Archive of Our Own

Tommy pried his eyes apart, blinking in the morning light. He brought his arms out and over him, stretching until he could feel every spot of tension he’d wracked up over the night pop like a mini firecracker.

“Tommy.” Phil was knocking on his door. “Come on. Up. We’re leaving in fifteen.”

“Where are we going?” Tommy yawned, not that he could help it.

Phil creaked the door open, eyes settling over Tommy’s just waking form with an exhausted, but amused expression. “We’re taking Floof to the vet. She needs her emotional support.”

Tommy scoffed, rolling onto his feet and waiting out the headrush. “Can I hold her in the waiting room this time?”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “You have to take that up with Techno, she’s his dog.”

Tommy mumbled something about life being unfair before promptly exclaiming, “But I’m the one with all the bitches.”

Phil didn’t waste another moment, closing the door behind him. “Fifteen minutes. You better be in the car or I’m dragging you out by your ear.”

Tommy winced, not liking the reminder of the less-than-fond memory.

He got to work on getting himself ready, which was just rolling into the first clothes he found and dragging himself to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Of course, to Wilbur it seemed like the perfect time to mess with his abilities, spraying Tommy in the face as soon as he twisted the faucet on.

“Wilbur!” Tommy whined, wiping the water from his eyes. “What the fuck was that for?”

“You didn’t look awake yet,” the string bean of a brother shrugged as he leaned on the door frame.

“I’m fucking fine!” Tommy’s voice raised two pitches as he tried to close the door on Wilbur, who was just managing to block it. “Get lost, dickhead.”

Wilbur let out an exasperated sigh, pulling his foot between where it was wedged against the door and the door frame, allowing Tommy to shut the door. With that taken care of, Tommy moved to brush his teeth.

The faucet sprayed him right in the face. Again.

“ Wilbur! ”

“You still aren’t awake, child!” Wilbur laughed from behind the door. Tommy hit his head against the wall and just decided to leave it. Whatever, getting water in his face was not worse than being pulled by his ear.

He finally brushed his teeth, noting for some strange reason that he could only breathe out of one nostril. Was it pollen season already? Prime, pollen season was the worst.

He ruffled up his hair to its acceptable form before rushing out of the door, almost running into a very sleep-deprived Techno. Techno didn’t even seem to notice him before taking his turn in the bathroom.

Tommy ran down the stairs with his normal amount of grace, checking his height against the kitchen doorframe as he did every morning, and despite having had an unbroken streak for several weeks now, he found he was a bit short.

“Fucking hell,” Tommy muttered, bouncing on his heels a little bit to warm up. “Of all days.”

“I thought you looked a little short this morning.” Wilbur snuck up behind him with a hair ruffle, which Tommy did his best to bat away with minimal screeching. “Only six-foot-one? Wow, a new low.”

“Shut up ,” Tommy whined. “I just need food, that’s all.”

“Mm,” Wilbur laughed. “Sure.”

Tommy popped his waffle into the toaster with a middle finger raised, chanting fuck you over and over until he could get his brain to focus on the pins and needles feeling that always accompanied his powers. Unfortunately, they seemed dormant this morning.

“This is your fucking fault,” Tommy accused Wilbur. “I bet I reset it when you sprayed water at me twice .”

“I should do it more often,” Wilbur retaliated. “Maybe then I’d get to really appreciate my little baby brother. ”

“I’m fucking—”

“Boys,” Phil scolded from the other room. “We’re leaving in ten, stop fighting.”

Tommy rolled his eyes, with Wilbur snickering softly. If Tommy could just get his brain to work like it was supposed to, maybe he wouldn’t be arguing. It wasn’t the first day Wilbur had sprayed him in the face with his stupid knockoff avatar waterbending powers, just the first day that Wilbur had sprayed him and Tommy couldn’t control his own abilities the way he wanted them to in the span of five minutes.

And to make it all worse, Mr. Sunshine walked in and went straight for his coffee as usual, but instead of just leaving the whole situation alone—

“Your nose is wrong,” Techno huffed just absentmindedly. Tommy spun around like he’d been hit, or worse, insulted.

“What do you mean my nose is wrong?” Tommy brought his hands up to prod at his nose like that would tell him anything. “I just saw my nose. It was fine!”

“It’s just different,” Techno shrugged, pouring his coffee. “I thought I’d be honest about it.”

“Prime, Toms,” Wilbur scoffed. “For a shapeshifter, you’re really bad at this shapeshifting thing.”

