Archive of Our Own

A healthy helping of moonrays spill through the lonely, isolated window in Tommy’s room, illuminating the dusty floorboards all the way to the doorway. The cheap, Amazon-bought curtains are parted just enough to share the glow of midnight, but not so much as to drag the stars along with it. Closer to the house and scratching back and forth along the exterior wall are the spindly branches of the magnolia tree that grew higher than it was supposed to. 

Phil said he’d trim the branches. When he never got around to it, Techno promised the same. Still, though, it knocks at his window, begging for Tommy’s attention and drawing him farther away from the alluring warmth of his sheets in favor of an insomnia that eats at his very core.

Moonlight and tree branches aside, Tommy can’t sleep. This is definitely less than optimal, considering the whopping two tests he’s got tomorrow, but it can’t be helped. Maybe if Techno would have told him not to have that coffee— but his brother was shut in his room all day today, since before Tommy even got home from school. He only saw him at dinner, and even then, he came down, grabbed his plate, and disappeared again.

Online college classes must be hard, Tommy figured despite the pit in his chest, and he chalked it up to the same types of assignments keeping him from doing anything interesting, even though it felt weird not to have Techno there to eat with them. 

He swings his legs over the side of his bed and stretches, standing and tentatively extending a foot forward in the dark. The moon only covers parts of his room; the corner where his bed is has been stranded to complete darkness. He’s not sure if he’s actually gotten any sleep, but to his credit, he has tried. 

Currently, the facts he knows are as follows. One: it is late. Two: it’s cold. Three: he’s awake. Four: he’s starving.

It’s for these reasons that he carefully traverses the rest of his room, ducking into the pitch-black hallway and avoiding the creakiest floorboards. Those are probably due to be ripped up and replaced. Then again— so is half the house. Phil always says it’ll look nice “someday,” but Tommy guesses it’s probably hard to rack up enough money.

As silently as possible (his father and brother need their beauty sleep), Tommy slinks into the kitchen and pulls the fridge open innocently, scanning rows and rows of leftovers and ingredients. You’re letting all the cold air out, Techno would say, and for some reason, the words bite a little hard in his head, so Tommy lets it swing shut once he’s fairly certain that there are no surprise snacks hiding around any corners.

Next : the cabinets. Tommy circles the table and reaches up to check the pantry and cupboards, frowning at the lack of snackable items. They need a grocery trip, then. Maybe if he’s not tired tomorrow, he’ll do it. (This is a lie. He’s always tired. He’ll leave it until it gets worse and worse and Techno or Phil does it.)

Two places checked, and still nothing. Tommy’s beginning to lose hope— considering guzzling a glass of water and just running along back to bed— until a final option slides into his mind sneakily, a forbidden sentiment: check for ice cream. 

Tommy stops; thinks. He probably shouldn’t. It’s late. It’s not his ice cream. It’s sugary, too, and he should really be trying to go back to sleep. 

Well… 

Five minutes later, Tommy’s set himself up on the counter with a cup of straight faucet water and a bowl of (admittedly a few too many scoops of) ice cream. He toys with his spoon, digging in relentlessly, with no hesitation. It’s easy to fall into the rhythm, forget where he is, pull his phone out—

Maybe he’ll text Wilbur. In theory, it’s a bad idea, doing it this late— but in actuality, Tommy would bet an even $5.89 (a.k.a. the total amount of money to his name) that Wilbur’s still up and going. It’s only— he glances at the top of his screen— half past one. That’s not terrible. 

Okay. For a school night, it’s pretty terrible. In his defense, Tommy’s got nothing better to do, and there’s no harm in checking. It’s not like he can just wake somebody in his own house up. Techno probably wouldn’t take kindly to it, and Phil would be too nice about it. He’d assume something was wrong. 

So Tommy takes another bite of his ice cream, responds to Tubbo’s iMessage game of cup pong that he forgot about earlier, and then slides over to Wilbur’s contact, thumbing out a message.

from tank engine mud boy: bitch

With a snort, Tommy leaves it at that. He was going to add more, but upon second evaluation, that’ll do. He sets his phone flat on the table, face up, and takes another bite of his rocky road ice cream (Techno always gets this kind; hopefully he won’t notice any missing). When the screen dims, he taps it to keep it awake, just so he can catch the very moment Wilbur replies— if he even says anything at all.

He’s known Wilbur for a few months now, give or take, and the upperclassman is… well. To be generic, Tommy would say he’s cool. Not in the popular, house party, thousand Instagram followers way, though, no; Wilbur’s cool in the beanies, Spotify playlists, doodling on Converse way.

That definitely makes him sound like a hipster. Wilbur is not a hipster. Wilbur is probably the furthest thing from a hipster that there is, without the quirky parts. They met through jazz band, actually. Tommy was too nervous to join it last year, but Ranboo and Tubbo made him join with them for their second year of high school, and now he plays trumpet in front of a meager audience of parents and siblings twice a semester and pretends to practice in between.

