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we all suffer from an incurable malady — hope
mahmoud darwish
No one knows that Tommy Innit and Wilbur Soot are brothers. In fact, for the first eight years of Tommy’s life, neither had Wilbur.
Their parents had splintered apart when Tommy was still only a cell, clinging to the dark warmth of his mother’s womb—the only calm he had ever known, the only home—their mother was a stubborn, unyielding woman, and so Wilbur—sixteen and sharp-edged, already exhausted by love and by life—found out about the litte brother he’d never met at the same time their father did.
But Tommy had known about Wilbur forever. From the moment he could understand the word brother from his mother’s drunken ramblings and smoke breaks, he’d been begging for stories, cobbling together myths from overheard conversations, imagining what his Wilby might be like. So when he finally saw him—lanky, bright-eyed, awkwardly tall sixteen-year old Wilbur—he had been delighted. Starstruck, even.
Their parents were a wreck of wine-stained lips and half-hearted reconciliations, nights spent kissing and cursing, weeks spent apart in different corners of the country and then bunched together by the kitchen cabinet. Tommy stopped caring what they were doing long before he understood why. Because when he was twelve and Wilbur was twenty, all that mattered was that he could spend weekends sprawled in Wilbur’s tiny apartment, eating cheap takeout and watching reruns until dawn.
They had always been strange as brothers—too close, too careful, too entwined. Wilbur’s hand would linger where it shouldn’t. His voice would dip too soft, his kisses pressed too long against Tommy’s hair, his temple, the corner of his mouth. And Tommy clung far more than he should, far longer, always clung, because Wilbur was home in a way no one else had ever been.
But the world did not know that Tommy Innit and Wilbur Soot were brothers. And so the world turned on, undisturbed.
Then, just a month after they had finally collapsed into each other—ruin and rapture indistinguishable—Wilbur was gone. Tommy had been seventeen. Wilbur twenty-five. There had been talk of seeing the world, of forming a band, of starting anew. And then one ordinary afternoon, Tommy came home from class to find Wilbur’s flat emptied out—shelves bare, drawers hollow, the scent of him gone stale.
Three hours later, a forty-five-minute voice recording arrived on Tommy’s phone as he sat cross-legged on the floor, eating cold McDonald’s fries.
He texted. He called. Nothing.
He had plans, you see. He was supposed to move in with Wilbur. His brother, his anchor, the only thing he had ever known, the only world he had ever wanted to live in. Now there was nothing left but the echo of Wilbur’s voice in that recording—played and replayed until the battery died, until Tommy could recite it word for word. Somewhere between those soft-spoken apologies and hollow reassurances, he knew: Wilbur hadn’t left for something. He had left from him.
Tommy broke. It was anot a quiet thing, for Tommy had never been quiet—Wilbur had said it was the most endearing thing about Tommy; it sure as hell doesn’t feel that way now—he cried until his ribs ached, until his throat was raw and strained. He did the morning sodoku because Wilbur used to, and talked to all the telemarketers that Wilbur used to, and watched someone else move into the flat that Wilbur used to live in.
He goes back to the core of his bloodline. He learns to drink, to forget, to remember. He learns to move as the world still strings him along, a dying fish on a fisherman’s whim.
He’s twenty four now. The recording still lives on his phone. He still wears the three hoodies he stole from Wilbur all those years ago, though the scent has long since faded. He’s moved into a different apartment in a different town—even after telling the neighbours and the landlords and the fucking café shop owner his new address should Wilbur come back and be searching for him—he scrolls through Wilbur’s instagram in the dim hours of dawn, watches the man his brother has become—the world-famous musician, the face that no longer looks for him.
Tommy takes photographs for a living now—capturing strangers’ happiness, freezign other people’s joy in perfect light. But sometimes, late at night, he scrolls down to the bottom fo Wilbur’s instagram and the bottom of Tommy’s gallery and traces the edge of his old photos, the smiles they shared, the moments he can’t reclaim, and thinks that there was no one in the world more happier than them.
He’s something now—something cracked and trembling, something half alive. Wilbur has always known how to live without him, has known for eight, no, sixteen years. But Tommy hasn’t. Tommy never learned. Tommy doesn’t think he ever will.
He drifts through life like sea foam and dandelion seeds, fragile and golden, spinning wherever the wind takes him. He’s whirling, he’s breathing, he’s alive, somehow.
And then, one rain-heavy evening, in his small apartment—his darling little apartment with its creaky ceiling fans and cracking paint and him—the doorbell rings like doorbells do.
He opens it—and there he is.
Wilby.
