Archive of Our Own ^beta

Aliens are shit at giving hugs.

Or maybe they’re fantastic. Tommy doesn’t know.

He can imagine that Phil would be a good hugger. He’d probably draw Tommy close, cooing something so gentle that even the implant in Tommy’s head couldn’t break it down into English, and then his wings would fold over Tommy’s shoulders and it’d be cozy and nice. Really nice.

Tommy would sink into him and Phil would hold him up and maybe laugh a little because it always amuses him when Tommy (the Big Massive Scary Human) plays helpless.

Techno gets imaginary second place, mostly because space is always cold and Techno is always warm.

Tommy may not know how to pronounce the name of his species but he does know that pig-somethings are walking furnaces. Techno runs hot, him with his glossy, ultra-fine bubblegum hair and eyes that should be too dark red to be so warm-looking and pink skin that’s covered in a thin layer of fuzz, like a peach.

Then, Wilbur. It almost feels rude to shackle him with last place (not that Wilbur doesn’t deserve it, the annoying bastard) but Wilbur is cold – so cold that his skin always has a perpetual frosty tint to it, a flush that blooms dark cobalt whenever he’s angry or happy or afraid or out of breath.

And another thing about Wilbur: he’s strangely… careful with Tommy.

Tommy’s been with the crew for who-knows-how-long and yet Wilbur still keeps him at a distance. He handles the same guy who’d broken onto their ship like his bones are made of glass. Wilbur would know, since Wilbur’s brittle bones are basically like glass.

(Phil says he’d had a bad experience a while ago, something to do with humans or humanoids. Something that scared him.

He says that’s why Wilbur had run when Tommy had been caught aboard the ship. Where Techno had bristled and straightened and had no qualms about tossing Tommy to the floor, malnourished and all, Wilbur had flinched and cowered until Phil had sent him away. As if it was Tommy’s fault that their ship was so breaking-and-entering-able.

As if it was Tommy’s fault that he is human.)

Wilbur seems to like him a lot more now but Tommy doesn’t know if he’ll ever quite lose that edge of hesitation.

That’s why he’d probably give the worst hugs, but that just makes Tommy want one from him more.

Not that he’s picky. At this point, he’d take a hug, or something, from any of them. Even a hair ruffle or a shoulder pat or a fucking– a high five. Because that’s the thing.

In reality, Tommy has no fucking clue if any of them would be good at giving hugs because they never do it. He’s lost track of the days he’s been with his crew, but through all of it, not a single one of them had ever extended even the whisper of a soft touch his way.

The loud, logical side of his head says that he can’t expect them to know that he’s dying like this.

For all he knows, none of their alien-species are very touchy at all, and none of the books that Techno has in his little library could possibly indicate that Tommy might want to be acknowledged in more than just presence now that he’s sort-of one of them.

They can’t possibly know that he’s become as miserable and wilted as a flower in the shade, slowly succumbing to the lack of sunlight. Hell, they probably don’t even know what a hug is.

But the quiet side, the one attached directly to his heart, says that they don’t want to hug him because he’s Tommy. Because he’s human, and broken, and so not-like them that he’s not deserving of it.

Either way, whether it’s all true or none of it or some of it, Tommy knows that he can’t say anything. They already freak out when he panics or has nightmares, the ones of his first months in space, of metal bars and cruel hands, and blood that turned to ugly scars.

And plus, Tommy doesn’t know how he’d even ask them something like this.

So–

He doesn’t.

I.

“Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. This is awesome.”

Phil whistles out a short laugh, and Tommy’s grin widens as he leans forward in the captain’s chair, eyes soaking up the endless abyss spilling out in front of him. Stars twinkle distantly against the swaths of black, hazy blue and white smudges that look close enough to be scooped up in his palm like marbles.

They’re not, and Tommy’s been in space long enough to sort-of wrap his head around the concept of distance and mass here, but he indulges the thought anyway. Something about sitting in the captain’s chair, Phil hovering over his shoulder like an anxious ostrich, ignites a fizzy, youthful feeling in his chest.

Phil is letting him drive.

“Careful,” Phil notes over his shoulder, stepping closer. “Keep her steady.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tommy groans, but he eases his grip on the steering wheel anyway. “I’ve got this. I’m a real pilot, I am.”

Phil coos out another strand of throaty laughter. It’s like a shot of serotonin, straight to Tommy’s brain. He likes making Phil laugh.

Tilting his chin up, Tommy tries to dedicate an ounce of focus to the task at hand: steering. If he listens well enough, maybe Phil will let him play captain for a little longer.

The motherboard beneath his fingertips glows, rows of buttons and switches flickering ambiently. It makes him nauseous to even try to comprehend, so he’s grateful that Phil is here to watch over that for him. And watch over him. In general.

Tommy doesn’t realize he’d stopped until two gentle, taloned hands flatten over his. Tommy jumps, whipping around as Phil leans over his shoulder, face pinched into the picture of concentration.

“There,” he murmurs, eyes scrunching in what Tommy had grown to know was his way of smiling. He maneuvers their hands to the right, smooth and slow. “You got it.”

As every part of Tommy remains frozen, a lump begins to swell in his throat. He blinks quickly, staring at where Phil’s hands are molding his into the correct form around the steering wheel. The touch burns, sending static up his skin.

