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He’s cold. It takes him a moment to figure out the rest, but he knows he’s cold. It’s hard not to know.
There’s an icy slurry sloshing through his veins, around his brain, behind his eyes – everywhere . His every stir, his every breath, sends it rocketing through his body, making the world spin in ways it never should. His skin prickles with goosebumps he can only half feel, and only because the hairs scratch against his blanket in little pinprick legions of pain. Or something.
It doesn’t hurt, really; he just doesn’t like it.
Wilbur tries to get up – “tries” being the operative term here. His arms don’t move. Not properly. There’s something tight wrapped about his wrists. When he tries to feel for what it is, he can’t, fingertips numbed by soft fabric – so soft that he hardly noticed it before. Now it’s all he can feel.
And the cold.
He’s really cold.
…it’s a little weird, actually: the cold. It’s. He’s– he’s cold. He’d even go so far as to say he’s freezing. But it doesn’t feel anything like how he felt this winter. There’s no chattering teeth, no shivering, no stiff, unfeeling skin that burns at the touch. And yet, while similar, it doesn’t feel like last winter, either. There’s no scarves or hot chocolate mugs pressed into his hands. No reassuring chins on his shoulder.
It’s still nice. Almost.
Only almost, though. Because the slurry persists. Because glaciers roam about his body, stirring up his thoughts until they whirlpool around his head and fuck, thinking hurts. Only almost, because even though he can’t feel his hands he feels his fingers; feels the snowstorms brewing in his fingertips, feels heat swelling in something he cannot see. He’s stuck in an ice storm.
…he can’t see.
Wilbur whines and curls up and– oh. Oh, that feels bad. That feels awful, actually. Something boiling hot punches him in the stomach, bubbling up his throat, into his eyes, bursting like a bag of glitter until the darkness is a haze of white dots and nausea.
Something clicks. For a second, Wilbur thinks he’s imagining it, but then there’s a clatter like something being set down. Something small. Metallic. Like a fountain pen.
A longing warble rises from his throat against his will, and he splutters as the sound itches his throat. His mind floods with images from his childhood – a grand, dark wood desk; hundreds of beautiful pens stacked neatly in a drawer; large paintings of tigers and polar bears and foxes, white coats glistening against glittering snow.
He whines louder. It hurts. It hurts so much. He hasn’t seen that desk in so long; those paintings, even longer. Wilbur replaced them seasonally – priceless wonders, discarded without a thought.
Wilbur can’t afford to do that anymore. His new life lies hundreds of cities away from there, in a shitty little hovel he dug out for himself, relying on charity and scraps from his shitty little job. He gets paid under the table. He pays his landlady under the table. He's pretty sure he'd live under a table if he could afford one.
But it's his. Has been for the past year.
Wilbur makes an unhappy noise, somewhere in-between a grunt and another whine as he stifles the chirp trying to bubble out of his throat. Everything's so confusing. He's in his apartment, on his mattress, hiding under the covers like some snivelling coward as if his pillow could protect him from the consequences of his actions. Even though he's comfortable. And warm. And, impossibly, safe… he's cold. He has to be. He feels cold – hell, he probably has a cold. That sounds just like his luck.
…oh.
Oh, fuck. He’s sick.
Suddenly, Wilbur feels far colder than he thought possible. His tattered wings try to lift – anything to ward away the chill – but he can barely feel them. They’re heavy against his back, stuck in place by the too-soft blanket, and he’s so cold they almost feel wet. Damp.
What if they are?
It would explain the sickness, at least. The last time his apartment sprung a leak, his wings felt damp no matter what he did, and he was coughing on mould for weeks. Can mould make you sick? It didn’t last time, he doesn’t think, but maybe it does. Because he is sick, he’s certain of that, now. And he’s cold. He’s sick and he’s wet and he’s cold and he’s losing his goddamn mind–
Unless he isn’t?
Wilbur tries to open his eyes. His vision is blurry, his eyes are dry, and he can barely make out the shape of his mattress, but there’s a flicker of a shadow in his periphery. He’s hallucinated shadows before – the thought makes him want to shut his eyes again – but he’s pretty he can hear footsteps, too. Quiet ones. Slow. Cautious. Like Puffy’s.
