Work Text:
“Tommy, stop your whining. Come here. We’re leaving.”
Tommy reluctantly shimmies away from his social worker, taking his place at his father’s side. He shoots him a look and Tommy curls into himself.
“It was lovely talking to you, but we’ll be taking our leave. We’ll see you around.” Tommy isn’t surprised his father won the court case, he had Tommy’s own social worker wrapped around his finger in just a couple minutes of conversation. His social worker, Miss Debbie, smiles wide with an eager nod.
“I hope to see you soon, mister… you do have my number…” she trails off, giving his father a sly smile. Tommy’s nose wrinkles but he simply smiles back with a wink, hand coming up to grip Tommy’s shoulder as he leads him back to his car. Tommy takes his seat in the back, behind his father's seat to avoid the eyes on him.
The car ride is silent and Tommy feels himself beginning to zone out. He counts the trees they pass, attempting to stay present to get a read on the older man. Before he knows it, they've pulled into the parking lot across from their shitty apartment.
Tommy gets out of the car, gripping his trash bag of possessions to his chest. He follows his father up the steps to the houst and then into the kitchen where he collapses into a chair, looking at Tommy expectantly. He pauses, unsure what he wants.
“God, Tommy. You already forgot our routine? Did a little month away from home make you forget everything? Dumbass.”
Tommy did, indeed, forget everything. He mutters a swear, spinning to grab beer from the fridge.
“Fuckin' pottymouth,” his father hisses, leaning forward to watch Tommy pry the cap off.
Tommy doesn't respond, biting his cheek until iron floods his mouth. He passes the drink over.
His father scowls. “Those foster homes made you soft. Get out of my sight.”
Tommy nods, stumbling out of the kitchen and into his room.
-
Tommy is enrolled back into his school within a week. He convinces his old boss to let him back to his job after explaining his absence. He quickly falls back into old routine, but now attention clings to him, a sticky thing.
It starts in class with the pitying looks teachers give him. Then, at lunch, the girls he normally sits with (and ignores, but he’s heard one of them fondly call him their “table emo boy” before) start whispering whenever he sits in his corner seat. One of the girls smiles shyly at him and Tommy scowls, staring adamantly at the earwax the school calls meatloaf.
He doesn’t completely mind the teachers, despite the pity they were far more lenient with his slouching in the back of the class and playing various games on his beat up school computer, but he does mind the sudden interest in him at lunch.
“What’s your favorite color?” the girl closest to his seat asks, breaking the unspoken rule in their lunch situation. They let him sit in the corner, he wards off girls they don’t like with glares, and he gets to sit in silence.
“I’m colorblind,” he deadpans. It’s a lie.
“Oh, okay. Sorry,” she manages, flustered, and turns back to her group. Tommy sighs in relief and goes back to eating the plastic they call food.
-
“Hey, Tommy,” Dream greets him, leaning against the doorframe as he clocks in.
“Hey,” Tommy parrots, grabbing an apron and tying it around himself.
“I’m clocking out at six, so you’ll have to close on your own,” Dream informs him, stepping out of the way for Tommy to man the counter.
Tommy nods and Dream disappears into the back.
He smears his customer service smile on his face as the bell rings, preparing himself for a long day at work.
-
“I just don’t get why– oh, you’re back.”
Tommy blinks at the tall brunet he’d never talked to before in his life. “What?”
“You were gone. But you’re back now,” he grins at Tommy, who narrows his eyes.
“Right. What can I get you?”
The tall one opens his mouth only to be cut off by a deep, monotone voice. “He has an overly complicated order that he claims no one but you has ever made correctly.” Tommy’s eyes flick over to the shorter man with long, pink hair and blinks.
“Oh. Well, I’ll try to do it right again, I guess?” Fucker, he adds in his head.
The tall brunet nods, satisfied. “I’ll have a medium cold brew, add four shots of low fat milk, three shots of caramel and one of vanilla, cold foam on top and a caramel drizzle. Oh, iced.”
Tommy blinks. He repeats the order in his head as he enters the order into the register.
“I’ll have a small black coffee,” the pink haired man says, glaring at the brunet.
“Name for the black coffee?”
“Techno.”
“Name for the fucked up one?”
“Wilbur,” Techno snorts. Wilbur lets out an offended gasp.
Tommy rattles off a price over the brunet's muttering and turns to write the names on the cups, intentionally spelling ‘Wilbur’ as ‘Wimlur.’
