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Wilbur sighed, weaving in and out of the crowd of people, blending in easily with the muted colors he was wearing. He clutched the strap of his guitar tighter when someone brushed against where it hung on his back. That was a decent show, and he managed to slip away before people started coming up to him demanding his attention. All in all, he got a good amount of money, so he was doing great.
A hand shot out and tugged on his sleeve, stopping him from leaving. Wilbur internally groaned, was it some fan? A homeless person just needing some money? Or a drunkard who wanted to annoy him? Either way, Wilbur was too tired for this.
He turned his head and paused, blinking slowly.
That’s a child.
Might be a fan, hell if Wilbur knows, but he’s not in the mood to talk to some strange kid.
“Are you Wilbur Watson?”
For a moment, it seemed like the whole universe stopped. Everyone else was avoiding him as they rushed along, but Wilbur was stood frozen, staring down at this strangely tall teenager who somehow knew the name that Wilbur had tried to forget .
Everything came rushing back to him, and Wilbur once again realized where he was. He cleared his throat, eyes flicking around wildly.
“Yes, why?” The teenager took a deep breath, and then reached into his pocket to pull out a couple papers. He handed them to Wilbur wordlessly.
The older man shuffled through them, getting even more confused when he saw what looked like very official papers, and then stopped at the very last page.
He recognized that writing, grew up with it all his life. Question is, why does this weird kid have something written by Phil?
If he wasn't already confused, then he was even more now when he looked at the word at the very top; Will of Phil Watson
And just like that Wilbur’s heart dropped like a wine glass on a hardwood floor.
“Wow big man, I think you need to sit down before you collapse.” The teenager maneuvered them both to a nearby bench, Wilbur too terrified to resist.
“What is this? Who are you?”
The teenager shuffled awkwardly, bringing up a hand to bite on his nails. “‘M names Tommy Watson, I was uh..adopted by Phil.”
Fuck, of course Phil would adopt another kid after Wilbur left him, it’s so stupidly him and Wilbur hates it.
Why is he even affected so hard by the death of his adoptive father? It shouldn’t matter anymore, (maybe if Wilbur had let him go sooner these news would be less painful.)
Wilbur can’t help the hot coil of envy wrapping around his body. Sure, it’s not the kid’s fault that he replaced Wilbur, but despite that Wilbur can’t help but sneer at Tommy. This is exactly why he moved out as soon as he could, because Phil was selfish and never cared about him.
(It might be a lie, but Wilbur’s been living his life off his silver tongue for too long now that he doesn’t recognize it.)
“Why are you here then?”
Tommy scrunched up his nose, as though choosing his next words carefully, “You were my only remaining relative, I’m kind of an orphan now.”
So am I .
“So you went all the way to New York just because you were related to me?” Wilbur deadpanned, staring at the teenager.
“It was in the will,” Tommy muttered, quiet enough that Wilbur almost didn’t hear it, but when he did he went stock still once again.
His eyes scanned the page, and sure enough he found written on that page Phil’s wish for him to take in Tommy , some stranger who Phil adopted and never told him.
The news stung like chlorine when you get it in your eyes, and a little in your mouth, that drips into your lungs then somehow slips into your veins, and runs through your whole body but no matter how quickly you get out of water or how long you stay out there there’s always a little bit somewhere deep inside you.
Tommy manages to look just like Phil, despite being adopted. It strikes a chord in Wilbur, deep inside of him, and Wilbur curses his life.
“Did Phil ever move?”
“No.”
Wilbur let out a sigh, rubbing his hand against the burly summers and unslept nights shown in his face with deep lines and dark splotches, thinning skin.
He’s been gone for a while. It sure wouldn’t hurt to take a trip down to his hometown.
Besides, he’d like to see Phil's grave.
“You know, we’re not connected by blood relations. You don’t owe Phil anything, you have the choice to just walk away and never come back.” Wilbur tries, just in case.
(See: he himself hadn’t spoken to Phil properly before he died in 6 years. Everything runs deeper than what you think it does.)
Tommy furrows his brows, “I owe him everything.”
First mistake. Wilbur sighs, tucking the papers into his jacket pocket with trembling hands to look at later when Tommy isn’t there to see him break.
He leads the teenager to where he parked his beat up old sedan, mindlessly throwing away the ticket tucked between his windshield wipers.
“ Vala , my treasure.”
