When Tommy wakes, there's moonlight on the bed.
Immediately, he knows something isn't right. His memories of what happened before he fell to sleep are blurred behind a curtain, obscured in a way that he can only pick out tiny segments of conversation.
"-Niki"
"... temperature..."
"Forgot... bed..."
A flash of skin, hands on his body; at first comforting, then confronting.
He can guess what it was.
He had spoken a little too outwardly, too confidently about something he knew to be true, so suddenly he was sick. Running warm, goosebumps 'all over you, you should get some rest, Tommy' .
It's fucking horse shit. Whenever they tell him he's unwell, he never feels it. Stupid fuckers, he thinks he'd know if he was ill, especially after all these years. It's just their sad excuse to shut him up.
He doesn't even remember how he got into bed.
Tommy pushes himself up, noticing the plastic cup and the half-empty glass of water with dismal acceptance. Of course. As he sits, some of the fog inside his head lifts and the memories flood back in. The argument, the double, Phil's caring touch.
And, most stirring of all, the real reason he was awake that night.
He never even had a chance to figure things out for himself, and if things really are falling apart the way they seem to be, he can't just rock up and ask . Usually, he doesn't even feel the strange swirl of drugs in his system, but he does now. There was something different in that cup, something new. Something he's never felt before. It's making him woozy, and his functioning limbs feel like they weigh far more than they do.
It would be so easy to just lay back and float, even if he just dipped between dozes. He just wants to collapse back into the soft confines of his sheets, forget about the day previous and just sleep , listen to his body's internal screaming for once.
He can't.
His body's internal screaming is now telling him to stay alert, keep aware. The red flags are waving right in front of his face and just as he's beginning to let them past his peripheral vision, to the forefront of his mind, they're snatched away again. He needs to hold on, needs to grab one and not let go.
It's fucking crazy. He's trying to justify this feeling against his father, the person who single-handedly raised him, paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep him alive, not leaving his side once throughout the whole ordeal. It doesn't feel real anymore. How does he even feel ?
Safe, sure. Loved, yes. Afraid...
The thoughts of safety very nearly cancel out the sudden realization that he has almost no recollection of any amount of time spent in a hospital, despite how sick they claim he is. He could blame that on the drugs, too, but now he's giving them too much credence.
The conclusion he comes to before he plummets back into the dangerless void of sleep is that there is something violently wrong with his family, and he's just now opening his eyes.
*****
Phil is pacing the kitchen when Wilbur and Techno stumble through the front door, leaning heavily on each other.
"Where the fuck have you been ?" Phil asks, anger born of worry tensing in his stomach. "You said day drinking!"
"And day drinking turned into regular drinking," Techno sends back, his monotone lifting a little in inebriation. "What're you gonna do about it?"
"Nothing," Phil sighs. "You're old enough to look after yourselves, but a text would have been nice. It's one in the morning!"
"Last time I checked," Wilbur slurs, clearly deeper in drink than his twin. "It is two ."
"Okay, Wil," Phil says defeatedly, deciding that enabling his son was far easier than fighting him. "Just... go to bed, okay? Drink some water."
"Phiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil," Wilbur whines, taking a step forward and almost tipping off Techno's shoulder. "I'm nearly twenty, don't tell me what to do. "
"I'll stop telling you what to do if you can walk in a straight line to the fridge," Phil deadpans, crossing his arms over his chest. Drunkbur takes this as challenge, lets go of Techno, takes two steps and falls flat on his face.
"That's what I thought," Phil says, fond amusement clouding the worry in his head. "Come on, let's go up to bed, huh?"
"Heyy, that's what we tell Tommy!" Wilbur points out, giggling to himself at the similarity. Angry warning flashes in Phil's eyes, and even though he's knee deep in alcohol, Wilbur looks sober for a second.
"Uh-huh," Phil placates to keep up appearances, hauling his son to his feet. Together, he and Techno manage to force Wilbur up the stairs and into bed, all the while blabbering indistinctly about sand.
The second his head hits the pillow, the sound stops. Techno, still in his own head somewhat, takes himself to his own room and finally, Phil can breathe again.
He knows his twins are adults and he can't protect them forever (that's what he has Tommy for) but they're still his children. It's instinct.
*****
The weird drug circulating his system seems to have dissipated when Tommy opens his eyes again. The fact that he can't finish a day without something unusual or scary happening is becoming a trend, one he doesn't like. It seems like a new lie starts every time he goes to sleep and every time he wakes up, there's a new mystery he's forced to solve.
Sunlight streams through open curtains, which were absolutely closed in the night when he first woke. Someone had been in here since then, and Tommy can guarantee it was Phil.
He hadn't noticed at first, but the way his father acts... it's not new, is it? For years, he's been in and out of sleep, supposed fits, and too many unfounded accusations. For years, he's been alone, with no one but Phil by his side.
