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Tommy is six years old when he first meets the ocean.
He is made of clumsiness, naivety and toothy smiles, slipping out of his bed and making a trail of small footsteps on the dusty hardwood floor as he climbs up the old sofa of his family’s house late at night. He is made of a messy flaxen bedhead, bright blue eyes that struggle to stay open and pajamas that he had grown out of two years ago, hands running along faded leather spots as he watches the front door in anticipation. He is made of high pitched squeals, indignant protests and mirth-filled laughter as he is suddenly hugged from behind, melting into the familiar warmth when he looks up to meet deep brown eyes looking at him fondly.
“What are you doing awake, sunshine?” Wilbur asks softly as he goes to sit next to him, running a hand through his own chestnut curls. He yawns loudly with quite a silly face, making the younger giggle softly before he can give his answer.
“Waiting for dad.” Tommy then says bluntly, oblivious to the way his brother’s expression turns sour. He only picks at the skin around his fingernails and thinks of all he wants to say to his father when he comes back from work. After all, he is made of baby fat in rounded cheeks, the ignorance of a child and the bliss that comes with it.
He doesn’t know yet that fathers aren’t supposed to ignore their children and disappear for months without warning. He doesn’t know yet that fathers aren’t supposed to be strangers in all but blood and only send envelopes filled with cash yet no words. He doesn’t know yet that fathers aren’t supposed to leave their fourteen-year-olds to raise their six-year-olds.
“Why?”
“Wanna tell him about what happened in school today. It was cool.”
“Really?” Wilbur’s eyes soften, and his tone turns into something gentler. “Could you tell me about it too?”
Tommy ponders it for a moment before shaking his head. “Maybe after I tell dad.”
“Hmm…” His brother simply averts his gaze. For a few minutes, they sit in silence. There is nothing between them but bated breath, childlike imaginations, and teenage realities. All of a sudden, he gets up and grabs the younger’s hand, making him shriek in surprise. “Hey, let’s go outside.”
“Wait−” He starts to protest, before abruptly being cut off.
“Just so that we have something to do while we wait for dad.” His older brother reasons, making his train of thought come to a halt. “I have a special place I want to show you. It can be our little secret, sunshine.”
Tommy visibly falters. He wants it. The prospect of a secret is enticing, especially one to be shared only by brothers. Yet, there is still one thing that plagues his mind. Yet, there is still one thing he cannot let go of. “... but what if we miss dad?”
“We won’t.” There’s something resolute in the way that’s said, something only someone older and wiser would be able to be so sure in. Wilbur drops his hand and walks in the direction of the front door, putting some shoes on before looking back at him. “I’ll go. Are you joining me?”
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother.
Tommy nods, and that’s all the confirmation that Wilbur needs. He gets off the couch clumsily and runs up to his brother, almost tripping along the way. He quickly puts on his own pair of shoes, wincing when he has to squeeze his feet into them so that they fit. His brother reaches out his hand for him to hold onto, and he takes it happily. The front door is opened, and out into the moonlit darkness they go.
They walk along the road quietly, hoping none of their neighbors see them sneaking out at this time of the night. After a few minutes have passed, Wilbur notices that Tommy is trembling a little as he presses into his side. “What’s wrong?”
A shaky exhale. “A little scary.”
“Aww.” His brother coos lovingly, then laughs when he responds with an indignant whine. “It’ll be alright; you can close your eyes. Just hold on tight, okay?”
“Okay, Wilby.” He squeezes his eyes shut and tightens his grip.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed since then. His brother hasn’t said a single word in what feels like forever. His feet are beginning to hurt, and he’s starting to get tired from holding on with all his strength. He feels a lot colder as well, and his shivers from the cold seem to be mistaken as those of fear because his brother only squeezes his hand tighter. He’s about to whine again in complaint, but then the older abruptly stops in his tracks.
“We’re here.” Wilbur says after a few moments, and he could just about hear him smiling. “Look.”
Tommy opens his eyes tentatively, then gasps.
