Work Text:
- saline solution
The lights are low in the diner. Tommy has never liked the lights ----- they cast a sickly yellow over the entire room, turning red into brown and paper into dirt. It's almost withering if you ask Tommy, like you'd fade away into grains of yellow dust like how you have been waiting your whole life, on the verge of it, and rejoin the earth.
Tommy would still rather have this than no light at all. Night shadows the street outside, it's always night outside, the blanket darkness only broken by a single, flickering street lamp cutting through the navy blue like a black ink of len cutting through yellowed parchment.
Maybe that's not an appropriate metaphor, opposite colors and whatnot. He wouldn't know.
Tommy swipes the washcloth across the table methodically again. He doesn’t know why he does this he just ---- he just does. Somehow he knows it is the right thing to do, what he has always done, and he doesn't question why. He doesn’t question why he knows not to push open the grey glass doors of the diner with its wooden handle, hear the fucking windchimes go off, and step outside into the navy darkness enveloping him. . He doesn’t question why it's always night. He doesn’t question why he's here all alone.
He has flashes of a life before this sometimes. Nothing concrete. Nothing real. But flashes of emotions he never feels now, that he somehow can't put a name to, that he somehow wants to feel again wants to know again wants to-
He wants to feel how warm a hug feels again instead of being stuck with this stupid creaky air conditioner that blows chilling air at him, and he wants someone to tell him it’s gonna be okay.
Thinking about rotting in the yellow light is the closest he'll get.
Tommy folds up the washcloth and sits back down on the bright red chairs patterned with dark stains. He folds his hands on the white plastic table and stares at the hanging yellow lamp, the light doing nothing but giving a flicker in response.
He wonders how his hands still look the same and his hair is still soft blonde and he's still the same height after all this time. Time is something he vaguely has a concept of. He doesn’t know how long it's been since….. since he's been here.
And then the door pushes open, and that is something different. That is an open cut, a defined stroke of ink across the mundane yellow parchment march of his existence and time, a bright black reference point firmly marked down.
The windchime rings loudly.
It’s Wilbur. And before he can even acknowledge the sheer weirdness and shock that his mind has to register, he’s running forward and burying his face in a soft golden sweater and someone murmurs above him “oh, sweetheart, are you okay?” and Tommy just shakes his head and burrows further into Wilbur’s sweater.
“It’s alright, I’m here now, okay?”
And it’s the first time in a long time Tommy has felt home and happy with what’s around him.
- since i saw vienna
Everything is the same, and in that it loses its beauty. The constant crashing of the garish grey-black seawaves against the grey pavement of the street, the grainy dull shade that seems to infect everything that enters the borders of this town and makes Tommy’s eyes hurt so much, goddamnit why can’t he see a little bit of color in his life.
There’s the town, and then there’s Wilbur Soot.
Wilbur doesn’t come by much often, but that is a thing Tommy can understand, even if it sends a selfish pang ringing through his heart whenever he sees Wilbur off at sundown against the dulling grey sky.
They don’t get sunset here. They don’t get sunrise. Just the light dimming slowly, always a grey, like someone was methodically mixing white paint into black.
That’s why Wilbur never stays. If you stay too long in this town, linger too long, the grey will stake its claim over you, spreading like mold over the bottom of a dish. You will blend in with the sky and the clouds and the sea, sucked into the sea, warped into just another face among the many dull others of this town going about their lives in a colorless motion picture.
You'll lose your love for this life. You will lose sight of the moments that you don't notice in the thrill of it, but later embed themselves in your mind like rusted, drying photo films with just a little bit of color left to them. Wilbur though, Wilbur-
Wilbur tells to him the colors of the sunset, all the pinks and blues and violets, the dotted clouds. Wilbur tells him about the seas that, instead of grey and howling waves, sparkle like snow in the sunlight in the pretty sky blue, he tells Tommy about gardens that are filled with not dark prickly briars and thorns but soft and bright blossoms with green leaves in all their glory ------------ glory that Tommy will perhaps never get to witness.
Wilbur sings to him, songs about himself and what he’s seen and pulls Tommy into hugs lets Tommy curl into him when his eyes get a little too dull and sways him to the tune of his humming.
Wilbur gives him something to love.
