skin, clearing his sight and making his flesh feel heavy. 

" Techno !" A sharp word cut through his daze, the tone venomous. But oddly empty. There was no weight behind it, even though he could recognize the inflection that came with the frustration underneath it. 

Yet it held no weight for him. 

The sense of lucrative clarity that hung around him made it feel like a weight that had made his limbs heavy and his movements sluggish was suddenly lifted, leaving him lighter but duller. The ability to look between the two men without choking on the waves of emotions cascading around the room like a mustard gas haze of somber serenity made his eyes focus in a way that they never could before. His mind was clear, and no amount of influence could break through whatever chained him down to himself. 

“What? Look at him.” Techno’s usually monotonous drabble was harsh, the edge of agitation lacing through it sewn in like razor wire, threatening any sort of challenge before it could start. It was alarming to hear him talk like that, even though the fear he was feeling wasn’t because he was drowning under a crimson wave of putrid vexation. 

“I- You should’ve said something. You need-” Phil’s words were cut off, his hesitance with his phrasing making him sound like he was talking down to a child. Tommy got second hand agitation from it, even though the tone wasn’t directed at him.

Even though he couldn’t feel it now. 

It was startling to be able to think clearly even as the tension thickened in the air, congealing like bad blood between the two of them. Tommy was unfortunately sat in the middle, though their gazes didn’t leave phantom gashes down the skin even if their focus was distinctly uncomfortable as it raked down his form. 

" Don't . You were the one doing it to him, I just fixed it." The hiss Techno let out sent a chill down his spine, even though the spiteful ire wasn't directed at him. 

Phil didn't waver, though. If anything, he seemed more concerned for Techno rather than himself. His gaze softened even as he faced down the growing intensity of the pinkette's grimace. Tommy was actively trying to avoid making eye contact with either of them, afraid of becoming the focus of their dispute. 

Just because he could handle their gaze piercing his flesh didn't mean he wanted to test how far his new clarity held to. 

"I didn't-" Phil's face contorted, and it seemed like it physically pained him to hold his tongue. Judging by the way his eyes landed on Tommy, he would bet that it was something he wasn't supposed to hear. 

Which was great, since the weird fuckers not telling him about the weird shit going on promised good things for his general safety and wellbeing in the future. 

"You didn't what ? He's clearly distressed and you did nothing but mess with him. You've been as helpful as Wilbur!" A hand clamped down on his shoulder as Techno raised his voice, the grip firm and cold. But oddly soothing, the connection making the faintest whisper of a chorus filled with vibrant purples and soothing blues shine through. 

"I didn't know." Phil's remorse seemed genuine enough, but even without being able to see it he could tell something about his words were hesitant. It seemed to sooth whatever inferno was threatening to consume the one touching him, which was nice. 

His vexation wasn't for him. He wasn't sure why he was about to curb stomp his father, but he wasn't about to get between the two of them if Techno's shaky resolve ended up snapping. The immediate threat wasn't even directed at him, and yet he was acutely aware of how in the direct line of fire he was. 

Watching Phil's eyebrows knit together didn't help him dissect what the man was feeling. Neither did the anxious movement of his gaze that bounced between the two boys before him. He visibly deflated as he let out a sigh that sounded more like a frustrated huff from a scorned husky dog. 

"What are you planning, then? You're not going anywhere like that ." Tommy genuinely thought that the venom in the man's voice was directed at the fact that he looked like he clawed his way out of the Salvation Army donation box. 

Not that he chose to dress like a homeless person. He wasn't happy about his appearance either, even if he realized he was being an idiot and Phil wasn't talking about him. 

"I have the old one. I'm not an idiot." Techno spat, his fingers momentarily tightening around Tommy's shoulder. 

He didn't know why he felt like those fingers wanted to keep closing. 

---

The silence stretched between him and Phil like sugar glass. The sickeningly sweet disposition of the man didn't match the turmoil that lingered in his gaze, and Tommy was sure he would've crumpled underneath its intensity if he wasn't still under whatever spell he had befallen.

He felt like one wrong movement would shatter the fragile atmosphere that barely veiled them from each other's side glances. He was sure Phil knew he was getting the side eye. He caught the man doing it, after all. 

His neck felt warm too, his tongue heavy and thick as it sat too far to the left in his mouth. It was if his anxieties were manifesting as some kind of blood rush centered at his voice box, threatening to overtake his whole throat. Phil's presence didn't seem to be helping. 

Which might've just been because he decided that he hated Phil. 

"I told you I had it covered." Techno's monotonous drawl was shadowed by a sharp lilt of something that made him sound almost humored. 

Tommy swung his head over to the voice, craning his neck at an unnatural angle to try and identify whatever the fuck the guy was talking about. Something dragged against the skin of his throat as it shifted, but he couldn't tell what . 

He noticed two things. 

The thin line of his lips were pulled into just the slightest start of a smirk. That, and he was wearing a fucking crown. 

It looked like a headband at first, except for the fact that it was resting on top of his head. That, and it looked like it was gold. Not the cheap, holographic plastic that came from fake jewelry or cheap decorative headbands for little girls. It looked real . 

He genuinely seemed more expressive, no matter how low he had set the bar for himself prior. There was even a glint in his eyes that had been missing before. Overall, he seemed more lively. 

He seemed more like a person. 

"That's not your old necklace." Phil sounded absolutely bewildered, like anything about his son's appearance could possibly be more rattling than the red contacts and bright pink hair. 

"It is, 'n it still works. Problem?" His expression was a mix of confidence and humor, his lips pulling at the edge of a smirk that threatened to surface. 

The most emotionally devoid, hallowed excuse for a living being he ever had the displeasure of having grab him, was suddenly having people feelings. He looked, sounded, and felt more alive. Tommy couldn't do much more than read his body language from afar, and yet he could tell that the atmosphere that hung around him wasn't a desolate void with the personality of wet concrete. 

"Are they-" Phil's voice died in his throat, and Tommy caught him staring at him out of the corner of his eye. 

Who were they ? He couldn't fucking handle having to put up with anymore of their bullshit, especially if more people just started showing up in the middle of their little debacle. 

"It's fine. I can take care of myself." The smirk slipped off his features, any hint of arrogance or humor in his expression bleeding away to nothing but the slightest hint of annoyance. His eyes betrayed the glaring irritation before the ember was snuffed out. 

Tommy had to admit, he had a damn good poker face. 

"I'm worried." Phil's voice was a lot softer than it had been. He had seemed emotionally prepared to get back into their white collares pissing match, Tommy's presence be damned. 

The change in attitude was alarming, but it wasn't the worst he'd ever seen. Techno responded well to it, at least. He physically deflated a bit, the defiant hunch in his posture softening. 

"You shouldn't be. I can take care of myself." Techno's voice was considerably lower than it had been, his features seeming less irate as well. 

"I know, you're not who I'm worried about." 

Phil's words felt like needles being inched under his fingernails, his words sinking further into him as the silence behind the statement stretched on. His mouth felt try and tacky as he tried to ignore the way the skin of his neck was crawling with anxiety and heat. 

Mostly heat, though. 

Tommy couldn't find a retort, his words refusing to come to him regardless. It was sickening, like the time he had gotten heat exhaustion. Techno's burning gaze seemed to only stoke the coals settled in his esophagus. 

He wasn't sure about when exactly he blacked out. 

Chapter Text

The first thing that registered when he awoke was the fact that he was in an actual bed. The second was the knocking, which was probably what woke him up in the first place. The third was the smell of something cooking that broke through the musk of laundry softener and stale air of a spare room that probably hadn't seen a proper soul in a good while. 

