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Tommy smiled as he added an ingredient to Phil’s brewing pot. Instead of the glistering melon that was sitting to the side, Tommy added another nether wart. He recalled the platonic love potion that he’d read in one of Phil’s spellbooks.
Or he thinks that’s what the potion called for anyway, if it’s wrong it won’t hurt Phil. Nether wart was a common food and when push comes to shove, Tommy would admit fault and try again. He won’t stop until Phil was his.
Philza was his. Was always meant to be. With this potion, Philza will love Tommy forever. Tommy won’t have to worry about any pesky street rats stealing his dad. He thinks darkly that he used to be one of those pesky street rats, but now he has his own dad! Phil’s been trying to teach Tommy some of his spells and whatnot, but Tommy didn’t care about that. Not really.
He’s finally being taken care of, his needs and wants being attended to in the way he never had before. He doesn’t want anyone taking that from him.
Phil walks in and Tommy smiles. “Get it?” Phil had left the room to grab something and the man returned with splash bottles. Little glass bottles that when they shattered, the glass would shatter so small that anything that got hit with the shrapnel wouldn’t get hurt. At least that’s how Tommy thought it worked.
“So, the way that the health potion should work is that the glistering melon paired with the nether wart,” Philza continues to explain the potion and Tommy listens. He watches as Phil puts the lip of the bottle to the spigot and fills it. “And it’s a pretty strong one so it should almost instantaneously heal someone. Almost.”
Tommy laughs as a bit of the potion leaks over the side of the bottle he was filling and tickles his fingers. He didn’t care if a bit of it got on himself, after all it was a platonic love potion, so him loving his dad more than he did wouldn’t matter in the end.
Tommy turns to hand the bottle to Phil but trips over his feet and faceplants into the floor, the bottle exploding under his stomach. Phil shouts, but Tommy feels funny. He stands, watching Phil fuss over his stomach. “Phil, I don’t- I think there’s something wrong,” he says, falling forward into Philza’s arms.
“Shit, what’d you put in?” Phil panics, having spotted the glistering melon that was probably still sitting beside the pot. “The nether wart? What– I don’t know what that would do, if we were making poison instead of health, I wouldn’t be so worried but, I don’t–” Tommy cries out in pain. Something begins to burn around his heart. Poison? That sounds familiar…
That was the potion that he was supposed to wait for. Not health.
Oh well, better him than Phil.
He whimpers as fire runs through his veins and he grabs Phil’s arm, there’s a small tugging feeling and he hears Phil tell him to stay awake until he can figure out what’s wrong. Phil tries to lay Tommy down, but Tommy doesn’t let the older go any further. He can imagine Phil’s worry, the way his blue eyes would soften and his lips would pull into a tight frown and his brow would furrow. The world is blurred around him and his heart feels like it’s being set on fire.
“Phil, I’m sorry,” he apologizes. He isn’t, really. He still wanted Phil to be his, and his alone, but he did feel sorry for worrying his dad.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I’ll help you feel better, don’t worry,” Phil’s voice is strained and Tommy feels a bit of remorse for making the elder worry. He’d still do it again if he had a chance.
But maybe he’d remember to wait for poison next time.
“D-Dad, it hurts.” If he could see, he might get to relish in the shock that was surely flitting across Phil’s face. He knew the man would get flustered if Tommy called him Dad, but he’d been waiting until Phil loved him so the knowledge that he was the only one Phil would call ‘son’ was his.
“Oh, oh, hey, hey don’t go to sleep, I know it hurts, Toms, don’t sleep, okay?” Phil’s voice was still panicked and Tommy knew he should listen, he wants to hear Phil worry over him for longer. But the pain was too much, making him want to throw himself in water to cool down. It hurt, he didn’t want to hurt. His eyes fell closed but Phil’s fingers were pushing them open as soon as the cool black was overtaking his vision. He groans. “I know, I know, but you can’t sleep.”
Tommy didn’t want to sleep, he wanted to close his eyes. He wanted Phil.
“Dad!” He calls out, tightening his grip on Phil’s shirt as tears slipped past his eyes.