Tommy wants Wilbur to stay foreber so he can keep these little colored photo films of moments in his life forever, have enough of them to paste them all over on his wall, he wants to hold on to the slipping wind forever.
Tommy is selfish because he wants more, he wants to go with Wilbur down wherever he goes and see the world, full colored kodachrome pictures and real things, he wants to get out of this place he has to get out this place
The person in question hums and runs a hand through his hair, Tommy leaning into the honey-warm touch naturally. “What’s on your mind, sunshine?” Wilbur hums, like he’s fucking read Tommy’s mind or some shit.
And Tommy breaks, against Wilbur, sobbing into the bright yellow sweater. He can barely stand the notion of putting all that grief and desperation into words, let alone actually telling it to Wilbur.
"I do- don't" He can barely ever choke out the words that sit on his chest and his tongue, weighing upon them heavily. "Don't wanna stay here anymore."
"That’s alright, sweetheart. That's alright. Just breathe." Wilbur murmurs, patting his back gently and letting Tommy curl into him as tightly as possible like if he buries himself into Wilbur's shirt he can hide from this damn suffocating reality.
"I don’t want to fuckin' be here anymore." He chokes repeatedly, as if saying it will make the situation any less real, any less sad, any less impossible to endure.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” Wilbur presses a soft kiss to his forehead. “Y’know what? I’ll find a way. Give me a week. We’ll both get out of here, kay? You can run away, skip this town.”
Like how Tubbo always used to say. Tommy wants to feel hopeful, but look at that turned out with Tubbo.
“Leave? Fuck, Wilbur, I don’t think that’s possible.” Tommy coughs a dry little laugh, meant to carry humor, but just ends up sounding pathetic and little and hopeless, and Wilbur just sighs and strokes his curls and holds Tommy a little closer.
“I’m not joking. I’ll figure it out.” And Tommy knows, Tommy knows Wilbur is just saying shit to make him feel a little better about his situation, just meaningless comforting words for a friend, a brother.
But still, he allows a little blossom of hope to grow in his chest, spreading its lively vines across his chest.Usually any mention of Tubbo and the broken dreams in the margins that go with him makes his heart pang, but now it feels…… hopeful. Hopeful, and Tommy buries his face into his brother’s sweater and mumbles “I want to see the world with you.”
The line between faith and idiocy is a fine one.
“Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
He is Tommyinnit, and he’s going to fucking walk it out of this town with his brother.
-----------------------------------
A week later, Wilbur runs up to him with bright eyes and a sparkle in his step. “I got it. I knew there was a way,” And he grins brighter than Tommy has ever seen anyone here laugh, brighter than he’s ever seen Wilbur laugh.
And then Wilbur holds out his hand, and crumpled in his palm are two faded train tickets. Tommy almost thinks they look like the faded polaroids from his dreaming metaphors. They’re folded in halves and carefully tucked into Wilbur’s hand, like they’re a treasure of the highest caliber, not to be lost.
“Wher- Where did you get these?” Tommy knows without needing to be told, that these are the tickets for the train. On the east side of the island, where the waters are calmer on certain days, stands amidst the ocean a slab of concrete and railroad tracks underneath the ocean.
The train never comes. Tommy’s waited. (He remembered, once, when he was so suffocated and he couldn’t breathe, he’d packed his things ------ the most important things to seven year old Tommy, at least. A faded book of fairytales, crumpled and torn at the edges. His green bandana. A dried out red flower.
And he’d treaded, ankle in the churning water, to the slab of cobblestone and waited for the train to arrive with lights that would pierce through the darkness, or at least in his imagination.
His mother scolded him for his foolishness afterwards.)
“We can get on the train, Tommy!” Wilbur pulls him into his side and rests his head on blond curls. “C’mon, you and me. We’ll see the world together ------- We can see the parts neither of us have.”
“But how do y’know it’s gonna work? Y-You can’t leave. No one’s ever done it.” Tommy has grown up since his wait. He knows not to feed idiocy. He pushes Wilbur away and then hugs himself anyways, and he reminds himself don’t get too hopeful.
But oh, he remembers what Tubbo always said. “One day, big man, I’m gonna get on that train, and I’ll ride it all the way to the final stop, and I’m gonna see what’s there. Run away from all this shit. One day.”
“If you don’t try, you don’t know.”