Tommy can remember the day that his brothers stopped paying attention to him, and oh, how terribly it had stung. How can two people lose love for him so quickly? But he also remembered Phil whispering in his ears, telling him he didn't need them, that he would always be there.
Fuck, how long had it been since someone who isn't directly related to them stepped foot in their house? How long since someone else genuinely showed an interest in Tommy?
And now that he's bringing it to light, it feels like a huge punch to the gut. Hasn't he been through enough?
Every time he thinks about his childhood, holes, splotches and all, he feels a little part of himself break off and float into the abysmal plain of memory. Be it a shard of his heart or a sliver of his soul, cut from his body, something fell to the ground if he thought too hard. It feels like a nightmare; nothing makes sense, there's no escape, and he's terrified.
He just wants some solid ground to stand on. He just wants to stand! His life would be so much less effortful if he did. He wouldn't be constantly sore or tired. He could walk around like normal people. Normal people don't take frequent naps.
Somedays, it feels like he's a heart attack away from any kind of real love.
He needed to get out of bed and stop wallowing. No one ever got anywhere by sitting in a pool of self-pity. There were things to be done today.
Reluctantly, Tommy drags his wheelchair back into a place he can feasibly get into it and does, leaving the room apathetically. He rolls to Wilbur's bedroom door and pauses in front of it for a second before going to Techno's instead. He doen't want to aggravate Wil, lest he break whatever fragile truce they've managed to form.
He raps his knuckles softly on the thin wood, waiting for an answer.
He's ignored.
"I'm coming in, Tech," he calls, loud enough to travel through the drywall into his brother's room. He reaches for the handle, turns it and throws the door open, unapologetically loudly.
"Can I-"
Tommy cuts himself when he sees his brother. Or rather, when he doesn't see his brother. There's a lump curled up under the bedclothes, the only evidence that the bundle is Techno being the messy, probably rushed braid that hangs off the side of his pillow.
Tommy fights the urge to roll over and re-do it for him. It's been so long since he braided something; he wonders if he would even remember how.
On the bright side, at least he doesn't need permission anymore.
Tommy rolls to Techno's bedside table, carefully so not to disturb him. There lies his phone, dormant, plugged into its charger. Tommy doesn't want to hesitate - he really can't afford to, at this point - but he can't help it.
This feels wrong. All of this feels wrong.
Still, Tommy reaches down and picks up Techno's phone.
He takes a minute to figure out how to turn it on. There are three buttons on one side, two of which do nothing. The last one he tries makes the screen light up. He can barely see the contents - why is Techno's phone so fucking dim ?
He'll have to work with it. If it took him that long to turn it on, it'll take him far longer to figure out how to brighten it.
Tommy bends over the phone to shield it, and finds that he can see a little better. There's a photo being displayed, and to Tommy's surprise, he comes to find that it's of him . Well, him and Wilbur, but he's more dominant in the image. It seems to have been snapped discreetly, because neither brother are looking at the camera. They look so much younger... Tommy can't help but wonder when exactly it was taken.
Wondering aside, now he has to figure out how to open it. He's seen Phil open his phone a few times, so he'll try that way first. Gently, Tommy wipes his fingertip across the screen, and is unsurprised when it moves.
The screen flips to a different screen, and it's another picture of him. Techno acts like he doesn't give one shit about him, but likes him enough to keep him as both of his phone backgrounds? Something doesn't add up.
He can play detective some other day. He needs one thing from Techno's phone, and then he can go.
He looks at the display. There's a clock in the center of the screen; 12:48. Was he asleep that long? He imagined it would be closer to 9. It doesn't matter, he's awake now, though it does make him wonder why Techno is still asleep.
Below the clock is a little white bar displaying the words 'Search with Google'. A memory stirs; Wilbur bullying him about his PDA...
"Oh yeah? Open Google."
If he could only see me now, Tommy thinks bitterly.
He taps the little bar, and the screen chances again. A white box, with another bar. Something pops up at the bottom of the screen and it almost gives Tommy a fright.
The keyboard. He could slap himself, he feels so stupid.
Stop being so fucking jumpy, Tommy, the voice in the back of his head yells. Not everything is out to get you. Focus.
He listens to it. Pretty easily, he figures out the buttons on the keypad. It's like Phil's computer, only less clunky and more sensitive. It takes him more attempts than he'd like to admit, but finally the word triazoline makes it into the search bar.
Oh, fuck! What did he do? Google is gone, and in its place are a line of blue and grey circles. A dragging tap later, the entire screen is filled with them, and none of them relate to his search. What the fuck is a 'bluetooth'? They look like buttons, and what are buttons for if not to be pressed?