Seven years older, seven years gone.
And Tommy can only stand there, staring, as the world he thought had ended quietly begins again.
Tommy had thought about it, of course he had—he’s every bit the daydreamer Wilbur used to call him. For years, he had built the moment in his mind like a cathedral. He had thought of what he’d say, what he’d do—how he’d spit out his hurt, his fury, his love.
For the first two years, the thought had consumed him entirely. After that, it came less often, in idle flashes—while brushing his teeth, while watching the sky through his window and wondering if Wilbur’s seeing the same sunset as him—after the tears, and the shouting, and the bitter little revenge fantasies, he’d imagined forgiveness. He’d imagined the reunion so many times that he could have written it out like a script.
He is proud, in a small, cracked way, that he had it all planned.
And then he does none of it.
He opens the door wearing the Wilbur’s old green hoodie that he stole, the one that hangs loose around his thighs even after his growth spurt. His hair’s a mess, his feet swallowed by fluffy white cat socks that were on sale, and he’s staring—wide-eyed, disbelieving—at the man on the other side.
Wilbur.
He licks his lips—an old nervous habit—and tastes the Vaseline on them. Wilbur’s gaze drops to his mouth and stays there, the air between them stretching thin and trembling.
“Tommy,” Wilbur says.
It sounds exactly the same—which is a ridiculous thought, because it’s not as if voices change spontaneously just because you haven’t heard them in years—and yet hearing it cracks something open inside him.
“Wilby,” Tommy manages, his voice catching like a thread snagged on glass. He hates that it wavers. But Wilbur flinches at the sound of it, softens, breaks—and then Tommy’s wrapped in his arms, caught and held and breathed in. He’s shuffled inside. Wilbur’s kisses find him like muscle memory: his hair, his cheeks, his temple, all the places they used to belong.
They stay that way, suspended in the hush between breaths, until the doorbell rings.
The food he ordered has arrived. The delivery man beams at them, calls them an adorable couple. Wilbur’s arm tightens, possessive, around his waist. Tommy should be angry— should pull away, say something, anything—but he doesn’t.
Instead, he leads Wilbur to his sofa, the ocean-blue one that they’d talked about buying, back in the before, and the yellow pillows that were the exact shade of the hoodie he’d stolen. (Wilbur’s favorite one — he wonders if it still is.) They sit close, eating together, their thighs pressed warm and firm. Somehow, without either of them noticing, Tommy ends up in Wilbur’s lap, and Wilbur’s hands are under the hem of his hoodie—cold, familiar—resting against his skin.
They watch Over The Garden Wall—the kind of brothers they should’ve been, but aren’t—and the light from the screen paints them both in soft blues. Wilbur’s breath brushes Tommy’s ear, his voice murmuring little comments, and Tommy wants—Prime, he wants—to stitch him to his side and never let him go again.
At some point, two hours later, the series ends. The What Would You Like To Watch Next? screen flickers for a moment and then Gravity Falls begins to play automatically.
That’s when Tommy starts to cry.
Quietly, first. Then harder. Seven years’ worth of tears, falling in slow, unstoppable waves.
Wilbur kisses them away. His own eyes are wet. Neither of them says sorry. The silence is thick with everything — the years lost, the ache endured, the love that refused to die even when everything else did.
All the anger, all the bitterness, dissolves into nothing. After seven years of drought, Tommy has finally found water again—and he will drink deeply, even if it disappears by morning.
They sleep in the same bed.
Tommy really shouldn’t. He should say no—Wilby, I’ll take the couch, it’s fine—but Wilbur has never once let him sleep on the couch. Not when he was twelve and visiting the city, not when he’d fallen asleep on the floor watching old movies, not when he’d been crying so hard he’d made himself sick. So they end up here again, like the years in between never happened—two halves of something that had cracked but never broken completely.
Wilbur laughs softly as he tugs Tommy closer, as he realizes that the oversized green hoodie drowning Tommy is his. “Adorable,” he murmurs, voice rough with affection. Their legs tangle instinctively, naturally. Tommy buries his face against Wilbur’s chest, the familiar heartbeat thudding beneath his ear, and Wilbur’s hand finds its way into his hair. A kiss lands on his forehead, light as breath.
Tommy doesn’t want to sleep. He wants to stay awake and memorize everything—the smell of Wilbur’s skin, the weight of his arm, the sound of the night holding its breath around them. But his body gives in, lulled by safety, and he slips into sleep thinking this might be the best rest he’ll ever have.
When he wakes, Wilbur is still there.