Tommy scrunches his nose up, “It looks like shit.”
“You look like shit,” Wilbur replies just to be petty, sliding into the front seat.
Tommy climbs in shotgun next to him, looking rather small in his seat.
Wilbur pulls the guitar strap over his head, placing the hollow fruit-shaped instrument into the backseat of the car.
“Do you know the way? I mean- you probably don’t because you haven’t been there in a while I just thought that you might, I don’t know, um-” Wilbur snapped the kid out of his ramble by clapping his hands in front of Tommy’s face.
“I know the way just fine.”
(He had memorized it at night, tracing lines on a map of the world that Phil had got him when he learned that Wilbur liked geography.)
“Oh,” Tommy slumped in his seat, fiddling with his hands for a second before buckling himself up.
“It’s going to be a long ride.” Tommy doesn’t respond, head propped up on his hand. It makes Wilbur wonder how the kid got here without a car. He decides to think about that later.
With a sigh, Wilbur starts the car and heads off towards his old hometown.
--
They’ve been driving for a while, enough that the swale of the afternoon has disappeared with the sudden dip into evening, and soon enough night will come with its notorious perfumes and many-pointed stars.
Tommy and Wilbur haven’t exchanged much conversation, despite the two technically being brothers. There’s both too many words and not enough, so they don’t say anything.
There’s a great ache that swells underneath Wilbur’s solar plexus, as if someone had poured sorrow into him. He wonders if this is what it feels like to miss someone.
He’s starting to get antsy, stuck in this car for so long. He needs to do something with himself, lest he accidentally crash the car.
With that in mind, he parks the car on the side of the road, right next to a fence. Behind it seems to be a couple acres of land, and he sincerely hopes that whoever owns it doesn’t catch him.
Tommy blinks up at him, confusion shown in his scowl, “Why’d we stop?”
“We’re taking a break,” Wilbur declares, grabbing his guitar from the backseat and getting out of the car. The wind tousles his hair, whipping his coat around.
Tommy stumbles behind him, clearly under dressed in his red and white t-shirt.
“It’s like night time, you’re insane.” Tommy complains as he trails after Wilbur, who hardly pays any mind to the teen.
Wilbur doesn’t give a reply, instead plopping down on the dirt. Tommy sits down a little ways beside him, looking rattled by the wind like a papery hive.
Wilbur sighs, focusing on that ache in his chest. He twists the keys of his guitar, flat then sharper, trying to pull all loose tension into one line, to rest each bronze string on the one clean level of sound all musicians strive for. Tommy watches him silently, legs criss-crossed and something indescribable in his expression.
Wilbur strums a little, satisfied by the little torches of sound that emit from the wood. He wracks his brain for a song to play, before finally settling on one.
Calloused fingers pluck the strings with skill, the notes rising like sparks around a campfire. Dusk stretches its quiet limbs as Tommy leans not so subtly into the sound coming from the guitar, eyes drooping.
Wilbur despises the idea of carrying a sleeping stranger into his car, but doesn’t stop the kid from dropping his head on Wilbur’s shoulder. He still stiffens automatically, not used to the touch of another being, but doesn’t push the teenager away.
Wilbur looks down at Tommy, and sees Phil. He wants to vomit.
--
A switch seemed to have been flipped after that night, because now Tommy doesn’t stop talking. He rambles about everything, mindless things, speeding right through any reply Wilbur could give. He’s like a dog that won’t stop barking, adorable on the outside, but so fucking annoying .
Wilbur groans as the boy’s chatter fill the air, missing the silence more than ever. He’s half tempted to throw Tommy out the car, temporarily of course.
(Probably.)
Phil never talked this much, and when he did it was about meaningful things. Wilbur paused that thought there, before he gets too carried away. He hasn’t thought about Phil since he moved out, so why was he so much now?
(Since Tommy showed up, since Wilbur noticed the too many similarities between his father and his ‘brother’. He managed to go through some of the papers when Tommy was asleep, a birth certificate, an adoption degree showing that Tommy was legally Phil’s son, papers from the government stating things about Phil’s death and how Wilbur was Tommy’s only family left.
Apparently Tommy’s sixteen, sixteen . How the hell did he go all the way from Utah to New York by himself? Surely the government was keeping an eye on him.)
The sky stretches for miles, painted in shades of gold and blue. The clouds, pregnant with sadness, gaze down at him.