It’s not that bad— Wilbur makes sure of that, after all, since they’re in the same section. On one of the first days of class, Tommy dropped his music all over the place, and Wilbur collided heads with him trying to help him pick it up. That’s when they first spoke.

After that, it’s been like clockwork, as stupidly cliche as that sounds. Tommy mutters under his breath when their conductor changes a crescendo; Wilbur snorts. Wilbur’s entire trumpet starts coming apart (twice! Two times!); Tommy whips his camera out just in time to catch him losing an entire valve. Soon, it became easy. Simple. Soon, they were exchanging numbers and making plans, and somewhere along the line, maybe Tommy started looking up to him.

He's not sure how looking up to correlates to texting 'bitch' to at one in the morning, but he'll just have to look past it. Besides, Wilbur’s just replied, anyway. 

from wumber spunk: why are you awake 

Tommy rolls his eyes. Wilbur always asks stupid questions. It seems like a key character trait now.

from tank engine mud boy: i could ask you the same thing

from wumber spunk: then ask, pussy

from tank engine mud boy: okay, why are you awake

from wumber spunk: god hath forsaken us

Shaking his head, Tommy begins to thumb out another reply, using his arm to balance the bowl and scoop another bite of ice cream out with his free hand. He’s halfway through a smartass sentence in reply when— creeeak. 

Tommy wobbles in his chair, head snapping up in time with his pounding heart. When he finally fixates on the shadowy figure that has scared the shit out of him, his older brother is in the hallway, running thin hands through his disheveled hair. He takes a few steps closer, eyes a little hazy, and Tommy purses his lips, glancing to his phone.

When he moves to set his spoon down, he realizes, as Techno jumps and crosses his arm defensively over his chest, that Techno hasn’t seen him until just now. Dazed, his brother relaxes and blinks slowly, stifling a yawn, and then squints at the clock. “Why are you awake?” This seems to be a common question of the night. Techno’s voice is low, and tired, but Tommy can tell he hasn’t slept yet. He’d be grumpy, and he doesn’t have the certified Grumpy Eyes.

The blond shrugs, finishing his message to Wilbur: you are a fucking weirdo. “Dunno.” It’s not odd for Techno to be up at this time, as he’s come to realize, but usually he doesn’t come down here. Tommy thought he’d be safe if he was just quiet enough.

Apparently, he was quiet enough, though, considering the split second of shock that has since faded from Techno’s eyes. It was just bad luck that he’s been caught. Thankfully, Techno doesn’t seem to care, anyway. His brother shakes his head and moves across the kitchen, pulling the fridge door open, and then stops, swiveling around. “Is— are you eating ice cream?”

Feeling heat creep up his neck, Tommy shrugs loosely again, eyes darting to the side and then back to his brother. It’s rare for Techno to be asking so many questions; he must be tired. “Yeah,” he says simply, and then pushes the carton halfway across the table. “Want some?”

Techno’s eyes track to the carton and then back to Tommy’s face, a deadpan expression falling across his features. “Tommy, you’re lactose intolerant.”

“Yeah.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Tommy takes another spiteful bite. Techno turns, sighing, and roots around in the fridge. “You’re gonna regret that.”

“Will not.”

“You will.” Techno pulls a cheese stick from one of the middle drawers and then lets the fridge swing shut, pulling out a chair far more gently than Tommy ever will to sit. He unwraps it carefully, and Tommy watches before his phone vibrates against the table again, indicating a reply from Wilbur.

With an exhale, Tommy allows silence to fall across the two of them so he can read Wilbur’s message and decide how to respond. Usually, he wouldn’t back down from a play fight with Techno, but he doesn’t just want to leave Wilbur hanging— especially not now that he’s bothered him in the middle of the night— and Techno seems tired enough, anyway. 

Things have been odd between himself and Techno since the latter started his online classes. It’s nice to have him at home— Tommy wouldn’t want him to leave the house— but it’s… weird, now that he doesn’t go to high school with him anymore. There’s less time for Tommy to swing by a class Techno’s in to bother him, and less time between periods for Techno to knock him in the head as they pass by each other, and less time for Tommy to send him stupid pictures of his history teacher in exchange for stupid pictures of Techno’s AP psychology teacher. 

Then there’s less time to hang out— less time to get ice cream, less time to play CS:GO, less time to make cereal at two in the morning and watch stupid reaction videos or for Techno to throw him over his shoulder like a football player or for Tommy to spray him with the hose. 

Soon, there’s no time at all, and the both of them spend each hour of each day in their separate rooms.

Tommy remembers being particularly upset about it one night, bent out of shape that Techno never wanted to spend time with him or do anything with him anymore. All he cares about are his stupid scholarships and essays and fucking applications. The words that poured from his lips (to Phil, who was rubbing gentle circles into his back) were harsh and biting yet brittle, filled with a sense of loneliness that couldn’t be solved in just one night while Techno was away.