For a moment, Tommy doesn’t move. Wilbur has plastered himself to him like Christmas wrapping paper. Gripping so hard Tommy’s ribs would break, if they weren’t so used to it—seven years later, and they fall into it easily—and Tommy stares and stares. Wilbur’s face is slack with peace, younger somehow, the purple craters beneath his eyes lighter than they had been last night. Tommy rubs at his eyes , blinking through the haze of morning light filtering through the curtains.
Wilbur is still there.
He slips quietly from the bed, does his business in the bathroom, and when he returns, Wilbur hasn’t vanished like a dream. He’s still sprawled out across the mattress, limbs long and graceless, one arm thrown over the empty space where Tommy had been. Still tangled in the sheets of the bed Tommy had bought three years ago—after a very kind employee had helped him choose it, even as he’d been near tears—Wilbur looks impossibly real.
So Tommy does what anyone would do when the impossible lingers. He makes breakfast.
The bacon sizzles, fat snapping in the pan. He cracks eggs, hums softly to the radio, trying not to think too hard. And then he hears the soft sound of bare feet padding into the kitchen.
Wilbur’s hair is a mess. He looks human, soft around the edges, sleep-heavy. Tommy tells him the coffee will be ready in a minute, and Wilbur only hums, stumbling forward until he’s pressed against Tommy’s back, his arms wrapping around Tommy’s waist like he’s afraid he might disappear if he lets go.
Wilbur buries his face into Tommy’s shoulder, voice muffled.
“D’you still like your eggs scrambled?” Tommy asks, just to fill the air.
“Mhm,” Wilbur murmurs. “Thanks.”
There’s a pause. The steady crackle of the pan. The smell of butter and coffee. Then, almost shyly, Wilbur adds, “Morning, love.”
Tommy blinks, startled, and turns. “Morning,” he answers, softly—just before Wilbur leans in and kisses him.
It’s a simple kiss. Gentle, warm. The kind of kiss married people might share over burnt toast and Sunday sunlight. And maybe that’s why Tommy freezes—because it’s too easy, too familiar, too dangerous.
Wilbur steals another. And another, until Tommy mumbles that the food will get cold. Wilbur grumbles, steals one more for good measure, and then flops down at the table like he’s been doing so for years.
Tommy joins him. Across the table, Wilbur eats with the same careless contentment he used to, fork clinking against the plate, humming between bites.
Tommy watches him through the haze of morning and the shimmer of steam from his coffee. He wonders if Wilbur will stay long enough for lunch—if he’ll get to make his macaroni and cheese, the one he’s perfected over the years. He wonders if it makes him a fool, still wishing, still hoping, still dreaming of a life where the two of them could have been married.
Because the thing about fools, Tommy thinks, is that they love too hard and too long.
And Wilbur—Wilbur has always been worth the foolishness.
After breakfast, Wilbur showers.
Tommy stands in the kitchen, staring at the small suitcase Wilbur brought with him—teal, with a white guitar drawn on the side. It sits by the door like a waiting verdict. He wonders if that’s how Wilbur will leave again, quietly, suitcase in hand, door clicking shut while Tommy pretends not to hear.
He can’t stand the thought.
So he turns to the dishes. It gives him something to do—something to hold on to. The water runs cold, pruning his fingers. He scrubs at plates that don’t need scrubbing, watches the bubbles burst and fade, anything to keep his thoughts from unraveling.
He tells himself that maybe, by the time he’s done, Wilbur will have gone. It would hurt less if he didn’t have to watch it happen.
But when Wilbur returns, he’s still there.
He pads into the kitchen, hair dripping and curling against his neck, shirt clinging damply to his chest. Without a word, he wraps himself around Tommy from behind, arms looping tight around his waist, chin resting on his shoulder. His skin is warm and wet, and Tommy thinks—just for a breath—that Wilbur would’ve dragged him into the shower too, if Tommy hadn’t already taken one that morning. He shoves the thought away before it can bloom.
The sink is empty now. No dishes left to wash, no excuses to linger. And yet, Tommy doesn’t move. And for some unfathomable reason, neither does Wilbur. His arms stay firm around Tommy, holding him like something he’s afraid to lose again.
Tommy stands there, still as the water gone cold in the drain, his hands braced against the counter. He doesn’t know what to do. What to say. What to believe.
Wilbur’s fingers begin tracing soft, slow circles against his waist—soothing, tender, unhurried. Tommy wishes they’d be harsher, that they’d bruise. Wishes there’d be a mark, something to prove this happened, that he hadn’t dreamed him up out of loneliness and longing.
