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Wilbur wakes up to a punch-drunk sort of morning, muzzy and humid, the air bearing down. Painstakingly, he rolls over, pushes off the covers, and sits up—just one of those days where even the easy things take far too much effort than he can stand.
The house is quiet, the street outside quieter still. Breathing deep, he rubs the remnants of sleep from his eyes and propels himself from his bed. There’s a chill in the air, unnatural for the season, and besides, there shouldn’t be a draft in this room—the window’s sealed shut.
And yet.
Halfway to the bathroom, his eyes catch on a sheet of paper on his desk that he could swear he’s never seen before. It’s thick and heavy, more parchment than the thin copy shit, and torn across the bottom, only half covered with carefully scrawled words.
Words in Wilbur’s own handwriting.
“What the fuck?” he mutters to himself, holding the sheet up to the light. It’s stained, he realizes, spattered with something dark. Ink, of course it’s ink, what else could it be—?
But when he runs his fingers across the spots they come away red, and when he brings them to his lips the back of his throat burns with that unmistakable iron taste: like waking up halfway through a nosebleed, or catching a whiff of a handful of pocket change.
This note in his handwriting, this note he did not write, is stained with blood. Fresh. Still wet.
So he reads it. What else is there to do?
Tommy—, it begins.
Who’s Tommy?
No one he should know, and yet—the press and release of his pen on the page is somehow desperate, clinging to some truth Wilbur cannot for the life of him recall.
Tommy—
Stay in the dark, it’s safe there.
Stay in the cold by the fireplace,
where we first saw the sunset and swore
to keep it that way.
It’s a poem. Wilbur swallows, lets his eyes flutter shut for just a moment. He’s just tired still, that’s all. The scene he pictures isn’t real—not the popcorn crackle of the flames, not the vivid clouds their breath made in the air as they laughed themselves sick, him and—him and—
Listen. Close your eyes and let
the truth wash in,
let the walls hold you close
and please, for once, pretend.
I know you know my reasons;
all I wish is
The page is torn, the ink too smudged in the last few lines to distinguish the letters. Understand, perhaps, or understood. Sorrow, or maybe just sorry.
He sets the note down. The—poem. It reads like a goodbye. Why the fuck was he saying goodbye to someone he didn’t know?
Maybe it’s a—a prank. Someone’s forged his handwriting, got a papercut, cried a few tears of laughter, while they were at it. Someone’s idea of an elaborate practical joke.
This seems very plausible to Wilbur all the way up until he remembers—he doesn’t know anyone who would play a prank on him. So why had it for a moment felt so very real? Like just behind him there was someone who would laugh, abrasive and awful, lighting up something in Wilbur’s chest he’d long ago given up for dead?
He clenches his hands into fists to stop them from shaking, or at least so he doesn’t have to look at his fingers anymore, nails bitten down to the quick and bleeding. Not to mention the dried blood from the still-wet note on the desk before him.
Suddenly the urge seizes him to know. To find.
Wil, what are you waiting for? Come on! D’you want to see or not?
“Yes,” Wilbur says aloud, his voice horrifyingly hoarse.
There’s no response. What the fuck is he doing, then, talking to the voices in his head? He chuckles, thinking of the incessant mocking he’d receive if—
He walks into the bathroom, where only the cold water knob works on the sink and the mirror is permanently stained with unknown gunk, rust-colored and smeared across the surface, ruining it. Even through all that Wilbur can clearly see the state he’s in, hair a mess, eyes wild.
And—he’s crying ink. Just from one eye, yes, but there it is: rich black, snaking its way down his cheek like it’ll still taste salty and bitter when it hits his lips, like every tear to come before it. And from his right temple, like the echo of someone else’s bullet wound, blood trickles from the broken skin of an impact that never hit him, not that he can recall.
The two twine together as they slip down his cheek, red and black, black and red, spreading the deck in front of him saying Pick a card, any card, go on, and it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, and he cannot bear to name the breath caught in his throat lest he give away power he does not have.
Impulsively, he reaches up and smudges it across his face, war paint for an unknown battle, his hand coming away gruesome, his face coming away dirty. He feels dirty, somehow, like he’s just tainted something sacred.
There’s nothing sacred in this dingy little studio-flat bathroom, he tells himself. But maybe everything feels a little more sacred in the delicate strains of first light.
Whatever. He cups his hands under the tap, fills them up with ice-cold water, and the ink and blood wash away quick as can be.
Wilbur doesn’t feel clean. To be honest he can’t remember the last time he did.
