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“Hey,” Wilbur says quietly one evening.
Neither of them has the money or time to be lounging around their tiny flat like two cats napping in the sun, yet here they stay: George perched on their couch with his phone in hand and Wilbur sprawled on the suspiciously stained rug they had pawned off at an almost alarmingly cheap price at an antique store. The television buzzes faintly in the background.
George watches Wilbur strum a chord on his guitar. “Hm?” He replies.
“Do you ever feel like we're, like, stuck in place?”
George frowns. “No?” It comes out more like a question.
“I mean, I feel like everyone in London kind of feels trapped.” Wilbur continues, plucking at a string as if to accentuate his point. “Like all our lives, we’re all working towards something, and then one day, we just step back and say ‘what the fuck.’”
“A bit too early for a midlife crisis,” George points out, turning his eyes back onto the television where a woman holds a can of fly repellent like a glass of holy water. She smiles winningly and George crinkles his eyes back. “You’re just going through a slump, Wilbur. Quit being melodramatic.”
“Maybe,” Wilbur sounds disappointed.
“Maybe,” George parrots back. ‘Why is this even on your mind?”
“Lee and Harriet are getting married.”
“What?!” George shoots up, dropping his phone onto the ground with a clatter. “Lee and Harriet are getting married?! Fuck, I haven’t…They stayed together?!”
Wilbur smiles grimly. “Yeah, I ran into Lee yesterday at a get-together. Swot was showing off his ring to everyone, even the bartender.”
George sits back, mind whirring and halting in a broken cycle. Their university friends, who had once chugged bottles of vodka like it was water and pissed on the meticulously pruned shrubs of their campus, were getting bloody married. Oh god, they would be raising kids soon.
“Fuck,” George chokes out. Suddenly, his bones feel very heavy in his body—much too ancient and brittle to function properly. He sags into the couch.
Wilbur nods, apparently sharing his sentiment.
“Yeah, he invited us to the goddamn wedding.”
The woman on the TV laughs, her giggles sounding through the air like bells.
Wilbur and George had always been friends by association, acquaintances by chance.
George had been dragged kicking and screaming into their tumultuous group of friends in university while Wilbur had popped in and out of the inner ranks according to his whims. Even though they were aware of each other's presence, like a planet might be aware of another planet's orbit, they are not friends. They barely talk until one night, drunken and stupid, they stumble into a bathtub in a random house party together and spend four hours talking about Minecraft.
“My friends and I would play, like, every day.” George had confessed. “We would do manhunts and shit, it was a blast.”
“Huh,” Wilbur had replied. “I think I roleplayed on there by myself.”
“Roleplay?”
“Yeah, I was a revolutionary who was going to war against his old country. It was pretty gruesome.” Wilbur had leaned back against the porcelain backdrop of the bathtub. “I got bored of it pretty quickly.”
George had quirked a brow. “So was your revolutionary story left unfinished?”
“Oh, no. I was going to have the most dramatic ending in the history of all Minecraft roleplays. I ended up blowing up my new nation and then having my dad log onto my brother’s Minecraft account just to kill me.”
“What the hell.”
Wilbur had smirked, a slow, lazy thing. “Yeah, death at the hands of a father. Can’t get more theatrical than that.”
George had wheezed so hard, a bottle of shampoo had fallen off the edge of the tub.
“You’re lovely,” Wilbur had blurted then, shuffling closer so that they could look properly into each other’s eyes. George had stopped laughing then, all too aware of how their arms were pressed against each other and how Wilbur’s hair seemed to shine under the fluorescent lights. “You’re beautiful when you laugh.”
He swallowed.
“Bet you say that to everyone you share your Minecraft roleplay stories with.”
Wilbur had looked at him then, face unreadable. “I don’t.”
George had grinned at that and drunkenly vowed to himself to ask Wilbur out for some drinks when they were sober.
(The next time he had seen Wilbur, the other man had an arm pressed around a girl and George had swallowed down any sort of hope that might have bloomed in his chest. He gave a small wave to the man who outright beamed back at him. It was for the best, after all.)
They had become a little closer after that.
Still, there was nothing fated about them and nothing certain. Wilbur was as flighty as a baby bird stretching his wings for the first time. More often than not, he would stumble home with a grin that revealed too much and too little about his night.
