Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tommy barely remembered a time before Wilbur. Vague images of rummaged villager chest, angry golems, and a solid shapeless back walking away haunted his nightmares and his rare quiet moments. But when he was with Wilbur, none of those images dared to pop up. Wilbur’s music and laughter pushed them away.

He did remember enough to know what the wings that fluttered open against his back meant.

He immediately ran. He ran through a tall grass field, zig-zagged through various oak trees, leapt down a small cliff, and slammed into the tall trench-coated man standing and chatting with a man Tommy had never met.

“Look, Wil. Look!” Tommy boasted, flapping tiny golden-speckled red wings. “I’m like you!”

“No way!” Wil said with his every tooth catching stray bits of light. He lifted Tommy up and tilted him over the his shoulder to better see Tommy’s new feathers. The angle of the tilt let Tommy see down Wil’s trench coat and catch sight of Wil’s own black feathers. “You have wings! Where the f**** did you get those?”

“Where the f**** do you think? From you,” Tommy whistled in tones he couldn’t before.

“Wilbur,” said the other man. He was shorter than Wil and looked like Wil and him could take the guy out easily, but Wil flinched and put Tommy down. Tommy peered around Wil to see that the other man had on a scowling smile. Or maybe a smiling scowl? “Do you have anything you need to tell me?”

“It’s not what you think, Dad,” said Wil, turning to face the other man and raising his hands like he was f**** loser that had to surrender to this nobody b*—Did Wil say Dad? “If I ever have a kid, I’ll make f***** sure to tell you. Toms here is just a friend I met on a server while I was traveling. He’s proven to be a lot of fun, so I’ve let him hang around. That’s all.”

Ice-cold eyes narrowed onto Wil, and okay, maybe Tommy had judged the guy too quickly. He was looking a lot scarier now. Just when Tommy was thinking it might be a good idea to wander off and try his wings out, the b**—Wil’s dad’s face broke into a grin as wide as Wil’s.

“I believe you,” said Wil’s Dad, patting Wil’s shoulder. “Looks like you found a shifter, Wil. One who trusts you more than anyone in all the worlds. I suggest you don’t break that trust.”

“I won’t, Phil,” said Wilbur. He pulled Tom out from behind him. “Say hi to my dad, Toms. Phil, this is Toms.”

Tommy parroted what Wil wanted him to say and stuck close to Wil for the rest of the visit. A visit that would end in Tommy staying with Phil for a while. Phil promised to teach Tommy how to use his new found wings, so Tommy agreed to stay even though he wanted to keep traveling with Wil. He wouldn't see Wil until they were both on a completely different server.

Black feathers floated onto the scorched ground. A green and white brim hid everything on Phil’s face except wringing lips and the tear tracks on either side of them. The slumped, stained body in the Avian's arms effortlessly pulled Tommy’s attention away from the hidden heartbreak and caused Tommy’s own.

“Wha—,” Tommy started wobblily. He didn’t know. He didn’t know where to start. Why was Phil here? Why was L’Manberg, their L’Manberg, burning? Why was Phil holding Wil? Why was Wil red and not moving?

The brim and shadow lifted, and glassy blue eyes with reds instead of whites pinned themselves onto Tommy. They looked past him, and the man that had taught Tommy to fly cocked his head with a blank expression where pained grief should be.

“Your wings,” Phil rasped in mild curiosity. “They’re gone.”

Tommy did not look over his shoulder. Their weight had disappeared the moment L’Manberg had burst into flame. He’d known. He’d seen it coming since that night with the TNT. He could have stopped it—he should have stopped it. But he had not wanted to believe—

“Ah. I see. You know what he did,” Phil said blankly. He tucked the bod—Wil closer to his chest. “He—He wasn’t well. He burned himself. He asked—He asked me to finish it. So I did.”

Tommy’s chest squeezed under the fist gripping his shirt. He should draw his sword. He should avenge his brother (his most precious person). Phil walked past him. Wil’s legs bumped Tommy’s arm. Tommy did not move. His wings were gone. L’Manberg burned. He had to do what he could to save it. For the memory of his brother.

(For the memory of trust, now broken.)

Chapter Text

Tommy’s fingers caught on something as he ran them through his hair. He ran them through the slight blond curls again and hit the same bump.

“Tubbo?” Tommy cautiously called. “Could you check my head? I think I bumped it or something.”

“Sure, bossman,” Tubbo said, dropping the paper he had been examining. How Tubbo could keep staring at that papers with words for hours, Tommy had no idea. He trotted over to Tommy. “What’s wrong?”

“My head,” Tommy repeated. He tilted in Tubbo’s direction and pointed at the weird bump. “There’s something here.”

“Got it. Let’s check,” Tubbo said. Short fingers with hard points prodded the weird bump. They didn’t hurt, but Tommy snuffed and pulled away. Tubbo didn’t move back to try to prod the thing again. “No f**** way…is that what I think it is?”

“How should I know?” Tommy tried not to snap. His head had started to pulse. “What do you think it is?”

“That’s a horn bump!” Tubbo said in a happy gasp. “A horn bump! Is this that shifter thing you talked about with your wings? How you were never an Avian, but a shifter hybrid that took on the traits of whoever you trust most and that’s why you don’t have wings anymore. Which means—Aw, Toms. Do you trust me more than anyone?”

“What?! No. I mean I trust you, but—F*****, yeah, sure, whatever. If these are really horn bumps, then that means I’ve shifted to match you. So I guess that does mean I trust you more than anyone,” Tommy begrudgingly confessed. He didn’t like his body giving him away like this. He didn’t need to give Tubbo another reason to be clingy. (Not that he ever really minded Tubbo’s clinginess. He was the one to convince Phil to let Tubbo stay.) “But only if they are horn bumps.”

“They’re definitely horn bumps!” Tubbo bleated. Smiling so widely it had to have hurt, he knocked his head against Tommy’s as usual. The bonk didn’t hurt as much as it usually did. Tubbo rested his forehead against Tommy’s. Peeking over Tubbo’s shoulder, Tommy could see the fluffy tail sticking out of his best friend’s trouser seat wagging hard. Tubbo followed his gaze, and the tail stopped. “We’re going to have to get your trousers like mine. While we work on that, you can use mine when your tail comes out or forms or whatever. They’ll be a bit short, but they’ll work better than yours. Trust me it is not fun to have your tail all cramped up.”

“I don’t think I want to f***** match,” Tommy said reluctantly. Tubbo pulled away, and his fluffy brown ears flicked to the side of his head.

“So you don’t want to become a goat hybrid like me?” The tone was shy of heartbroken, and Tommy didn’t want to deal with that emotional s**** right now. Didn’t want to explain to Tubbo how hard it had really gotten to adjust to wings and how much worse it had been to adjust to losing them. That the thought of matching Tubbo, of declaring his trust to the world, both excited and frightened him. Because look how f***** well it had gone last time. But Tubbo didn’t deserve any of that s****. He deserved the world and to be happy and to match with his best friend and to keep smiling so wide it looked like it hurt. Tubbo hadn’t smiled like that since his face had burned.

“Nah. Nothing like that, Tubs. It’s just that your fashion sense is s****.”

“Are you saying that your president’s fashion sense is s****?” Tubbo asked, the wide smile back. “Because I might pass a decree that outlaws red and white shirts for all L’Manberg citizens.”

“You wouldn’t,” Tommy grumbled with a strange bleat.

“I wouldn’t,” Tubbo repeated. He bumped Tommy’s forehead again. “But you better take my advice and get those trousers made. You’re going to need those for the rest of your life.”

Tommy snorted. “Who’s to say I won’t start trusting someone more than you?”

“First, that’s never going to f****** happen,” Tubbo snorted back. “Second, even if it did, Phil told me that a shifter adaptation was a lifetime thing unless the trust is broken. So even if you start ‘trusting’ some random person more, you’re stuck matching with me. FOREVER!”

The last word was shouted straight into Tommy’s face which made him fall over backwards and bleat loudly. Tubbo immediately broke into uncontrollable laughter. Tommy scowled and crossed his arms as his best friend (the person he trusted the most in the world) laughed in his face. Despite his best efforts, the corner of his lips bubbled up, and his mouth burst open with his own loud laughter.

He could trust Tubbo. Tubbo would never betray him. He’d order the d**** trousers.

“Tommy. I am so, so sorry.” Rectangular pupils weighed heavily into Tommy’s before flicking away. “Dream, I have come to the decision...that will be best for the nation, the most logical thing to do...for Tommy to be exiled from L'Manberg.”

Tommy’s ears flattened on either side of his head.

“War is not the best for this nation,” Tubbo continued. Blue eyes glassy and focused left of Tommy’s general direction, along where the rest of cabinet stood. “Nothing involving any kind of conflict is the BEST for this nation. You guys are thinking emotionally, irrationally. You need to think logically. There is more than us four that live here!”

“What?” Tommy bleated. Tubbo flinched but quickly squared his shoulders and lifted his gaze closer to Tommy’s face. He answered with a warning bleat of his own.

“War is going to bring destruction, terror, a new regime that we don't want to enforce upon our citizens!”

Quackity and Fundy’s voices floated in the background but were drowned out by Tubbo’s roaring bleat. Tommy struggled to breath. (Not again. Please. Not again.)

“Tubbo what the f...Tubbo why?” he pleaded. It was supposed to be them forever. They were supposed to match.

Tubbo looked past Tommy. As if Tommy wasn’t there.

“Hey, everyone!” the president of L’Manberg shouted. “That's enough, that's enough, okay? You have undermined my authority from the get-go okay? All of you, no one here has respected me! You all jump on these merry little band-wagons of destruction... It's not okay! You definitely do not have this nation’s best interests at heart and you've made that more apparent than ever before today.”

“You agreed with us, you agreed with us!” Tommy yelled back. Because they matched. They were supposed to match. “Why would you go back on the plan now? What the hell? WHAT THE F***?!”

“When I was sworn in I made a promise,” Tubbo said, rectangular pupils back squarely on Tommy. Tommy wished he could look away. “To do what's best for this nation and right now YOU, Tommy, your presence here, is not the best for this nation.”

“ Tubbo, no, no...Tubbo, this, you’re not...no man,” Tommy pleaded. He begged. He tried to step forward and literally knock some sense into Tubbo. Into his best friend. “That's not right man, you agreed with us!”

“Dream,” Tubbo said, blue eyes glassy and cold. (So like Schlatt.) “Please detain and escort Tommy, out of my country.”

A vice-grip caught Tommy’s shoulder and pulled him back. Pulled him away from Tubbo. He struggled, he tried to hold his place. To wait for Tubbo to take back what he said. To remember what else he promised. To knock heads with Tommy and declare that—that they were forever. That no one would…no one could separate them. That he wouldn’t abandon Tommy…

Tommy lost the struggle the vice-grip and was yanked backwards. Yanked and pulled away from his home. From their L’Manberg. (From the person he trusted most in the world.)

The last he saw of Tubbo, the glass in the blue eyes had shattered into tears. But Tubbo hadn’t taken a step forward.

By the time Dream had manhandled him in a boat, all Tommy could focus on is the empty hole in his trousers.

(They no longer matched.)

Chapter Text

Five months into exile, and everything was cold and getting colder. Tommy didn’t understand. Dream had brought him here in early winter, and spring temperatures meant less cold. But it was cold. Especially at night. No matter what Tommy did, no matter how many blankets he wrapped himself in, no matter how close he lay to his makeshift fire place, he couldn’t get warm.