Now, what is wrong with this picture? asks the little voice in his head.
E: all of the above. Everything, everything. He picks up the note and sweeps out the door before he can think better of it.
Time slips, or he blinks, or he inhales too sharply, and he’s down the stairs and his building’s spit him out onto the sidewalk. The sidewalk, where a trail of footprints leads away further than he can see.
His breath catches at the sight of them: an impossibly dark shade of black. It looks like ink.
Wilbur bends down before he can think twice, reaching out, swiping up liquid darkness with two fingers—opening his mouth, he places the would-be ink on his tongue, and—
And he’s somewhere else, speeding down a highway in a bright red convertible—maraschino cherry red, not blood, not rust. There’s no end in sight, just sky. He’s whooping, freer than he’s ever felt, laughing till he can’t breathe.
There’s someone beside him in the car, someone in the passenger seat with blond curls blown everywhere by the wind, and Wilbur loves him. Wants to keep him safe more than anything. And he can’t slow down, can’t hit the brakes, doesn’t know where he’s going, but it’s fine because he has—because this boy is by his side, this boy he cannot name but clings to in memory.
Memory?
It’s a little grayer outside when he opens his eyes. When his eyes—open. He’s shaking again, but it’s all right, it’s just a little cool outside, and he doesn’t have a coat.
He coughs, but it’s all right—he’s just catching a cold like he always does this time of year. He wipes his hand across his mouth and it comes away black—pitch black, ink-black—but it’s all right, he’s just made of words is all. A creature formed of letters and flourishes at the end of sentences and half-written midnight notes never received.
Wilbur walks on, following and following, the footprints dark and the back of his hand darker, his chest rattling till it starts to pour—round, weighty raindrops, trying too hard to mean something.
He has no umbrella, and the footprints are washing out, and he is sodden trudging down the sidewalk, he is lost in his own city streets—
What city does he even live in? What is he looking for?
Come on, Wil, they’re waiting for us! You’re so fuckin’ slow, you know that?
Unclenching his left fist, it comes to him like a fresh gasp of air. He watches the note fall from his grasp, watches the ink bleed into it until not a word can be seen—a small sacrifice.
It’s Tommy, you see. He’s looking for Tommy. The boy in his head, the boy in the car, the boy in the rain—
The rain? It comes down even harder, as if in reply, and suddenly a flash of lightning has Wilbur flinching back, squeezing his eyes shut.
And there’s Tommy, right in front of him, his blond hair unmistakable even matted and streaked with something dark. Behind Tommy is a figure in a lime green hoodie, face obscured by a hood stained red at the edges from blood that doesn’t yet look dry.
The boy in the rain is so bright. “Wilbur?” he whispers.
“Tommy?” Wilbur breathes in return, and the boy nods, and wraps his hand around Wilbur’s wrist, and Wilbur feels a jolt, like this is the only right thing to happen to him all day. The only real thing.
“Holy fuck,” Tommy says unsteadily. “We thought you were—"
“I’m here, Toms,” Wilbur says, but Tommy’s still talking.
Tommy’s still talking, mouth moving around rapid-fire words, eyes alight, but all Wilbur can hear is static, static.
With some effort, he looks away from Tommy to see what's going on, only to find something glowing bright white from beneath the figure's green hood.
Tommy turns around, following Wilbur’s gaze, and goes pale.
“Who is that?” Wilbur asks slowly. Carefully. He doesn’t want to know.
Tommy’s exhale is shaky, almost tearful. “XD. He’s my…”
“He's mine,” XD hisses, and it tears its way through Wilbur’s skull so painfully his vision goes red. He blinks it away.
Tommy coughs as if punched in the stomach. “Wil, is he talking to you? Don’t listen. Please. He’s trying to—" Static again.
“No sunshine boy without sunshine,” XD intones. “Ink runs in the rain.”
The white noise between Tommy’s frantic motions washes over Wilbur, mixing with the downpour. Blood and ink and it’s all just grey.
It was beautiful, in the mirror. Is it beautiful now? Is he beautiful?
“—please, Wilbur, please, just—"
“Run,” XD urges him. “Where will you go? Hide. Leave him behind, he’s used to it. You’ve done it before.”
Turning away, Wilbur pulls Tommy into an embrace. He doesn’t know this boy, this sunshine boy. Doesn’t know his laughter on a windy afternoon, or the shape of his breaths after sunset. But this, now, feels like the sort of home he’s only ever dreamed of, dreamed and woken up with a face full of dried tears and a heavy emptiness festering within him.
