Chapter Text
They lay on the roof overlooking the city underneath them and the sun that was quickly setting. They enjoyed the last slivers of sunshine, basking in it before the sky would turn dark once again. Wilbur enjoyed it particularly, looking sad that the evening had finally come.
Tommy laughed, capturing his attention, and Wilbur looked at him with a judgemental frown. “What?”
“Nothing, you just look like you’re falling in love with the fucking Sun is all.” Tommy laughed again. Wilbur had his eyes shut a moment ago, and he was smiling as he enjoyed the last of the sunshine on his face. Maybe he was enjoying it too much. “Do you really love golden hour this much?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitance.
They lay on the roof overlooking the city underneath them and the sun that was quickly setting. They enjoyed the last slivers of sunshine, basking in it before the sky would turn dark once again. Wilbur enjoyed it particularly, looking sad that the evening had finally come.
Tommy laughed, capturing his attention, and Wilbur looked at him with a judgemental frown. “What?”
“Nothing, you just look like you’re falling in love with the fucking Sun is all.” Tommy laughed again. Wilbur had his eyes shut a moment ago, and he was smiling as he enjoyed the last of the sunshine on his face. Maybe he was enjoying it too much. “Do you really love golden hour this much?”
“Yes,” he replied without hesitance.
Wilbur’s life had always been sad and boring. Little happy moments here and there, mostly drowned out by a sea of depression, anxiety, loneliness. He could barely remember a happy moment from his childhood, all he remembered was the divorce, the arguments, the trials, the strange men and women that came and gone in his life. An only child at home, friendless in school. Barely anyone wanted to talk to him, it took him years until he found a handful of people that liked to hang out with him.
And then he met someone who he thought was the love of his life. This beautiful woman, who was everything he ever wanted. He wanted to marry her, but was too afraid to ask her, since they were only teens. “Wait for me,” were her last words to Wilbur as she broke up with him. “Wait for me, until we can be together again. I just need to sort this out alone, without a boyfriend next to me. I need to think with a clear mind.”
And Wilbur wanted to wait. But he saw the girl, the love of his life, holding another man’s hand on the street, smiling at him how she used to smile at Wilbur. Clinging to him how she never did to Wilbur. He wondered if she thought he was weak.
That’s when the sadness kicked harder. And he turned to antidepressants that made him numb to any kind of feeling. He tried to make music and it helped a little. He forced hundreds of people to pay attention to him, watch him through a screen so he felt at least some sense of responsibility. It’s like getting a pet when you’re about to kill yourself. You can’t do it because there’s this tiny thing that needs your help to survive. Wilbur adopted thousands of people as his virtual pets to hold him accountable for his life.
Then the pandemic hit, and Wilbur’s mental health reached a new low he didn’t think was even possible. And he tried out this neat little trick he saw some people do called alcoholism. It was cool, it was all fine, Wilbur had his life in line, he was sorta taking care of himself. Not very well, but he was alive, right? Yeah. That’s all that mattered.
And then came Tommy.
Tommy was an annoying kid who he met through the platform he had only really created so he doesn’t fucking end his life. And that’s all he was for quite a long time. Almost a whole year. Tommy was just an annoying kid from “work” who Wilbur never really thought about.
They sort of became friends by accident when Tommy, uninvited, joined a discord call with Wilbur and his friends. He finally saw what an explosive person Tommy really was, with his quick, witty jokes and his smart comments, and he couldn’t get enough. In those few hours when they talked, Wilbur was finally happy again. He was happy for the first time in a long while.
They became friends. They spoke a lot more often, usually with just the two of them in the call. Wilbur told Tommy about all the bullshit that’s been going on in his life, and on a drunken night, he said to Tommy, “I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this alive.” Which was probably more concerning to a sixteen year old boy than it sounded to WIlbur, because he noticed Tommy’s demeanour change. He became Wilbur’s sole reason to get out of bed every morning. The message lighting up on his phone screen, “come talk to me,” made Wilbur take showers and sit in front of his computer to listen to Tommy ramble.
“You’re single handedly keeping me alive right now, Tommy,” he told the boy one time, which meant a lot more than he dared to say out loud. It meant Wilbur stopped taking the antidepressants, no matter how much he itched for them. It meant he poured all the liquor down the drain and never wanted to go near them again. It meant he was no longer using any other form of escapism, nothing to dull the pain of his everyday life.
He didn’t say all that, but Tommy seemed to understand it nonetheless. “Good,” the kid simply said with a soft smile. He knew what Wilbur meant. And he was happy.
The first time they saw each other without a screen separating them was overwhelming. Seeing Tommy, hearing his voice, being able to touch him, hug him brought Wilbur so much serotonin he could not stop smiling for the next two days. It felt like the muscles in his cheeks had cramped, but he loved it. He was like an addict, craving his next hit after just having tried a vice. He was already messaging Tommy the next day, “When are we meeting again?”
They started seeing each other regularly. And then Tommy moved to Brighton. And it was all happening so fast Wilbur didn’t even have time to catch up to everything, before he had a very flushed boy pinned to the wall of his flat, and they were kissing like this was the last thing they could do before they both combust and die. How Tommy ended up in his flat, he had no idea, could not remember for the life of him. But fuck, he was happy that he did, because kissing Tommy felt…
It felt like kissing the Sun itself. It felt like Wilbur was burning up inside and out, and behind his eyelids, all he could see were shades of golden yellow, like the sunset on a warm summer night. Tommy was his sun, Tommy embodied everything Wilbur loved in his life, everything that was worth living for.
When they pulled away from that kiss and they had the brief moment to look at each other, Wilbur really took Tommy in. His red face, his golden blond hair, his blue eyes that were almost swallowed by his pupils…
“You’re an angel,” he whispered to Tommy. “You’re an angel, a vision, the fucking Sun itself. You’re everything and more, you’re my whole life.”
It wasn’t a confession, but it might as well be one. Tommy giggled and Wilbur kissed him again, and he thought at that moment, if he died right now, he could die happy.