"Breakfast is ready." Techno's voice was muffled from behind the heavy door, but he seemed satisfied enough by his lackluster attempt at rousing him that Tommy could hear him moving away. 

A quick look at his surroundings didn't clue him in too much except that the room was only half cleared out of whatever sentimental shit had been stored in it. The mattress wasn't much, but the rigidity of it and the layer of dust over the sheets meant that he was the first one to sleep on it in a good while. 

He threw the covers off of himself, the air bitingly cold despite it being August. The only light coming through the room was from the window, the sheen of the rising sun being enough to illuminate his surroundings. He couldn't tell what time it was by the sun because he wasn't a fucking caveman, so he just guessed that it was before his usual wake up time of noon. 

The view out of the window was oddly scenic, his room overlooking the backyard. The slivers of gold that permeated the dew in the grass made it look almost dream-like. Not that his dreams were ever that pretty without something grotesque lurking underneath the plush greens and somber golds. 

He let his gaze wonder, and caught the movement of something closer to the treeline. It was quick enough that he wasn't sure if it was just his eyelashes in the corner of his view or not.

He wasn't sure if something was actually moving in the darkness that was held by the tree line, but he sure as shit wasn't about to stay there and find out. 

---

Tommy didn't do much to try and fix his appearance. The scrubbing of his face with a hand towel he splashed some water on was purely to try and remove the grimy layer of sweat and oil he had accumulated since his last shower. He half assed it, so he just made peace with the fact that he would probably have a breakout in the near future. 

His only real concern with that was the fact that ugly kids got targeted by bullies more. Washing his face in a sink was usually enough to keep the worst of the worst off of his back, but even he could only spruce himself up so much with the tools he had at his disposal. Or the ones he stole. 

Rinsing his mouth out barely helped with whatever taste was stuck to the back of his tongue, but it wasn't bad enough for him to steal one of the other's toothbrushes. Even if it was, he'd rather be on the verge of dry heaving than see if any of them were violent enough to try and kill him over a toothbrush. They wouldn't be the first.

They could be the last, with his fucking luck. 

He messed around in the bathroom for what couldn't have been more than ten minutes, but the hallway seemed a bit brighter from the sunlight streaming in through the windows. It wasn't much, but it was enough of a difference that he could see the embery shreds cascading from between the trees. 

The windowsill he found himself in front of looked frosted. Or like someone took a mister to it, with the warmth of the house causing it to fog up. It was foreign, the vibrancy of the colors making it look absolutely astonishing outside. He was sure that the somber motionless was adding to the ethereal beauty of what he was seeing. 

He wasn't an outdoorsy kid, nor had he ever been in a house like this one. The forest was so close, and even with the way it bent shadows into sharp edges and moving shapes, it made the view outside of the window look like something off of a wildlife magazine. Not that he ever actually read any of those. He wasn't sure if anyone ever did. 

But they sure were easy to steal.

"If you don't hurry, there won't be any left!" Techno's voice carried up the stairs a louder and a lot quicker than he would've expected. He reflexively took a step away from the window, as if he was doing something wrong by existing near it. They hadn't given him a reason to be jumpy yet, but it was always better to be safe than dead. 

Not that any of the others managed to actually kill him, but damn if they haven't gotten close. 

"I can hear you breathing! Do you eat breakfast?" Techno's voice rang out from the stairwell once again. Although there was a bit more hesitance to it, like he wasn't sure of why Tommy was taking his sweet time. 

The splinters of bitter gray hit him hard enough that he almost didn't catch how fucking weird the first thing he said was. How was that supposed to encourage him?! That fucker was lucky if he didn't try to go back to his room and escape through the window with how fucked up that sentence was. 

He didn't. 

Even if he wasn't too keen on being near any of the Watsons, starving to death was just a bit less pleasant. Plus, it would be easier to run if he was on a full stomach. It was better in the long run for him to pretend they were living in domestic bliss and that yesterday didn't happen. 

Out of everything he expected to see once he crept down the steps, it wasn't Wilbur. Or more specifically, Wilbur playing with the fucked up cat. Said cat had a weird green hat on, one that looked like it was a simplistic frog made out of yarn. One that was probably done as a shitty DIY if the button eyes only being half attached was any indication. It had a shirt that seemed like a failed attempt of an upcycle of a shirt from some band he didn't know. The logo itself took up most of the poor thing's torso, the material clinging to it despite the horrendous stitches threatening to burst at any second. 

No matter how absurd the situation was, it seemed more apathetic about it's current predicament rather than outright agitated. Even the calmest of cats he had met would never allow themselves to be subjected to such bullshit. Wilbur had it picked up under the arms, and was just waving it about like it was some kind of doll. 

"Meep moop meep." The brunette was making a weird fucking noise as he continued doing whatever the hell this was. He sounded like a character from one of those town building games he always wanted to try. 

"Moop meep?" Wilbur swung his head to stare at him, the lengthy cat being swung to follow his whims. It didn't do more than blink at him, and he honestly wouldn't blame the thing if it was disassociating. 

If it could manage to repress what was happening, good for it. 

He didn't have the emotional or mental capacity to respond, but Wilbur seemed happy to turn back and continue speaking gibberish to his poor rodent shaped cat. It didn't seem like it was going to snap and eat the brunette's face any time soon, so he was sure that it would be fine to leave them to it. Whatever 'it' was. 

As he was turning away, he hesitated for a second. Shooting a glance back at the pair over his shoulder had the same result as it did earlier. It hadn't processed with his sleep-addled brain, his concern directed at the weird noises the older boy had decided to make to entertain himself. 

Looking at Wilbur didn't hurt . 

There was a sheen of pastels simmering underneath, but it was muted like the guy was a lot farther away than he actually was. But the oppressive black void that threatened to swallow the sun and drown him in its ichor wasn't there . 

It was like he was a completely different person from yesterday. The change was so captivating that he didn't notice Techno's approach. The pinkette only caught his attention once he cleared his throat, scaring the shit out of Tommy. He thankfully wasn't close enough to the wall to bounce off of it as he lurched away from the noise. 

Techno seemed genuinely disinterested in his reaction, despite the slight amber concern that crossed his expression for less than a second. 

"Come sit down." His statement hung heavy in the air, making him forget his fascination with Wilbur. It felt like his ears were filled with static as tunnel vision formed around the pale figure before him. The stale air of indifference hung over him like a cloak of darkened fog, obscuring his senses. 

"You should eat while your foods still warm." His tone was gruff and indifferent, but his expression softened ever so slightly.

The atmosphere of the exchange was broken by the Pokèmon noises Wilbur was making less than five feet away. 

---

There was a full plate in front of him. The type he had only seen served in restaurants or on TV, since he had never been in a household where someone bothered to cook like that. Especially not for him. 

Never for him. 

"It's not poisoned." Techno's stale gray tenor broke the silence that had settled between them since they both sat down. 

The pinkette had taken the seat across from him, having the decency to not box him in against the corner. Whether it was done consciously or not, he didn't know. But it did leave him feeling a bit less trapped at the table. 

Until Wilbur stormed into the kitchen, still holding his extended cat like it was a stuffed animal. The pastels that had been curling around his base were being obscured by growing pinpricks of volatile oranges, like the start of a fire in a plastic flower bed. 

"Why'd you start without me?" Wilbur's whining was accentuated with him throwing a hand on his hip like a blonde antagonist from a teen romance movie. The cat seemed indifferent throughout, though it was still in its DIY disaster of an 'outfit'. 