“Tommy, I’m– oh. Hey, Techno,” Dream’s cheerful tone drops.
“Dream,” Techno greets, mouth twisting.
Tommy glances between the two having a stare-off. Wilbur looks similarly confused. “What’s up, Dream?” Tommy interrupts.
“Right. I’m clocking out.”
“It’s six already?” Tommy glances at the clock, releasing a string of swears when he realizes.
“Don’t swear in front of customers,” Dream reminds him for what might’ve been the fiftieth time.
“Sorry,” he says unapologetically, like he has every time before. He bites his cheek and turns to make Wilbur and Techno’s drinks.
He slides their drinks across the counter when he's done, Wilbur picking his up and eyeing it before taking a sip. He begins clapping and jumping like a little kid. Fucking weirdo. “You did it right!” he yells and Techno sighs, sipping his own black coffee.
Tommy rolls his eyes and waves at Dream as he abandons him Techno and Wilbur leave shortly after and the rest of his shift is spent scrolling on his phone at the counter and making considerably less complicated drinks.
-
Anxiety builds in him on his walk home. His father had been in a bad mood ever since the court case.
He tries to open the door, realizes it’s locked, and enters through his cracked bedroom window.
He pauses, sprawled on the floor of his room, to listen. He hears a feminine moan and withholds a groan of his own, nose wrinkling. He wishes he has a door to close but settles with fishing earbuds out of his school bag, connecting them to his laptop and playing his dumb chemistry notes video way too loud, wincing every time his father and the woman are heard in the periods of silence in the video.
He falls asleep to a random nature documentary.
-
The next day at lunch is the same. Again, the girl tries to talk to him. He shrugs at her questions and avoids eye contact until she goes back to ignoring him.
The class after lunch is chemistry and they get new lab partners. He gets sat next to the same girl that keeps trying to talk to him and learns that her name is Niki. She’s two years above him, he thinks.
-
“Tommy! Come up front!” Dream calls. Tommy is icing cupcakes for an order at the café, but he sets down the piping bag and sticks his head through the door.
Dream is glaring at Techno and Wilbur from the day prior. Wilbur is practically bouncing up and down, looking at Tommy with a bright smile.
“This weirdo won’t let me do their order, says it has to be you,” Dream tells him, annoyance clear in his voice.
Tommy snorts, switching places with Dream.
“My favorite coffee maker!!”
“I’m not a Keurig, you bitch,” Tommy snarks.
Wilbur chokes on a laugh and Techno asks for his same black coffee again. Wilbur prattles off the same stupid order and Tommy starts working on both of them.
This time, when he hands them both their coffees, they take the seats at the counter. Tommy gives them a weird look but shrugs, trading spots with Dream again. The table for icing cupcakes in the back is in direct view of a pair of seats a couple to the left of Techno and Wilbur. He watches, amused, as Wilbur convinces Techno to shuffle down until they can see Tommy again.
“How’s your day been, Keurig?” Wilbur crows, grinning widely.
Tommy rolls his eyes, picking the piping bag back up and beginning on the next cupcake. “My day was great until you came in, bitch boy.”
“Never mind, Techno, I want to leave now.” Wilbur complains, and Techno huffs. He grabs both their drinks and walks out the door, leaving Wilbur sitting at the counter.. Tommy chuckles as Techno’s absence is processed and Wilbur scrambles up, running out the door.
“That was weird,” Dream mutters, and Tommy is inclined to agree. Neither of them come back the rest of the day.
-
His father isn’t home when Tommy gets home. He goes to bed.
-
Wilbur becomes a regular at the cafe. Techno doesn’t come all the time, but when he does, Tommy and he team up to unrelentlessly bully Wilbur.
Sometimes, Wilbur stays until Tommy closes. Those days are his favorite, even as he has to practically fight Wilbur to keep him from walking him home. Something in his chest is inexplicably warm.
-
Tommy doesn’t think about his foster family much and it surprises him when he looks at a calendar and realizes it has been two months since he moved back in with his father.
His father, after having been sober for the month-long court case, had fallen even further into his drinking habits. A portion of Tommy’s pay, instead of going into rent and the water bills, has started funding the drinking and the smell of whiskey and cigarette smoke sticks to Tommy more often than not. Sam, his boss, joins the group giving Tommy more attention than he’s worth.
“Tommy, I want you to remember I’m here if you need to talk,” Sam tells him one day. Tommy looks at him suspiciously.