Wilbur’s voice is low when it comes, roughened by sleep and something else. “What’s on your mind, baby?”
And it spills. Not in anger, not in fire, but in something smaller. Fragile. A whisper meant more for the sink than the man behind him.
“How long will you stay?”
For a moment, there’s only the hum of the refrigerator, the faint drip of the faucet. Then Wilbur’s arms tighten around him, pulling him back until Tommy has no choice but to turn, to look at him.
Wilbur’s expression is unreadable—something between apology and wonder.
“As long as you’ll let me,” he says.
Tommy’s breath stutters. “If I say forever?”
The words come out cracked, blurry through the film of tears in his eyes. Wilbur lifts his hands, cupping Tommy’s face, thumbs brushing the wetness away like it’s sacred.
And then he smiles—luminous, soft, impossibly bright.
“Then I’ll stay forever,” he murmurs. “I’ll live in your pocket, sunshine.”
The words shouldn’t mean so much. They shouldn’t sound like vows. But Tommy feels them settle somewhere deep, somewhere that’s been aching for seven long years.
And for the first time since that door opened, he lets himself believe—just a little—that maybe this time, Wilbur won’t leave.
The day that follows is beautiful.
It unfolds with the grace of a sonnet, the soft lilt of a soprano, the tender flow of piano keys struck by steady hands. It’s quiet, it’s golden, it’s the kind of day Tommy’s camera would ache to capture—sunlight spilling across skin, laughter caught mid-breath, cheeks flushed red from smiling.
It reminds him of all the photographs he’s taken of families and couples—the ones who lean into each other like they were born knowing how. The crow’s-feet at the edges of their eyes, the effortless, radiant joy that cameras almost never do justice to.
That’s what this day feels like: a photograph. A colorful bandaid over an old bruise. Lovely and lovely—but the bruise still pulses beneath, tender and unhealed.
Wilbur should know that. He’s been covering Tommy’s bruises with cartoon bandaids since Tommy was small—bright, silly ones patterned with sunflowers or Spongebob, always sealed with a kiss and followed by a microwave dinner. It had worked then, hadn’t it? The hurt hidden beneath sweetness.
And Tommy should know better, too. But just like the child he once was, for a while he lets himself believe the wound is gone.
It’s domestic, almost dreamlike.
Wilbur twirls him in the living room until they’re dizzy with laughter, then kisses him on the balcony among Tommy’s potted plants and voyeuristic flowers—the ones that lean too close to the sunlight. They go grocery shopping, hand in hand, Wilbur swinging their joined palms like a boy who’s never learned to stop. At lunch, Wilbur kisses him with macaroni still on his lips, and Tommy laughs into the taste of cheese and nostalgia.
Later, Wilbur pulls him into the night shower, kisses trailing down pinkened skin, and afterwards, he wraps Tommy in one of the hoodies he’d brought—soft, oversized, smelling faintly of music studios and cigarette smoke—and they fall asleep like that.
It’s lovely.
It’s perfect.
It’s rage-inducing.
Tommy doesn’t know when it starts—the slow burn under the ribs, the sharp pulse of anger coiled beneath all the softness. But with every tender moment, every kiss, every heartbeat shared like a promise, it grows.
Because for every time Wilbur makes him smile, Tommy remembers the silence that came after he left. The seventeen-year-old version of himself, alone and desperate, clutching a phone that would never buzz again.
He loves him—Prime, he does. He wants him to stay forever and forever—but also, fuck him. How dare he leave. How dare he vanish and come back and act like the world didn’t fall apart in his absence. How dare he, how fucking dare—
By the time Tommy realizes what he’s doing, he’s already out of bed. The bottle of alcohol is heavy in his hand, half-empty, familiar. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t think. He ends up on the cold white floor, legs splayed awkwardly, phone in hand.
The recording plays.
The one Wilbur sent him seven years ago.
Wilbur’s voice—soft, quiet, breaking at the edges—fills the apartment like a ghost.
“—I’m sorry, sunshine, I just need time. I don’t know how to stay, not right now. But I’ll come back, I promise, you’ll do fine without me for a bit, you always were stronger than me—”
Tommy presses the phone to his chest, sobs spilling unchecked, hot and raw. He can still hear Wilbur’s snores from the bedroom—real, alive, right there—but it doesn’t make it better. If anything, it makes it worse.
Because now the voice on the recording and the man in his bed exist at once, and Tommy can’t reconcile them.
His tears blur the screen; the recording loops, static hissing.
Then—softly, uncertainly—from the doorway:
“Sunshine?”
Tommy looks up, eyes swollen, breath ragged.