“Oh my god shut up .” Wilbur groans.
Tommy squints his eyes at the older, “Dickhead.”
Wilbur sighs, trying to ignore the headache splitting in his temple. “And you’re a gremlin.”
“Fuck off.”
Wilbur’s fingers itch, to twist something in his hands, to smack a certain child, to strum his guitar until his fingers bleed. Once again, he wishes that he hadn’t agreed to go on this stupid road trip, wishes that he was still back in his shitty apartment where he solves puzzles and stares at trucks and drinks only to end up in a stranger’s bed because otherwise he’ll just keep causing harm to himself.
“I’m hungry.”
“Fuck off .”
Tommy furrows his brows, leaning into Wilbur’s space. “I’m hungry ,” he repeats, like it’ll suddenly change everything.
“If I get you food, will you shut up?” Wilbur snaps, squeezing the wheel of the car so hard his knuckles start to pale.
Tommy’s head bops up and down ferociously, so Wilbur pulls up his phone with his free hand and finds a diner spot relatively close to where they are. It only takes a couple minutes until Wilbur pulls up to where multiple cars are parked, stopping his shitty old sedan.
Tommy wrenches the door open, hopping out before Wilbur can even unbuckle his seat belt.
He follows the teenager into the diner with a sigh, a bell dinging when he opens the door.
There’s the present sound of country music playing in the background, which Wilbur wrinkles his nose at in distaste, hopping into a seat in front of the counter next to Tommy.
A woman pulls up, holding a notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. She has short, spiky purple hair and a silver earring dangles from her ear.
“What can I get you both?”
Wilbur scans the menu quickly, “A coffee.”
The woman jots his order down, turning to Tommy, “And you?”
Tommy scrunches up his nose, as though thinking, until finally he seems to make up his mind, “Strawberry milkshake and a uh, biscu- cookie.”
The woman writes that down and walks over, presumably to get their orders. Wilbur drums his fingers on the table, surveying the place. Not many people are here, a man who looks like he could beat Wilbur up, and two people laughing in a booth, but other than that Tommy and Wilbur are the only ones in the diner.
The woman returns, placing down their orders. Wilbur immediately starts adding the sugar packets to his coffee, while she also places down the check and walks away.
Once Wilbur is satisfied that he added enough sugar, he takes a sip, wincing at how it burns his tongue. Way too hot.
Tommy picks up the cookie wrapped in a napkin, breaking it in half and sliding the other piece over to Wilbur.
The older man picks it up, furrowing his brows.
Tommy merely shrugs, “You’re all bones ‘n shit.”
Wilbur snorts, taking a bite and letting the awful country music fill any uncomfortable silence that might be there between the two.
Wilbur spends more time listening and less time writing nowadays. He thought by now that order would be the other way around. That he’d have everything figured out and maybe his voice would matter more than it does.
Instead he’s in the middle of Ohio with a teenager who’s supposed to be his brother.
Wilbur takes another sip of his coffee, it’s considerably less hot.
--
They’re right about to enter Illinois if his Google Maps is correct, the stars explosive overhead. Wilbur is solely focused on the road as Tommy rests his head on the center console, half-asleep.
It’s way too late (or early, depending how you look at it) for the teen to be awake, but he had persisted and now it was nearing 4am.
“Tired?” Wilbur teases, despite the exhaustion also weighing at his bones.
“Not my fault I have an actually normal sleep schedule,” Tommy mutters, blinking up at him slowly. Wilbur would almost call it adorable.
The young teen looks younger now, less guarded, more vulnerable. Wilbur cringes at the thought.
Tommy shifts, staring at him with wide eyes. They’re bright, like they’re holding the light of extinguished constellations.
Wilbur sighs, “Go to sleep kid.”
Tommy opens his mouth as though to disagree but then stops and slumps down at the hand in his hair. It’s an amusing sight honestly, one which Wilbur never thought he would get to see. For the first time since Wilbur met him, the teenager’s silent.
It’s a true relief, no shrieking voice to interrupt his thoughts. He tries to ignore the feeling of his heart taking root inside of his body, something akin to fondness curling inside his stomach.
Disgusting. He’s getting too damn soft with this kid around.
--
When the morning sunlight hits the ridge just right, the blue mountains turn into a windswept painting of foggy stars. Indigo clouds stack like accordions across a dusty sage sky, and it reminds Wilbur of the time Phil woke him up early just to get the 50% off cupcakes at their local bakery.
