Chapter Text
When Wilbur peels his eyes open that morning, barely a ray of sunlight able to pierce through his black curtains, he almost immediately feels the urge to vomit violently. He, of course, rushes to the bathroom as yesterday’s activities come back up in the form of acidic bile that burns the back of his throat. Even wiping off the residual gall off his stubble — I really ought to shave more, he thinks absentmindedly — doesn’t make him feel any better.
Rather, he just grimaces at the contents of his stomach now in the toilet bowl. It smells rancid, a mix of what was probably some random concoction of drugs, probably not important enough to remember in his buzzed brain. Flushing the toilet doesn’t make the smell fade either, instead persisting like a mosquito that won’t leave you the fuck alone, even after it’s been swatted away several times already.
Though, it’s not like Wilbur has had to deal with mosquitoes in a long while, not when he’s been in London for over four years now. Sure, he can’t really remember why he left so early, but it was probably for a good reason. It’s all a bit of a blur, really, living in the UK.
He thinks he moved here for the university in London, even if he doesn’t really remember much about having any particularly good grades, or anything at all going for him either. It’s probably why he dropped out of university not even a year in. For the last year, he has endured through the constant routine of downing a pill in the morning, going to work at 10am and never stopping until late. After that, he usually gets drunk, high or smokes until he’s deep in his sorrows, wallowing in things he can’t even remember when he wakes up the next day, back in his shitty flat with the peeling paint and mouldy walls.
Wilbur knows it’s not healthy, but he can’t really be bothered to care more at this point. Although London was probably anticipated as a fresh start for him all those years ago, it is now a drain. It saps at his energy, edges him into this awful man who only ever focuses on getting by on some shitty wage each month that’s spent on the drugs and cigarettes that sate his addictions. Either that, or he stops eating completely if it means he can pay rent. The city has also gave him asthma so severe that even sorting the shelves at work are enough to elicit breathlessness in him. His frequent panic attacks don’t help either; often, he’s suffering from hallucinations that plague his mind after one too many highs. They scare him so badly to the point where he can go without sleep for days and ending up in coughing fits that wrack his body like a leaf falling to the ground in autumn. He should probably see a doctor.
Not that he ever does.
He knows living like this is only a temporary solution to the emptiness he feels — it’s like falling, but you gradually get so used to it that it just becomes a background thought, but in the interim, Wilbur thinks that he’s probably just going to end up dying in some back alley somewhere which is probably deserving for someone who’s done so little with their life.
Only does he break out of his stupor when his phone’s obnoxious ringtone screams at him to pick the damn thing up, surprising him. It’s rare for him to get a phone call these days, especially when he has no friends here in London and the only people who do bother checking up on his general wellbeing are his Mum and Dad.
So, when he checks the caller ID, Wilbur is not surprised for it to read Mum, and for a photo of him as a teenager and her posing rather stupidly to be the icon beside it.
He can’t remember the last time he smiled like that.
Wilbur eventually picks up the phone after what might be the seventh ring and his mother’s comforting voice sounds different to what it usually does. It’s not soft and reassuring like what he remembers, rather it’s rushed and breathless, as though what she were saying would be forgotten if she didn’t spill it all at light speed. Of course, he doesn't compute any of it at all, fleeting words like your Dad, dead and will all register, but he can’t string any of it into a coherent sentence he can understand.
“Mum, slow down, will ‘ou?” Wilbur slurs, feeling his brain become cotton. It’s like his brain is deliberately shutting down, preventing him from processing any of that information. It can’t be that bad, he thinks.
“Wilbur— are you even listening?” His mother sighs, and it’s almost like he can hear the rolling of her eyes, or even the pinching of her nose bridge. “Well, if you weren’t, you better now.”
It’s still hard for him to get a single word out, he realises. They’re caught in his throat, unsaid, but from the way his Mim sounds like she’s about to descend into some childish lecture about respect, Wilbur decides that he’ll try to listen anyway if it means it’ll avoid her anger.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, noticing the way his mother tuts a little as he says it. His mouth downturns.