Wilbur stands there, hair mussed, wearing one of Tommy’s baggy shirts, something shattered in his expression. Something that looks far too much like Tommy’s own heart, cracked and bleeding in the same rhythm.
Wilbur doesn’t say anything at first. He just stands there—the dim lamplight catches on the bottle in Tommy’s hand, on the streaks of salt shining down his cheeks, on the way his knuckles tremble. Tommy tries to make it easier for him. Or maybe for himself.
“Go back to bed, Wil,” he says, his voice raw and ugly from crying. He wipes his sleeve across his face, smearing wetness and snot and pride together. “M’fine. Just couldn’t sleep, yeah? Go back to—”
Wilbur doesn’t move.
“Go back,” Tommy repeats, sharper this time. His laugh breaks in the middle. “You always were good at that, weren’t you? Going.”
That’s what does it. Wilbur steps forward—low, careful, like he’s afraid Tommy will bolt. And maybe Tommy would, if his limbs didn’t feel like they were made of glass and saltwater.
“Sunshine—”
“Don’t.” Tommy’s voice trembles, too fragile to sound angry, too furious to sound small. “Don’t call me that. You don’t—you don’t get to.”
Wilbur kneels anyway. His knees touch the cold tiles beside Tommy’s hip, his hand hovers for a second before landing on Tommy’s shoulder. Tommy jerks back.
“I said—”
But then Wilbur’s arms are around him, steady and stubborn, and Tommy is thrashing against his chest—beating at him with his fists, his palms, his grief.
“Fuck you,” he sobs. “Fuck you, Wilbur, fuck you, you can’t just—you can’t just leave and then—and then—”
Wilbur holds him tighter, as if he can anchor both of them through sheer will alone. His own breath hitches, once, but he doesn’t speak. Doesn’t defend himself. Doesn’t say the easy things like I had to or you wouldn’t understand.
“You left me,” Tommy gasps. His throat burns. “You left me, you bastard, you didn’t even say goodbye. I waited. I waited, you know that? Every day I—”
“I had to build everything again,” Tommy spits, voice shaking. “Do you know what that’s like? You leave, and the whole world caves in, and everyone tells you to move on—so I did, Wilbur, I did! I got up, I made breakfast, I learned to smile again, I learned to take pictures again, and all the while I was still bleeding inside. You left me there with an empty flat and a cold bed and a fucking voicemail that didn’t even make sense. I—”
He laughs, the kind of laugh that splits a wound open. “Do you even remember what you said in that recording? You said, ‘I’m sorry, I just need time.’ Time for what, Wilbur? To forget me? To breathe easier without me? Because I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
His hands clutch at Wilbur’s hoodie now, desperate, broken. “I kept telling myself there had to be a reason. Some terrible, noble, self-sacrificing thing. Because that’s who you were, wasn’t it? Always the tragic genius, always so full of reasons. And I believed it, because it was easier than believing you just didn’t want me.”
Wilbur’s jaw clenches. His fingers tighten against Tommy’s back.
Tommy hits him—not hard, not like he means to, but enough to make the sound echo — and then he just folds. His hands twist in Wilbur’s shirt, gripping it like it’s the only thing keeping him upright. He’s shaking, chest heaving, breath stumbling over words that can’t seem to find the air fast enough.
“You don’t get it,” he starts, voice shredded, furious. “You don’t fucking get it, Wilbur, you left—you left and I didn’t even know if you were alive. I came home and your stuff was gone and I thought it was a joke and —I had to learn how to breathe without you.”
Wilbur’s hand cups the back of his head, gentle and safe, and Tommy jerks but doesn’t pull away this time. The words just keep spilling out, unstoppable.
“Do you know how pathetic that is? How small that made me feel?” he spits, the anger shaking apart in his mouth. “I had to—had to make a list of things that wouldn’t remind me of you, and the list was nothing, Wilbur, it was blank, because everything—everything was you. The kitchen smelled like you, the pillows smelled like you, the fucking rain sounded like you leaving all over again.”
He laughs, broken, scraping the sound out of his throat. “And—and people thought I was okay, and I hated them for it. Because how could they think that? How could anyone think I was fine when I was—when I was crawling out of my own fucking chest every day just to pretend?”
Tommy goes on, he finds that he can’t stop, voice cracking, wild. “Do you know what it’s like to grieve someone who isn’t dead? To wake up and realize you still set two plates, still check your phone for messages that never come? I buried you, Wilbur. I had to bury you in my head just so I could breathe. And you—” his breath hitches, “—you show up, and you hold me, and it’s like no time has passed and every goddamn year between then and now just folds in on itself. I hate you for that. I hate how much I still—”
He stops, trembling. His voice drops to a whisper. “I hate how much I still love you.”