That special place had been the nearby beach, had been the coarse sand and jagged rocks tickled by playful waves along the shore. That special place had been an waterside sanctuary miraculously untouched by urbanization, tucked away beyond a patch of trees that barely obscured it from the outside world. The ocean twinkles with the dancing starlight on its clear waters, catching his curious eye. Its waves crawl up the shore as though it was reaching out for him before receding, a clamor for attention and a clear invitation into its space. He looks to his older brother for permission, who only urges him in with an amused laugh.
He gets to know the feeling of cool water and the night breeze on his skin, eliciting the whispers of quiet giggles to be tucked away in pledges of morrow. He gets to know the feeling of saltwater-tipped fingers cupping his cheeks, tracing the constellations of moonlight evanescent reflecting off the ocean surface onto his face. He gets to know his home.
Before long, all the activity finally eats away at the last of his energy reserves because now Tommy is yawning and Wilbur simply coos at him for the second time that night. “Aww, sunshine. You’re sleepy?”
He struggles to keep his eyes open, only humming noncommittally and leaning into the arms beginning to cradle him. “Mhm.”
“It’s okay, just close your eyes.” His brother shifts in place, pulling him up just enough so that he feels warm skin at his fingertips and cool waves at his feet. There is a light kiss pressed on his forehead and a steady hold on his legs swaying him from side to side. It is more comforting than he would like to admit. “I’m here for you.”
“Wilby…”
“Sh. Go to sleep, sunshine.”
In the end, their father never came. But when he falls asleep against his brother’s chest and is hushed by soft-spoken declarations of love, it feels all the same.
-
Tommy is eight years old when he first seeks out the ocean.
He wakes up in the middle of the night with sweat beading on his forehead, his heart beating out of his chest, and unwanted images burned into the forefront of his mind. He lays there for a few minutes trying to calm himself down, focusing on the flaking faded paint on his ceiling in an attempt to steer his thoughts in a different direction. He knows it doesn’t work when breathing just seems to get more difficult and his vision turns a little blurry, obscuring the admittedly plain view. His next action barely takes a second of pondering, however. He gets off his bed quickly, his footsteps thudding loudly behind him as he races outside his room without a care for the magnitude of noise he’s making.
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother. There is always one place he can go to that will accept him no matter what.
He stops and stands outside his brother’s bedroom door long after the lingering golds of sunlight dim to make way for night, with tears streaming down his cheeks just waiting to be washed away by the tide. He stops and stands on the dust shore of the narrow second floor hallway and knocks hesitantly on the horizon line that marks the boundary between solitude and company, and prays that he would find salvation. The door opens agonizingly slowly for his taste but he waits patiently, and like the sun setting on the ocean he eventually finds his way into open arms.
“Wilbur!” A relieved sob.
“What’s wrong, sunshine?” A question laced with worry.
“Please…” Tommy’s fists grip at Wilbur’s sweatshirt, and he feels tears well up in his eyes and stain the fabric as he buries his face in the warmth in an act of desperation.
Wilbur winces at the sudden mass knocking the air out of his lungs, but manages to steady himself just in time. He reaches over to close the door behind them and wraps his arms around Tommy, first and foremost. “Can you tell me what happened?”
He hesitates slightly, loosening his hold so that Wilbur can have some space and shifting his weight from one foot to another. He’s a little old for it, he realizes with a shred of embarrassment. However, he’s already interrupted whatever the other was doing anyway, so he might as well be honest. “… nightmare.”
“Do you mind telling me about it?” His brother steps back toward his bed and reaches out to hold his face gently, looking at him with all the fondness in the world. “If not, that’s okay. I’m here for you now.”
“I want to. It’s just…” The younger feels his breath hitch, his words getting caught in his throat. One of his hands play with the hem of his pajama shirt while the other clasps over one of the hands warming his face. “D-dad. He… he left us.”
“Oh, sunshine.” He already has. I don’t think it’s just a nightmare.
Despite our father, despite our family, despite everything… “Are things gonna be okay?”
“Of course.” Wilbur’s fingers intertwine with Tommy’s, and he’s pulling them both into his bed with nothing more than one surprised squeal. “Things are always going to be okay, as long as we’re together.”