Tommy hasn’t woken up, and Wilbur hasn’t moved his hand from the kid’s hair. It’s fine, he’s gotten used to driving with only one hand for the past couple hours.
Wilbur has the windows open, it’s far too hot in the summer in Missouri. He appreciates the cool kiss of wind on his neck, chasing away the heat from the sun.
When he looks down at Tommy, he tries to gather hate for him, but he really can’t. The teenager’s stopped looking like Phil every time Wilbur sees him, which is frustrating because then he has nothing to pit his anger against.
(What Wilbur doesn’t tell anyone is that the reason he moved out was because he had a tendency to shut people out.
Then again, where do you think he got it from?
P̶h̶i̶l̶. )
He misses Phil and he hates it, because now the man’s dead . The words don’t sound right, for all Wilbur knew the man couldn’t die. It’s just so weird .
He hasn’t cried at all since he heard the news about his adoptive father’s death, and he has no idea if that’s normal or not. But whenever he’s tried to be more silver spoon and less butcher knife in the past it’s always ended wrong wrong wrong .
Truth be told, he doesn’t remember the argument he had with Phil before he left. He should, god he should, because that’s the last proper conversation they had in 6 years.
(He couldn’t call Phil because he made him panic.)
But Wilbur has learned a lot in the time he’s been gone.
For one, when he says he is crying what he really means is that he wants to cry but cannot. Sex is another way of communicating with his body, like self-harm or sign language. Completing five puzzles a day stops the panic. Trucks downshift on Main Street. Most of what he does is to stop the panic.
(In another universe Wilbur is a thirteen year old boy with soft hands and bruised shins again, but this time he tells Phil about his day as they fold laundry together. Phil smiles. The summer heat does not feel razor-sharp or ready to wound him. Phil laughs. in this other universe Wilbur’s hands are allowed to be his .)
Tommy shifts, leaning closer into Wilbur’s hand in the process. It takes a second, but finally he groggily blinks open his eyes at the older man.
“W’lby?”
That was not cute, that was not .
“Welcome back to the world, sleeping beauty.” Well, he’s always hid his true feelings behind jokes, why stop now?
Tommy doesn’t snap at him, instead his brows furrow and his eyes flicker to Wilbur and then to his outstretched arm, still too tired to comprehend the situation.
Subconsciously, Wilbur’s eyes soften ever so slightly, “You’ve been asleep for a couple hours now bud, we’re in Missouri.”
Tommy relaxes, tension dropping with his shoulders, “Where’s ‘hat?”
“Somewhere between Illinois and Kansas.”
Tommy hums, and a sort of comfortable silence fills the air. Wilbur twirls a curl of Tommy’s hair between his fingers.
From the corner of his eye, he can see Tommy hooking his fingers together in a sort of ‘C’ shape, and then switching his fingers around to do it again. He’s slightly confused, but doesn’t comment on it.
The whole scene is blurry and softened, as though covered in a layer of oil paint. It’s odd, most of Wilbur’s recent memories have been ridden with his gut twisting with an ugly feeling, loneliness aching on his tongue. It’s odd, to have such a..peaceful moment. One where he can almost feel whole.
--
They’re halfway through Kansas, Wilbur’s shitty old sedan spluttering along the road. Tommy has his cheek pressed against the window, eyes glazed over as he stares at the fields passing by.
Wilbur is sweating in his shirt, sunburn cradling the back of his neck. He feels uncomfortably warm, the urge to yell at someone hidden under his tongue. It’s like a crow trapped in his belly and beating to be freed.
Wilbur stares at the outlines of lily-freckled hillscape as he passes them in a blur. He can’t explain the strange feeling in his chest, like the bones of his ribcage are being bent.
“Phil never mentioned you, ya know?”
He doesn’t know why, but Wilbur snaps. It might just be all the turmoil building up in his chest, demanding to be let free, the harsh words scratched on the walls of his throat that beg to be spoken, but the words that he speak next are wrenched straight from the ugly part of his mind.
“Of fucking course he didn’t.” It’s almost a growl, and he can see Tommy’s eyes widen at the newfound anger from the older man.
“Phil cares more about you than he does about anyone else, because of fucking course! I was never good enough, so he replaced me. Fucking predictable.” These words are coming from where they made a home in the negative spaces in his ribs, harsh and unforgiving.
