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wilbur reminded tommy a lot like the sun. shining, incandescent - blinding almost. it was hard to stare directly at him with his crooked grin and smiling eyes, a fire burning beneath like the embers of a hearth. he draped himself in yellows and oranges, chasing the colors of sunset with cloth.
yet blue was his favorite color. wilbur would gaze endlessly at the sky and its thousands of shades with a thoughtful look upon his face, and tommy would wonder what pondered the elder’s mind. wilbur would then turn his stare to tommy, and smile like he were viewing the sunrise in the middle of the day, and tommy would forget to ask his thoughts and muses.
(tommy’s eyes are blue, blue, blue. a bittersweet color for wilbur. blue like an absent fathers, like the matching cloaks they once wore. but tommy is warmer somehow, a tropical sea compared to arctic ice. he sees tommy’s eyes and decides the color is not as bad as it was before.)
wilbur was like a brother to him, he was. tommy grew up alone, surviving on streets with nothing but himself and his wit, and wilbur appeared one day like a knight in shining armor. frankly, tommy ran when he first met wilbur. he didn’t want pity, didn’t want some stranger in his business hoping to be a hero.
his trust was hard earned, but tommy is much like a dog. show him enough love and he will be loyal to you - follow you until the ends of the earth. wilbur was the same, though his trust was even less freely handed out. but those who knew him, who saw beneath the facade of a cocky man - those who looked into his eyes and knew his past and present - wilbur loved wholly.
his fall from the top, from heaven, from grace, was tragedy in its own right. like icarus, he tumbled to the sea and was swallowed in it’s apathetic cruelty. wax and wicker wings melting in the heat of his own brilliance, his own ignorance. tommy, ever the fool, followed him into those depths.
(many people think of tommy like fire, like air, but they are wrong. he is water - ever changing yet the same, stable in his many shapes. son, brother, friend. an anger potent yet hidden. the tide of the ocean on the beach and the lightning of the storm. passionate with every drop and unable to let go of those that wind up in his waves.)
tommy follows and follows until he can no longer, stopped by earth and magma as wilbur goes where he cannot tread. the fire in his eyes alights with wicked glee, an end to his story - how poetic to go down with the burning ship, to sink into the sea.
he does not bother to try and put out the flames.
the dawn of wilbur’s death is hollow to him. he cannot help but think of wilbur’s sunshine smile, his yellow sweaters and soft campfire eyes. tommy does not think he could stomach it anymore.
(it used to be his favorite, when he had a brother to cling to and sing songs with. when he had the sun personified into being before him. wilbur was fire, and like fire he burned himself to the ground when he had no more fuel. they were opposites in the best way.)
the life and death of wilbur soot; a sunrise to a sunset, an ending at dawn.