“I’m here, Toms, I’m here,” Phil says. Tommy buries his face in Phil’s shirt to hide his pained smile. His. His dad. He lets himself fall asleep even though Phil begs him not to again.
He wakes up, not feeling like he’s not in as much pain as he was. The room was dark and there was a soft surface under him. He opens his eyes and stretches. He looks down at his hands and yelps.
There wasn’t hands, instead there was talons and scales in a golden color. He chirps and growls, not understanding himself and desperately wants to go find Phil. The man couldn’t leave him now.
He tries to call out for Phil, but he finds himself chirping again. The sound felt like a hiccup coming up his throat, but sounded like a bird. A baby one.
He wasn’t a baby, he was a big man!
“Tommy?” Phil calls from outside the door. The door opens and light floods the room. He’s in Phil’s room and Tommy looks around in mild surprise. It was to be expected honestly, he was going to get in here to find comfort in his dad eventually, it was just a lot sooner than he thought it would be. “I’m here, Toms.” Tommy climbs into Phil’s lap and finds himself feeling a lot smaller than before. “Just a baby, a little nestling.” Tommy looks up at Phil in confusion. “You made a transformation spell of some sort, you’re a little dragon now.”
Tommy hisses as his talons catch on Phil’s jeans when Tommy tries to climb closer to Phil’s chest. This was hard. It felt like he was crawling on his hands and knees, and he hated it.
“Itty bitty baby,” Phil coos, a finger going down Tommy’s spine. Tommy melts into a puddle of goo in Phil’s lap, and he feels the tug on his heart again. He wants Phil to hold him closer, not… whatever this is. “I can’t find anything about this sort of thing, I don’t know what you put in, or how much, but this is why potions are very dangerous, Tommy.”
Tommy hisses half-heartedly, somewhat content with Phil’s finger gently scratching his spine. He feels something sway behind him and turns to see wings and a tail. It makes sense, Phil said he was a dragon.
He stops.
He can protect Phil so much better now that he’s a dragon. He can also keep Phil as close as he wants and no one can take Phil from him now. Excitement courses through his veins, replacing whatever feeling had caused him to melt and he moves out from under Phil’s finger to rest his front feet on Phil’s chest. Tommy purrs as Phil wraps an arm around him.
“So little,” Phil coos, kissing Tommy’s nose. Tommy hisses, again half-heartedly. “No, don’t hiss at me. If I’m your dad, you can’t hiss at me.” Something in Tommy backs down and he feels himself surprised. “I read up on dragons a bit, so I knew what to expect. You’re just too adorable.” Phil’s hand began scratching Tommy’s cheek and Tommy melted again. Tommy wasn’t sure what to think.
On one hand, he had what he wanted, a way for Phil to stay with him forever. On the other, he didn’t know what to think about being treated like a child.
“So little,” Phil says when Tommy chirps at him.
Maybe he didn’t mind being treated like a child if it meant that Phil would stay.
Tommy’s stomach rumbles and Phil coos at him again. “Are you hungry? I brought some food for you.” Phil’s hand moves and Tommy grabs onto it as gently as he can, not wanting Phil to leave. “I read that you might be clingy, but I didn’t think like this,” Phil chuckles, using his other hand to reach behind him and bring something that made Tommy’s mouth savor. The smell of meat had Tommy opening his mouth. Phil gave another chuckle before placing a piece of meat in Tommy’s mouth. Tommy purrs and swallows the bit of meat, curling into Phil’s stomach after his stomach is filled. “Sleepy?” Tommy nods and crawls up Phil’s shirt to wrap himself around the man’s neck. Loose enough that he’s not suffocating Phil, but tight enough that Phil won’t try to pry him off. He falls asleep pretty quickly after that, taking comfort in the warmth of Phil’s body.
“Sir, I can’t just make your crops better! Magic has a price and–” Phil’s cut off by the man waving his hand. Tommy had been watching the interaction from around Phil’s neck and had already decided that he was going to absolutely be killing this guy. It’d been a few weeks since the incident and Tommy discovered that it was pretty cool to be a dragon. He especially liked killing the mice that sometimes tried to eat Phil’s supplies.
