Chapter Text
Wilbur is six when his little brother is born. He does not like him.
The kid is noisy and demanding and takes up all his parents’ attention. They no longer have time to listen to Will’s little songs or answer his questions. He’s brushed off or asked to come back later while they deal with the screaming child whose first word is “fuck”.
Then Tommy grows up a bit, becomes the watch when Wilbur sneaks out or the front to get the parents to agree to things they never would if Will asked. He’s too young to understand any of the elder’s songs or poems, but he claps excitedly after each recitation anyway, even when it’s the same thing again and again as Wilbur tries to find that one perfect word.
Wilbur is ten, and Tommy is four, and he decides that maybe he likes his little brother after all.
Tommy is six when he meets two other boys in the neighborhood, Ranboo and Tubbo, and decides they’re his new best friends. After that, the three are inseparable, and Will gets the joy of not one but three small children running around the house constantly. He’s the first person they ask for stories or games or a song as they fall asleep, and almost every time he obliges. The little boys declare him the coolest person ever. Wilbur decides he loves his little brother, and his two new best friends.
Wilbur is fourteen, Tommy just eight, when their parents die. Wilbur is the one who answers the door to the police officers. He’s the one who gets Tommy and tells him they need to go to the hospital, though he refuses to explain why. He’s the one who the surgeons look in the eye and tell that their mother, and then their father is dead. And when Tommy wakes, looking up from the makeshift pillow that’s really just Will’s balled-up jacket, it’s Wilbur who holds his brother as close as humanly possible and explains that they’re never going to see their mom or dad again.
Wilbur is fourteen, and he doesn’t think he’s a child anymore.
Wilbur grows up fast after that. His role changes. He's no longer concerned with being the coolest person ever. Songs and games and stories take the backseat to ensuring his little brother gets food before it runs out, keeping him away from the older kids looking for a fight, and making sure that for the love of god they're not separated. Will is fourteen, and he becomes his little brother's sole protector.
They try to put Tommy in a different home once. A nice family looking for a sweet little child to fill their white picket fence home. Tommy is young and cute enough that families like that still take interest in him. Will, on the other hand, is a surly teenager who goes absolutely feral any time someone so much as looks at his brother the wrong way.
Tommy is with the family for all of twelve hours before Will sneaks out of the group home, walks several miles through the dark in a thunderstorm to the bus station, and somehow gets onto a bus without a ticket. Fifteen hours after taking in their new foster child, Tommy's new parents are woken up by a scrawny, sopping wet teen on their front step with anger beyond his years in his eyes.
As they try to sort out what the hell is going on, Tommy wakes up. When he sees his big brother, soaked to the bone and nearly in tears with frustration, he hugs him and refuses to let go. Even as the parents (who for all intents and purposes seemed to be good people, if only they weren’t the thing keeping the boys apart) attempt to calm them down, and their case manager and then a social worker arrive, they can’t be pulled apart until they’re both back at the group home.
They don't try to separate the brothers again after that.
Tommy is nine when he starts to get mad at Wilbur. Nice families have asked to foster him, families with plenty of food and pet dogs and who laugh when he curses instead of elbowing him like Will does. But every time, Will shuts it down.
He's nine when a family with two older children offer to foster both him and Wilbur. To Tommy's shock, the elder actually goes along with it. For once, both of the boys get an actual house that's their own. Two days into the stay, Tommy drops a plate. The foster father gets one slap in before Wilbur is shoving Tommy out of the way and getting in the man's face. He yells out every swear word Tommy knows and then some, screams insults like his life depends on it. That night, a black and blue Wilbur leans on Tommy as they sneak out.
Tommy is nine when he understands why Wilbur is so serious all the time.
So, they stay at the underfunded group home with a bunch of other sad kids. They take the hand-me-down clothes and make do with meager food because hey, at least they're safe. At least they're together.
Tommy is ten, Wilbur a worldly sixteen, when some older boys at school start picking on him. It's mild at first, just a taunt here and there or a trip in the hallways. Cliche, really, and Tommy laughs about it even as Wilbur frowns worriedly. Then things escalate. He doesn't know what changes, but one day the boys find him outside and they're mad. He comes home with a bruise on his cheek and no backpack. Wilbur sees red.
Wilbur is sixteen when he's expelled for blowing up Dream's locker. He doesn't apologize, no matter how much the principal, and then the guidance counselor, and then his social worker try to convince him. Those assholes deserved it, and Will doesn't regret it.
He doesn't regret it, until his social worker informs him that getting expelled for "violent behavior" could mean he won't be allowed in the group home anymore. Which means he won't be allowed to see Tommy anymore.
Wilbur is sixteen and he has never been more sorry in his life. He begs for a second chance, begs for any kind of alternative if it means that he can stay with his brother.
Wilbur is sixteen when he's put in a specialized group home. Tommy is not.
Wilbur is sixteen when he's taken away from his little brother.
On his first night at the group home, Wilbur shoves as much of his stuff in a backpack as he can and runs away. He makes it halfway down the street before he's caught. Apparently the front door has a fucking security alarm.
So the next night he goes to the bathroom during dinner, and climbs right out the window. It takes them nearly a half hour to find him this time, but his social worker eventually tracks him down at the bus station. Damn his predictable escape methods.