Just because he’s busy doesn’t mean he doesn’t still care about you, Tommy, Phil soothed gently, he’ll come around, but it felt like he never would, and things had already descended into radio silence. So Tommy angrily renovated his sadness, exchanging hurt for hurt and tearing down an old poster that Techno bought him for his thirteenth birthday. He ripped the thing off the wall and stuffed it into the bin and then pretended to forget about it, even when Techno came home the next day and took out the trash and then gave him a strange look as he passed by. 

Some part of him still misses the poster, recognizes that strange look, if he thinks a little too hard about it— so he doesn’t. Tommy manages a brief glance at Techno, who sits around the corner peacefully picking at his string cheese, and tries too hard to stop picturing that mildly hurt expression deeply engraved into his features.

Quickly, he forces his attention back to the phone and shrinks in on himself. He’s too old for that poster now, anyway. It wouldn’t have matched his room when he redecorated. He would have thrown it out eventually. 

Maybe things aren’t as chill and normal as Tommy wants them to be. Maybe Techno didn’t just skip dinner for no reason. Maybe Tommy has driven a stake between them, far into the ground, and won’t loosen his grip on it.

“Wilbur, then?” The heavy silence is broken; Tommy looks up like a deer in headlights, fumbling for words until Techno gestures to his phone tiredly. 

There’s the opening he needs. “I, um— yeah,” he stutters, glancing at his screen and darkening it with a sense of guilt. “Just, uh. I wanted to see if he was awake. Wasn’t gonna wake you up or anything, y’know.”

“Go figure,” Techno mutters, focusing intensely on his cheese stick and peeling another piece of it off to eat, and it’s like a swift kick to Tommy’s ribcage. Go figure. What the hell? What is he supposed to say to that? “You could have texted me, if you were already gonna bother him.”

Oh.

It echoes. Go figure. Go figure. Go figure. Tommy tries not to crumple, tries not to turn hurt into hurt, but he’s just a machine: in goes the sad, out comes the mad. He swallows and ignores it, pushes it further and further until it festers in the back of his mind, and digs sharply into rocky road ice cream. Go figure. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean,” he says finally, feeling the swell deep in his chest and ignoring the second part of Techno’s sentence. 

It’s a lie, and Techno catches him in it when he looks up from the string cheese to meet his gaze with the simple raise of an eyebrow. I don't believe you, it says. You're lying, it says. Don't pretend you can get away with it, it says, and Tommy is cornered. “You’re always texting him.”

“No I’m not,” bursts from his mouth far too easily, too quickly, and his face twists into something it shouldn’t be as he tries valiantly to defend his fragile honor. “I text Tubbo all the time. And Ranboo,” he says, quieter, pushing down the handful of hours ago that he left Ranboo on read and the game of cup pong that he didn’t reply to until Tubbo had already gone to sleep. “You could have been asleep.”

“Wilbur could have been asleep,” Techno replies easily, like a hot knife through butter, a critical hit to Tommy’s counterargument, and Tommy swallows with resentment at how easy it is for Techno to call him out, how easy it is for Techno to point out each and every crack in the porcelain that makes up Tommy's mask of excuses.

“Man,” he says finally, turning his gaze away from the table, and something irregular rattles inside of him. “I don’t get why you’re so… obsessed with this. Fuckin’... I’m allowed to have friends.”

“I never said you weren’t,” Techno says, shrugging and peeling another strip of cheese. His hands work quickly, smoothly, and his eyes don’t move from Tommy’s face, taunting him with hues of mahogany and mauve. “Just saying I was awake the whole time.”

Frustrated, Tommy pushes his chair back from the table, raising his voice slightly as the wildfire spreads to his limbs and buzzes under his skin. “But you keep saying it like that,” he argues, shaking his head, and his eyes lock on Techno’s, blazing, blazing, blazing. “Stop it, man. You— you’re doing it on purpose. Don’t guilt trip me n’ shit.”

Techno remains infuriatingly calm. As Tommy’s heart squeezes into stencils that are too small for it, a mold that cannot fit it all, Techno sits, and sits, and sits— stoic and blank and monotone. “You’re gettin’ awfully worked up about something you just called me obsessed with.”

“I’m not,” says Tommy, and he is. 

“I don’t see what the point of this conversation is,” Techno drawls. “I made a simple statement. You text Wilbur a lot. You’re blowing things out of proportion.” 

He practically flinches, recoiling. You’re making a big deal out of something small, Tommy. You’re blowing things out of proportion, Tommy. Mountains and molehills, Tommy. Don’t cry over spilt milk, Tommy. Don’t be a baby. Don’t be so sensitive. There’s no need to be angry. 

“What the fuck,” Tommy snaps, raising his voice more than he should, “is wrong with you? You fucking— you’re doing this on purpose. You— you can’t—” Distressed yet speechless, Tommy’s hands gravitate to his chest, pressing palms into his heart and begging for a release. 