Maybe he’d liked ripping apart the one mouse too much, enjoying its screams of pain as he ripped its tail off, but ah well, technicalities.
“I don’t fucking care.” The man continues to angrier at Phil. Tommy growls at the response. No one cusses in Phil’s shop. Not because Phil banned it, but because it was considered rude.
“Get out of my shop,” Phil says after the man tries to rip Tommy off Phil’s shoulder. This man was going to be found with no head and eyes later. Tommy was going to really enjoy taking the man’s tongue too. He wouldn’t eat it, that sounded disgusting, even though it would be such wonderful revenge. “You okay, Toms? I’m sorry he did that to you,” Phil’s hands are worriedly brushing against Tommy’s scales and Tommy chirps cheerfully and brushes his cheek against Phil’s. Phil chuckles and scratches Tommy’s head with a fingernail. Tommy melts against Phil as he always does. Only for Phil though, that girl Niki had done the same thing, but he’d only wagged his tail a bit like a dog. “Clingy.” Tommy hisses at Phil and Phil laughs. “You are though! Look at you, smaller than my forearm and trying to fight guys three times your size!” He doesn’t tell Phil he’s been doing that since he was abandoned at five years old, not because he can’t which is true, but he wouldn’t have anyway. It’s better to let Phil think Tommy was helpless and tiny and cute so he can do as he pleases a little more often. Which is usually remaining around Phil’s neck all day long.
Tommy hops down and begins to trot toward the door on his four legs. He’s gotten better at navigating his new body and he finds joy in the way that Phil tells him not to wander too far. Tommy finds his prey standing outside. He bares his teeth and bites the guy’s leg. The man yelps and growls a few curses at Tommy. None that will actually hurt Tommy, since Phil gave Tommy a small charm that fit around his neck to keep him safe from that kind of stuff. The man begins to chase Tommy and Tommy leads him further away from Phil’s hearing range and feels a dark satisfaction run through him.
He suddenly spins around and climbs up the man’s leg, leaving small cuts from his talons as he climbs up to the man’s face. He begins to screech but Tommy reaches into the man’s mouth and rips his tongue out with his talons, cutting it neatly with a sharp one. The man’s scream gurgles and Tommy bares his teeth in glee. This is what happens when you mess with what’s mine.
Tommy tosses the tongue to the side and reaches into the man’s eye sockets, growling as he does so and pulls out one of the eyes a bit too fast for his liking. He frowns but pulls the other out slower. He inspects the eyes and decides he hates the amber. It doesn’t match the man’s light brown, almost blond hair. The man falls over and Tommy yelps. He scrambles off as the man claws at his face, but Tommy trots off to a bush to clean himself. He rolls in a few berry bushes, finding amusement in the way the man’s screams are still garbled by the blood that surely was in his mouth. He runs home and finds Phil standing by the brewing stand. “Hey, mate!” Phil calls cheerfully. If Tommy had had any regrets, they would’ve washed away as soon as Phil’s smile turned on him. No one gets to touch his dad.
His dad. His to keep and his to love.
Phil’s brow furrows and Tommy tilts his head in question. “Think about something again.”
He’s confused. What does Phil want with him? What was Phil talking about, did he miss something?
“I didn’t even– Oh!” Phil smiles brightly and Tommy whips his tail around excitedly. “I know what potion you made now.” Phil’s arms pull Tommy to his chest and Tommy purrs. He doesn’t really understand what’s going on. He chirps in question and something nudges Tommy’s mind. He freezes. What?
Then it feels like something is reaching out for him and he cautiously leans toward it. It feels like Phil, so he doesn’t even question it before leaning fully toward it. Something warm and honey-like drips over what feels like his very soul and coats it in love-love-love.
He’s still confused.