His words break into sound, raw and animal, and Wilbur just takes it. All of it. He just rocks him, the way he used to when Tommy got sick as a kid, slow and useless but still trying.
When Tommy finally goes quiet—hiccuping, exhausted, face buried against Wilbur’s chest—Wilbur’s voice is so soft it almost isn’t there.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” he murmurs, and it sounds like he’s saying it to every version of Tommy he’s ever hurt—the boy with scraped knees and bandaids, the young man clutching an empty phone, the one now shaking in his arms.
Tommy flinches like it hurts. Because it does. Because it’s the one thing he wanted to hear, and the one thing he can’t stand to. He presses his face harder into Wilbur’s hoodie and laughs, low and hoarse.
“Sorry doesn’t fix it,” he whispers.
“I know,” Wilbur says. His hand moves gently up Tommy’s spine, trembling. “But I’m saying it anyway.”
Tommy lets out a noise—half a laugh, half a sob—and grips Wilbur harder, clutching him like if he lets go, the world will split apart again. His words are wet against Wilbur’s neck, muffled and frantic.
“I hate that I missed you. I hate that I still do. I hate that you’re here and I can finally breathe again. I hate that you make me want to forgive you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you—”
Wilbur holds him tighter through it all. Through every curse, every gasp, every word that tastes like blood and love. He doesn’t tell Tommy to stop. Doesn’t shush him or kiss it away. He just lets Tommy tear open every wound that never healed, until all that’s left is breathing—ragged, uneven, alive.
Dawn seeps through the curtains in slow, gold threads—a soft, forgiving kind of light that makes everything look gentler than it should. Tommy falls asleep there on the cold floor, the bottle tipped on its side and forgotten, Wilbur’s lips pressed to his forehead like a benediction.
When he wakes, it’s to warmth. He’s no longer on the ground but on Wilbur’s chest, the steady rise and fall beneath his cheek, the cage of arms wound tight around him—protective, stubborn, unwilling to let him take the cold for even a second longer. Tommy doesn’t have to guess; he knows Wilbur would have borne the chill himself rather than let Tommy shiver. He knows it because that’s always been Wilbur’s way—foolishly tender, heartbreakingly so.
Tommy’s always been the one who could sleep anywhere, even in the “uncomfortable positions” as Wilbur labelled them, tugging Tommy out of them because his own heart couldn’t take it. Wilbur’s the one who needed a specific resting place to sleep. Wilbur wouldn’t have been able to sleep tonight, then.
He tilts his head, eyes blinking against the honeyed morning light, and finds Wilbur awake. His hair is a mess, curls unruly, dark circles pooling deeper beneath his eyes—and yet his expression is kind. Too kind. The kind that hurts to look at. Seven years gone, and somehow, Tommy’s world still orbits the same sun.
“Morning, dove,” Wilbur rasps, voice hoarse from sleep and sorrow alike. He leans down, kisses Tommy softly. It’s a mess of morning breath and the stale ghost of alcohol, but Wilbur doesn’t seem to care; he never has. He kisses him again, lighter this time, as if to remind Tommy that softness still exists, even after all that.
“Bet you wanna take a shower, don’t you?” Wilbur murmurs, a smile tugging at his lips.
Tommy nods, wordless, his face pressing back into the warmth of Wilbur’s chest. He feels impossibly small—something half-drowned and pulled to shore. He probably looks it, too: hair in disarray, eyes swollen, mouth sour. Hungover. Miserable. And yet Wilbur’s hand just smooths over his curls, thumb brushing the nape of his neck as though Tommy were something precious, a miracle that had survived the night, even after having tried to break his ribs and eat his heart out.
Shame flickers in his chest—the memory of how he’d torn Wilbur open the night before, how he’d raged and wept until he’d burned through himself. His cheeks flush with it. But his chest feels lighter now, emptied out, the seawater drained, and for the first time in years he doesn’t feel like he’s drowning.
“Want me to carry you there?” Wilbur asks, voice soft and low, rumbling through his ribs like a lullaby.
Tommy’s curls flop as he nods, and Wilbur laughs, gentle, the sound breaking the air like the first note of morning birdsong.
So Wilbur does. He gathers Tommy up, light as anything, Tommy’s legs winding around him like a koala clinging to a familiar tree. Wilbur’s warmth presses steady against him as they move through the apartment; he pauses only to tug a clean shirt and sweatpants from the drawer before setting Tommy down on the bathroom tiles.