Techno doesn’t take lightly to it, either, stiffening and throwing a sharp glance Tommy’s way. “Nothing is wrong with me. I said you text Wilbur a lot, and I said I was awake. You’re making a big deal—”

“I am not making a big fucking deal,” Tommy hisses. “It wasn’t a big deal until you made it one! You fucking— you baited me!”

“I said two things, Tommy,” Techno says, sitting up straighter and raising his own voice back. “Two. And you’re acting like a child. You are acting like a ten year old, Tommy.” 

It hits him like a dagger, leaving cuts spiraling across his skin. “Don’t fucking call me immature,” he says. “At least I actually have friends, Techno. Are you jealous? Is that what it is?” His rocky road ice cream is melting under the growing heat of Techno’s glare. “Are you fucking jealous that your little brother has more friends than you? Are you lonely?” 

Techno’s lips curl slightly, and his jaw ticks when he snaps it shut, clenching it. “Grow up. You’re long overdue.”

“Oh, sure,” Tommy laughs bitterly, throwing his hands up. “Real nice coming from the dickwad who couldn’t bear to leave his dad’s house for uni.”

All the while, the burn heightens and heightens, and the world crashes and spins and dances around them, sharp edges and hot flames dangerously close to the heart locked in his ribcage. Techno’s eyes are flecked with something that Tommy can already tell was caused by him— spite, anger, frustration. 

“You wouldn’t have wanted me to leave,” Techno spits finally in an accurate accusation, ignoring his food and the dark house and the birds past the window that chirp agitatedly to warn of their volume. “You would have texted me every day if I left home. You would have texted me just as much as you text Wilbur Soot.” His voice raises as he speaks, a crescendo that hurts his ears, and Tommy’s heart drops into the soles of his feet when something in Techno’s eyes spells out hurt for hurt just like his own. “Don’t act like you’re too good for me, Tommy— you’re a terrible liar.”

A beat, a breath, and then rage. “Fuck you,” Tommy all but cries out, chest exploding into fireworks of seething red. “Fuck you, Techno, you pretentious bitch, you fucking asshole. You come in here and— and start trying to tell me who I can and can’t be friends with? After fucking ignoring me for six months? You controlling fucking— I can talk to whoever I want!” A beat, a break, a bated breath. His voice does not waver. “And if it’s not you, that’s not my problem!” 

It backfires. 

Instead of backing down, agreeing, changing opinion, Techno lashes out too, his voice louder than Tommy’s heard it in a long time.

“Maybe if I did leave, you’d actually talk to your brother instead of the fucking crony you hired to replace me when I graduated.” 

The wind is knocked out of Tommy’s lungs, and the empty void of pain consumes his breath, suffocating him and demanding the life from his eyes. It seems too dramatic, too agonizing to be real, but Tommy cannot breathe, the oxygen out of his grasp. He flinches as if hit, grabbing his elbows, and as he struggles to recover, tries in vain to gather the pieces, Techno regards him with an expression so cold that ice floods his veins, begging hoarsely for his attention.

His chest caves, and he turns his gaze to the smooth surface of the kitchen table that wobbles on one leg, the table they haven’t both been present at in months. Did he replace Techno? Did he copy and paste his feelings, beg for attention for someone he knew would actually give it to him? Is Wilbur a poor excuse for a second brother, a fill-in for something Tommy is missing so dearly? Can Tommy even live and breathe and grow without somebody holding his hand the whole way down the path?

Something so brittle, so fragile, shakes Tommy by the shoulders, threatening tears. He doesn’t want to replace, to discard, to lose Techno. He’s not ready yet. He’s not ready to let him go. 

“You don’t get it,” Tommy expresses earnestly, violently, as fireworks set his heart aflame, shoving at his bowl of ice cream that has almost all broken down to sludge and soup that he doesn’t want to touch anymore.  “You act like you get it. But you don’t. You never will.” And the painful reminder persists: even if he wanted to, he wouldn’t be able to make Techno get it. He can’t express himself so vulnerably to somebody he feels so rawly hurt by, can’t express I’m so lonely and why won’t you talk to me anymore and I miss you so much. 

So as Techno stares in disgust, distaste, at what he has said and done, an affliction blooms in Tommy’s stomach, a hurtling freight train. Again, he surges with anger, wiping his thoughts and knotting them into a bloodstained clean slate that will never truly be blank. His brain spins a story of fury, and he balls his hands into fists, leaning forward, hurting, aching, until he is a tiger, a bear, a great ball of flaming gas, a planet, everything and anything he can use to hurt—

“Maybe I’d want to text you if you ever had the decency to at least act like you fucking like me!”

Silence. The house is full to the brim of unbearable, ubiquitous silence.

Techno sits rigid as a ruler, straight in his seat, and stares hard into Tommy’s eyes with the same hurt reflected back at him like a twisted, fucked-up funhouse mirror. Tommy stares in return, fading into hurt to hurt, a puppy with his tail between his legs. They exist in a plane that skids out of reality, pushing them farther and farther apart until all that is left of each other is a speck on the horizon.