It’s a good static – like light, except…

Phil’s nonchalance is almost cruel, tantalizingly close to being paternal but too far from it to really tell. It’s like the stars. Tommy can see them, those blinking smudges, but he won’t ever hold them. Not really.

And Phil won’t ever hold him. Not like a father would. Even if his hands are so endlessly gentle, easing the wheel between them like-

“It’s like riding a bike,” Tommy laughs out quietly, blinking hard at the shimmering stars.

They blink back at him, he thinks. A mocking twinkle.

“A bike?”

He’s very aware of Phil, of how close he is. So close that Tommy can hear the ambient hush of his feathers shuffling on his back. It would take no effort at all for Phil to throw an arm around his shoulder and let his wings fall forward, cradling him.

But it would take a will. One Phil won’t ever have.

Tommy shakes his head, huffing out another little laugh.

“Nevermind,” he says, wetting his lips. His heart thumps nervously in his chest. “This would be a really big bike.”

Phil hums something, and then he’s stepping back. The weight against the back of the chair eases, and Tommy tries not to wilt.

Tommy was never any good at riding bikes anyway.

He squints back out the large window, watching the endless black roll beneath them. It’ll be that way for a while, he knows.

“Is it as exciting as you thought?” Phil asks him, seemingly content not to hover over him anymore.

Tommy shrugs, jerking the wheel. Part of him relishes in the way that Phil jolts, stepping quickly forward. Tommy’s sharp grin sends him rolling his black-pearl eyes.

Phil’s frazzled wings lower. “Very funny.”

“I know,” Tommy chirps, and then–

Phil’s hand is back, this time flattening over the back of his neck. It’s a steady pressure, anchoring. A full breath floods his lungs and Tommy holds it there momentarily.

Perhaps not momentarily enough. Phil’s hand, which burns against Tommy’s skin, threatens to lift. Tommy doesn’t want him to pull away so soon. His mind goes blank.

“How do I shoot shit?” he blurts out, squeezing the wheel so hard it hurts.

Phil’s taloned hand seizes. “You don’t.”

Tommy frowns, shoulders slumping. “That’s fucked.”

Phil laughs, sweeping forward, and Tommy only realizes that he’s being ushered away when one of his large, oil-spill wings bats at his chest, nudging. Tommy stands, and Phil’s hand falls off his back, and then it’s Phil settling into the captain’s seat. He traces his eyes over the void like he actually understands it.

Tommy is left cut out to the side, standing awkwardly.

“It’s late,” Phil murmurs, and Tommy swallows hard. “You should head to bed. Humans need at least seven hours of rest, yes?”

Tommy clenches his hands into fists, releases them. “Yeah, I guess.”

Phil turns– or well, his neck does that freaky stretch, letting him get a look at Tommy while barely moving his shoulders. Phil is at least a head shorter than him, especially in the chair, but Tommy’s the one who feels small now. He feels small all the time.

“Goodnight,” Phil recites, eyes lighting up with self-pride. “Sleep well, Tommy.”

Tommy had taught him that. He wishes, in those early days, that he’d taught him a lot more about humans. Specifically, how else to show a human that they actually matter. Tommy is tired of feeling like a stray piece of cargo, picked up and carried until it loses its value and can be chucked away.

He’s even more tired of hiding it.

“Can we do this again?” Tommy blurts, mouth moving before his brain has a chance to consider the consequences of the questions. His nails sink instinctively into his palms, like a flinch. “The, uh– flying. Or driving– Captaining? Can I… captain?”

He trails off lamely, a flush blossoming scarlet over his cheeks.

Phil’s eyes widen, wings fluttering against his back, peeking over the edge of the chair. “Of course! Of course, Tommy. I would love to.”

Would you? the jagged part of Tommy’s mind wonders. Will you prove it?

“ Just… maybe when it’s not so late.”

It sounds like a truth. Phil makes it feel like one. Tommy doesn’t know why his heart strains so loudly that it’s not.

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbles, eyes flickering down to the metal floors. “Uh, goodnight.”

He makes his retreat swift and robotic. The crew has gotten too good at analyzing the little things about him, all the unimportant ones that reveal when he’s anxious or tired or just plain wrong.

(And still, the one thing that Tommy wants them to notice about him remains absent from their scientific books, their diagrams and articles. It’s a burnt-coffee-bitter irony, sour in his head.)

As he gets ready for bed, Tommy tries hard to cling to the good moments. To Phil finally asking him, after weeks of begging, Hey, mate, you want to fly?

But that just makes him think even more of Earth and longing, until his head is mixed up like a smoothie and his curl into his blankets is plain miserable.

Fathers are Terran things. Fathers, the way that Tommy knows them, belong to the Earth, and there isn’t an Earth anymore. Tommy’s alone.

Still, when Phil pulled his hand away, stealing the anchoring pressure against Tommy’s spine as he went, it felt like he took a tiny piece of Tommy’s heart with him.

That void aches and aches as Tommy drags a blanket over his shoulders and tries to sleep.

II.

Techno may not know what a high five is, but he is willing to punch Tommy when he asks, so that’s kind of a win.

Sparring with Techno is probably the one activity Tommy hadn’t expected to like as much as he did. What had started out as Techno’s way of getting Tommy to release all the bigger-than-him emotions that clouded his brain in the early weeks aboard the ship ended up being closer to therapy.

Hand-to-hand therapy. Even better.

