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Tommy raps quickly on the solid spruce door, bouncing anxiously on the balls of his feet.
For a long moment, he does not hear the telltale footsteps of someone coming to answer the door, long enough that Tommy lifts his hand, fingers loosely curled, to knock once again.
The door swings open abruptly, revealing Technoblade, dressed in a loose white poet’s shirt and black trousers, hair tied back in a ponytail instead of a braid, with reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.
Techno’s expression twists when he sees Tommy standing there, wearing his loosely knit cardigan and tattered tennis shoes. Tommy pulls his hand back as if he’s been burned, folding it to his chest and then letting it fall to his side.
“What are you doin’ here, Tommy?” Techno asks gruffly, looking him over with something that might be disgust.
“Hey, big man!” Tommy chirps, hoping that his voice doesn’t waver too much. “I just wanted to drop by and bring you something, since I know I should have brought it back ages ago. Had big man shit to do, you know?”
He watches Techno’s mouth twist wryly. “No, Theseus, I don’t know. I’m not sure if I want to know.”
“That–” Tommy licks his lips, throat closing around a suppressed cough. “That’s the difference between you and me, Tech-no-blade. I make all the big man shit my business, and you do not. It’s why when I die I will be immediately promoted to CEO.”
Techno’s brows furrow. “What? ” He shakes his head, pink hair swishing behind him. “No, you know what? I don’t even want to hear the explanation for that. What do you want, Tommy?”
The anxiety creeps up on Tommy again then, and he swallows as he looks up at his oldest brother. After a moment, he offers a weak smile. “I wanted to bring this back,” he says, reaching back and pulling the Axe of Peace from its sheath on his back. Tommy offers it to Techno, turning the blade to face himself so it’s not as threatening. He tries to ignore how his hand shakes, but Techno’s eyes fix firmly on his white-knuckled fingers.
“Aren’t you cold, dressed like that?” Techno asks, not even starting to reach to take the axe.
“What? Techno, I’m trying– Look, please just take it. You were right. I don’t deserve it, and I don’t know if I ever will. I stole it from you and you should have it back.” Tommy’s throat is starting to tickle, and he works his throat carefully as if he can make the sensation go away.
“Tommy,” Techno says, and this time, his alarm registers in Tommy’s ears. “Do you have a fever? Why do you look like that?” Finally, finally, he takes the axe out of Tommy’s hand, leaving it to nearly fall to the floor when he leans it against the wall just inside the door.
Tommy all but wilts without the weight of the axe to hold up. “Bye, Techno, I’ve got to—”
“Wait, Tommy’s here?” comes a new voice, and Tommy looks up to see Wilbur lean around a corner. His older brother’s mouth curls into a bright smile. “Tommy!”
Tommy stares at him. Wilbur’s been revived for a while now, but Tommy has only seen him around once or twice. He’s been busy with Techno and Phil, but he looks like he’s doing okay. He looks happy to see Tommy, actually, which is strange considering that he hasn’t seemed to care enough to come find him.
The coughing fit comes on so suddenly that he doesn’t even have a chance to take a step back, let alone run, and he doubles over, pressing his face into his elbow and grasping helplessly at the railing as pain lances through his chest. His own pitiful whine reaches his ears, strung out between violent coughs. Tears drip down his cheeks, forced out with the convulsions wracking his body.
A single, perfect camellia falls to the porch with a wet smack, and Tommy shudders as he tries to catch his breath. It stares back at him, the same colour as Techno’s hair, laid innocently on the wood. It’s dripping blood.
“Tommy—” Techno says, sounding stricken. Tommy startles, almost having forgotten that he was there, and looks up at him. Techno’s eyes widen at the blood dripping down his chin, and he takes a half-step forward, reaching for him. Tommy scrambles back, panic clawing at his throat.
His eyes dart to Wilbur, who has gone white as a sheet and is staring right at Tommy. Now Phil stands beside him, holding a towel with a smudge of something white, maybe flour, on his cheek. His father’s gaze darts between the flower on the porch and the blood on Tommy’s mouth, and his expression morphs into horror.
“I’m sorry—” Tommy chokes out, barely able to speak around the rawness of his throat. “Sorry, I’m sorry. Just– I’ll go, just please–” He whimpers, feet skidding just as Techno catches him around the arm, pulling him closer. His head hurts, and it would be so much easier if he could just go and let the flowers kill him, away from everyone else.