“As I was saying, Wilbur, your dad died a few days ago,” she says, almost nonchalantly, but she’s probably desensitised to the information at this point if she has had to tell as many people as he thinks she has.
To Wilbur, the cotton only thickens its grasp on his thought process and he just stares at his wall in an attempt to understand what exactly his mother has just told him. Four years is a long time and he can hardly remember his father. From what he can, though, his presence seems to be comforting, maybe a little strict. There’s nothing particularly bad he can remember, instead it’s just kind words and often of conversation about friendly robots who can sing and dance and bring fantasy to life. He’s not sure why it’s friendly robots that stick out to him specifically, though.
Maybe he ought to ask his mother.
That thought is forgotten as Wilbur realises that his mother has been talking his ear off again, all while he was more intent on remembering what he could about his Dad.
“Wilbur!” She shouts, causing his mouth to feel all dry and the cotton around his brain feels as though a carpet has been pulled out from underneath him. “I hope you were listening to what I was saying, because I’m not repeating it.”
“Sorry, Mum, I was ‘ust thinking about Dad.” He says slowly, almost cautionary. “He was nice, wasn’t he?”
Once again, it is almost like he can hear her eyes rolling. “Of course, he was nice, Wilbur. He was your Dad.”
Wilbur doesn’t know how to reply to that. He takes the phone away from his ear for a moment, eyeing the red hang up button instead, his thumb hovering over it.
Just as he is about to press down on it, his Mum’s voice comes through a final time after a prolonged silence. “Your flight is tomorrow, Wilbur, don’t forget.”
With not even a goodbye, the line goes dead and for some reason, he feels the urge to cry. It’s something primal, an instinct he can’t quite put his finger on, but it claws at his chest nevertheless, making his breathing quicken as his vision blurs. The phone rolls away from his open hand and all Wilbur can do is sob.
There’s something within him that screams to not return to his family. He can’t even think of a reason as to why, but from that phone call, Wilbur can already feel all she said fading away a little. It probably doesn’t help that he hardly listened, and that wasn’t as a result of his own disinterest, rather just the general haziness in his brain. All he can remember is, though, that he’s most likely going to a funeral — more specifically, his Dad’s and that has not really sunk in yet — if his Mum has already booked a flight like she said she had.
With his shitty memory, he can’t even remember if he’s even attended a funeral before, but if he has, he can’t imagine that he felt much for whoever it was. What concerns him most, though, is the fact that things will definitely have changed since he was last home. Time is uncanny like that — always tearing things apart.
Yet, when Wilbur thinks of his home town in Florida, he thinks of something warm and loving, maybe even of nostalgia and a hot chocolate he might’ve shared with his family once, the marshmallows on the surface of the drink acting as clouds on top of an earth so brown that is actually quite pleasant to look at. In the brown earth, there’s specks of something much darker. It seems like his childhood — or, at least his adolescence — was quite conflicted, a mess of something bloody, dark and dismal that make Wilbur glad he can’t really remember any of it. He’s not really glad for the amount of hurt he associates with those memories, though — no, those are damning, awful and he hopes that it’s nobody he cares about being harmed.
In regards to preparing for the funeral, he decides to actually clean himself and his stinking flat for once in his sorry life, even if it requires a fuck ton of effort for him to do so. The smell of that morning still lingers and even after he bleaches the bathroom, it still doesn’t leave him alone. After much frustration, Wilbur ends up slamming the brush to the floor, clenching his fists around the damn thing. He wants to throw it against something, but it ultimately results in him just completely giving up on scrubbing the toilet again and again. Annoyingly, he’s probably just made himself dirty as he was before which just causes Wilbur to sigh. Retreating to the little warmth his bed offers feels like a punch in the gut.
Really, it just reinforces his loneliness. Wilbur can’t remember the last time something as warm as a human hand even grazed his skin in any way not meant to be harm him. He’s been in his fair share of bar fights, but those are simply not comparable to maybe something like his Dad’s hugs, a heat that he can vaguely remember. His heart pangs. He wants to feel that warmth so badly, but he has forgotten how much physical affection means to him. It’s warm and kind, but in the absence of it for so long, Wilbur has become cold, numb.