The first night they had moved in together had been the worst. Wilbur had opened the door with pupils the size of the moon and all but collapsed onto the only patch of floor that wasn’t covered by moving boxes. George had fought the urge to kick him across the back.
He dialed Alex, their mutual friend, instead.
“He’s a mess,” George had complained.
“He’s a rockstar,” Alex had responded.
“He plays gigs at dive bars.”
“He’s a fuckin’ rockstar, man.”
Wilbur had woken up bright and early the next day, holding out untoasted slices of bread towards George like a peace offering.
“Sorry if I threw up on you or something,” He said goodnaturedly. George had studied his eyes. They were no longer the blown-out, midnight black of someone high off of drugs and bad decisions. They were just a normal shade of dark brown. Somehow, the sight was as unsettling as ever.
“You didn’t,” He replied and took a slice of bread. He chewed doggedly, trying to remember why he had agreed to be roommates with someone like Wilbur Soot, who was as accessible and untouchable as the sun itself.
“I just had to celebrate,” Wilbur said.
“You celebrated us being roommates without your roommate.”
“I knew you’d understand, George.” Wilbur crowed. His brow furrowed as he studied George’s stoic face. “Are you mad at me?”
Was he?
George tried to remember what anger felt like, tried to scrounge up a true unbridled rage that coiled in his stomach and threatened to eat him up alive. He even tried to manifest a mild irritation at Wilbur’s inebriated actions, at his deliberate, almost child-like way of leaving George out of his life. The distance between them waned like the moon, despite their knobbly shoulders knocking together as they sat on the kitchen floor.
Looking at Wilbur’s placid grin, he couldn’t bring himself to feel anger. Maybe anger was only a gift meant for those who lived and breathed too close to one another—maybe anger was something that was born and bred from intimacy. Wilbur’s eyes were as kind as they were unreadable.
“I’m not mad,” George had replied finally, taking another bite of his soggy bread.
Wilbur had smiled at him like he knew what he was going to say all along.
“Cheers,” He murmured, clinking their slices of bread together like wine glasses. “Here’s to a long, prosperous union between us.”
After that, they don’t talk about the night and the other nights to come. It just became another part of his daily life: trudging to work, avoiding eye contact with others on the tube, eating bad takeout, and watching Wilbur Soot get dangerously high and floating right back down like a deflated balloon.
He politely ignores when Wilbur watches him back.
They show up to the wedding in suits that are far too cheap for a momentous occasion like the matrimonial union between their two old friends.
Wilbur pulls at the cuffs of his suit jacket, frowning a little in a handsome, brooding sort of way that makes a few people around them stare appreciatively. George doesn’t let his gaze linger and instead turns to greet some acquaintances he doesn’t quite remember the names of. He thinks they might have shared a philosophy class back in uni or they might have been the idiots that threatened to shit on his dorm balcony because he swiped the last bit of weed brownies at a party. Funnily enough, after five years away from the hellhole of university, the people there seem to blur together in George’s memory.
Still, he smiles politely when a man Ravi pats him on the back like they're long-lost friends
“Can’t believe Lee and Harriet are finally tying the knot,” Ravi laughs. “I thought for sure she would dump his ass during junior year when he tried to snort coke off that one girl’s stomach at a rager.”
“Yeah, well,” George replies. “Love works in mysterious ways.”
“That it does.”
They watch as more and more people show up to the venue, smiling and chattering excitedly with one another. There’s an exciting thrum of energy in the air, so pungent George can almost taste the electricity on his tongue. He glances over at Wilbur at his right, reflexively.
Wilbur’s already looking back at him, mouth pulled into a taut line.
He’s tense for reasons George knows nothing about. How was one man so unknowable as Wilbur Soot, who would drop anecdotes about embarrassing childhood experiences and university failures like they were nothing, but withhold information about a mild strawberry allergy for two years? Sometimes, George foolishly thinks that after four years of being Wilbur’s roommate and six years as his friend, those years would erase the distance between them; then, Wilbur does something that sets progress back by another few years.
Once, Wilbur had sung a song to George. Or rather, he sang a song and George was there to witness it.
His fingers, broad and callused, had flown across the strings and produced music out of thin air. His voice rasped and pulled at the edges until he was practically hoarse, scraping through his lyrics like sand against stone. Wilbur had curled around his guitar and sheet music, and in turn, his music had curled around him—separating him from the rest of life in a protective barrier.