“Thanks, Sam, but where is this coming from?”
Sam glances down at Tommy’s arm, where he realizes his sleeve had ridden up to reveal a purpling bruise on his wrist. Tommy pulls it down. “I’m fine, Sam,” he promises with a wide smile.
“Take a sandwich when you leave today, okay? On the house.”
Tommy feels a familiar resentment in his chest at the blatant pity, but nods anyway. He needs the job and he’s hungry.
-
At lunch, Niki slides a bottle of perfume and a note to him before standing to throw out her trash. He watches her leave and looks at the note.
‘Go to the bathroom and spray this, teachers will smell the whiskey and you’ll get detention. You can give it back in chem, -Niki’
Tommy scowls at basically being told he smells bad, but he knows it’s true. His father had spilled whiskey onto him the night before and the water bill not being paid meant he couldn’t shower. He isn’t going to take her pity perfume, though. He isn’t that pathetic.
“I don’t need your pity,” Tommy scowls and shoves the perfume back at Niki in chemistry, still reeking of whiskey and cigarette smoke.
“It’s not–” Niki begins to respond but Tommy is walking away, headed to the weed bathroom. He’s skipping chem today.
-
Wilbur comes in that day during Tommy’s break. He’s slumped in half over a table in the corner, laptop open where he lazily drags his mouse over a to-do list of assignments and makes no move to actually open any of them.
He doesn’t even order, instead plopping down across from Tommy. He wrinkles his nose. “You smell,” he tells him and Tommy scowls, lifting his head.
“Fuck off.”
Wilbur just laughs. “What’s up, Toms?”
Tommy’s breath stutters at the nickname but he plays it off with a bang of his head on the table. The pain blooms across his forehead, a familiar thing that Tommy is disgusted by but leans into. He wants to hit his head again, but Wilbur shoves his hand between Tommy and the table to soften the next hit.
“Toms, hey, don’t do that,” Wilbur pleads as Tommy lifts his head to glare at Wilbur. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Tommy grunts. “I’m fine.”
He closes his laptop, stands from the table and moves behind the counter. He logs his break and moves to make Wilbur’s stupid complicated order that Tommy had memorized.
Wilbur’s eyebrows are furrowed as he watches Tommy make his drink and he hisses at the pity Wilbur wears like a crown.
Tommy disappears into the back as soon as Wilbur pays, working on an order of cupcakes with an ear out for the door’s bell. He glances out of the room when it chimes to see Wilbur walking out, eyes trained on his phone. Tommy tells himself it doesn’t hurt.
-
Tommy enters the front door, surprisingly unlocked, when he gets home. He pauses in the entryway at the sight of his father pinning his social worker to the wall. A hickey blooms red on her neck and his father’s shirt is unbuttoned. Tommy stares, frozen. His social worker stares back.
“Well, um, I really must get going, this visit wasn’t meant to be a long one, I’ll just jot you down as improving,” Miss Debbie rambles, blush rising to her cheeks as she slides out from under his father’s arm. She pauses, then turns to Tommy’s father. “I might have to come back for another visit in a couple weeks, though,” she grins at him and scurries out the door.
“What the fuck,” Tommy mutters, staring at his father still.
“Goddamnit, Thomas, you just had to come home tonight. What the hell am I supposed to do with you barging in and ruining my dates?”
“Your date was with my social worker!” Tommy yells, exasperated. He regrets it as soon as his father slams him into the wall, similar to the position he and Debbie had just been in. A hand grabs at Tommy’s chin, squeezing.
“I thought I had taught you not to talk back,” he growls and the smell of alcohol is heavy in his breath. He tilts Tommy’s head to the side and Tommy’s head hits the wall after a slap to his face. Fat fingers pry his mouth open before digging nails into his lip. “I used to split my lip as a kid, always a pain to talk after. A pussy like you shouldn’t talk for a few days.”
Tommy winces as he feels blood trickle down his chin, his father pulling away and wiping the blood on his fingers onto Tommy’s shirt. “Get me a beer,” he huffs, shoving himself off of Tommy and stumbling down the hallway.
-
“Dude, what happened to your face?”
“You can’t just say that, Tubbo!”
Tommy looks up to see a tall kid wearing a mask smacking a short boy with brown hair covering his eyes. He scowls.
“Sorry about him, he’s a bit insensitive sometimes. This is Tubbo, I’m Ranboo,” the tall one explains.