He’s been cold for a long time.
And he’s hardly up a few hours — even if he’d woken up late as it was — before he’s nodding off again and that night, for the first time in what might’ve been years, Wilbur doesn’t end up going out to some random bar. Though his general haziness seems to have increased, something about that day sticks in his mind and for once in his life, his memories are vivid rather than strung together over a few incoherent images.
Maybe it’s got something to do with those pills I haven't taken, Wilbur thinks momentarily that next morning. Somehow, he’s actually able to wake up before noon, judging by the amount of sunlight filtering through his dusty window as the curtains he must’ve opened yesterday that were never closed. He then realises that he never actually found out what time his flight even was.
As a result, he practically rushes to his nightstand, but in his exhaustion, he must’ve misplaced his phone. With adrenaline fuelling him, Wilbur’s movements become frantic in his search for the phone, turning his previously clean house into a tip once again. When he finds it, tangled up in his bedsheets of all things, he lets out a sigh that stings his chest.
With more deep breaths, he turns the phone on, blinding himself for a moment as the bright blue light of the screen causes him to blink several times before it eventually becomes less blurry to his tired eyes. During that period, he notices the email from an airline company stating his ticket for Florida is at 11am. He pushes that aside for a moment, instead eyeing the message below that from his mother. It reads a simple message that reminds him of the time the plane leaves, but also a love you that makes him smile a little after he didn’t receive one yesterday.
When his eyes flicker to the time, though, Wilbur’s moment of happiness is shattered when heartbeat begins to sound in his ears again. It doesn’t take a genius to point out how he only has a little over thirty minutes to be out his door. He’s glad that his past self had already prepared a suitcase for whatever reason, but those clothes are certainly not suitable for a funeral, not when he’s living on the bare minimum and barely has enough to keep himself afloat, let alone splurging on a suit he will never use unless it was for unforeseen circumstances that always like to bite him in the ass.
After wasting what might’ve been five minutes — his brain counting the seconds that turn into minutes all the while — he resorts to shoving on a simple hoodie trouser combo for the time being, hoping that his late father might have something to fit him.
With that, Wilbur runs out the door, barely remembering to lock it in his hurry, even with his struggling chest, and, surprisingly enough, he arrives on time to the airport.
It’s ten to eleven when he does, the bus he hitched a ride on a little late, but he’s calmed down enough from his earlier panicking to worry about the next thing.
It’s not that Wilbur hates airports, but it’s more so the general crowdedness and noise that irritates him to the point he often feels like he’ll break down then and there. That feeling is only worsened by the intrusiveness of the guards as they search and grab for what was, to Wilbur, a pointless venture. Sure, he realises it’s probably for safety reasons, but he can’t help but feel that in how uncomfortable it makes him, he should be exempt.
But the mere thought of being interrogated in such a way is enough to make his hands sweat a little, so he pushes it to the back of his mind whilst he still can. Instead, he focuses on his breathing, probably something taught to him by his Mum years ago, aiming to ground himself to reality. From behind him, he hears various tuts as somebody pushes past him, groans and curses escaping their mouth as they glare spitefully at Wilbur when they walk past. He recoils a little, wincing as the words stick in his mind.
Opting to instead ignore them as best he can, Wilbur just stands in line again and it isn’t long before it is his turn to be inspected by some strangers probably with some form of superiority complex. In the beginning, they are kind, speaking to him in a soft tone that’s somewhat patronising, but after a few minutes, they meet his expectations and instead start treating him like some sort of alien. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth and the acid produced by nausea seems to rise, burning his insides almost. He feels violated, but luckily, he’s boarding the plane before long.
Head in his hand, Wilbur stares out the window at some moody grey clouds that, if he squints hard enough, seem to be crackling with some form of energy and releasing it to the surroundings. His stomach drops for a moment before he hears some kid tell his Mum something similar to his own thoughts, but she reminds him they’re going in the opposite direction. It soothes his beating heart, even if the noise seems much too loud and the space much too small. His mum was nice enough to get him a single seat, though, so he doesn’t have to deal with awkward interactions with strangers — those guards were enough of a sap on his energy. He had London to do that for him, thank you very much.