There’s something in him burning fiercer than it’s ever been. Something he’d written off as buried, irretrievable. I’m sorry, he thinks to no one in particular.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs instead, but his fingertips have gone numb and he can barely see through the sheets and sheets of rain, holding onto nothing but the slip-slide of ink between his fingers, blood between his teeth.
And then XD steps forward, pushes back his hood to reveal a blond boy with an unsettling lopsided grin, a pure white blindfold tied over his eyes with a dark red X marked in the center.
It fucking hurts to look at him. Shifting in Wilbur’s arms, Tommy screws his eyes shut. Wilbur looks XD straight on as he begins to—melt away?
In the rain, hoodie and blindfold and humanness alike congeal into something bright and blinding, something outlined in an impossible neon green, something with wings that cannot be wings and eyes in the shape of screams and floats above the ground, rising and rising. And then he stops. He waves, jerky and mocking.
Wilbur takes a step toward him, shielding Tommy with his body.
“Don’t do this again,” Tommy is saying, a warning in his voice. “Wilbur, please, listen to me. Don’t you fuckin’ dare.”
“What do you have to say for yourself?” XD demands, the ground trembling when he speaks. He raises a hand, dramatic, deliberate, almost like he’s playing it up for effect.
Whose effect, damn it? There’s no one watching. The sidewalk’s empty—the roads are empty—the whole damn city’s a ghost town.
And then lightning arcs down and strikes XD’s outstretched fingers, his wide white grin glowing obscenely in the sudden brightness. Yet there’s no smoke when Wilbur blinks the glare from his eyes, no electricity in the air—and then he sees it: there, sizzling in XD’s palm, is a ball of pure light.
Tommy darts out to stand between them. “Leave him alone, you fucking—bitch!” he shouts up at XD. “Let him go!”
Here are the facts: Wilbur’s not trapped, Tommy is. Tommy is under XD’s wing, clearly afraid. Tommy in the rain, being taken away, Wilbur’s just found him again but he can see it now—
XD tilts his head. “I think not.”
“Go on,” Wilbur says. “Him or me, right? Take me.”
“No,” Tommy chokes out. “Wil, no, he already has you, leave me, you don’t need to save me, I swear, I fucking—“
Wilbur blinks. The rain stops. Wilbur blinks. XD is standing next to Tommy, too close. Wilbur blinks. Tommy’s on the ground.
Wilbur—can’t blink. He can’t move. Can’t run to Tommy, kneel beside him, see if he’s all right—
“He will wake up,” XD reassures him.
“And me?” says Wilbur, palms out, a pyrrhic surrender.
“Well,” says XD with a chuckle. “He did try to save you. Your sunshine boy.”
He pauses, the tilt of his head achingly familiar, and Wilbur has the space of a breath to think Wait! before XD is drawing back his hand, the gathered light getting brighter as his smile widens impossibly.
“Better luck next time!” says XD cheerily, and then there is a ball of lightning being thrown at Wilbur’s face, and then—nothing.
Wilbur wakes up to a world dim and already drizzling, blinking a few times to clear his eyes of the stickiness in the air. Even though he’s tucked away in bed, he feels unconscionably jittery, like he drank one coffee too many, the effects threatening overwhelm.
Maybe he’s waking up from a nightmare, he muses, some fucked-up car chase scene that would explain away the adrenaline rushing through him. Or maybe—
It occurs to him that it’s dim outside, the sun obscured enough that its light cannot be what woke him. Shuffling over to the window, he squints past the grime and finds that it’s already raining.
He feels almost like it shouldn’t be, not yet. Like he should still be in the calm before the storm, feeling the lilt and lull of sunshine convinced the downpour will never come.
But I remember, Wilbur thinks to himself, firm and reassuring. I remember the rain.
He stops short. What rain? What remembering? What reassurance?
There is something deep within him telling him to be afraid; he tells it to shut up.
Halfway to the bathroom to start his morning routine, his eyes catch on a piece of paper on his desk that he could swear he’s never seen before. It’s yellowed, torn from some sort of notebook, just a scrap, really.
Picking it up, it sticks oddly to his fingers; upon closer examination he finds it streaked with blood, still wet.
The handwriting is not his own—scrawled in a rush, spidery and angular—but then again, why would it be? He’s never seen this note before.
Well, it’s here, he decides, pushing down the rising tide of questions he cannot answer. Might as well read it.
WILBUR, the note says.
The rain will stop. The ink will dry. You will see the sun again.
We’re coming.