“I don’t care,” Tommy snipes and looks back down to his laptop.
“Ooh! Are you playing that one color game? My high score is 61!” Tubbo yells, peering around Ranboo to watch Tommy play the game.
Tommy glares at him and closes his laptop, staring at the whiteboard at the front of the room. It was his maths class, the class before lunch and what often felt like the longest one. He did like his math teacher, though, as she often just let them have a free period after whatever fifteen minute lesson she planned.
Ranboo pulls Tubbo away from his attempts at talking to Tommy, shooting him an apologetic smile that Tommy glares at.
-
Some girl Tommy vaguely recognizes throws herself into the seat across from him at lunch.
“I’ll give you some of my food if you pretend to talk to me for like, two minutes, I’m avoiding my ex and he just walked in to look for me,” she rushes out and Tommy snorts. He’s hungry and he likes this deal more than Dream sneaking protein bars into his bag at work or Sapnap burning things and then giving them to Tommy to eat.
“I’m Tommy. What’d he do?”
“Clementine. Caught him cheating on me last weekend, he’s been blowing up my phone asking to talk but I ran into him on Monday and he just cussed me out for not accepting his apology. Oh, shit, he sees me,” she ducks her head and stares wide eyed at Tommy, barely blinking.
“Well, he’s an ass alright,” Tommy mutters. “I’m gonna flip him off.” Tommy spins in his chair, making eye contact with a football jock staring straight at him, anger clear. Tommy sticks out his tongue and gives him the middle finger to Clementine’s snickers.
The jock glares at him, dragging a thumb across his neck, and turns around to stalk out of the cafeteria.
Tommy laughs at the threat, but when he turns around Clementine looks worried. “I didn’t mean for you to get on his bad side, you were just the only one I saw that wasn’t sitting with other guys or girls I don’t like,” she tells him. Tommy shrugs, looking down at his food.
“Oh, right! Um…” Clementine throws a lunchbox onto the table, digging through it. “Do you like cheezits?”
Tommy shrugs. He’d never had it. She throws a ziploc bag of orange square-shaped crackers at him, flashes him a bright smile, and disappears as quickly as she had arrived.
Tommy decides he likes cheezits.
-
“Who do I need to beat up?” Sapnap loudly asks when Tommy walks into work. His eyes are trained onto the splotchy purple bruise on his cheek and chin, lips split in three places.
“Yourself,” Tommy replies, and smacks him in the face lightly. Sapnap bursts out laughing. “Stop worrying, bitch. I’m fine.”
-
Privately, Tommy thinks his father must’ve been a pussy as a kid. The splits in his lip hurt, of course, but he can easily talk around the pain.
-
“Toms? What happened?”
Tommy glances up from where he’d been hunched over his laptop, typing out an essay for his English class. Wilbur is looking at him, focusing on the bruises, but he looks at Tommy’s eyes every once and a while, too.
“Nothin’ happened, Wil,” Tommy grumbles. He stands up from his seat behind the counter and grabs the cup for Wilbur’s regular order. He forgoes the usual misspelling of ‘Wilbur’ and writes ‘bitch boy’ on the side of the cup.
“No, something happened, Tommy. Who hit you?” There’s an underlying anger in Wilbur’s voice that Tommy shies away from.
“No one hit me,” he insists. “I ran into a door. That’s all.”
“A hand shaped door?”
“Mhm. I was so distracted by its odd shape I walked right into it.”
“I really want to see this ‘door’ so I can beat the shit out of it.” Tommy lets out a chuckle at the imagined sight.
“I think I made a friend today,” Tommy interrupts whatever Wilbur was going to say next. He meets Wilbur’s annoyed glare evenly and begins to ramble about Clementine, refusing to shut up until Wilbur leaves.
The chime of the door as Wilbur leaves fills Tommy with equal parts relief and disappointment. He focuses on the relief.
-
Tommy has weekends off. As often as he tries to convince Sam to let him work, apparently it’s ‘illegal’ to let a minor work more than a certain amount of hours in a week. This obviously doesn’t apply to Tommy, because he is a Big Man and above the law, but Sam still refuses to let him clock in on weekends.
Tommy still goes to the cafe on weekends most of the time, if only to get out of the house. He tends to sit at the counter and bother whatever worker happens to be stuck with a weekend shift. Unless the worker is someone who Tommy hates (cough-Jack-Manifold-cough), then he wanders around the city until he finds something to do. Most often, he ends up at the library after an hour or two of walking around.