As the plane lifts into the sky, the grey clouds become little more than a distant memory. Though, as he continues to glance out the window, he’s instead more transfixed on the even darker clouds they’re heading towards. He can’t even back out now even as the conversations around him act as some form of white noise that lull him into some sense of security and overall, comfortable enough to sleep in.
Before he can, though, his thoughts wander to that of his Dad and where he might’ve ended up. He can’t imagine the man as someone vindictive, uncaring. Instead, he seems to be much the opposite and thus, Wilbur thinks he’s probably gone where the good people go, even if he’s no believer in higher powers.
With that thought, Wilbur loses himself to fitful sleep. Some part of him can already tell that things will definitely go tits up.
When the plane does touch down, startled from his sleep, the reality of the situation finally hit him. This is his Dad’s death, someone he will never get to touch or talk to again. Wilbur can feel his chest tighten and his hands urge for something. They itch for drink, smoke — whatever will stave off the anxieties swirling around his mind. He digs in his pocket for the few cigarettes he’s brought, letting out a gasp of delight when he finds them.
Hastily lighting one, he shoves it in his mouth and the thickness of the smoke enters his lungs, but before it can fully envelop them, he exhales. The relief is immediate and for the first time that day, Wilbur feels truly relaxed. It is almost as though he were floating on a cloud the whole time going through that airport, even as the smoke’s strong stench hangs in the air wherever he goes, or breathes, for that matter.
Only does he snap out of his temporary lull from reality when he realises it is his mother waving his hand in front of his face upon his exit from the airport, frowning at him.
“Wilbur, you okay?” She asks, her brows furrowing as her nose scrunches up, perhaps in response to the smell of that cigarette.
He just looks at her wide-eyed, blinking at her a few times like a deer in the headlights before his brain is actually able to recognise the woman in front of him. Time has treated her well, but wrinkles have plucked at her skin that indicate stress. Regardless, when his brain recognises who it is, he nods and a small smile flits onto his otherwise expressionless face. In return, she looks rather perplexed for a moment before shaking her head and ushering him into the car.
After that, the car ride is surprisingly silent. Usually, his mother is rather talkative, but Wilbur knows her husband — and his Dad — has just died. That would sully anyone’s mood. Hell, he himself is still confused about the whole thing. Nervousness still plays on his brain and in a vain attempt to distract himself, he focuses on fiddling with his hands or staring out the window.
Perhaps thirty minutes into the ride and a further forty from home if his memory serves correctly, his mother opens her mouth, only to close it again not even a moment later.
“What is ‘t, Mum?” Wilbur says, still transfixed on whatever bush could catch his attention the most, but even he can notice the blatant tension in the car.
She looks away from the sorry state of her son for a second, before nodding and opening her mouth again. “I ought to tell you that the funeral’s tomorrow, Wilbur. I’m just wondering if you want to, maybe, make a speech about your Dad?”
At that, he almost immediately frowns, moving from the window back to his hands. It’s not that he hates his Dad, but Wilbur isn’t exactly sure what he’d say on such short notice. As he thinks about it, he comes to the conclusion that he is probably better not doing it, but he asks anyway.
“Do I ‘ave to?” Wilbur mumbles, resting his hands in his lap, studying them meticulously.
When he says that, he notices the way her eyes darken and a twang of guilt plays a chord of regret in his chest. “Never mind,” he sighs, “I’ll do it.”
Her face breaks out into a wide smile then, and it would cause him to grin as well if the circumstances weren’t so grim. He wants to sleep again, even if he has done so much of that in the past few days, simply because the silence is starting to become too heavy and maybe it isn’t just the asthma that’s suffocating him now.
He takes in a shaky, shallow breath and he almost opens his mouth to tell his mother to stop, the feeling of bile sloshing around in his stomach causing him to drift from the car a little. Wilbur thinks of elsewhere, maybe of a distant memory that is somehow vivid to him, where he can smell greasy pizza that despite looking so bad, tastes rather good as he feasts on it. To his side, two boys rush up to him, their eyes bright and their smiles even more so. He wants to reach out to them — even if he knows they aren’t really there — and is instead jerked back to reality by the screeching of wheels against tarmac.