“Oh fuck you,” Tommy spat, but he could feel his insides heating up, and probably his outsides too since he was a relatively fast blusher. He took in a breath, letting it out, waiting for the pin and needles to come back to he could fix everything.

Nothing happened. Tommy turned and moved out of the room before he could be teased again. He’d been up for not even ten minutes and he was dragging his hands down his face already. He could feel it now. His nose was just a little different than he liked it.

His waffle popped out of the toaster in the other room. He ignored it.

He just needed a reset, a full wipe and regathering of elements. He must not have exercised his powers enough and they were just tired. He’d fix it.

“All of you, can we get in the car please?” Phil called, and knowing him, he already had the front door open. “We can’t be late for another appointment.”

Tommy sighed, pushing himself off the wall and walking to the front door. He put his sneakers on without raising his face to Phil and squeezed himself through the door before the other three got there.

He at least secured the shotgun.

---

The vet’s office was not Tommy’s favorite place. Tommy loved all kinds of animals— cats, dogs, birds, lizards, literally anything— but it was a little overstimulating. There were so many things going on at once, and it already felt like a doctor's office. Combined with his already shitty morning, he was not feeling his greatest.

To couple it, his pollen reaction had developed from a half-clogged nose to occasional sniffles, making him sound like he was a toddler about to burst into tears at any moment.

At least neither Techno nor Wilbur protested when he asked to sit with Floof in the waiting room, scratching lovingly around her chin and behind her ears. She behaved beautifully, though that wouldn’t be the case if even one of them was missing.

Her appointment was just a check-up, so Tommy was zoning out, staring at the floor as he tested the hold over his abilities again and again. It was like someone had put a lid on it, and he couldn’t tell if he was supposed to pull or twist the top off, so he was trying some weird mixture of both and nothing was working.

He was back in the car before they knew it, Tommy riding backseat this time with Techno. He kept his face turned away, but he could see his wrong reflection staring at him in the window. His nose was off. He was shorter than he was yesterday. The freckles he’d long ago hidden were starting to poke up under his skin again.

He didn’t look like Tommy.

Tommy raced back to the house once he got the chance, only to be stopped by Phil asking him for his help with something. Tommy didn’t want to fuss, but he really wanted to do this full reset and be done with it.

He walked over to Phil with a sharp pace, who was just… standing there , waiting for him.

Prime, had he done something? He didn’t think he did. This day couldn’t get worse, right? He was normal. Everything was normal. He was not guilty of something he hadn’t even been accused of yet.

“Are you alright, mate?” Phil just asked him with a lowered voice, even if Wilbur and Techno were already out of earshot. “You look off.”

This again . “I fucking know,” he hissed back. “I didn’t mean to offend all of you with my ability to shift my appearance, sometimes I just feel like fucking shifting!”

“No, Tommy,” Phil reached out, Tommy took a step back. “I don’t care what form you’re in, I meant you look off as in under the weather.” Tommy pursed his lips together, crossing his arms. “And you’re quiet. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

He would be much better if his body would listen to him.

“I’m positively perfect ,” he spat. “Can I go in now?”

Phil looked conflicted, which, good , Tommy felt conflicted. He didn’t mean to snap at Phil but he just wanted to hide in the safety of his room and find out what was going on.

“Alright,” Phil told him. “Come down for lunch, though.”

“If I feel like it,” Tommy shot back before turning on his heel. He walked through the door and made a beeline for the stairs, only stopping once when he felt a sneeze.

It practically echoed against the walls, prompting Wilbur to peek in through the doorway to the kitchen. Tommy watched his eyes go wide before he sprinted up the stairs and slammed the door to his room shut.

He collapsed onto the bed with a long sigh, tugging at that place in his brain to try and unlock his powers just enough to reset his appearance. Nothing budged.

A glimpse in his mirror told him that his hair was two shades darker than it had been just minutes ago.

---

“Tommy? I made lunch.”

Tommy had, not surprisingly, fallen asleep. Despite not being able to access his powers for some unknown reason, it still seemed like it was draining him at the same rate.

“Phil said you had to eat something,” Techno continued, his voice dropping every second he wasn’t answered. Tommy flipped over to press his head into the pillow. He didn’t want to wake up and see how much had changed since he’d fallen asleep an hour ago. “And he said we couldn’t tease you. And we won’t.” Tommy pressed his eyes together to block out all of the light. “It’s just mac and cheese.”

“Fuck off,” Tommy croaked. He sneezed right after. “I’m not hungry.”

