Chapter Text
Wilbur loved Tommy. He did. He loved the way his eyes lit up whenever he came home, or the way the boy screamed the lyrics to his songs when they came on his playlist.
Tommy, for some background, was Wilbur’s baby brother. (Well, technically not baby, he was sixteen, but something in Wilbur’s mind would always see him as the wailing toddler that held his hand when he was seven.)
Some people said they looked like brothers. Wilbur couldn’t see it. Tommy had blond hair, and blue eyes. Wilbur had brown hair and brown eyes.
(Sometimes Tommy tried to point out that their noses were the same, or that they were both tall, but Wilbur had always scoffed at that. Tommy looked like their father. Wilbur didn’t.)
Which wasn’t a bad thing. Sometimes Wilbur took it as a good thing. He couldn’t imagine waking up every morning to find the spitting image on him strolling around making waffles.
And so because Wilbur’s brain was fucked up, he preferred his little brother looking like his dead father.
Sometimes WIlbur wondered if Tommy knew if he loved him. Probably. Wilbur looked after him, after all. Tommy must’ve known Wilbur wouldn’t do that if he didn’t love him.
And of course, like it was with most siblings, they had their quarrels. Arguments. Little spats that lasted maybe two days.
Most of them held no true heat. It was things about Tommy’s messy room, or how Wilbur forgot to remind him to wake up early for school.
But lately, it seemed that something was wrong.
Little jokes, lighthearted jokes, like Wilbur teasing him about how he never saw any of Tommy’s friends, or how he looked so tired despite sleeping in almost all day, turned from Tommy glaring and spitting insults in retaliation, to him just nodding mutely and not replying.
Which, in turn, made Wilbur feel awful and get snappish.
But you couldn’t blame him, could you? If someone misinterprets a joke, you start to get defensive, and with defensiveness comes the snappish-ness.
(Now, Wilbur would never admit it, but some part of him saw the correlation between him being snappy and Tommy being quiet. He wouldn’t change, though. Why should he be the better person?)
Sometimes their spats would turn into a full-scale fight. Bad days would lead to temper flares, which led to shouted words and red faces. One spark would cause a small fire, but by the time Wilbur had run to the extinguisher, it’d become a wildfire, and Tommy was already sobbing in his room.
Wilbur often recognised his mistakes. He knew when he messed up, when his words would carve into their target and twist.
He’d apologize when he calmed down. When the noise had quieted in Tommy’s room. When he knew his apology would mean something.
Wilbur would knock softly on Tommy’s door, hushed voice whispering. If he was still awake, Tommy would reply. Wilbur would open the door and pretend he didn’t see the way Tommy rubbed at puffy and red eyes, or fixed his bedsheets in a way that didn’t look like he’d been curled around them. Wilbur would sit down. He’d apologize for the words he’d spoken. Tommy might apologize as well, but they would always embrace afterwards.
It was a tradition that had been practiced many times over the years Wilbur had taken care of him. It was familiar. It was nice.
(It made Wilbur feel less guilty.)
But that obviously wasn’t the reason he apologized. Of course it wasn’t just to clear his guilty conscience. That’d be awful. Wilbur wasn’t awful.
No, Wilbur was a good brother. Or at least, he tried to be. He tried to set an example, to keep his patience, to care for Tommy.
And granted, it was hard. Wilbur didn’t know how Phil had done it.
(Well, Phil was dead now, since four years ago, but hey, he still put up with Tommy, Wilbur, and Techno for a combined age of twenty-three years.)
Which was a while. And it wasn’t like he had help, considering Techno was also deceased, which Wilbur often found incredibly rude at some times, and other times, he’d be too busy crying to properly think about it.
But he didn’t blame Tommy. How could he? It wasn’t Tommy’s fault they got in a car crash. It wasn’t like they were on their way to pick Tommy up from school and got hit by a drunk driver. It wasn’t like Tommy meant for them to crash. It wasn’t like Tommy could’ve taken the bus but instead decided to hang out with friends.
Ok, so maybe Wilbur blamed Tommy. But he never acted on that, right? He never neglected Tommy, he never purposely started an argument, or tried to shame him for it?
Yeah. That was right. Those thoughts stayed true to what they were: thoughts.
(Tommy had thoughts. He used to voice them a lot. Little things like how Wilbur should cut his hair, or how he should tell the girl across the street he liked her, or how Wilbur looked like a prick in those glasses.)
Key words: used to.
In fact, it was Tommy’s idea for Wilbur to start a band. To group a bunch of people to work together, instead of Wilbur just writing depressing stuff alone in his room.
(Huh. Had Wilbur ever thanked Tommy for that? Somehow, he doubted that.)
Wilbur’s band was his pride and joy. He loved that band, and every song they produced. He loved the feel of the studio air, or a guitar under his finger tips, or a mic pressed against his lips as he shouted the words that flowed through his veins like magic.
WIlbur loved his band, and so he found himself working with them more often.
At first, he’d felt bad about it. Tommy was left all alone at home most nights, and Wilbur knew that because Tommy had no friends.
(He didn’t really know why. Tommy was social, friendly, and funny. He often wondered what happened to the friends that hung out with Tommy the day of the crash, but then he got side-tracked and forgot.)
As time went on, Wilbur began to realize that maybe Tommy was glad he was gone so often.
It made sense, honestly. Whenever Wilbur saw him, he was quiet and unhappy. It had to have been because Wilbur had returned.
(Because what else could it be? There was no way that Tommy, bright, bold, brash Tommy, could be getting bullied. There was no way he was that stressed about his school grades, he barely put work in it. There was no way he was worried about Wilbur leaving, either, because he would’ve voiced that opinion, spoken in words of ‘why are you leaving me’ or ‘am I still important to you?’ But he hadn’t, so he wasn’t.)