He settles into a comfortable position and mumbles of palpable nightmares into thalassic zephyrs with strangled breathing and hiccupped words, of broken families and absent fathers. His brother whispers reassurances into his ears and the ocean cradles him in a loving embrace, both equally making his mind muddled with incoherent yet good emotions. In here, in the small bed and strewn around sheets of Wilbur’s bed and the ocean’s steady hold grounding him despite the storm of his turbulent life threatening to sweep him away, he feels so very cared for.
"Sunshine.” His brother murmurs between one breath and the next. “Hey, did you know I’ve been practicing music lately?”
“Mhm.” Tommy sleepily hums, remembering just how lively the house had been lately. “I found your guitar.”
“That you did.” Wilbur has a small smile on his lips, just a tad bit bittersweet. “Well, do you want me to sing for you?”
“Really?” He gets a nod in return, and his next word is but a prayer that slips past quivering lips. "Please."
Wilbur reaches out for the old guitar they had found collecting cobwebs in the attic, his newly blistered fingertips getting to know untuned strings in the crude imitation of a lullaby. Wilbur reaches out for scattered notebook pages filled with angry pencil scrawls and sorrowful ink marks, words that were made of venom and vitriol stain the lined sheets with a million sharp-tongued secrets and drip from a mouth that screams of the injustice of two childhoods taken away. Wilbur reaches out for Tommy’s undivided attention, finds his most adoringly written verses, and sings.
His voice is a little shy and plenty untrained, while the song is a little hastily put together and doesn’t quite have the right amount of syllables in certain lines to flow as smoothly as it could. There’s a few voice cracks here and there that sound even more out of place with such a naturally deep voice despite his age, while the frequent pauses attributed to not having memorized the lyrics yet take away from the experience a little. To Tommy, however, it’s all just perfect.
It is gauche and unrefined, and it curbs that which thunders tempest. It is tentative and shameful, and it lulls him to the beginnings of a dreamless slumber. It is a rumble of torrents that curl around his limbs, and it wraps around him in an oath of protection. It is a stream of water that sighs affections into his sun-kissed skin, and it treats him as though he was made to be loved.
And his brother is no more than a siren that sings enchanting songs as a prerequisite to destruction. And he is no more than a human lured into the depths by his voice.
-
Tommy is ten years old when the ocean waves begin to recede.
Wilbur is just starting college, and the new workload on top of going to a different school further away makes for some changes in routine. He doesn’t take Tommy to school in the mornings nor does he fetch him at night, with his classes starting and ending much later. He doesn’t cook breakfast for both of them nor does he get home on time to cook dinner for both of them at a normal time. There are days where they don’t see each other at all, and there are weeks where they only get to talk on weekends. There are days where he feels terribly lonely, and there are weeks where the house feels way too silent.
In lieu of his brother’s company, he is soon gifted a gaming console that he quickly fawns over and tries to install in their living room. His brother laughs at him and moves over to help after cleaning up the tatters of gift wrapping left on the floor, and soon everything else as well is forgotten as they are quickly absorbed in playing a cooperative game. Player One’s primarily red color scheme catches his eye, and he selects the character instantly. His brother rolls his eyes and settles with Player Two, playfully complaining about the blue color scheme even though they both know he doesn’t exactly hate the color and actually quite likes it. Tommy’s random button mashing and colorful commentary sends Wilbur into hysterics, and for a moment it is as though they are just kids all over again.
This becomes their saving grace of sorts, helping them connect in a fragile bridge that the large disparity in their ages and life experiences would have otherwise burned into nothingness. It ends up as a routine, even. Every Friday and Saturday nights, they both find themselves at the living room in the beginnings of night just playing through whatever games they could get their hands on that week. It fills up the house with joyous laughter and muffled screams, and it fills up their hearts with warmth and happiness.
For the other days of the week, however, playing games is but a solitary activity. There are no waters holding him afloat and embracing him, only the week old blanket haphazardly strewn over his shoulders as he shivers in the night breeze. There is no siren’s song gently lulling him to a pleasant dreamless sleep, only the repetitive tune of 8bit music in his ears as he struggles to stay awake. There is no older brother lovingly whispering reassurances into his ears, only the sounds of his character slowly dying and the “Game Over! Try Again?” announcement that punctuates the moment he drifts off to sleep.