George had watched him, palms sweating, and wondered what it would be like to be so mysterious.
Wilbur had leant back, not to make eye contact with him, but to stare up into the ceiling like it had all the answers for a starving musician like him. George had watched the column of his throat work and thought about what it would be like to sink his teeth into it and stay there—to suck Wilbur’s life force out of his body and into George’s own.
Then he wondered if he was going batty.
George had never been much of a fighter but being around Wilbur Soot was like playing an Olympic sport he would only desperately lose. It was utterly exhausting .
“You alright?” He whispers now like it’s a secret. He inclines his head towards his roommate and, after a pause, Wilbur leans in as well.
His frown is even more brooding up close. “I see a live band.” He mutters.
“Sizing up the competition?”
“Please, George, we play different genres of music,” Wilbur sniffs. “We couldn’t compare even if we wished to.” Then his mouth pulls into something resembling a smile, though it's much too sharp to be called one. “Though if we could, I reckon my band could outplay them by miles.”
“Yet they’re the ones with a gig and you’re sitting here in cufflinks,” George snickers. “With me.”
“Dreadful,” Wilbur agrees. “Not about me being here with you, of course.”
“Of course,” George nods.
They look at each other, not quite smiling but not quite frowning for a few moments longer before someone to George’s left clears their throat.
The group of people who George had almost forgotten about are still there, eyes flickering between them with an air of amusement. George blinks at them, then blinks at how a man is heading over to the altar, a bible clutched in his hands and how the rest of the venue is scrambling back into their seats.
The wedding is about to begin.
“Best to save the flirting for after,” A woman in the group murmurs to George as she scampers over to her seat. “Let the soon-to-be married couple have a moment to shine.”
Wilbur inhales slightly and George turns his eyes to the altar.
They had been living together for two years and George had slowly, but surely started to carve out a place for himself in the hubbub of London. He liked his job as much as a twenty something could like his job and more importantly, he was starting to like who he was as a person. The teen angst bullshit was finally, finally ebbing away and George could scream his thanks to the heavens.
Wilbur had been having a little less of a successful time.
His band was okay, the money he made was alright, his girlfriends were lovely, his habit of trying to kill his liver was something that had to be worked on but George could find no real fault in his life. Wilbur, however, seemed to despise life if it wasn’t actively throwing him curveballs and melodrama. He started shit on purpose and bore its consequences proudly, like hangovers and bad hookups were prizes he had won through sweat and tears.
He was like a comic book character brought to life; as tragic as Batman but as charismatic as Archie. (“Self made rockstar,” Alex would always joke. “Self made tragedy.”) He was horrible. He was—
George had found him out by the fire escape one morning, nursing a cigarette between his lips with the hidden joy of a little boy discovering lollipops for the first time.
Wilbur had looked up at him and George had caught a glimpse of lovebites staining his neck. His stomach twisted at the sight, yet he looked away. Wilbur blew out a stream of smoke right in his face.
“Are you happy, Wilbur?” George had asked. He didn’t know why he did, all he knew was that Wilbur was smoking on the fire escape at 4 AM, that he had disappeared with a woman a few hours before, and that he had not touched his songwriting notebook since March 21st. It was now June.
Wilbur huffed out a raspy laugh. “Are you happy, George?”
“I’m content.”
“That’s not happiness,” Wilbur had said back, so simply, like he knew what happiness meant. “That’s something else entirely. You’re not happy.”
“Don’t tell me what I am.” George had replied back.
Wilbur had shrugged and leaned forward precariously, resting his forearms on the railing. “I’m not happy right now, but someday, I will be.” He mutters around his cigarette. “I’m gonna be happy.” He repeats like he needs to hear himself say it again.
George rolls his eyes. “You’re an idiot with delusions of grandeur.” Even the biting words don’t come out as biting, instead they’re ice-cold and uninterested. Untouched.
“You’re an apathetic bastard,” Wilbur snaps back.
“I don’t understand you,” George wants to shout. He wants to rage and stomp his heels like a child throwing a tantrum. He wants to press Wilbur down onto the ugly rug they bought together, the rug that he had spilled pasta onto from laughing too hard at Wilbur’s dry humor, a rug that Wilbur had chosen because George had wanted it. He wants to turn into a savage beast and rip into the man next to him and then himself.
Though the actual fury never settles into his flesh, the want for it scares him a little.