Spread out like a starfish on the sand letting the sun beat on him, his skin felt more like cold plastic than warm flesh. But it was still better than at night when he couldn’t stop shivering.

“Tommy, your stuff.”

“I don’t have anything,” Tommy said, keeping his eyes closed and focusing his whole being into absorbing the sun’s weak warmth.

“Nothing? What have you been doing since I came to check on you yesterday?”

“None of your f***** business,” Tommy grumbled. The grains of sand that should burn and stick to his skin shifted around him like cold pebbles. “You can go get my blankets and burn them yourself f***** matters to you so much.”

“Blankets? In 90 degree weather?”

“It’s not 90 degrees at night,” Tommy shot back, ignoring how much he wanted one of his blankets right now. He wanted to wrap himself up in one and see if that made the cold in his bones go away. “And unless I’m boiling and don’t know it, it’s more like 35.”

“35? That would be free—Oh. You mean Celsius.”

“Use the f**** right system, b**** boi,” Tommy said.

“I am,” Dream said in a less playful tone. “Are you telling me that you spent all day yesterday making more blankets? You have made three dozen since you got here.”

“Maybe I’ve been making them since there the only things you don’t f**** burn!”

“Fine. Let me fix that.”

Tommy snapped his eyes open and jerked up off the cold sand. Dream had already turned to head into Tnret. Tommy should stay. He was the one in the wrong, the one who had snapped at Dream for no good reason. Tommy should trust his friend. The only one who had been there for him these last terrible months. But…Tommy imagined himself curled up in one blanket instead of under a pile of them. The night chill pressing and icing his skin while his bones ached with a their own frost. He let out a short cry, dashed towards the retreating b******, and grabbed him by the waist to yank him back and away from Tommy’s blanket pile.

The instant Tommy’s arms wrapped around Dream’s torso, warmth seeped into his bones. Into his soul. Tommy cuddled into the soft warm green sweatshirt.

“Tommy?”

He froze, realizing what he was doing. He was clinging. To Dream. He had accepted that Dream had been his only friend when no one had shown up to the Beach Party. But he would never—Were these his dumb shifter instincts? They weren’t supposed to—He had never asked Phil what would happen if the person he tru—If a shifter imprinted on a human. But cold? A cold that wouldn’t leave unless he…unless he touched that person. (Dream hadn’t touched him during all of exile. That was normal between friends, wasn’t it?)

Tommy had promised himself that he wouldn’t adapt again. No matter who he trusted. He would cut off whatever hybrid trait dared to appear and keep the adaption from advancing. But how could he cut off a cold that sunk into his bones? Why did the adaptation to human include cold? Do humans need touch that badly? His base form was human. Did he need touch that badly? (That answer was obvious.)

He couldn’t make himself let go.

“Tommy.” Dream’s tone had gone from confused to annoyed. Tommy didn’t want to annoy Dream. He knew he didn’t. He knew the consequences. But he couldn’t let go.

A hand clamped down on his head, fingers raking into his curls. Tommy winced and braced himself. A strangely high-pitched chirp hiccupped. The harsh yank didn’t come.

“What was that?” The question came filled with confusion and…Dream sounded like he had been hurt. “Why—Did that come from you?”

The formerly frozen skin burned in embarrassment as Tommy dug his face further into the warm green material.

“Mphmee,” he mumbled. The hand on his head slipped in-between his forehead and Dream’s sweatshirt. His face was pushed away from its warm shield. The tiny black beads of Dream’s porcelain smile seemed to bore into Tommy.

“Tommy, was that you?”

His face burned splotchy red. He wanted to snuggle back into Dream’s back and hide. (No. He didn’t. Not one bit. But it was so warm.) He needed to answer Dream before Dream lost his patience. Tommy couldn’t lose his only friend. (Was he really his friend? Didn’t these instincts prove he was?)

“Yes,” Tommy finally answered in a whisper. The hand disappeared, and Tommy tried to take the opportunity to snuggle back into the warm sweatshirt. But then Dream escaped Tommy’s hugging hold, ran off the beach, and disappeared.

Tommy stood on the beach feeling the heat wafting down from the spring sun. He had scared off his last friend, but at least he was no longer cold. He wondered how long that would last.

As the sun set, shivers rattled Tommy’s bones. The familiar cold had crept back that afternoon, and it would only grow infinitely worse as the night fell. Tommy hadn’t seen Dream in three days, and he knew the green b***** would never come back. He had accepted it and even convinced himself it was a good thing. He’d mined. Gotten full iron armor. Ran across a few cows he could draw back with some hay he had started to grow. Even tried swimming the ocean to catch some fish. (It had been too cold.)

But now the cold was seeping back. For no good reason. (Because Dream had not come back.) He didn’t think he could deal with the cold. Not again. He remembered standing over lava. Remembered how warm it looked. Remembered Dream talking, convincing him to step back. If he wasn’t here, he couldn’t convince Tommy to step back. And Tommy would be warm forever.

Cloth plopped on Tommy’s head, and instantly everything was less cold. He grabbed the large green blanket that had haphazardly fallen on him and wrapped it more firmly around himself.

“Warm?” asked the ridiculously missed voice.

“Where were you?” Tommy demanded, glaring out of the hole he made in the blanket at the green b***** and his f***** smiling mask. “Aren’t you supposed to come every day and burn my stuff? Make sure I’m still breathing or whatever? That I haven’t tried to go back to L’Manberg?”

“Did you?”

“Did I f***** what?”

“Try to go back to L’Manberg?”

Tommy would bet anything that behind that f**** smiling mask was smug smirk. He glared harder. Dream chuckled and sat on the sand next to Tommy. Almost unconsciously (he didn’t stop himself), Tommy tilted and fell onto Dream’s side. Dream’s breathing hitched and then evened out, but he didn’t push Tommy away. A warmth that came from both inside and out gelled into Tommy’s flesh and bones. His eyelids grew heavy, and his body sagged heavier into Dream’s.

A hand touched Tommy’s shoulder lightly, hesitantly, before curling around it and gently pulling Tommy even closer to Dream. A part of Tommy screamed at the action, screamed at him to get away, to snap out of whatever trance Dream had put him in. Dream had to know he was a shifter and was manipulating his instincts somehow. (Dream loved to mess with Tommy.) But—

Tommy was warm. He felt safe for the first time in a long time. And Dream was…Dream was his friend. (Was he?) And he came back. He hadn’t abandoned Tommy. (Wilbur hadn’t come back. Ghostbur didn’t count. And Tubbo hadn’t even visited.) Tommy could trust—

No. Tommy couldn’t trust. He couldn’t trust anyone. Trust ended in lost wings and holey pants. Dream hated him. Dream was his enemy. Dream took his discs.

But he was warm. He could—he could pretend to trust Dream. Just for…just for right now. So he could be warm. He’d—he’d pretend. He’d let Dream think he trusted him. And he’d be warm.

Tommy snuggled into Dream’s side. The arm around him tightened.

(Tommy fell asleep on Dream’s shoulder with only one blanket half-wrapped around him.)

Chapter Text

The red blanket disappeared one day only to reappear the next as a cloak. Tommy had scowled at the idea of wearing the cloak since it would mean matching with Dream, but the weight and scent calmed something deep within him. So Tommy wore the cloak and received head ruffles in return. Everyday Dream got more and more touchy-feely with him, and though he didn’t want to like it, after the hands-off approach Dream had taken before, Tommy inwardly melted under the touch.

It was all part of the manipulation, Tommy knew. But he didn’t care. Because if he knew it was manipulation, it wouldn’t work. Not on him. Sure, he would sit at the door of Tnret to await Dream’s return every morning and wear the cloak constantly, but Tommy had to do that to trick Dream into thinking that he was falling for his manipulation. That way Dream would bring him food and different treats. Yesterday Dream had even brought him a new set of clothes to replaced his old ripped ones.

Tommy had no idea where the manipulative son of a b***** got clothes his size, and he pushed down the happiness that welled up in his chest when he saw how well they fit him. The shirt was his signature red and white, and the tan pants were even comfier than his old pair. Tommy wondered if Dream would get him a new pair of shoes if he asked.

Pulling the red cloak tighter around him, Tommy sat on the recently constructed tent entrance. Dream had been trying to help Tommy remodel Tnret, and Tommy had discovered that Dream sucked at building. Dream refused to use the obviously superior cobblestone blocks and attempted to use wood, wood to fix up Tommy’s Tnret. More like a house than a tent. Tommy hadn’t wanted that. A house…he could have made a house if he wanted to. But he didn’t want a house. He wanted a tent. He had screamed the same in Dream’s face. (He wanted for Dream to scream back. To let the truth show through his act.)

The wood blocks had become fencing poles and had held up a larger wool tent. The b****** had even found a way to dye the wool red and white striped. It looked like a f***** candy cane. Completely ridiculous. He’s almost refused to sleep in it. (But it felt cozy.) But he didn’t want Dream to catch on that Tommy didn’t trust him. So he had crawled into his new red bed and curled up to pretend to sleep.

He hated the changes. The red and white stripes were disgusting. The wood was full of splinters. The space inside the remodeled Tnret was too big and nowhere near the nicely spaced, well-decorated area Phil would have made of it. But Tommy’d fallen asleep within minutes of pretending and slept until late in the morning.

Tommy ran his fingers over the rough wood, reminding himself that this version of Tnret sucked. That the old set-up wouldn’t have prickled and threatened to cut his ski—What the f****?

Why weren’t the splinters catching and burying into skin? How was he running his fingers over the horribly treated wood again and again and not getting splinters?

“What are you doing?”

The question startled Tommy and made him jump and reel back. He recovered and glared up at Dream. He started cursing the taller man out, and the green b***** had the audacity to look shocked as if he didn’t have it coming. He leaned closed to Tommy, and Tommy shut his mouth. (He’d gone too far. Dream’s mad. He’s going to—)

Hands surrounded him and picked Tommy up. He lost his balance and tumbled back into strangely tall fingers. Everything was bigger. Including Dream’s f***** smiley mask.

“….you’re so small.”

Tommy puffed up and let loose an angry tirade. A tirade he realized was not in Mojang but in pitiful chirping squeaks and whistling squeals. Panicking Tommy raised his voice, but that made the squeaks and squeals higher pitched and more pitiful.

“Calm down. You are going to hurt yourself,” Dream scolded. A large thumb bonked Tommy’s head and instantly silenced him. The thumb began to go back and forth across Tommy’s forehead in a gentle soothing motion. Tommy’s whole body leaned into it against Tommy’s wishes. “There. Better. This is the first time for you in this form so I am going to guess that you have questions.”

Tommy managed to pull back from the giant thumb pets to give Dream a glare filled with every curse he could not articulate. Dream shrugged almost apologetically and moved into Tnret. He then sat on Tommy’s bed without Tommy’s permission and set Tommy down beside him. Tommy’s body momentarily whined at the loss of pets, but Tommy wrangled it back into silence. If he didn’t get to curse Dream out, then he wasn’t going to whine for more pets either.

Dream sat stock still for a full minute staring at Tommy before Tommy lost his patience and squeaked loudly to get the green b*****’s attention. Dream seemed to startle before sighing and fiddling with his mask. He stopped and looked away from Tommy.

“…this was a bad idea.”

Tommy let out a questioning chirpy squeak, and Dream’s too-large hand gripped the red sheets tightly. Seconds later, he let go.