Tommy hangs his head and closes his eyes tightly. “I'm sorry,” he whispers again, but he doesn't think anyone hears him.
It feels like an interrogation.
Tommy is curled up, small as he can make himself, on the couch that faces the fireplace. Techno and Phil sit in armchairs across from him, and Wilbur paces before the fireplace, his every movement showing the frantic worry that seems to fill him.
He’s cleaner, now, having been given a damp towel to clean his face and a glass of water for his throat. His cardigan has been taken and is now draped over the opposite arm of the couch. The blood-soaked sleeve visible to all is a reminder of his failure to hide even this weakness. Tommy turns away.
“Tommy,” Phil starts, sounding choked, but doesn’t continue. Tommy waits, expecting reprimand for hiding the hanahaki, or for having it at all.
You’re using this to guilt them into loving you, Tommy.
That’s what Dream would have said. Dream would have been right. He tried so hard to hide it, to not make people feel a responsibility for something that they couldn’t control. Not even Tubbo or Ranboo know, and yet here he is, unloved, dying, and forcing their hand.
His breath rattles in his chest, and he tastes copper on his tongue again. Tommy tries not to cough, tries to just clear his throat, but it comes out almost like a hiccup, involuntary. A trickle of blood slips from the corner of his mouth and he wipes it away as quickly as he can, smearing it over the back of his hand.
Across the room, he hears Wilbur sob.
“Tommy, how long has it been?” Techno asks, gruffly. His voice is tense, tight, and it makes Tommy wince. He knew they’d be mad, but out of all of them he had hoped that Techno might care the least.
His hands tremble to match his voice, but he answers quietly, “Four months.” There’s no point in lying. They all know his tells, and even if they didn’t he doesn’t have much longer before it takes him. Whole flowers starting to come up means weeks, maybe even days left.
“Only four?” Phil asks. He sounds almost confused, and Tommy can’t help it. He snorts, scowling at the thick rug at his feet.
“Yeah. Four,” he says, hating the way that it comes out half bitter and half broken. “Goes quick when there’s no chance of getting loved back.”
“Who– Who is it?” Wilbur chokes out. Something about his tone makes Tommy look up, and he finds Wilbur looking at him with tears sparkling on his cheeks.
Incredulity flashes through him. He’s fucking tired, he’s in pain, and they can’t even see that they’re the reason for it?
“Everyone,” he spits. “Everyone I have ever cared about.”
“What–”
“Oh, don’t play fucking dumb,” he says, curling in on himself. He doesn’t sound angry, for as spiteful as his words are. He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’ve spent every day of my life giving everything I have because I’m fucking stupid and I love too much and I don’t know when to stop for my own health. It’s only fitting that loving people takes the last thing I’ve got, right?”
“Tommy, please, I need– I need to be on the same page. Who are you talking about?” Phil asks, and when Tommy looks at him from beneath his lashes, he looks nearly ready to tear his feathers out.
“You,” he says plainly. “Wilbur. Techno. Tubbo, Ranboo. That’s probably where the worst of it is coming from, but I’m sure some of it is from Dream. I hate him, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to not love him, just a little.”
“Tommy,” Wilbur starts, and Tommy meets his gaze, waiting for the niceties, the pretending.
“Tommy, we love you,” Techno says. His gaze snaps to his eldest brother, and he’s startled to find that the firelight catches the tears in his eyes. “I don’t know why you think we don’t, but we do.”
“If all the things you’ve said to me aren't enough to explain why I don’t think you love me, then I’d think that this is,” Tommy mutters, the fire in his chest dwindling at the sight of Techno— the Technoblade—crying.
“Toms,” Phil says softly, dragging his attention back to him. His smile is sad but kind. “Toms, hanahaki doesn’t happen if you aren’t loved back. It just happens if you think you aren’t loved back.”
You just decide what’s real or not, Tommy. That’s what’s wrong with you. You think I’m the bad guy but it’s all just in your head! It’s not real and you can’t make it real just by—
“No!” Tommy says, far too loudly. He knocks the heel of his palm against the side of his head, because Dream is in prison, he shouldn’t be still getting to him. “You don’t– You can’t be right, because if you’re right, then he was right, and I can’t start believing he was right again, please. ”
Tommy curls into himself, a snail retreating into his shell, lungs throbbing and ears ringing even when he clamps his hands over them.
The couch dips beside him, and he flinches when he is drawn to his left, lifted and moved until he is leant against Techno’s chest, curled up tight in his lap.