When his brother parts his lips, even as Techno’s eyes flicker with hesitation, Tommy knows that whatever is to come past them will hurt. “I don’t know who you think you are,” Techno murmurs slowly, words serrated and dragging through his heart and past the ring in his ears, “but you’re acting like no brother of mine.” And yet again, as a deep chasm opens against his sternum, Tommy is proved right. 

A silent scream haunts the back of his throat, strangled and snuffed out by the knowledge of a gently sleeping Phil upstairs and a terrifyingly weaponized Techno sitting to his left and an ever-so-patient Wilbur on the other side of his phone screen. Instead, his head fills with ache that should have been let out long ago. He should have been quieter. He should have been nicer. 

He should have been a better brother.

Tommy slumps in his seat, and presses his palms to his eyes, and curls his spine over itself, and he says, in the smallest voice he’s used thus far, “I hate you.” 

I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you I hate you I hate you. You did this. This is your fault. I hate you I hate you I hate I hate I hate—

A chair scrapes against the floor, and Tommy doesn’t lift his head. The trash can rustles, and Tommy doesn’t lift his head. Footsteps sink into the floor, going, going, and Tommy does not lift his head, but he mutters, “I hate you,” and all goes still again. 

There is a slow exhale that threatens to wheedle its way into Tommy’s brain. “I don’t want to hate you, Tommy,” says his brother, and it makes it all the worse. It makes the hurt rear its ugly head inside of him. Tommy doesn’t move, opens his mouth but doesn’t speak, afraid of what might come out if he does. 

And as he remains, hunched and strangled with his face in his hands, the footsteps start up again, followed by a hand against his shoulder. 

It burns with the heat of the sun at night, the radiance that reaches through the core fof the earth to grab him and move him against his will.

Tommy lashes out, yanking himself up to sit straight and shoving Techno’s hand away. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he says brusquely, but when he finally drags his gaze up, Techno’s face is careful, less sharp and awful and offensive. It reflects nothing of the unmatched, unrivaled ache in Tommy’s throat, nothing of the rolling peach pit of hurt versus hate and sad versus mad coiling around his ribs like twin snakes. 

Instead, his eyes reflect regret, and Tommy traces out the same look that the poster in the trash can saw.

“Tommy,” Techno says quietly, and there’s guilt, genuine guilt and remorse, in his voicel— and Tommy wants to crush it. He longs to stomp it into the dirt, beat it lifeless, extinguish it easily with more hateful, edged words thrown his way. “Tommy—”

“Just don’t touch me,” he says again, pulling his arms to his chest. “Don’t— stop. I don’t wanna talk to you, Techno,” he confesses, even though all he wants is to be held like he’s a little kid. “I don’t want to be around you,” he lies, even though that’s the problem to begin with: all he wants is to be cradled like he means something again. “Leave me alone,” he begs, while all he wants is Techno to braid the longest pieces of his hair and read him a Greek war fashioned into a gentle, baby-proofed bedtime story. 

But he’s grown, and he doesn’t deserve life’s lullabies, so while he doesn’t snap, and he doesn’t shake, and he doesn’t yell, he does mean it. His boundary is drawn deeply in the sand, and the hurt of accusation and assumption still needles at his skin all over his body: don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, don’t stay. 

Techno shifts, visibly uncomfortable. In fact, he looks like he’s swallowed a rock. Good, the sad-to-mad, hurt for hurt part of Tommy whispers. Good. He deserves it. But he doesn’t. And, after a brief moment of convincing himself: neither of them do.

“I’m not goin’ anywhere,” Techno says quietly, and it reverberates throughout his spine. Is it over? Is he safe? 

Is it over? Does he still have a brother? 

Tommy remains quiet, watching with glossy eyes the internal battle happening in Techno’s own brain. “I shouldn’t have fought with you,” is the ghost of the phrase that comes quietly from Techno, the faint admission of flaw. His older brother rarely contradicts himself, rarely accepts defeat, rarely apologizes. Techno is firm and stubborn and unmoving, and so is Tommy, and they clash head to head like disgruntled rams, battling over a single patch of grass.

It is for this reason that, selfishly, Tommy doesn’t cave. “No,” he mutters indignantly, voice on the brink of a betraying tremble, “you shouldn’t have.” He doesn’t shake. He’s stable— stubborn, and stinging, but stable. And for now, for whatever amount of time Tommy has until one of them walks out of the kitchen still angry, they are still brothers. For now. 

“I,” Techno begins, and then pauses, running his hands over each other once, twice, three times. “You like Wilbur,” he says flatly, and Tommy presses his lips into a thin line. So they’re back to this, then. They’re back to the conversation that sends them teetering precariously on a tightrope.

Under one side of the rope resides clear blue water, and under the other is churning acid. If Tommy moves wrong, or Techno breathes wrong, they will both fall ten stories down into the side that will eat them alive.