Now, Tommy is usually the one to drag Techno into the training room. Usually it’s when he’s upset, when bad memories begin to creep into his mind, pushing at the walls he’d deliberately shoved them behind. It’s the type of memories that make him jittery, a walking fuse who needs to combust.

Techno helps him burn himself to the ground. He’s the strongest person on the ship, besides maybe Tommy, and he will throw and take blows until Tommy runs out of steam and drops. He drops and lets himself be taken under by a tide of exhaustion, all-consuming in a way that blots out all the bad things and just leaves Tommy.

Just Tommy, a mess of scars and sore muscles and aching, aching skin.

(Tommy doesn’t want to think about what usually happens afterwards: the lonely crawl of his sore body to his room. Techno doesn’t really even help him up off the ground. Every step back to his room is Tommy’s.

Sometimes, he wonders why – even with his implant – he can’t ever find a way to ask Techno to wait up for him. To help him up. Then he wonders why he thinks he’s entitled to casual softness, so he stops.)

That is not why he pesters Techno into fighting him today.

Today, it’s because that burn is back. Tommy wakes up with a clawing in his chest, an iciness clinging to his skin that is so cold it burns. He doesn’t want to combust. He almost just wants to fall. Tommy wants to fall and be caught, and he can’t have that the way he wants it, so the next best thing is fighting.

Techno doesn’t take much convincing, which Tommy is glad for. He does take really slow steps down the hallway, though. Tommy has to hold himself back as he walks behind him, every part of him coiled like a spring and ready to unleash.

The gym-type-room has always been cozier than Tommy expected it to be. The white lights and metal wall panelling should make it feel clinical, but somehow, it doesn’t. Maybe it’s because Tommy has spent too much time in here, sparring and stretching and molding his body as far away from a helpless pile of his limbs as he could.

Tommy makes it halfway onto the rubber mats before Techno is jolting to a stop in front of him.

There’s a crinkle of confusion scrunched between his crimson eyes as Tommy stops abruptly.

“Your hands,” Techno remarks lowly.

Tommy looks down. His hands look pretty normal to him. Well, they’re shaking a bit, but everyone just assumes he’s cold when they notice that, so he’s sure Techno isn’t caught up on that. Then what…?

Tommy blinks, and Techno presses a roll of white bandages into his chest.

“You usually wrap them,” Techno explains, and oh. He’s right about that. “Otherwise, you’ll bruise.”

Tommy accepts the bandages into numb hands.

“Right,” he says, because he thinks if he told Techno that he wanted to skip out on wrapping today that he’d be worried. “I’ll do that.”

And then Tommy would have to explain that he isn’t feeling real today, and he would really appreciate the sensation of skin on skin, the reverberating sting after a harsh impact to make his hands feel attached to his body. He can’t get it anywhere else.

But that wouldn’t make any sense. Not to Techno; not to anyone but Tommy. So Tommy just bites his tongue and goes about wrapping his hands.

Five minutes later, Tommy still doesn’t feel real, but he is sweating, and his lungs are starting to ache with the drag of exertion. Techno, meanwhile, doesn’t seem out of breath at all, the pink prick. The curl of his lips, pulled around his tusks, indicate that he might actually be amused. Tommy groans.

“Fuck you,” he heaves, as he dodges a quick blow directed at his face. “Pig bastard.”

“Small child,” Techno shoots back without missing a beat. Tommy throws a fist towards him. Techno sidesteps it instantly. “Tiny human.”

“I’m not–” Tommy doesn’t miss his next blow this time. Techno goes staggering back. “–tiny.”

I am massive, he wants to add, but he’s too concerned with sweeping his leg out and… somehow, winning? By all odds, the desperate kick against the back of Techno’s legs shouldn’t have been enough to actually take the guy out, but it works.

Still, Tommy doesn’t realize he’s secured a victory until he hears the thump of Techno’s back against the mat and realizes that he is still upright.

Techno doesn’t seem overly fazed as he goes down, but Tommy latches onto the victory like a hungry wolf. Who knows when he’d get this opportunity again?

(Tommy had never claimed to be humble.)

“Holy shit,” Tommy laughs breathily. “I’m cracked. I’m goated. I’m–”

Techno squints up at him, huffing and blowing shiny strands of pink gossamer out of his face. “You’re human.”

Tommy cracks a delirious laugh. “Sure am.” He reaches down, heart thumping pleasantly. “And I just kicked your ass.”

Techno says nothing, and Tommy frowns. It’s then that he notices what had silenced him.

Techno’s gaze had been caught by Tommy’s hand, still floating between them, waiting for Techno to grasp it. Tommy swallows hard.

“Grab it,” he gets out quickly. “I’ll help you up.”

Techno is still frowning, eyes almost crossed with confusion, but he raises his hand. Tommy is quick to heave him upright, almost giddy as he drags Techno to his feet.

Once he’s up, Techno is swift to retract his hand. Tommy’s smile dims.

He has half a mind to chase the touch, fingertips beginning to sizzle, but then he talks himself out of it. He doesn’t need to beg for scraps, no matter what his heart says. He can get his affection-fill in a way that Techno actually wants.

“Want to go again?” he asks, forcing a grin. “One more round?”

Energy pools beneath his skin, raking at him, begging him. He needs to let it out the only way he can. Hope flays him alive when Techno’s hesitant silence drags on.

