Archive of Our Own

Decrepit is not a strong enough word to describe the house that Tommy was born and raised in. Maybe if he mashed together the words decrepit, gloomy, strange, and even triggering, Tommy can get close to the feeling that this house invokes. Nope, still not strong enough. Tommy hates this place, he really does.

The shudders are still that terrible shade of barf green. Paint is chipping off the sides of the house; isn't that supposed to be a safety hazard or something? Well, Tommy lived with it for years, and he turned out mostly fine. Okay, maybe not mostly. Somewhat fine. Alive, at the very least.

Tommy walks up the cobbled path to the front door. His suitcase makes a clunking noise against the stones as he yanks it along with him. On the porch itself, Tommy braces one foot against the raised portion of the bottom of the enclosing fence. This gives him a little bit of extra height. That's all he needs to snatch the spare key out from the small hole in the wall where Wilbur stashes things. This dent in the wall had some sort of story behind it that Tommy cannot remember. Now it's quite useful for the keys.

He wrestles with the lock for a couple of seconds. Fucking hell, Tommy does not miss trying to open this thing every day after school. When the door finally swings open, Tommy barges in. He lets down the handle of his suitcase and pushes the offending object off to the side. It wheels right into a vase that holds the remnants of a dead plant.

Tommy brings his hands up to his mouth to holler, "I'm back from uni, you dickhead!"

The moment Wilbur gets up from his bed is marked by a prolonged creak of the floorboards that echoes through the whole house. It lasts a solid ten seconds before finally fading out of existence. Then, one heavy footstep began after another. Each one seemed effortful from the amount of time Wilbur took to complete them. He then came padding down the hall. Due to the lack of light further into the house, Tommy doesn't see his brother's state until they're standing face to face.

Wilbur is like the house. Indescribable due to how fucked up he is. He smells bad, he's dressed in stained pajamas, and he does not look happy to see Tommy. Wilbur is happy; Tommy knows that much from being Wilbur's ward for eight years and his brother for nineteen. He expresses it in odd ways. The fact that he isn't smiling is actually the indicator that he missed Tommy. Wilbur is weird like that.

"Well, bring it in," Wilbur says with his arms outstretched. His tone almost makes it seem like it's a chore, but Tommy still takes the necessary steps forward to wrap his arms tightly around his brother.

Tommy hates Wilbur. He also loves Wilbur. His professor of psychology would call this cognitive dissonance. Maybe if Tommy spoke to Wilbur on the phone more, then he would've done better in that psych class. After all, Wilbur is a textbook case of half those terms Tommy had to memorize.

It would be weird if he didn't love his brother. Contrary to what this house would lead one to believe, Wilbur provided Tommy with a pretty happy teenage life. He fed Tommy and dragged him to the doctors and let him have some freedom but not too much freedom. Tommy is all sorts of messed up, but maybe he would be even more sorts of messed up if Wilbur did a worse job taking care of him.

That might not be saying much, come to think of it.

Regardless, Tommy has looked forward to coming home. Wilbur may be smelly and a big fucking dick but he's Tommy's brother. Tommy pushes past Wilbur into the kitchen, where a basket of cookies sits on the front table.

Tommy turns back to his brother and just stares. Sometimes, he cannot believe this man. He couldn't bother taking a shower but he got up and made Tommy cookies.

"How has uni been, man?"

Tommy gives the obligatory answer – "Good, it's been good." In reality, it's been more than good, but he always gets exhausted answering this question. He's having the fucking time of his life but trying to sum it up in a couple of sentences is like explaining a joke. Sucks all the fun out of it.

Tommy is getting what he needed out of college. Some better friends than the ones he had in high school. A lot of fun parties and other events that make him feel alive. Some time to discover who he is as a person.

There's something bittersweet about being home for the holidays. He's happy to see Wilbur. He’s not so happy with the reminder of just how shitty of a place this was to grow up in. Before college, Tommy lived here all his life. It was their mother's house before she ran off and left it to Wilbur.

Wilbur soon pulls Tommy into a familiar routine. He snatches the cookies and brings them into the living room. Both brothers collapse down on the couch. Wilbur digs the remote out from between the cushions and flicks the television on. "What movie do you want to watch?"

Tommy takes a moment to respond. It's... hard to answer that question. He's not thinking about movies right now. He's thinking about Wilbur.

"Wil?"

His brother snaps toward him. "Yeah?"

"You told me you would clean up after I left for college."