Unlike shadows, Wilbur’s never hallucinated noises before. They must be real.
He hopes they aren’t. And he hopes they don’t belong to Puffy, if they are. She’s a nice landlord and all, but she’s every bit as overbearing as – Wilbur seizes up, teeth squeezing together like anything he could do would muffle the keens splitting through his lips – as someone else he used to know. Used to, because it’s been too long to claim he knows them anymore. Far too long.
If they’re real but it isn’t Puffy, then maybe it's the thief from last week. Maybe they changed their mind about pitying him and came back to steal something after all, only to find Wilbur like… this.
Maybe – the thought comes to him like a shot in the heart – that's already happened.
Maybe he’s already been found.
Maybe he’s in the hospital. It would explain the blankets, at least.
“No…” He doesn’t like hospitals. They have records. If he’s here all alone, they’ll need to look through his information. Call an emergency contact. Maybe they already had.
There’s so many maybes already, but Wilbur can’t help but wonder, even as his brain starts to pound. What if he’s denying the obvious? What if there really is a desk here? And a fountain pen. And leather shoes, gently clicking along the floor in a way that is entirely his father.
They’re coming closer. Closer and closer and closer. Patient, even strides, as steady as the ticking of a timer counting down the seconds until the inevitable.
A sigh far above his head. Popping knees. Another sigh and a warm, too-familiar hand cupping his cheek, tilting Wilbur’s head up from the pillow. Teasing the tiny feathers scattered over his ears. Pausing over the haggard skin where Wilbur plucked the bigger ones.
“Phil,” Wilbur whimpers, voice hoarse. Because even though the face peering down at him is little more than a blur of colours, he could recognise it anywhere. This is Phil. Phil found him. His father, his protector, his flock found him, and he’s so warm.
The hand doesn’t so much as twitch. It keeps moving across Wilbur’s forehead, sifting through his hair so much more easily than it should be able to, letting damp curls droop back onto his face with every sweep. “Phil,” Wilbur tries again, because he– he doesn’t know. But everything’s wrong and Phil can help. Phil always helps, even when he shouldn't.
“Wil,” Phil murmurs. A hot, slow breath fans over Wilbur’s face. Iron and mint. If he weren’t so out of it, he would have scrunched his nose at the smell, but as it is, he barely holds himself back from leaning into the heat. “I’m here, starlight. I’m here now.”
“Dad–!”
Phil hushes Wilbur’s cry quietly, reaching his arms under Wilbur’s chest to gently lift him up. Wilbur’s head spins, nausea kicking him in the gut, but Phil keeps moving. A hand on Wilbur’s back. Another on his side. He’s practically sitting up, and–
Phil’s gone.
Wilbur pauses, breath caught in his throat, blearily scanning the dark room.
He can’t– he can't see him. The shadow of him. Any part of him.
It’s too much.
Between the dizzying confusion and fear and sickness and cold and shattered relief, Wilbur finally breaks out into muffled sobs. The tears make his eyes ache and the tracks they trail down his cheeks burn lengthy brands into his skin, searing him, marking him, he– God, he’s pathetic. He’s an adult. He’s eighteen. Why the hell is he crying?
He still can’t see Phil. He… Phil– he must have left. He’s gone. Just like how Wilbur left him.
It hurts.
He just wants to go back to before – before Wilbur became a failure; before he got it into his head to let Phil choose another, better, heir, fucking off to the middle of nowhere; back when the cure to all his problems was a couch in his dad’s office.
Wilbur traded that comfort for freedom. For adulthood. For… for the future. Phil’s future. One without him.
Before Wilbur can think any further, the cushions beneath him disappear and he’s lifted into the air – his wings twitch instinctively, but they’re still too heavy to move – and he falls just as quickly. Strong arms seatbelt Wilbur against a hard surface, and it’s only when he recognises the tempered thump of a heartbeat that he realises it’s a chest. His dad’s chest.
Tears forgotten, Wilbur turns his head to check – he tries to, at least. But Phil starts stroking his hair, caressing his cheeks, wiping away the remaining saline with gentle talons. Rocking him. Whispering to him.
