Do I Need It? (Am I Under Control?)

The Meeting

It isn't gaslighting if it's to help Tommy, right?

Right?!

Wilbur disagrees.

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This gets a bit dark. Don't worry, it gets worse and then gets a lot better. The Crafts truly love Tommy, they just have no clue how to deal with humans and can be a bit infantalising.

Also, Wilbur POV???

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Phil strode into the kitchen, fangs grating together like chalk on a blackboard. His fledglings looked at him in alarm as they took note of the aggressive expression laying clearly on their sire's face. And if that hadn't tipped the two off, the mad-angry-mad thrumming through their bond definitely did.

His silence spoke volumes as Wilbur and Techno stood in line, urging their sire to speak as dread filled every empty crevice of their bloodless body.

"...I think we need to have a quick coven meeting..." Phil announced, clearly seething, displaying a piece of how angry he truly was.

His fledglings looked up at him in apprehension before nodding slowly, neither daring to look at the other beside them.

"I... Yeah, I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding..." Techno breathed, eyes locked firmly to the chipped, wooden floor.
Phil paused for a second, as if to let the horror sink into his two victims.

...

Phil vanished from view, only the cold air he'd cut through informing the two he had in fact, not disintegrated.

"So, uh... We're following him, right?" Techno whispered. Wilbur punched his arm softly and the two raced to their seats in their coven headquarters, a small bunker hidden amongst the thick forest, fifteen miles away from their home.

The building itself was mostly underground, a remnant of how society had seen vampires millennia ago, when vampire hunting was widely participated in by mislead miscreant humans who'd somehow managed to convince themselves of the 'cruelty' of their species.

Poor little things.

Of course, it had other purposes, such as bomb shelters during the various wars humanity had attempted over the years, such as World War 2, when humans decided that the mature thing to do was to throw weapons of mass destruction at each other.

Luckily, humans no longer looked after themselves, instead stepping away to allow those wiser to make the important decisions. Though, there were always a few insistent ones.

It had been penned in to show Tommy the bunker next week, though, it seemed unlikely due to Tommy's behaviour that morning. There was always time...

Wilbur and Techno sat across from each other; eyes locked on their sire who appeared to be focusing on concealing his displeasure rather than the presence of his coven. They sat in silence, Phil's jaw opening and closing as he attempted to find his words. He'd found something to say upon his wife's departure, the death of many a friend and yet now, only now was he struggling to verbalise his true feelings on a subject.

Perhaps, Wilbur thought, it was because in those times, there was a person to blame, someone to shake his fists at, release his anger in ear-splitting cries and hit ruthlessly until they went still. Before, it was always someone he loved having pain inflicted by those he loved.

But this was new.

Someone he loved had inflicted pain upon someone else he loved, and Techno had partially faced the consequences already: Tommy had made it clear that Techno was not forgiven and that was his right.

But at the same time, Tommy was living with vampires. The expectation of coming out of it entirely unscathed was both childish and stupid. Wilbur did not doubt that Tommy knew that, but had he somehow forgotten? Perhaps he, Phil and Techno had placed rose tinted glasses on him, blocking the true nature of reality from Tommy's youthful eyes. Well, Wilbur thought, what was so bad about that? Their gift of childhood and naivety should have been cherished by the boy while he still had it, but not mourned too much when the glasses inevitably fell off. Like a day at a theme park: a day to remember yet think of in mourning, lost time flashing in shards of reshaped and false memories.

"Alright, Tommy." Phil declared, as though his name was some sort of new invention (memories of Phil's prime-forsaken inventor phase invaded Wilbur's mind, those stupid fucking goggles his father refused to take off making him shudder.) and not just an adorable human boy.
Wilbur kicked himself internally for thinking such cruel thoughts. Tommy wasn't just some 'adorable human boy', he was Wilbur's sunshine, Techno's Theseus, and Phil's newest son.

He was theirs, all theirs, and nobody could take him from them, not even Tommy himself.