Chapter Text
Wilbur thought that he may spend too much time thinking.
He sat in front of his laptop, Discord open in case anybody wanted to talk to him. Nobody did. Phil might make a group for the next Minecraft Championships soon, but that was really up to him, and clearly he didn’t feel like doing it. Considering the fact that a certain loud 16-year-old was on their team, Wilbur didn’t blame him.
Wilbur snorted to himself. “Fucking Tommy, man. We’re not going to talk at all before the competition because of him.”
Usually, Wilbur would make the groupchat himself and open it with a joke to ease tensions. Battling for victory was fun, but Wilbur had always preferred to focus on messing around. Plus, it was a good way to start the conversation with his team, because everyone else always seemed ready to fight right away. It figures, they were definitely all inspired by-
Well.
Maybe there was another reason that nobody wanted to make the groupchat, someone who was on their minds other than Tommy.
Wilbur thought that maybe he should have actually skipped this round of the Championships, but he had wanted the chance to play with his friends. He had been too hopeful, probably. He knew that Techno wouldn’t put his name down this time, because he had predicted it himself at the end of the last round. And yet Wilbur still joined, still wrote Technoblade and Phil and Tommy down as his choices.
At least Phil and Tommy were still here for him. And he loved them, really he did. He loved the dynamic, he loved Tommy’s posturing and Phil’s easy laughter.
But usually, there was somebody else with them to help make the jokes.
Wilbur found Techno’s name on his friends list. The familiar pig icon was marked with Do not Disturb. It had been like that every time Wilbur checked, ever since the teams were announced.
Wilbur checked more often than he would care to admit.
After all, what else was there to do?
Yet again, Wilbur wondered what Techno could be doing. Was he recording with Dream, or just talking with him? Was he obsessively filling documents with strategies that would help him outplay Dream and take his spot as unofficial team leader?
Doesn’t he know that we’ll let him be team leader every time?
Now, probably, Phil would take the leadership role. Wilbur tried to focus on that. That was a good thing to come out of all of this, because Phil was fun to be around and would never call with no warning at 3AM to practice a new strategy. Maybe Tommy would try to stage a coup without his admiration of Techno holding him back. If that happened, Wilbur would probably end up egging Tommy on. He always liked when there was some minor crime in his vicinity.
Wilbur tried to imagine Phil’s laughter and his exasperated sigh, or Tommy’s loud shouts and cheers. He told himself that this time he could be the one to make sarcastic comments, and Tommy could really show off how good he was at PvP. Together, he and Tommy were almost one Technoblade, right? If looked at a certain way, at least?
He dropped the thought almost instantly, and berated himself for even letting that cross his mind. He had been half-joking, but that wasn’t an excuse. This was nothing to joke about.
Plus, he didn’t know why he had tried to joke in the first place. He wasn’t in the mood.
Instead, he let his thoughts wander between memories. He thought of the list he had made of one-liners to say the next time that Techno woke his team up at some ungodly hour. He thought of the Sleepy Bois group chat, where Techno hadn’t started a conversation in longer than Wilbur could bother to keep track of. He thought of months and months of potato farming, when he, Phil, and Techno would mess around for hours in voice chat, but Techno would never respond to the DMs that either sent. After all, typing took time away from his end goals. Wilbur and Phil had made fun of him for that, but there was always a silent understanding that once he hit 500 million potatoes, Techno would grow less distant and things would be back to normal.
Wilbur picked up his guitar and began quietly strumming, creating chord progressions that he would never sing along to.
What was normal, now?
After the end of the last Championships, after they lost, Techno had been comforted by Wilbur, Phil, and Callum, until he suddenly left their voice channel to talk to Dream. Wilbur couldn’t even remember the last thing that he had said to them that night, but it certainly wasn’t goodbye. It was probably something about clout, something about Dream being on.
Dream took priority, Wilbur supposed. It was something that he had been trying to come to terms with ever since that day.
Wilbur had watched Techno and Dream’s conversation after he ended his own stream. The two got along well. Techno didn’t seem overwhelmingly nervous around Dream and his friends, which was surprising considering Dream’s reputation and Techno’s anxiety.
Wilbur and Phil used to help him with social situations. Other people could make Techno so nervous that he dropped his character entirely, or leaned into it until it became uncomfortable to watch. But Wilbur would hype him up and make jokes that helped him take his mind off of the situation, and Phil would laugh hard at every sarcastic comment Techno made until it was impossible to stay nervous. The three of them got used to facing the world together.
When he talked with Dream after the tournament, Techno had seemed so… at ease. He was confident and funny. He didn’t need any help at all.
Wilbur wondered if he had taught Techno to do that. He probably played at least a part in making Techno more comfortable with others. Without knowing it, Wilbur had been preparing his friend to continue on by himself.
He would do it again, he decided. He was proud of what he had accomplished just by being an accepting, stable person for Techno to turn to. His friend deserved this success more than anyone else Wilbur could think of, and if that success left Wilbur behind, then so be it.
He would never stop hoping for Techno to come back to their little family unchanged, though. Wilbur knew himself well enough to recognize that much. Even if it eventually became impossible, he would still hope.
A notification sounded on Wilbur’s computer. He looked up from his guitar to see that a new groupchat had been created with him, Phil, Tommy, and Joel. Tommy had made it, and opened with a comment about how excited he was to “lead his team to glorious victory”. When Phil reminded Tommy that the Championships were mostly about having fun instead of starting wars, Tommy shot back that he had, in fact, killed Dream before, and it had been very impressive.
Despite his reflective mood, Wilbur laughed, burying his head in his hands to stop himself from leaning out of his chair. He knew that Phil was laughing just as hard. There were many ways that he could respond to Tommy’s last message, but calling him a child would be the easiest and also frustrate him the most, so Wilbur did.
The four of them talked with each other all night, even after Tommy had to fake going to bed and wouldn’t stop complaining about how he was typing in the dark under his covers. Of course, he blamed Wilbur, Phil, and Joel for this injustice, and of course that was more than enough of an excuse for them to tease him even more. None of them mentioned that there was someone else who always loved to make fun of Tommy, someone who always seemed to appear at the mere mention of Tommy’s name to throw a quip. This time, nobody appeared.
At first, Wilbur thought that everyone else was having too much fun to think about Techno, but the longer the discussion went on, the more clear it became that they were avoiding the topic on purpose. Even when they discussed the event, the four of them danced around Techno’s name. Wilbur knew that the charade may be for his sake, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to bring Techno up first, even if that meant that the obvious was never addressed.
Plus, in the moment, it was hard to ignore how amazing it was to talk with his friends. Even without Techno, Phil’s laughter was contagious, and Tommy was funnier than Wilbur thought a 16-year-old could be capable of. He realized that he didn’t regret signing up for the tournament again at all, even if the team formation hadn’t gone exactly as he had hoped. He would have an excuse to call two of his closest friends every night for the next two weeks and play Minecraft with them. What more could he possibly want?
Techno’s icon stayed on Do Not Disturb all night and into the next morning. Wilbur didn’t let himself think about how many times he checked.