Chapter Text
From the moment he was born into a world of shattered glass taped back together to seem whole and rippling water from the falling stone of the tumbling society, he was told to remain silent.
His mother cried when he took his first breath and that was the last time he ever watched her cry over something he did.
Every breath he took, every step, every word spoken so delicately that it was barely even a whisper, was met with screams.
So loud, so putrid, so vile. They coated him, leaving him drenched in the stench of the cruelest words a little boy would ever hear.
All because he dared to live.
It took him only five years to learn that it was not the world that was shattered and put back together incorrectly, but rather his home.
It took him five and a half to learn that it was him who shattered the home with all seven pounds of himself that very first night that he dared to live.
His dad was just as bad. They had the same eyes, the same freckles dotting their cheeks, and yet they never shared the same love.
Wilbur ached for that. Even in a home of shattered glass and mirages, he reached out for an inkling of love that would drip onto his battered wounds and heal them with the gentleness a parent should have when with their child.
He was six when he learned that the smell that clung to his dad and was the signature scent of the house Wilbur tried to call home was beer.
The smell was like an unwanted perfume that spread through the whole house in a lazy manner.
Sometimes, he would pretend it was fresh flowers.
Though even he wasn’t young enough to believe that.
Words became his enemy, for when he spoke it felt as though he only caused the already broken glass of the house he calls home to shatter just a little more.
In order to fix the home, he learned to be quiet.
Wilbur wished he could say that silence plagued the home, but it didn’t. They still found a way to curse him for merely living.
And he struggled, because they are his parents.
If he’s a disappointment then he has to prove he is worth something. If he is a waste of space then he must show them that he has a purpose. If he is their biggest mistake, then he has to show that he wasn’t a mistake at all.
How was he ever meant to not yearn for the never ending love of a woman who has his hair and his nose and a man who has his eyes and his freckles.
They are fractured mirrors of himself and as a child he wished that he could find the strength to mend the image until they too saw themselves in him.
He was eight when his dad hit him for the first time.
The glass beneath his feet shattered into a million minute pieces at that moment. The precarious structure he dared to call a home billowed dangerously with the blow that caused blood to rush to his cheeks and flush his face with that stinging warmth.
Tears had prickled in his eyes, balancing so dangerously on the edge of his eyelid.
He recalls the way the tile had felt so cool against his flushed skin, the way his hands had collided with the floor and his dad had stood above him, that horribly familiar scent of alcohol swirling around him and a terribly stoic face.
No emotions dared to even flash in his eyes as though they too had a newfound fear for the man standing proudly in the kitchen.
His left hand clutched a beer bottle. It was a Bud Light.
To this day, Wilbur has refused to ever drink one.
The palm of his right hand burned red, the same color that blossomed across Wilbur’s left cheek. He hated that thought, that they had twin wounds in a way for two completely different reasons.
And Wilbur remembers the way his dad had stalked away, heading out to the patio to drink the rest of his beer.
He recalls so vividly the way he had scrambled to pick himself up off the floor of a broken home that he barely even recognized was always fated to remain fractured.
The tears swelled in his eyes and yet, Wilbur had refused to even dare to let one salty droplet fall and crash against the tile floor, causing it to glisten in one spot that marks his failures.
The worst part is he knew it was his fault that this is how everything had played out. He knew better than to be downstairs after nine, he knew better than to try and talk to his dad when the smell of alcohol was even stronger than before.
He knew better.
So that night, eight year old Wilbur added more rules to his endless list of ways to make his parents happy.
He had to, because even he knew that if they didn’t love him that it was his fault.
His mother loathes him for what he has become and it’s his fault for cursing her with the burden of a baby boy who single handedly shattered every aspect of her life.
It’s his fault for asking for too much, making his dad work long hours and taking away that time for them.
And when he says them, he does not mean all of them. No, he means the two of them. He took away time for them to love life.
All because he was the mistake.
The next few years go much the same. He does something wrong, his face blooms with that crimson red and his tears threaten to spill over and slide down his cheeks and he adds another rule to his mental list.
It goes on and on and on and it isn’t even until he is thirteen that he has some sort of epiphany. It isn’t until he finally gets a friend close enough that they invite him over.
It isn’t until he sees the way Niki’s parents seem to adore her. It’s the sparkle in their eyes and the way they save smiles just for her that make him wonder: why do they not love me like that?
Yet, that doesn’t truly tell him something is wrong. It just tells him to try harder, to earn that kind of smile that feels like fresh baked cookies on Christmas and the fireplace during the first snow of winter.
By the time Wilbur hits the ripe age of sixteen, he’s learned that no matter what arbitrary rules he follows, they will never love him.
It was kind of a slow realization, there was no big moment where every puzzle piece fell into place. It was just a muted kind of understanding that they never wanted him and nothing he can do will change that.
All throughout high school he just made it by. He got okay grades and had friends and did some extracurriculars, but he didn’t excel at anything.
It was almost like he was destined by the stars and the gods that are woven between them to be perpetually mediocre.
It isn’t until Niki takes him over to her house just after he turns seventeen and they’re messing around in the garage with her dad’s instruments when he touches a guitar for the first time.
It’s that tan wood, smooth beneath his calloused hands and the way the strings hum under his fingertips as they graze them so delicately.
Wilbur smiles at the instrument held softly in his hands, the same way a parent should hold their young ones.
Niki walks over to him, “Do you like it?”
Wilbur nods, “It’s super cool.”
A smile bestows itself upon her face and it’s smiles like those that make him feel like he isn’t alone.
“Have you ever played before?”
It’s a dumb question. Wilbur answers earnestly either way, “No.”
“My dad can teach you, I’m sure he would love to.”
Wilbur frowns, running his hands over the wood.