“Phil said—”

Tommy threw a pillow at the door. It made a decent thud before it hit the ground, stopping Techno’s sentence in the middle. He stood outside Tommy’s door for several seconds, not saying anything, trying to figure out what was wrong with the barrier between them.

“Later?” Techno asked eventually. His voice was getting small, Tommy didn’t like it when Techno’s voice was small. His emotions were so even all of the time that being able to hear them was distressing.

“Sure,” Tommy half-agreed just to make him go away. He felt like shit, just sleeping for another hour would be a blessing.

“Ok,” Techno said after a little pause. “Later.”

Tommy waited until his footsteps retreated to push himself out of the bed and rummage through his drawer for the mirror he’d put in there in spite of it lying to him. He sat down as he stared at his wrong face, everything retreating back to what Tommy called his factory reset.

Darker blonde hair, greenish eyes, he had freckles dotting his nose, and a crease on his forehead that he hadn’t liked being there before. Not to mention that he was short , so every proportion was thrown out of whack. He usually hid the scars from his old injuries, but the little white line from where he’d accidentally cut himself slicing tomatoes to those red patches from the eczema scars he’d had as a toddler was on full show. He had no way to hide them.

There were only a few changes he hadn’t yet evolved into. His teeth weren’t always straight, but they hadn’t gone back to their crooked selves yet. He still had the style of hair and the little calluses on his fingers that he’d copied from Wilbur. The ear piercing he’d discreetly inherited from Techno was still there, but he’d shoved an earring into it to keep it from closing, so he didn’t know what his body was going to do about that.

Everything else? It was like Tommy was a brand new person.

Tommy turned his head at the weird sound against his door, tiny footsteps against the carpeted hallway. There was light scratching now, slight whining. Tommy must have kept his door closed for too long, Floof had some serious separation issues.

Tommy sighed, getting up from his chair and putting the mirror down. He pushed the little bit of hair out of his face so he didn’t have to see the off-color.

He reached for the doorknob, taking only a second to rethink before easing it open a crack. Floof was sitting there, shaking her little tail. Her head tilted slightly before nudging forward, sniffing around Tommy’s ankles.

He guessed he still smelled like the same person because Floof adamantly pushed herself into the room and made herself at home on Tommy’s comforter. Tommy relaxed a hair length of a fraction, going to close his door again when he spotted the tupperware container sitting right on the floor.

Tommy picked it up, begging himself not to turn away, and brought it inside before closing his door. He set it on the table with no appetite but opened it up anyway.

Floof hopped her way over to Tommy’s side, setting her head on Tommy’s knee as he ate what he could of the meal Techno made. Floof sniffed it with curiosity and looked like she was going to make a move for some, but Tommy pulled the lid back on.

“Cheese isn’t good for you and you know it,” Tommy scolded lightly, smiling a little, only to realize that his voice had changed.

He didn’t even know that was something he was doing before, but he suddenly missed it. It used to be somewhere between Phil’s and Wilbur’s, but now it was just… a little deeper than it had been before. He didn’t like it.

He laid back down, petting Floof lightly as he wondered how long this would go on. Someone didn’t just lose their powers, it was a forever kind of thing. Sure, someone might lose control over their powers sometimes; emotions, injuries, or stressful situations did that to you, but Tommy didn’t think a little prank like Wilbur’s would count as a traumatic enough response to make him lose control over them completely.

This sucked.

Floof whined, putting two paws on Tommy’s side like she was trying to get attention, but her tail had stopped wagging.

Tommy just closed his eyes. “I don’t know either, Floof,” he admitted. “I just gotta wait it out.”

---

He woke again with the sunset. Tommy’s headache was one of the worst he’d ever had, causing him to groan and turn over, where he almost ended up squishing a disgruntled white dog. Floof jumped out of the bed a moment later, but Tommy didn’t feel like following.

She was pawing at the door, but Tommy was just… he didn’t want to get up to let her out. He knew his head would spike with any more movement.

Footsteps thankfully came over after a few minutes. “I hear you, girl,” Wilbur said on the other side before opening the door with a swift motion. Tommy watched Floof leave before making eye contact with his brother.

He ducked under the blankets immediately, hiding everything he could from sight. He didn’t want anyone to see him like this. He wasn’t him .

The door closed with a gentle click, not a word spoken between them. Tommy waited until he heard the footsteps retreating to come out of his cacoon. He shivered just once but didn’t think much of it. It was probably cold outside.

“...just a kid in Tommy’s bed, how am I supposed to know it’s Tommy?”

Wilbur’s voice was not as hidden as he might have believed, and it made something angry stir in the pit of his stomach.

