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1
When Tommy gets to school the next day, there’s only one person who returns his greeting, and it’s a teacher. The whole day he’s given weird looks- more so than usual.
He’s in year nine and when Liam asked him about any crushes he forgot to lie because Liam is his friend and Tommy’s an idiot who forgot that this isn’t some stupid fairytale, of course power matters more than friendship.
Tommy isn’t gay, not that there’s anything wrong with that, he just isn’t. He’s not an idiot and he understands why people think that, I mean, what else are you supposed to take from ‘ no, I don’t wanna fuckin’ date them anyways ’. Tommy is a fucking idiot.
The slightly-taller-than-him boy from some dumb sports team corners him after pe because they both have it last period and he’s heard the rumor by now. Of course he fucking has.
Tommy fights back but not really because he’s shit at fighting and his ass gets beat and Tommy, briefly, thinks he’s ready to die here because a boy who likes boys is a dead boy- even if that’s not what he is- so he’s dead anyway.
He has no friends and this boy is going to kill him and then there are teachers pulling them apart and his knuckles are split and his nose is bleeding and he gets detention for a week. In the end, he’s in year nine and some shouting about women smoothes it over and everything’s back to normal.
In the end, it doesn’t fucking matter.
2
Wilbur Soot thinks he’s annoying, and he doesn’t even try to hide it. The man seems like he’s really fucking sad all the fucking time, and it seems pretty miserable.
They play MCC together, and Tommy’s trying his best, really. He’s just tired and his personality- the thing which he’s popular for- is the exact thing that drives people away and he doesn’t know what to do. TommyInnit is too much but enough people reject him as just Tommy so how the fuck is he supposed to decide who can see what.
After all that’s happened is going to happen in their call, Tommy asks for Wilbur to follow him on some shit. It isn’t until later when he gets the notification and realizes that he should’ve asked for more because the man follows hundreds of people and doesn’t even use the fucking app because he couldn’t care less anyway.
His mother keeps astilbes on the kitchen table as a centerpiece, because their neighbor Melissa said the kitchen looked ‘rather drab’ once and Tommy got his insatiable need to be liked from somewhere. He barely held himself back from baring his teeth at her.
3
A dono says he’s a welcome distraction from real life and Tommy thinks, i’m a distraction the same way a house on fire is . You’re only looking because it’s a disaster, you only care because it’s a disaster.
He thinks it again when he gets a donation with hate. You want to be a part of it, be important, but you’re under-qualified to put it out and it’s too big for you.
“Thanks for the five dollars, bitch.”
i’m a distraction the same way a pothole in the road is a decoration.
Wilbur calls him his best friend, Tubbo loves him, and his friends all defend him from dumb haters and he’s loved, he is, nobody thinks he’s a freak.
Tommy’s just another sacrifice for the viewers to feast upon, for them to dig their teeth into before spitting it out after its years of flavor have finally run out.
He turns his back into a table so they don’t have to eat off the floor, carves out the part of himself that bleeds at their harsh words so they can get warm.
The clock turns from four to five and shouting turns into screaming and by the end of his stream he can barely speak and his mom has peppermint tea with honey ready. He used to hate the taste of mint but he learned to appreciate it because the cool-burn means he can stream more.
When Tommy goes to class the next day, people make jokes about him doing certain things and he wants to throw up because no , but nobody ever learns and year ten isn’t that different from year nine, and nothing ever changes. He’s not gay, he doesn’t anyone that way, what’s so weird about that.
The year isn’t over, it’s barely begun.
4
That slightly-taller-than-him boy is still slightly taller than him, and he still fucking hates him. He thinks that Tommy not looking at boys in the changing room is him avoiding it in order to seem less suspicious and Tommy wants to scream, what do you want from me .
He can’t do anything right, apparently.
The boy’s name is William but that’s too close to Wil and Tommy loves Wil, he does, so he can’t use it. Which is fine, the boy never uses Tommy’s name anyways.
He calls Tubbo and laughs and laughs, hate comments are nothing in the face of long calls filled with stupid jokes and a familiarity that’s unseen with the few people he has at school. The thought of being shipped with Tubbo makes him want to throw up, but they’re friends . Tubbo and Tommy, Tommy and Tubbo.
5
Ranboo is not someone he expected to become friends with. Ranboo is Tubbo’s friend and these lines aren’t usually crossed. Ranboo is nice, if a bit awkward, but his sense of humor is similar to Techno’s and they get along.
He gives Tubbo shit for making a group chat between the three of them, but when Ranboo dm’s him asking if he would genuinely want the boy to leave, all Tommy can do is smile. he send back a simple but very, very hard-hitting message of ‘bitch’.
Yes, he has his jealous moments whenever he sees the beeduo tweets or art or any of that, but for every beeduo there’s an aliium duo or a bench trio somewhere.
Not to mention, every time he and Tubbo mention something about being anywhere near each other, Ranboo will come into the chat and say ‘this is so upsetting’ hours before he makes a Twitter comment.
Tommy skips a late-night stream to have dinner with his family, smiling. Ranboo and Tubbo are on a call, and Ranboo’s going to spam him with a million ‘beeduo supremacy’ memes.
Tommy’s father brings them tea, only two cups because green tea makes his mother sick, and that’s the only flavor they have left.
The fan knocks the heads of flowers together, steam rises from every cup at the table at once. Things happen all the time, things happen every minute that have nothing to do with us.
6
The ‘ Psychology Today ’ website says not to listen to sad music when you’re feeling sad, and yeah, it probably has a point. Despite that, he opens the ‘Wilbur’ page on Spotify. Tommy follows thirteen people on Spotify- one of them is Dream, another is Ranboo, and four of them are Wilbur.
Tommy falls asleep to the soothing voice of his older brother figure, even if it’s tinged with pain and sadness. In the morning he’s not much better, but Tommy has school.
His parents are clearly concerned but they can’t figure out what he needs because he won’t tell them.
Sometimes Tommy stands on the long bridge viaduct and wonders what would happen if he threw himself off. He’s not suicidal, and he’s read the articles on that ‘weird urge to jump’ as Liam’s sister had once called it. Sometimes Tommy goes there when everything is mind-numbingly quiet.
He wonders if he throws himself over then maybe something interesting will happen.
7
Tommy’s grades plummet when his views go up, and his mother asks for him to please take some time to care. School’s never really been his thing, but he gives her a lot of shit a lot of the time, so.
Tommy’s parents get him a tutor who isn’t absolute shit and they work on things like Math and English and all this stuff he barely understands. None of them really understand his streamer thing, but they understand it’s important to him.
Technoblade accepted his friend request, and now he’s gonna suffer for it. When the tutor smiles at him after triple-checking his essay- Tommy made that happen, this shit’s embarrassing, okay?- he hesitantly asks for Technoblade to VC him. When that doesn’t work, well. He tried, alright?
Okay, so maybe he deleted that first message, but who really cares? It takes about 20 minutes of near-constant spam messages for the man to respond, and when he does Tommy nearly backs out. The man seems annoyed, but that’s most people’s reaction to him.
What he decides to do is send the essay, see what happens. It includes those myths the older man likes so much. When he doesn’t get a response 10, 20, 30 minutes later he deletes the file. When its been nearly an hour, he puts himself on do-not-disturb. He does not cry, big men do not cry.
This is it, he’s ruined it, he’s ruined it all. Tommy’s ruined everything, he ruined one of the best things in his life, this is what he does- Tommy takes the things he loves and he goes too far, he tears them to pieces.
Tommy took and he took and he kept taking and Techno didn’t stop him and he was silent and maybe now he’ll leave Tommy alone, maybe now Tommy can finally leave.