The thought barely crossed him before it focused it's gaze upon him, it's black eyes burning holes into his face like hot coals that refused to let go of their heat even after the ember had withered away. The suffocating tension was snapped when it cocked it's head at him, it's silly little crocheted frog hat drooping with the movement. The button looked like it was going to pop off at any moment. 

"You heard me. And you're here now, aren't you?" Techno's voice was the same blank slate as usual, but the corner of his lips threatened a smile. He seemed to genuinely enjoy his brother's company. 

Despite the monster he had been less than half a day ago. 

"It's not the same!" Wilbur's hiss was punctuated by the orange lurking between the florals fizzling out. There wasn't any real bite behind his words, even as his expression darkened. 

"Take your meds and make a plate." Techno's authority wasn't challenged with anything other than a noise that sounded close enough to a bark that it could've been the lengthy cat. 

"Hold this." Wilbur's demand barely got to him before the cat was shoved into his arms, flopping over his elbow like a limp sack of sand. If it wasn't clearly breathing, he would've assumed he was just handed a dead animal. 

He could've sworn the huff out of it was a sigh of relief. 

"He could've been allergic." Techno's voice sounded hesitant about his statement and he couldn't tell why. 

Either way, the rat cat was in his arms and he wanted to eat. The pancakes had gotten soggy from sitting, but they were still warm. He would've eaten them if they were frozen. He was starving from having missed dinner- 

He choked on the mouthful that he had been attempting to swallow, the memory of what happened last night catching him off guard. Everything came to him in a tidal wave of the events being replayed, as disastrous and overwhelming as they had been in the moment. If he had attempted to repress it, he did a pretty shit job. 

Not that he ever got to forget. 

Long rat cat seemed more concerned than the two people in the room with him, a tentative paw being placed on his sternum. He could've sworn that it was looking for him for an answer. A slight nod seemed enough for it to go back to being limp after he managed a carb-free breath. 

Surveying the room made him see that Techno was staring at him while chewing, and Wilbur was struggling with the safety cap on what looked like a bottle of vitamins with the label taken off. 

"What the fuck ." It didn't come out as a question. It sounded like the desperate plea of a child lost in the menagerie of colorful and wild bullshit. 

"What?" Techno sounded indifferent. He looked indifferent. There was genuinely no surprise or intrest behind his gaze as it settled on his trembling form. 

It felt so condescending .

The only reason he knew he was shaking was because the cat seemed to want his attention, grasping his fingers in it's weird little paws like an attempt to ease his anxiety. Which was nice, but not super relaxing. Grounding, but not relaxing. 

"Yesterday." 

The crack as the bottle hit the ground was followed by the contents spilling all over the floor. Wilbur must've slammed it down, since there wasn't any other reason it would've shattered like that. His hands were trembling and he seemed like he was trying to stare a hole through the counter. 

It felt like whatever colors that had been lurking under his skin drained from him so fast that he looked like a corpse, the life in his expression fading with it. 

"Oh, yeah. What about it?" Techno's resolve was cracking. He could tell there was an anxiety dripping into his tone like an apricot acrylic pour threatening to spill over and drown out the somber ashes.

"What- Fuck you, dude." The anger crawling up his throat felt good. Being angry felt infinitely safer than the helplessness he had been plagued with since he stepped foot into the hell house. 

" Sorry ." Wilbur's voice was soaked with despair so heavy that he was surprised he couldn't see the cerulean spilling down his lips. 

An apology wasn't what he was expecting. The turmoil going on around him wasn't what he expected either. The frog hat clad rat cat was definitely not something he thought would be involved in this shit show of a conversation. 

"We owe you some answers. Phil left us the card if you want to go shopping. Not a lot in town." Techno tore his gaze away from him and went back to sawing through his pancakes. The weight that left him once he averted his eyes made Tommy too nervous to pursue an answer. 

He was talking so blankly, like he had disconnected himself from the conversation behind the smokey sheet of insouciance. Trying to poke through it to get a better look made his lungs feel heavy. It didn't seem worth it to drown in soot to try and get a glimpse of whatever was lurking beneath. 

"Friend." Wilbur's tone was still shaky, like his voice was about to give out just as badly as his knees. It sounded like a command, even with the putrid green unease it was floating atop of. 

The rodent cat monster rolled out of his arms, somehow managing to land on its feet despite the ungainly method it chose to get down. It almost got to Wilbur before it turned and made a weird noise at Techno, seemingly demanding something from him. 

The pinkette rolled his eyes, but seemed to understand it's requirements enough to set down an empty plate from off of the table. It seemed satisfied enough to begin picking the pills off the floor and placing them on the dish, uninterested in the fact it was splattered with crumbs. 

"I'm- I'll be on the couch." Wilbur bounced off of the doorway while leaving, his movements stiff and jerky like he was struggling to get himself moving. It wasn't coordinated enough to call him robotic. 

It was just unsettling. 

"Make sure he takes another one." Techno didn't look up from his plate while he was speaking, and Tommy was about to ask him why in the hell he thought the stranger should be the one handing out pills. 

The animal on the floor made another weird chirp, like it was trying to respond to what Techno said. Which was insane, since it made no sense for an animal to be able to understand something like that. Not that it made sense for it to be retrieving vitamins off the floor. 

"I'll sweep when you're done." Techno added, which didn't get him much more than another disingenuous chirping noise. 

He went back to eating like it was normal. Like any of what was happening was normal. He seemed to think that whatever the fuck was going on with his own brother wasn't worth his worry or time. 

"Stop staring and eat. We can talk later." His voice was firm with no inclination of wavering. There wasn't room for Tommy to argue with him. 

He wasn't sure if he wanted to, either. 

Chapter Text

The rest of the meal was silent, the suffocating orchestra only being broken by the music that carried itself in from the living room. Tommy had no idea what Wilbur was watching, but they sure did sing a lot. It was getting progressively more grating, the limelight pastels feeling too sharp against his skull. 

"Phil left a list for groceries." Techno eventually spoke again, his voice holding firm like he never stopped. 

As if the quiet didn't weigh on him. 

It probably didn't, all things considered. He didn't seem too affected by Phil's mustard gas cloud that he just excreted for no reason, nor did he seem bothered by Wilbur's insane change of character. Why would he think that they would have anything in common when he didn't have the decency to be upset by these things? 

He could tell the moment Techno shifted his focus, the pinpricks of solemn dread that spread down his face like cold oil made swallowing a lot harder. He begrudgingly looked up, meeting his gaze with as much disinterest as he could muster while he debated if he could get the mouthful of eggs down without gagging. 

"You could come with me. Since Wilbur's out of commission and all that." It might've been from staring the weirdo down, or it might've been false hope that revealed the shrapnel of what felt like pleading . 

Techno wanted something from him. He wasn't sure why, but he could tell that the pinkette was hoping for something out of him. 

But what was Tommy good at if not being a disappointment? 

---

Techno had told him to get ready. Tommy didn't know what the fuck that meant considering he already washed his face and his clothes were clean(ish), but it gave him respite away from the twin terrors being weird as possible downstairs. He didn't know if locking the door would actually deter either of them, but flicking the latch gave him a sense of relief regardless. 

He ended up on his bed, staring into his hands. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with himself, since he would have to go out and face them eventually. For the first time in a while, he felt trapped. 

There wasn't any alleyway to slip into, there wasn't an Uber to call, and he sure as hell wouldn't be able to find a bus. If he knew anything about small towns, it was the 10 minutes of Children of the Corn he saw that one time and that they didn't have public transportation. The Watson household was textbook cult shit, so that meant the other stuff also had to be right.  