Tommy pulls out the crumpled photo he always keeps in his pocket. Two boys wearing bandanas, the only colorful things that stand out in the photo. He stares at the piece of laminated paper Wilbur holds out, both equally crumpled with care.
“Alright. Let’s go.” And he lets go of those words that have been resting on his tongue for sixteen years and the weight on his heart and spirit lets go.
Wilbur grins again. “Pack your shit.”
Tommy has nothing that matters in this town. Not anymore, anyways.
-----------------------------------
The waters calm that afternoon. The hazy thick blanket of clouds part a little, drawing a gap in the sky for sunlight to pour through on the ocean.
Tommy doesn’t let go of Wilbur’s hand the entire time they walk through the greyish-clear water to the slab of concrete, like a kid grasping onto his older brother’s hand in a new place.
His eyes follow the single orange fish that curls lazily around Tommy’s ankle, dodging in and out of the strangely green seaweed. The fish seems content to lap around in the sunlight-woven water forever. Is that how Tommy feels now? Is on the verge of feeling? The border is close.
Surprisingly, the concrete is warm from the continued sunlight. Tommy sits crossed-legged on the platform and stares off into the faraway ocean and sky, eyes trailing the metal and wood of the tracks until he can no longer see where they lead off to.
Seagrass tangles itself around the metal wiring of the train tracks, and coral grows on the wood and rots it beautifully from the inside. Fish dash above it, and Tommy spots a turtle that floats and lounges across, shadowing the sand floor.
The tracks look unused, waiting. It looks entwined with the sea, so unlike how the town is strictly sliced from the choppy waves of the coast, fences and borders and walls keeping it away. The tracks have been waiting.
“Alright, Tommy.” Wilbur has been sitting parallel to him, cheek rested on his hands and brown curls spilling out of his beanie. “First thing you wanna see, go. We can go there! And I’ll take pictures, and you can print them out and keep it with the one in your pocket!”
Tommy likes the idea of that. Keeping Tubbo in the safe space of his pocket with the places he’d see (the places Tubbo had wanted to.)
“I don’t- I don’t know. We could go to the gardens, the ones you always talked about.”
The ones that hung from the suspended by invisible threads of magic, that water poured from in glittering pools and turned into mist halfway through the grounds, filled and overspilled with green and pink and aqua life. The exact opposite of what Tommy had ran away from.
Wilbur had told Tommy about visiting once, when he was his age. Tommy had laughed at him and called him old. Back then, seeing it for himself had seemed like something unreachable. Something Tommy would just have to dream about doing in some other distant lifetime.
And now Wilbur said he could take Tommy there, and he just had to get on the train.
“We can do that. How about the city?” Wilbur laughs excitedly.
“Which one?”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ve told you about there before. The sky changes colors when it’s a different time, not just at sunset and sunrise. Sometimes it goes yellow in the middle of the day, sometimes it goes pink. I read a study about that once ---- say it’s ‘cause of the gases and air in the city.”
“And whales live in the sky. The sea is the sky, there. Don’t ask me how it works ---- some dude fucked magic up during a war a really long time ago, and now it’s like that. They’ve got a whole transportation system based on it, it’s fucking wild. I lived there, for a while.”
“Why didn’t you stay?”
“I didn’t like it. Too lonely but too crowded. I think you would though, sunshine. We could go too if you want.”
“Oh Tommy look! The train’s here, the train’s here!” Wilbur leaps up, almost dragging Tommy with him, and Tommy can’t help but notice how much brighter his entire person is, how the afternoon light (when did the sky and sun get so much more brilliant?) soaks through his curls and reflects on his glasses, because oh Wilbur had stayed longer than he usually did to find the tickets for Tommy and oh the mold has been spreading and numbing Wilbur all along but he stayed just for Tommy.
The realization hits him all at once, a wave of guilt, but it’s alright now because the train is rolling its way down the tracks, stream of yellow light cutting through the dimming evening like a hand waving through water (the sheer contrast of it, what Tommy has craved his entire life), and it fills him with a sense of content wonder he doesn’t think he’s ever felt.
Tommy doesn’t remember much of the train ride afterward. It really doesn’t matter, he thinks, but he remembers seeing silvery fish leap out of the ocean, matching the moonlight and contrasting against the dark calm navy of the sea.