Wilbur stops the car, hopping out, hoping that’ll stop him from doing something he’ll regret. Like an idiot, Tommy follows him.
“I don’t- I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
Wilbur stops in the middle of the road, turning to the confused teenager. It feels like his body is a war zone, like there are mines planted beneath his skin and with every sharp word he’s setting them off.
“What I mean is that Phil is fucking shit. And every time I look at you I see him . I hate it, I hate it so much. I hate having to look at you, because I haven’t spoken to Phil in 6 years and then you come back as though to taunt me! It’s a sick fucking joke, and guess what? I’m not laughing!” The words carve themselves into his bones until all he knows is harsh words and the warm feeling in his ribcage from late night drives and early mornings.
Wilbur tugs a hand at his hair in agitation. From the corner of his eye he can see Tommy shaking, repeatedly making a circle over where his heart would be with his finger.
The older man’s own breath is trembling, and he swallows harshly.
In the middle of the storm, Wilbur says that he hates and loves Tommy in the same breath, “I see you and I never know if I’m looking at Tommy or looking at Phil, and yet either way I don’t know who deserves my anger.”
In the eye of the storm there is no serenity, just Wilbur with clenched teeth and shaking hands and Tommy with tears spilling down his face and still circling over his heart.
The anger doesn’t leave Wilbur, instead it slips through his fingers. It’s like he’s holding sand, for a second he has a good grasp on it and then the next he doesn’t know where it disappeared to because it all looks the same when put together.
(“ Anger makes you stupid, ” Wilbur remembers Phil whispering to him once, when it was late at night. “ Stupid gets you killed. ”)
Wilbur sighs, his fist unfolding into petals. The light from the blazing sun frames his ash-stained cheekbones and teeth of splintered glass. He feels angry and disgusting, like someone had just spat on him.
“Fuck, I don’t think any of you do.” Wilbur mutters, his mouth made of burning coals. The silence that follows is thick like tar, and Tommy is still shaking and still crying and still making that circle over his heart.
Something clicks in him. In sign language that means ‘ I’m sorry ’.
Wilbur grimaces at the damage he’s done, reaching a hand out to Tommy. To do what? He doesn’t quite know, but Tommy flinches away and escapes back into the car.
After a moment, Wilbur slips back into the passenger seat. Silence fills the air, and it feels like a bunch of sharp knives hitting him in his heart.
Tommy is curled up, looking smaller than he has since Wilbur first met him.
“Well? Drive, we don’t have much left to go.” Tommy mutters quietly, not looking him in the eyes.
(Some thousands of light years away, Wilbur met the sun in his dreams and she was tipsy. She kissed him like she was afraid to smudge her lipstick and he asked her what it was she was drinking and she said raspberry rum mixed with the aura of dying planets .
Wilbur asked the sun what she was drinking and she said your love for him .)
--
Wilbur had been glancing over at Tommy now and then, but stopped a while ago so that he would focus on something other than the massive guilt in his chest. It’s even worse because Wilbur doesn’t even regret what he said, when he definitely should.
He hadn’t known, until now, that you could bleed from somewhere invisible.
It’s almost like the ocean’s deepest trench found a home and evolved in his heart, drying out with global warming because of how much Wilbur wanted.
The roads are getting more familiar now, and he can tell that Tommy recognizes them too. They arrived in Utah a couple hours ago, and Wilbur has been following the tantalizingly nostalgic highways to where he hasn't been in 6 years.
“Take and left, and then continue forward until you come across a fork in the road, and then go right.” Wilbur doesn’t tell the younger that he knows the way already, too afraid that he’d cause even more damage.
This town didn’t grow on Wilbur, it grew inside of him, in his soft belly, an old oak with too many roots tangled up in his guts.
(The more you sever the roots the more we try to reach for them.)
This town is where he hid his soul, buried it in the soft damp ground of the earth. Buried it with all his memories of laughing, of bones of salt and teeth of lavender petals still wet with dew.
It’s so goddamn weird to be back here, especially because it’s not to yell at his father but instead to see his grave.
“Stop here,” Tommy didn’t need to tell him, Wilbur already recognized the house he grew up in. The shingles covered the slanted roof of the house, the sky blue paint more muted than it was years ago. The blinds to the windows are drawn shut, and the porch is fixed.
