Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Notes: It seems I'm on a roll. :D This pairing is awesome.
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Tom is a shivering mess of bones. He's street-wild, a little bit mad, wholly starved. Too young to feel so ancient, so withered. He huddles in on himself for warmth, and thinks maybe he's trying to hold onto his sense of self. It's the only thing he has anymore, the only thing he will have, until—
Tom doesn't know, he doesn't know, he cannot possibly know, that one day or two days or maybe ten days from now, Sonny will come to him as inexplicable as an angel dropping out of the sky, and with gentle hands will usher new life into his tired body. Sonny, only eleven, has an already-legendary temper, but he has compassion to match it (surpass it, even, though maybe Tom is the only one who thinks so).
And it happens. It happens just like that; Sonny brings Tom home with breathtaking complacency, utterly sure of himself and his actions. He tells Tom, "You don't need to worry anymore, all right? You've got family now. I'm your family now." And he is. It is Don Corleone that formally accepts Tom into his household, it is Mama Corleone that clucks over his rail-thin form, it is Michael and Fredo and Connie that never look at him like an outsider, that take him as their own brother. But it is Sonny that was his family first, Sonny that saw something of worth in him, Sonny that gave him everything good and of value in his life.
It turns out everything in Tom's life comes back to Sonny, at some point.
At twelve, thirteen, fourteen, Tom is growing, getting taller and healthier, and smarter. Or maybe he's as smart as he always was, but only now has the confidence to make it known. Either way, he brings home accolades and straight A's, and Sonny throws an arm around his shoulders and announces gleefully, "Tommy, you're the smartest of us all. So goddamn smart." Tom closes his eyes and takes in those words like a burning flame, falling into the depths of his body and lighting him up from the inside. He turns into Sonny's half-embrace, and it's right there, with blood lighting his cheeks pink and shy pride drumming through his body, that he falls in love for the first time.
(Or maybe it's not, maybe he fell in love one, two, three years ago, when he learned what he'd never known before: that he had more to look forward to in his life than the dank streets around him, that hope was something he could afford himself. For Tom, that bloom of new hope is written in Sonny's crinkle-eyed smile and proprietary embrace, the curl of his voice when he says Tommy, like it's a beautiful word.)
(Maybe it happened then, maybe it's happening now, maybe it'll happen years from now. Maybe Tom falls in love anew every single day of his life. It doesn't matter. Wherever, however, whenever it happens, it's Sonny. It's always Sonny.)
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