"Are you ready to go yet?" Techno's voice rang out from behind the door, his monotonous drawl weighted even as he was sheltered behind the heavy wooden door. 

"Yes." He wasn't. 

"Are you going to come out?" 

"Yes." He didn't want to. 

"I'll be in the car, then." There was a hue of well-meaning mint twisting between the cracks in the door like maggots, threatening to breach the gap towards him. 

He didn't move, even as he heard Techno leaving. The fact that the pinkette had managed to unnerve him that much, even when he could see his intentions were good, rattled him in a way he didn't like. It was unsettling. 

Everything about the three of them was unsettling. The only normal person in the house was the cat who was probably clinically depressed. And, honestly, Tommy didn't fucking blame it. He'd probably have more shit wrong with him if he had to put up with them all the time. 

If the cat hadn't killed itself yet, then he shouldn't either. How bad would shopping be? Techno was at least the least threatening, seeing as he hadn't fucked with his mind or blown up yet. 

But how long until he did? How long until Phil dropped whatever facade he was putting forth? His kids couldn't possibly be that fucked up if he was doing everything right. 

He was fully expecting the blond man to do something that made Wilbur's outburst seem tamed. It felt wrong to even think of the adult, the mere idea making his head swim with the memories of mustard and daffodil yellows swallowing his vision and clogging his throat. 

The knock at his door jolted him from his thoughts, pulling his attention away from his brooding. He checked the shitty digital alarm clock on the desk across from him, showing that it had been another few minutes since Techno had bothered him. He didn't think he had been meandering around his thoughts for that long. 

"You said you'd be in the car." He spat, his tone holding no real venom. He wanted to sound annoyed without the threat of upsetting any of them. 

"And you said you'd be down." Was all the warning he got before Techno was opening the door to his room, his expression darkening as he stepped inside. 

"I know this is a lot, but if you don't come with me, then you're not getting any answers. We can't talk on the property without something-" Techno stopped himself, a mirage that mimicked panic flashing across his eyes as if he misspoke. "Someone could hear us." 

That didn't make any sense, but it genuinely didn't feel like he was being lied to. Whatever the fuck was wrong with Techno, it didn't include dishonesty. Which would've felt like more of a win if he wasn't still being cryptic as fuck. 

"I'm bringing the knife." Tommy hissed, hoping the threat of him being armed would stop any potential fuckery before it happened. 

The corner of Techno's lip twitched in the threat of a smile, his demeanor relaxing as he leaned against the doorframe. 

"You sure that's a good idea? You don't wear a belt, so you can't keep it on your hip." 

It felt like he was being spoken down to. No matter how Techno originally intended it, it came across as a challenge. 

"No need to, got pockets." He puffed himself up as he rose from the bed, swiping the sheathed blade from off the desk and sliding it into his pocket. 

The blade was about the length of his hand, not including the handle. The couple inches that stuck out of his jeans seemed to amuse the pinkette more than concern him. 

"If someone asks, say it's a skinning knife." Techno hummed as he pushed off the wall, heading down the hall. 

He wasn't sure if it was the weight of the blade or the curiosity that made him follow. 

Chapter Text

"Can you hear dog whistles?"

After five minutes of driving that felt like an endless eternity, Techno had to open with the stupidest question he had ever heard. Hopefully he answered questions better than he made small talk. 

Not that Tommy was exactly talking . He would've been fine if neither of them opened their mouths until they got to their destination. It was easier to get away when their was a crowd, or at the very least not get murdered. He was still waiting to see if the whole 'psychotic episode' thing ran in the family. 

He shot an absentminded glance in the pinkette's direction, realizing he still hasn't answered. A shrug just got him a scowl in response. 

"I'm asking because I have an analogy for what I'm assuming is happening to you. Wilbur had it happen too, especially around Phil." He watched as Techno's fingers wandered from the wheel, gliding over his gilded collar. 

Watching it move as the muscles underneath it flexed, Tommy could clearly see the irritation building. The edges were suddenly too sharp, too close. Suffocating, almost. 

He went back to staring out the window, the endless mirage of trees as never ending as it was liminal. 

"It's like when people can hear bats or dog whistles. A lot of people lost the ability to. Or they never had it." 

Whatever explanation he was getting made absolutely zero sense. 

"Bats make a sound?" Why would they? They were blind, after all. Seemed like a good way to get eaten. 

Techno's expression soured. Tommy dug his teeth into his tongue, anticipating the familiarity of a strike born from irritation. Even if it lacked the usual cloud of putrid oranges and grays that alerted him to it. 

It didn't come.

"Yes. I'm assuming you haven't been out of the city much?" Techno was changing the subject. He didn't need to see how his knuckles tightened on the wheel to confirm it. 

"Why would I? Fuckin' blows out here." 

Out of everything he expected to happen when he got into the car, Techno laughing wasn't on the list. It was loud and deep, like what he imagined a cartoon bear to produce when told a joke. 

He didn't hate it? 

"You don't know the half of it. Towns are full of either demons or meth out here." Techno's monotone seemed… lighter. Even if the upturn of his lip was almost nonexistent, it still rang clear in his voice. 

The meth would make sense, actually. Tommy usually didn't see men as scrawny as Wilbur getting physically aggressive unless they were on something. Or they weren't on something. 

Not that smashing a vitamin bottle was the worst thing in the world. At least Wilbur didn't get him sent to the hospital three minutes into meeting him. If that was the only standard that guy could stumble over, it'd be rude to deny him it. 

"My original point was that some people can hear tones others can't." Techno continued his spiel as if he hadn't stopped. The conversation didn't feel as forced as it picked up, which was odd. 

"Like dog whistles?" Tommy supplied, his own expression souring as he felt a burst of pride as he got a simple nod in response. 

He knew better. 

"Do you know what happens when you get a tone like that, but it's too loud?" Techno's eyes were focused on the road as he spoke. Tommy hadn't seen any other cars yet. 

"Isn't that tinnitus?" It was easier to pretend he wasn't interested if he stopped looking at Techno. Closing his eyes was the best option, since he was getting a headache from trying to follow the tree line while they moved. 

"Tinnitus is a symptom of hearing loss, which was my point. If you get thrown somewhere really loud after living somewhere quiet, you can lose your hearing." 

That didn't make any sense. The city was much louder than the woods ever could be. By that logic, his hearing would improve the longer he stayed with them. 

"You're doing that with magic." Techno said it with a straight face, despite it being a clear attempt to fuck with him. Staring at him didn't make his facade crack, so he decided to play into it. 

He wouldn't continue it into the store, after all. 

---

Techno continued it into the store. Between the unlabeled aisles of what was ominously called a 'bulk store', the older boy tried to continue the conversation from the car. Tommy just nodded along for the most part. He didn't have a real reason to challenge whatever insane ramblings left the one who could drive. Unless he wanted to chance walking back with no idea where he was or what address he was shooting for. 

He could've tried it if his goal was to die in the stupidest way possible. 

Techno stopped trying to push him to respond rather quickly. Tommy was sure he didn't want to have the conversation in the first place, so the blond gave him the perfect opportunity to drop it. He spared them both from suffering through whatever bad joke was being attempted. 

He was staring at what looked like a plastic bag full of sand that didn’t have a price tag or label when he heard something in the aisle behind the one he was currently hiding in. He was mostly trying to avoid Techno while he went and tried to find whatever bread flour was. 

He was pretty sure it only became bread after you used the flour, but it was just something to add to the list of weird shit he had heard on the trip. The excessive swearing and very explicit language he was hearing would probably qualify.