It’s in the hour or two that Tommy finds himself sitting on a bench, watching two birds fight over a piece of bread, that Wilbur talks to him outside of the cafe for the first time. Tommy is slumped on the farthest edge of the bench when Wilbur slides in next to him. “Tommy!” he crows, as if he isn’t ruining Tommy’s perfectly crafted routine.
“Wilbur,” Tommy responds because he’s an asshole, but he isn’t that much of an asshole and Wilbur had sounded happy to see Tommy.
“What are you doing out here? I’ve never seen you on this street before.”
Tommy shrugs. “‘M not allowed to work on weekends and I like to wander. Just found myself here this time.”
“Do you mind if I wander with you today?” Wilbur speaks slowly, as if walking on eggshells with his words.
Tommy shrugs, and they sit in silence.
-
“What would you feel about ice cream? On me.”
Tommy shrugs. He’s been shrugging a lot recently. His stomach cramps but he ignores it in favor of keeping in step with Wilbur.
They walk a couple minutes to a corner ice cream parlor. When they step inside there’s no jingle like there is at the cafe.
“Niki Nihachu!” Wilbur crows and a familiar blonde-pink haired girl looks up from the counter. Tommy scowls.
“Wilbur!” Niki smiles, but it dims when she spots Tommy.
“I want to introduce you to my friend, Tommy,” Wilbur says. Niki smiles back at him.
“We’ve met, we’re lab partners in chem and share a table at lunch. It’s nice to see you, Tommy.”
Tommy just nods, staring at his shoes, confidence gone. He could be a little more of himself around Wilbur, but someone from his school? What if she tries to talk to him more? Or show up at the cafe? Those two worlds were not meant to collide, but as per what is slowly becoming usual, Wilbur is ruining the perfectly built barrier.
Wilbur throws an arm around Tommy’s shoulder, pulling him close, and Tommy’s thoughts are gone. All he can focus on is the warm arm around him, eyes wide.
At some point, Wilbur hands him some kind of ice cream in a cup. He rubs Tommy’s upper arm, whispering, “I’ve got you, Toms.”
-
On Monday, Tommy is sitting at his lunch table as usual with his tray of school food. He jumps when someone sits across from him, throwing a bag onto the table.
“Hey,” they say, and Tommy looks up to see Techno.
Techno, of all people. Tommy didn’t even know he was still in school. He says as much.
Techno shrugs, “I’m a senior. I was held back in seventh grade, though. Spent too much time suspended.”
Tommy nods at that and they lapse into silence. It’s comfortable. Every now and then, Techno flips his phone around to show Tommy a Reddit post. It’s nice.
-
Tommy comes home after work to loud music blaring through the house. He peers through his window and finds two adults making out against his closet door. He scowls and turns to sit on the porch, grabbing his laptop and booting up the essay he’d been assigned for English.
His room isn’t empty until 4 in the morning. He strips his bed and throws it into his dirty clothes pile and sleeps on the bare mattress with a blanket he finds in the closet.
-
Techno sits with him again at lunch. He takes one look at his drooping eyes and tells Tommy to take a nap. Tommy scowls but lays his head on his arms and he doesn’t realize that he fell asleep until Techno wakes him with a hand on his shoulder.
-
At the cafe, Sam insists on Tommy taking a sandwich during his break. He tries to avoid him, but Sam is stubborn and Tommy ends up sitting with a sandwich in front of him before long.
Wilbur comes in during his break again, but Sam refuses to let him come back behind the counter until he eats the sandwich.
Wilbur sits across from him, watching him pick at the plate of food. “How about I eat one half and you eat the other?”
Tommy looks up at Wilbur, considering, and nods. Half a sandwich is much less daunting than the full one.
They both finish their half and move to the counter where Tommy makes Wilbur’s drink. Wilbur stays until close.
-
His father has another woman over. Tommy wishes he had one of those big hairy men for a dad so there wouldn’t be so many women over all the time. The noises coming from the living room made him want to throw up.
-
The next weekend, Wilbur finds Tommy at another bench in the city. They don’t wander this time, instead sitting on the bench together and sharing earbuds connected to Wilbur’s phone. Shyly, Tommy asks for Wilbur's Spotify playlist.
Wilbur goes on a rant about anteaters and Tommy joins in on his stubborn hatred for the animals. Tommy’s cheeks hurt from smiling at the end of it.