He barely ever sees the ocean anymore, just as how he barely ever sees his brother anymore. He barely ever hears the siren’s temptations anymore, just as how he barely ever is sung to sleep by his brother anymore. With no one to take him to their special place, he can’t exactly visit it. With no one to sing to him on restless nights, he can’t exactly be lured into the depths. He doesn’t even remember where their special place is exactly, which is a bit embarrassing for him if he’s being honest. It’s something he holds dear, and he doesn’t even know it all that well. It’s something he holds dear, and he can’t even seek it out on his own no matter how much he wants to.
Tommy doesn’t mind. He understands that college is a new experience, and that Wilbur is busier than ever. He understands that he has to take care of himself, and that his brother won’t be with him every step of the way. He understands, but he can’t help feeling a little resentment at the circumstances that they’re in. He understands, but he can’t help feeling a little sting of pain as he so very deeply misses his brother’s company. And yet, he still feels it would all be okay.
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother. He doesn’t need to question where they’re headed to, just needs to train behind his brother as though he was his shadow.
Tommy trusts Wilbur with every fiber of his being. He would follow him to the ends of the earth, go along with whatever plan he could come up with. After college ends, surely everything would be back to normal. He just has to endure this for the time being, and he could wait for however long it would take for Wilbur to come back to him.
He trusts that his brother works to make it work. At the end of the day, that’s more than enough for him.
-
Tommy is twelve years old when the ocean first pushes him away.
It had been a day like any other, an afternoon after school not unlike any of the ones he’s had before. He walks home alone now after the final bell rings, and he’s proud of himself for only making one wrong turn and getting lost for just ten minutes. It’s the best record he’s had by far. He takes off his shoes at the door and ignores the pang of hunger in his stomach as he passes by the kitchen to go to his room, deciding to start on some homework while waiting for his brother to come home since he doesn’t know how to cook and the fridge is empty. Unfortunately for him, he struggles to make sense of the concepts he’d been taught today. His solution sheet looks more like incoherent scribbles and crossed out attempts than any actual problem solving, and he sighs in frustration. Who the hell decided to add letters into math, as if numbers weren’t bad enough already?
After a while of half-assed guessing for answers that end up way off the mark anyway, he just gives up and goes to play a game on the console they have in their living room. There’s no point dwelling on it when he’s clearly not in the mindset to absorb any new information. Besides, he could always ask his brother for help once he arrives back from school, which he should be at any minute now. For now, everything melts into the blinking pixels of a starting screen and the grainy 8bit music that goes along with it. For now, everything is as it usually is and nothing is out of place.
He’s faced with the fifth “Game Over! Try again?” scene that has graced the old television screen in the last twenty minutes when he hears the familiar click of the front door unlocking and the proceeding creak when it swings open on unoiled hinges. In stumbles his brother with a tired yet seemingly happy smile on his face, muttering something under his breath and not even taking his shoes off as he rushes to the kitchen and hastily shoves a tupperware into their fridge. He turns to look at his brother with an amused grin, ready for a night the same as every night he’s had before.
“Wilbur!” Tommy perks up, already scrambling for the second controller. He yelps when he nearly slips off the couch, paying no mind to the cushions that fall to the floor. “Do you wanna join me? I’m having trouble with this level and I really−”
“I’m so sorry, sunshine.” The world as he knows it stops right then and there. This has never happened before. For the first time in his life, he realizes that smile on Wilbur’s face wasn’t for him. “I have band practice in a bit.”
His grip on the second controller tightens, as if holding on to the idea of there still being a Player Two in his life. This was just going to happen once, the other was just logging off for now. Everything would go back to normal later, as if nothing ever went wrong. “This late? But−”
“I have to go.” His brother simply says as though his world isn’t crashing down in front of his very eyes, already turning his back to him and barely sparing him a glance as he walks to the direction opposite of the living room. “I just put some leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry and I don’t go home in time.”