He strode past more bags of colored sand to peek his head around the corner, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. He was probably doing a really bad job, but the brunette who was on the floor in front of a shattered jar of honey oozing an excessive amount of blood from his hand didn’t seem to notice. Tommy should’ve been the least of that guy’s concerns. 

There was a sudden burning in his eyes for the few seconds he kept his eyes on the other boy, like his body was trying to shed tears that weren’t his own. The air around the guy wasn’t nearly as suffocating as Phil’s, but he could tell that the dude had some serious emotional issues. Best to avoid people like that at all costs. 

“Tommy! I got the heavy bags loaded, we’re ready to go if you don’t-” Techno was speaking from over his shoulder, his voice cold even though he was close enough to feel the heat of his breath. Turning around to face the guy felt like sticking his head into a freezer, a chilling running up his spine. 

Techno wasn’t focused on him . His eyes held something that was terrifyingly foreign as he stared at the kid who was down the aisle bleeding. He managed to get out of the way as Techno marched down the aisle towards the hunched figure of the boy covered in a syrup of his own blood and sugar. 

Was Techno going to eat him!? The guy had basically just basted himself, but Techno wasn’t that kind of crazy, was he? He held his breath and turned away, fully prepared to scream at the first zombie-esque flesh eating noise he heard. 

“Tubbo. Look at me.” 

It was a complete 180 ° from how he had spoken since Tommy had come home. He was surprised that Techno could even hold that much emotion in his tone, the sweet lavender of his concern practically dribbling down his chin like spittle. 

Tommy was far enough away that the Tubbo guy on the ground seemed to not be too concerned, but he almost threw up when his hair fell away from his face enough to show what was hidden beneath. 

It was like an explosion went off, his face torn to shreds and the gore underneath charred and oozing enough blood that the front of his shirt was soaked. His nose was barely attached, and Tommy could see how the flesh was burned away across the right side of his head. The hair was curled and smoking, the teeth knocked loose falling to the floor as he spoke-

Then it was gone. 

Tommy blinked and there was just a boy with a huge burn across the right side of his head staring at one of the guys he now lived with. He just looked like a normal, although scarred, boy who had a broken jar of honey and a small wound across his palm. The stench of blood seemed to evaporate along with the rest of the mirage from hell, leaving behind the ambience that was random spices and the plywood everything was built out of. 

“I’m fine .” The boy spat, the haze of whatever he was trapped in lifting as he glared at Techno, his (good) eye finally clearing enough he spotted Tommy. “Who the fuck’s that?” 

“Tom.” Techno spat it out before Tommy had time to register the question. He didn’t have his own mouth opened to bitch about how Tom was not what he wanted to be called, but he was interrupted by laughter from burn boy. 

“Are you serious? Good luck keeping an eye on him.” Tubbo snorted, getting to his feet. Most of what had been soaking his clothes turned out to be imaginary blood, but he did still have a good portion of honey splattered on his hands and lap. 

“He doesn’t need to worry about it anyways, you know how Phil is. Do you want some help?” Techno got to his feet as well, the shreds of decadence lining his words disappearing as if it had never been there in the first place. 

The expression on Tubbo’s face soured, a hand combing through his hair as he shot a glance towards Tommy. He knew what the brunette was asking, the problem was Techno seemed rather dense. He just shot a small thumbs up to try and diffuse the situation. 

The huff he got in response seemed to be of relief. The veil of putrid greens and rotten browns that the guy was trapped behind seemed to be clouding anything else that came out. It was hardened and fossilized, unlike the fresh one that would swallow Susan when she got too quiet. 

Hopefully this Tubbo guy had “get really quiet” PTSD attacks and not the “try to kill everyone and everything near him” PTSD attacks. Tommy had caught the ass end of more than one of the latter, and he usually also got in trouble for it. 

“I got the boxes from the car already, I was just putting things up.” Tubbo’s hand disappeared into his pocket. Tommy didn’t expect much, considering that it was a perfectly normal thing for someone to do. It would’ve been perfectly normal to expect something like his phone to come out. 

It was an eyepatch. 

It felt like he was watching it in slow motion, how the band was stretched and slipped over his head. Before it was used to cover the eye that he had seemed to hide with his hair. Considering how he had seen what the fresh burn looked like in the first place, he should’ve known. 

Techno seemed to be catching up with the conversation, his eyes scanning the both of them for a moment before he spoke. “He gets headaches.” 

“Headaches?!” Tubbo shot him a look that almost seemed like disgust. Again, Tommy couldn’t see much through the blanket of anguish. “I look like fuckin’ Two-Face, you’re allowed to acknowledge it!” 

Techno’s face stayed pale when he was embarrassed, but his ears sure didn’t. They darkened quick enough that Tommy almost didn’t have time to appreciate how funny what Tubbo just said was. 

Tubbo at least had the kind of PTSD that made him funny.

Chapter Text

Conversing with Tubbo was oddly fluid, filling the space between the shelves with sangria, even if it didn't swallow the smoke on his breath. The same soot that followed in his footsteps, slipping between his self deprecations and slights at Techno as they spoke. 

Everything about Tubbo radiated heat, his presence smoldering like gasoline on a campfire. It was a nice change of pace to the emotional frost that seemed to overtake the Watson’s household. Where it wasn’t devoid and cold, it was freezer burnt and frostbitten. 

Or maybe his standards had just fallen so low he was willing to talk to someone sane who wasn’t also the fucking cat. Both of his sons were clearly insane. 

It must’ve been rubbing off on him, since he kept glancing back to the edges of the patch. He could’ve sworn he could see the gore out of the corner of his eye, the scent of burnt hair and sulfur stinging his nose between the hints of pollen and cigarette smoke that clung to his hands. 

He had to say something before the bile rose too high in his throat. He was trying to not curl his lip in disgust, his fingers clammy as the glass surface of jars felt like the tender tissues and scarlets that get revealed when it’s peeled away by heat and fire. 

“So.” Tubbo turned to look at him, his face seemingly oddly pale under the harsh fluorescents. A reminder that what he was seeing wasn’t real. What he was thinking about seeing, even. False pretenses of colored drapery he was using to freak himself out over some poor guy’s burnt eye.

 The words died in his throat, his eyes scanning for something to save himself. 

“So?” 

Tommy cleared his throat, finding something other than the brunette to focus on. He made the mistake of glancing back up to his face, lingering just a moment too long on the eyepatch, before quickly turning to the floor. Tubbo laughed, somber baby blue bouncing between them as Tubbo seemed to revel in the blond’s discomfort.

“You wanna know what happened?”  Tubbo regained his composure enough to speak, an empty grin growing on his face. “It’s okay if you do, big man. Bit of an eyesore ‘n all.” 

Tommy just stared back at him in silence, watching with wide eyes as the sorrowful smoky grays that smothered his words. He tried to fight the tightness in his throat as he kept his attention to the floor, forcing his own tight simper. 

He was pretty sure it wasn’t okay. 

“It’s not that bad.” He offered. 

“It’s pretty bad.” Tubbo leaned against the shelf next to him, mimicking his slouched posture. 

“You don’t seem too upset ‘bout it.” 

Tubbo laughed again, dry and joyless, mockery directed at nothing in particular. Just spitefulness harboring apathetic disinterest, but not quite mourning. He wasn’t sad about it at the very least. 

“Not anymore.” He shrugged, his gaze settling to the floor as well. Tommy wondered which of the dusty boards he was staring at. “It doesn’t hurt anymore, so I’m fine with it.” 

“How long did that take?” If he could skirt around asking him about how it happened, he could avoid hearing him say it.

