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Tommy was the last to notice.
Sure, things were weird, but Wilbur told him it was normal so he believed him.
Wilbur would never knowingly lie to him.
Ranboo was the second to notice.
He noticed how Wilbur put his arms out to brace himself whenever he stood and how Wilbur always managed to disappear when the group would start to talk about meeting up to get food.
Ranboo noticed how his jumpers hang loose on his body, and how he had to lean against walls after a group had gone on a walk.
Ranboo was the first person to ask George about it though.
George was the first person to notice.
Actually, George was the first disordered person who Wilbur told.
Wilbur, too drunk for his own good, called the one person he thought would help him understand everything and much to his surprise he did.
George was able to understand the drunken state of the boy who had no food in his body to balance out the tremendous amount of alcohol he had ingested, but he also understood the greater picture.
George understood why Wilbur had called him.
For starters, he was the only one awake, but he also was obviously disordered when you saw him up close. For those who had similar issues, it was clear that George was exhibiting most of the signs.
Wilbur wasn’t an idiot.
Neither was Ranboo.
There was an unspoken bond between the group. There was an unspoken rule of don’t ask me about it, but if something goes wrong, you’ll know.
Wilbur felt responsible for Ranboo’s disorder. Realistically, he knew it wasn’t his fault but he couldn’t help it when the boy would look to him wherever his best friends would get a little too close to figuring out his deepest and darkest secrets.
If Wilbur was lying to Tommy and Phil about his disorder, why couldn’t Ranboo lie to Tommy about Tubbo about it?
Wilbur knew that his secret would hurt Tommy and he didn’t want that to happen.
George told everything to Niki when she had made the tract to London to visit him.
Niki was the third person to know and the first person to ask him if he was actually okay.
Wilbur didn’t know how to answer the question.
At the time it felt obvious and like there shouldn’t have even been a question in the first place. (“Are you sure you're alright?” “Niki, if i was anything other than alright, you would be the first person to know. I promise.”)
Phil was the 4th person to notice.
It was because of the merch that everything happened.
Phil wanted to do a photoshoot of all of his friends wearing the merch and while Wilbur had thought that it would be fine and that everything would be great, he knew that once he arrived he was wrong.
He was wrong when Phil realized that Tommy, who was shorter than Wilbur, was wearing the same sized hoodie and it was bigger on Wilbur than it was on Tommy.
That was the exact moment that Phil knew exactly why Wilbur had been off for so long.
Phil was the first person who directly brought it up to him.
Wilbur had blocked most of the conversation out of his memory at this point, but from what he can remember it ended with Phil trying to get a direct answer out of him.
Wilbur remembered shutting down completely, waiting for the screaming and blame to start coming.
Wilbur couldn’t remember if it did or didn’t happen.
He could barely remember making it home. He could barely remember how he ended up on the couch instead of the floor right by his entry door.
Wilbur remembered that as the first time he ever dry fasted and it wasn’t even on purpose. It was completely accidental which was weird, because nothing was ever accidental with Wilbur.
George was the first person that showed up at his house.
Wilbur didn’t know if Phil had called him or his lack of activity anywhere that had made him concerned but it was George who had the spare key to the house.
It was George who pulled him from his dry fast as he was nearly dead. He remembered George telling him that if he didn’t want to go to hospital he needed to drink his water.
He remembered George how much having the tube hurt as he held him while he drank water. He remembered the pain being awful and he remembered splitting an orange with George who looked just as pained as he did to eat it.
Wilbur did not want the tube and he didn’t want it so bad it was the one thing that actively kept him out of treatment of any form. George knew it and while he often urged Wilbur to get treatment so he wouldn’t get to that point, he would still knowingly use it against him if the situation was dire enough.
George would deem this week of dry fasting The Incident.
Tubbo was the first person that had pierced things together without any prior knowledge.
Tubbo, for as much trouble as he had in school, was one damn smart eighteen year old.
He noticed Wilbur had dropped off the face of the Earth and noticed that he lost weight at the photoshoot. He had attributed it to Wilbur’s untreated mental health issues, but something in him knew it ran deeper than that.
Tubbo was smart enough to know that much.
Tubbo was also smart enough to not mention anything to Tommy.
Tubbo didn’t even do as much as mention the idea. Tubbo was the first person that wasn’t disordered that Wilbur actually opened himself up to.
It wasn’t intentional but he told Tubbo more than even George knew about everything that had happened in his life as they related to his disorder.
Tubbo was also smart enough to not bring up anything about Ranboo’s disorder after Wilbur had mentioned that he felt responsible for it.
Tommy was the last person to find out. He only found out when a thread of Wilbur’s disordered behavior showed up on his Twitter timeline.
The thought hadn’t even come up into his head but it seemed obvious once he had thought about it.
Wilbur never ate when they were together. He had told him that he didn’t like to eat in front of people.
Wilbur’s weight alway fluctuated. He was active and seemed to have the great stamina for working out.
Wilbur was always a private person because he didn’t want everyone in his business. Tommy didn’t think that he was one of the people he couldn’t trust.
Tommy unfortunately took it a little too personally.
Tommy was the first person that Wilbur saw himself hurt directly.
Wilbur knew that Tommy knew when he saw Tommy cutting the tags out of Wilbur’s sweaters. Regardless of what size they were, the tags were removed. He also noticed that all of the food items that Tommy brought into his house had the labels blacked out.
Tommy also made it a point to text Wilbur at least once a day and bothered him until he called him or at least answered the phone.
Tommy was the last person to know that Wilbur had an eating disorder but he was the first person to actually try and help.