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Not waking up early to pick up Tommy was odd, and left a bitter taste in his mouth. He had as good as promised Tommy that he had a place with them, that they’d keep him safe.
And then Wilbur had… No. Tommy had betrayed him first. Tommy had been the one to hurt him and leave the knife sticking out of his back. So, even as Techno glared at him over his breakfast, Wilbur couldn’t bring himself to regret his actions. Much.
Phil looked up from his coffee. “Wilbur, can you take some files downstairs for me?”
“What? Can’t someone else do that?”
“Sure, if someone else was here. It’s almost like I should hire an assistant to do things like this for me.”
Techno’s glare was bad enough, but Phil’s expression was carefully blank. Somehow, the passive aggressiveness was worse.
He considered refusing—Wilbur did not want to fall into the trap of taking over all the paperwork duties that Tommy had been in charge of—but he couldn’t deal with any more of Phil’s disappointment.
“Okay,” he said quietly.
“Good. They’re over on the coffee table.”
He slipped off his bar stool, walking over to pick them up. “Alright, I’ll be back in a few.”
Neither of them said a word to him on his way out the door.
Wilbur sighed, doing his best to brush it off and head over to the elevator. A sticky note was on the outside of the top file with a room number in Phil’s handwriting. Ugh. Going to the public part of the ground floor was never fun, but especially not at this time of morning—the lobby would be crowded with people coming in for work with loud footsteps and dull conversations, too noisy for his tastes.
In an effort to get out of there as quickly as possible, he simply handed the files to the receptionist—she could find someone to take it the rest of the way—and turned to go back upstairs.
But then, he caught a flash of blond hair that looked like… What?
He made his way over with a few quick strides. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Tommy beamed at him, massive sunglasses on his face. “Wilbur! So great to see you! Absolutely crazy running into each other here.”
Wilbur wasn’t putting up with that. Not today. “Tommy, why are you here?”
He took a long, obnoxious slurp from the drink he was holding before answering. “I work here. Duh.”
“No, you don’t. Let me be very clear that you were fired.”
Tommy’s grin stretched, causing a pool of dread to form in Wilbur’s gut. “Oh? Haven’t you heard?”
“Tommy!” Wilbur turned his head to find Sam waving at them. “How was your transit?”
“Big S! Same as always, you know how it is.”
There was something there that Wilbur wasn’t getting. “What’s going on?”
Sam threw an arm across Tommy’s shoulders. “Well, with Tommy no longer working for you guys, that means he’s free to come work in the lab with me full time! I suppose I should thank you for that.”
“Yeah, thanks Wil.”
The two of them stared at him like twin sharks.
“Well,” Sam said. “We’ve got a busy day ahead of us. Good talking to ya!”
For once in his life, Wilbur was speechless as the two of them walked off, Tommy briefly looking back to stick his tongue out.
That was…
He shook himself out of it, going to jab his finger to call the elevator once more. There was no way Phil didn’t know exactly what he was doing when he sent him down. Back on their residential floor, he brusquely opened the door, Phil and Techno still at their same spots.
“You knew about this?” he asked incredulously.
Phil slowly sipped his coffee, maintaining eye contact in a manner entirely too reminiscent of Tommy. “Knew about what?”
“Tommy.”
“Oh, Tommy!” Phil smiled. “It’s lucky that he was able to find another job so quickly, don’t you think?”
“Mm. Lucky,” Techno agreed in complete deadpan.
Wilbur almost felt like he couldn’t breathe, not knowing how to respond to that. Tommy was like a raw wound in his chest, and they… “I’m calling in sick today. I need to go lie down.”
He sped to his room, closing the door behind him and resting his forehead against the cool wood.
His feelings about Tommy were complicated; it wasn’t like you could just stop caring about someone just because you fell out. But this was more than that. This was Tommy lying to them for months about the one thing that he knew would hurt Wilbur.
Of course, some part of him was soothed that Tommy had a good job with people they trusted. That was the part of him that could never care what mistakes Tommy made or what he did because Tommy was his little brother in everything but name.
Most of him was angry though. Most of him hadn’t cared about Tommy’s tears when Wilbur yelled at him to get out, or when he threatened to leak Tommy’s identity if Phil wouldn’t fire him and Tommy wouldn’t quit.