He could pretend he didn’t know, and smother the spark that would engulf him in a regretful panic. It wasn’t his business.

“Happened about four years ago, so it’s been healed for a while. Used to bother me a lot more with sensitivity and shit.” Tubbo gestured vaguely upwards. The fluorescent tubes hummed above them.

“I cracked a bottle of fluorine gas in my face.” He added after a moment. 

Tommy nodded along, assuming it was some kind of off brand butane. Butane was something he had watched other people mess with. He had stayed out of the way for the most part, outside of the time he shot one because that had been really cool. 

“Basically boiled my eye, but it hurts from the lights and stuff even if I can’t see it.” 

“That sounds like it sucks.” He ignored the coppery and sulfurous scent that permeated the back of his tongue, swallowing to try and fight off what he knew was a phantom. 

 “Yeah.” Tubbo perked up a bit, elbowing him. “But between that and being dyslexic, the teacher’s baby the shit out of me. I turned in an essay a month late and still got full marks.” 

“You get a handicap sign for that? Or is that just for when you lose a limb.” Tommy didn’t have a lot of information about being crippled. 

“I don’t drive, so I haven’t checked. So maybe” The weight of the smog around them seemed to lessen as Tubbo’s smile became more genuine. “My older sister didn’t get one for being blind, so I don’t think half-blind would cut it.” 

Tommy snorted. 

“I’d trust her to drive.” He wasn’t sure why the quip felt meaningful, but he nodded along with his joke regardless. 

Tubbo made a face at him, something between confusion and discomfort. He settled on the confusion, and eyebrow raising as his expression seemed to become more cheerful.

“ I’d trust her more than my other sister. She can see and read just fine, except if it’s the speed limit.” 

Tommy laughed at that, the tension melting away as the warmth returned to the air. Tubbo was his favorite so far. He didn’t want to think about it too much and risk jinxing it. 

“No, I mean it! She had to take our brother to the hospital the morning after we got, like, two feet of snow during winter break last year. She got to the ER in ten minutes.” Tubbo shook his head. 

“Is that bad?” Tommy didn’t see the issue. 

“It’s a thirty minute drive.

---

Tommy would’ve bitched when Techno came to retrieve him if chatting with Tubbo hadn’t put him in a better mood. He was already in the car by the time he realized they had simply walked out of the building. 

“You didn’t pay.” 

“Yes I did.” The click of his seatbelt punctuated Techno’s words. 

“Tubbo said he was the only one working, and he didn’t check you out.” Tommy knew for a goddamn fact that he hadn’t placed some kind of online order. Not at a building that looked like it was made by some guy. 

Techno looked up at him, his expression unreadable. 

“The cat was there .” 

Tommy must’ve misheard him. Techno didn’t think he was that stupid, right? Maybe it was just some attempt at a joke. Was he supposed to laugh? 

“The what?”

“The cat. He’s basically just a self aware animal, so he basically acts as an employee.” Techno’s monotone made his words seem more ridiculous than they already were. 

“The cat.” Tommy parroted, trying to not give a reaction to his bullshit. Maybe if he ignored it, Techno would give up and stop doing it. Or at the very least, he could probably repress it better.

Techno nodded, before the silence between them became increasingly uncomfortable. He cleared his throat and straightened in his seat, turning the ignition and throwing the car in reverse. He tried to get himself buckled before he was bounced off the dashboard.

“Friend isn’t like that, by the way. He’s more like a toy.” 

“Mhm.” Tommy squeaked, turning to stare out the window. Maybe he would stop talking. 

“He’s like a stress toy. Wilbur can’t actually hurt him, so don’t panic if something happens, okay?” Techno’s voice was the same blank monotone, but blocking the inflection from his words in an effort to ignore them was making his words seem increasingly threatening.

Maybe he was upset that he wasn’t taking it seriously? He would just have to vaguely engage until the car stopped moving, and his chances of survival skyrocketed. Hopefully the other two would be in a better mood too. 

His luck probably wouldn’t carry that far. 

“He isn’t going to die, so if anything happens, go get Phil.” He could hear fingers the accelerator picking up. “Unless Friend is in pieces, then you need to come to me.” 

“Pieces?” Tommy turned to look out the windshield. He could glance over and act like he was listening that way. 

“You’ll know what I mean.”

“Yup.” He kept nodding at random intervals, assuming that he would see him doing it at some point. 

“I’m serious. I know it’s weird, but you don’t need to worry about it. Just make sure you don’t feed it anything, it’ll eat anything you offer it.” 

“What can it have?” Tommy needed to be able to use food to win over the furby tube. Food always worked with animals, even with ones that were incredibly abused. 

Maybe he could leave the back door open for it. He might’ve needed to shoo it out the door with something if it was stupid enough to not tear into Wilbur, but if he had to he could just throw it into the woods. It would be better off in the wild than with whatever the fuck was going on with the brunette. 

“Nothing. It can’t eat anything, it just chokes it down and hacks it back up on the carpet. Wilbur feeds him popcorn, so watch for that.” Tommy could see him well enough to watch the endearment envelope his words. “Phil is probably going to tell you that it’s just allergic.”

It would’ve been touching if they had been talking about literally anything else. 

When he thought about it, he decided that it might've been some kind of purebred cat. It looked and sounded defective, and inbreeding would've made the most sense. It did look like one of those sausage dogs. 

“Try not to get it wet either.” 

“Like a chinchilla.” That part actually made sense to him. 

“Sure.” 

The car was filled with that confining silence, broken only by the occasional jerk from the wheel or the car bouncing in a pothole. 

The roads were pretty shit, actually. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to be the one driving. Plus he would probably hit a moose. Or an elk. Whichever was bigger. 

They might’ve been the same animal, actually. He knew that it happened sometimes, like with alpacas and llamas. 

“Anyways. Don’t give him food, try not to step on him, and don’t spill anything on him.” He saw the ruby red focused on him for a moment, almost glowing against the pale and uncanny surrounding . 

Looking closer, his skin looked free of imperfections, smooth and doll-like. He looked like one of those haunted wax people in museums . 

“Sounds good.” All of those were normal cat rules. They were becoming his favorite the longer Techno implying Wilbur beat the shit out of the poor thing. 

“You should leave your door open, it’s nice to have something warm when it gets cold. Make sure to wear sweatpants or it’s claws will get you when it gets under the covers.” 

That actually sounded really cute. Tommy let out a small noise, trying to nod along without fixating on the silly thing. If he did get the chance to escape, he was going to take it with. He knew homeless people had dogs, so he could probably get away with a cat. 

That was assuming he could even get to civilization. He knew what his limits were, and one of them was having to shit in the woods. 

“Wilbur isn’t that bad, by the way.” 

“Yeah?” That part actually caught his attention. It wouldn’t hurt to get more information about the one that was prone to fits. 

“He means well, he’s just eccentric. It’s because he’s a theater kid.” Techno was talking coherently. 

“Damn.” Tommy let out a small laugh. 

“He won’t do anything to you, and if he does, you get to tell Phil.” He could see the hint of a smile. “You know what that means?” 

“What?” 

“He has to spar with me.” Techno’s grin was slowly growing. 

Tommy tried to not grimace as he continued nodding along. He couldn’t think of a good reason for Techno to be telling him that he sparred, which meant he was into fighting, that wasn’t mildly threatening . 

They both seemed to be a bit dramatic. If Techno wasn’t being indistinct on purpose, the extended pauses and awkward prompts made him seem obtuse, and conversation felt like navigating some poorly scripted chat menu. 

