Work Text:
What were you supposed to do when your old coworker slash friend who is about 20 years older than you came back one day after disappearing for years and when you ask what he’s been up to- he says he’s had a child, founded a country, blew up said country, got stabbed to death by his father, was revived, and then he got homesick?
James had half a mind to type that into Google, but that might lead to some interesting search results he didn’t want to have in his browser history.
Said coworker, with the most posh sounding fucking name ever- fucking Wilbur Soot, was leaning against the wall outside the backdoor of the gas station they both worked at, cigarette in his hand and not emptying the trash like he was supposed to do, that motherfucker.
“Wilbur…” The other man had the audacity to jump at James calling out his name- like he was caught red handed, which he most definitely was. “Are you just waiting for the trash to grow feet and walk into the bins by itself? Is that a thing that happened on this 'essempi' you told me about?”
If the quotation marks he made with his fingers during his pronunciation of SMP were a little too overacted and sarcastic, could you really blame him? He had never left Utah himself, and though he was slightly skeptical of Wilbur’s tales of his adventures, he was also maybe just a bit jealous. Most people knew of the other worlds out there, but traveling between them was difficult and instructions were unclear.
“Fuck off James.” Wilbur took another drag from his cigarette. “I’m… in a mood.”
“Ah right, your famous moods, how I’ve missed them.” James picked up the trash bags that were carelessly dumped on the floor and carried them over to the dumpsters. If their boss somehow happened to come by and see them all over the back of the lot, no way was James going to attempt to defend himself and say that Wilbur didn’t do his job. One, he didn’t have the energy to argue, and two he was not certain Wilbur couldn’t shift the blame onto him somehow. If anything, James could now maybe suck up and say he did Wilbur’s work as well.
“You kind of remind me of someone. I never got to apologize before I left, he didn’t show up.”
Bang. The dumpster’s lid slammed down hard after the bags had been unceremoniously yeeted into it. “Alright, I’ll bite. Who do I remind you of, Wilbur?”
James turned back to face his companion and already saw the irritating small smile form on the man’s face which meant James was in for another long and probably crazy sounding story.
“Someone named Quackity. Well, he used to be all cheerful- but after my revival he had changed. Grew more cynical. He wouldn’t let me into his country, saying I was dangerous. Do you think I’m dangerous?”
“You look like a strong wind could blow you over, the only thing you have going for you is your length… Not length, HEIGHT, fuck.” James buried his face in his hands. This only served to make Wilbur giggle louder.
“So yeah, after that I started my own burger van, called it Paradise, and annoyed the fuck out of him until I nearly blew up one of his employees and then actually blew up said employee’s husband.” Wilbur’s giggles did not subside even as James’ stomach turned at Wilbur’s confession. The other raised a hand and pointed his finger at him.
“There’s that look. You do think I’m dangerous. Wait…”
Suddenly he moved closer, grabbing James by the shoulders. “Do I need to apologize to you too, James?” Wilbur stared intently into his eyes with a swirl of emotions behind them that were unable to be read. “Have my actions hurt you in the past?”
“Wilbur… you’re scaring me right now.”
A tense beat of silence passed and Wilbur’s hands shot up from James’ shoulders as he retreated out of James’ personal space. “I don’t know why I thought it’d be different…”
His form slumped as he leaned against the wall again, looking the most pitiful James had seen him since the man had returned. And let it be known that James Does-Mining does care for the people in his life, even if they’re not good at doing their job and leave most of the work for him- Wilbur used to be someone he could laugh with, who had listened to James’ troubles many times as well.
“What would be different?”
“If I returned here, things would be different- or so I thought. I would be out of their way, I wouldn’t be a constant reminder of what my failings did to them. But now… I’m just left reminding myself of them. Even after apologizing, I never quite could forgive myself.”
It was the haunted look on Wilbur’s face that sent shivers down James’ spine. Wilbur was not quite crying yet, but tears were threatening to spill over at any moment.
“Mate, listen… I know I’m not the best with words, and I’m not sure I’m able to help you with this. I will listen, I promise- I will listen to everything you want to tell me. But maybe, you should consider seeing a professional for this.” He reached out and lightly grabbed Wilbur’s arm in what he hoped was a comforting gesture. Wilbur made no move to stop him or push him away, but their moment was cut short by the sound of the door to the shop opening with a chime.
“Fucking damnit.” James huffed in irritation. “I’ll be back, stay here. I’ll take care of it. Them, I mean. Take care of whoever walked into the shop.” Wilbur just snorted back in response, but it was at least a positive sign.
He had just finished ringing up the customers when Wilbur walked back into the front of the gas station. Wordlessly, he started to refill the shelves and even though James had had the intention of letting him slack off at least until he felt a little better, he wasn’t going to complain.