“Eh, I better get back,” Techno grunts out. “Phil wants me working on some repairs.”

All that hope supernovas in his chest. Tommy’s teeth sink into his cheek, hard.

“Oh,” Tommy says– tries to say. It’s more like a lame whisper. “That’s, yeah. Repairs are… important.”

He cringes away from his own words, how they ring awkwardly against his eardrums. There he goes, needing too much.

Techno’s features squish into something like contemplation. He studies him like a dissection frog from biology. Tommy panics.

“Well, good game,” Tommy breathes, fiddling automatically with the bandages crisscrossing up his battered knuckles.

Techno blinks. “Good… game.” He scrapes his eyes over Tommy. “Was it a game?”

A strangled laugh breaks out of Tommy’s throat. “Sort of,” he answers. “It’s like… you say it after a good match of… something.”

Techno nods, absorbing that information. Tommy would laugh at the pure soberness of his expression if he didn’t feel so compressed all over, ribs caving in.

“Thank you,” Techno finally says. “It was a good game.”

Tommy cracks a grin – it’s pretty much all he’s good at when emotions get too messy. Techno accepts it, and bows his head.

“Wilbur is cooking tonight,” he offers, as he heads back towards the door.

“I’ll make sure to eat before then!”

Techno’s rumbling laughter is sealed behind the electronic close of the door. Silence falls. Tommy’s shoulders slump.

Bathed in bright white light and flanked on all sides by oppressing metal, Tommy feels cold.

He stares down at his red, bandaged hands and wishes it was easier to tell them to stop wanting so much. But it’s not, it hasn’t been for a while, so he grits his teeth and turns his attention to the punching bags hanging across the room. He imagines Techno had used these before he’d had a human to simulate an actual fight.

Tommy is glad they’re here, at least. He needs to do something with the itching energy balled up inside of him before it kills him.

Maybe he can punch an embrace out of one of the hanging punching bags.

(He’s wrong. He only ends up hurting his knuckles when he goes for too long, and the dead leather ends up being as cold as him.)

III.

Tommy wakes up and decides to spend the day bothering Wilbur.

Wilbur doesn’t seem to notice that Tommy has made it his mission to shadow the guy until he’s drifting into the greenhouse to do whatever sciencey shit he does all day, and Tommy tries to go with him.

“No,” Wilbur immediately denies him, pure-white eyes intense. “Go away, child.”

“Please?” Tommy tries, staring up at him and doing his best to look pleading. It’s… not that hard, actually. He finds that really wants to be close to Wilbur. For purely manly reasons, though. Obviously. “I’ll be quiet.”

Wilbur can never quite resist his Tommy-face (whatever that means), and he can’t resist it now. That means that Tommy is granted access almost instantly. The tension lacing Wilbur’s lanky limbs eases.

“Fine,” he allows, grumbling as he turns through the doorway. “You better not disrupt my work.”

Wilbur’s work climbs up the circular ceiling, vines wrapping the metal framework. The void of space peaks through layers of thick, purple leaves attached to brown-green vines. Scattered through the greenhouse are lines of flowerbeds, glass shelves of baby sprouts, and – strangely – a brown sofa, shoved against one of the walls.

Tommy knows it has something to do with Wilbur’s freaky sleep schedule, but it’s an intriguing sight nonetheless.

“I’ll be as quiet as the plants,” Tommy grins, trotting in after him. He has to concentrate to keep a good distance; there’s an itch in his brain, telling him to get closer. To properly follow him. He ignores it. “They call me Moss Boy, back where I come from.”

Wilbur halts, glancing at him. “Do they really?”

“Absolutely,” Tommy lies, settling onto the lumpy sofa and stretching out. “That and Big Man. Big Massive Man–”

“You’re already failing.”

Tommy’s mouth clicks shut. A wry grin sprouts from his mouth.

“Sorry, sorry. Quieting now.”

What had started out as a mission to annoy Wilbur into abandoning his responsibilities quickly dissipates as Tommy’s eyelids begin to grow heavy.

Exhaustion tugs at his limbs, guiding his head down against the arm of the sofa. Something about the peacefulness of the greenhouse, and maybe even the proximity of the greenhouse, is making him sleepy.

Tommy sighs, a shiver wracking over him as he burrows against the sofa. Ahead of him, Wilbur is crouching in front of a spindly yellow herb, humming over its growth. Tommy slips further.

The next time he blinks, it seems that time has jumped ahead. Wilbur is across the room now, scribbling onto some sort of notepad. The lights in the greenhouse are dimmer.

Tommy blinks again, wondering dimly why he has to be so far away. Can’t he come sit down on the sofa, too? Just to be there?

As if reading his mind, Tommy’s next long-blink brings Wilbur right to him. He’s crouching in front of Tommy, something worried etched into his face. Or maybe something fond? Tommy still has trouble determining how Wilbur shows emotion, even though he looks the most human out of all the crew.

It’s the eyes, Tommy’s mind supplies drowsily. I can’t read them.

“Tommy?” Wilbur whispers, hand ghosting hesitantly over his head.

Tommy instantly shoves his head forward, but the pressure is gone before it even truly registers. Wilbur draws his long-fingered hand away, but he doesn’t get up.

“Hm?” Tommy grunts.

Wilbur’s eyes roll to the side, studying his sprawl atop the sofa. “Are you…” he starts, dripping with hesitation. “Are you sleeping here?”