He remembers staring out into the dark night and squinting and trying to make out all the towns and scenes they passed while Wilbur laughed good-naturedly and pulls Tommy into his sweater for a hug.
He remembers every moment being different and new, and not wanting to blink and miss a single moment, all the colors splashed over. And he’s with Wilbur. And that’s all that matters, really.
- la jolla
He is on the balcony.
He is on the balcony, and he is overwhelmed. That’s all he knows. That’s all he can focus on. He just wants Wilbur and the comforting yellow sweater and familiar scent of expired candy and soda and way-too-cold-aircon.
Okay. Breathe, like Wilbur taught you to.
Five things you can see; the stupid aquamarine sky, the yellow-white dirtied tiled porcelain flooring of his balcony, his hands, the red fabric of his jacket he’s clutching in them.
Four things you can feel; the scratchy texture of the cheap red fabric that his jacket is made out of, the slight coolness of the flooring, the autumn wind blowing and making a mess out of his blonde curls, his hair whipping and sweeping past his face.
Three things you can hear; the splashing of a goldfish passing through a bubble noisily just above his balcony, the loud chatter of his neighbours (the walls are cheap and therefore thin), the noises of cars and green lights and beeping in the streets below him.
Breathe. What’s his name? His name is Tommy. Okay.
It’s too fucking easy to get overwhelmed here. People think this city, they think it’s a dream to live here. A picture-perfect fantasy. He supposes it does look like that, from afar. From afar it’s a beautiful city, pretty towers built into the sky with hoops that goldfish in the sky swim through, vaporizing clouds with a flap of their fins.
From afar it’s a rainbow of opportunity, bustling streets and busy traffic, all as whales sing their songs while in the heavens above the sky, and schools of fish dapple above. From afar ----- in the postcards, from a birds-eye-view ----- it is a city of skyscrapers that literally have giant jellyfish from the sky cling to them, causing tourists to stare in awe, it’s the pinnacle of prosperity.
But the margins. No one ever looks at the margins. The margins are the shitty apartment Tommy lived in that he could barely afford, one that has a moth infestation in the closet (he named all of them Clementine. Currently at his estimation, there were about twenty to thirty Clementines) and walls so thin he could constantly hear his neighbours arguing in the depths of the night, and being so fucking overwhelmed he could barely breathe.
And the margins are that nothing is ever still. The indie coffee shop that’s been down the street for maybe a few months is a bookstore now, and Tommy knows that will turn into something else in a blink of an eye -------- maybe tomorrow.
Nothing is ever still ----- the sky is always changing shades and hues and gradients, the clouds are always moving and changing, and the flocks of sealife in the heavens are always migrating and moving, and there is no still corner.
Dogs bark and people chatter and kids run in parks, and people smoke and yell in alleyways, and stores are always barraged by a flood of people in the evening and afternoon, and the streets are never empty; there’s always a surplus of people floating in crowds up and down them.
(Tommy sees a girl with rose hair clips in her hair. She has her headphones in. Tommy wonders what she’s listening to.
He sees a guy with glasses and a red sweater that matches his own red jacket. He sees someone with a cool frog hat, someone in a purple hoodie, someone wearing a mask with a smiley face painted in it.
He wonders what all these people are doing. He wonders what they’re thinking about. He wonders where they’re going, what they’re thinking. Who do they love? What’s their favorite color?
Perhaps one is panicking about their coming test, perhaps one is on their way to visit a friend, perhaps one is on their way home for dinner. Do all these people have lives and thoughts like him?
And gods, despite the crowds, he feels so alone, because there is a wave of people and yet all of them seem faceless, and he’s so lost god he’s so lost he doesn’t know what to do.)
There is nothing constant in this whirl of tiring chaos. Except the tuck shop, Tommy supposes.
Next to the ground floor of his shitty apartment building is a convenience store that looks to be a relic straight up out of a history museum, something from the few decades back version of this city.
It’s been there for as long as he’s passed this street, it’s been there for as long as his mother has told him about the tiny little store that sold rainbow chewing gum she and her friends had gone to hang out at when they were in school.
It’d been ran by another faceless man with platinum blonde hair and a green hat, once. Now Wilbur’s there, and Wilbur is always another constant.
Tommy shrugs his jacket tightly over his shoulders and pulls his hood up, pulls his ratty grey (formerly red, but now grey) sneakers on and swings the creaky metal door of his apartment home open with a screech, then slams it behind him with a bang.