“I want to understand you.”
He slides down next to Wilbur. “We can’t all be like you.” He manages.
Wilbur regards him for the first time that day. His hickies seem to bloom under the light of dawn, they match the purples underneath his eyes. George wants them gone.
“No,” Wilbur says. “You can’t. But you could always try looking from my perspective, if you’re so sick of living in your own skin.”
“I don’t think I can.”
Wilbur flicks a bit of ash in his direction. His gaze, for once, is piercing and a little mean.
“You can or you don’t want to?” He asks, and even though the question sounds rhetorical, it still hangs in the air like an odor. “Do you even know what it means to want, George?”
There’s a retort (a confession?) on the tip of his tongue but even as he swallows, George does not know what it is. Wilbur, resigned, turns away and continues smoking his cigarette and pretending like every inhale doesn’t send his lungs hacking in tiny coughs. He’s a cliche to end all other cliches.
George watches the sunrise and how it changes Wilbur’s features. He can be allowed this small pleasure.
The wedding ceremony goes by beautifully.
Lee quips and makes jokes, even during the most important day in his life, and Harriet glares through every mistimed quip with the ferocity of a tiger. Still, when they finish their vows and finally press their mouths together, they’re smiling like George has never seen them smile before. It’s almost disgustingly beautiful.
Then there’s dancing, tears, and lots of champagne.
George nurses a champagne flute between his fingers and floats from person to person, gritting his teeth through interactions with people he does not remember and smiling at the ones with his friends. Wilbur does his own bit of social surfing but somehow, they find each other again.
“Hey,” Wilbur murmurs over the swell of music.
“Hi,” George grins.
Buoyed by the alcohol and the similarly intoxicating feeling of catching up with old friends, he jerks his head towards the dance floor in a silent invitation. Wilbur’s eyes trace the movement until he understands. A strange look crosses across his face for a split second. Then a wide smile replaces it.
They stand at the corner of the dance floor. George bounces on the balls of his feet, swaying in what he hopes is along to the beat of the song. He glances up at Wilbur through his eyelashes to see the other man baring his teeth back at him in a grin. Elated, George places a hand on his wrist urging him to move too.
“You look stupid,” He snickers. Wilbur cups one of his ears and he has to lean in to repeat what he just said. Their foreheads knock together in the process. Wilbur doesn’t even flinch, placing his free hand on George’s jaw and tilting it at an angle, so they can make eye contact.
His palm is rough against George’s skin, burning through the sweat and flesh. For a moment, George wonders if this is what Wilbur’s guitars feel when he holds them, how his mics feel as he grasps them during shows.
‘How tragic that guitars and microphones are inanimate and unsentient,’ George thinks. ‘All that glorious heat is lost to things that do not need it.’
“How do I look stupid?” Wilbur asks, voice cutting through the music ringing in George’s ears.
“You’re just standing there and watching.”
“I dunno,” He responds. His eyes sweep down George’s frame for half a second. “I like watching.”
“Just move, Wilbur.” George laughs.
“If the great George himself insists.” Wilbur bows then shimmies his shoulders so enthusiastically, he nearly knocks into the woman behind him.
George bites back a laugh bubbling in his throat as the woman whirls around, her face light with irritation. His mood drops somewhat when her eyes sweep across Wilbur, her initial annoyance warring with the understanding of who is dancing behind her. He knows what she sees: broad shoulders, sleeves pushed up to reveal stretches of pale skin, a smile that promises nothing good.
She licks her lips. George selfishly, stupidly dislikes her for it.
When she sidles closer to Wilbur and starts dancing, like really dancing—rocking her hips back and forth, sliding her hands into the hair—George starts to despise her. Wilbur’s gaze slides away from him, landing on her for a split second, and his eyes darken with interest. His hand burns George alive.
George backs away, folding his hands back into his pockets.
Wilbur’s hand takes a moment to leave its place on George’s face and when it stubbornly lingers, it is all he can do to not lean into its touch. Instead, he peels it off, shivering as Wilbur’s callused fingertips trail across his stubble, and raises his eyebrows towards the girl who’s somehow scooted closer to the other man.
Wilbur frowns at him.
George rolls his eyes, irritated at his feigned confusion. Men like Wilbur played coy at the worst of times.
When he knocks shoulders with his old friends and gladly accepts their invitation into their dance circle, he allows himself a glance back.