“Okay…” The younger mumbles reluctantly, fingers flexing around empty air as though he was trying to get used to it. This feels like the beginning of a story he doesn’t want to see to the end. “Stay safe.”
“Don’t look so down.” The older calls out to him when he’s already stepping halfway out of the house. “I’ll join you next time, alright?”
The resounding thud of the front door closing echoes through the ringing in his ears, and rejection feels like a heavy weight slamming down on his hopeful wishes. He swallows the uncomfortable lump in his throat and looks back at the screen to start a new game and distract himself. Surely this was a one-time thing. Surely tomorrow everything would be back to normal.
“Aww, sunshine, not now I’m afraid. Maybe later, okay? I still need to finish up some homework.” Maybe next week, he can try again. Wilbur might just have exams or something, or some other reason for him to be preoccupied for the entire week.
“I’m busy today, sunshine. I’m going to go hang out with some friends.” Not this week, then. He starts to think it’ll be the same next week as well. Maybe he’ll ask again in a month, that’s when summer vacation starts, right? Surely Wilbur could make time for him then, yeah?
“Hmm, I don’t feel like it today.” Perhaps he can make another attempt when he’s desperate enough, when the silence starts to become deafening and the empty halls press on every inch of his lungs and make it difficult for him to breathe.
“Leave me alone, Tommy.” He stops asking after that.
To his brother, he is no longer sunshine. To his brother, he is a name made of the remnants of an absent father with a long forgotten face.
Tommy misses when things were simple, when he was just the sun and when his brother was just the ocean. He misses being dragged to their special place at the dead of night, misses feeling loved when he goes to sleep, misses the long gaming sessions that drag on until the early hours of the morning. Now he is just Tommy, and he is made of maddening solitude and earnest yearning. Now his brother is just Wilbur, and he is made of endless lies and broken promises. And yet, despite all of that, he can’t help himself.
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother. He seeks the turbulent waves and longs for the dangerous song.
Tommy tails his brother like a lost fledgling when he is around the house, more out of unconscious habit than any deliberate act really. He sometimes finds himself taking an unnecessarily long time to get a glass of water when his brother is taking a phone call in the living room, or dozing off on the floor just outside Wilbur’s room after straining his ears to grasp at any muffled singing of the older practicing the songs he’s working on for his band. He tries to be discreet about it at least, learning when to slip back into his room once the conversation seems to come to a close or learning to wake up and run into the bathroom at the end of the hall when he hears footsteps walking towards the door he’s leaning on.
It's the least he can do to still have his brother in his life one way or another, to still know about what his brother is up to despite them not having spoken to each other in ages. It’s the least he can do to have some semblance of their old routine, to grasp at the frayed ends of their tattered relationship and hold on as tight as he can.
“My brother?” Tommy snaps back to reality, perking up when he hears Wilbur mention his name. Holy shit, this is new. He had never been mentioned in any of the conversations so far. He tiptoes closer to the living room, knowing the risk but pushing through anyway because he just needs to know what his brother is about to say about him. “Yeah, we could chill in my house for a bit. Don’t worry about him. He’s just some brat anyway.”
His breath gets caught in his throat, and tears well up in his eyes before he knows it. He doesn’t have time to dwell on it though, as he finds that his proceeding sharp inhale is what gets him caught when Wilbur suddenly looks in his direction and locks his eyes on his. Distinctly, he can feel the world as he knows it crumble into nothingness.
Wilbur averts his gaze first, expression unreadable as he continues talking on the phone. “Yeah, so anyway, about that gig…”
Tommy walks away from his brother for the first time in his life. The ocean waves do not crawl after him, the siren does not sing for him, and his brother does not ask for him to come back.
-
Tommy is fourteen years old when the ocean stills beneath his bloodstained hands.
His brother had grown distant and cold. He spares him barely any regards as he spends increasingly more time outside the house. No longer was he made of patient smiles and kind words, and no longer was the ocean made of playful waves and gentle tides. Those are all things of the past, all ephemeral maladroit sandcastles built far too close to the creeping surge of time. Like the ocean that glitters innocently with the reflections of sunlight on its surface only to have incomprehensible trenches filled with danger and the unknown, like a siren that bares its fangs once a human falls victim to another one of its songs, his brother spits at him the late night grievances he had immortalized along the margins of unorganized college notebooks and the recesses of a troubled mind.