Suddenly, crying seems impossible.
“Bluebird,” Phil coos – literally coos. The sound sends shivers down Wilbur’s spine, warming him up in a way he’d never felt before. His mind clouds for a moment. His wings twitch. As much as they can twitch, anyway. “Wil,” Phil continues, “what’s wrong?”
Wilbur whimpers wordlessly, thoughts drifting from his fingertips as Phil makes another soft noise.
It’s a hard question with even harder answers, and not least because of his instincts starting to rear its ugly head in the back of his brain, but – if he’s being honest – nothing’s wrong. Everything is as it’s always been, if not a little better than before.
Well–
Except him, something hisses.
–except him.
The reminder hurts, even if it’s expected, and Wilbur squirms a little in his dad’s hold. It’s useless, of course. Phil is unrelenting, barely even noticing Wilbur’s weak escape attempts.
Wilbur has always been just on this side of off. Where his family all have black wings, his are bright blue. Where his family has courage, he has cowardice. Where his family has patience, he has fits – moments where his instincts run away from him, like now, leaving him with nothing but fear and fury. And longing. Longing for things he already has; longing for more.
And that’s just how it is.
Ungrateful.
Stupid.
Useless–
“No.”
A deafening rattle of feathers interrupts his thoughts. Wilbur flinches, a desperate chirp on his lips as he strains to get away from the danger pinning him in place. Phil deflates, pressing a kiss to one of Wilbur’s hands. “No, never,” he promises, spitting the words like an angry flame. “You’re none of those things, do you understand me?”
“Fuck’r,” Wilbur laughs, though he can hardly hear what he’s saying. The hand in Phil’s grasp twitches clumsily, fingers clenching in lieu of gesturing to himself properly. “Jus’ look. Tell me ’m wrong.”
Phil goes deathly quiet. Wilbur takes that at his cue to leave. He jerks forward clumsily, only to be pulled back into his dad’s chest. “I’m looking,” he says, breath fanning over Wilbur’s ear. Wilbur freezes. “You’re wrong.”
“I– let go.”
His dad ignores his complaints, hoisting him up higher with deceptive ease. Phil has always been unreasonably strong, and even with Wilbur being nothing but an awkward, lanky spread of limbs, he’s readjusted quickly.
“You–" Phil’s tone is biting, piercing the depths of Wilbur’s soul, and Wilbur stops trying to struggle for a moment as he’s frozen again with distant horror. It’s good. It’s terrible. He hates it; he needs to leave– “you, Wilbur Soot Craft, are perfect.”
It’s Wilbur’s turn to hiss now. His wings try to perk up to rattle, as his dad had done earlier, but they’re still so heavy. Damp, almost, but not damp. It’s like they’ve been strapped against his back, or covered by fledgeling mittens.
“You are,” Phil insists. “You’re perfect – more than perfect. I look at you and I see myself. Your mother. Your brother. Do you know how worried we were, bluebird?”
Wilbur chokes on another sob. His dad holds him tighter, shushing him gently even with the venom in his teeth. An oath on his tongue. A knife, unsheathed.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he murmurs, working small, gentle circles into Wilbur's throat, “I really am. And I know it doesn't feel nice, and I know you’ll be upset when–” he pauses, just for a moment, and Wilbur can feel him shuddering against his back– “when you come-to. But I needed you back, okay?”
The hand trails up to take Wilbur by the chin, and he’s turned around. He screws up his eyes. He doesn’t want to see. To know.
“Look at me, starlight.”
Wilbur looks.
Cold, steel blue eyes meet him. Wilbur can see the outline of his reflection in them, and his brain fills out the blanks. He looks terrible. Nothing remains of the glossy, chocolate curls over his head, laying limply against his skin; of the witty smile in his cheeks; of the false composure and practised self-assurance and whatever potential people used to see in him.
He looks like a mess. Like the failure he knows he is.
“There you are,” his dad says. Reverently, like Wilbur’s the first dawn rather than the clouds that killed it. “Perfection.”