Tommy blinks heavily. “‘m tired.”

It’s strange. He’d hardly been able to sleep all night. All week, really. Now, he can barely keep his eyes open.

“Oh,” Wilbur mumbles quietly. “I’ll… I’ll leave you to it.”

Don’t, Tommy tries to say, but he’s falling too fast, and not even that faint thread of panic is enough to bring him back. He watches Wilbur unfold to full height with the same dread that would accompany watching a trainwreck. I want you here.

At the last second, he manages to lift a heavy arm up, grasping weakly at the air. Somehow, his fingertips catch on Wilbur’s sleeve, and hope blooms in his lungs. He gets his clumsy fingertips around Wilbur’s wrist.

Even half-asleep, he’s able to compute the perplexion slowly taking over Wil’s face. But Tommy ignores it, eyebrows furrowing deliberately. Perplexion is so close to denial. If Tommy looks at him and sees that rejection spill across Wilbur’s pale features, he’ll collapse right here, he thinks.

His vision narrows down only to the hazy smudge of Tommy’s hand, puppeting Wilbur’s. He tries to drag it towards him, tipping his head forward. Ideally, Wilbur could take his own hand and place it in Tommy’s hair, comb his fingers through the blond strands, gentle, so gentle. It would be so nice, everything that Tommy’s been craving since he spent weeks and weeks in a fucking cage and then a spaceship with a crew who he loves so much but won’t even–

Wilbur rips his hand away.

Perhaps “rip” is unfair. He does it softly, untangling Tommy’s grabby fingers from his wrist with hardly any effort. Tommy’s too tired (too devastated) to truly fight, but it feels like he’s ripping, feels like he’s taking claws and reaching directly into Tommy’s chest, pulling his organs out with it. He takes his hand away and Tommy’s arm drops and he sags against the couch, hating himself for hoping.

Wilbur steps back, and the next time Tommy is able to crack his eyes open again, Wilbur is across the room. He’s still in the greenhouse, still here but… really far.

The last thing Tommy sees, before he slips under, is Wilbur’s cautious glance over his shoulder, thrown at him.

Then, everything fades out, Wilbur’s almost-affection going with it.

IV.

He may have escaped the lab months ago, but it always finds him when he sleeps. Always.

Tonight is no different, except in its brutality. Tommy’s mind descends on him without mercy. Every mark he’s ever had put on his skin burns.

He screams himself awake before he realizes what is happening, and by then, his crew is already flooding into the room.

Bright spots still dance across his eyes, medical lights and gleaming scalpels and glimmering pools of blood, by the time Phil reaches him. Techno and Wilbur aren’t far behind, but they flank the bed instead of coming to him, and their hazy silhouettes send Tommy over the edge.

He thrashes against the blankets, so hard that it nearly sends him toppling harshly off of the bed. He needs the blankets off, needs everything to stop touching him, everything except–

“I’ve got you,” Phil’s voice coos, piercing the floaty veil of delirium overtaking him. Tommy sobs harder – oh. Had he been crying? He feels it now, feels everything now. “I’ve got you, little song. I’ve got you.”

Little song? Tommy thinks through heaving breaths. He curls forward, chest pressed against his knees. What does that mean?

The question slips away with the rest of his lucidity when someone touches him. It’s barely any sort of pressure, just a hesitant brush against his shoulder, but it makes him go tense with want. He whips his head up, still gasping for air, and Techno jerks back surprised.

“I’m sorry,” he rumbles gently, and Tommy sniffles as he breaks open further.

He’d taken it away, Techno had taken it away, why had he done that–

“Breathe,” Wilbur strains, leaning onto the bed. In the dark, his skin and eyes hold a faint, bioluminescent glow. He shimmers in the side of Tommy’s vision like a specter. “Breathe, you– you need to do that.”

Tommy shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. That’s not what he needs right now. He needs them, needs them to remind him that he’s real, because he can’t feel anything, only bad things and the bad things hurt–

He needs Techno to reach out again, needs Wilbur to lose the hesitation and hold him, needs the ghostly whisper of an embrace from Phil to come closer, solidify. They surround him, and it’s torturous.

Tommy had never known he could feel so far away from something so close to him.

“Tommy, breathe,” Phil chimes in, shoving closer. His wings bat anxiously against his back like sentient things, stretching towards him even as Phil forces them to curl away. “Breathe, you can do it.”

Tommy can’t. All he can do is sit here and break apart.

He’s begging, he thinks. Begging with everything but words.

Please, his shaking hands scream.

Please, begs the choked wheeze of his lungs.

Please, writhes the burning of his skin.

They don’t hear him.

V.

He doesn’t mean to skip so many meals, but he doesn’t notice that he has until he’s already collapsing.

Tommy just… hasn’t been hungry. He hasn’t had the energy for a lot, these last few days. His stomach had shrunk to the size of a pea, and the sight of food made him queasy. The lightheadedness he’d chalked up to just general anxiety, but that illusion shattered, too, as his balance heaved.

The kitchen tilts violently in his frame of vision, floor swaying beneath his unsteady feet. All Tommy had done was stand up, but that had apparently been enough.

Three cries ring out around him in a worried, dissonant chord as he goes down. The side of his head cracks against the edge of a countertop. Pain strikes through his temple, stealing his breath. He doesn’t feel it for long.