His mother lets out a shout, curses escaping her mouth in a way he’s not familiar with, and the small feeling of happiness he gains from that memory disappears, being replaced with a firm line where his smile once was. She opens the car door and with how dark it is outside, he almost reaches out to her to grab the back of her shirt, but she is long gone by the time he reacts. He surmises that she has probably gone to see if there’s anything wrong with the car, but he can’t help but feel anxious. It’s relieved not long after when she stumbles back in, shoving the keys back into the ignition and driving away as if nothing even happened.
Wilbur doesn’t bother asking why, not when he feels like just saying the wrong thing will result in him being shoved on a plane back to London.
When he arrives at his old house, it feels a lot smaller and a lot less lively than it used to be. Maybe it’s because his Dad isn’t there to offer any of his reassurances anymore, or the fact his Mum is still very quiet, but it feels so wrong. It’s a heavy feeling that’s been following him ever since he’d touched down on American soil, a constant hand on his throat and only now can he feel it tightening.
Even if he knows he can ask his mother for help, he doesn’t particularly want to, not when things feel so tense and that if Wilbur does so much as even breathe incorrectly, things might just blow completely out of proportion in a way his overwhelmed brain can deal with.
So, that’s how he ends up in his childhood bedroom, the sheets still as untouched as the day he left them four years ago. Now that he’s back, he can say that he’s a changed man, but probably not in the way his younger self would’ve idolised. Rather, he would probably call himself a deadbeat and even if Wilbur wants to disagree, he knows that he can’t. Even with the fogginess he has surrounding his past, he knows his younger self was probably a boy with hopes for the world to be in his hands, even if the world ended up crushing him instead.
Despite all the sleep he’s had in the past few days, Wilbur can’t help but feel drowsy again. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had my pills, he thinks and as he reaches for his bag, he rattles the orange container they were kept in, staring at it for a moment. He knows it’s not hard to overdose on these types of pills, even if he still isn’t exactly sure what they are, and his mind even considers the prospect for a moment. Wilbur thinks of a funeral, something that only his mother would attend, but he doesn’t want to leave her alone — not when he’s just come back home for the funeral of her husband (and his Dad, why does he keep forgetting that?).
Either way, Wilbur downs a few of the pills — perhaps one too many — with a glass of water and it’s not even five minutes before it knocks him out, leaving him in the rather dirty clothes he arrived in.
Rather abruptly, his mother shakes him awake and he doesn’t even feel like he’s slept that long. He realises that he’s slept in his clothes which makes him shiver a bit, almost as though the gunk were digging its way underneath his skin. It’s not long before she’s urging him to get out of his bed and he follows suit, discontent with the dirtiness clinging to his clothes and his body by extension.
The shower allows Wilbur’s mind to drift slightly, though not too much as the fact he has to somehow make up a speech about a man he has particularly fuzziness around is proving to be more daunting of a task than he realised. Even as he tries to make up a coherent wording in his head, he loses them as quick as he thinks of them. Honestly, it’s much like the trickle of cold water that rains down on him, causing him to grit his teeth.
Soon enough, it gets too cold for him to stay in there any longer and his speech is flimsy at best when his mother shows him to a black suit he struggles to put on. Wilbur has never been one to attend formal events — not at all in London — so it’s all quite foreign to him, especially when the suit is a few sizes too small.
Even with his mother’s help, it’s all just a bit of a hassle that makes Wilbur feel like he’s about to blow a fuse. He tries to keep it under wraps as best he can, of course, but sometimes his best isn’t enough.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that when they did end up at the crematorium after what felt like hours of getting ready, Wilbur is in an even worse state, all the foreign faces he can’t recognise at all making him feel so out of place. How was he meant to speak for a man he can’t remember in front of people he can’t recognise?
