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It's not his usual spontaneity that drives Wilbur to abandon his current coffee shop of choice (a newly built Costa, only five minutes down the road. In less words, a blessing.) When prompted, he tells Tommy it is, promises him that he's fully aware of his decision as he fumbles with his shoelaces, but he knows that neither of them believe it.
It's happened before, is the thing. This same pall of lost control and soft pressure that tells him where to move his feet and how to wiggle his toes, that whispers to him tales of lives lived before, a homesickness for a world he doesn't remember.
It's the same lost feeling, the one that's sunk deep into the cracks of his bones, that's dragging his waking mind into a black and quiet abyss (but instead of the void, he's being drawn to a Café Néro's, of all places, that's twenty minutes away from his only tether to reality.)
(He quietly finds himself wishing it were at the very least a Starbucks.)
The atmosphere of the streets outside is cold and quiet. Wilbur finds no solace in the creepy still of the air, so different to the vibrancy he is used to from Tommy and their apartment. He hums, loudly- a tune he doesn't yet recognise - and marches through the thick fog clouding the peripherals of his mind. He:s been walking for so long he can see the coffee shop now, it's doors propped open enough so that the noise of the patrons deep inside reaches Wilbur's ears but not enough for him look inside. He feels it's the only thing he can see, as though there's thick white gloom layered on everything (to Wilbur, it feels like the void, gaping white instead of black. Real instead of not) but if he tries he can make out the double yellow lines lining the curb. He follows them until he's mere steps away from the cafe, still slowly treading forward until he reaches the open doors. It smells sweet, unusually so.
Wilbur lifts his eyes from the pavement and-
-in one lifetime they are enemies.
In another they are family.
They are also friends and they are not and they are neighbours and they are not and they are a god and a president and they are an eternity twisted together from the broken fibres of a fractured universe.
In this life, in this world, they are competitors first and they will be friends but not now, not in the heat of it. Not yet. They are at a starting line on a floating island and then they are racing through the sky and then there is green on red and a firework show up above one man breathless, the rest in disbelief and then minutes after the fanfare has stopped the timer ends and everyone stops for breath and-
Life is good, in this world. They are competitors here but they are also friends. They are competitors but mid-fight they switch between team calls to taunt and tease and they are competitors but they are not enemies. Not now.
Wilbur resurfaces. At no point did his head sink below water but he's coughing it up all the same. Tommy startles from his place on the sofa and Wilbur's head spins as he registers soft carpet beneath his feet and the sound of a door shutting.
He's holding a coffee cup he doesn't remember buying, "Costa" printed in bold across the side in an apartment he knows is his but feels so far away.
Tommy stares at Wilbur and Wilbur stares back.
They are but two lost souls clinging to a single piece of driftwood in the hopes it will lead them home. They are but two lost souls, on opposite sides of a yawning chasm.
Wilbur can taste the sun on his tongue as he walks and he hasn't felt a serenity like this since his first, earliest memories. As always, the calling of the void creeps behind his ears and his muscles silently wail a song he doesn't remember but for once he's able to move past it, seamlessly, fearlessly.
His mind is his own today and so he doesn't slowly slip into the waves when his eyes catch a green that shouldn't be familiar. A green that means so little and so much all at once. A green he is intrinsically drawn to passing by on the opposite side of the road.
It's odd, Wilbur thinks, that beneath the sun he can still taste, is the name of a stranger he has met before.
Wilbur's moments of clarity are those to be remembered (those that can be remembered) and when he looks back on those most recent he feels much like a line paralleled by another on an otherwise blank sheet of paper. He doesn't think about the coffee shop he's never been to but he does think about the stranger- the stranger clad in green and a Café Néro's cap. Tall, blonde, and overwhelmingly- overwhelming.
Wilbur reckons they're star-crossed soulmates, destined to cross paths but never to meet and Tommy tells him to shut the fuck up so he does and talks about sheep anatomy instead.
(Tommy still tells him to shut the fuck up but the haunted yearning has left his voice so Wilbur reckons he doesn't mind the sheep talk and life carries on.)
In one life, Wilbur is a president and he is a God.
(A reflection in a shop window.)
In another, Wilbur is still a president. He, however, is as mortal as they come.
(Green in his peripheral.)
In one, they are both the villains of the story and neither acknowledge the regret bleeding from their cracks.
(Unnaturally sweet coffee.)
They are both the heroes of the story and they live in a time of peace.
(An unseen tether connecting their hands.)
They are parallel lines, destined to never meet.
They are parallel lines, Wilbur whispers to himself, as he stares into the eyes of a blue stranger, parallel lines destined to never meet.
On their own, two parallel lines on a sheet of paper can only meet through forces that are beyond them. Wilbur has likened it often enough to divine intervention (Tommy wincing in tune with Wilbur's heart) and as he stares into the eyes of a man he knows but has never met, blue instead of green, he cannot help the prayer that slips past his lips.
The man in blue does not hesitate to grab the one in green and nudge him in Wilbur's direction. It's a terrifying feeling, to finally be seen. Green eyes meet his and Wilbur cannot think for the beating of his heart in his ears. There's surprise in both parties, though while Wilbur can only stare, the green-eyed stranger hesitantly raises a hand to wave, when from somewhere in the crowd Tommy yells-
"Wil!"
-and the world comes crashing down.
There's a world in which Wilbur doesn't know who he is. In this world there is a Tommy who also does not know who he is but knows Wilbur in the same way Wilbur knows him. There's a world in which a family of many were thrown onto a stage, decorated in masks and made to play strangers without a single script between them.
There's a world in which Wilbur is drifiting (a world with no script to read from). The least he can is stay afloat and so he does and he finds Tommy and they are alone but they float together and then-
(he dreams of fields and wooden paths and an endless sky and blackened walls and ugly huts and fighting and hoping and caring and healing)
(he dreams of red and sickness and burning lands and crying soldiers and war and war and war)
-he finds Dream, and with Dream comes George (a gentle nudge in the right direction; divine intervention) and they are only the tip of the cascading waterfall.
(Only weeks later does Tommy find Phil and- well.)
They are all lost and they are all drifting, but they all cling to the same piece of driftwood now, together in their endless wandering. Together, all the same. Still yearning, still searching, but with lighter hearts and clearer minds. And so, Wilbur thinks, life is good.