Wilbur’s mouth runs dry, any words he could’ve said leaving his mouth. Tommy doesn’t share the same surprise as him, hopping out of the car and pulling a key out of his pocket.
It takes a moment but Wilbur gets out and follows the kid, lilacs are scattered around the front yard, little flashes of purple in the overwhelming green.
Tommy fiddles for a moment with unlocking the door, but when he does he throws it open. He yanks his shoes off casually, going over to one of the windows and heaving it open. The curtains flutter with the wind now entering the house, and through the white lace Wilbur catches glimpses of kids riding their bikes down the street.
“I’ll bring you to his grave at night.” Tommy musters stiffly, too loud in the empty house. Subconsciously, he makes another circle over his heart and then disappears before Wilbur can comment on it.
Standing in this house is so weird. The feeling of nostalgia isn’t the same, this time it’s heavy with a feeling Wilbur’s too afraid to look in the eyes. But he knows these streets better than he knows his own dad, this place he and Tommy both once called home.
Wilbur sighs, venturing into the kitchen. Mason jars filled with coral and chocolate jars filled with rocks line the window sills, light spilling through the crack where the curtains part. They’re the same curtains that have been there since Wilbur got adopted. He doesn’t know why Phil never replaced them.
He traces the lines in the wood of the kitchen table he used to eat takeout on. Stops on the part of the table where he had dug a knife into when he tried to cut some of his hair and was so frustrated that he just stabbed it into the wood. Phil hadn’t liked that very much.
He’s back, but it doesn’t feel like home.
--
Wilbur’s sitting on the porch steps, listening to the echo of wind kissing treetops and crickets rubbing their wing-teeth together. The empty trees are asking him to take their hands. They want to dance even as they’re dying.
There’s the sound of footsteps behind him, and Tommy slumps down on the porch next to him, pulling his legs up to his chest. Their breaths sing ghosts to the cold air.
“We should go.” Wilbur merely nods, pulling himself up.
They walk in silence, Wilbur choosing to focus on the sound of his feet pounding against the sidewalk. A dog starts barking from somewhere.
After a while, they stop at a cemetery. Tommy pushes open the creaky metal gate, weaving around gravestones easily, like he’s done this before. (Most likely, he has.)
Wilbur follows the teen, until they stop at a particular gravestone. There’s nothing really special about it, nothing eye-popping. Wilbur’s sure he wouldn’t have even noticed it had he not known what lied six feet under.
Sweet lily blooms opened themselves under constellations, scattered around the stone. Wilbur crouches down, tracing the words carved in the stone. Phil Watson .
He has the urge to both punch the stone and hug it, like one of them would bring his father back.
Wilbur’s soft insides crack with the heat, ready to spill himself dry. He welcomes it fullheartedly.
“I’m not sorry, for what I said. It was true.” The words shred through the cartilage of his ribs the way night shreds through moonlight. He relishes in every ache.
Tommy sits beside him, the hoodie he's wearing clearly over sized on the young teenager. “I know. I know.”
Wilbur turns to Tommy, continuing to talk despite the fact that it feels like there’s a sparrow in his mouth bloodying his tongue with the urge to take flight, “But I don’t think that really anyone deserves my anger. Especially not you.” It’s not quite an apology, but they’ve both long since learned to read between the lines.
“Oh,” There are tears spilling down Tommy’s cheeks, and Wilbur cradles the kid’s face without thinking, swiping a thumb over the raw emotions.
“Please don’t cry, I am not your brother, there is nothing wrong.” Despite those words, they both know the truth behind it. They don’t say it, just so they could pretend to still have one secret thing in their lives.
Wilbur half wishes he could tuck Tommy away in the crevice of his trembling heart to keep him safe, but knows that’s not possible. Instead, he folds the teenager to his chest, resting his chin on top his flop of curls and feeling how both of their bodies are shaking.
He closes his tired eyes, remembers to breathe .
(Wilbur traces his calloused fingers once more over the words etched into the stone, before pulling back. He and Phil weren’t perfect, but really who is?
He forgives Phil. He forgives himself.
It’s a start.)
--
A dream in his chest is molting, has been molting since for the first time in 6 years he heard the words “Wilbur Watson” muttered to the world. It sheds its muddy, thunder-stained skin and asks for a heart of peony fields this time.
For once, he thinks he’ll be able to fulfill that request.