To Wilbur, that just feels unfair and that’s why it takes his mother’s gentle words (it’s coercion, he thinks briefly) to utter him into the main room where his father’s corpse lays to speak for him. The crowd is a sea he can’t wade in and with stuttering words, Wilbur barely manages a sentence before his mother is speaking again, pushing him back to where he’s meant to be sitting in the front.
After all the people have finished speaking and the rest of the attendants have filtered out, Wilbur moves to glance down at where his Dad lies. His mouth is set into a firm line and his eyes are closed; if he didn’t know that this was his funeral, Wilbur might’ve thought he was just sleeping soundly. Wilbur smiles a little, whispering something under his breath that might’ve been love you, Dad, sweet dreams when his Mum walks in, the clacking of her heels against the wooden floor loud and a surprise to his ears. He whips around, not expecting his Mum to have such a sour expression on her face.
“Wilbur, I wasn’t expecting for you to stumble with your words like that when delivering your speech.” She states simply, but the way she frowns afterwards is enough for Wilbur to realise she’s disappointed in him. “You used to be such a good speaker, I wonder what happened.”
Her glance now hardens into a glare and Wilbur can’t help but avert his eyes. “Sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to, it was just such short notice ‘nd I couldn’t think of what to say—”
“I don’t need your excuses, Wilbur,” she cuts him off and it feels like a dagger has been stabbed into Wilbur’s chest. “I knew sending you to London at that age wasn’t a good idea. Especially with how worse you’ve got.”
“I already said I’m sorry, Mum!” Wilbur shouts suddenly before clamping his mouth shut immediately afterwards.
She just turns away from him and with that, Wilbur thinks getting the bus home is a better option — even if he ends up smoking a whole three cigarettes in the hour it takes him to get home.
The buzz from the nicotine is enough to distract him for the time being and whilst he can’t say he’s happy with how things went (he wasn’t invited to the afterparty that he knows will keep his Mum preoccupied for at least the rest of the evening), it’s better being at home than the suffocating atmosphere of that funeral.
What he doesn’t expect upon finding himself in the entryway of the house, though, is for a letter to be on the floor. To him, it looks like it was placed there intentionally but gently — by who, he couldn’t guess. Oddly enough, it is addressed to him, the chicken scratch scrawled on the front familiar in a way.
He clutches the letter with a strange protectiveness, bringing it up to the relative safety of his room and opens it. The contents of the letter are both disconcerting and comforting.
Dear Wilbur,
If you find this letter through some means or another, it probably means I’m no longer on the earthly plane as you are. Cryptic, I know, but you know how I am, don’t you, mate?
I suppose you’re not reading this for banter, though. If this is after my funeral, you’ll know about what I want to do with my company, but otherwise —
I’m passing it on to you, son.
I know you had those big dreams of London and you did exactly that. Not every kid moves away from home at 16, y’know — that sort of thing takes a lot of courage. I’m proud of you.
It’s why I think you’ll be the best candidate for taking up my mantle, Wilbur. I’d pass it onto your mother, she’s my second in command, after all, but I fear that would only complicate things.
I’m not forcing you to either, mate, but just remember Zaza’s will welcome your leadership with open arms.
Love,
Your dear old Dad
With its general definitiveness, Wilbur wonders why he can feel hot tracts running down his face by the time he finishes reading the letter. It wasn’t sappy, it wasn’t flowery — it was his Dad and maybe that’s why his chest was hurting. He lets out a dry sob, wracking his whole frame in the process and it’s almost painful.
The company his father mentioned alludes him, but the name Zaza’s is familiar nevertheless. Maybe that’s what his memories of friendly robots relate to and that line of thought niggles its way into Wilbur’s brain, perhaps clawing its way into his subconscious to where the fogginess lay, lifting it slightly.
For once, Wilbur’s mind feels somewhat clear and he decides that he’s going to find out what Zaza’s truly is. He remembers secrecy for some reason, questions about the company always being redirected elsewhere when Wilbur asked, but he doesn’t think it was out of malice.
Maybe it’s intentional, trying to protect him from something, but Wilbur will endure that something if it means he can finally have some answers about his predicament, his eyes drifting to the pills at his bedside table.