“I’ll go make breakfast, yeah?” he murmurs, leaning down to kiss Tommy’s forehead again before he slips out.
Tommy stares at the closed door for a moment, at the faint curl of steam already rising from the shower. He thinks, distantly, that there’s something he should be feeling—clarity, anger, forgiveness, something sharp—but all he feels is the pounding in his skull. The hangover dulls everything, turning the world soft and slow.
Even rolling his eyes hurts.
So he doesn’t. He just stands there, palms against the cool porcelain of the sink, and lets the water run until it’s warm.
“There you are, sunshine,” Wilbur murmurs, voice soft as a Sunday morning hymn when Tommy walks in. He sets a plate before Tommy with a small smile. There are two bagels—halved neatly, each side glistening with a thick, indulgent spread of cream cheese—along with a tall glass of cold water, beads of condensation sliding lazily down the rim.
As soon as Tommy sits down, he presses a few pills into Tommy’s palm, paracetamol and emiset, his fingers warm, calloused. “You can’t take ’em on an empty stomach, Toms,” he says firmly but gently.
Tommy whines—half-hearted, hoarse from too many tears—but relents. The first bite feels heavy on his tongue, dense and slightly sweet. The taste of cream cheese sits soft at the back of his mouth. He chews slowly, deliberately, as if stalling the clock itself. The quiet is punctuated only by the sound of Wilbur biting into his sandwich, a low hum of satisfaction escaping him, and the soft clink of the glass.
Halfway through, Tommy swallows his pills and finishes the rest with deliberate slowness, as though dragging time itself out by the collar. He doesn’t know what waits on the other end of the meal—only that it feels inevitable, like a tide that’s been biding its time.
Wilbur doesn’t press him. He just leans against the counter, soft curls a little wild, watching Tommy with that patient, almost too-gentle kind of fondness. When they’re done, Wilbur gathers the plates, rolling up his sleeves before turning on the tap, humming a low tune under his breath as he rinses them in the sink. The sound of running water fills the space, warm and steady, like rain on a quiet morning.
“I’m sorry,” Tommy rasps at last, the words scraping out of him like something rusted and long-buried, and Wilbur freezes mid-motion. A droplet of water slips from his wrist to the floor, and the quiet stretches, full and trembling.
Wilbur turns slowly, eyes soft with confusion. “Whatever for?” he asks, and somehow, it sounds honest—like he truly doesn’t know what Tommy could possibly need to apologize for. “There’s nothing you have to be sorry about.”
“But—” Tommy opens his mouth, and Wilbur’s quiet tut silences him. He sets the dish towel aside and crosses the space between them.
Tommy watches as he lowers himself onto one knee, both hands wrapped around Tommy’s like a penitent clasping prayer beads. His thumbs trace over the rough pads of Tommy’s knuckles, over the small scars and ridges time had carved there. When Wilbur finally speaks, it’s with that trembling softness Tommy remembers from years ago—when the world felt smaller, and love easier.
“I am so fucking sorry, Tommy,” Wilbur says again, quieter now, but the words carry the weight of seven years. “I don’t think I’ll ever stop being sorry. I left you—I left you when you needed me most. And I told myself there was a reason, that I was doing you a favor by disappearing, but it was cowardice, sunshine. Just cowardice dressed up in excuses.”
He exhales, long and shuddering. His eyes dart briefly toward the window, as if afraid of his own reflection there. “I thought—I thought I was poison. I thought if I stayed, you’d wither around me. I’d already made so many messes, broken so many things I’d promised to protect. And you were—” He laughs softly, a wet sound. “You were this bright, beautiful thing. Still are. I thought leaving would save you. But it just—” His voice cracks again. “It just damned you to loneliness instead. I damned us both.”
Tommy doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Wilbur presses his forehead to the back of Tommy’s hand, the gesture half-prayer, half-punishment.
“There hasn’t been a single day I didn’t think of you,” he continues. “Not one. You were in every song I wrote, every meal I couldn’t finish, every stupid sunrise I tried not to watch because it reminded me of you. My own little sunrise. I kept—Prime, I kept imagining you moving on, smiling, falling in love with someone who wasn’t me, someone who deserved you, and it hurt so much I thought maybe I deserved that hurt. And I did. I did.”
He lifts his head then, eyes glassy, red-rimmed. “You built a life without me, Tommy. You learned how to stand again after I cut the ground out from under you. And I—” He swallows, hard. “I’m proud of you. I am. You had every right to hate me. Every right to slam the door in my face when I came back. But you didn’t. You—Prime, you let me in. You fed me. You let me hold you. You still—you still call me Wilby.”