And every time Wilbur started to think that maybe he had overreacted, he would see XD in his mind, reaching his hand toward Wilbur, young and vulnerable. Except, when he spoke, it was with Tommy’s voice.
So yeah. It was easier to just avoid the problem.
——
The LED clock next to his bed told him it was just about lunch time. Wilbur wasn’t exactly looking forward to it with how Phil and Techno were acting, but he had skipped breakfast and could feel his stomach gurgling.
Bleary eyed, he left his room to pad over to the kitchen, only to freeze because Tommy was in his seat for some god awful reason.
“Something wrong, Wilbur?” he called cheerfully.
“Phil. Phil, why is he here?”
“Oh, come on, Wil. You know Tommy’s practically part of the family! It’d be rude not to invite him up for lunch.”
Wilbur felt himself wither under the combined stares of all three of them, and… (he’s pinned down and XD’s standing over him…)
Fuck, he couldn’t do this.
He hurried back to his room. It felt like running away, but he didn’t care, more preoccupied with how his fingers jittered, and pressing his pillow over his head to block the world out.
It was a long minute before he heard his door open, a weight coming to sit next to him on the bed. The pillow was taken away, and gentle fingers started to comb through his hair.
“I love you. You know that?” Phil murmured.
Wilbur rolled over to look at him. “Yeah. I do.”
“And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t protect you back then.”
He sat up. “We’ve been over that, Phil. It’s not your fault.”
Phil hummed, not agreeing or disagreeing. “What happened was… horrible, and I’d do anything to change it. But you’ve held onto your anger for so long, Wil. And there are vigilantes out there that do good work. That help people.” Phil brushed a thumb across Wilbur’s cheek. “They don’t deserve your anger. And neither does Tommy.”
“He lied to us, Phil.” He needed Phil to understand, to tell him that his feelings were valid.
“I know. You don’t have to forgive him if you don’t want to, but you do have to accept that he’s still a part of our lives, okay?”
Wilbur didn’t want to. He had bared his soul to Tommy, trusted him with things only a handful of people knew. And Tommy… Tommy had listened to him talk about vigilantes and how they had hurt him with a straight face, as if he wasn’t one of the people Wilbur was talking about.
And Wilbur wasn’t dumb. He understood why Tommy had kept it a secret (to protect himself from you, a voice in his head whispered), but it hurt all the same.
“It doesn’t feel like I have much of a choice here.”
Phil leaned over to press a kiss to his temple. “You don’t. And I’ll try to get Tommy and Techno to tone it down, but they’re angry too right now.”
It felt backwards that Tommy had any right to be angry in this situation, but he knew arguing wouldn’t help. “Okay.”
“Good.” He stood up. “You can stay in here for the rest of the day, but you have to come out tomorrow. And eat something too.” Phil nodded to the nightstand, which Wilbur only now realized Phil had set a plate on.
“Thanks, Phil.”
Phil gave him one last smile before leaving him alone.
Wilbur grabbed the plate, and couldn’t help the huff of laughter that came when he saw the familiar bear-shaped outline cut into his sandwich, leaving him with mostly crust. He wouldn’t hesitate to bet that Tommy was in possession of the missing bear.
It should irritate him, looking at the scraps he’d been given, but he just felt fond instead.
Somehow, his own reaction annoyed him more than the actual food.
——
By the luck of god, Wilbur didn’t have to see him the next day until Tommy came up for lunch. He’d had enough time that he could deal with it—had even managed to straighten himself out enough to do actual work—but this?
Tommy was covered in blue—fingerprints littered his face, his hands were nearly completely inked, and, most mortifying, there were several kiss marks across his forehead, and even one on his nose.
“Ghostbur,” he seethed. That stupid ghost.
“Oh, sorry, Wil.” Tommy grinned, completely unapologetically. “This may make things awkward for you, but Ghostbur and I are still tight.”
“But he’s me,” Wilbur stressed. “Why is he doing that?”
“He says he recognizes you made a decision, but he thinks it’s stupid, so he’s ignoring it.”
Wilbur didn’t want to read into that even though Ghostbur was supposed to be his subconsciousness. If Ghostbur could ignore him, then he could ignore Ghostbur too.
“This changes nothing.”
Something flashed across Tommy’s face, too quickly for Wilbur to fully clock. “Wouldn’t expect it to.”