He and Tommy aren’t used to it. They understand each other without words and therefore realize that they were both born spitfire. So, tenderness is offered in spoonfuls. Syrupy lamplight illuminating blank journal pages, Tommy being able to distract Wilbur from the shakiness in his hands.
They talked about Phil, a couple times. On Monday nights and Thursday afternoons. Once, it was when Wilbur was pulling weeds out of the dead vegetable garden with sun-blistered shoulders and heat-dizzled eyes.
Tommy had sat down beside him, short sleeved shirt revealing the sunspots dotting the milky skin of his arms.
Wilbur was sat between the peaches and the avocados, running his fingers over their unripe skins, a song tumbling from his mouth like spring water.
“Tell me about Phil,” They never willingly talked about their shared adoptive father before. Wilbur paused, straightening up and then turning to Tommy.
“Okay,” So he told him about all the nice moments he remembered, Phil taking him out for blackberry ice cream, helping Phil with his vegetable garden when Wilbur first arrived in Phil’s care as a scrawny, abnormally tall 13 year old and that being their first real bonding moment.
Phil let him have a sip of cider once, when it was 15 minutes until New Years. It bubbled in his throat and lingered on the tip of his tongue. He’s never had cider after that.
The sky is silver like an ache and he can smell in the air how the earth churns, then lets go. He pulls out a rotten tomato, the vines intertwined with another crumpled fruit corpse.
The memories are soft and stinging, maybe a bit bittersweet. But Wilbur’s “storytelling” voice never edges into venom, and Tommy watches fixated as he waves his hands around.
(Not all parts of healing have to be noticed.)
The next time was when they were watching the stars fall one at a time from their porch, a glass of too-sweet lemonade between them. A third of the sky’s black when Tommy speaks up.
“Phil was nice, I think. I mean, he treated me well, but what happened to you both?” Wilbur was half-tempted to wave the topic off. He was fine with talking about the good times between the two, but he wasn’t prepared for those memories.
Instead, he talks of arguments, glass shattered, sneaking out at night. How the tensions between them were growing thicker and thicker everyday. The lack of trust that ended in the biggest fight the two had. Wilbur had revealed how he had a lease for an apartment all the way in New York. Phil thought he was crazy. He left.
A flowering heart, fractured humming cello bones.
In return, Tommy talks about his life when he was first adopted by Phil. How he had been aggressive to avoid his other feelings. He learned that if something was loud enough, it could block out anything. How he always expected Phil to hit him (Wilbur could understand that), and that it took several months for Tommy to warm up to Phil.
They swapped stories; abusive foster parents, shitty ass childhoods. Lightning spreads its angel wings across the plumskin-colored sky, and if Wilbur swings an arm over Tommy’s shoulder and drags him into his side, then neither of them mention it.
They stay there for a few more days before they leave back to Wilbur’s apartment. He should probably start looking for an actual house, so that Tommy doesn’t have to constantly live with the city craning its neck into his life. They both wordlessly agreed that they didn’t want to live in this house, where they grew up with Phil, who was gone.
It was time to go. Tommy had packed up his stuff, and Wilbur had checked the whole house for things he should bring with him. By all means, they should be ready.
The windows are thrown open, sunlight turning soft as lavender petals and the air as warm as a dream. It feels so weird, knowing that Wilbur for real this time was never going to come back to this house again. He tries to memorize every crack in the wall, every broken furniture, memorizes it as Home.
It’s a slow process learning to be free, but Wilbur thinks he’s doing an alright job.
Tommy appears from the doorway, grabbing his arm gently with a knowing look in his eyes, “Where does it hurt?”
Wilbur grins, “Everywhere.”
He is doing something right. That’s the first step.
--
It is 3am and Wilbur is driving down the highway, eyes weighed down by exhaustion and shiny with nostalgia. Tommy sits shotgun beside him, belting out the lyrics to Frank Ocean. The streetlights are flashing by, and Wilbur’s fingers are drumming along to the beat against the steering wheel.
Wilbur turns his head in Tommy’s direction and laughs at his singing. The whole car fills with a warm feeling.
Tommy grins wide, eyes glittering.
The light Wilbur contains now suits him better than the bitterness he was served in a crystal wineglass. Maybe he’ll write a song about it, if he can find the right chords.
(The world will want to take this from you , Wilbur snorted and only said, just let them try .)