Tommyinnit Oneshots

Your Trust is Worth Waiting For

DISCDUO TIME DISCDUO TIME

DREAM IS NOT A MANIPULATIVE BITCH IN THIS ONE FOR ONCE 

TW: mentions of child abuse, toxic home life, dysfunctional family (in the beginning)

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For the first four years of his life, Tommy knew nothing but the pungent smell of beer and the stomach-curling sight of the empty pantry. 

His room was bare of toys and other comforts. He had three shirts and two pairs of pants he cycled through, and a single blanket and bare pillow sprawled across his bed. A lone piece of childhood sat watch by his pillow night after night, when not grasped tightly by the ears in his little hands - Bun-Bun. Phil once told him his mother had picked it out for him when she was still pregnant. It was the only thing Wilbur and Techno allowed him to keep. It made sense though - after all, like they always told him with their words and their fists, it was his fault she was dead.

He turned four in April and in the dusk of that year's summer —hot, sweaty August— he was being driven to pre-school in his neighbor Schlatt's truck with his son, Tubbo. Phil wasn't able to drive him, so they arranged a car-pool. When his father and him had walked across the street to speak to Schlatt about it, Tommy realized it was the first time he could remember his father's sallow skin lit by the light of the sun rather than the dim glow of the lamp in the living room. The rays cast a surprisingly friendly glow against the pale skin.

He found that he liked going with Tubbo and his dad, because Tubbo was really fun to talk to. Tommy had never spoken to another kid his age, and Tubbo was nice. He was glad they were going to school together, because Tubbo was his only friend.

On the first day he had walked into see all his classmates with their backpacks fresh off the Target racks and lunchboxes filled with sandwiches with the crusts cut off and Ziplocs of baby carrots and Goldfish. Tubbo didn't have quite as much, but Schlatt made an effort to get a bagged lunch into his hands that morning, and every morning after. His friend's single, full-time working father didn't have much time to give love, so he tried to make up for lost time with material. Maybe that was why Tubbo had an untouched pile of toys and liked hugs so much.

Nevertheless, Tubbo's rushed yet fulfilling lunch would have been better than what was in Tommy's hands - a spare yogurt cup he had snuck from snack, hands painfully empty of a lunchbox and shoulders bare of backpack straps. As experienced as he was with sneaking food, the teachers still caught him - to his surprise, all they did was give him a bag of Cheez-Its and a cookie from their lunch. He said thank you and scurried away to eat his cookie and Cheez-Its in the corner with Tubbo, neither of them wanting to sit at the tables with their classmates.

Within the first month of pre-school, his kind teachers had called CPS on his family. He was quickly thrown into a whirlwind of his father's broken-looking face, a duffel packed with his few belongings, and an uncomfortable bunk bed in an unfamiliar brick building. A never-ending stream of adults looked at him with their pity-filled faces as they led him down dark linoleum-floored hallways to meet with his state-issued social worker, Ms. Puffy (although Tommy had no idea what 'state-issued' or 'social worker' meant).

All Tommy knew was that one day, Ms. Puffy took his little, cold hand in her big, warm one and introduced him to the tallest adult he had seen since Wilbur. This was the first person who he felt like smiling back at—maybe because this tall man didn't look at him like his entire family was dead. No, they just didn't love him.

This man knelt down to his eye level and held out his hand for Tommy. Tommy didn't know why he was doing this, so he just grabbed the smallest finger.

"Isn't that nice," Ms. Puffy said in her puppy-voice (one could guess why it was called that). "Tommy, this is Dream. He's a nice man who's gonna take care of you now. Wanna say hi?"