Chapter Text
Tommy felt like his brain was muddled.
He was not sure if it was because of the medicine or the fever but he felt muddled.
If his father were to hear that, he would say that it was because of him sleeping all day. That was a possibility but Tommy had spent the day trying to walk around and be less… blegh.
When he got scolded later that day for not doing simple chores, a part of his brain told him that it was okay to feel mad at being scolded. That he should have been allowed to let out his feelings about being scolded with the same lecture even though they had all been there when he was told to just rest. He knew that he could not focus on anything that day, let alone remember things said quickly.
However, Tommy also had a part of his brain tell him that it was stupid. So what if he felt like that? His parents had done so much more when they were also tired. Some could argue that he was a child, young. A child? He was sixteen for fucks sake. He should have been able to handle a simple task.
Of course, Tommy would know about not knowing how to handle simple tasks. He had tried all he could to do simple tasks every day. He tried to be proud of himself for at least waking up. But he could not. He once tried to have a project where he did at least one thing, one productive thing. He ended up not doing it. It was dumb anyway.
Tommy felt tired.
He knew that he did not deserve to be. If anything he should have been full of energy considering he did jack shit the entire day but rest and sleep. Tommy still felt tired.
He knew he was especially tired when he collapsed that day. He also knew to tell his family when that happened because it was what the doctor had said. Tommy said it to them in his usual way, a sort of joking tone with a serious connotation. He hated dealing with serious matters. Made him feel all anxiety-filled even though he should have learnt to deal with those by now.
When he told his family, they brushed it off, thinking it was him being him. Him being him. Him being mature, such a good boy, a smart boy, never being much of an issue type of guy, the child you never had to worry about their emotions type of thing.
Of course when he did have to deal with those he did so by himself or with his friends. Wilbur had started serving as a sort of therapist friend which had only made him want to push them further away. He did try before, letting out his emotions to his parents. They never really helped. Leaving Tommy to be Tommy and working it out by himself.
He was tired of trying. He wanted to keep on trying but he was so very tired. He remembered a few months ago when he tried telling his parents about him having issues with how they talked about his body or bodies in general. The toxic undertones in their jokes made him sick. They did not stop and Tommy was tired of thinking they would try to.
Tommy felt sleepy.
Tommy never remembered the last time he felt like being alive forever. He enjoyed some parts of life. Being with his friends, even though on-screen, was always a great thing. He had people he loved and people he knew loved him.
But Tommy had a very mean brain. A brain that would keep telling him they did not give a single goddamn fuck about him. His parents did not, why would they? Why would they care about a scrawny, annoying, dumbass kid like him? He could not see a single reason why.
Maybe if he were asleep forever, he would not have to think about these things. He enjoyed his dreams when they were about him and his friends hanging out together. Or when he had very cool dreams about him doing awesome stuff and helping people.
Maybe if the real him could be replaced by the dream him, people would be happier with him. Or perhaps he should just be gone.
Tommy felt dead.
Tommy wanted to be dead.
He made a promise to Wilbur that he was gonna stay alive. That he was not going to try again. But lately, Tommy has been feeling like bleeding, burning, falling, dying.
Tommy is sorry.
Sorry, he could not be as strong as people hoped him to be. Sorry, he let down the people he wanted to make happy.
Tommy was happy. And now Tommy feels like they will be now that he will be gone.
Knocking on the door comes before then. He stops his hand from pouring the pills. He asks what they needed, it was someone calling him. Tommy knew he wanted to at least find out what it was before he went and did something irreversible. He closed the medicine box and cleaned up before walking out. He thought a few minutes ago he would be walking out with a stomach full of pills, now he was walking out with a few bandaids on his finger which he had used as the excuse to grab the medicine kit in the first place.
He grabbed his phone from the outside dresser where his mother had left it. The screen held a missed call from someone who wanted to do a collab. Tommy grips his phone a little bit tighter. This? This is what stopped him? He was seconds away from running back into the bathroom and slamming the door. Chug down the pills before anyone could stop him.
His eye catches another message underneath. A message from Wilbur asking him if he was alright. Alright? Tommy was just peachy. But, what prompted the checkup? A few messages prior was him telling his friend that his brain was being noisy again. It was why he got up from trying to rest even when he was supposed to be sick. The noise in his brain told him that he should be getting up and moving instead of slacking off like he always did. Tommy shot a text saying that his whole life was noisy so he was fine. A couple of ‘lol’s for good measure. Same old Tommy.
Another text from Tubbo comes, asking if he was excited about the move to Brighton after he got better. “Yeah big man!” he said but rejected the offer to call. Saying he was going to sleep some more. A new message came in.
“Haha, is that really you Tommy? You would never miss out on a cal-” His grip grew stronger as his eyes began to water at the edges. Voices in his head taunted him. They asked him why he could not be the Tommy people wanted him to be? That he wanted himself to be. He felt like a zombie, haggardly walking towards his room. The laptop on his desk relaced the big monitors that had been moved to his new office. On it, a message from the gang asking pestering him to join the call.
His brain fought over the decision of whether or not to join the call. On one hand, he could join the call, pretend to be his good ole energetic self. It had worked a million times before, why would it not now? On the other, he could mess up, get everyone sad or piss them off for acting like that in a call that was joyful and fun. Tommy knew they would not actually get pissed off. But maybe they would. Ultimately, he decided to head to his bed, pretend to have been asleep.
As his world faded to black, he realised his parents would most likely scold him for sleeping again. That was alright, one way or another, he would be out of their hair soon.