It’s wiped away by the creeping blackness that consumes him as he crumples weakly on the floor.

Ow, floats his last coherent thought before his eyelids flutter and don’t lift. That fucking hurt.

He comes to what might be a few minutes or an eternity later, head aching. Someone is trying to hammer a trainpike into his skull, they must be. It hurts.

And everything is so damn hazy.

Tommy blinks, and something wet and warm slides into his eyes. It stings.

“Get a rag,” someone is saying. “Hurry.”

Tommy has to concentrate extra-hard to understand it. He rolls his head to the side, or– he tries to. Someone is holding his face in place.

Oh. Someone is holding him.

Tommy is still having trouble working through the throbbing ache ringing through his skull, but that somehow gets him to relax. Maybe it’s not a bad thing that he fainted after all. Even if it hurts.

“Te’hno?”

The fuzzy hand holding him freezes, and red eyes peer blurrily down at him. Tommy is immensely disappointed by how his face muscles are too frozen to let him smile.

“Stay awake,” Techno demands sharply.

Tommy wiggles on the ground, trying to press up into his palm. Techno grits his jaw and presses down a little harder on Tommy’s forehead. Fucking ow. He seems to want Tommy to go still. Tommy tries. For Techno.

“I’m… so awake,” Tommy slurs. “Nev– never sleep.”

“Oh, void,” Phil – Phil! – curses. Tommy knows it’s a curse because Phil had told him it was one. Why is Phil swearing at him? “Techno, we have to get him to the medbay.”

Tommy gasps, air vacuumed out of his lungs in an instant. Every coherent brain cell left in Tommy’s rattled skull begins to shriek. Alarm pulses through him with a diluted flood of clarity.

He doesn’t want to go to the medbay. He stays away from the medbay at all costs, they told him he doesn’t have to go there if he doesn’t want to. They promised–

He tries to thrash but he’s not very good at it. Especially not now that Wilbur has returned back to them, has dropped down at Tommy’s side and is staring at him with those wide, white eyes, cheeks beginning to flush with a fearful sapphire.

There’s a rag in his hands, and Techno takes it from him, presses it down where his hands had been. Tommy whimpers, pain spreading white-hot over his temple.

“You’ll have to carry him,” Phil says to Techno, wringing his taloned hands. “He’s too–”

Yes, Tommy thinks, mind blue-screening over those words. Carry me. Pick me up. Hold me.

And he does.

Techno huffs through his nose, face settling with rocky determination. Then, his hands are sliding securely beneath Tommy, hefting him up like he weighs nothing.

The pain and all the bad things become nothing in Techno’s arms. Tommy sags against Techno’s chest, fingers clutching desperately at the loose fabric of his shirt. If Techno wants to put him down, Tommy will fight him. He will–

Or maybe not.

Techno is able to settle him onto a white medical bed easily enough, before Tommy even realizes they’d made it across the ship. Techno must’ve been going fast.

It’s only Wilbur drifting over to his side that calms the rising wash of panic before it can truly take shape between his ribs. Wilbur looks worried, sure, but he doesn’t look like he’s going to leave him. Tommy can bear the hospital room, can bear the lab, the dissection table, whatever, as long as they are here with him.

Even if they aren’t holding him anymore. Maybe they will after. If he’s calm, if he doesn’t let himself freak out like his brain is thrashing at him to. If he listens.

‘After’ comes. Nobody raises a gentle hand his way.

Tommy loses track of how long he drifts, tracking time only through flashes.

A flash and Wilbur is gone, but Phil is there, cooing something quiet to him. A flash and the pain in his head eases. A flash and all three of them are here with him, standing over him… walking… away?

No. No no no no no.

“Don’t,” Tommy croaks, lifting his head which seems to have been weighed down with something. He can hardly do it. The medbay, even as hazy as it is, closes oppressively in around him. “Don’t leave.”

Phil frowns down at him, shadows draped cruelly over his face from the light above.

“You need rest,” he tells him. Tommy’s heart begins to sink, sink, sink down towards his stomach. “Humans prefer to rest in solitude.”

For the first time in a long time, Tommy wants to cry about something that’s not the lab. He shakes, throat bobbing around the helpless monster that is trying to claw its way up his throat and out his mouth.

He wants to get angry. To find Techno’s bookcase and loot Wilbur’s lab and comb Phil’s study and tear to shreds every single page on Humans in those books because they’re not true. This isn’t true. This isn’t him.

He doesn’t like being alone.

But anger is too much for him right now. That helplessness compounds, and his will gives out.

“Don’t,” he tries again. “Don’t…”

“Humans need rest,” Phil repeats, then glancing helplessly to Techno and Wilbur, stood next to him, “Right?”

Tommy’s chest crumples in, eyes stinging.

Both of them nod, like they know more about him than he does.

Tommy finds, in this moment, that he loves them so much he can only hate them for it.

+1

Tommy doesn’t get up the next morning.

His bill of health is totally clean, physically. Their space medicine is so advanced here. It heals his mild concussion right up, and there isn’t even a scar to show for it. Tommy’s crew knows so much about all the things he doesn’t care about.

None of that changes the fact that when he wakes up, he’s as good as paralyzed, curled up in bed.

It’s not fair to say the sickness creeps up on him suddenly, because it doesn’t. It’s the same one that had festered until he’d lost his appetite and fainted, and it is killing him now. Something like death wraps around him, pulling him into a graceful dive down.