“I can’t do this,” Dream gasped, and Tommy got the distinct impression that Dream was not talking to him. The f***** smiley mask tilted towards Tommy and then away again. “He’s too small.”

Dream got up, and terror struck Tommy’s body. Dream was leaving. He couldn’t leave! He couldn’t leave Tommy! The tiny body that had replaced Tommy’s handsome one hopped closer to the edge of the bed and squealed. Dream kept walking away. Away from the bed. Away from Tommy—

Tommy screamed a loud, shrill squeal.

Dream stopped, hesitated, and turned around.

“I’ll—I’ll be back. I promise.”

And then in burst of purple particles, Dream was gone.

Tommy felt his tiny body shake and let out one last chirping cry before he snapped his mouth shut. Dream said he would come back, but—Tommy didn’t want to be alone. Not again. Not now. He didn’t even know what he was.

(Too many people had said they would come back. Ranboo had said he would come back. Ghostbur had said he would come back. Wilbur had said—)

Warmth surrounded Tommy and scooped him up. He was settled into a wooly, soft dome. He blinked as he realized he was in what amounted to a tiny knitted cave. The hands that had put him in the knitted cave retreated, and Tommy instantly hopped to follow them. But then a completely different shape blocked the tunnel out.

The thing was bigger than him by a good bit but managed to squeez comfortably into the cave with him. A spherical head sat on a cone-shaped body, and apparently drawn on the head was Dream’s signature smiley face. Tommy’s body took a half-bounce back, but the big blob thing let out a strange chirping purr. Tommy’s body froze in answer and chittered a whine back while Tommy himself had no idea what was being said. The big blob thing came close, and Tommy found himself leaning cautiously towards it. The large round skull(?) rubbed softly against his. Tommy’s body melted and tucked itself under the large head.

Faster than Tommy could register what was happening, he and the big blob thing were cuddled in the nice soft cave together, and Tommy felt warmer and safer than he had in years. A soft chirp-like sound rumbled through him and echoed back from the big blob thing beside him. That strange purr again, only from both of them.

Part of Tommy didn’t like this. Didn’t like how comfortable and warm and content he was cuddling up to this strange blob thing that had to be Dream. Because of f***** course, Dream was some weird hybrid Tommy hadn’t even heard of before. But the rest of Tommy was comfortable and warm and content.

Tommy decided to ignore the part that didn’t like what was happening.

Dream had come back, so what did it matter that he was some weird blob thing and had made Tommy into one too? Dream was right here, and that was what mattered.

Tommy let himself melt further into the weird, armless embrace and let himself be happy with the person he trusted most in the world.

Chapter Text

“Tommy, we have been over this. I have to leave.”

Tommy stared up at Dream with his best puppy dog eyes (or whatever the equivalent for those was in this strange blob form). He could almost see Dream crack.

“No,” Dream said, shaking his head. “I cannot bring you with me! I might need to fight. Technoblade’s in trouble and I need to help—Stop looking at me like that. Until you can control your form, you cannot leave here. Besides I am going to L’Manberg, and if they catch you, that would not end well for either of us.”

Tommy looked down at his white with red accents formless self and then back up at Dream. The green b*****’s resolve was crumbling.

“You could shift back at any moment! Remember two days ago when randomly out of nowhere and in the middle of lunch you shifted into your human form in my lap. Neither of us want a repeat of that. So please stay here.”

The tiny blobby body hopped to the edge of the table where Dream had set it and leaned forward to bop its head against Dream’s hand. Tommy peeked up in time to see the green b***** crumble.

“Fine,” Dream grumbled. He pet the top of Tommy’s head briefly before picking Tommy up. He tucked him into his green hood. “If you feel like your shifting, dive out of there and hide. I will come find you. No matter what, stay out of sight.”

Tommy peeped his agreement and snuggled down into the hood’s soft material. Since this s***** blob body was pleased and content, Tommy took the opportunity to think outside his new instincts. Dream hadn’t explained where they were going, but he had let some things slip. Someone had commed him in the middle of a…cuddle session thing. Tommy had learned then that comms did not shift with them and that Dream had to leave his outside the cuddle cave. (Tommy did not give it that name! His dumb blob brain had…)

Tommy of course had his confiscated while he was in exile. By Dream. He held onto that thought. (Dream was the whole reason he was stuck out here. But Dream had stayed when no one else had.)

Dream had also mentioned Technoblade and L’Manberg. Something was happening between those two groups. Did Tubbo decide to try and take Techno down? (Tommy’s former friend would never have tried to take on Techno.) And Dream wanted to help Techno. Because of course he wouldn’t want to help L’Manberg. Dream hated L’Manberg. (Hated what Wilbur and Tommy had built.)

His thoughts unraveled as the air around him went from breezy cool to oppressive heat. They were in the Nether. Where lava was. Lava was warm. Warm enough for forever. But Tommy was already warm. Actually he was a little bit too hot. Tommy’s body whined a chirp in protest.

“Sshh,” Dream whispered. A hand entered into the hood and tapped Tommy’s head gently. “You have to stay quiet. If I hear one more sound, I will find a hole, stick you in it and come back for you later.”

Instinctively a grumbly squeal wanted to whine out Tommy’s throat. He forced it to stop. He did not want to get put into some smelly hole and have to wait for Dream’s return. (What if he didn’t come back?!) He had to stay quiet. His tiny body bounced a little at Dream’s sudden firm nod.

“Good. Now shush, child,” Dream teased. Tommy kept his curses at the man mental. He didn’t care how small he was in this form. He wasn’t a child.

The heavy heat dissipated, and the cool breeze returned. Though it was cooler than before. Tommy’s body allowed him his curiosity and let him peek over the side of the hood. L’Manberg buildings passed his vision. Movement came from a shadow, and Tommy’s body dove back into the hood spooked.

“You’re late,” said a familiar voice. Was that Punz?

“Did they get him?” Dream asked.

“Yes,” answered Punz(?). “Quackity threatened his horse.”

“That’s why I say attachments are dangerous,” Dream said. Tommy’s gut curled. (Dream didn’t care about anything. He said so. Which meant he didn’t care about Tommy. But then how was Tommy curled hidden in his hood instead of back in exile?) “We will use this to our advantage. I need you to distract them. I will deal with Technoblade.”

“Understood,” said Punz(?). Tommy didn’t hear the guy walk away to do distract people or whatever, but Dream started walking again, so Tommy assumed Punz had left. Sneaky b*****.

Tubbo’s voice carried from somewhere in the distance, but before Tommy could make out the words, they got further away. A distressed neigh sounded ahead of them, so Tommy took another peek. A white-striped snout poked out of a hastily made hole. Dream shifted around and dug a larger entrance for the cave-ish hole and grabbed a lead to tug the horse out. The horse jumped out of the hole and tried to trample Dream with its thick hooves. Tommy’s body shrieked a squeal and burrowed into the safety of the green hood.

Dream did a strange neighing shush, and the loud hoofbeats softened. Tommy realized that he was no more safe in the green b*****’s hood than he had been peeking out of it if that monster pretending to be a horse decided to trample them. Good thing Dream was some kind of horse whisperer. The monster didn’t trample them. Dream leapt up onto what Tommy assumed was the monster morphed into a horse, and the wind picked up around the hood and batted it dangerously. Dream tucked it and Tommy closer to the green b*****’s massive head.

Suddenly the horse’s trotting was quickly drowned out by a loud explosion. Tommy’s body eeped.

“You are supposed to be quiet, Tommy,” Dream whispered harshly. “I have already heard you twice. Want me to leave you in the hole I found Carl?”

Tommy shook his head before realizing that Dream couldn’t see him. The green b***** didn’t stop moving though, even as another explosion boomed. Tommy wrestled himself around the hood’s rim, but he could barely see a glow in the distance. And then Dream darted into a tunnel that seemed familiar. Carl was stashed in a room near an exit in the outskirts of L’Manberg and Dream went further into the dark, grimy tunnels—No. Not here. Not now.

Quivering, Tommy curled and squished himself into the part of Dream’s hood that met the green b*****’s neck. He knew where these tunnels lead. He knew where Dream planned to go. He—He never wanted to come back here. (His first encounter with Death. His first taste of betrayal. The beginning of the end with Wilbur.) He stayed in the green-tinted darkness, trying to pretend he had stayed behind in Tnret and was waiting for his friend’s return.

Fingers reached into the green material and gently patted Tommy’s head and pushed down the hood to better cover the tiny blob body. Tommy’s trembling lessened, and he could breathe. He curled into a tighter ball when the soft pressure stopped and the fingers retreated.

Tommy was fine. He was safe. No one would hurt him while he was here. (Except Dream. Dream was here. Dream always hurt him. He hadn’t in weeks. They had been at war when they were here last. Tommy trusts Dream.)

“This way,” Dream hissed, causing Tommy to uncurl a little. Was Dream talking to him?

“Hyeh? Dream? What are you doing here?”

Tommy knew that voice. He uncurled and hesitated right under the hood’s edge.

“Helping. This way if you want to get your horse.”

“You have Carl?” The Blade asked with a note of suspicion. Dream didn’t say anything. He likely nodded like the weird**** creepy b***** he liked to be. They started moving back the way they came, or so Tommy thought. It was now or never because Tommy wasn’t going to wait until they were there to chance another peek.

Taking a deep breath, Tommy popped his head over the hood’s rim. His beady blue eyes met blood red. The blood red ones widened, and The Blade’s humungous mouth split open. (The sight would be terrifying if Tommy hadn’t grown up around the huge piglin hybrid.)

Tommy shook his tiny head fiercely back and forth. The Blade’s giant mouth closed while the blood red eyes narrowed.

“So you doing this whole helping-the-terrifying-warrior-escape-his-execution thing all by yourself? Or do you have help?”

“I paid Punz to distract the others,” said Dream distractedly. Something was bothering the green b*****, and he was walking awfully fast. “Punz will be fine. Did the anvil drop?”

“Yeah. It’s a good thing you gave me that map. That totem kept me from joining Phil’s wife. Which is great because Phil’d get jealous that I got to hang out with her and he didn’t.”

“Great,” Dream said, still eerily preoccupied. What was the green b***** thinking about? “We are nearly there.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re trying to get rid of me as fast as possible.”

Dream snorted but didn’t pause. He skillfully and smoothly took turn after turn.

“I thought you would want to get out of here as quickly as possible. You are the one escaping, not me.”

“And yet you’re the one that is going so fast I can barely keep up,” said Techno as he huffed barely into view behind them before becoming obscured by another corner.

“Is the great Technoblade slow?” Dream taunted without slowing or missing a step. Techno grumbled loudly something that sounded like “he’s a speedrunner, Chat” before increasing his speed enough to stay in view. And then they arrived in the place Dream had passed after he had hidden Carl. They entered the final control room. Tommy’s tiny body automatically shook, but he held it in place.

Tommy did not want to be here. That thought, that feeling, grew stronger in his strangely conical chest. What happened here—Tommy had trusted Eret. And look at what happened. (He had trusted Wilbur. He had trusted Tubbo.) Trust ended in disaster. Disaster Dream had brought. Dream who handed Wilbur the TNT. Dream who had pushed for Tubbo to exile Tommy. Dream who had taken Tommy’s discs day one.

(Dream who had never played at being his friend, only his enemy. Until exile. No one had pretended to be Tommy’s friend then. Dream was not playing at being Tommy’s friend.)

As he trembled, Tommy knew one thing. He couldn’t—he wouldn’t trust Dream. He refused.