Wilbur chirps like a chick and Phil doesn’t even hesitate before warbling back, cupping Wilbur’s cheek. Wilbur feels small in his arms. Tiny. Nothing more than the child he used to be – than the child he still is. Lonely and scared and homesick–
Somehow, he forces himself to move, ignoring the exhaustion and the ice and the heavy weight in his head to twist until he’s free to collapse into Phil’s chest. And he does. And Phil lets him. And when he tries to curl his arms around the man’s waist – tries to hug him; hold him close; make sure that this is real – he can’t. They’re still stuck together, still bound by fabric.
Phil doesn’t push him away. He waits, patient, and it just makes Wilbur more desperate. He gives up on his arms, trying to push off of the floor – bed, cushions, couch, whatever – only to find that his legs don’t work either, tangled in the blankets and just as clumsy as the rest of his body.
His dad understands what he wants, though, in that way he always has. He takes Wilbur up by the armpits and lifts him closer as easily as if Wilbur were still six years old, guiding Wilbur’s head to nestle in the crook of the man’s neck.
Phil’s neck.
His dad’s neck.
“Mis’ you,” he warbles, voice thick, muddied by emotion Phil can no doubt feel soaking into his immaculate suit. Everything about his dad is immaculate. Nothing like him.
“Of course you did,” Phil hums, but he presses Wilbur closer until iron and mint and ash is all he can smell. “Now stop thinking. It’s obviously not doing you any good.”
Wilbur whines, but complies. He never could rebel against his dad. Not really. Not in any way that matters, at least, and certainly not now.
Phil rubs the space between Wilbur’s wings in slow, comforting circles, tugging up the blankets until Wilbur’s more trapped than ever, whispering stories into his ear. Stories from his childhood, back when he wasn’t a fuckup – “You’ve never been a fuckup, sweetheart.” – stories from adulthood, in the weeks before Wilbur left – “We should have known something was wrong. You were so quiet, darling. You’re never quiet.”
“Di’nt want…”
His dad shushes him. “I know. I know, baby, I know. You’re being so good.”
“I’m–”
“You are,” Phil insists, even though he isn’t. “You’re being so good for me. I know you’re uncomfortable, but– I’m glad we found you, Wil. So glad.”
Every word from the man’s mouth melts the ice a little more.
Wilbur feels a bit like Technoblade's favourite vase – the one with cracks and holes pasted over with gold leaf. Even now, all this time later, the thought of it sends little shocks of pain through Wilbur’s palms, but it isn’t enough to stop the… the good. The warmth. The wholeness starting to trickle into his heart.
It feels so strange.
“‘m sick,” Wilbur decides, muttering into his dad's neck, because that’s what he is. Sure, he might have gotten a little turned around along the way, but there's no other explanation for this. He's sick. This is a fever dream of some kind, a good one, a convincing one, and at any moment he's going to wake up and feel more alone than ever before.
“Yes,” Phil agrees darkly. Wilbur can hear the anger in his dad's voice, so strange and yet so unbearably familiar that he can't help but melt into the sound even as a distressed chirr leaves his throat. “Yes," Phil repeats, voice barely above a whisper, "you're sick, very sick. And I'm so sorry I didn't see it before. But I’ll make you better again, okay? We'll make you better again. I promise, son.”
It’s too good to be true. It has to be.
But Wilbur remembers dark days where he'd shuffle to Phil's office, and where, no matter what he was busy with, Phil would tuck him in. Fluff up the pillow. Hold Wilbur's hand and whisper secrets to him in-between calls and paperwork. It feels just like this.
“I promise,” Phil says again, more to himself this time as he begins threading his fingers through Wilbur’s hair once more. Wilbur hums in sleepy contentment, drooping his head to snuffle into his dad’s shirt as the man’s wings finally begin to envelop them both, shadowing the blurry shapes of the world in peaceful darkness.
It will take far more than just nostalgia and promises to heal his son’s wounds, but that’s okay. With his baby in his arms, wraith-thin and broken but home, they have more than enough time to fix this mess and dig it out from the root; to purge every single little thing that led them to this moment. To start again.
“I love you, Wil. Always.”
Wilbur scoffs through a half-strangled chirp, wings straining against their bindings. He doesn’t believe him. But that’s okay, too, because he will. Eventually.