“Yeah. I like Wilbur.” It’s matter-of-fact. He tries to say it without any lilt to his voice. When he glances up at Techno, he finds that he is being carefully watched, so without thinking, he shifts in his seat and reiterates, “Wilbur is my friend.” Something shifts in Techno’s expression then, and Tommy purses his lips, waiting for the thunderstorm that is sure to come.

But his older brother breathes out, slumps in his chair. Sighs. In this moment, he doesn’t look like the prestigious college student, the man who never gets an answer incorrect, the one who doesn’t stop arguing when he knows he’s right. But he doesn’t look like the brother that never let anyone lay a hand on Tommy, either. In this moment, he is less the towering pillar Tommy always needed him to be, and he is more tired, and bristling, and uncomfortable. Maybe lonely.

Maybe Techno is lonely in tandem with Tommy. Maybe they’re two planets orbiting the same sun that have already crossed paths and will not do so again. 

“I don’t know what I’m doing wrong,” Techno finally admits, weary. Exhausted, maybe. “I don’t care if you like Wilbur, but brothers or not—” or not, or not, or not— “I can’t read minds, Tommy. So you either have to tell me how you feel, or…” He trails off, opening his palms flat to the ceiling, and Tommy wants to kick him for leaving such an obvious hypothetical, invisible end of the sentence.

Or we don’t talk about it until we drift apart, further and further. Or we leave it until there’s nothing left of us. Or we ignore it until we aren’t brothers anymore. Until we don’t know each other. Brother to stranger. 

“I don’t know… how,” Tommy says finally, with a burning hesitance, and something in him fades, dissolves into embers. It’s been like this for quite some time, he realizes. It’s not a crack that happens all at once. The strain of a fading brotherhood is a constant erosion. Gradual.

It’s no surprise that something inside him is so intrinsically broken. Some piece of him is so unnaturally missing, a brother-shaped hole that Wilbur can be no replacement for. Some piece of him is so far gone, so far removed, that only Techno could truly retrieve it for him, lift him up and reach to the top shelf to get it down for him. 

Some part of him begs him to collapse, to fall to dust and wash away under perfect angel tears born of shells of phrases that would never hurt so badly. Some part of him swallows and then carefully creeps up and out and past his defenses, and some part of him says, quietly, voice cracking, “This isn’t how family is supposed to feel.” 

It’s so earnest, and so nauseous, and it brings a sting to his eyes that he violently ignores.

The atmosphere grows stifling, quiet and tense and uncomfortable with the ache of suppressed sad, until Techno surprises him, in the opposite of the way he surprised him just a few minutes ago. “This isn’t how family is supposed to feel,” his older brother agrees, and it’s soft and raw and nothing like Techno should be.

When Tommy looks up, Techno’s eyes are glossy, too.

They are both feeling a pain that, Tommy realizes with a twist of his quickly beating heart, could have been avoided to begin with. He fights with himself, struggles to find an answer, but the only thing drawn from his lips is, as it always is, “I’m sorry.” He’s always the first to apologize, the first to regret, the first to come crawling back.

Look at me, his selfish, arrogant heart says. Look at me and tell me I’m worth loving. 

And with a careful air, Techno does. “I accept your apology,” he says, carefully, and a pause follows. Tommy holds his breath, stares helplessly into Techno’s eyes, and begs for his brother back. Techno, hearing the voiceless plea, sinks further into his chair and avows, “I’m sorry, too.” 

Tommy’s chest floods with warmth, because it’s so much better than it’s okay or don’t apologize or you didn’t do anything wrong. Those are lies. Those are comfort lies, white lies, little lies that provide no closure and no mitigation for the raging river inside Tommy’s head. 

But this— I accept your apology. I’m sorry, too. This brings him to a fermata, clear as day, that he hangs eagerly off of. Techno has stepped back from the crashing ocean they have built for themselves. Spite and hostility have dug a canyon to serve as their graves, a trench for them to lie in while the stars fall out of the sky all around them.

Tommy still hurts. Still he is all too familiar with the concept of pain, wrapped up in a little ball of crumpled paper in the landfill that will be used as kindling, that will wait sadly in the dark until it rejoins its maker, that will erode until there is nothing left of it. There are not, Tommy thinks, nearly enough words to describe pain. There is not enough he can express, not enough he can force into his gaze to show Techno how badly it hurts, why it hurts. 

It’s why he is hurt and, in turn, hurts others. Unbroken, the cycle spins on, filling Tommy’s head with heavy leaden poison until hurt is the only word he knows to make sense, untangle, smooth out what he is feeling anymore. Until the world seems to stop spinning on her axis just to cast her cruel, unforgiving spotlight on him and make it clear: you aren’t worth trying for.

Until Techno says, in a low rumble, “I don’t want to fight anymore, Tommy,” and Tommy breaks.

Unlike the painfully slow decay of a lost brotherhood, this is the shattering of a wall, the explosion of a fortress, and it rattles him. His breath hitches, and Tommy gives in, curling in on himself until tears slide down his cheeks. He breaks, and while he falls apart, Techno sits, pulls his chair close— offers himself as an ally instead of an enemy.