His body felt squished and constricting, but he pushed it out of the hood and fell to the floor. A pair of hands caught him. They quickly closed around him.

“What are you doing?”

“Tripped over a dip in-between blocks. Not all of us are as graceful as you,” The Blade informed as Tommy felt himself lifted up and caught sight of red silk surrounding him. His tiny body rolled into an inner pocket. Tommy had always known that the Blade had things hidden in his dumb cape. Instinctively, Tommy curled up and squished himself into a ball. Pins and pricks prickled every inch of his rubbery skin. He was in danger of turning back. F****.

He squeezed his eyes shut and thought about Dream. How Dream had kept his promise to check on Tommy daily. How Dream had not blown up when he’d found Tommy’s secret stash. How Dream had cuddled and gently explained how Tommy still needed positive touch even in human form even after Tommy had awkwardly transformed back in Dream’s lap. (How much Tommy would miss Dream if he ran away. How Dream would come looking for him)

His body relaxed into painlessness. That was enough thinking. He concentrated hard on not thinking. Not about Dream or The Blade or anyone else. He could think later. Right now, he was comfy and safe and—and away from D43#}—

No thinking. Safe. Comfy. Warm. (With the wrong person. Wasn’t safe. Wasn’t with his protector.)

His cozy spot jerked up and down before falling into a gentle rocking motion. Tommy made himself focus on the motion. The jolting rock that could only come from riding a horse. Familiar loud beating pounds proceeded and followed the motion. The steady sound gently lulling Tommy into unconsciousness. Letting go, Tommy fell asleep.

His tiny blob body twitched as Dream parted ways with Technoblade. It shook and quivered as memories and worries compounded and compressed themselves into nightmares while Carl galloped frantically to the cabin in the north.

Elsewhere a man returned to a complicated but still shabbily built tent, sighed in audile relief, and reached into his hood. His hand closed around air.

Chapter Text

Tommy flopped over to face the inside of the couch.

“Riiight. Asking you what happened to the gapples I had in the chest was a step too far,” the Blade drawled. Most people would have trouble picking out the anger in the Blade’s undertone, but Tommy caught it just fine. He’d heard it enough. “I dunno what I was thinking picking you up when you fell out of Dream’s hood. I should have given you back to him.”

Tommy curled up tighter under his stolen blankets. He didn’t agree with the Blade. He didn’t. He was better off getting the Blade to pay him back for the trauma he caused Tommy and Tubbo. (He shoved the thought that Tubbo had nothing to do with him now. And how much less safe he felt with the Blade than he did with his Dream.)

Hard, warm points poked his forehead. His human form flinched deeper into the thick red material. Tommy was cold.

“I’m not a great judge of how cold things are in the overworld, but you seem a bit colder than people are supposed to get around here. Is that an effect of your newest form?”

Shivering, Tommy refused to reply. He didn’t have to answer any of the Blade’s questions. The Blade owed him. He should be able to stay a little longer. (And if he was thrown out, at least he had a new stash of golden apples.)

“I’m gonna guess that your new form comes from our resident Admin. Never expected him to be some weird blob thing, though given his cryptid status, I shouldn’t be surprised. I should ask Phil in my next letter what kind of thing he actually is. Also have to admit, I didn’t think you would shift to match the terrible awful Admin you’ve cursed since the day I got here. But then Wil didn’t take much—”

“Leave me alone,” Tommy croaked. His throat hurt. (He didn’t want to cry.)

“I would. But you’re in my house, Tommy. And you’re really bringing down my vibe.”

“Don’t care.” He didn’t. Who cared if he inconvenienced the Blade? If he was a burden? (Wasn’t he always? Wasn’t he to Dream? Wasn’t Dream better off without him?)

The coach tilted, and he tumbled in a blanket-wrapped roll onto the floor. His face pointed towards the ceiling, but his view of the wood was quickly blocked by an angry Piglin’s.

“It matters to me. If you trust Dream enough to match him like you did Wilbur, then why did you run?” The blood red eyes crinkled out of anger and into what looked like it might be concern. “Did he hurt you?”

Tommy stared up blankly at Wil’s friend and Phil’s best friend. The hardened warrior who had watched him grow up from the periphery. He had never pretended to care about Tommy before. (Dream had hurt him. But not for long and not for a while.)

“Why would you care?” he spat hoarsely. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to feel. He wanted to lay here and shiver alone. (No, he didn’t—He missed the cuddle cave. He missed Dream.)

The Blade let out a low, snuffing snort. “I dunno. Maybe because Phil would be upset? You know, the guy who’s still recovering from losing his son? The guy you were attached to before?”

“Phil? That’s why you’re worried?” Tommy squeezed out from between clenched teeth. “Then you don’t need to bother. That f***** b***** hasn’t talked to me since killing his own son!”

The Blade leaned quickly out of Tommy’s vision, and Tommy sunk into the loosened blanket pile. He prepared himself for the punting that was coming. The snow was cold. But everywhere was cold. (He missed Dream.)

Another blanket flopped right onto his head.

“You got Chat started. You better give them some good content when you’re feeling better to make up for it.”

He didn’t know how to respond, so Tommy slipped out a hand and moved the heavy blanket to glare at the Blade. The f***** Piglin had moved out of range. Tommy tucked the newest blanket around himself tighter when a loud pounding vibrated through the floor from the cabin’s door.

Despite the cold, Tommy wiggled out of the blanket cocoon. Immediately his skin turned to ice, but he ignored it to peer around the corner of the doorway into the hallway. The Blade hustled past and shoved three potions into Tommy’s hand. The glass’s chill bit into Tommy’s palms, but he fumbled with the cork and chugged it. Sweet carrot and spicy wart and sour spider meat mixed on Tommy’s tongue. His hand had disappeared seconds after the amalgamation of flavors hit his palate, and Tommy’s skin shivered a little less as the deep essence of nether warmth welled up from his center.

He moved a little closer and dove under a table in the hall with a clear sight of the front door blocked by the Blade’s back. The pounding had paused but repeated as the Blade reached it. The wood door was yanked open in a quick motion. Knowing the Blade, he was likely annoyed that his dumb door was getting so much damage.

Two seconds later, the Blade’s broad back hit the wood floor hard. A gleaming purple axe pushed blade first under his chin.

“Where is he?!”

“Hyeh?!” came the Blade’s dumbfounded voice. “What’re you doing here, Dream? Get that ax away from my throat before you lose it. Don’t you have any manners? This is my house!”

“Does it look like I care?!” Dream continued to yell. “Where. Is. Tommy?!”

In a movement that Tommy could not make out from where he was, Dream was pushed back through the door, the Blade had Dream’s favorite netherite ax in his large hand. He pulled out the Orphan Obliterator with his other.

“Okay, Dream. Let’s try this again. What are you doing in my house with full netherite armor and an ax to my throat?”

“Tommy’s here,” Dream continued, a netherite sword now in his hand. The sharp blade shook. “I know he is. Give him back!”

The last words were roared as Dream dove back onto the Blade. The Blade blocked the blow easily and used the momentum to jam Dream against the hall’s wall. Dream thrashed and kicked under the Blade’s heavy sword-sealed pin.

“Dream!” the Blade shouted. “Calm down! Or I’ll give Chat the blood they want!”

Tommy nearly burst out to keep the Blade from pushing the Orphan Obliterator past Dream’s sword and into Dream’s neck, but Dream slumped slightly, enough to make a show of “calming down.” (Somehow Tommy doubted Dream was the least bit calm.) The Blade did not let up the pressure on his sword, keeping Dream in place on his tiptoes.

“Are you calm?” the Blade needlessly asked. Dream managed to glare at the Blade through his mask but nodded. The Blade didn’t move. “Good. Now calmly tell me what happened and why you’re barging into my house and attacking me for no reason.”

“Tommy. Is. Here.” Dream’s voice growled every word, his teeth clattering loudly between each one. “I know he’s here. Give him back.”

“I heard you the first time, Dream. I heard you the first time,” the Blade said almost calmly. “I don’t know why you think that, but I haven’t seen Tommy since I mocked him being an exile by the very government he fought to defend. Why would I take in an annoying gremlin who betrayed me for government? Government that recently tried to kill me?”

“He. Is. Here,” Dream repeated lower and darker. “Do not try to gaslight me, Technoblade. I know he is here. I need to—I need to find him. He’ll die without me.”

“No offense. No offense,” the Blade said evenly. He did not ease the pressure on the Orphan Obliterator even a little. “But you sound crazy. Why would the gremlin die without you?”

“Because—” Dream snapped. He cut himself off and for the first time his tone slipped out of enraged. “Just because. I know he does, okay? Please. Just—Tell me where he is.”

The Blade hesitated and sighed with his whole body. He did not release Dream.

“If I let you go, will you stand there long enough so that I can explain what I know?”

“…I can give you two minutes.”

“Bruh. Two minutes? Not all of us are natural speedrunners. That isn’t long enough for an explanation,” the Blade complained. “Fine. At some point, you both are going to pay me back for all the nonsense Chat’s spewing at me. Look, why do you want Tommy?”

“He’s supposed to be in exile, but I couldn’t find him where he was supposed to be—”

“The real reason, Dream, or I’m going to stick to my ‘official version’ as well.”

Dream gave a brief harsh struggle from under his own sword, but he couldn’t get out of the two sword’s locked hold. He stilled.

“Tommy’s—He’s…He used to live with Phil for a while, right? Did Phil explain what Tommy really was?”

“The whole thing about him being a adaption shifter hybrid that changes to suit the person he trusts most because that type of hybrid typically adapts to match a group to keep that group alive or something like that?”

“…Yes,” Dream sighed. “I did not really understand what it meant at first when he lost his wings after Wilbur’s untimely death.” Tommy winced at the reminder. At the memory of his loss of flight (of the loss of who he had been and who Wil was to him). He itched to take out one of his stolen gapples. He popped open a second potion and drank it instead. He had almost seen his hand. “But I researched it after he grew horns, a goat tail, and his ears shifted to floppier ones.”

“Huh. So he matched Tubbo for a while?”

“Until he was exiled,” Dream explained, and Tommy wished he would shut up. The Blade didn’t need to know any of this. (Tommy didn’t want any more reminders of the shards of broken trust.) “By then, I had mostly figured out how his kind of hybrid worked.”

“Really?” The Blade asked in a lower voice. The angry undertone was back. “And you decided what? To mess with his genetics?”

“…originally I wondered what would happen if I was the only one around for him to latch onto. I did not—I did not honestly think he would bond with me. I thought he hated me too much for that,” Dream confessed, and part of Tommy crowed in victory. He had been right. Dream wasn’t any good for him. (The rest of him wanted to return to curling in the blankets—could he still do that?) “But then he did, and I—I didn’t know what to do! I just—He’s so annoying! From the moment he came on this server—my server, he’s broken every rule but one. He’s done nothing but start problems and then get his stupid friends to come to his defense whenever I punished him for it. He made me the bad guy on my own server!”

The natural nether warmth faded from Tommy’s bones as Dream’s accusations ran through his head. He had never—Dream had taken his discs! Tommy was justified! Dream kept getting in the way. He was against L’Manberg from the start. (L’Manberg was against Dream from the start.) He got Eret to turn on them. (Eret decided to betray them.) He—He sided with Schlatt. (He gave up so easily.) He gave Wil the TNT. (Wil asked for it. Wil blew up their country without even talking to Tommy about it.) He—He—He made Tubbo exiled Tommy. (Tommy pushed and pushed and gave Tubbo little choice. And the exile came from Tubbo’s own mouth.)