“Hey, you ready to go?” Techno walked into the room.
Wilbur furrowed his brow. “What? Where are you going?”
Tommy pulls a few slips of paper from his pocket waving them around. “To see a movie, then lunch after. We’re taking a half day.”
“Without me?” Wilbur directed at Techno, slightly hurt.
Tommy loudly ripped one of the tickets, letting its halves fall to the floor, and then held up the three that were left. “Sorry, only three tickets.”
He stared at Techno. “Really?”
Techno shrugged. “Like he said, three tickets.”
Wilbur felt like screaming. It wasn’t like he wanted to go, because he didn’t, but… There had been a fourth ticket. And Tommy wasn’t the kind of person to waste money like that just to prove a point, which meant that he had…
No. Not thinking about that.
“Coming, Phil?” Tommy shouted.
“Yeah, yeah, hold on,” Phil called back, appearing a few seconds later. He immediately locked in on the shredded paper still lying on the ground, giving one of his disappointed sighs. “Okay then. Wil, we’ll be back in a few hours, okay?”
Wilbur swallowed heavily. “Yeah. Okay.”
Left alone again in their empty living space, his appetite was suddenly gone.
——
Wilbur had thought Tommy couldn’t get any more annoying than the pointed jabs he made while he blatantly outsted Wilbur from his own family. Which, fine. Wilbur was a grown adult, he could handle that.
He had been wrong.
Until this point, Wilbur hadn’t actually considered the implications of Tommy working in the lab with Sam, but there was no doubt he had been the one to mess with Wilbur’s suit.
It wasn’t neon or anything, nothing that Wilbur could complain about as being a stealth or safety issue—which was probably deliberate, Tommy’s vigilante experience meant he knew exactly how much of a target bright colors could make you—but the pattern was repulsive. Tommy had covered it with hearts, flowers, and peace signs, all excessively large so there was no way to mistake them, even from a distance.
And Wilbur had patrol in half an hour. He wanted to shrivel up in embarrassment.
There had been a brief hope that he could go ask Sam if he could use one of his old suits, but Sam had shook his head, claiming he didn’t keep them (which was a brazen lie, but Sam was clearly on Tommy’s side even if he didn’t know the specifics as to why they were fighting).
So. This was the way they were playing it.
He decided to deviate from his normal route to head over to the fourteenth district, and, sure enough, it wasn’t long before he was able to spot the glow of Theseus’s magic. He headed over to the roof of the building it came from, sighing when he noticed Techno’s red cape.
Both of them immediately burst into laughter upon seeing him, Techno wheezing in a way he didn’t often. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks, I know,” he said dryly before looking at Tommy. “Fix this.”
Tommy made an exaggerated ‘ who, me?’ pantomime.
“Yes. You. Tommy, the gremlin that did this.”
He rapidly signed at Techno for a few seconds.
Techno shrugged. “Sorry, this isn’t Tommy. This is my good friend Theseus.”
Wilbur felt drained. “You’re really doing this?”
Techno watched Tommy sign again. “Yeah, we have no idea what you’re talking about. Also, Theseus wants me to let you know that you look like a dumb bitch.”
“I… Okay. I can see this isn’t going anywhere.”
“And, for some reason, neither are you. Move along now.”
Tommy made shooing motions to back up Techno.
Wilbur returned to the streets he normally patrolled for the rest of his shift. Maybe if he asked nicely tomorrow, Tommy would actually do it. Or Sam would take pity on him. Either way worked.
Except, when Wilbur went into the workshop the next morning, Tommy sucked in air between his teeth. “Sorry, can’t. We’re really backed up right now,” he said, as if Wilbur hadn’t walked in on him spinning around aimlessly in his chair just moments ago.
Wilbur stared at him.
Tommy stared back.
“I am a broken man,” he declared flatly, spinning on his heel and walking away.
He was tired enough, mainly emotionally, to want a nap, but the last time Wilbur had fallen asleep while Tommy was at the tower, he and Ghostbur had snuck into his room to draw on Wilbur’s face. Wilbur could understand Sam and Techno, and even Phil, taking Tommy’s side, but Ghostbur? He had almost a constant headache from how many memories Ghostbur was keeping from him.
