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Wilbur is all alone.
He is a lonely, lonely man, and he will never find love. He’s resigned himself to this fact. He’s fallen in love with a straight guy, like the fucking idiot he is, and now the only thing left to do is drape himself over the nearest piece of furniture and pine.
“Let me get this straight,” Phil says. He’s got his head in Techno’s lap, and Techno has his head on Niki’s shoulder. It’s making Wilbur homicidal. “Tommy’s on a date right now. So you’re… here.”
“Yes,” Wilbur wails. “Finally! Someone who fucking understands the hell I’m in!”
“...You aren’t dating Tommy?” Techno says into Niki’s shoulder.
“Shut up,” she tells him kindly. “Wilbur, get your face out of our flooring.”
“It’s nice down here,” he says. His freakishly long legs are up in the air and his face is smushed against the carpet. “I think I might just stay like this forever, actually.”
“You should have dealt with this,” Niki tells him. “You should have dealt with this, I don’t know - four months ago. When I told you to.”
Wilbur levels her with his big, watery eyes. She stays strong in the face of such pressures. “What was I supposed to do, Niki,” he begs her. “I was going to, I fucking swear, but then he fell asleep on me during a movie, and - and he called me breedable, and - what was I supposed to do? Huh? You’re going to fucking tell me I should have stopped to talk about our relationship status? When he’s right there?”
“Please never call yourself breedable again,” Techno says. “Niki, please don’t let him do that again.”
“I can’t stop him,” she says, pressing a soft kiss to the tip of Techno’s nose. He grins back at her, eyes mushy and loving. Wilbur sobs into the floorboards.
“You are going to wake up our neighbors,” Phil says.
“I can’t do that to him,” Wilbur continues. “He doesn’t - he doesn’t want me, Niki! You’ve talked to him!”
“Tommy!” Niki says. Her hair hangs down into her face, and she’s balancing three cups of coffee at once. “I didn’t know you were supposed to be over today.”
Tommy jumps to his feet like a spring-loaded trap door. She doesn’t step back, lest he smell her fear and take all three mugs. “Don’t you worry, Niki Nihachu, you have not forgotten a single plan. I ended up staying with Wilbur last night. So I was already, like, in the area, and I need to harass Technoblade into giving me back my - “
Niki tunes out the rest of what he says. Looks at him, blinks long and slow.
“I didn’t know you were gay,” she says. It’s a neutral statement, because she kind of didn’t think Tommy was attracted to anybody, let alone the scrunkliest looking man and messiest ex in all of Brighton.
He blinks back at her. “Oh, I’m not!” he says. “Common misconception, don’t be embarrassed. Phil asked me that just last week.”
Niki … frowns. Maybe she’s not got the whole picture here. “Oh, sorry, I just - you said you spent the night at Wil’s, and I thought - “
He waves one hand through the air. “Oh no, we fucked, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Niki -
Stares at him. Mouth open. She needs Phil. She needs all three of these coffees.
“I - “ she starts. “I mean. Well. You…” Niki takes a few long, deep breaths and tries again. “You aren’t gay?”
He shakes his head. “Don’t like guys, unfortunately - women are where it’s at, you know - there’s not anything wrong with that! Some of my best friends are gay, like Phil! Or Techno! Or Wilbur!”
“Or Wilbur,” Niki echoes faintly. She sets the mugs down on the counter, pulls out a seat at the kitchen table, gestures for Tommy to sit. He does, still grinning at her like a golden retriever.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. You had sex with Wilbur last night?”
Tommy nods. “Mhm.”
“And you… don’t like men. Sexually, I mean.”
“Nope,” he affirms.
She gives him a Look.
“Wil’s different,” he elaborates. “It’s different from being gay. We just go out sometimes and get dinner, or cook it together, and then watch a movie, usually, or sometimes he plays me the shit he’s working on, and then one of us starts it and then we have sex.”
Niki makes a pained noise. Tommy puts a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. “He’s really good at it,” he tells her, as if that is remotely close to being what her problem is with this situation.
“I know,” Niki says. Her voice is strained. “Trust me, Tommy. I know how good he is at sex.”
“I bottom, though,” he continues, nonchalant. As if he isn’t ruining Niki’s entire week with his unprecedented levels of obliviousness, with the sudden context for all of Wilbur’s messy drunk texts and white-girl sad quotes on his Instagram story.