After that, all the windows are locked from the outside, and Will can't go fifteen minutes without someone knocking on his door to ask if he's still there. But he plays nice for long enough, showing up for meals and talking with some of the younger boys (who don't remind him of Tommy, they don't, because thinking of Tommy right now would make him lose it) until they're convinced that he's ready to go back to school. A new school, of course, because the whole locker explosion incident means he is still, in fact, expelled.
But it's fine, because Will has no intention of going to a single class anyway. As soon as the bus drops him off in front of the building, he's out. Turns out writing a few A-minus-earning English essays is enough to convince the oldest boy in the house to drive him across town to the old group home. Tommy’s home.
The thing Wilbur hadn't considered is that, without an older brother refusing to be fostered separately, there are plenty of families looking for a Tommy-sized new addition.
Wilbur makes it to the old group home, finally, and Tommy isn't there anymore.
Wilbur is sixteen when he breaks.
The social worker finds him underneath a tree in the backyard sobbing into his arms. His hair is a rat's nest from him tugging on it, small red welts all over his arms where he's dug his nails in.
He doesn't speak at all while they drive back. He hides in his room for dinner, refuses to leave for school the next morning. No one can get him to say a word.
Wilbur is sixteen when they force him to go to therapy.
Phil is too old for this.
Or at least, that's what he's thinking as he chases the lanky brunette teen down the halls of his office building. It's not the first time he's come across a client who doesn't want to be there, but he's getting a little old to be doing wind sprints through the office with no warning.
The kid turns a corner, out of Phil’s sight and dangerously close to the front door of the building. Then he hears a crash, followed by a shout, and he runs even faster.
When Philza finally catches up, he finds...Technoblade? Who’s holding...a struggling brunette teenager. Ah, perfect. “Uh, Phil?” his adopted son says, dodging an elbow from the teen. “What’s going on, and why did this kid nearly run me over to get out the door?”
“Who the hell are you calling a kid?” the boy interjects. He tries to kick Techno in the shin, and finds himself on the floor with a knee digging into his back.
“Ah, you can let him up, please, Techno,” Phil says. The pink-haired teen grumbles, but complies. “That would be one of my clients. Wilbur, meet my son, Technoblade.”
Techno looks between Wilbur and Phil. “Did you start talking about Adlerian psychology again?” he deadpans.
“Not this time, no,” Phil chuckles. “Right, thank you Techno. Wilbur, shall we head back upstairs?” Wilbur glares, and Techno prepares to grab him again.
“Fuck you,” he spits. “Just let me see my brother.”
“Your brother?” the older man says, raising an eyebrow.
"Are you deaf?" Wilbur snarls. "Yes, my brother. Tommy. Just let me see him."
"Tommy? That's your brother?"
"Yes," the boy says, like Phil is particularly obtuse.
Well, maybe now they can actually get somewhere. "Where is he?"
"I don't know!" Wilbur says. "That's the whole fucking problem, isn't it?"
"I don't know where Tommy is either, Wilbur," Phil says calmly. Now, Phil has been a therapist for many years. He knows what works and what doesn't, has learned the hard way on a few occasions. Long story short, Philza knows better than to make promises he's not sure he can keep. But he also knows that sometimes you have to make a gamble. "But I can find out. Shall we go back upstairs?"
Wilbur glares, but follows him. There hadn't been much in the file he'd been given on the teen, possibly because of how short notice the first appointment was. All he really knows is that his parents died two years ago, and that he was kicked out of school less than a month ago because of an explosion.
Over the next hour, Philza slowly manages to pry more information out of the kid, most of it being solely due to his unique power to unite the boy with his brother, but hey, whatever works. The picture that’s eventually painted is...not pretty, to say the least. In the span of two years, Wilbur lost his parents, his home, had to become an adult far before he should have, and lost the one family member he had left.
It’s no freaking wonder the kid is depressed.
And depressed he is. The boy tries painfully hard, even though Phil assured him that the only reason he’d rescind his promise to look for Tommy is if Wilbur seemed a danger to him, but the first question Phil asks him after he explains his history is to name one good thing that happened to him that week. It seems a simple question. It’s the question Phil starts all of his sessions with. That’s why he knows how much of a struggle it can be for the clients struggling with depression.
Wilbur certainly fits that bill. At Phil’s prompting, he tries to come up with a happy thing. The first thing he blurts out is the possibility of seeing Tommy again.
“That’s good, mate; I’m glad you’ve got something to look forward to,” Phil says. “But I was hoping for something that happened to you this week. Ideally, something I haven’t heard about. It doesn’t have to be big.”
They sit in silence for a full five minutes, Wilbur fiddling with the buttons on the sleeve of his flannel and Phil nodding encouragingly every once in a while. Finally, the teen ventures a response. “I got to the coffee maker this morning before all of it was gone?”
“Alright,” Phil says. “Yeah, that’s a good thing. Thank you.”
The social worker who begged Phil to take this kid as a client had called him a “special case,” and then off the record, told him that he’d have his hands full. And sure, Phil can see that he has some work cut out for him. But it’s not from a child who wants to cause people problems, who makes trouble just because he can. This is a depressed kid who’s acting out because he has no idea how to handle the horrible situation he’s been thrown into.
Damn right Phil is gonna help him.