It’s not every day that Techno hugs him. Tonight, though, they both fall gently, wearily, from the sky like feathers, Techno with a sigh and Tommy with the charged gritting of his teeth. Techno wraps his arms around Tommy’s shoulders easily and carefully despite the way he’s always the one to complain (hugs are stuffy, why are you so touchy, I don’t get what’s so appealing about this). Today, Tommy leans off of his own chair to wrap himself in his brother and hold firmly to his shirt, and Techno returns the favor, smoothing his hair down and gathering him up in that you’re worth loving way instead.

“I,” Tommy says, and swallows a burning ache, suppressing tears. They have fought too hard for too long, now, and it still feels wrong, and mean, and upsetting to say anything else, anything but cutting edges and broken glass. Now, though, he’s smooth and soft and nice. “I didn’t want… to replace you,” he admits shakily, drying his tears with his brother’s shirt. “It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was… you were…”

Techno’s chin comes to rest on top of Tommy’s head as he trails off, and Tommy nestles himself further against his brother, staring into space. “Communication,” Techno rumbles softly, halfway to putting Tommy to sleep. “We both made mistakes. We both swept them under the rug. We both had to own up and face the consequences.” A gentle swaying exhale, and Techno slumps slightly. “And then we both made mistakes again.”

Guiltily, Tommy swallows the scratch in his throat from the earnest yelling. “I don’t want it to be a cycle,” he murmurs tightly, all too aware that it already is. “I didn’t mean it when I said you should pretend to like me.” 

Techno jostles him gently. “Don’t lie. You’re a bad liar.” Tommy breathes, and so does Techno, before the next fragment comes to light. “You feel ignored.”

Tommy’s throat practically closes at this, heat seeping through his features. Techno’s ability to read him is annoyingly, embarrassingly accurate. Again, he lets his eyes fall closed, letting his head fall against Techno’s chest again. He presses his ear flat to his brother’s chest and listens to the steady thump thump thump of his heart. When Techno speaks again, it’s echoey and deep and rumbling in his ear, all the more a temptation to listen. “Talk to me,” says Techno, and Tommy whines under his breath, suddenly a lot less inclined to listen.

Even so, from his awkward, half-bent position leaning against Techno, he sighs. Obliges. He’s too tired to fight anymore. “I feel ignored,” he finally says, nearing on a whisper. “I feel ignored, and you feel replaced. And…” It feels so insurmountable, to speak his mind in a way that makes sense, but Techno is there to save him from that pit of acid, like he always is. 

“Put it into small words,” his brother, the English major, suggests, and the validation is enough for Tommy to break it down to its bare essentials, enough for him to stop holding that breath that says Techno will judge you. That says nobody will believe you if your words aren’t sophisticated enough. Nobody will listen if your emotions aren’t organized. 

“And nobody is happy,” Tommy finally finishes, and a short affirmative exhale from Techno follows.

“Nobody is happy,” he echoes in agreement, carding a hand through Tommy’s hair, which sends pleasant shivers down his spine. “Why?” 

It’s as easy as that to make him break. It’s as easy as that to forget about rocky road ice cream and Wilbur through the phone and hurt to hurt and act like you fucking like me. “I,” Tommy says, formulating something that will make more sense than what is floating haphazardly inside his own brain. 

“You don’t care about me anymore,” Tommy says, and when a muted, sharp breath comes from Techno, he quickly clarifies: “It feels like. Since you had to apply and get in and start doing work. You never… come out to talk anymore. I thought you didn’t want to see me. And… in the… you did all your college things and I kept thinking you— you’d be done. And then finally you would come see me again, and it would be normal, but you just— you didn’t.” 

He pauses to think, hesitates to get the wheels turning. The next part is harder to admit, but he forces himself forward. Techno asked why. Tell him why. “And,” Tommy mumbles, face flaming where it is pressed against Techno’s chest, “I miss… getting high fives.” Fuck, that’s so embarrassing— such a childish thing to say. But he can’t stop now. “I miss when you pick me up and… I don’t know,” he finally fizzles out. “I miss… I miss hugs n’ shit.”

He ends it at that, too humiliated to go on. He is just a child in a teenager’s body, a little explorer inside of a student’s mind. Tommy wants his hugs and his stories and his macaroni with hot dogs. Tommy wants a brother that will pretend his jokes are funny to make sure he grows up loving, not hurting. 

Securely, Tommy thinks: he has one. He has that brother, and it is not Wilbur Soot. 

Techno doesn’t move, but he doesn’t speak, either. For a second, Tommy’s scared that he’s said something wrong, scared that Techno will be angry again, scared he’s fucked everything up by ignoring eloquence and embarrassing the messy, too-honest explanation. The hugging was too far. The requests were too many. He’s drowning in self doubt. This is not how he wanted to spend his sleep cycle.