Tommy clicks all of them. A light comes on at the back of the phone, the screen turns an orange-y colour, and the text goes from white on black to black on white. He notices the Wi-Fi button is dark, so he pushes that one too. It turns blue, but doesnt change. A few more buttons; 'Do Not Disturb', 'Power Saving', and 'Mobile Data'.
Of course, he has no idea what any of them do, but eh. It was fun.
He makes a few more taps before swiping, a last resort that, somehow, works. Google has returned, with his search ready and waiting. 'Go', a little key at the bottom of the board says, and Tommy can only assume what it means to do. He pushes it, and the page begins loading.
Triazoline. Used widely-spread in the medical field to treat bacterial infections as well as high blood pressure, the summarized text reads.
It doesn't make sense. Tommy knows what he has - what he's been told that he has - and high blood pressure is not among that list. Bacterial infections are temporary, so how could it be a replacement for a medication he'd supposedly been taking for years?
It's total bullshit. It's fucking mental!
It's all a big, ugly lie.
A feeling of need sweeps over him. A deeply rooted desire to uncover every truth in his weird ass family. He can't help but be curious now that he knows his entire life is a lie. Sue him.
There's an incredibly tempting button just below the search bar, one that says images . He taps it with no trace of hesitation. He's unafraid of what he'll find.
The pills on the screen are caps. Half white, half blue.
Now that his eyes are open, Tommy is seeing far more than he bargained for.
*****
Techno knows his father is a bit of a character. He's a good man, for sure, but there have been instances in his life he has been unable let go unquestioned. Since their mother died, he had become so much more involved... in an incredibly bad way.
Tommy, for one. He was fine, completely fine, and then completely out of the blue, he just fell. The boisterous, excitable kid they knew turned into a husk of a human being. It didn't make any sense. A sickness of Tommy's calibre usually starts out slowly, and one at a time. All of his just appeared one day, and no one was allowed to challenge it.
When the kid started to get sicker, Phil had essentially told them to stay out of the way, which felt off to Techno. Tommy was very touchy and loving of his brothers, so it didn't add up that they had to limit contact. Did their father believe that was best for him?
He couldn't have. He didn't.
His father's words seemed founded on solid grounds, kind yet unwavering, but one look at Wilbur knew something to be wrong. The look of shock, pain, fear on his face was something Techno wouldn't forget for some time after.
He's badgered his twin for answers the minute he had a chance. Wilbur, after much argument, had simply said, "Don't get involved in things you don't understand."
Techno wanted to understand, but he knew he couldn't. If it was really that important, he'd know about it. Wilbur would come to him in his own time. Years passed, but Techno still held onto the notion that his brother would let him in on the secret he kept tucked so tightly to his chest.
Around seventeen, Techno began to put the pieces together.
There were incidents. Too many incidents to be coincidental. Things Tommy said when he thought the room was empty, things Wilbur said in his sleep when they still shared a room, and things he could see behind Phil's eyes.
They had a connection, Phil and Wilbur, that Techno couldn't grasp the substance of. Was it love, or was it resentment? Some days, it was both, and it was painfully obvious which was more prevalent.
Techno felt like he was walking on eggshells in his own home. He was seemingly Phil's sort-of favourite, liked more so than Wilbur but less so than Tommy, he knew that. It didn't stop Phil locking the basement door whenever he wasn't inside, nor from telling each boy a completely different story of what was down there.
He told Techno it was just a place to keep all of his memories. That much was probably true, photos of them and their mother, but they hadn't made that many memories. They never did anything as a family; if Wilbur or Techno wanted to do something, they had to take themselves. There was no 'I'll drop you off," or "I can pick you up," just "Drive safe."
They don't go anywhere. Tommy can't go anywhere. The poor kid hasn't left the house in over ten years and Phil wonders why he's so restless. Techno'd thought about giving him a taste of the world, a day trip to... somewhere. Phil shut it down before he could decide out where they'd go.
Control.
What was control? By definition, it means to have power over someone or something. Everyone likes control, Techno especially, but the extent of Techno's fascination stretched to the way that his bookcase was organised.
Phil's fascination in control is Tommy. The realisation came in slow bursts, starting with the day trip plans. His father's defensiveness hit hard and fast, and it felt like he was in deep trouble. It was weird, and he'd gone to Wilbur to ask if he thought the same.
It was like a repetition of the night Phil had told them to stay away from their baby brother. A darkness passed over Wilbur's eyes, quickly replaced by a hastily forged mask of indifference, but there were too many cracks in it for it to be functional.
He could see the undertone of desperation in his brother's schooled features, but for what, he couldn't place. Later that night, he'd look over to Wilbur's face, troubled even in sleep, and wonder if the desperation was for safety.
He'd started putting together the jigsaw, but some of the pieces don't quite fit, and some are missing entirely.
For example, why?