How would you know?
And if it wasn’t any of those, then it had to be Wilbur’s initial theory.
Which, he had to say, stung a little.
And thinking about it, it was probably that thinking that added to the fact he was away so often.
That sounded bad. Wilbur could explain it, though. He could reason about it.
So here’s his argument: would you want to spend time with someone who’s happier without you there?
Your answer would probably be no, right? That was Wilbur’s point.
Plus, he had a life. He wasn’t Tommy’s father, he had a job, he had friends, he had a passion.
He was sure Tommy understood that. Even if some part of Tommy was upset with Wilbur for leaving so frequently, he had to understand that taking care of him couldn’t be a fulltime job.
His band understood. They wanted him there. They were happier with him there. They needed him.
Unlike Tommy, who really did seem to be living fine without Wilbur. He bought his own groceries with money from a job Wilbur hadn’t even known he had. He made his own foods with recipes scrounged under cupboards, left by the deceased. He fixed anything he could, cleaned everything he could, and put himself to bed at reasonable times.
(God, Wilbur remembered the first few weeks after the crash. Tommy had been a mess, worse than Wilbur. He wouldn’t sleep alone, choosing instead to curl up beside Wilbur with shaky breaths and a stuffy nose.)
Wilbur hadn’t minded that. He could deal with having to sleep beside his little brother. In fact, and Wilbur would never admit this, but it might’ve helped him as well.
Something that Wilbur still, to this day, had no idea how to deal with, was the quiet. When Tommy would sit, perfectly still, save for maybe a shaky hand, Wilbur was terrified. When the only sound Tommy would make was a low, broken, keening noise when Wilbur left the room, Wilbur had no idea what to do.
So just like now, he’d grown distant.
(Wow. When he said it like that, it sounded shitty, like Wilbur had no idea how to do anything but run.)
But Wilbur was nineteen at the time. He’d had homework. In that time, he’d still been in university, which he’d dropped out of later, but was lucky at the time to have the university near his town. Being nineteen and in university wasn’t a good recipe for taking care of a twelve year old. You couldn’t blame Wilbur for not knowing what to do.
But, you might be saying, what about Tommy? He was twelve years old, he couldn’t take care of himself. What was he supposed to do with no father, one dead brother, and one brother could only run away?
And to that, Wilbur couldn’t answer.
Which was kind of pathetic. What kind of person was he, to leave his twelve year old brother to pretty much fend for himself, after a traumatic incident, no less?
But he still tried his best, right? Didn’t he try his hardest to care for him? Wasn’t he the one who always apologized first?
And that was another thing. Wilbur wasn’t Tommy’s father. He wasn’t obligated to help. He could barely take care of himself, much less a twelve year old kid. He could’ve sent Tommy to live with their uncle, or sent him to a boarding school. Shouldn’t Tommy be grateful for all that Wilbur did for him? Not once had Wilbur heard a ‘thank you’ from him. Not once had Tommy shown Wilbur he appreciated him.
Now that he thought about it, long and hard, there were a lot of reasons why he spent more time with his band than Tommy. They said thank you. They agreed with Wilbur, in fact, saying that at least a thank you a week would be nice.
Wilbur still loved Tommy, though. He did. He would continue to look after him, because they were family.
But it did seem like Tommy was starting to become self-sufficient. It didn’t seem like he needed Wilbur that much anymore.
So was it really that bad that Wilbur spent more time with his band?
He didn’t think so. Wilbur remembered an argument they’d had two months earlier. Wilbur had come home earlier than he’d been for a long while, bringing with him two boxes of takeout that they hadn’t shared in weeks.
(Mind you, he hadn’t told Tommy he’d be home that night, had he?)
Tommy had made his own dinner, before Wilbur had come, a box of instant macaroni and cheese. Wilbur could still remember the dead look in his eyes and the faint surprise on his face as he walked through that door.
Wilbur couldn’t remember what had started the argument exactly, but he could remember his anger.
(Thinking back, he realized his anger was really pointless and misplaced, but anyways. It was too late.)
Wilbur had roughly set the boxes on the counter, yelling about how Tommy didn’t care to wait for him, to see if he’d be home for dinner. How Tommy didn’t call ahead to make sure it was dinner for one. How Tommy didn’t make extra for him anyways, even if he wasn’t there to eat it fresh.
Tommy had muttered something, maybe about how if he started to wait for Wilbur, he’d starve.
Wilbur, again, couldn’t remember what he said next, but he did remember the look on Tommy’s face as he said.
But, you see, the thing about Wilbur was that he had a gift with his words. He knew how to carefully together strings of meaningless sounds to make a sentence built to either destroy or uphold.
In this case, and in many others as well, it was destroy. In one sentence or less, Wilbur crushed Tommy’s entire spirit, ruined his entire day, and probably caused a crack in their relationship.
(It was almost comical, as well, and Wilbur would never know this, but there was still a box of week-old leftovers sitting in the fridge from the last time Tommy thought the same thing as Wilbur.)
Tommy loved Wilbur, or so he thought. (He assumed.) He still smiled at Wilbur. He still bid him a good night, or day. He still wished him good luck with his band. He still sang along to his songs.
But maybe it was just… less? Maybe the love had slowly begun to seep out, melting in a useless puddle on the floor, never to be rebottled?
Maybe Tommy loved him less.
So maybe it was okay to focus on his band more? Maybe Wilbur could aim a little more of his worry and affections on something that was reciprocating them?
Tommy would understand this. He knew you got what you put into a relationship. He was smart.
He would know Wilbur still loved him.
Just… not as much as his band.