His voice gentles, so full of regret it feels like it could spill over. “I missed you so much I forgot how to breathe sometimes. I missed you in ways that didn’t make sense. I’d see someone with blonde hair or hear someone laugh too loud on the street and I’d think, there he is, my sunshine, and then remember—no. No, you’re gone. Because I sent you away.”
He takes Tommy’s other hand now, so both are caught in his, and presses his lips to each knuckle, whispering between kisses. “You deserved better. You still do. But if you’ll have me—if you’ll even let me try—I’ll stay this time. I’ll do it right. I’ll hold on until you tell me to go.”
He sits back on his heels, hands still trembling. “I don’t want to leave again, Tommy. Not ever. Not unless you ask me to.”
Tommy’s throat burns with all the things he wants to say—too many jagged things, too many years’ worth of splinters and longing. For a while, he just stares at Wilbur, at the raw hope bleeding out of his face, at how small he looks kneeling there. He runs his tongue over dry lips and finally breathes out, voice thin as cracked glass.
“I don’t think I can forgive you,” Tommy says. “Not yet.”
The words land softly but they hit hard, and Wilbur flinches as though they’d drawn blood. Tommy’s fingers twitch in Wilbur’s hands, but he doesn’t pull away. He keeps going, quiet, steady.
“I want to,” he admits. “Prime, I want to. But I don’t think I can just yet. You—you broke something in me, Wil. You left, and I had to learn how to live again, how to eat alone, how to stop checking the door every time it creaked. I built a life without you in it, piece by bloody piece, and I think if I forgave you right now, it’d feel like saying all that didn’t matter. And it does. It mattered.”
Wilbur’s eyes shine, his lips tremble. But before the tears can fall, Tommy’s voice softens—barely there, but warm.
“But,” he whispers, “the door’s open. Always. There’s no world where my home isn’t yours too. No world where I’d ever lock you out. I may not be able to forgive you, yet, but I still love you. I always will.”
For a moment, Wilbur just stares—like he doesn’t believe it, like he’s afraid if he breathes too hard, the dream will dissolve. And then, without warning, he crumples. The sob tears out of him, loud and ugly and unrestrained, as though seven years of penance have cracked open at last. His shoulders shake, hands fisting in his own lap until Tommy moves—slides off the chair and into his brother’s lap, tucking himself close like he’s done all his life.
Wilbur tries to say his name, but it comes out a choked sound, and Tommy presses his lips to Wilbur’s—salt and all. It’s clumsy, wet, nothing like the practiced sweetness of before, but it feels like the beginning of something healing. It doesn’t feel whole, not yet, but the pieces are sliding back together, tentative and trembling and real.
They’re real.
There are bad days.
Days where Tommy wakes up and can’t look at Wilbur without seeing the empty flat, that blinking voicemail icon. Days when he’s cold and sharp-tongued and drinks too much and smiles too little and Wilbur takes it all, guilt in his smile, apology in every touch. There are days where Wilbur seems stressed to be back—having to deal with his bandmates and paperwork and other legalities and stuff. There are days where they fight, with their mouths and their hearts and it ends with them crying on the cold floor the same way they did all those weeks ago. There are days when Wilbur flinches from nightmares and Tommy sits beside him in the dark, torn between wanting to hold him and wanting to hit him. There are days when Tommy panics and nearly calls the police when Wilbur doesn’t come back from the grocery store fast enough.
But there are good days, too.
Days when laughter fills their kitchen like fresh air. When Wilbur hums in the shower, and Tommy rolls his eyes but listens at the door anyway. Days when they take photos together—Tommy behind the lens, Wilbur pretending not to pose—and they make dinner that burns at the edges but tastes like home. Days when Wilbur drapes his arm around Tommy’s shoulders and the ache of the past hums quietly, but no longer bleeds.
And there are all sorts of in-between days.
Blue days, slow and heavy, when they barely speak but sit close enough that their elbows touch. Orange days, crackling and restless, when they talk for hours about nothing and everything. Yellow days, bright and dizzy, when Wilbur’s laughter feels like summer and Tommy’s smile finally reaches his eyes.
Through them all, they remain. Tommy and Wilbur. Limbs close, hearts closer. They try, and they try, and somehow, it’s enough.
No one knows that Tommy Innit and Wilbur Soot are brothers.
And maybe that’s for the best—because no one would ever believe that love this tangled, this ruined, this enduring, could still find a way to bloom.