-
“Why haven’t you been sleeping?”
It’s a pretty straightforward question. Tommy and Wilbur had been sitting together at the counter of the cafe, Sapnap and Dream working meaning Tommy spent his time there on Sundays.
“My dad’s been… fuckin’, bringing people over, I guess. They’re loud,” he confesses. “He had a party on Monday. Some people were in my room making out and stuff.”
Wilbur is silent, looking at him. When Tommy doesn’t continue, he wraps an arm around him. “I’m sorry, Toms.”
Tommy gives him a weak smile.
-
In Spanish class, they do an assignment about their family. The teacher is not happy with him saying he has only a dad, so Tommy makes some people up. Two brothers.
He names them Wilbur and Techno.
-
Tommy feels another spike of anxiety when he gets to his house that night. There’s an unfamiliar car in the driveway, but there’s no loud music.
He knocks before coming in, something he rarely does. “Hey, Toms! Why don’t you come into the kitchen and meet this nice man?”
Tommy throws his backpack down and peers into the kitchen. At the barely-used table, a man with black hair and a beard is sitting in a straight-backed chair.
“Um, nice to meet you, sir.”
“Ah, you must be Tommy? My name is Matthew.” Tommy nods back at his greeting. Matthew turns to Tommy’s father. “May I talk with Tommy outside, in private?”
His father nods absently, watching some baseball game on the TV. Tommy leads Matthew back to the front yard.
Once outside, Matthew sits on the steps of their porch and pats a little ways away for Tommy to join him. He does, hesitant.
“Hey, Tommy. I’m going to be your new social worker, Miss Debbie confessed to her… activities with your father. I have some partners coming here in a couple minutes to talk with your father, so you may be seeing some more of me.”
Tommy glares at Matthew. They had said the same thing last time. “They said the same thing last time. Why? I had bruises. I’m fine, see?” Tommy turns to face Matthew completely, showing off his bruise-free face.
Matthew nods. “I know. But your father is not being... arrested for child abuse, but he is being arrested, and so you will be removed from his care.”
Tommy turns to stare at the brown grass. He doesn’t want to go to a foster house again, not now that he has Wilbur and Techno.
But then again… his foster care stay months ago included a door and a comfortable mattress. A strict curfew but one that ensured he wasn’t sitting outside until 4 in the morning.
Tommy squeezes his eyes shut and, with grit teeth, says, “can I go pack a bag?”
“Of course.”
-
Less than an hour later and Tommy is in the passenger seat of Matthew’s car, bag clutched to his chest as Matthew chats with a police officer who has Tommy’s father in his car.
Matthew eventually parts with the officer and joins Tommy in the car. He fiddles with the radio for a minute before turning on some 80s rock music Tommy doesn’t recognize. It’s a 40 minute drive.
Eventually, they make it to a house. It’s tall and obviously nicer than Tommy’s house, the neighborhood having a pool and everything. A garden is well kept at the front of the house. Matthew leads him to the door.
It doesn’t take long for the door to swing open after Matthew knocks and Tommy flinches away from the sudden movement. He flushes, trying to play it off as just shifting where he was standing.
Behind the door, though, is a tall man with mutton chops and a man bun. “Hey, come in, come in. My name’s Schlatt. You must be Tommy.”
-
Matthew is nicer than Debbie. He stays for a while after they arrive, making sure Tommy is okay, before leaving. Debbie had barely even stepped inside.
Schlatt has two sons, Tubbo and Ranboo. One of Schlatt’s friends, Quackity, lives with them too.
Tubbo is chaotic but Ranboo reels him back in. Tommy is quiet, for now, but he thinks if he stays they could become friends. He remembers Tubbo liking his color game in math, annoying as it was at the time.
-
He emails Sam on his laptop, letting him know that it was an emergency and he’d be out for a couple days, but he’d let him know when he can work again.
The day is boring. Tommy spends it holed in his room doing schoolwork and watching YouTube videos on his laptop.
-
The Underscore’s liked family breakfast, apparently. After a night of fitful sleeping on the too-soft bed, Tommy wakes to a knock on the door. “Tommy? Are you up? Breakfast is ready.”
He groans, but replies, “yeah, I’m up. I’ll be down in a second.”