And he’s had enough. He can only take so much, after all.
“What the fuck, Tommy!?” Wilbur shrieks in surprise from where he’s laying down on his bed when the door to his bedroom is kicked open, groaning when he lets go of his phone on reflex and it drops on his face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Tommy has a sharp look in his eyes as he closes the door behind him, noticing a dent on the spot where the doorknob meets the wall and promptly ignoring it. His brother deserves it, really. “Can you stop being a fucking asshole for one second?”
“I−”
“No, no. Stop. I’m sick of all this.” He walks forward and stands next to his brother’s bed, looking at him in the eye with a hostility that has never been seen before. “I’m sick of you cancelling on me, of you leaving me alone, of you ignoring me. If you just want to spend less time with me, say it to my face.”
“I told you I was busy, which is true!” His brother moves to sit up, and he has a defiant look on his face. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings!”
“I think you’ve just ended up hurting me more.” There’s a vulnerability in his voice that has no place being there.
“College is just different, okay!? There’s a lot more to do than just take care of a kid all the time, and my course isn’t exactly easy.” His brother’s words are still made of venom and vitriol, but he had drunk them all up years ago. They taste only of dried tears and sleepless nights, and he simply finds them bland. “Now I finally have a life to live. I don’t need some fucking brat taking up all my time.”
“I’m not trying to!”
“Sure, whatever.” Wilbur glares at him, trying to push him back so that he can stand on his own two feet. “You’re just mad that I’ve gotten tired of babysitting you and left you to figure shit out by yourself. You turned out fine, why are you still complaining?”
“Shut the fuck up. I was never fine.” Tommy doesn’t budge, instead putting his hands on his brother’s shoulders so he can face him head on as he’s about to spill bitter sentiments. “I didn’t need you to pick me up every day after school, I just needed you to teach me how to get home. I didn’t need you to make dinner for me every night, I just needed you to teach me how to cook.”
His brother falters ever so slightly. “Tommy…”
“Where were you when I got lost for hours trying to get home, wandering around the streets in the dead of night? Where were you when I was sitting through hunger pains because you haven’t cooked in a week, resorting to eating undercooked food that ended up making me sick for days?” His anger bubbles and boils over, flames of rage obscuring rational thought as all he can think to do is to cut his bleeding heart open and showcase the extent of his agony. He grits his teeth and tightens his grip on his brother’s shoulders with barely exercised restraint, paying no mind to the pained wince it elicits. “I didn’t need you to be there every single moment of my life, I just needed you there when it mattered!”
A deafening silence falls upon the room after his outburst, and he can hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He steps back a little and nearly stumbles when he lets go of his brother, feeling himself wanting to go back to get some form of the physical contact he’s been missing for the last few years. He shakes the thought off, instead deciding to focus on swallowing down the lump in his throat to control his rapid breathing better. He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he manages to take a steady, deep breath before speaking.
“I didn’t need much. I just needed you, Wilbur.” Tommy finally breathes out shakily, blinking away the incoming tears. “I just needed my brother back.”
He yelps when he’s suddenly being pushed away, clumsily landing on the floor in a brief moment of disorientation and quickly scrambling to his feet when he realizes Wilbur has already left the room. He makes it out the door and catches sight of the other going down the stairs, and he runs down the hallway as fast as he can without tripping. He will not be left alone again. Not now, not ever.
“Oi!” Tommy yells from the top of the staircase before skipping one, sometimes two steps to get down to Wilbur in record speed. He grabs his wrist and pulls him back. “We’re not done talking.”
“I am not responsible for you.” His brother hisses under his breath, refusing to look at him in the eye. “I shouldn’t be responsible for you.”
“Wil−”
“I’m not your fucking father, Tommy.”
“You think I don’t know that!?”
The older seethes. “You think that’s not what you’re asking me to be!?”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” The younger grumbles.