It was a quiet day, like most days were. Their location being a little ways away from one of the main roads meant not much traffic passed by. Only some locals and maybe one or two tourists were their regulars.
“Bye, have a nice day!” James pitched up his voice slightly as the customers left, the initial cringe at his fake happiness had worn off long ago by now after working here for years. The bell of the door chimed again and he watched as they drove off.
“...Wilbur, you alright?” He had half a mind to try his customer voice on Wilbur, just to see the reaction, but figured that might be a bit mean right now.
“Am fine.” Came the short reply. Wilbur had sat down on the floor to stock the bottles on the lower shelves.
The static hum of the airconditioning was the only sound that followed, bouncing off the tiled walls as if its job was to provide atmosphere for the slightly awkward situation- and not to cool the air like it was supposed to do. But like a lot of things at this gas station, it was in need of maintenance it never got. For someone to take it apart and inspect every tiny little element, give them a clean, replace the broken ones, and put everything back together in a better state than how they found it.
The silence meanwhile droned on as James zoned out a bit. If he didn’t know any better he would think he was in purgatory, or maybe limbo as Wilbur had called it. He hadn’t described much, only that he was stuck there for a long time- without any company.
James spared another glance at Wilbur still dutifully restocking the shelves. Could he ask? Should he even ask? He could try to imagine himself stuck here in this gas station, unable to leave or even interact with anyone and he shuddered. Not a very pleasant thought.
Different approach then.
“So, euhm…”
Wilbur glanced up and quickly back down again to the bottle in his hand.
“...this Quackity, you couldn’t apologize to him?”
Wilbur shook his head and wiggled the bottle in its place on the shelf. “I waited at our usual spot, but he didn’t come and it was time for me to leave.”
“What did you want to apologize for?”
“I wasn’t going to actually. I was just going to insult him again, that’s the way we’ve always worked.”
James idly tapped a pen against his chin. “But you’ve apologized to other people on that SMP before you left? Or am I drawing the wrong conclusion?”
“No, you’re spot on. It was my dad who suggested it in fact. After I got revived he said it would be the best way to try to make amends.”
Wilbur’s hand shot up and James’ eyes followed as it tangled itself in Wilbur’s white streak of hair for a second, a habit the man had seemingly developed whenever he talked to James about his mysterious comeback from the dead.
“Amends for… blowing up your country?”
“That was part of it, but that was more the means by which I caused the hurt rather than how I caused the harm to each individual.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“They didn’t need L’Manberg, they each needed part of it to grow into their own individual talents. I just kind of pulled the rug on it and whilst I intended to go down with it, I at that point was too far in my own head to look behind me and find each string attached to my back as leader and separate them before the anchor pulled me down.”
Not even in top condition could the air conditioner possibly handle how heavy the atmosphere had gotten in the store, James was sure of that. They had never delved beyond the surface level of what Wilbur had gone through while on the SMP, in fact Wilbur had only given him a vague timeline and nearly could’ve passed it off as a joke with the way he was laughing as he recalled the events two days after he had returned to this god awful job. That was a few months ago now and in hindsight James should have really expected that Wilbur had changed from the man he knew before. Instead he hadn’t, and had continued like normal, like he had never left.
He left the counter and walked up to where Wilbur was still crouched down, looking like he was very interested in the ingredients of the bottle of coke he was holding. “Let’s grab some lunch, I’m hungry.”
“Yeah, let’s.” Wilbur snapped out of it, looking relieved at the change of topic, until James’ hand landed on his shoulder and he stared up at him.
“Wil, not as your coworker but as your friend, I think you need to tell me a bit more about your ‘adventures’, as you’ve called them. Maybe over lunch.”
Wilbur let out a deep sigh as he cast his eyes downward again. “Yeah, I guess.”
“As I’ve said, I can’t promise I can help, but sometimes all you need is a person to listen.” James reached over Wilbur to open the door to the fridge next to him.
"James- no, you're not seriously eating that, are you?" Wilbur's nose wrinkled at the sight of James pulling out one of the packages of sushi they had in the store's fridge.
"Honestly, at this point I don't care anymore." James replied. "I am stuck at this fucking job, I have a massive college debt, with a useless degree, what harm can gas station sushi do?"
“Why do we even have sushi, no one ever buys that shit.” Wilbur stared at the sushi like it had offended him personally.
“Oh don’t tell me you have a vendetta against sushi because it was somehow involved in, I don’t know, the fight for independence you told me about.”
The blank stare that followed said enough.
“Oh come on!!”
—
Half an hour later and James was already forming the Reddit post in his head: ‘Am I (25M) the asshole for telling my coworker (47M) that he shouldn’t have dragged a teenager into his illegal drug emporium?’.