“I hope that you know each other well enough that you can recognize each other by more than looks alone,” Phil told him back, not daring to mask his voice. “Go do something productive. I’ll talk to your brother.”

“Wait, Phil, I want to talk to him—”

“No.” Phil’s hand was on the doorknob. “If he wants to see you, I’ll let you know, but you’ve already antagonized him enough today.”

Wilbur just sighed, murmuring a confirmation before walking away. Tommy heard his footsteps walk down the stairs, and Phil took several more seconds before finally knocking on the door.

Tommy didn’t want anyone to see him, but he also knew Phil wouldn’t care. He was like that sometimes, so immune to anything like he already knew exactly what would happen and didn’t give a single shit unless they were hurt or in trouble.

Phil wasn’t going to leave, either. Tommy knew Phil wasn’t going to walk away like Techno did.

“Yeah?” He croaked, and prime , his voice was so off. He hated it. He wanted to gauge out his vocal cords and stuff them in a freezer so they shrunk back to their original size.

Phil eased the door open, sticking a head in. Tommy ducked a little farther down into his blankets. “Hey mate.” He offered a simple smile, coming in the rest of the way and closing the door, but not moving any farther into the room. “Feeling alright?”

Tommy shook his head, ducking so all but his eyes and hair were covered by the comforter. The room was stifling, but Tommy was freezing.

“Can I check if you have a fever?” Phil walked just a few steps forward. Tommy tensed against his will, self-conscious in all of the wrong ways, but eventually, he nodded. Phil took the invitation slow, walking up to him with predictability and easing himself down to sit at the edge of his bed.

Phil brought a hand up to Tommy’s forehead slowly, like he was trying to pet a stray animal. That was honestly kind of what Tommy felt like, a cornered puppy, too weak to say no to help but scared this human would hurt him more than the last. His fingers eventually rested on Tommy’s skin, slightly cool, which was just as strange because Tommy felt himself freezing to the sheets.

“A little warm, nothing serious,” Phil said. “Are you feeling anything? Nausea? Headache?”

“Headache,” Tommy hummed cautiously. “Cold. A little stuffy.”

“Just an end-of-the-season cold, then,” Phil shrugged. “Maybe a weak flu.”

But Tommy had had colds and the flu before. And he’d never seen all of this.

“But why is—” he started, trying to find words for the process that was happening but failing. “Why is this happening?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific, mate,” Phil hummed back. “What’s up?”

“I can’t control myself, Phil,” Tommy blurted out. “It’s all— I don’t look like me .”

“Ahh,” Phil nodded, understanding. “So all those new features you got isn’t just you experimenting?”

“No!” Tommy wanted to duck further down, but Phil stopped him with a gentle hand. “I… I don’t want to be like this and I don’t know why I can’t fix it.”

Phil nodded, scanning over him in consideration, at least what he could see anyway. He brought a hand up to Tommy’s hair which was… longer, but he still sifted through it like he normally did.

“Ever heard of superhuman fever?” Tommy shook his head, to which Phil continued. “Happens to the best of us. You use your abilities too much and weaken your system. The first cold you get, your powers go down for the count right along with you.” Tommy sunk into the bed, feeling stupid. “How long were you keeping up those appearances for without giving yourself a break?”

He used to reset himself each week for just a night, ‘fixing’ it in the morning when he woke up. But… he’d stopped doing that because he just figured that he got so used to it that it was like his original skin now.

He never expected it to backfire.

“A few weeks,” Tommy mumbled. “I thought-”

“You got used to it?” Phil chuckled. “Yeah, so do us all. I once tried to talk only in chirps for an entire week, and not even three days in I got hit with the worst cold I’ve ever had and couldn’t speak for days.”

Tommy laughed softly, peeking out under his blankets a little bit. Phil smiled at him, not an ounce of confusion in his eyes when Tommy didn’t look at all like he usually was.

“Now, I’ve briefed your brothers that under no circumstance may they taunt you about anything that might seem sensitive, so if you want to come downstairs and watch something, you’re completely welcome.” Phil stood up from the bed. “Meanwhile, I’m going to make some soup and get you some medicine because those fevers hit hard if you turn your back on them.”

Tommy hesitated. Not about the soup or the medicine because he could recognize when he needed them, but… out in the open? Or, it was still his own house and his family but… it would be strange. Vulnerable.

“Do you know how long this will last?” He asked Phil, who tapped a finger against his chin for a minute to think about it. 

“Well, it took me four days to get my voice back, but everyone is different. Techno’s gotten it before, we can ask him.”