“I was a child.” His brother’s words become barely a whisper, and he has to strain his ears to be able to hear it. It is reminiscent of what he used to do years ago, before the bridge between them was officially burnt down by a single overheard phone call. “I was a child and the world took it all away from me. I was a child and I had to raise you on my own. I was a child and I had to give my everything to you, and you’re telling me that’s not enough for you?”
He freezes in place when his brother finally turns back to look at him. He looks at him with so much sadness, so much pain, so much resentment. He looks at him with so much frustration, so much anger, so much hatred. He looks at him and his gaze is adorned by things that should never have been directed at him.
“I was a child and you took it all away from me, Tommy.” Wilbur says simply, as though it were a matter of fact.
“Don’t you dare fucking say that.” It really was not a matter of fact, Tommy decides. It was a matter of Wilbur being a bitch. “I’m not the one that left home and barely looked back.”
Whether it was his brother or their father he was talking about, he didn’t know anymore.
It was inevitable, really, for his brother to blame him for taking away his childhood. It was inevitable, really, for his brother to pull his wrist out of his grip and storm outside of the house blinded by misplaced anger. It was inevitable, really, for his brother to be acquainted with bouquets of lilies, carnations and roses sooner rather than later.
Because the screeching of tires could be heard long before blinking headlights flooded the streets. Because they had both looked at the car barreling towards his brother at full speed. Because his brother had simply stood there and made not a single move.
“WILBUR!”
Tommy screams hoarsely, rushing to his side in an instant. He doesn’t care if he’s injured by the wreckage or by the fire that starts soon after, all he knows is that he needs to find his brother fast. He just about cries in relief when his fingers push past hard machinery and finally meet soft skin. He quickly pulls Wilbur’s broken body from the bloodied street, tasting bile at the back of his throat when he catches a glance of the other's torso and realizes the extent of his injuries.
“No, no, please, no.” His voice breaks, and he crumbles onto the pavement of the sidewalk. He cradles Wilbur’s head on his lap, muttering pleas in a flurry of fading hope and persistent desperation. “Hey, hey. Wake up.”
He furiously rubs away the tears that obscure his vision, not caring about the blood that smears on his face. He reaches out to hold his brother’s face as gently and carefully as he can as though he was trying not to hurt him further, pushing his bangs to the side so he can look at him properly with all the fondness in the world. He takes in the hauntingly pale features and cold cheeks, burning the image of his surprisingly peaceful expression into the back of his eyelids.
“... Wilby?” He tries, just once more. The ocean is still. The siren is silent. His brother does not respond.
For the last time in his life, he realizes that smile on Wilbur’s face wasn’t for him. Tommy wishes the ocean waves would hold him close again, wishes the siren would sing for him again, wishes his brother would be there for him again.
It doesn’t take long for an ambulance to arrive. They try to pull Tommy away from Wilbur’s body, but he just knows deep down that there’s nothing they can do for him anymore. He just wants to be by his brother’s side for as long as he can, just wants to spend his time with him until he takes his final breath. He refuses to be separated, not even when he has his own injuries that need to be treated as soon as possible. They call him foolish. They call him pitiable. They can call him whatever they want, as long as he can call himself Wilbur’s younger brother.
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother. Not even death can change what is absolute.
Funeral flowers do not thrive on oceanbeds. Strangers’ shallow condolences and pristine white petals do nothing more than appear as blemishes on the clear blue waters, just waiting to be torn apart by the rage of a flood whose name is only known after its death. They do not sink. They do not speak to the ocean depths like the way the sun does, do not persistently break past the surface to shine into its very depths in a jumbled mess of apologies, regrets, and pubescent voice cracks in between choked out “I love you.”s.
Their father does not attend his brother’s funeral.
-
Tommy is sixteen years old when the sun sets on the ocean for the last time.
He fumbles with the phone in his hand, squinting intently at the multicolored lines of Google Maps and the slowly moving icon that marks his current location. This better be the right place, because he won’t be able to live past another night after he exhausted all his supplies trying to get here. He curses as he stumbles on a protruding tree root, huffing before pushing past a thick patch of trees. Suddenly, he perks up when afternoon sunlight warms his skin and saltwater taints the breeze he breathes in. Oh god. Oh wow. He actually made it. He’s finally here after so, so long.