For a moment, Wilbur stares like a deer caught in headlights. Then, his head slowly turns to look around the room. His eyes linger on a stain on the carpet, the blinds that were chewed up from their old cat, and a myriad of other broken things that were never fixed. Tommy knows firsthand how easy it is to forget about the room around him when he's living in it. During high school, he pretty much lived in a pigsty. That room still isn't entirely clean, things were just pushed around so that he could pack up everything he needed for college.

Wilbur made the promise the week before Tommy left. That was the first time Tommy actually sat down and thought about the state he was living in. He realized that things would be different and for once, he had some foresight. He wondered what it would be like returning.

So he asked Wilbur if things could get a little bit better, and Wilbur said yes.

Tommy points that out, and immediately, Wilbur begins trying to claim that things had.

"I cleaned the kitchen a couple of months ago," Wilbur says, taking Tommy by the hand. They backtrack into the kitchen where Wilbur yanks cabinets open. The various utensils inside are marginally more organized than they were before. The table has a little bit less clutter and Wilbur got rid of that nasty bin that practically fused with the rubbish.

Then Wilbur pulls Tommy toward his room. Tommy is already tensed up before Wilbur swings the door open. Tommy still cringes.

The room smells about the exact same as Wilbur does. That's all Tommy has to say about it. He turns away, not able to bear the sight of it.

"Oh come on, that's a little bit better–"

"Have you at least been taking care of yourself?" Tommy asks. "Have you seen the dentist? Gone to the doctors?"

"You know I go to the doctor's way too often."

That is true. Wilbur wants to pathologize every problem except for the ones he actually has.
There was a time when neither this house nor Wilbur was like this. It was before Mum left. She may not have been a great mother, but she could do one thing: stay clean. When she lived here, this house was spotless. The glory of the neighborhood despite the cheap exterior. She could garden and she could decorate.

She groomed her two sons like they were dogs. Tommy has many memories of being sat down in a chair in the kitchen. Mum would take her clippers to his hair and he would rise looking all neat and tidy, just like the home. He had to take a shower each day and he could not go to bed without brushing his teeth or she would wash his mouth out with soap.

Tommy will take Wilbur over her any day. He tries not to think too hard about his childhood. But this psychology class has really awakened some things within him. He can see so much clearer now: there was something really, really messed up about the way that Wilbur handled this house.

"You told me you would fix things." Tommy tries not to sound too angry. He fails.

"I have! I just showed you!"

Tommy waves his hands wildly around the house and lets that speak for itself. Wilbur hangs his head in shame, and the conversation ends there.

Tommy tries to push down his feelings of disgust for the rest of the holidays. They're going to have a good Christmas. They go over to spend it with one of Wilbur's friends and they have a grand old time. Tommy can finally have a glass of wine without Wilbur yelling at him. It's great, and they go back there for New Years. The times between that aren't too bad, either. Tommy and Wilbur play video games and watch movies and go out to play in the snow the one day it actually comes down. Then, Tommy has to pack up to go back to college and he can't say he's too awfully disappointed by that.

He hugs Wilbur goodbye and begins to head down the cobbled path. But Wilbur runs up behind him and places a hand on his wrist.

"I am going to fix this." Wilbur gestures back at the house. "Before summer, It'll all be fixed. A brand new coat of paint and everything. I'll make it a priority."

It's hard to believe Wilbur at this point, but Tommy doesn't want to fight. That's one of the ways he's changed since college; he's no longer so confrontational. He's by no means non -confrontational, but he's not going to pick a fight because somebody looked at him wrong anymore. He's certainly not going to fuck things up with his brother before going away for another six months.

That being said, he does not trust Wilbur. So he doesn't hold out hope as he goes back to uni. Stepping into his dorm room is like a breath of fresh air – it may be cold and cramped, but at least it's not home.

June comes after the blink of an eye. Tommy has taken another semester of psych and he did better this time. He wasn't going to take the extra class, his major has nothing to do with psychology, but he's happy he did. It continues to contextualize his teenage years.

"Fucking hell," Tommy tells his best friend Tubbo as he watches all the other students drive away, off toward the joys of summer. "This place is going to be a ghost town."

"I thought you were going home? You aren’t going to see it," Tubbo says.

Oh. That's right, Tommy is going home. "Shit, I haven't packed my bags."

Tubbo is generous enough to give him a ride to the train station. There, Tommy hugs his friend goodbye. The train ride is an unfortunately long one, so Tommy passes the time with music, mobile games, and a little bit too much rumination. That's another thing that college has done to him. Made him think a whole lot more than he ever expected he would.

Tommy sighs. Earlier, it felt like every little second was crawling along at a snail's pace. Now, he recognizes the towns flying by outside the window. He's nearing home.