Wilbur has his arms wrapped around the girl, his hands pressed to her stomach and her head thrown back onto his shoulder. He’s whispering something in her ear, his hair falling into his eyes, and they’re swaying dangerously close together.
His hands look big and possessive pressed to her body.
George is well aware he isn’t the only one staring but somehow he feels almost isolated, watching the two in the spotlight. He wonders when he started caring about being part of the crowd staring after Wilbur as he shone. His face feels oddly cold.
Wilbur lifts his eyes from the girl and meets his gaze.
Something complicated twists in those dark eyes, brown swallowed by black pupils, and George looks back, suddenly breathless.
They don’t stop watching each other; not when the girl makes bedroom eyes at Wilbur, not when a man touches George’s arm with a demure grin, not even when Wilbur finally dips down to kiss the girl and George presses his lips to the stranger’s.
Wilbur’s grip on the girl’s hips look painful and his kiss looks even more so, a clash of lips and teeth fit for the most feral of animals. The stranger kissing George has chapped lips and his hands shy away from him like he’s afraid of him. Wilbur pulls away from the girl, sinking his teeth into her bottom lip on his way out, and his stare is somehow, inexplicably still on George.
George’s chest aches something awful.
Wilbur had his worst breakup at George and Wilbur’s three year anniversary as roommates.
They had been sitting together on the cheap couch, drinking cheap alcohol, and strangely, they had been happy. Wilbur was flicking through the channels, making stupid comments about whatever program he decided was worth his time before switching to a new one. George had been laughing along.
“He’s just like me for real,” Wilbur had said as they stopped at a movie where a young man was bawling and pounding at the ground as snow fell around him. It was all very melodramatic. George had squinted at the screen, trying to remember what the plot of the movie was.
The young man was being comforted by his friends. George had glanced over at Wilbur who was watching the scene play out with a strange mixture of amusement and sympathy.
“I think his lover just died or something,” George had said. He had strained to hear what the characters were murmuring to each other but their TV was shitty and the movie had looked like it was made in the 80s so he couldn't make out much. “Or maybe it was his roommate?”
“Is there really that much of a difference?” Wilbur had asked.
George had glanced over to him with a start. Wilbur had already been looking at him. Their hands were mere centimeters away from each other, George had realized then, he could move over slightly and they would be brushing.
He had wanted nothing more than to move those few centimeters.
Wilbur had smiled at him in a way he had never smiled before and George had wanted so badly to move then when the door had flown open.
The girl who stood there had nearly been frothing from anger.
“You,” She had seethed, eyes flickering between Wilbur and George. George had no idea who she was talking to at the moment, if she was talking to both of them at once–like he and Wilbur had fused into an amalgamation where they were suddenly one entity—until her eyes had finally settled on Wilbur.
She and Wilbur had shouted at each other all night with George tip-toeing around them, uninterested in their debate but even less interested in being caught in the crossfire.
“You are horrible,” she had screamed at one point. “You’re cruel and a horrible person. You only find happiness in taking it away from everyone around you.”
Wilbur had shouted something back but what he said had been lost to George who was watching the girl. She was crying, mascara running down her cheeks, and she had looked every bit the heartbroken girlfriend Hollywood would pay millions to see. She had probably been a nice enough person, too nice to be entangled with the likes of Wilbur Soot.
Even so, he hadn’t been able to conjure up any sympathy for her.
He could only watch her clumpy, mascara-ridden tears and think to himself: ‘Cruelty is what you signed up for if you choose to love Wilbur Soot.’
When the celebration starts dying down, Wilbur nods at him in greeting as George sidles next to him at the edge of the empty dance floor. His tie is undone in a casual way that only he would have the confidence to pull off and his jacket is draped casually over his arm. When he smiles, George can see hints of tipsy joy tugging at the corners of it.
“Where have you been?” George asks in lieu of hello.
“Hanging around the bar,” Wilbur says through his lovely grin. He sounds much more sober than George would have expected from him. “Made friends with the girl from before.”
“Yeah?” George raises a brow, pushing his irritation away. “I couldn’t tell.”
“She offered to put in a good word for me at the pub she tends at,” Wilbur continues, ignoring his snark. “My music’s influence is expanding, be proud of me.”
“You’re networking during the most important event of our friends’ lives,” George counters. “DId you even wish them a happy union?”