Techno took a moment to meet his eye, a hint of sharp teeth showing as he spoke. 

“You get to watch me beat the shit out of him.”

Chapter Text

Tommy couldn’t quite identify the feeling in his gut as they started down the desolate excuse for a driveway. He felt less unnerved the closer they got to the house, like someone had finally taken their eyes off of him, not that he had noticed Techno staring.

“You shouldn’t mention anything to Phil, by the way.” He said after a while.

They had been driving mostly in silence for the past couple of minutes. It could’ve been longer, actually. The liminality of the unending treeline made keeping track of anything feel like a chore. 

He had stopped looking out of the window as they continued, the sound of the gravel crunching under the tires being the only thing daring to fill the silence now that the engine wasn’t fighting for its life against the accelerator. Techno liked to drive pretty fast, but he didn’t see any harm in it since there wasn't anyone to kill besides themselves.

They hadn’t seen any other cars. 

“Your best bet is to play dumb. Pretend not to notice what’s going on, and don’t ask him about it. Come to me or Wilbur if something does happen.” He continued. 

Tommy nodded. He hadn’t said anything since they had finished their discussion, the spark of familiarity fizzling out and dying as Techno’s lack of social skills shined through. He didn’t want to carry the conversation, so he didn’t.

It would’ve been more cathartic if the radio fucking worked. He had tried to play with the knobs to produce some kind of coherent noise, only to get a static. If it managed to come through at all.

He had given up soon after, Techno not acknowledging his futile attempts. He had simply reached over and turned it off once it was clear Tommy wasn’t going to continue his fiddling. 

“Okay.” 

He tried to not sound as dismissive as he did. He wasn’t sure where the sudden exhaustion had come from, but he was actually anticipating the chance to flop down on a bed that didn’t suck.

He made the mistake of flopping down on one during his first tantrum at the new group home. He could’ve sworn he had cracked a rib, knocking the wind out of himself as he landed on what felt like a hardwood floor with a shitty rug thrown over it. 

The awkward silence didn’t have time to set in, instead being interrupted by a shriek in the woods. He couldn’t tell what side of the car it was on, the deafening cry impossible to locate. 

He could see Techno’s idle tapping halt out of the corner of his eye. He watched pale fingers reach over to the radio, turning up what had previously been a station that sang nothing but a dull white noise produced from the weak signal. 

The sound of cheerful pop music sang from the scratchy speakers. 

---

The door opened to the smell of what he could only describe as hot dust. It was the cloud that came from dirt roads in the summer, the dust devil seeming to personally want to burn his throat and sting his eyes. Maybe it had been a mistake to go first. 

The aridity mixed with the smell of burnt hair made him pull his collar up over his nose, trying to block out the stench. It had something toxic underneath as well, like melting plastic. It was almost like a used hairbrush and a handful of clay had been thrown into the bottom of a gas oven. 

Phil was wearing oven mitts when he stepped out of the kitchen, holding up the scarf rat, which vaguely confirmed half of his suspicions. He was holding it away from himself, arms outstretched as if he was prepared to drop it in a moment's notice. 

“Hey guys! Glad to see you home!” He didn’t look happy.. “You sure you’re done for the day?”

The last statement was directed at Techno, Phil staring through him to the figure looming in the doorway behind him. Even without its intensity focused on him, it was unsettling. 

It made him feel small.

“We could be.” The lack of emotion in his voice sounded almost mocking, like it was some kind of slight. 

If Phil looked unhappy before, now he looked downright malicious. The invisible aura that surrounded him nearly tripled in intensity, seemingly all directed right through him like a bullet. 

It wasn’t that hard to imagine that gaze focused on him. It was only a matter of time with how things had been escalating. Especially since it seemed like Wilbur wasn’t the only one who liked to throw the cat. 

The poor thing looked burnt, its fur coiled at the edges. He could only imagine how bad it must’ve smelled.

Phil grabbed it by the back of the neck, tearing off one of the mitts with his teeth in order to dig into his pocket. The rodent took it as an opportunity to escape, thrashing in his grip. 

 It wriggled in his grasp, before being thrown to the ground, the body smacking against the woods with the noise and impact of a wet sock.

“Is it dead?” He spoke before he could stop himself. 

He was looking at the body. Its head looked to be in one piece. He could’ve sworn it was moving. 

“No, Friend’s just having a bit of a fit.” Phil’s voice sounded closer than it had a few moments ago, a warm hum filling the background to his words. 

He couldn’t remember much after that, except for the sound of an egg hitting the floor. It was behind him, in the doorway of the kitchen. It seemed to eb Techno’s problem.  

“Go put him in the fridge for me.”

“Are you serious?” 

“Don’t worry about it, twenty minutes and it’ll be fine. Unless it needs some time in the freezer.” 

Their words seemed more distant, his feet moving forward without him noticing. He was standing in the grass, listening to the sound of birds around him. The leaves moving in the wind sounded louder than they should've. 

Once Phil strolled out to meet him, he felt like something was off. He couldn’t tell why. 

“Sorry about that, but I need to show you something.” He smiled. 

Maybe Techno’s advice of not saying anything wasn’t that bad. His throat locked up at the notion of trying to say something to spite him, the same tension quickly releasing itself the closer he got. 

Maybe he was overthinking.

“Okay.” Tommy nodded. 

“Something’s going on outside, and I need you to see it before we can talk about what to do.”

Tommy gave a nod, treating it as a normal statement. Phil seemed pretty pleased with his response, but his voice remained cautious.

“Don’t step off the grass. You need to be quiet.” He continued, gesturing vaguely to the trees before walking off. 

Tommy followed him, even if he didn’t want to. He didn’t follow close enough to get that close to the treeline, standing amongst the ferns.

Phil beckoned him over. There was something he didn’t like about how the leaves and bare earth ate away at the grass, killing out the pleasant greenery and instead leaving plants that definitely harbored ticks. 

He waved him over again, before pointing out into the wilderness. Tommy squinted from where he stood at the porch, but couldn’t see what had his attention. He finally acknowledged Phil’s attempts to lure him closer, beginning to close the distance. 

He went about half of the way. He still couldn’t see anything, but he felt unnerved. It was if the anticipation was twisting itself into anxiety. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see what Phil was pointing at, even if he couldn’t tell why. 

Phil made a face and stepped back, exaggerating his movements as he waved him over like a child. 

It was condescending enough to do the trick. 

Once he was finally in range, he followed where Phil had been pointing. He didn't notice anything at first, trying to see further back once the closer areas seemed to prove fruitless.  

Then he saw it moving. It looked like a dog, it’s back gray with sides dipped in a fresh young brown. The dog was much closer than he would’ve expected, only about thirty feet away. He didn’t understand the problem. 

The other one he saw was much smaller as well, and further back in the woods. More of them started moving out, what must’ve been puppies and adults slipping against the ground in an attempt to evade their gaze. 

There were too many to count, but enough to know it would’ve been dangerous if they weren’t friendly.

Chapter Text

Tommy was staring up at the ceiling. He felt like he had just woken up, minus the part where he had gone to sleep, let alone get to the bed in the room he was shoved in. 

He was also missing the part where it felt like he had slept. 

His head was throbbing, like he was dealing with a hangover. The buzzing of pressure behind his eyes felt like it was about to burst at any moment, his vision feeling distanced and outstretched as it refused to focus. 

He attempted to sit up, only to see that his legs were already hanging over the edge like he had thrown himself back into the mattress. Which he didn’t remember doing. 

The room felt wrong. Sitting upright just made it feel like he was trying to fight through water to move, the air in his lungs feeling weighted as he tried to escape the confines of the bed. 