He stares at the shop again, like greeting an old friend. A shadow's cast over him as he steps closer to the orange-stained glass doors from the faded red and white awning above. This place always had a peaceful feeling to it, a steady place to just be still, to just be, like a shangri-la of his own but rusted and in a city’s alleyway.
He pushes the door open, hears the pig-shaped wind chimes Wilbur had never told him the story behind ring out, glancing at the ground and seeing his sneakers beat against the lime linoleum tiled floors.
“What’s up, Wilbur?” He grins, greeting said man, who is sitting behind the cashier, guitar balanced on his knee, beanie lopsided on his chocolate curls, and cigarettes piled in a dish next to the candies on the counter.
And Wilbur. Wilbur is a constant, he’s always there with his honeyed eyes and cool music and always behind the counter at the store. And Wilbur never leaves him, never gets sick of him and his loudness and pessimistic outlook shadowed by his loud jokes, never merges into just another face in the crowd.
Wilbur’s his constant.
“My anxiety levels.” The brunette deadpans, then goes back to strumming soft chords on his guitar. “Y’know, this is a snack store, not a place for you to hang out whenever.” His tone carries soft fondness hidden in sharp teasing; an invitation. It’s alright. You can stay. I’m here for you. I love you.
Swinging his leg over a random box that looks steady enough and settling on it, Tommy huffs. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. You should be honored to witness the glory of Big Man Innit's presence so often. Can I have a candy?"
Without waiting, he takes a green sour candy from the nearest shelf and munches on it anyways. "Ew. This shit is sour."
Wilbur rolls his eyes. "Child."
Yeah, Tommy thinks this place is the nearest he has to a place of safety, a home, and Wilbur a brother.
-----------------------------------
Tommy is overwhelmed.
He's overwhelmed again, knows he's hyperventilating and has to stop, has to calm down or he's going to collapse but he can't god he can't and he has to keep running he has to make it there-
"Craft's convenience" The cracked, flickering lit sign in bright pink is blurred by the tears in Tommy's vision and the chilling rain beating down on him, sending shivers racking down his entire body.
The streetlamp aside the road became a sharp glare of yellow light in his fuzzy eyes.
Tommy shoves the doors open roughly and stumbles onto the tiled lime green floor, and the once comfortingly familiar harsh white lights make his head ache with sharp hurt.
“Fuck.” He mumbles ever so eloquently. He realizes he’s dripping water all over the floor of Wilbur’s shop. Shit. That’s not good. Wilbur’s gonna be annoyed.
There’s a voice by his side in an instant. “Shit, Tommy, you good?” Wilbur breathes, and it seems like he doesn’t care about his ruined floor anymore, which causes Tommy to bark out a half broken laugh.
“Ok, c’mon breathe, sunshine. Follow me; in for four and out for four, mkay?” Wilbur’s voice is soft, the same voice he uses for singing his lullabies and songs, and it makes Tommy just a tiny bit soft in matching Wilbur on the inside, that Wilbur values him enough to take the effort to treat him so softly when no one ever does anyone here.
Tommy gasps in small, shuddering breaths matching Wilbur’s counting as he runs a hand absentmindedly through Tommy’s curls. “There we go, sunshine. That’s amazing. Are you feeling better?”
Tommy chokes out a small nod.
“Tommy…..” Wilbur says in a concerned voice. “Can I hug you?”
“Yes-” He mumbles, and Wilbur scoops him up against his soft dull yellow sweater, helps Tommy curl up against him and wraps his arms around him like a blanket, pressing a soft kiss to his curls. "What happened?"
And, fuck, how does Tommy say it? How it's been too much, how it's always been too much, how all the lights and crowds, and how he just wants to stop in time and rest forever. He wants out. He wants to just be.
Tommy doesn’t need to. Wilbur sighs and props Tommy back upright like a piece of porcelain in bubble wrap. “Stay the night here, kay? I’ll take you upstairs. It’s probably easier to get a good night’s sleep here, ‘cause both next doors are fuckin’ abandoned or some shit. Do you wanna watch a movie? I think I have UP on tape somewhere-”
“You’re rambling.” Tommy slurs into Wilbur’s shoulder. “It’s nice.”
This isn’t the closest thing he has to home. It is home.