“I’m sorry, Theseus,” Techno rumbles, barely loud enough for Tommy to hear. “I’m sorry we made you think we didn’t love you. It’s not your fault, but it’s not true either. We’re to blame, and I’m sorry . I’m sorry this happened to you, I’m sorry you’re hurting, and I’m sorry for all the hurt you’ve been through. I love you, Tommy, and I swear on Carl’s life that that's true.”
It’s like a dam bursts then, one that Tommy hadn’t even known was there. He sobs, ugly and wet, into Techno’s chest. He cries for himself and for no one else. He cries for the years of hurt, for how long he’d been certain that Techno and Phil didn’t hold anything in their hearts for him, for the months Dream had made him love him, for the months he was sure that Tubbo didn’t need him, and for the lifetime that he’d been sure he was unloved.
He thinks Puffy would tell him that he’s allowed to mourn for himself.
Wilbur sits alongside Techno first, pressing his forehead into Tommy’s shoulder, whispering over and over his love. They lack Wilbur’s scam artist smoothness, disjointed and stumbling as if he just needs to get them out, not make them sound pretty.
Phil is the last to join them on the couch. He spreads his wing over them like a blanket, leaning forward until his head rests against Tommy’s temple. Phil’s nimble fingers find Tommy’s free hand and take it, holding tight. He doesn’t say a word, but he squeezes gently.
One. Two. Three.
I. Love. You.
Tommy comes home.
It’s strange to live with his family again, to have Wilbur’s smile turn on him in the morning, to spend his afternoons pestering Phil as he tries to work, and to spend his nights listening to Techno read. Again, all of it again.
He hears ‘I love you’ more than he thinks any one man really needs to in his lifetime, though to be fair it was a lack of hearing it that nearly killed him, so he can’t complain.
It feels almost as though Wilbur says it every time he sees him (Tommy had counted one day, and Wilbur only missed one opportunity). He hangs off of Tommy every chance he has, hugs him and begs him to cuddle almost constantly, and it’s hard to say no and mean it.
Techno says it without words, when he gives Tommy delicate wooden carvings, of moths and spiders and cows and sheep, and when he waits up every night for Tommy to slip into his room and tuck against his side. He says it when he refuses to read further in the book he reads with Tommy without him there to listen.
Phil says it when he makes sure Tommy has eaten, when he presses a kiss to his hair and passes him sliced apples like he’s a little kid. He says it when he asks Tommy if he wants to go on a flight, and he says it when he teaches him how to preen his wings and then pretends to preen him back by braiding his hair.
Tubbo nearly slaps the shit out of him when he gets Phil’s message and shows up with Ranboo in tow, and he might have actually done it if Tommy didn't look two seconds away from passing out anyway.
That’s also the first time Tommy has ever seen Ranboo angry, and it was exactly five times too many.
Ranboo refuses to leave him alone when he starts visiting Snowchester again, always hovering, always ready to protect. He curls around him like a contented cat the moment he sits down, but turns into a guard dog as soon as he needs to move to do something.
Tubbo takes to saying ‘I love you’ whenever he has the chance. Not like Wilbur, who says, “Hello, I love you,” when he enters a room and, “Goodbye, I love you,” when he leaves.
No, Tubbo says it like this:
“We’re having spaghetti for dinner, and I love you.”
“It’s going to be cold today, and I love you.”
“Michael wanted to see you, and I love you.”
Two facts, paired together. That's what Tubbo says, when he asks about it. The sky is blue, and Tommy is loved. The grass is green, and Tommy is loved.
It’s hard to forget how loved he is when he’s so suddenly surrounded by so much of it.
The hanahaki doesn’t go away immediately. He hadn’t thought it would, but he didn’t think it would be as slow as it is.
Phil says that it’s probably because Tommy’s still trying to unlearn loving ‘some people’ (Dream, but everyone refuses to say his name), but the dregs of love for just one person is not fatal, so while it will still hurt for a while, it will be less, and eventually he’ll be okay again.
The flowers he coughs up for Dream are pink carnations. One of Techno’s books says it means “I’ll never forget you”, and he can’t help but think it’s fitting.
Tommy breathes freely most of the time, now. It’s only on bad days that his chest rattles, days when he wakes up screaming with a smile burnt into the backs of his eyelids, and days when he needs someone to tell him he’s allowed to eat.
He is not better, not yet, but he will be.
He is alive.
He is loved.