Tommy wants to let it. He feels so empty. Hollow and cold. An open grave.

His crew don’t find him like this for a few hours. No, they think he needs to be like this to get better.

But I’m dying, he thinks deliriously, at some point. You’re killing me.

His shattering happens once he misses breakfast, and then lunch, and then dinner. There’s no such thing as night in space, but it has begun to fall by the time a knock sounds against his door.

“Tommy?”

Wilbur. The helpless thing in Tommy’s chest wails. He curls further into his blankets, a shiver wracking him. He doesn’t get up.

The door creaks open, soft white light from the corridor spilling in. Wilbur’s half-opaque silhouette makes a faint shadow. Tommy feels it, just barely draping over him. He still doesn’t move.

“Tommy, are you awake?”

Wilbur sounds so… painfully concerned that Tommy tries his best to hum out a response. It ends up sending him into a round of coughing, lungs quaking. Wilbur stiffens.

His unsure swaying-in-place becomes a melody of quickening steps. He’s at Tommy’s side in an instant, horror etched on his face.

“It’s okay,” Tommy attempts to mumble, poking his tired eyes up above the swaths of blankets he’d dragged around him. “I’m just a little sick.”

Not a word comes out. Not clearly, anyway.

Wilbur doesn’t seem to hear even the whispers he produces, reaching out and flattening the back of his hand over Tommy’s forehead. Tommy’s breath hitches, and his eyes flutter closed. Wilbur draws his hand back like a startled deer.

Tommy should be used to the suffocating wave of resignation, but he’s not.

“Phil!” Wilbur yells, trembling. “Techno!”

Tommy frowns. Why is he shouting? But when he tries to straighten and sit up, his body doesn’t obey.

Oh, he realizes, as the rest of his crew breaks through the doorway. Something is wrong with me.

“What’s wrong?” Phil is quick to demand, eyes flashing in the near-dark and wings all fluffed up. Tommy wonders if Phil would let him preen them, one day. They’re not like ordinary wings, but maybe he could try. “Wilbur?”

“I think he’s sick,” Wilbur explains hurriedly, staring at him like he’s viewing something horrific. “He– he can barely move, and–”

“I thought he was clear to leave the medbay,” Techno interjects sharply, eyes flying over to Phil.

Phil is pale. Tommy notices that even in the near-dark.

“He was,” Phil insists, but his voice grows soft with denial. He doesn’t look like believes himself. “He– the system said he was fine.”

“He’s not,” Wilbur half-gasps out, “Look at him. Something’s wrong.”

Techno jolts to his bedside, and Tommy blinks. His pink face swims in front of Tommy, tantalizingly close.

“Tommy,” Techno asks, low and pleading. “What’s wrong, kid? What can we do?”

“Techno…” Wilbur starts, but Phil lifts a hand, silencing him.

Tommy swallows, digests the words. There’s so much wrong. There’s so much they can do. But he can’t bring himself to ask. It’s not fair.

Still, his hand acts on its own. It slides, trembling, past the blankets, and reaches out. It hangs in the air, barely supported, and Tommy waits.

Techno’s eyes narrow, something shuddering over his face. Slowly, he lifts his own hand. Tommy sighs as he drops it against his palm.

Tommy squeezes it, tension hemorrhaging out of him.

“That,” he whispers. “Just– that.”

It’s silent – a hungry silence. All three of them are waiting for him to do something, but he can’t.

And then a hand gently lowers over his scalp. A shuddering breath breaks past Tommy’s lips. Wilbur, motivated by his reaction, lowers his hand fully. Tommy could die, right here and now, and he thinks he’d be happy.

“Tommy,” Wilbur begins quietly, voice trembling. “Have you been feeling… lonely? Is this…”

Tommy almost doesn't want to answer that. It’s a question that he knows will break him open – but really, how much further can he split? He’s already at his weakest, nearly crying over holding someone’s hand. He just wants to feel real.

Tommy forces himself to sit up. This is something he needs to face. Even as his body begs to be restored to its resting place against the blankets, Tommy slowly shuffles upright. The blankets slip off his shoulders and he shivers.

He drops Techno’s hand, but it only falls to the bed. He doesn’t pull away, still watching with contemplation. So does Wilbur, hand retracting him from his hair but settling in his lap, fingers twitching. Like he’s ready to reach out again.

He’s listening– they all are.

“It’s stupid,” are the first, broken words out of his mouth. Phil’s mouth splits open, and Tommy is sure he’s summoning a too-fatherly protest but he shakes his head. It is stupid. It’s definitely not strong. “I’ve just…”

He lifts his eyes, hopes they can read that he’s trying in all the fractured blue.

“You guys are wrong,” he begins, drawing in a strained breath. “Your books about humans, they’re– we aren’t solitary creatures. We don’t– I hate being alone.”

Wilbur blinks at him, slow and patient. “You’re not,” he counters. “We’re all here.”

Something pops in Tommy’s chest. “No, no, I am. I–” He forces a deep breath down into lungs that don’t want to swell. “I feel alone. All the time. And I know you aren’t trying to make me feel like that but I fucking, I do, okay?”

They don’t interrupt him, but he doesn’t give them the chance anyways. If he stops now, he thinks he won’t ever be able to say it again.