“You’re a familiar, Tommy, you–” Phil laughs and Tommy is still confused. He just killed a man, or caused one to die of bleeding- which in all honesty, is a skill issue in Tommy’s professional opinion- so he’s still riding on the dark smugness of getting rid of a pest. He doesn’t entirely understand what Phil is going on about. “You turned yourself into a familiar! A dragon familiar, a rare type of familiar and yet here you are. A little dragon all to myself, hmm? How lucky am I?” Tommy blinks in confusion. “A familiar is basically the other half of a witch. I guess this was always meant to be, I never thought I’d actually find one.” Phil laughs again and Tommy finally understands.
All that talk that Phil had had about finding a familiar animal made sense. Tommy had thought he was looking for an old pet or something, not… a magic thing. He doesn’t understand completely but he thinks he can grasp the concept.
“Do you wanna be human again for a bit?” Phil asks. Tommy hesitantly nods, still not entirely comprehending what Phil was talking about. “Think about… oh, what was it?” Phil thinks to himself for a little bit before he sets Tommy down. Tommy whines. “Clingy baby,” Tommy preens at Phil’s coo and tries to climb back into Phil’s arms. “Think about stepping down from a big rock, or jumping into the pool.” Tommy tilts his head but nods. He thinks about standing on the edge of the lake and jumping off the dock into the water below, feeling the cold water wash over him and then suddenly he felt light-headed, wobbling on his feet. Phil catches him under his arms and Tommy smiles, wrapping his arms around Phil.
He still doesn’t understand what Phil was talking about but he does understand that Phil can’t leave him now. Sure, it wasn’t his original plan, to become a dragon, familiar– whatever he was now, but Phil was still going to be his.
“I’m gonna have to tell Wil and Tech that I finally found a familiar.” Tommy pauses.
“Who are they?” Phil tenses before he laughs. Tommy grumbles. He knows that his voice sounded a bit rough, but he didn’t think it was funny.
“They’re your brothers, Toms, my other sons. Techno is Wilbur’s familiar, he’s a dragon, just like you.” Phil’s hand scratches Tommy’s head. “It’s why I had a dragon care book, you didn’t wonder why I had one?” Tommy shakes his head and melts in Phil’s arms. “Nah, you’re just so clingy you didn’t care, huh?”
“I’m not clingy,” Tommy grumbles, even as he pulls himself closer to Phil. Phil laughs, but says nothing else for a while, only holding Tommy close and Tommy relishes in the feeling of being held.
“You’ll love them, Toms, I promise. I can’t believe that I haven’t talked about them before! Usually I talk about them all the time, weird.” Phil’s hum of concentration distracts Tommy and Tommy decides it’s been too long since he’s annoyed Phil.
“Old man, forgot about your own sons? Your memory really is going in your old age,” Tommy comments.
“You little shit,” Phil says, chuckling as he ruffles Tommy’s hair. “Wanna learn how to do magic?” Tommy turns and sees Phil showing off a small orb of light that multiplies and flies around the room in a string of glowing lights. Tommy stares in awe.
“Uh, duh? What am I, gonna turn down literal magic?” Tommy replies, pulling Phil up and grabbing the other’s hands. The orbs fade as Phil chuckles and Tommy finds himself smiling bright. It was everything he’d ever wanted, wrapped in a green shirt and blue jeans with ugly open-toed sandals that only changed for boots or sneakers when snow began to fall.
“I don’t know, maybe you’d rather just snuggle all day and never let me out or try to break my phone again,” Phil teases and Tommy’s face heats. So yeah, he hadn’t liked it when Phil had been getting lots of calls from village people who had really wanted to talk to Phil for a bit after Tommy had “kidnapped” Phil for hibernation, but he hadn’t tried to break the phone. He’d just wanted it out of the room and had thrown it a bit too hard.
“That was an accident,” Tomm whines. Phil just chuckles again and ruffles Tommy’s hair again.
“Sure it was, now come on, let’s go start some fires.”
“Aw hell yeah!” Tommy bounds out the door behind Phil. Sure, he didn’t like that Phil could influence his emotions and actions so easily now, but being a dragon and having magic was pretty cool.
He could also tear people’s eyes and tongues out again. He smirks when he thinks about the man in the woods. He can keep Phil distracted here for a little while longer.
After all, he got what he wanted in the end.