“Are you sure?”
His words feel brittle. They are spoken with hope that Wilbur didn’t know he could have and so softly that he fears that Niki won’t even hear him.
“Yeah! He has always wanted to teach someone the guitar.”
“Why not you?”
Niki shrugs, “I was more of a piano girl. Music has never really been my thing either way.”
“Oh.”
“Do you want me to ask him?”
Wilbur’s eyes fall onto the guitar, “I don’t want to be a burden…”
Niki laughs and Wilbur shrinks.
“He won’t mind, I promise! He’ll probably be excited!”
And that is how Wilbur learns how to play the guitar.
They meet up once a week, though they could meet up more. Wilbur knows that his parents would never notice that their shattered glass house was missing a person.
He was never a part of that house anyways. He was an intruder, always tip-toeing his way around a place that should have been his. The soles of his feet are slick as they crunch the glass beneath them, his footprints bloody enough to follow as he runs, but nobody will come to find him.
Music found him though, even from the shadows, it pulled him in and held him tight.
By the time he graduated high school, music was something more to him than just a way to get out of the house.
It was freedom.
It was everything.
And when he left home for good, his parents wouldn’t know it. They didn’t even bother to show up for his graduation, the only present he got was that guitar that taught him to yearn for more.
So, the ghost that haunted their halls moved on to a better world.
Community college carried him for the next two years. He floated through classes, busked in his free time, and found himself a home on some bench in a park.
That was not the most glorious time, but it was his regardless.
He made a few bucks busking every night, he had enough to eat, and despite the hot, the cold, the rain, the snow, he was free.
He didn’t have to tiptoe around in a home where everything feels one misplaced step away from falling apart. He doesn’t have to live somewhere that never wanted him to live in the first place.
He’s allowed to live.
So even with no money and some cheap college and a park bench, he feels free.
And sure, sometimes he thinks he misses them.
But, he’s long done crying over someone who never shed a tear over him.
And yes, there was something heartbreaking, earth shattering, never ending, about the realization that your parents never deserved to be placed on those shiny pedestals so high up.
And yes, he knows now that the pedestals were flawed and that they never asked for him to tape them back together every time they fell apart.
They never asked for him.
So, yes he is free, but at what cost? He had to lose his childhood to learn that sometimes you cannot see the best in people.
He had to lose his childhood to a list of things he’ll never forgive them for.
He had to lose his childhood in order to leave.
He almost wishes he had his childhood some days.
On those days when it’s thundering and he knows that he’ll feel the water in his shoes for weeks and the thunder in his bones for days.
On those days when he shivers from the first fall of snow and struggles to find the warmth that he so desperately seeks.
It’s on those days, when he thinks it can’t get any worse, that he aches for the childhood he never got.
Because, if he got that, then maybe he would be warm and dry and still free.
It’s a dull sort of ache though.
It doesn't rattle around or scream at him like it might have before when he was younger. Instead it’s something quieter.
It kind of just spreads within him when he sees children at the park smiling with their families or parents gushing about how sweet their kids are.
Families like that make him wonder what it would have been like to grow up somewhere where he was allowed to just be. Somewhere where silence wasn’t what he was condemned to, somewhere where being a child was not a crime.
Wilbur sits on the street, a raggedy stool that he found in a dumpster settled underneath him as he tunes the guitar that Niki’s dad gifted him when he graduated.
People stroll by him, paying no mind to the tattered guitar case with a few coins scattered around the torn and stained fabric that lays inside.
Wilbur strums gently on the guitar, ensuring it’s tuned correctly before settling into himself a bit more so he can play.
The day is still early, people still groggy as they walk with their overpriced coffee in one hand and their cell phone in the other.
The sun barely even peaks between the buildings and a soft wind brushes through the alleyways to offset the dry sort of heat of the summer.
Wilbur doesn’t know what he’ll play today, he never really knows.
It’s always a gamble of what he feels like for that day. Some days, he’ll take requests and others he won’t and oftentimes it just depends on who’s asking.
Wilbur strums lazily, smiling gently as he begins playing the tunes to the more popular songs in hopes of drawing a dollar or two out of people.
He plays Mr. Brightside and smiles at people as the occasional passerby gives him a dollar.
It’s never much, but Wilbur takes it all with a smile.
He has to.
Once that song ends, he holds the guitar, eyes wistfully watching the clouds that look so pure sitting among the bright blue sky and the industrial buildings that tower around him.
It’s maybe midday, when the sun shines so high above him that something in the mundane routine changes.
Less people filter by at this point, everyone off to their jobs or eating lunch or something else.
Regardless, there is still a decent amount of people that pass by.
There’s one person in particular that catches his eye though. It’s a kid, probably about thirteen if Wilbur had to guess.
He’s partially hidden in an alley, resting in the shadows as a solace from the brutal sun that causes beads of sweat to form across Wilbur’s forehead.
Wilbur looks back down at his guitar, leaning over from where he sits to take a sip out of the water bottle he has.
The water inside is lukewarm now, but he isn’t really in a place to be complaining.
His eyes fall back towards the alley across the street where the boy lingers before he begins strumming another song.
At some point a few songs later though, Wilbur glances up and his eyes fall on a desolate alleyway devoid of the boy.
He sighs before placing the guitar back into its worn and weathered case, packed with memories that were never his.
Wilbur slings the case over his shoulder, grabbing his water and dragging the chair behind a dumpster near his busking spot.
From there, his eyes fell back towards the little boy that had hid with gray eyes and sun braiding through the locks of faded golden hair that sat in a tussle above his head.
When his eyes meet nothing, Wilbur turns away and looks for a place to eat, knowing chasing someone who doesn’t want to be found isn’t worth it.