Niki shuts her eyes tightly. “I don’t - why are you telling me that.”
“You know,” he intones. “If I were the one sticking my dick in him, well - then that’d make me gay, hm?”
Tommy leans over, picks up one of the three mugs of coffee. Sips out of it. Niki lets him. She has bigger fish to fry at the moment.
“It’s just best friend stuff,” he says around the coffee. “Wilbur’s doing what anyone would, because he’s the best friend in the whole entire world. ‘nd I wanted to - to be able to appreciate gay sex, you know? Tubbo likes it a whole lot, and - ” He lays a solemn hand on her arm. “What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t try to share in my friends’ interests?”
“Oh, god, Tommy,” she tells him, horror dawning in her chest. “He’s going to have - written so many songs about you.”
“He does,” Tommy tells her, with a placid expression that makes her suddenly understand the seriousness of the situation.
“Oh, god,” she repeats.
Tommy shrugs. “He writes them about my hair and my face and my smile. And sometimes my ass. They’re - bit brilliant, honestly, they’re really good. I told him they were really good, and he wrote some more, and it just kind of - “ He makes a vague waving motion with his hand.
“Tommy,” she tells him, trying to keep her voice gentle. “I… I think you like men.”
He frowns at her. “Niki, I love women. Women are my life - they’re - the air I breathe is women. I respect them. Respect them way too fucking much to, to degrade them! With things like lust or intercourse!”
“I’m going to die here,” Niki says flatly.
“Which is why I only fuck Wilbur,” he concludes. “Because I don’t respect him at all.”
“So you have to understand that, that Tommy - he’s never going to love me back,” says Wilbur.
“Tommy won’t stop asking me what brand of aftershave you use so he can wash his pillow in it,” says Phil.
“Tommy is as straight as the St. Louis Arch,” says Niki.
“Tommy’s coming up,” Techno says, thumbing a reply on his phone.
“WHAT,” says Wilbur. He is suddenly so, so sober.
“You seemed busy,” Techno tells him flatly. And suddenly -
“Well,” Tommy scoffs, crashing through the door with a key in hand. (Niki did not give him a key. She has no fucking idea how he got it.)
“That one could have gone better. She didn’t even play guitar.” He makes a beeline to the armchair Wilbur is still draped across, now upright, and sits on his lap. Wilbur whines low in his throat. “Can you fucking believe that?”
“I can’t,” Phil says. There is not a hint of sympathy in his eyes for Wilbur’s terrible situation right now. Frankly, Wilbur thinks that’s unfair.
Tommy cuddles up against him, presses against his chest and drapes one arm over his shoulders. “Wilbur, her hair wasn’t half as shiny as - I mean, it didn’t even smell good! Christ! Anyway, I gave her your number. Gave her some pointers, y’know.”
Tommy sighs forlornly. Wilbur makes a noise like a drowned cat.
Tommy sighs again, presses his face into Wilbur’s neck. “I just don’t get it. Maybe women need to take lessons on being a good girlfriend from you, Wil.” And damn if that doesn’t make him half-hard, heat coursing through his gut.
Wilbur - steels his nerves. Gathers up all the last dregs of his energy, of the morning coffee and the evening coffee and the night Red Bull and the midday five beers stolen from Phil’s fridge and the four p.m. joint bummed off of Quackity.
“Tommy,” he says. “Toms, I don’t - “ He almost buckles, under the pressure of it, under having to look at Tommy’s gorgeous fucking face, at the big fucking eyes blinking up at him. “TommyIloveyou.”
Tommy stares at him.
“Tommy,” he tries again. His voice is only slightly shaky. He calls it a win. “I think I would like to - date. For real.” Wilbur winces. “Not, like. Not as friends. But for good. For - as long as you’ll have me.”
“Oh,” Tommy says, and then, grin spreading across his face, “Wil, I’d really like that.”
Wilbur looks at him, relieved, exhausted. “Yeah?”
”Yeah,” Tommy says, reaching up to press a kiss to Wilbur’s cheek. Wilbur can feel the stubble on Tommy’s mouth, rough against his skin. “I mean, what kind of ally would I be if I couldn’t see myself in a fulfilling long-term relationship with a man?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Niki says, “I am going to kill him until he is fucking dead and gone,” but then Tommy’s lips are on his and Wilbur doesn’t hear anything at all.