But Ghostbur wasn’t the worst part. No, that honor belonged to Dream.
The moment Wilbur walked into any room that both Dream and Tommy were also in (which had started happening far too often to be a coincidence), they became insufferable. It didn’t even make sense—for fuck’s sake, Tommy had punched the guy—but they’d immediately start talking about how ‘brotherly’ their relationship was.
It didn’t bother Wilbur at all. It wasn’t like Tommy was actually his little brother or anything, and it was totally natural to get the instinct to deck Dream’s smug face whenever he saw him.
And, when Dream drove Tommy to work on a day that they knew Wilbur would be in the lobby, the pencil in his hand only snapped because it was poorly made. Because Wilbur didn’t care.
“Everything alright there, Wilbur?” Dream asked smugly.
Wilbur glanced between the two of them, hardening himself mentally. “If you want to claim the world’s most annoying kid as your brother, then be my guest. Maybe he’ll stop spending so much time bugging us then.”
(No, take it back, you don’t mean that.)
The words were bitter on his tongue as he carefully avoided looking at Tommy’s reaction.
——
Wilbur had made his stance on Tommy explicitly clear, but that didn’t stop the outright panic that shot through his veins when Tommy used the panic button for the first time. Tommy was both prideful and capable; he wouldn’t be pressing it if something wasn’t seriously wrong.
It shouldn’t matter that it was Tommy in trouble—being a hero meant saving even the people you didn’t like—but it did. God, it did, because Wilbur didn’t react like this for anyone else. Not even Phil or Techno made him feel this way, and there were a million and one reasons why that could be, but this specific brand of terror was reserved for Tommy, and Tommy alone.
The tracker showed that he wasn’t far away, and Wilbur sprinted as fast as he could, phasing through cars and people alike because dodging would take too much time.
He didn’t feel like a hero right now. He felt weak and slow and why couldn’t his feet move any faster than this?
That was the building. Wilbur skidded to a stop, chest heaving, for no longer than a second before he carefully poked his head through the wall, scanning desperately.
There.
Tommy was surrounded by a handful of people, hands restrained behind his back and a knife pressed to his neck. Tommy, with red eyes and a bruised cheek and no mask. Tommy, clever, observant Tommy who noticed him far sooner than the others.
Tommy, who desperately mouthed, ‘Wilbur, please,’ as if Wilbur would ever even think about leaving him, face scrunched up like he was trying not to cry.
Wilbur’s heart squeezed.
“How close is Blade?” one of them asked, almost bored.
Another checked something on his laptop. “Still a few minutes out; he was on the other side of the city.”
That… made almost too much sense. Theseus was generally known only as a low-level vigilante, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that he was friends with Blade—Techno had been spending a lot more time patrolling with Tommy ever since the secret came out.
But Techno wasn’t the one they had to be worried about.
With a newfound steadiness, Wilbur slipped into his hero mindset. Take care of the hostage first. The man holding Tommy was lax enough that all it took was a quick phase—grab the wrist, knock him out, get the hostage behind him—and he let autopilot take over, spinning through the rest of them with ease.
Wilbur wasn’t the best at hand-to-hand combat—certainly not compared to Techno or Phil—but there was something to be said for the protective rage that overtook him. He barely remembered what happened, only really processing the moment the last one hit the ground, exhaustion the furthest thing from his mind.
His head dipped down, sweat pooled on his neck from his mad sprint as he checked to make sure everyone was going to stay down.
“Wil?”
Wilbur’s eyes snapped up. He waited a breath, then another, and then he was rushing over, sliding the last few feet on his knees and scrabbling for the discarded knife to saw through the rope around Tommy’s wrists.
The moment he broke through the bonds, Tommy threw himself at Wilbur, shaking. “Wil.”
Wilbur clutched back just as tightly. “You’re okay, I’m here, you’re safe, I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he rambled at a low murmur, tucking Tommy into his chest as much as possible. There was a blue mark on Tommy’s forehead just in reach that Wilbur pressed his own kiss into. “I’m here.”
“Fuck, Wilbur.”
“I know, it’s okay.”
Tommy hunched further in. “They—the one with the knife—they had some sort of power blocking enhancement, and I—I couldn’t—” He broke off into sobs.
“You’re okay, I’ve got you,” Wilbur repeated, brushing through Tommy’s hair with his fingers. “You’re okay.”