He hears retreating footsteps and struggles to put on his day clothes. He clambers out of the guest room and stumbles down the stairs, pausing at the sight of Schlatt and Tubbo fighting over pancakes with a too-tall Ranboo slouching over a plate of eggs protectively. He hesitates but takes a seat at the empty spot, taking two sausages from a serving plate in front of him. Ranboo smiles at him, shoveling eggs into his mouth as Tommy hesitantly eats his sausage. It’s good food. Tommy hasn’t eaten anything well made besides Sam’s sandwiches in a long time, and breakfast food in general was barely ever served at the fast food places he got his meals from.
Eventually, Schlatt notices Tommy’s presence and looks ashamed, letting Tubbo take the pancakes with a shriek of joy from the younger boy.
“Hey, Tommy. I hope you slept alright.”
Tommy smiles and nods, looking down at his plate. He loses his appetite when all three’s focus clings to him, observing.
“When would you want to start going back to school?” Schlatt asks. Tommy just wants him to stop looking at him.
“Um. Tomorrow? If that’s okay?”
“Of course. Do you need anything today? For school?”
“No,” Tommy hesitates, “but… um, if it’s okay, I have an after school job? Of course if you want me home by a certain time I’d understand, but I kind of had to email my boss to tell him I can’t come in, and we’re low on workers and–”
“Tommy, hey, it’s alright. You can of course go to your job. It’s after school you said?”
“Uh, yeah. I usually work Monday through Friday until 8.”
“That’s perfectly fine. Do you have a ride home?”
“No, I can walk.”
“I’ll be honest, that doesn’t make me too comfortable. Can I pick you up from now on? Or Quackity?”
Tommy shrugs. As long as he can keep seeing Sam and Wilbur, he can put up with an awkward 10 minute car ride. “Yeah, alright. I can write down the address for you.”
Schlatt nods, smiling, and turns back to his plate of food. Ranboo and Tubbo do the same.
-
He emails Sam again, saying he’ll be in tomorrow. He clicks past the unopened response to his first email.
-
After school, Tommy has to dodge Ranboo and Tubbo waiting nearby his locker to slide out the side door of the school. He jogs across the road that is used for late busses and crosses into the tree line, quickly appearing on a sidewalk on the other side of the woods and beginning his walk to work.
When he walks in, Dream is behind the counter. “Tommy!” he yells and Tommy winces. “I missed you, man!”
Tommy is suddenly caught up in a hug as Sapnap peeks his head around the door to the back. “Tommy?”
“Hey, big man,” he wheezes, squished in Dream’s grip. “I missed two days and you guys act like I died.”
“How were we supposed to know?!” Sapnap exclaims, rushing to help squeeze the air out of Tommy’s lungs.
“Guys, I need air.”
“Oh, right,” Dream huffs, pulling away. “What’s up?”
Tommy shrugs. “I was sick,” he lies. Dream doesn’t need Tommy’s daddy issues on top of his own life.
Dream and Sapnap seem to take the answer easily, because they let him clock in without more interrogation.
-
“Tommy! Oh my god, you’re back!”
He lifts his head from where he was swearing out a crumbling bread loaf to see the tall beanpole that is Wilbur jumping up and down. Techno stands at his side, still, but a small quirk of his mouth reveals his delight.
“Oh prime, William, you’re awake? Last I heard you’ve been in the hospital… is your memory okay? I haven’t been gone… maybe you should go back to that psychiatrist…” Tommy mutters. A shout and a wad of paper hurtling at him has him bursting into laughter, ducking behind the counter to avoid a paper cup.
“Hey, come let me hug you. I missed you.”
“I was gone for, like, two days,” Tommy grumbles, but slides around the counter to stiffly step up to Wilbur.
Wilbur wraps his arms around his shoulders, pulling him to his chest and resting his head on the top of Tommy’s curls. Hesitantly, Tommy brings his arms up to settle on Wilbur’s mid back. He gets a squeeze in response before Wilbur steps back, a smile bright on his face.
“So, my favorite Keurig, prepared to make my drink?”
Tommy snorts and gets to work.
-
He falls into a new routine involving hanging out with Tubbo and Ranboo at lunch and being driven home from work by Schlatt and occasionally Quackity. It’s comfortable.
His father’s court trial has nothing to do with Tommy, apparently. His father is sentenced to six years behind bars for possession of cocaine. Schlatt tells him he is welcome to stay with them for as long as he wants, but that they won’t be offended if he would rather be removed.
Tommy chooses to stay, and he does.
It's the happiest he's ever been.