“—nap even—No. Nevermind. My life, my server, was ruined by that blond brat. So yes, I was going to make his life miserable. I was going to experiment and see what happened if a stupid shifter got put in a situation where he couldn’t trust anyone! Where no one cared about him! I wanted to find out what—what it would be like for him.”

Tommy bit back a whimper. His bones were freezing. He missed Techno’s sword edge closer to Dream’s throat.

“And then,” Dream continued. The breaths heavy and savage rocking his chest suddenly stilled, and Tommy’s own chest spasmed to a stop to match. Dream gulped, his breathing quivering back to life. “And then the brat hugged me.”

Silence filled the room. Every hybrid in the room refusing to breathe. And then Techno snorted and stepped back, unlocking his sword from Dream’s.

“That’s all it took? For the kid to hug you? I dunno, man. Sounds like you have some unresolved issues you should seek help for if a hug can make you forgive the gremlin on the spot.”

“It wasn’t like that!” Dream defended in a huff. His sword disappeared into his inventory, and he crossed his arms. “It’s what the hug did! I could tell he was freezing.”

“Freezing? Did you move his exile closer to my base? Is that why you think he’s here?”

“I know he’s here,” Dream bit out. But his sword stayed stowed. “I meant that he was freezing in the way a blob hybrid would.”

“Hyeh? A blob hybrid? Never heard of it. Have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. But it sounds interesting, so if you wanted to explain, I would take time out of my precious day, which is rather magnanimous of me since you have already taken so much of it, to listen,” the Blade said, the Orphan Obliterator vanishing. Dream wheezed what might have been a chuckle or a deep breath. “So Tommy shifted into a blob hybrid? Was there one in the area you didn’t know about…?”

“I’m a blob hybrid,” Dream said flatly. Revealing to the Blade a fact he hadn’t most of the server. Someone, anyone, would have mentioned it before if they had known. Dream had—Dream had a lot of enemies that used to be friendly to him on the server. (Tommy didn’t want to think about that.) “Even with how I was treating him, the brat somehow managed to imprint on me.”

“Huh. Imagine that. Guess your experiment worked. You learned that adaption shifters will take the form of whoever they can when given no other choice. It’s like it’s a basic part of their biology that if they can trust a sentient being even a little, their instincts will count it as ‘the most in the world’ and shift accordingly. It’s revolutionary how you’ve discovered what Phil’s known for years.”

“None of the books I found mentioned that detail,” Dream grumbled.

“Could have asked Phil.”

“After ‘helping’ cause his son’s death?”

“Don’t think Phil sees it that way,” the Blade said, leaning on the wall opposite the one Dream had started to use as support. “He was the one who drove the blade into Wil’s chest after all. If he blames anyone, he blames himself. Next time you don’t know something, try going to the guy who’s lived thousands of years thanks to Death’s crush on him.”

“I will think about it,” Dream said, mimicking Techno’s more relaxed pose. “Point is, the brat is one of mine now, and I could not just—just leave him to freeze. I might have been in denial for—for a little bit afterwards. Even once he took on his blob form, I thought I could do the right things and help him out of baby blob phase—”

“Baby blob phase? Are you saying that as blob hybrids go, Tommy’s a literal baby?” asked the Blade, perking up a bit too much.

“In his blob form, basically he is a literal child,” Dream answered too smugly. “Not that that’s any difference from normal.”

The Blade let out a loud laugh, and Tommy wanted to slither out of his spot and kick him. But he used mature self-restraint and chugged down another potion as he had started to make out strands of his blond hair.

“You know what, Dream? That’s fair. That’s fair. Hard not to feel the need to look after a literal child. Phil gets that feeling all the time. So is Tommy your kid now?”

“What?! No!” Dream immediately cried. Tommy didn’t understand why his heart and eyes squeezed at the quick answer. “He’s like my little brother!”

“So he’s your kid, just with a different title. Gotcha,” said the Blade casually. Dream leaned forward obviously ready to argue, but the Blade continued, “So if I see Tommy, I should shoot you a message.”

Dream froze and then sighed.

“Fine. If you see Tommy, shoot me a message. Until then you are going to need this.” Dream pulled out a book and shoved it at the Blade. The Blood Warrior took it and held it up to his face while he squinted. He must have left his glasses somewhere again.

“Blob Instincts: How to Take Care of A Blob,” the Blade read out. He pulled the book away from his face and stared at Dream. “You just had this lying around?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. And you need to read it this on the off chance you run into Tommy,” Dream said in a tone that made Tommy reach for the gapple stack. “From what I have observed, you are not very touchy feely guy, but a blob hybrid requires consistent sentient touch or they freeze from the inside out.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Page 4,” Dream said, pointing with his whole hand at the book. The Blade flipped open the book. “It is more emotional, but it will affect his physical body if it goes on too long. If you do not want direct touch, indirect can work. For example, you could cover him with your cape. It is heavy with your scent and presence and heavy enough to settle his blob instincts. While he is a literal child, he will also be unable to control his body’s forms. He’ll go from boy to blob without warning. On page 12 it goes into detail over the various stimuli, emotional and physical, that can cause the involuntary change between bodies. Page 7 and 8 explain the different needs of the different bodies. Also, here.”

Dream pulled out—Tommy almost gasped and gave away his location. (Why wasn’t he? What reason did he have to continue hide? Hadn’t Dream proved himself? He’d gone looking for Tommy.) the Cuddle Cave! Dream had brought it with him!

“You’re going to need this for when he becomes a baby blob,” Dream continued. “There are instructions on how it works on pages 14 through 17 along with diagrams. And since you’re not a blob hybrid, you’re going to need this.” A white blob shape, knitted like the Cuddle Cave, popped into Dream’s hand. “This is adult-blob shaped. It will work in a pinch. You will need to warm it with your own body heat. I will let you figure out how you can do that best.”

“I don’t know if I like what your implying, Dream, but I’ll figure out a way that won’t make either me or Tommy regret our life choices,” the Blade said as he took the knitted plush. “If I come across him of course.”

“If. Of course,” Dream sassed. “If you find him and have questions, just let me know.”

“Don’t you want me to let you know immediately so you can come get him.”

“I am going to trust you to know when to comm me to come get him.” Dream moved to stand closer to the Blade. hadn’t realized that Dream was significantly shorter than the Blood Warrior. Dream had always loomed large over everyone. (Had he, or had Tommy always imagined him bigger than he was? Less like a person and more like an unfeeling giant obstacle.) The green b****** leaned forward and almost pressed his mask into the Blade’s snout. “Look, Technoblade. I know your reputation. I have known it since before you entered my server. You are one of the fiercest warriors of Hypixel which makes you one of the most fearsome warriors anywhere. I do not know what you have heard about me, but put whatever you think happened in the one duel we fought aside. If you hurt Tommy, I will kill you and take your only life. Understood?”

“You know what? I believe you, Dream. I really do. If I happen to see Tommy, I will take your advice and not harm a hair on the annoying gremlin’s head,” the Blade conceded. Dream leaned back and off his tiptoes. “But just so you know, most of the rumors are exaggerated. I rarely feel the urge to commit unjustified violence. So if I see the kid, and he becomes his worst annoying self, I would comm you to take him away immediately rather than bother to spill his blood myself.”

“Seriously?” Dream spluttered. “Are you seriously trying to get me to buy that? Mr. ‘blood for the blood god’? After you literally threatened me to give Chat the blood they want?”

“Ah. But I didn’t. I withheld, Dream. See?”

Dream scoffed another chuckled. “I guess you did not skewer me. But I wanted to make my stance crystal clear. Some on the server have trouble understanding when a threat is serious.”

“I understand. I understand,” the Blade said with a nod. “So you’re leaving now?”

“Yeah, yeah. I will leave now,” Dream said. The dumb mask hid it, but Tommy was fairly sure the green b***** was rolling his eyes. He headed down the hall and towards the outside exit. Dream made another remark towards the Blade, but Tommy couldn’t concentrate on their words anymore. Dream was leaving. Tommy swallowed a call for him to come back. (Why? Why didn’t he call him back? Why didn’t he reveal himself?)

Before Tommy could wrestle a sound out of his throat. Dream was gone. The person he trusted most was gone. And this time, it was clearly his fault.

Chapter Text

The Cuddle Cave shook as it tilted forward, and Tommy and the knitted body pillow (he was not going to think of it as a Dream substitute of any sort) rolled into large, hard fingers. His blob body chirped in protest as he was separated from the barely warm weirdly shaped pillow. The chirping protests stopped when he was deposited in spicy scented, white fluff. Tommy sank against his will into the warm, smelly softness.

“Yeah, I thought that would work,” the Blade snorted as his giant head turned to point his snout at where Tommy was cuddling (against his will!) into the piglin warrior’s cape. “According to the overly detailed book Dream happened to have lying around, your knitted blob thing should need warming about now. I’ll put it in my pocket and let you cuddle with it again in about half an hour. I still have no idea how I signed up to babysit a needy child.”

Tommy let out a shrill whine. He was not a child. This stupid f****** body had too many instincts to let him think clearly. Of all his adaptions this was the worst. He missed being an avian—

Tommy blinked his eyes quickly and hid his head in the slightly dusty fluff. He was Tommy Danger Kraken Innit. He didn’t—He didn’t need to cry like a baby every two minutes. He was a big man. The biggest. (He missed Wil. He missed Tubbo. He missed Dream. Why was he always getting left behind?)

Pounding rattled the thoughts out of Tommy’s head. He popped out his head, but the Blade’s large hand scooped him up and tucked him into a cape pocket. His blob body instantly melted. Was the inside of the Blade’s cape always this soft?

“Coming. Coming,” the Blade called as he shuffled very slowly forward. The pounding got louder and more…frantic? Tommy wished he could poke his head out of the pocket and catch a glimpse of the outside of the Blade’s cape, but he already knew that all he would see was the Blade’s frilly white shirt. He didn’t need to stare at the Blade’s horrid fashion choices.

The cabin’s front door creaked open. A random memory of Phil explaining the usefulness of noisy doors flittered across Tommy’s mind. Something about warning of unexpected guest’s arrivals. That’s why if Tommy ever wanted to break into someone’s house, he’d either dig in from under the floor or break through the roof. That would be much less expected.

“Finally,” Dream’s voice burst, strained and hoarse. As if the green b***** hadn’t been breathing before the door had opened. (He came back!) “Did you find Tommy?”

“Seeing as I haven’t messaged you, let’s go with ‘no’ and ‘what are you doing here?’” the Blade said flatly.

“I thought that maybe you might have forgotten to message me,” Dream said quickly. “Or maybe your comm was broken? As the server Admin, if a comm breaks, it’s my duty to fix it.”

“Isn’t Halo a moderator? Wouldn’t that be his job? Do you even have other moderators?”

“There are a couple of other moderators on the server.” Dream was starting to sound like he was rambling. Tommy really wanted to see what the green b**** was doing. Couldn’t see his face, but Tommy thought he could read the cryptic f*****’s body language pretty well. “But they’re all tied up with different things at the moment, and since I was around, I thought I could stop by and check. Just in case.”

“Makes sense. Makes sense,” the Blade said in a tone Tommy remembered from when he would try to lie (successfully, of course) to the intimidating warrior. “Well, since I’m not a clumsy fool who breaks bedrock and throws my comm into the void, it is still working. Next time you should try something less time-consuming like sending me a message to check.”