They held each other like that for several minutes, Wilbur gently shushing the whole time. His heart rate was only just slowing down when the doors were banged open by an imposing figure.
Wilbur relaxed further. “You’re a little late, old man.”
Phil ran over with a sigh of relief, crouching down next to them with a hand on each of their shoulders. “Everyone okay?”
Tommy let out a strangled noise that sounded vaguely positive.
“Yeah.” Wilbur swallowed. “We’re good.”
Techno wasn’t far behind Phil, arriving only a minute or two after without the advantage of wings, and, by that point, Wilbur was fed up enough with this place. Protocol said they’d need to stay to give their statements, but… he honestly couldn’t care less right now.
“Come on, child. Let’s… Let’s go home.” Wilbur waited for Tommy to nod before he tried standing up with the full weight of a teenager. Techno did his best to stabilize, but—”Nope, this isn’t working, Tech picks you up or you walk on your own feet.”
Almost instantly, Tommy dropped his feet down, but stayed pressed against his side. “I’ve missed you,” he mumbled.
Wilbur felt choked. “I’ve missed you too, Toms.”
They piled into the car Techno had haphazardly driven here (leaving the criminals tied up and sending in an anonymous tip to the police, because they could afford to do it the vigilante way just this once), all four somewhat collapsing with faded adrenaline as Phil started the car.
It took a few minutes for anyone to say a word, but then, quietly, “I thought… When I saw you, I thought that maybe you weren’t going to…”
Tommy refused to meet his eyes, and Wilbur realized that his weeks of pent up hurt and anger were just… gone. “I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m so sorry.”
“I thought you hated me.”
Wilbur glanced to the front seat where Phil and Techno were both pointedly pretending not to hear them. He didn’t really want to do this with an audience, but… “Not hated. Never hated. But you hurt me. A lot. And I shouldn’t have lashed out like that, I just… I felt like you took advantage of my trust. And I know that’s silly because I get why you—”
“I’m sorry too,” Tommy interrupted. “Not for all the pranks, because those were actually pretty funny, but I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
“You shouldn’t need to be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong, not really anyways, and—”
“It doesn’t matter. Sometimes, people hurt each other without meaning to. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t apologize.”
“But—”
“Wilbur, just accept the apology so you can start driving me to work again. I hate public transit.”
That startled a laugh out of him. “Sure thing.”
“Good.” Tommy relaxed against him again. “I still think you’re a bitch though.”
Wilbur sighed, hiding his smile in Tommy’s hair. “Wouldn’t expect anything else.” He shifted a bit. “You’ll stay with us tonight, right?” He wasn’t feeling too keen on letting Tommy go.
“You want me to?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Tommy remained attached to him for the rest of the car trip and most of the evening, so it really shouldn’t have been surprising when Tommy softly knocked on his door in the middle of the night.
Wilbur rubbed at his eye with the back of his hand. “You need something?”
“No.” Tommy pushed his way into Wilbur’s room. “I just decided your bed was more comfortable than the couch.” He kept the faux-glare on his face even as he wrapped himself in blankets and curled up on the bed. It was more than slightly adorable.
Wilbur snorted. “Oh, so you wouldn’t mind if I left then?” He put his hand on the doorknob. “Because really, if all you want is the bed, I have lots of important things I could be doing—”
“Just get over here, you prick.”
“Well, since you asked so nicely.” He climbed in next to him, letting Tommy rest his head in his lap.
Tommy hummed as Wilbur scratched lightly at his skull. “I missed you.”
“I know. You said already.”
“Because it’s true. I thought I’d messed everything up. That it was all ruined.”
“It’s not. We’re okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yep. Now go to sleep, gremlin.”
“Not a gremlin,” Tommy mumbled, but closed his eyes anyway.
Wilbur stayed awake as long as he could, staring down at Tommy. It was hard to imagine him as a vigilante when he was like this. Harder still to imagine he was bad. And that was scary—Tommy, running around doing vigilante justice and fighting people and getting hurt.
Wilbur suddenly understood why Techno had started spending so much time patrolling with him if he felt even a fraction of that panic.
He’d be better. Wilbur would be better for Tommy.
It was no surprise when they woke up to find Tommy’s skin once more painted blue.