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He knows it’s getting bad when at fourteen years old Tommy finds himself sitting in a train station of a city he doesn’t know with his phone in his hand staring at a contact that has never replied to any of his messages.
He stares, and stares, and stares, and stares before his hand moves of its own volition, clicking call before he can stop himself and dreading both outcomes to the results of a test with no right answers. It rings. He shouldn’t be here.
It’s two o’clock on a Wednesday, he should be in class. It’s still ringing. Maybe he should hang up? He’s obviously not going to pick up and Tommy really shouldn’t have skipped school, maybe his teachers called Phil and then he’d really be in deep shit because not only will he have detention but he’ll have to deal with whatever punishment his dad gives him too, which would not be good. Not that Phil is home enough to answer the phone but still-
“Hey!” The ringing stops. He answered.
“Wilbur-” He breathes out, relief flooding his entire body, shoulders slumping as he lets himself fall back against the wall behind him. He answered. He laughs breathlessly, smile lighting up his face. “You will never guess-”
“I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message or whatever, unless this is Techno… if it is, then you’re a bitch.” Wilburs laugh is cut off by the beep, and Tommy swears he can hear Technos classic ‘Heh?’ in the background.
The message is new, hadn’t been that when he gave up calling a few months ago. Thought that maybe he just hadn’t realised Tommy finally got a phone and thought it was spam. A hundred calls without answer was probably overkill but the fact that his own brothers had met up without a second thought to him after all these years is what makes him regret every single one.
The phone beeps, he should talk now.
“Hey, Will!” He says, a bit too loudly, the woman two benches over gives him a dirty look which causes him to blush, mouthing sorry over to her before she can get any angrier. She shakes her head and adamantly does not look in his direction anymore. What a bitch. “Sorry to call again, you’re probably getting sick of your phone ringing so much and I’m sure your voicemails are almost full, I guess I was just hoping you’d pick up, this is Tommy by the way. I-”
“Shit. Sorry. I’m rambling.” He has had enough people tell him to be quiet over the years, he’s used to it honestly but still, he worries, that this could be the reason no one answers his call. “Uh, so, anyway- I’m calling because I am currently in Brighton and I know I should have asked first but in my defence you never answer your fucking phone-”
He cuts himself off, deep breath in, deep breath out.
He is…
(Driving a car. The car doesn’t have brakes. It’s going to crash. There’s no way to stop it. Nothing he can do. There is no one to help. The car will crash with him inside and there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it.)
Fine.
Tommy is fine.
(He got in the car knowing the brakes didn’t work, he thinks, he had to have known it would crash.)
He can do this.
“I’m at the station, I don’t have anywhere else to go so if you could pick up I would really appreciate it.” He is not expecting an answer, yet he asks anyway, because once again he is left feeling like that stupid ten year old kid who misses his brother again and again and again. “Please.”
“Just, please, Wilbur.” His tears are not something his brother deserves, yet he is alone, and he is scared, and his brother will not answer his goddamn phone and so when the tears gather in his eyes he does not let them fall because they should not be given to a man not worthy. “Please.”
The lady looks at him again, though the meaning of the look is not the same. She must be a mother. Or, well, maybe just sympathetic. He wouldn’t know what a mother was like if she was to come back from the dead and slap him in the face.
He supposes at least then he would at least be able to say he met her, which is more than he’s been able to say so far.
“I know you’re probably busy- I didn’t ask and I just turned up- but I don’t know how to get to your uni from here and I only have enough for the train back so if I need the bus I’m fucked but you have your car right?” He pauses, because he rambles when is nervous, or scared, and his mind has finally caught up. “I heard Phil mention when you guys were talking once that uh- your friend? Nick? Mick?- or ah, fuck, what was their name…” His eyes are squeesed shut, to help him think, not that he thinks it helps but at least it feels like it does and it allows him to pretend hes not alone in this train station and is instead back home in his living room.
“Niki!” Again, it comes out louder than planned, he smiles before remembering the call and lets it fall from his face just as quickly as it came. “Niki,” He repeats. “Phil asked if they were driving you to a concert so if you can’t drive you could ask them?”
“Please.” He begs, a little desperately and well, maybe a tear or two or twenty slip out but the wobble in his voice could be anything and god, he should never have called Wilbur. In the four years he’s been gone he’s never answered, why did he think it’d be different now?
“Come on Will, surely you can pick up just this once?” Though he doubts he will, his whole life is evidence enough of that. He has far more evidence that his brothers do not care, that they don’t want to care than he does for anything that could even dream of giving him hope.
He loves his brothers.
He had loved his brothers.
So fucking much but Wilbur hasn’t answered the phone and so what does that leave him with?
There’s a beep, he almost thinks Wilbur picked up again and then: “To re-record your message please press one. To save your message please press two. To delete your message please press three.”
He presses three.
He knows it’s getting bad again when five years down the line he’s standing on the porch of a house he hated. He doesn’t know why he’s here, but well, it’s the same reason he was at the train station all those years ago.
He wants his brother, because despite it all he loves him.
So he knocks on the door, waits one, two, three moments before he decides it’s a bad idea and starts to turn away but the front door opens and his name is being called and-
He hates his brother too.
“Tommy?” Technoblade calls. Confusion evident in his voice, and he almost doesn’t turn around. Wants to run back to Tubbos shitty car and get in and drive away. This isn’t the brother he wanted.
He scraped his knee.
It wasn’t a huge deal but Tommy was six and dramatic and sure it was the end of the world but his dad had told him to leave him alone when he’d gone in so now he sits on the front steps, plaster in his hand, tears running down his face.
Wilbur and Techno are both out, he hopes one comes home soon because he really could do with a hug. Wilbur is much more likely to give one, if not purely so Tommy will leave again but he’ll take whatever he can get.
Technoblade comes home first.
Walks right past him to the door, hesitates before turning and walking back towards him. The plaster is snatched out of his hand before he can react, his brother opens it and puts it over the cut on his knee with a gentleness he didn’t know the teenager possessed.
He doesn’t say anything but takes the rubbish with him when he finally goes into the house.
This is far too reminiscent of that.
Though this time he’s not physically hurt, not emotionally hurt yet either but his therapist would call this self destructive and he thinks she might be right. No good has ever come from him being here.
“What are you doing here?” Techno asks, he doesn’t know. “Did you forget something?” He hasn’t been here since Christmas months before, moved out long before that too.
“I came to see Wilbur.” He says, because he did, though he’s not sure why. Isn’t all that surprised to find out he isn’t here, that he’s back in- where ever the fuck he lives, visitng a girlfriend Tommy doesn’t know the name of.
“Do you want me to tell him you were lookin’ for him?” Techno asks, that same gentleness that he had when applying the plaster seeping through the edges.
“No, uh, it’s no big deal.” He feels fourteen again, in a train station waiting for a brother who doesn’t want him. He turns to leave after that, to get away from the awkward situation he put them both in, gets halfway down the stairs when his name is called again.
“Tommy.” He hesitates just a moment. “Are you okay?” The words are unfamiliar coming from his brother, he almost wants to tell the truth but it wouldn’t be fair to lay years and years of trauma not dealt with on his brother at one in the afternoon. Despite him being the cause of a sizable chunk of it.
“I’m fine.” He says instead, and he wants to mean it.
(He doesn’t know why he keeps coming back to them.)