“Does it matter whether or not I wish them a happy union? They’ll move into bloody Yorkshire and raise 2.5 kids and grow old without my praise. Or maybe they’ll divorce. I don’t know.”
“Asshole,” George mutters. Wilbur doesn’t flinch at the words.
“You love me either way.” He shrugs, sipping from his half empty fluke. “I’m happy for them, George, you know that.”
“Do I?” George asks before he can stop himself. The champagne had long since worn off and he had turned down offers of anything stronger for the rest of the night; yet, he still felt punch-drunk, jittery with nerves and annoyance. Wilbur glances at him, bemused, and he powers on.
“I feel like I know nothing about you.” He says. “Even after years of us being friends and five more of us being roommates, you still feel like a stranger sometimes.”
Wilbur flashes a fox-like smile. “Doesn’t that make life interesting, George?”
“No,” George says back. “It makes life exhausting.”
Wilbur reaches into his pocket, pulling out a pack of Marlboros and a busted up lighter George had gotten him for his birthday a few years back. He takes his time lighting a cigarette then offers the pack to the man next to him, who bats it away in irritation. Wilbur laughs through the smoke.
“You don’t seem too bothered,” He says eventually. “At least, you didn’t before. What changed?”
You, me, us. George does not say.
“I want you to be happy,” He confesses instead. The words come out hoarse, like they were unwillingly ripped out of his throat. He stares down at his hands in order to not watch the lines on Wilbur’s face shift. “I want to be happy. I want things that I’ve never wanted before and, fuck, I’m just so tired of this.”
“This?” Wilbur’s voice gives nothing away. Of course.
“This,” George confirms. “Your melodramatic, asshole attitude where you always want to leave me guessing. My apathy, I guess. Just us being together but still being strangers. I, fuck , I want to see you. I want you to see me.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, tiredness bleeding together with the utter humiliation of being laid open for Wilbur to dissect.
The silence stretches out between them, taut and unsnapping.
Then, a hand finds George’s. He stares at it, at the flexing tendons and the long fingers, at the knuckles he’s dreamed about and the fine hairs on the back of it he’s counted in his most selfish of daydreams. The warmth of it is nearly suffocating.
He dares to look up.
Wilbur stares down at him.
“I didn’t know you were looking at all,” he whispers like it's a secret. “I kept watching you but I never…I didn’t think you wanted to see me.”
“How could I not?” George asks before he can think better of it. “You’re the cruelest, most enigmatic man I’ve ever met.”
“You should look in the mirror, love.” Wilbur responds, bringing his cigarette to his mouth with his other hand. He’s smiling, teeth glimmering in the moonlight and eyes bright with what George recognizes with a start to be elation. He’s never seen such an expression on Wilbur before. It’s so beautiful, it hurts to look at.
He takes the cigarette from Wilbur's lips and places it between his own, inhaling the smoke and chasing after the foreign taste of an indirect kiss. Wilbur watches him with half-lidded eyes. George gives himself a few more seconds before he pulls the stick away and catches Wilbur’s gaze once again.
“I want you to be happy.” He says, more firmly this time. “I really, really want you to be happy.”
Wilbur blinks at him and George smirks as he sees the tips of his ears grow red.
“I want you,” Wilbur responds. “I want you to want me.”
He leans forward and catches George’s wrist in the circle of his fingers. He lifts the hand to his face ever so delicately and leans forward, wrapping his lips around the cigarette George had almost forgotten about and inhaling—never once looking away from the other’s face. George feels his own face grow warmer as well.
When the stick nearly burns down to the filter, Wilbur wrestles it out of his fingers and flicks it away, uncaring. He presses a feather light kiss to the fine bones of George’s wrist, right next to the fluttering pulse.
“Can we both have what we want?” He murmurs against George’s skin. George swallows.
“Maybe one day,” He rasps. “Maybe in the future when we’re both decent men with decent lives.”
Wilbur hums.
“Can we fast forward?” He asks, quieter. “Can we fast forward to when I’m happy, you want me, and you go down on me?”
George smiles back at him, his chest expanding and collapsing in on itself. He knows it's a bad idea, knows one day he might be like the boy in the movie grieving a lost lover/roommate/ friend but he can’t bring himself to care.
Oh, how he wants.
“Let's get out of here.”
He leans forward and Wilbur kisses him like a king who just won a war.