To be fair, that had apparently only been the start of a spiral of bad decisions on Wilbur’s part. The sushi had been devoured by now, under Wilbur’s disapproving stare, whilst the man told him incredible stories of a war over a couple of music discs, how he had vague memories of being a ghost but that said ghost was a separate being now stuck in limbo, how his son was almost adopted by an ex-traitor, and several more.
“So ghost-you…”
“Ghostbur.” Wilbur corrected.
“This Ghostbur, he only had your happy memories from before your death? And now you only have very unclear memories of being him, or… not being him, I guess?” James massaged his temples with his fingers. “This is all so confusing, but it made perfect sense when you were there, you said?”
Wilbur nodded and threw his feet up onto the breakroom table, which gave a pathetic creak. “It did and still does. And as my way of apologizing to him, I asked one of the gods to make his friend who was immortal, mortal. Then I send him to join him in limbo.”
James closed his eyes and raised a finger, taking a deep breath before releasing and blinking his eyes open again. “Go some 5 steps back there. Ghostbur had a friend?”
“Yes, a blue sheep aptly named ‘Friend’.”
“...who was immortal?”
“He had infinite canon lives, which is one form of immortality on the SMP. For example, others have only 1 life instead of the normal three, but that life stretches infinitely.”
“And you asked God to kill him?”
A shake of Wilbur’s head. “Only to give him 1 canon life- I was the one who took that last life.”
“Fucking hell, and then what?”
“Then…” A pause, and a careful moment of consideration. “Then I met up with Tommy. And after Quackity didn’t show up, I said my goodbyes to Tommy and left the server.”
Tommyinnit, a young man who, going off Wilbur’s description, James was sure he had to be one of the most annoying people in the world, but who also was a brother-like figure to Wilbur and had almost never left his side.
“And how did Tommy react, when you told him you were leaving?”
“Badly.” Wilbur huffed out. “Very badly at first. He misunderstood me and thought I meant leaving in a more… permanent way. I told him where I was actually going and left him a book in which I had recorded my thoughts during my stay on the SMP.”
“Do you miss him?”
Another huff and a long pause as Wilbur pulled his feet off the table and lowered his forehead onto it, pulling his arms around his head. “Yes. Yes I do, but he’s better off without me.”
“You are the most self deprecating motherfucker I have ever met.”
“Pot, kettle.” Came the muffled reply.
“Ok fair, but also fuck you.”
James tried to put himself in Wilbur’s shoes. What would he do, if came back from a long absence, wanting to make up for his mistakes and getting a mixed response? Would he still want to stay?
“Why did you come back here though?” James questioned. “Just because you grew up here?”
“I just needed to leave, it didn’t really matter where to. I guess I did miss Utah, even if I don’t have much here.”
They sat in silence once more. Now that he finally knew what was hopefully the entire extent of Wilbur’s experiences in this other world James felt like he understood the other man at least a little better. Though everything still felt almost magical and unreal to him, he knew that it had affected Wilbur deeply.
“For the record, I don’t think you had to leave.”
Wilbur lifted his head slightly.
“You tried to make things right, in your own weird way I guess. Some forgave you and some didn’t, which you said your dad told you might happen. And you let them go. Aside from maybe your son, no one told you to go fuck off and die, which I think is a positive sign. I think you’re mostly running from yourself.”
Wilbur said nothing, making James guess he was right.
“And to answer your previous question, I still don’t think of you as dangerous.” He continued. “You did fuck up, a lot, like a lot. But not with genuine malice. Those are the people that are the most dangerous, the ones that are fully aware they’re hurting someone and they don’t stop.”
Silence fell over the conversation again like a blanket. Soon they would have to get up, get back to work. At any moment, their peace could be disturbed by someone walking in wanting to buy something. But for now they just sat there, having both said what they needed to.
After a few minutes, it was Wilbur who broke the silence.
“Do you wanna just go somewhere after work? I just want to do something fun.”
—
The rest of their shift was filled with small talk, mostly to lighten the mood. They discussed plans for after work, argued with each other over where to get dinner, and eventually settled on going to see a movie together- but only if Wilbur was allowed to complain about the shoddy writing.
When it came to closing time, James snuck a glance at Wilbur who was mopping the floor and humming to himself. He seemed to be doing a little better, the relief of finally talking to someone about what had happened to him brightening his mood already. James just wished he had done so earlier.
After they locked up, James waved Wilbur over to his car. “We’ll take my car, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow before work.”
“Look, James.” Wilbur started, and James turned to look at him. “I know I’ve been away for a while… But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten about your bad driving skills.”
He burst into laughter as James groaned, having expected something serious instead of a joke.
“Oh come on, they were never bad. Just cause you happened to be there when I hit that one pole doesn’t mean you can bully me about that forever.”
James sat his plump behind in his PT cruiser. Wilbur sat down in the passenger seat with a grin on his face still and they drove off towards their destination.
“By the way, did I ever tell you my mother is the goddess of Death?”
“What?!”