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wilbur is slacking. he has been for a while.
he remains hidden away in his room, face blank, pressed up against the wall and sitting on his bed, staring down at the floor. he's supposed to be cleaning up. he's supposed to be doing things- phil had asked him to, and then told him to. he doesn't have the energy. the motivation. the will. anything required to even make himself stand up, to change the clothes he'd been wearing for days.
his windows are open, though it's early november, and the cold bites at his uncovered arms- he's only wearing a t-shirt, and pajama pants. he likes the cold better than the warmth, sticking to his skin and making him uncomfortable. being cold is somehow more dignified. being cold is somehow more comforting. his entire body shakes. it's nice to remind himself that he's alive, living and breathing, by being much too cold.
he wants help, he really does. he wants to stop being like this. numb, and cold, and too tired to attempt leaving his room. but he's too afraid to ask for it.
despite his reputation as the problem child, the root of pretty much anything that goes wrong in the house, wilbur's grades remain as peachy as ever. he has solid As in geography, music, history. A-s in anything else, never stepping down to a B. phil praised him for it. told him he was doing amazing. told him he was proud.
wilbur didn't want to risk that.
he didn't want to risk losing that image of him, didn't want to ask for help and let everyone in on the big secret. because techno was probably worse off than he was, and tommy was a handful who'd already confessed to not being all there, and wilbur was the only one of them who managed to keep up the act of normalcy. of being completely very fine, thank you, he simply just likes to cause problems on purpose.
tommy was in counselling. it was a step down from flat-out therapy, but phil said they'd cross that bridge when they got there.
techno had a job. he was saving up for therapy. he'd pay for his sessions himself.
wilbur did nothing of value. had no support network. nobody to get all these thoughts out of his head, bouncing around constantly, telling him that he wasn't good enough, was just a problem, should just kill himself or leave or get thrown out and open up a spot for some golden child to rush into phil's arms and give him the kid he deserved.
and phil didn't deserve to be stuck with wilbur. wilbur didn't deserve to be in phil's presence, fucking everything up constantly. hell, his grades were probably the only reason he hadn't been put back into the system yet.
maybe, just maybe, he'd let them slip. missing assignments. half-assed tests. maybe that would be the push phil needed to realize he was better off without wil. better off without the middle child, stuck in place. if mental health was a river, tommy would be waist-high, techno shoulder-high, and wilbur would be drowning.
he'd slept until 3pm, that day. had been woken up by phil asking him to clean up. maybe, if phil hadn't come in, wilbur would've stayed asleep for days. weeks. years. clung to unconsciousness, because it was the closest he'd ever get to death. an inch away from lifelessness.
he hadn't eaten that day. perhaps it could be chalked up to depression. perhaps it could be chalked up to wishing his arms were thinner, wishing he was smaller, wishing he was stick-thin and pretty and deathly pale. the visage of a corpse, skeletal and ghostly and always seconds from collapsing. the constant hunger pains reminded him that he was on his way toward that.
maybe he'd die from it. maybe that would be his final, grand 'hoorah'- wearing oversized clothes around his family to avoid them stopping him, and finally collapsing one day onto the bathroom floor and falling backwards into death, his body too starved to continue.
maybe, if he stayed in this room long enough, he'd rot. they'd never have the mind to walk in. never have the mind to actively seek out the problem child, while he slowly decayed behind the door.
absently, he thinks he prefers being in manburg, or pogtopia, or just in the woods with dream and his friends, where he can flaunt his dwindling mental health like it's a spectacle, a showman's act, and everybody admires it. people stare as he spirals in front of them, throwing himself off of the brink multiple times, and at the end of the day they all applaud him for being such a good actor.
the role of a leader was never his. the role of a crazed rebel, though, fits him just fine. constantly causing trouble. unwanted in his own land. it summarizes him, in and out. but he knows tommy is onto him. sees the way he 'brings the character home', as if it were who he really was. which is entirely the truth, but tommy can't know, because he can't keep a secret to save his own life. he'd tell phil the second he got the chance, who would come and have a 'talk' with him, which would devolve into him getting help.
he doesn't remember exactly why he wanted help so bad, earlier.
this is who he is. who he was ultimately meant to be. a burden, a nuisance, lazy and constantly whining about how hard he's got it. and if he got help, they'd stop him from achieving deathliness. put more thought to it, and notice how he only eats at family dinners, how his hands shake and tremble. sometimes, he thinks he sees them shooting concerned glances.
then again, he can't trust his eyes much anymore. everything seems to shift and move, even when he knows it probably isn't. the curtains move in the wind, even on the stillest day, and the lights strewn across his bed are jostled by nothing at all.
distantly, he hears phil and techno talking. nearer yet, he hears tommy bustling about in his room, walking in and out, opening and closing the door as he comes and goes. hears him speaking to tubbo over the phone. or maybe that's techno and phil talking. or maybe that's tommy sobbing into his pillow. wilbur can never make out much of the conversations, or noise. it all comes in snippets, and he's left with the pieces, trying to figure out if they're onto him, if they're talking about him, if he's going back into the system.
his guitar has laid untouched, stood up by the wall, for weeks. usually, when he got upset, he'd play. when he had an idea, he'd play. when he was happy, he'd play. music was the one thing he could cling to, could trust to never be abandoned by. the thought of standing makes him dizzy.
he doesn't reach out for it. doesn't pick it up, and start strumming, and suddenly change his entire attitude. he lacks the energy. knows it would be heard by everybody in the house, and he doesn't entirely want to be acknowledged right now. for all it's worth, wil just wants to be a ghost, just wants to be left to himself, yet he gets upset when nobody comes. when nobody asks if he's okay. when nobody comes to tell him that he's enough. perhaps it's because he knows, subconsciously, that he is asking too much of his foster- adoptive family, and that he deserves none of that praise. he expects too highly of them. they are kind, but should not be expected to come in and hold his hand.
so he sits, with his back to the wall, only a bit cold for his liking, and allows himself to spiral down. allows himself to get lost in this constant tunnel of self-hatred, no light to be seen, and hopes maybe, somewhere along that tunnel, he'll fall off, plummet to wherever the bottom is, and break his neck upon ground collision.
maybe he'll text his friends later. it was a friday night, after all, and he'd admittedly been ghosting them for a while.