He finally found their special place.
The ocean is no less comforting than it had been when he first met it, and is no less distressing than it had been when it first pushed him away. It is as beautiful as it is terrifying. It is of waters that keep him afloat and drown him all the same. It is of a siren’s song that promises to soothe and destroy all the same. It is of a brother that raises him lovingly and abandons him coldly all the same.
He relishes the serenity for a bit, just drinking in the sight before him. The sun settles on the horizon and makes the waters twinkle in delight, and the playful waves rhythmically caress the undisturbed shoreline every few moments. Everything thankfully looks untouched, save for the rocks that seem to have simply eroded over time. He puts away his phone inside his backpack, finds an empty dry patch of sand and sits down.
“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He says after a while of silence, not knowing what to say at first. “I’m sorry it took a while, life was rough. And I’m sorry I’ll only be here for a bit.”
The ocean waves hesitate to crawl up near him, as if observing him thoroughly.
“I know, I know.” He rolls his eyes in exasperation. “You missed me. I missed you too. I’m here for you now. How about I tell you what I’ve been up to, ay? I owe you that much, at least.”
This seems to do the trick, as any trace of hesitation seems to disappear. Before long, water begins to tickle the heels of his shoes and dampen the material. He sighs fondly and the tenseness in his posture disappears.
“The funeral was… something. I don’t know, really. I felt like I was the only one there that was actually grieving, kinda fucked innit?” He stretches his limbs out, getting more of his shoes damp but not paying much mind to them. “Oh yeah, some friends were probably there. Good for them, I guess? They’re better than dad, at least, if they actually made it.”
He reaches out, and the waves take his hand gladly. He chuckles at the familiar cool sensation.
“Well, anyway, things didn’t go so well after that. Who would’ve known?” His voice trembles a bit, and just a bit of vulnerability slips through. “I had nothing left. I had no one left. I didn’t know where to go for a bit, until a few months after.”
A pause. The tides encompass his entire hand, weaving waters through the gaps between his fingers as though to intertwine them with someone else’s. He mumbles his gratitude in earnest, and squeezes back.
“I wanted to go back here. Problem is, I’m stuck in the system because my brother, my legal guardian, is dead. It took a while of me getting passed around foster homes until I finally got close enough to the area; I had to figure out that sweet spot of getting constantly kicked out while deeming fit for the process to start all over again. It took even longer to sneak around to be able to use my foster parent’s phone to get some directions to here, and when I finally did I just took all of my savings and ran.”
He takes a deep breath, and looks in front of him to face the ocean head on. Spoken sentiments are too much, too complicated for him to grasp. He wishes his gaze could convey all those that his words cannot.
“I’m here for you now. I’ve found you.” He whispers breathlessly.
And only in the echo of children's laughter, in the permanently empty master bedroom of a broken family’s house, and in the tear-filled eulogy given too early does the earth mark the line of the horizon: the line between the sun and the ocean, between human and siren, between two brothers in world where they only had each other.
“You’re here, just as you’ve always been.” He chokes out, squeezing his eyes shut because he refuses to cry at such an important moment. “Even when I think you’ve left, even when I try to walk away from you, I’ll always have you no matter what. Because, at the end of the day, we’re brothers.”
Brothers. It is a bond forged in blood, nurtured by time, severed by betrayal. It is happiness and it is pain all in one; it is harmonious songs and dissonant syllables all in one. It is everything that he is, and everything he ever wants to be. It is his maker and his undoing. It is all that he has and all that he will hold dear, from the first moment of his life to his last.
The sun will always set on the ocean. A human will always be beckoned by a siren’s call. A younger brother will always follow his older brother. It’s absolute, after all. He will not be left alone again. Not now, not ever.
“Hey, Wilbur.” Tommy smiles, one last time. “Don’t worry, big man. Things are always going to be okay, as long as we’re together.”
The welcoming waves swallow him whole, and he faintly hears his brother's soothing song.