The most he managed was throwing his weight forward enough that he slipped off the bed, legs sprawled out before him as he sat and stared forward blankly. Everything felt too heavy to move, and the mere thought of trying conjured up a rhetoric of his sloth as his body stayed limp. 

The floor was cold under his palms, the chill of the wood bringing him some sort of relief to the devoid despondency sitting in his chest. It filled his diaphragm, making his breath feel foreign as it escaped him. 

The sun streaming through the window highlighted the dust in the air, spreading the warm light across the frozen floor to reach for him. His legs were still a few feet from what managed to shine through still. 

It hadn’t been close to dark when they had arrived home. He had remembered worrying about it, since it meant having to be trapped with the other two again. It wouldn’t have been dark enough to justify going to bed for another four hours. 

The amber light spilling across his floor hadn’t been there since the night before, which meant the sun was the entire way across the sky already. He had no idea how many hours that would’ve taken. 

He would’ve tried to guess if his head wasn’t still pounding. It felt like someone had stuck an immersion blender in there. Before punching him in the face. 

Trying to get to his feet was a bad idea. Getting his legs underneath him only  made him realize how physically exhausted he felt. Every muscle screamed in protest to the simple movement, the strain aching deep into his limbs 

He stared into the twisting patterns of the knots dancing around each other, feeling his breaths become more shallow as he slumped forward. He considered closing the distance, to let his face collide with the ground, to close his eyes and give into the immobilizing apathy that had seemed to overtake him.

Even his panic seemed to be strained, the emotions seeming out of reach, a distance he couldn’t care to cross. Maybe that was a good thing. 

A jolt seemed to shake some of the static out of his head as someone kicked the door. It hadn’t been hard, but the door was a lot heavier than he was used to, projecting the impact through his room like he was trapped in a drum. 

The vibrations seemed more violating than they should’ve, the start of a migraine crossing the threshold into the urge to dry heave as everything from his nose up began to throb. Maybe he was hungover. He felt he was going through some kind of withdrawals. 

The next bang against the door was nothing in comparison to the sudden adrenaline that forced him to his feet, his heart pounding as he stripped his shirt. His hands were shaking as he tried to inspect his skin. He couldn’t find anything on the front of him, but what about his back?!

His nails dug into slightest imperfection, his fingertips ghosted over, digging it out in a desperate attempt to try and identify any punctures. He clawed into any of the spots that were tender to his touch, his mind racing through what patches of burst capillaries he could be missing. 

His heartbeat was all he could hear as his throat tightened with panic. He threw his arm over his shoulder, digging his nails down his spine as far as he could reach. His mind was running through every inch of skin he had to inspect, the notion of anything being hidden underneath the fabric made the notion of vomiting increase drastically. 

The sting of tears clouded his vision, his fingers trembling as he haphazardly threw his shirt back on, the fear of possibility not outweighing his desire to not puke on himself. 

He heard Wilbur shout from somewhere downstairs, his voice full of rage. He could hear him stomping his way to the staircase, his footfalls boasting anger that was surely aimed at him. 

Maybe he had locked his door during his drugged state, and they heard him moving. Phil must’ve been the one kicking at the door then. His mind racing with paranoid delusion seemed to skip over Techno completely. 

He would’ve been upset if he was in any state to focus. Tommy would’ve written it off as his absence from the immediate danger he was facing, even as the bile rising in his throat boasted otherwise.

“What the fuck are you doing!” Wilbur was upstairs now.

His words were punctuated by a more forceful kick, earning a cracking noise from the hinges. Tommy was having trouble getting the air to go down his throat. He could hear the brunette's footsteps growing closer. It sounded like he had shoes on. 

Backing up just led to him tripping over the comforter that had accompanied him to the floor, his back hitting the mattress. He didn’t have the energy to sob as he realized he was trapped, defenseless against a lunatic, his only escape being a window on the second floor. 

Even if he could get that far, let alone that fast, breaking his legs didn’t seem like an improvement. Plus, it probably wouldn’t curb Wilbur’s desire to beat the shit out of him. 

“You stupid fuck!” He heard the door swing open, the knob smashing into the wall. “Don’t-”

Wilbur seemed to trail off, just in time for Tommy to hear claws against the hardwood. It was all the warning he got before he felt the weight join him on the bed, flinching before getting to his feet in a panicked hurry. Wilbur was staring at him from the doorway.

Maybe the window wasn’t that bad of an option.

“Tommy, close your eyes and count to a thousand.” Wilbur’s voice was dripping honey, the sickeningly sweet syrup drowning out the agony and filling him with a warm buzz. 

He obeyed, the noise of something hitting the floor behind him not even registering. The numbers were seamless, smooth and relaxing to rattle off. In time with his breaths, he counted. 

The darkness that overtook his vision was filled with a sense of enlivening serenity, his prior troubles lost to him. 

---

Tommy was still standing in the middle of the room when his senses returned to him. The general agony from being alive was sobering, making his recall of what happened much more fluent than they had earlier. 

He woke up, Wilbur let the cat into his room, asked him to count, and now his room was a lot darker. He could’ve sworn he had only started a few minutes ago, the time having muddled itself between his delirium and-

His eyes shot open, remembering his original theory. He fought to get his jeans off, examining his legs for anything that would’ve indicated a puncture. His socks were next as he bent and twisted his toes to see every bend and crevice. 

He couldn’t find anything, not that it made him feel any better. The idea of what could’ve been hidden on his back sat heavy in his mind, weighing down his movements with dread as he made himself decent. 

It didn’t feel worth it to try and fill in the timeline from the gaps in his memory. Not after what happened when he woke up. Wilbur seemed to know the moment he did, along with the long cat. If it was Wilbur’s, it made sense that it would also go after him. 

And he pitied the fucker. 

He wasn’t sure about his options, honestly. He scanned the room to try and give himself some kind of solace, any clue as to how he could find something to aid him in his escape. Something to make him feel less helpless. 

The knife didn’t. No matter what he said, he knew Techno would get between him and the other two. Maybe even if the cat. They were his family, and Tommy was not.

The disgust with himself that he managed to escape earlier rose up, making him worse than he already had. Techno had been the nicest so far, but the blond couldn’t gauge his involvement.

He scrubbed at the crust in his tear duct, trying to stem the flow. Not that irritating it was helping. It was his own fault for getting comfortable in the new household. He knew better, and he still did it. 

Tommy sat on the bed, staring at the dimmed sliver of sun that still streamed through his window. The light looked so much warmer than it would’ve felt, the floor would’ve stolen the heat from his body. He shifted, ready to pull himself up and under the covers. 

But he was sitting on something. 

His mind regressed back into a frenzy of paranoid conjunction as he jumped to his feet, as he knew for a fact there hadn’t been anything prior. Which meant they had been in his room while he had been unconscious again. 

His panic seemed to subside a bit as he saw what it was. It was just a small bottle of something silver in a small tube. He assumed it was plastic until it was in his hand, the glass startling cold in his palm. 

It was the size of one of those perfume samples, the small glass vial holding nothing more than a few drops of what seemed like paint. Or mercury. 

He popped the cork, taking a hesitant sniff. He realized that he didn’t know how safe inhaling mercury was by the time the smell hit him. The scent was almost Christmas-y, something cold and sweet with something spiced. 

It didn’t hold any of the harshness of some kind of chemical, though. It was sweet, his mouth watering. He was suddenly aware of the fact that his tongue was dry. The smell was intoxicating. It was probably some kind of soda, right?

Taking a sip couldn’t hurt.