“It’s,” he breaks off breathing hard, “Humans need– hugs and shit. Sometimes. From people they care about, and I can’t– I can’t survive like this.”

There. He’s said it. Tommy’s worst, most fractured confession splinters out of him, and he’s so ashamed that all he can do is bow his head. His lungs heave and heave, so fast he’s sure he’s making all of them a little panicked, but he can’t stop.

This is it, this is every piece of him. Pulled out and displayed, hung up on the wall, ready to be examined, and they aren’t saying anything, why are they just being silent–

“Hugs?” Wilbur asks, the first to break the silence. When Tommy yanks his head up, his white-marble eyes are scrunched. “How can I give those?”

Tommy’s heart hiccups in his chest. It’s dangerous, the hope that prods at him. It’s ready to break him down.

Tommy wrangles his slipping composure into something functioning. “A hug,” he echoes tightly, wetting his lips. “It’s like, you grab someone close and– gently– and you wrap your arms around them, and hold them, and parents or brothers might do it–”

Cold, pale arms seize him, tugging him into a solid chest. Time freezes.

“Like this?”

Tommy trembles, in that second before he melts. He falls forward into Wilbur’s chest, arms squeezing around him, forehead pressed against his icy neck. It’s the warmest embrace he’s ever had.

“Yeah,” he whispers, sniffling, as all the cracks racing through him close over. “Exactly like that.”

Wilbur holds him, and silence is a comforting balm that holds them both.

Tommy is whole like this. The burning, for the first time in all these weeks, eases. Tommy exhales, eyes falling shut.

“For how long?” Techno’s voice asks quietly. “How long does a hug…”

Tommy sniffles, shifting so he can look at Techno over Wilbur’s shoulder. The pig-alien is watching them both with a regretful, guilty expression – like he could’ve known that Tommy was falling apart like this.

“Until we both wanna stop?”

Wilbur squeezes him tighter. “I don’t,” he murmurs quickly. “Not if you need it.”

“Then don’t,” Tommy replies, perhaps deliriously.

Or maybe it’s just because he feels safe. For the first time in infinity.

“Okay.”

And he doesn’t.

Things change, after that. Not loudly, or all at once, but they change.

The scraps of affection that Tommy’s heart had been yearning for, starving for, become as natural and frequent as oxygen. A hand combing gently through his hair here, a palm cupping his cheek there.

A shoulder to fall asleep against, a hand to lift from the training room floor – Techno. A cradle of a wing, a grounding pat on his back – Phil. A hug to warm him, even if it’s cold – Wilbur.

Affection, free and endless – all of them.

The part of humanity that Tommy had missed the most is suddenly everywhere. Coming from his crew, his family–

It’s like it was always there.

“Did you know,” Wilbur tells him one day, “that Elytrians teach their young to fly when they are born?”

Tommy, half-focused, looks up. “I didn’t.”

Wilbur nods, trying to smile the way Tommy taught him. “Mhm. They help them swim in the sky. That’s how they care for them, on their planet.”

Tommy has always been an endless basin for Wilbur’s fun facts, but something about this feels different. A weight laces Wilbur’s words, and Tommy completely turns to him so he doesn’t miss a thing.

“And Phantlings,” he continues lowly, slinging an arm around Tommy’s shoulder for him to fall into, “Like me, they… they watch over their flock. In their sleep.”

Something warm begins to blossom in Tommy’s chest.

“Oh,” Tommy whispers. “You...”

He thinks of a worn, brown sofa and crawling plants and he is sure that Wilbur is thinking of the same moment.

“It’s a protection thing. Phantlings don’t sleep in front of something they don’t trust. It means a lot to, uh, have someone to look out for.”

Tommy inhales deliberately, exhales. His throat is oddly tight.

“And, um, Pig– Piglins,” Tommy stammers, clenching his fists tightly, “What do they do?”

Wilbur indulges both what Tommy asks and what he does not say.

“They’ll spar,” he confirms softly. “Often, the elders will let the youth win to build strength, and confidence.” Techno, hitting the mat. Not fazed, just… proud. “It’s love.”

Tommy blinks, and salt touches his lips. A tear streaks down his cheek, isolated and lonely. He doesn’t stop it.

“We didn’t know what a hug was,” Wilbur admits, gently twirling one of Tommy’s loose curls between his fingertips. Tommy snuggles against him, heart full. “But I think we were hugging you this whole time.”

“Oh,” Tommy repeats, tongue numb in his mouth. “Thank you.”

Wilbur shifts, letting Tommy fall further against him. “Don’t thank me,” he says. “I just wanted you to know that you had it all along. You were always flock.” He hesitates. “Or… pack? Or haunt, or–”

“Family?” Tommy suggests.

“Family,” Wilbur agrees.

And they are. And it’s enough.

Tommy drifts.

Tommy was wrong. Aliens are not that shit at giving hugs.

If he wanted to give any of them an ego boost, he might say that they’re quite good at the whole hug-thing now – not that Tommy doesn’t expect lots of practice from now on. Luckily, his crew, his family, seem more than happy to oblige him.

Tommy’s heart is never hungry anymore. Not with them. He thinks it wouldn’t be a trick anymore to say, Never again. They seem to believe that, anyway. With his mismatched crew, even cradled by nothing and everything, Tommy thinks he can believe them.

Why wouldn’t he? Wrapped in arms and affection alike-

Tommy has never felt more human.