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It started as a small stomach ache
It was just a dull throb he could feel pushing his right side as if it wants to punch his ribs but not have the power to do so. He has had a stomach ache before, it was honestly nothing too concerning.
It makes him feel a bit nauseous, so he skips lunch, ignoring the worried glances Tubbo shoots him while he’s eating his own lunch. He has felt nauseous before, nothing to be scared about, nothing deadly.
The throb becomes more evident after every step he takes, but he chooses to ignore it for the remaining classes. He can’t miss school for a stupid stomach ache.
“Hey man, you’re alright?” Tubbo questions. Tommy looks up at him from over the desk. Tubbo’s turned around, looking at him with a concerned frown. He was in fact, not alright. But he won’t worry Tubbo, it’s not worth mentioning something stupid like this, is it?
“I’m fine,” Tommy answers, “Why?”
“You skipped lunch,” Tubbo offers, “And you look like you’re about to faint not gonna lie,” Tommy chuckles, hoping to hide the pain. He tries to keep focusing on algebra, but it wasn’t a subject that was known to keep his focus. He tries to think about goniometry, but the ache keeps catching his attention.
And then it leaves. Algebra is over and he feels better again. He feels a tiny bit nauseous, but it’s nothing compared to the ache he felt before. He almost punches himself for worrying just because of a bit of pain.
He’s quick to run out of school, knowing Wil would drive away and let him walk home if he was too bored. Although his stomach ache had disappeared, he still doesn’t feel good enough to walk a good ten miles. He would barely have any time to do his homework, and his teachers wouldn’t accept the excuse that his brother left him to walk home.
“I almost left you for a coffee, not going to lie,” Wil jokes as he sits down into the car. The car smells like something died in it, and Tommy honestly doesn’t want to know what exactly did die.
“Why does it smell this bad in here,” Tommy complains, putting his bag between his legs. He can barely sit down properly as Wil drives away in a hurry.
“Well, it’s a new car, and I had to make it feel like home,” He explains. Tommy honestly hopes he didn’t do one of those rituals where they try to scare the demons away with awful smelling smoke as they do in these bad horror movies.
“So you had to murder something in here?” Tommy questions. The smell did nothing for his nauseous feeling, nor for the returning ache in his stomach. The pain feels worse, more like a stabbing pain than just a dull throb as it was before.
“I didn’t kill someone in here,” Wil argues, “You look like shit, by the way,”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” How dare Wil offend the one and only TommyInnint. He never looks like shit.
“You look like a ghost,” Sure, Tommy feels a bit bad, but he wouldn’t say that he feels so bad that he’s as pale as a ghost.
But Tommy doesn’t respond, not finding the energy to answer the older. If Wil is so insistent on the fact that he looks like shit, then that’s his problem. Tommy has personally other problems, for example, the stupid pain in his right abdomen.
Tommy has had a stomach ache before, but never this bad.
Is this what women feel on their period?
Will Tommy get his period?
Now he’s just bullshiting, but it’s better than thinking about the fucking pain, growing like fire on wood. It hurts so much that he feels like he couldn’t ever walk again, just getting his foot up would hurt too much for his stomach.
He can faintly hear Wilbur saying some shit, but Tommy ignores him, focusing on the road, and the sky, and anything but Wil’s annoying voice and the god fucking pain.
He wants to cry and he wants to shout and he wants to do everything but exist right now, he doesn’t want to listen to Wil’s voice anymore, that’s cutting like knives in his head.
Every bump the car makes, jolts a new stab of pain through his abdomen, making him force a cry of pain in every single time.
Everything hurts so much, he knows nothing but pain and pain and pain.
He bolts out of the car the second they arrive, bolting through the house, running past Phil and Techno, running up the stairs, locking himself in his room.
The ache is gone, but Tommy can still feel it as phantom pain every step he takes, so slides down the door, letting a tear fall from his cheek. There is no pain anymore, not as bad as before anyway, but Tommy can still feel the burning as if it never left.
He hugs his knees, letting the tears fall silently.
“Tommy?” Phil’s voice cuts through the static in his ears. It doesn’t hurt as much as Wil’s voice did nearly minutes ago, but he still would rather be enveloped in silence, “Tommy, can I come in?” He doesn’t want him to come in, he wants to be alone, hoping that the pain will go away forever.
He wants to go to sleep and never wake up anymore
He wants to do anything but explain what just happened
“It’s okay if you don’t want me to,” Phil’s voice keeps going, taking the silence as a sign to continue “Could you just tell me what happened, bud,” He doesn’t want to, not at all. He just wants to sleep.
Phil sighs from the other side of the door, “Dinner is in half an hour,” Tommy can hear him faintly walking back downstairs, probably talking to his brothers.
Tommy takes a moment to appreciate the moment without the firing pain, rather a dull throb, just as before. The release of pain makes him want to cry again, but he stops the tears from falling. They will notice if his eyes are red, and they will question him until the end of the night.
He just needs to get through dinner, and everything will be alright. They’ll leave him alone for the rest of the night and he’ll be able to hide his pain.
The food was already on the table when he arrives downstairs. Wil looks up at him in surprise, as if he didn’t expect Tommy to actually come downstairs for dinner. Now that Tommy thinks about it, he should’ve just stayed in his room. It’s too late anyway.
He sits down silently in his seat. He quickly puts some pasta on his plate, but he feels too nauseous to actually eat anything at all. He feels as if he’s going to throw up the second he even smells the smell of food.
