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"A dance party? Are you serious?"
"Absolutely."
"Wilbur, I'm not fuckin' ten."
"Close enough. Look, you're sad, and I don't like that, and it's impossible to be sad when you have a dance party."
"Is it?"
"I mean, according to my extensive research with you and Techno, it is."
"Maybe I want to be sad, have you considered that one?"
"Oh, absolutely. I used to get like that a lot. But you can't be sad on purpose, because if you keep it up then before you know it it's impossible to switch back, and if you can't switch back that's when they stop calling it sadness and they start calling it clinical depression."
"Right." Tommy's never liked to joke about Wilbur's diagnosis, despite the brother in question being all too happy to reference it at any given moment, and laugh at his own allusions. It just feels a bit insensitive for him to join in.
"You're young, Tommy. You've still got life in you. Dance with me."
Tommy looks up from his hiding place in the corner of his bed at Wilbur hanging off the doorframe. "Maybe."
And then Wilbur's pulling out his phone, flicking through his downloaded songs - bluetoothing to Tommy's speakers, apparently, because they let out a tinny device connected - and bringing up something fast-paced and with overpowering drums.
"This isn't your music style," Tommy protests.
"Just because I write indie music doesn't mean I can't enjoy a bit of mainstream pop sometimes!"
"Who even is this?"
"I don't know. I shuffled Brits 2007."
"You know I was -" he does the calculation "- 3 in 2007, Wilbur, I just do not remember anything that happened, much less what was on the radio."
"Yeah, but they're bangers, innit?"
And he's right - this could definitely be considered a banger, because the beat coaxes him to nod his head or tap his fingers with every vibration through the floor to his bedframe and his blankets. The singer's a bit annoying, too high pitched and singing from his nose, but clearly getting into this anthem for terrible couples at the club in the late 2000s.
A spark seems to light in Wilbur's brain.
"Oh! This is - it's that one, right?" He conducts the imaginary orchestra through a beat drop of sorts. "Yeah - doot doot, doodoo, I, don't, know-the, ly, rics, to this, song!"
"You sound so stupid right now, you know that, right?" he teases, unfolding, a grin forming as he thinks of all the bullying he could be doing right now. Wilbur's smile widens, and he curses his own receptiveness to brotherly torment, because Wilbur's stupid plan to coax him out of his sadness is working, god damn it.
"When I'm dancing with you, tomorrow doesn't matter!" Wilbur mumbles into a belt as he finally picks the lyrics up, entirely ignoring Tommy's tease. That just will not do.
"Bitch! You are a bitch!"
"Turn the music up, something something shatter!"
"Get out of my room!"
"Cause you're the only one who can get me off my feet and I! can't! e! ven! daaaance!"
"Fuck you!"
"Dance with me, Tommy!"
He stands up, half a mind to start attacking his brother for not giving up the bit - but Wilbur seizes his chance and grabs Tommy by the shoulders, leading him into some ridiculous form of a shimmy.
"Fuck you fuck you fuck you HANDS OFF ME, BITCH," he complains even as he's being wiggled with the ferocity of a Wilbur on a mission. It's so ludicrous that he can't help the smile creeping back onto his face as Wilbur starts to sway the pair of them to the beat in the middle of his carpet, stained with years of dropped pens and spilled paint from impromptu art experiments in the room he's grown up in. He's so lucky to be the youngest - Wilbur and Techno have always been forced to share until a few years ago, when they started their kick of needing to be as different from one another as possible. (He's not even really sure which of them started it, but one thing led to another and now they don't gang up together on him any more.)
"Isn't this fun? Don't we have fun?"
"I hate you!"
Wilbur spins Tommy and catches him by the arms. He's being absolutely puppeted, but as much as he hates to admit it, it's nostalgic and stupid and fun. "And tomorrow there's no school," Wilbur joins back in with the lyrics for a moment, reminding Tommy that yes, he's actually free from the Hell Focus Chamber for the next two days, because it is actually Friday afternoon.
"Hold on, actually get off," he insists, and to his credit Wilbur actually does (finally) take his hands away. He keeps bopping to the music, though, sweeping his head in huge arcs that send his hair flying like the stupid mop it is, even bringing out the air-guitar as the next chorus comes crashing in.
Air instruments? Actually, that's something Tommy can work with. He picks up his invisible drumsticks.
Wilbur lights the fuck up.
"YEAH!" he cheers, almost in tune with the song as it keeps grooving through the room. Tommy puts his foot on the beat and his hands start moving through the air, and he doesn't even know his way around a drumkit, but it's downright therapeutic to slam his fists into nothing when he's been in a mood since lunchtime, so he goes wild with it. His shoulders follow the movements, and then they're both playing at each other with massive smiles, heads tilting to the rhythm and Wilbur's fingers working an imaginary guitar's neck like he knows where the strings would be, the absolute tryhard bastard -
The instrumentals cut out. This bit's just vocals. The bridge.
Tommy takes a moment to breathe, laboured, heavy. God, he's unfit.
And then one of the drums comes back in, just a hint of percussion, and his head nods sharply with it like he's become the instrumentals, like they can lose themselves in top volume 2007 synths and each other's company, like there really is no tomorrow, just like the song says. Wilbur is watching him almost too intensely, almost monitoring.
"Fuck are you looking at?"
He almost looks like he's about to say something -
and then the rest of the song slams back into them, and the moment's washed away like a tidal wave's caught it.
Doesn't matter. He's having so much fucking fun.
Wilbur abandons the air guitar for doing something stupid with his arms, which quickly morphs into grabbing the nearest waterbottle off Tommy's dresser to the side of them and making it his microphone. The singer wails out a high pitched exclamation that Wilbur tries and instantly fails to replicate, his voice breaking in fifty places before he settles for a dramatic mouth wide open instead. Tommy laughs like it's going out of style at that one, basically doubled over.
And yeah, when he's with Wilbur, he can forget all about whatever the fuck happened at school that day. There's no tomorrow to worry about, no homework to finish right now, no terrible world outside their window and no responsibilities beyond fighting over who can get in the other's face more and who can jam harder to a song Tommy's never even heard before today but which Wilbur is still half-mouthing the words to. When they're together, they don't have to think about anybody else, anything else - they can just be brothers, be kids, and have some fucking fun with each other.
The album keeps playing. Tommy and Wilbur keep dancing. It's stupid and amazing and the moment's so totally theirs that it almost hurts his face to keep smiling, or his heart to keep loving his brother so much for forcing him to choose something other than sadness today.
When Phil comes home, he'll complain about the noise and the mess, all serious, but he'll be hiding a smile of his own about it. They know their dad well enough to know that he appreciates the merits of a good dance party.