“Well, I happened to be in the area, so it was—it was fine. So you have not seen Tommy?”

“Nope. Nothing. Maybe the kid ran back towards L’Manberg? You should check that way. Isn’t your whole job during this exile to keep him away from that place?”

“It is, but turns out that is hard to do when I have no idea where he is,” Dream strained with an emotion Tommy didn’t recognize. He needed to see Dream. He started to squiggle out of the cape pocket. “Okay. Fine. You have not seen him. Not at all. That’s—That’s fine. I thought—Here.” A loud thump startled Tommy’s dumb blob body into stillness. “This will help you watch him if you happen upon him.”

“Dream, is this more blob-related literature you happened to have lying around?” the Blade huffed as he bent down to grab what had to be another book. Tommy had tried to sneak a peak of the first book Dream had given him, but the Blade had been keeping it close and never left it where Tommy could get to it. “‘Tommyinnit.’ Strange title for a blob book.”

“It’s not—It’s not a blob book!” Dream protested, probably due to whatever expression was on the Blade’s face. The Blade’s mental warfare was legendary. “They are my personal notes on him. From when he was in exile. Strange behaviors and such.”

Dream what?!

“You know what, Dream. I’m not even going to ask why you’ve been keeping some creepy kind of diary on Tommy like some stalker fan—”

“It’s not a creepy diary! I told you I was observing him! Those notes basically boil down to a amateur psych evaluation—”

“But putting aside your creepy stalker tendencies,” the Blade ruthlessly continued, “the fact that you’re giving me a book full of your personally written notes on Tommy ‘just in case’ I happen to find him rummaging in my gapple chest makes me wonder if I’m the only one being given this special treatment or if you’re going around giving these kind of notes to everyone. Because if you want to share your creepy diary, that’s one thing. But when your creepy diary is full of other people’s secrets.”

Tommy had to get his hands on that book. If Dream was sharing that with everyone—

“What?! Why would I be giving out highly personal information to everyone on the server? It’s just that—It’s that you happen to live the farthest away. If Tommy were to end up here, then it could take me a while to pick him up, and if you’re stuck with him for—for whatever amount of time it takes me to pick him up, then it’s best if you’re ready for a longer period of time.”

“Isn’t that what the first blob book was for?”

“Yes, but he—he might—” Dream stuttered and started again. “He might not even be a blob hybrid by then. Because blobs are very social and the longer it takes me to find him, the more abandoned he’ll feel. And—and shifter hybrids, when they feel the foundational trust between them and their familial bond-holder snap—well, you saw what happened after Wilbur betrayed Tommy and all L’Manberg.”

“So you’re saying that the kid’s trust in you is weak enough to break if he doesn’t see you for a couple of weeks? Why? You think the kid’s that fickle?”

Tommy flinched. He’d gone through three adaption bonds. He’d messed up what should be a lifelong bond three times. If any other shifter hybrid met him, they would call his bonds weak for breaking over—over nothing. Wilbur—He’d been struggling, and Tommy hadn’t noticed. He’d pushed Tubbo to the point of having no choice but to exile him. He’d run away from Dream.

He couldn’t blame anyone for calling him fickle.

“No!” Dream shouted so forcefully that the Blade jerked back. “It’s not—It is not Tommy. It’s blob psychology and instinct. If a blob has been left by the Set, it knows it’s supposed to die! That the Set has sentenced it to a long, cold death as punishment for—for the unforgiveable crime of being such of a burden to the Set that even its very presence cannot make up for its uselessness. Every blob and blob hybrid knows that! If you’re abandoned, then there’s no relationship between you and the Set to cling to. You accept your death and find the quickest way to get it over with, or if you really care about your Set at all, you find a way to make your death useful for the Set.”

Dream’s quick huffing breaths wheezed, and Tommy’s blob body quivered in an effort to whine. Tommy’s own shock was the only thing holding the sound back. Dream audibly swallowed and scoffed.

“Tommy is well within his rights to break his ties to me.”

“Not gonna lie, kinda sounds like you want him to break the bond. Almost as if you’re the one scared of being abandoned.”

“What?! Why—Where—What’s wrong with you? How did you get that from what I said?”

“No reason. No reason at all. But about those unresolved issues of yours—”

“Now that I know your comm is working, I have no reason to stay,” Dream said tonelessly. “I am leaving. If you see Tommy, forget about messaging me. Now that I think about it, I obviously have better things to do.”

“Right. But before you go, I have a question,” the Blade said, moving quickly forward into cold air. Tommy snuggled back into the pocket from where he had been hanging half out of it.

“Sure. Make it quick,” Dream snipped.

“How are George and Sapnap? I haven’t seen them around lately.”

The Blade jerked to a stop in the cold air, and Tommy pressed himself as close as he could through the pocket to the piglin warrior’s warmth. (He knew that neither of the two idiots were talking to Dream. Not since Tommy had told them Dream didn’t care about them or anyone. Dream didn’t care about them, did he?)

“They’re fine,” Dream said casually. “How is Phil?”

“Trapped in L’Manberg. You know. I was just thinking about doing something about that the other day. Would you be interested in helping me do some heavy duty remodeling on your server?”

“…maybe. Depends on how heavy we’re talking. From the ground up?”

“Something like that. So, interested?”

“I might be,” Dream said with that dumb audible smirk. Part of Tommy wanted to squeak and whine that L’Manberg be left alone. But the air was too cold and the pocket too warm (and maybe he didn’t think he could continue to hide if he saw Dream face-to-face).

A flurry of movement drug him out his pocket, wooshed him through the freezing air, and snuggled him into tighter, thinner but warmer cloth. He quickly realized that he was in the Blade’s f****** pant pocket. The cape was also gone because if he squiggled to peek out of the pocket he could see light and snow.

“Here. Can’t have my future ally freeze to death out here. Next time you come, wear more than that homeless brand of green hoodie. Whatever vagrant ascetic persona you’re going for is not worth losing fingers.”

A muffled inaudible cry grumbled from in front of the Blade, which unfortunately was not the direction the pocket pointed in.

“Actually, now that I think about it, do you even have a house, Dream? Are you homeless on your own server? Is that why you only own a hoodie that is an affront to all senses?”

“I’m not homeless!” Dream clearly cried. “And take back your stupid cape, I don’t need it.”

“Nah. I’ll pass. It’s currently infested with an unknowable amount of germs from a homeless man. Why don’t you bring it back washed when you come by to plan L’Manberg’s downfall? Dressed as something other than a green homeless teletubby.”

“I have a house! And I am not infected with an ‘unknowable amount of germs,’” Dream snapped. “But fine! I will come back in a couple of days with your dumb cape washed. If you find Tommy, just—just follow either the blob hybrid book or the notes and keep the brat from hurting himself.”

“Will do. But I have to point out, you haven’t agreed to come back wearing something other than that hoodie, and I’m starting to worry that my cape’s going to get washed in some polluted river or in some less sanitary way—”

“Then take the dumb thing back!”

“No. It’s fine. I’ll take the risk. But when you clean it, make you follow the directions on the tag.”

A wordless guttural cry strangled out of what had to be Dream’s throat. Crisp footsteps crunched loudly away from them. The Blade stood in the cold air long enough for Tommy to give a concerned squeak. Grunting, the Blade marched back into his cabin.

“I am starting to wish I had put you back in Dream’s hood when you fell out of it,” the Blade said, more to the warm, empty cabin than to Tommy. “Phil is better suited for this kind of thing.”

Tommy had no idea what the f**** the Blade was going on about, but he did appreciate the warrior taking him out of the squished pocket (he was never going back in there) and placing him on the blanket-lined basket near the fire. Tommy’s blob body instantly curled into the warmth, but Tommy kept his eyes on the Blade. The large hybrid pulled out some paper and a quill from a nearby chest and started furiously writing on it. Tommy watched the frenzied letter writing until the back and forth motion of the quill’s feather lulled him into a troubled sleep.

Chapter Text

Tommy sat squeezed into the corner behind the chest, wrapping Techno’s blue cape around himself tight. A week had passed since Dream had left and promised—told Techno he would help him plot against L’Manberg. Because of course the green b**** would help the Blade destroy Tommy’s home.

A thump came from down the hall, and Tommy peered eagerly around the chest. The Blade’s f**** polar bear batted around a ball the Blade had placed on the highest shelf to keep it away from Steve. Tommy scoffed. If the Blade was such a genius, how come he couldn’t keep a ball away from a dumb animal so that it wouldn’t destroy his dumb house? Served the Blade right for all the trouble he had caused L’Manberg and Tubbo…Tommy’s head ducked under the cape, and he tried to keep his body from shivering. How long was Tommy supposed to wait for the green b**** to come back? (Was he coming back?)

The ball bounced loudly off the wall nest to his head, and Tommy squeaked and watched the world grow around him. Blue material was now smothering him. A black nose larger than him nuzzled itself under the blue cape and nudged his entire tiny body. He let out another annoyed squeal as teeth snagged at the back of his head. Apparently, blobs could be scuffed. The first time Steve had done it, Tommy had kept a very cool head, but the Blade had freaked out. Steve had dropped him, and Tommy had bounced on the floor once before the Blade had his stupid a*** blob body back in massive piglin hands.

Tommy had not been allowed alone with Steve since, though the Blade had no problem letting Steve carry Tommy’s tiny blob body around as long as it was where the Blade could see. Hold on—if Steve was here f***** around with the ball he isn’t supposed to have and scuffing Tommy like he’s not supposed to without the Blade watching…Where was the Blade?

The huge a*** polar bear carried Tommy into the fireplace room. And there was the Blade, passed out on his plush chair. Tommy would have felt more sorry for him if he had a better sleep schedule. Him and Dream had to be competing with each other over who could stay awake the longest, because Tommy had never seen either sleep until now. It was creepy, like they were soulless machines. Which they were…a little. Like Tommy used to tell Tubbo.

Hefting himself up on the nearest arm rest, Steve lifted himself on his hindfeet and dropped Tommy onto the Blade’s lap. The bear huffed a puff of fish breath straight into Tommy’s blob head and lumbered away. Tommy’s blob body immediately started tucking itself under one of the Blade’s arms when Tommy caught sight of what was in the Blade’s hand. The weird a**** blob care book Dream had given the Blade.

With great effort Tommy pulled himself out of the comfy spot his instincts had found and climbed up Techno’s arm and onto the armrest. He then carefully hopped forward to where the book lay face up. Glancing up and back at the Blade, Tommy watched for any signs of movment, but the piglin warrior’s face remained relaxed with the golden eyeglasses angled crookedly across his snout. Not looking back again, Tommy reached the book.

The open page had nothing but small handwritten words, and Tommy’s mind instantly recoiled. So much reading and handwritten stuff too. This is a big reason why he’d pushed Tubbo to become president. He didn’t want to deal with handwritten papers day in and day out. Tommy’s body shuddered, and he forced it to stay in place. He stared down the tiny, carefully scribbled words.

—server-maintaining mob, Blobs have a close ties to the server where they originate and service. Blobs are less known than Endermen, Allay, and the Enderdragon, but only because they do their jobs must be done in subtle, secretive ways. Unlike Enderman who make loud, distinctive sounds and leave trails of purple particles or Allays who can be captured by Pillagers and Players alike, Blobs are not meant to interact with other mobs or normal Players and are therefore invisible. They are to do their job and only come out to aid the Server in times of server threatening problems where the Admin needs to reset entire portions of the world.