“Techno got it?” Tommy sat up from the bed, letting the blankets fall around his lap and deciding that was a bad idea. He was still cold. “I don’t remember that.”

“He was little, nine or ten,” Phil explained as Tommy wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and then hugged one of his stuffed animals close. “He used to pick up the furniture just to move them around and see what they looked like somewhere else. When he started complaining that he couldn’t lift a soup can off the shelf, I knew something was wrong.” Phil started to chuckle. “He was so uncoordinated after that, expecting things to be lighter than they were, including his own arms and legs.”

Tommy laughed with him, feeling a little better. Until he sneezed.

His earring popped out of his ear and he sighed.

“Come on, Toms,” Phil guided him up with a hand. “A change of scenery will be good for you.”

Tommy followed him like a duckling down the stairs, feeling like covering his face but refusing to let himself back down. Phil gave both Wilbur and Techno a stare-down when they walked into the living room, with Tommy curling up between them on the couch and avoiding eye contact.

“I’ll be back with medicine.” Phil said as he left the room, and then added, “Be nice to your brother!”

Tommy sheepishly kept his eyes on the screen, where it seemed Techno had chosen the program. The documentary was about arctic animals, all of which were intriguing Floof to the point that she was sitting right below the television with her tail wagging.

“You want to watch something?” Techno asked carefully, passing the remote over. Tommy stared at it for a moment before shaking his head.

“I don’t want to upset Floof,” he commented. “She looks like she’s recognizing lost ancestors.”

Wilbur smiled from Tommy’s other side. “Well, her brain’s small enough that she probably thinks they’re all her siblings.”

“How dare you,” Techno deadpanned. “She obviously thinks they’re prey. That’s a hunting pose.”

Tommy watched Floof’s tail wag with a smirk. She got especially excited when there was no animal on the screen at all.

“It’s not the animals at all,” he laughed. “She just likes the snow.”

Wilbur choked out a laugh. “Her bed is white and fluffy like that.”

“Oh,” Techno realized with him. “She thinks she’s staring at the bed dimension.”

“Can’t blame her,” Tommy shrugged. “I’d also want to live in a world of endless fluff.”

Techno sighed into his hand. “See, Floof? This is exactly why you got your name.”

At the call of her name, she turned her head, and seeing Tommy wrapped in a warm blanket, happily pranced over to him and settled in his lap. Tommy folded the blanket over her with an eye roll.

And he sneezed. Again.

Besides startling Floof, both Techno and Wilbur were staring at him with something akin to horror.

“What?” Tommy narrowed his gaze. “Did I grow horns or something?”

Wilbur blinked. “Um no, you just… shrunk.”

Of all the answers, Tommy didn’t expect that one. He couldn’t exactly tell if he’d shrunken or not, and honestly he’d thought that he was done shrinking. He had already gone down to, like, five-eleven, he didn’t need to go down any more than that, did he?

“He’s just finally embracing the role of little brother by accepting that I should be taller than him,” Techno broke the silence. “This is exploitment. You’re making yourself more huggable.”

Tommy barked out a laugh. “What?”

“‘Tis true,” Wilbur joined the bit, putting a hand to his own forehead. “I can feel myself succumbing to the effects already.” He faked a faint against the couch, almost collapsing over Tommy like a weighted blanket. Just more clingy.

“Hey!” Tommy raised his voice but couldn’t hide the laugh. “Get off me, fucker.”

“Oh no,” Techno tried to act like Wilbur, but it just ended up sounding incredibly sarcastic. “I can’t resist the pull. The horror.”

There was absolutely no emotion in his voice as he draped himself over Tommy too, with a much more audible thump than Wilbur had. Tommy was shaking with laughter rather than cold. “You dicks! I can’t move!”

“Should have thought about that before you became fun-sized,” Wilbur said, which Tommy gasped at. “You’re ours, there’s no leaving now.”

“No! Fuckers, I’m still sick! I’m going to get you both sick!” With no answer or letting up to his squirming besides a grumpy whine from Floof, he pulled out his only string left. “ Phil!”

Phil was only laughing from the kitchen doorway, where soup was on the stove. “Mate, I think you lost this one.”

Tommy whined, resting his head against the back of the couch with a grumpy mumble, but he was no longer cold. He rested his head on Techno’s shoulder in defeat, not even bothering to hide the smile that crept over his face.

He didn’t know why he doubted them, they were just as understanding as Phil, if not a little more chaotic.

Tommy made a vow to trust his family more often. It was in his best interest anyway.