Finally, though, his brother comes around. “Well,” Techno replies tentatively, “you want me to spend time with you. And you want me to be more touchy,” he tacks on, and Tommy shrivels. 

“Shut up,” he grumbles under his breath, even as Techno chuckles silently. “Whatever. I didn’t even mean that, prick.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Techno chides with another hand through his hair, and Tommy is instantly placated, melting into the touch. It’s an addiction he’s been too long without: Phil is touchy enough, but hugs from Phil are plentiful, and hugs from Techno are rare and always involve complaining. He can’t remember the last time Techno hugged him willingly, without stiffening, without grunting in disdain, without pushing away after no more than three seconds. 

“That’s what you want,” Techno insists through the reminiscence. “And it’s illegal in at least nine countries not to comply with Tommy Watson’s every demand.”

Tommy wriggles and worms his way out of the crook of Techno’s neck to bat at his chest. “Shut the fuck up,” he mutters, and Techno regards him bemusedly, pulling his arm back from Tommy’s shoulders so that the deathly cold absence of touch creeps back in on him.

“Oh, so you want me to let go—”

Within seconds, Tommy has slotted himself back against Techno, no matter how awkward or stupid either of them finds it. He presses his face against his brother’s shoulder and relishes the low roll of the laugh that follows. “Fuck you,” he mutters, burning with shame. “Mimimimi, I will torture my favorite brother—” 

“You’re my only brother.”

Tommy scoffs, pushing down the giddiness he feels at the familiarity of their bickering. “Shut up, Techno. You are the worst brother in the entire complete and total history of brothers.”

“Darn,” Techno deadpans. “Guess that identifies the root cause of our problems.” Even still, he doesn’t pull back, and Tommy remains glued to him until the light fades, and the tenseness of reality returns to them. Techno sighs, leaning his head back, and Tommy doesn’t move, petrified. If he takes one fidget too far, Techno will make him back up. Techno will make him face the cold again.

So as his brother goes on, Tommy sits still as he can to listen. “So you miss me because I don’t spend enough time with you or hug you enough,” Techno drawls, and Tommy nods carefully against his chest. “Hm. Would it help if I… I don’t know. Should I eat dinner with you guys more?”

“Yes,” Tommy replies immediately, thinking back to the quiet, Techno-less dinner a handful of hours ago. “And play more video games with me. And…” Then he stops himself, reconsidering. “Well… what about you, though,” he asks quietly, begging for an ounce of explanation. “What… bothers you?” Techno shrugs loosely, but Tommy pulls his arms to his chest, leaning stubbornly. “You aren’t allowed to lie either.”

“Caught red-handed,” Techno mutters, smoothing his hair down again, and Tommy suppresses a smile. “I’m gonna be honest, Tommy, I don’t—”

“Shut up,” Tommy demands, lifting his head slightly and thumping it back down against Techno’s chest. “Shut up and tell me the truth. You were mad about Wilbur.” 

The silence is brief but deafening, as it seems to have been all night. “Yes,” Techno finally admits, so raw and natural and real. “Because I like when you… want to do things with me and for me. And when you did them with Wilbur instead, I guess I was…”

“Jealous,” Tommy finishes for him, but instead of poking fun, he settles into the dirt and plants his feet. Techno’s jealousy is Wilbur. Tommy’s jealousy is locked doors and college assignments. Techno hums in quiet agreement, and Tommy presses his lips together, regret pulling at his edges. “I’m sorry,” he says again, and he can feel Techno rolling his eyes, but it doesn’t matter. “I really didn’t… mean to do that. Real shitty of me, wasn’t it? I didn’t know that…”

“You didn’t know,” Techno agrees simply. “And I didn’t know. But if things are gonna get any better, now’s the time to make sure of it. Alright?”

Tommy nods. “So I’ll help you more,” he says. “And I can… complain less, or whatever. I don’t know. I’m sorry if you have to remind me. But I will, honest, I just—”

“Relax,” Techno soothes, “I believe you,” and the world rights itself, keeping Tommy balanced and oriented. The world pulls the spotlight until it encompasses the two of them together, until it mitigates the unsure ache in his chest. His center of gravity pulls him towards the earth and towards the brother that cares so deeply, so intrinsically, for him. 

“Wilbur isn’t my brother,” Tommy all but whispers, holding back the flood of relieved tears that knock at his door, “not like you are. I promise, Techno. I promise.” 

He feels something lessen in Techno’s chest, and feels the tenseness reside, and feels the way Techno’s arms wrap more securely around him, even though he has always been the one to protest. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m your brother. And I'm better than him, anyway.”

"Shut up." Techno’s blissful selfishness draws the ache from him in the form of heat that pools in his eyes and pours down his cheeks. Swallowing and wiping his face on Techno’s shirt, he smiles, warbling, “Now we don’t have to fight anymore.”

And Techno, with a hand carding through his hair and a voice that turns hurt to understanding, affirms, “We don’t.”