Due to this predisposition not to interact with most server entities, Blobs hold tight to their hidden Set communities. A  Blob outside its Set will quickly die from lack of stimulation and connection. A Set is known to isolate and push out a blob with a corrupted/glitched memory. Anything that threatens the functionality of the Set—

The book snapped shut.

A squealing whine escaped Tommy before he could stop it, but a large hand scooped him up and lifted him into the air as the Blade stood and yawned.

“Nothing like a bit of light reading to stimulate the brain,” the Blade warbled through the yawn. “I’ll be honest. I wasn’t sure you could read.”

Tommy chirped an angry squeak. The Blade knew he could read! Techno had been there when Phil had taught Tommy.

“Sounds like its bedtime for both of us. Don’t think you’ve gotten your full 18 hours yet.”

The squeaking grew louder as Tommy cursed the Blade out in his current instinctual tongue. He was Big Man Tommyinnit. He didn’t need more than four hours of sleep. He only slept more because he got bored when everyone else was asleep.

“Where do you want to sleep? Upstairs or downstairs?” the Blade continued in a low, gravelly voice. Tommy’s cursing chirps quieted. The Blade sounded exhausted. “If you can’t choose, I’ll just take you upstairs with me.”

Tommy hadn’t been upstairs. He didn’t want to be upstairs. Upstairs was the Blade’s personal space, and he remembered from Pogtopia how Wil had stressed that Tommy and—and Tubbo weren’t supposed to intrude. How the Blade liked and needed his space, and how dangerous he could be protecting it. Phil had also warned them to leave Techno’s guest room alone back when Tommy and Tubbo still lived with him.

But the Blade had said he’d take Tommy, and Tommy’s s***** blob body would start to freeze if apart from the Blade for too long. (But even then, it wasn’t as warm as it had been with Dream.) Tommy—Tommy could indulge the Blade this once.

A knock came from the front hall, and the Blade spun towards it, tucking Tommy deep into his breast pocket. He strode out and through the hall and flung the door wide open.

“Finally decided to show your mas—Hyeh?! Phil?!”

“Hello, mate,” said the voice of the only man ever. “I got your letters and thought I’d drop by. Heard you were having some server memory troubles and needed help from an old man to figure things out.”

“Phil, I was having weird mob troubles, not memory ones,” the Blade said with a strange rattle from his chest. “Isn’t that more Ranboo’s thing?”

“Not memory problems,” Phil said, shaking snow off his half-feathered wing. The sight triggered a memory of tangled wings, and Tommy winced. “Server memory troubles. You mentioned Blobs in your letter.”

“And blobs are related to server memory?” the Blade drawled.

“If they weren’t, I wouldn’t have brought it up,” answered the only man ever. Tommy wiggled to see if he could peek out of the Blade’s deep a*** shirt pocket. “Didn’t think anyone but the Server Admin could interact with those buggers.”

“Not even you?” the Blade asked, notes of genuine surprise in his voice.

“I could. But it would be rude to mess with the coding mob on another Admin’s server. But something has to be deeply wrong for Blobs to come out of hiding. Could mean a dangerous amount of damage to the foundation of a server. So I came to check on it personally.”

“Didn’t L’Manberg have you on house arrest?”

“They did,” Phil chuckled. “But the only thing holding me there was my fascination with what Wil had left and an old fondness for its president. None of which could survive their attempt to execute you without a trial, so I decided enough was enough. Your letters helped me make up my mind to finish messing with the redstone cuff they were using to track me and come here. How do you feel about having a new neighbor?”

“Not gonna lie. I kinda liked the whole solitude I had up here,” the Blade lied through his teeth. If he cared about his f***** solitude, he would have already thrown Tommy out. “But then again it might be nice to have someone I can borrow sugar and milk and gunpowder from nearby, so I guess I could adjust.”

“You say that like you haven’t half-adopted the Blobs in your letters,” Phil smirked. “Speaking of, where are they? Are they doing that Blob thing where they all but melt into the server coding?”

“Huh. Didn’t know they could do that. The book I have didn’t mention melting into server code.”

“Probably because they don’t usually do that after revealing themselves to someone. The author probably didn’t even know that they could do that. That or the book didn’t feel the need to cover every single aspect of Blobs and focused entirely on the care aspect.”

“Dunno. Seems pretty thorough,” said the Blade obviously striding away from entry door as the temperature rose. Tommy felt gravity shift around him as the Blade reached down for something and then straightened back up. “Here.”

“Huh,” Phil said, sounded exactly as Techno did earlier. The pages made soft swooshing sounds as they turned. “Handwritten and in good condition. Probably some Admin’s personal notes. Interesting. Very interesting. Where’d you get this? Most Admins are notoriously secretive with their notes.”

“Came with the blobs,” the Blade answered with a shrug that tugged the material around Tommy. “It was like someone wanted me to take good care of them.”

Why was the Blade talking about blobs with an “s”? Tommy was the only blob that the Blade had agreed to “take care of.” Not that Tommy himself needed caring, but his dumb blob instincts needed a lot of care. And it was either the Blade or Dream. (He missed Dream. Why hadn’t the green b**** come back?)

“Mate, where did you get this?”

“I just told you, Phil. It came with the blobs—”

“No. You didn’t get this out of thin air, and this isn’t about mob Blobs outside of a brief introduction to the species. This is about Blob hybrids. Among server-spawned hybrids, Blob hybrids have the least chance of survival, because like Blaze, Blobs are a species whose instincts are incapable of taking care of young hybrids. Blobs function as a Set, as a group. If a strange deformed Blob spawns near them, they will automatically abandon it for the good of the Set. And guess what they consider baby Blob hybrids? They need to be found within a day or so of their spawning to have any chance of survival, but unlike Blaze, their Blob heritage makes them hide when people approach instead of attack. In other words, they are rarer than even Blaze hybrids. Where did you find this much information on them?”

“Would you believe me if I said I stumbled upon it in an old stronghold?” the Blade asked almost timidly. But then he was talking to Philza Minecraft, the only man ever. If anyone could intimidate the Blade, it would be Phil. “I didn’t think so. I got it from Dream.”

“Dream? Our Server Admin Dream?” Phil said, his pitch rising. “Why would he have a handwritten book about Blob hybrids? And no offense, mate, but you usually suck at making Admins do more than put up with you. How did you get Dream, who is all but a creepy, antisocial cryptid on his own server, to trust you with this?”

“He might, hypothetically, left a blob hybrid in my care.”

“This isn’t making any sense! This server isn’t  in any shape to be spawning Players! Not with the constant violence going on. Where would the little guy even come from? And why would he drop the Blob hybrid off with you?”

“I don’t think Dream wasn’t expecting another blob hybrid to be here either,” the Blade explained, and Tommy’s blob stomach ached.

“I don’t think you’re getting this, mate,” Phil said in an alarmed tone Tommy had last heard that time Wilbur disappeared for a week. “Blob hybrids need community! Why would Dream hand over a Bob hybrid to you and not one of the groups on this server? I understand L’Manberg, but what about the Greater SMP or the Badlands? Even Kinoko’s a better bet even with its half-formed status. A reclusive hermit isn’t that great in meeting a young Blob hybrid’s needs!”

“You know what? Due to our longstanding friendship, I’m going to choose not to take offense to that. Also pretty sure Dream didn’t feel like he had a choice.”

“You know I meant no offense to you, Tech,” Phil sighed. “Blob hybrids do better with multiple people to attach themselves to. They can by clingy little buggers. And seeing how you avoided Toms and Tubs when they lived with me…Well, I have to agree that Dream must not have had much of a choice if he left them with you. Also I haven’t forgotten you mentioned blobs, as in plural. Twin spawns are ridiculously rare so how is it that Dream dropped two unrelated blob hybrids in your lap?”

“I wouldn’t call them unrelated perse…”

“Dream f***** found twin blob hybrids?!”

“Phil! My monetization!” the Blade whined. “And no. They aren’t twins. More like…brothers.”

“As in they have an age difference?” Phil asked exasperation leaking in every word. “How would that work? Spawned hybrids don’t work like that. Are these birth hybrids like Wilbur? When and how did they get invited onto Dream’s server?”

“This would be a lot easier if someone would come out and explain themselves instead of hiding and making my life difficult because they want to keep hiding,” the Blade said pointedly down to his pocket. Tommy’s blob body curled up on itself. He didn’t want to reveal to Phil that he had shifted again—and to match Dream of all people. But it was Phil so—

A loud whistling chirp came from the floor. The Blade stiffened.

“Tech, what was that?”

“I have no idea, but whatever it was had better come out before I follow Chat’s advice and blow a hole in my own floor.”

The crackle of wood breaking convinced Tommy to pop his head out of Techno’s pocket. The green b***** pulled himself out of a neatly cut hole in the wood near Techno’s feet. Dream stumbled as he tried to get his legs under him to stand opposite Techno. (The green b**** was still wearing Techno’s cloak.)

“This isn’t what it look like!” Dream burst.

“Really?” the Blade said slowly. “You weren’t skulking around in my basement like a creep?”

“I came by to check on Tommy—to see if you’ve seen him.”

“Tommy’s missing?” asked Phil, moving to stand next to the Blade where Tommy could see him through the corner of his eye. “Since when?”

“A couple of weeks,” said Dream quickly. “I asked Techno to keep an eye out for him. But he swears he hasn’t seen him.” Dream was staring straight at the Blade’s shirt pocket. “Left the book with him and everything.”

“Wait. Tommy’s the blob hybrid?” Phil exclaimed. Tommy flinched at the high-pitched surprise. Because of course it was a surprise. Last Phil had seen Tommy, Tommy had been a goat hybrid. “How? The only way he’d be a blob hybrid is if he—Oh f****. Tubbo exiled Tommy.”

“And broke his trust in him in the process,” the green b**** said, as if he had any idea about Tubbo and Tommy’s relationship. “He bonded with a blob hybrid in exile.”

“Considering you were the only one allowed to visit—”

“Everyone was allowed to visit,” Dream interrupted. “Most chose of their own accord not to.”

“That’s not what I heard, mate,” Phil said, and something in Tommy twisted further. “If so few people went out of their way to visit Tommy, who was the secret blob hybrid that gained enough of Tommy’s trust to have him shift?”

“Phil,” the Blade said flatly. He lifted his arm to point his hand towards Dream and block Tommy’s view of Phil. “You’re looking at him.”

“What?” Phil quietly blurted. The arm lowered enough for Tommy to see Phil’s gobsmacked expression. “What?! Are you saying that the Server Admin of the server we are on is a blob hybrid?!”

“Do you have a problem with that?” Dream asked, low and menacing. Tommy’s blob body shivered.

“…are you wearing Tech’s cloak?”

“…I do not see why that is important at the moment,” Dream huffily dismissed. “We were talking about me being a blob hybrid and how dangerous that is.”

“Tech, mate, tell me you weren’t talking about the Server Admin when you started writing in plural.”

“I wasn’t talking about the Server Admin when I wrote in plural,” the Blade recited. Phil’s wide-eyed glare had the Blade shrugging again. “You told me to tell you—”

“I did,” Phil grumbled like the old man he was. “Of course your adoption tendencies crop up for the first time in centuries, and it’s the most troublesome gremlins you could find.”

“I think you’re confusing me with you again, Phil.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.” The only man ever swung his attention back to Dream who had apparently been sinking back through the hole in the floor. “Where do you think you’re going, young man? I have a few questions before you can go anywhere.”