“So I wanted to give my essay in early because I knew that I was going to forget if I didn’t do it right then and there, but she just refused to take it,” Wil complains before stuffing some pasta in his mouth. Phil chuckles at the story, side-eyeing Tommy’s still full plate as if he wasn’t really listening.
“You not hungry,” Phil asks. Tommy stops his fork in the middle of its path through his plate, turning around in circles over and over again. Tommy’s sure that most of the pasta was cold at that point. He glances up at Phil.
“Stomach ache,” Tommy simply replies. It’s true, it may be mostly over by now, but it still hurts like a fucking bitch.
“Sure,” Wil comments from the other side of the table.
“What?”
“You always have a ‘stomach ache’ when you have bad news,” Tommy frowns. That’s not true. “When you had an F, stomach ache. When you punched that one kid, stomach ache. When you broke my ukulele, guess what,” He says, looking him challenging in the eyes “Bingo, stomach ache,”
Tommy really truly wants to punch that grin off of his brother’s face. How dare he say that, as if that ever happened. It’s honestly not his fault that he gets stressed a lot.
“Wilbur,” Phil warns, looking at Wil with a warning look.
Take that bitch
“There’s a Tylenol in the cupboard, that should help against the pain,” Tommy nods softly, standing up swiftly to walk quickly to the cupboard, taking the packet of Tylenol out. He honestly hopes very much that it will help, because he truly thinks that he’ll pass out if he doesn’t get anything right now.
He quickly grabs a glass, ignoring a stupid remark from Wil.
He’s about to walk to the sink when fire erupts in his side.
If he thought the pain was bad before, it was nothing compared to the absolute fire erupting in his side. The pain makes black spots form in front of his vision, making his legs tremble. He can’t help the cry that slips past his lips as he quickly brings his hands to his side.
The glass falls out of his hands, breaking at the impact on the ground.
“TOMMY,”
The pain is too much, too overwhelming. He can feel his knees buckle, falling before he can promptly understand the immense pain overtaking all of his senses. He doesn’t hit the ground, rather being placed in the warm chest, feeling hands all over his body.
“Tommy, buddy, what’s going on?” Phil’s voice is frantic, scared. He hasn’t heard his father this scared in a long time. “Wil, please call 999 right now,”
Tommy can’t hear Wil’s response, he can’t focus even if he wanted to, the only thing he feels is pain. He wants to say something, but it hurts so much, so fucking much.
“M’ side,” He whispers, but it hurts too much, the pain only grows more and more, “ ’t hurts,” Phil shushes him, cradling his hand through Tommy’s locks. The movement used to be so soothing, it used to scare away all the pain, but it doesn’t help right now.
The pain is too much, he feels as if everything is tilting.
“How long until the ambulance is here,” Phil asks. Tommy can’t hear Wil’s response, but by the way Phil’s hands tense in his hair, he can only assume the worst. Is this how he dies, lying down on the filthy floor of the kitchen, crying in the arms of his father while praying that everything will be alright?
“Dad,” He tries, hoping to be reassured that everything is going to be alright, begging for confirmation that he won’t die here, “pl’s, dad,” He wants to hug his father back, but only moving hurts so fucking much.
“Shshs,” His father soothes, “Everything will be alright,”
It doesn’t take more for Tommy to roll on his side, puking all of his breakfast on the ground, making his death scene only worse. The vomiting doesn’t help anything against the endless fire of pain, still burning in his side.
His silent cries change into desperate sobs, every sob sending new jolts of pain through his abdomen.
He feels static in his ears, muffling his father’s reassuring touches. He can feel everything too much, but not good enough. He feels like dying as if someone’s stabbing him over and over again until he bleeds to death.
His blurred vision gets overtaken by a bunch of black spots. It doesn’t take long for him to lose his consciousness.
==========
He comes by quickly, the pain still fucking obvious in his abdomen.
He’s not safe in his father’s chest anymore. He’s lying down on the kitchen ground, a neon yellow vest filling his vision. Tommy starts to panic, he wants his father, he wants to hug Wil and never leave their side ever again.
He tries to push himself up, trying to find his brothers, hoping to get reassured, anything but here with these strangers. It may not have been the smartest idea as the pain becomes tenfold, hurting more than he thought anything ever could hurt.
A loud, desperate scream leaves his mouth.
The pain swallows him whole, locking him up. It burns his skin as if acid has been poured all over his body. He doesn’t know if he’s still screaming, but the pain stays, even as he was pushed back on the ground, forced still by strong arms, pushing him down.
He can feel the rough hand of Phil cup his cheek. The comforting feeling makes him look at the older. “Everything will be alright,” He reassures, smiling at him “Just hang in there, alright,”
“dad,” Tommy doesn’t even know if he made any sound, but he keeps his eyes locked with Phil’s as he feels a prick in his arm, making the pain and Phil float further away.
==========
The next time he opens his eyes, he feels drowsy. The lights above him are blinding, sending pulses of pain through his skull. The burning pain has disappeared. He can solely feel the slight dullness, but it feels different.
He feels better.
“Hey Toms,” Tommy looks to his side, his eyes falling on Techno’s broad body. Tommy makes a sound that he can’t decipher himself, pulling his hand out slightly, hoping to make clear what he wants.
Techno gives him a warm smile, grabbing his hand.
“You gave us quite a scare,” Phil pushes a streak of hair out of his eyes. “Your appendix burst, Toms,” Phil chuckles, smiling slightly at the exhausted figure of Tommy “You can sleep now,”
Tommy doesn’t need to hear more, passing out of exhaustion.