“I have no reason to answer your questions,” Dream said, but he stopped sinking through the floor.

“Considering the amount of information I have about Blob and Blob hybrids, I think you do,” Phil said silkily. Like he used to when Tommy and Wi—Tub—When Tommy and Wilbur had gone too far.

“I’d listen to him, Dream,” Techno strained. “You don’t want him to craft a belt. That gets ugly real quick.”

Without another word, Dream pulled himself back out of the hole and into posed attention. Phil smirked.

“Good to see you have some sense. So let’s start with the most important question: Who’s in your current Set? Is it the other two members of the ‘DreamTeam’?”

Dream remained silent.

“Mate, we’re trying to help you. A Blob hybrid shouldn’t be far from his Set. Yes, you don’t have to be as tied to your Set as a mob Blob, but you can’t be out here every day without at least one member nearby. So where are they?”

The smiley face on the green b**** mask stood staring at them. Staring at Phil and Techno and Tommy. Dream—The green b***** knew Tommy was here, but he was still pretending he didn’t know. Wasn’t saying anything. Wasn’t admitting that if anyone was his Set, it was Tommy. Because George and Sapnap—Because no one else had ever come with Dream.

(How could Dream look so okay? Tommy missed Dream so much. A hole setting endlessly in his stomach and heart that only these stupid half-a***** meetings ever lightened. And that was with the Blade’s touch and care. How did Dream deal without—) Dream’s hands were shaking. Tommy could almost see Dream’s mouth opening behind the stupid smiley mask.

Tommy wiggled and squeezed out of Techno’s pocket and landed in full human form on the floor. He then pointed angrily at Dream.

“You f****** green b*****!” Tommy screamed. “Am I the only one in your Set?!”

The air around Tommy froze, and shock at his actions crawled up his spine but before it could fully register the dread Dream had wrapped his arms around him and snuggled him under Techno’s cloak. The body wrapped around Tommy quivered.

“You’re a stupid brat, Tommy,” Dream whispered. “I—I let you go. I don’t—I don’t think I can do that again.”

“B****,” Tommy spat, jiggling his arms loose enough to loop around Dream’s middle. “No one ever said you had to.”

Chapter Text

About two months ago, Tommy would have balked at the thought of sitting snuggly in his worst enemy’s lap. But he guessed Dream was not his worst enemy anymore, and his dumb blob instincts had decided to act up if he tried to separate himself in any way from the green b****’s loose hold. “Loose.” Right. If Tommy had enough air to chuckle, he would have.

“All right. Let me get this straight,” Phil said in a worn out sigh. “Tommy imprinted on you, and you decided that the best course of action was to find him someone better to imprint on?”

“Abandoning a blob is the greatest betrayal any blob can know,” Dream explained again. The arms looping around Tommy squeezed tighter, but a pointed, loud cough had them “loosening” again. “Tommy should have taken it as a betrayal, and his trust in me should have broken.”

“That’s…Not gonna lie, mate. The thought of being on a server run by a Blob hybrid without a Set is making me the tiniest bit uneasy.”

“It’s fine. I have it under control,” Dream said smoothly even as the arms twitched four times. His head leaned over Tommy’s shoulder to tap a looped hand against the creepy f****** smiling mask he was still wearing. “My mask is enchanted. Smothers most of my instincts.”

A heavy pause smothered them, and Tommy could feel all of Dream twitching.

“If I wasn’t married to the most wonderful woman in the world who also happens to be the living embodiment of death, that statement right there would have taken several years off my life,” Phil groaned. The only man ever held out his hand centimeters from Dream’s mask. Dream snapped back, taking Tommy with him. Phil gave a wry smile. “And that right there is what I was afraid of. Any chance you’d let me check the enchantments on that thing?”

“The enchantments on it are fine.”

“Didn’t think so,” Phil said leaning back. “Techno?”

“This is a bad idea, Phil. A bad idea. Let the record show I think this is a bad idea,” the Blade grumbled. Dream’s twitching increased, and his neck snapped as his head jerked towards the Blood Warrior. Techno snatched him by the collar and held him tight. One arm let go of Tommy to bat at the sharp hands holding Dream in place, and the wrestling arms overhead almost distracted Tommy from the flash and blur of green, white, and blond movement opposite them.

A minute later, Tommy was treated to a sudden and unexpected Dream face reveal. And honestly? It was a letdown. Guy’s face was the most normal looking thing about him. He had a few faded freckles and grass green eyes, but other than that he looked like a background character who sold coffee to the main characters. Barely passable looking. Or maybe that was the expression of sheer horror on the guy’s face. Green eyes skittered to his, and suddenly Dream’s face was in Tommy’s shoulder. The arms had somehow tightened their hold and continued to allow Tommy to breathe.

Automatically Tommy’s own arms wiggled out of the vice grip in order to cover Dream’s head as best he could. The twitching had become full-on shaking, and Tommy’s body let out a plaintive chirp. Dream chirred back and tried to fold Tommy’s arms back into his hold, but Tommy resisted. His body could tell Dream was hurting, that Dream needed surrounding too. And Tommy could help. Tommy was the biggest man ever. He could comfort Dream. He could! If only he could get his arms to reach around easier—

Spicy scented cloth fell over both of them, and Dream’s head popped out of Tommy’s shoulder. He maneuvered them out from under the cloak and shoved them both forward. They fell into solid silk, and Dream pressed them snug against it.

“Hyeh?! Dream! What are you doing?” came the Blade’s voice, and the solid silk wiggled under them and started to dislodge them. Dream wiggled them back into place. “Phil! What is he doing?!”

“He’s molding with his Set if I had to guess,” came Phil’s voice from somewhere nearby. Direction was getting hard to keep track of with all the manhandling.

“Molding?!”

 “It’s a Blob thing. Should be in that book you Admin left you. Blobs are very touch-oriented. It’s how they keep themselves in check a lot of the time. And if a Blob has been away from the Set for any large period of time, they need to resynch with the rest. They do that by ‘molding’ themselves back into the Set by touch. Hybrids imitate that behavior.”

“If it’s a Set thing, why is he doing it with me?!”

“Tech, he was wearing your cloak and apparently hiding in the walls of your basement. Why do you think he is doing it with you?”

“And you didn’t feel the need to warn me about this earlier?!”

“You read the book,” said Phil’s voice with amusement. “You can’t complain that you didn’t know what you were doing when you gave Dream that cloak.”

“I obviously didn’t. If I had known I’d get used as giant teddy bear, I would have left the homeless green teletubby to freeze.”

A mournful whine vibrated around Tommy, and Dream twisted himself and Tommy around and angled them off the solid silk. They were both yanked back onto the soft material. An extra layer of solid warmth held them both in place.

“Stay right there. I don’t want everyone blaming me when our Admin ends up frozen from the inside out,” the Blade grumbled, pulling them closer to him. “Mold or whatever you need to, but don’t get used to this. I prefer my personal space, and Chat’s trying to be the world’s worst migraine.”

“Want to share what they are saying?” said the only man ever sounding very smug.

“No,” the Blade growled with enough force to make all three of them tremble. “Shouldn’t you be examining the enchantments on Dream’s mask?”

“I’m getting to it,” Phil said. “Also in case you can hear us, Dream, neither of us peeked at your face. Our only priority is making sure you don’t accidentally kill yourself.”

Dream’s body shuddered, but Tommy tucked his head next to the taller blond which earned him a soft chirr. He got what Phil was trying to do. The big man had done the same to Tommy and Tubbo when they were younger and had gotten splinters all over their hands. He grabbed them and yanked them out before infection could set in. Phil was trying to keep Dream alive and through Dream the whole server. (Tommy could have gotten the whole server corrupted by pushing Dream’s best friends away from him— He could have indirectly caused Dream’s death. ) Still Tommy would bite Phil if he came close again.

“Huh. This f** — brat managed to put together some intricate but stable enchantments. Still harmful in the long run, but by using enchantments like binding with effects like slowness, he’s managed to keep his hybrid side from mentally deteriorating at a normal rate. The enchantments won’t keep him completely unaffected, but the instincts are locked into an almost stasis type state. However this comes at the cost of constantly keeping his body in the same state, so he also cannot retain any major injury while the mask is on. Sounds great in theory but he in return has to be going through his hunger at a constant rapid rate to make up for the energy needed to keep his body in shape. And since he cannot get from sleep, he has to be losing his ability to think rationally. He’ll likely need to hibernate for a few days to make up for the lack of sleep and stabilize both his instincts and his minds.”

“Checks out. I think the guy’s already in dreamland,” the Blade said softly. Tommy pulled away from Dream’s side enough to check that the Blade was actually correct. A large arm moved to allow him room to slip out of the green b****’s finally loose hold, but Tommy snuggled back into Dream’s side. His blob instincts wouldn’t let him get too far away from the green b****. (And it was perfectly cozy and warm where he was.)

“Looks like your stuck, mate. At least for the time being. I think we should probably contact his former Set to see if they are aware of what he is and what they’ve done by leaving him alone.”

“Not sure you should do that. Pulling off his mask to check the guy isn’t killing himself is one thing. Another is going around blabbing to the rest of the server about his hybrid status. He must have kept it secret for a reason.”

“If I don’t contact them, then you’re going to have to step up. Blob hybrids need about three people in their Set to keep mentally healthy. And we both know how the rest of the server will take you two growing closer.”

“Like you said, Phil, I already gave him my cloak. Might as well go all the way now,” the Blade snorted, but the arms tugged Tommy and Dream into more secure hold. He stood up with both of them carefully held against him. “But if he’s going to take a nap, then I am too. It’s been a while since I hibernated.”

“Someone on the server has to know about Dream. I could at least ask around to see who might know something. Maybe try to find out what his old Set does and does not know without giving away Dream’s status.”

“Fine. But if I find half the server at my door in a couple of days demanding to see Dream or execute him, I’m blaming you.”

“I can be discrete, mate. I’m not the one that tried to sneak into L’Manberg and immediately got caught.”

“Not my fault that that poster looked nothing like me. It was my wanted poster. It should have looked exactly like me.”

“Sure it should have,” the only man ever placated. “Go to bed. It’s way past your bedtime.”

“No argument from me. Make sure not to get yourself put back under house arrest.”

“I make no promises, but I’ll keep that goal in mind.”

The Bade gave a loud huffing snort and carried them both up the ladder as if they weighed nothing. Which was not impressive. Not one little bit. Tommy could have carried the Blade and Dream both with one arm behind his back if he wasn’t so tired. He chose to cling to Dream and make sure the green b**** stayed in place as the Blade pulled them into his room a few stories up.

After placing them on the bed, the Blade pulled out mountains of blankets and piled them around all sides of the bed. Tommy would have gotten up and demanded to know what the Blade was doing, but he was already colder without the Blade’s solid warmth. Not that he was cold cold. His body snuggled further into Dream who pulled him closer even in sleep.

A humungous fluffy blanket fell over them both and suffocated them until the Blade folded the part that was covering their heads back. The fuzzy pink blanket was tucked around Tommy and Dream’s shoulders. Then the solid weight returned to Tommy’s back and yet another blanket fell over the three of them. Tommy should have felt smothered. He should have been baking under all the layers of material surrounding them. He should have been squished between two solid masses of muscle. But Tommy’s body only felt warm and cozy and happy.

So Tommy let himself fall into the fuzzy, happy warmth and the sweet dreams that followed.