It's weird to call it home considering it's been nearly a year since he lived there. It's hard to call uni a home due to how massive it is. He can't share a home with thousands of students, that's just not right. He's going home, because home is where he grew up, not where he wishes he was.

He's being so cynical about this. But he wants to see his brother. He loves Wilbur.

He's just not looking forward to seeing the results of broken promises.

Tommy is completely prepared to walk home once the train rolls into the station. He would've walked right past Wilbur's car if the horn didn't honk obnoxiously. He whips around to see Wilbur's hand waiving from the driver's side window.

When Tommy sits in the car, Wilbur immediately leans over to wrap his arms around Tommy's shoulders. "How've you been?" Wilbur asks immediately. "And don't give me a phony answer, 'aw I've been great Wil,' give me the real deal."

"I've got so many women. I'm drowning in them."

Wilbur laughs and pulls out of the parking lot. He hits play on the cd player and plays the old, obscure indie band Tommy forgot the name of.

The car does not smell revolting. Neither does Wilbur, actually. It's the sort of thing Tommy didn't notice at first because one doesn't tend to notice the absence of something horrible when they step into a space. But taking a look at Wilbur, he definitely does look a little more put together. His hair is fluffy, not greasy. He's wearing jeans instead of joggers.

Maybe Tommy should have put two and two together. But he is not prepared to see the house. He doesn't even recognize it at first.

First off, it's blue. A  nice and bright shade of blue, just like the sky. It was not that color before. Accordingly, none of that blue paint is chipped. Flowers bloom out in front, lining the cobbled path and even poking out between the stones themselves. Wilbur comes around to Tommy's side and opens the door for him like a personal chauffeur. He already has Tommy's suitcase in hand, having grabbed it for him.

Tommy follows his brother up the path into the house. Once he comes inside, it's like his whole world has turned upside down.

Silently, Tommy steps further into the house. Another step. Wilbur is talking, but Tommy cannot hear him. He continues on through the house. Everything's changed. Everything. The walls are a brighter, newer shade of white. For the most part, the furniture is different. The house now smells like artificial air fresheners.

It's in the kitchen that Tommy's mess of emotions solidifies into something solid. He looks around, and the place is conventionally beautiful. It's so much better than the common room kitchen his uni has in the basement of the dorms. Pristine and spacious and nothing like the kitchen that Tommy learned to cook in. Where he burned his hand on the stove, when he nearly set the microwave on fire, and where he learned how much sugar he likes in his tea. Then Tommy sees the refrigerator.

All of his childhood drawings are gone. The fridge itself might even be new, or did it always have an ice dispenser built into it? This prompts the realization that all the walls look so empty because they don't have art on them anymore. Wilbur used to have this godawful abstract art hung up that was apparently painted by a buddy of his from college. It looked like somebody barfed on a canvas. But Wilbur stubbornly refused to take it down.

Tommy thought he was coming home. But this is a completely different house than the one he grew up in.
He turns on his heel. Pushes Wilbur and his big flashy smile out of the way of the hall. Then, Tommy takes off running. He bursts through the front door onto the street. He puts the cobbled path far behind him and shoots off down the sidewalk.

That run lasts about a minute, tops. He gets past one street and down a really long block before he stops, falling to his knees. His skin scrapes against the sidewalk but he could not care less. He heaves in a breath, half because he just ran for much longer than he's used to as the unathletic person he is, and half because he is so fucking angry.

No, Tommy isn't angry, come to think of it. He's furious.

Tommy picks himself up off the ground just in time to wheel around at Wilbur. "That isn't home!"

Wilbur, who's about twenty feet away at this point, stops in his tracks. "What?"

"I wanted to come home!" Tommy stomps forward, forcing Wilbur to stumble back.

"... Tom? What?"

"That looks nothing like it. That..." Tommy runs his fingers through his hair, trying to form words but a pained grunt is all that makes it out. Tommy feels this rage in his gut; a beast that cannot be tamed.
"I did what you said. I tried so hard."

Just like that, the beast backs away with its tail between its legs. The anger may have been strong but it was extremely short-lived. In its place is a hollow feeling and a deep sense of wrongdoing. Wilbur is hurt – that much is clear through his wide eyes and dropped jaw, mouth hanging slightly open. Under Tommy's gaze, Wilbur tries to collect himself, but he seems to be on the verge of tears.

"I'm sorry." It's halfhearted, and it doesn't seem to make Wilbur feel any better. But it allows Tommy to shove down his guilt long enough to walk back to the house, so it's fine.

Inside the house, Tommy grabs his bag and bolts into his room. He shuts the door behind him and waits for about a minute, breathing shallowly. Wilbur does not barge in, nor does he knock. Tentatively, it seems like Tommy is alone. Good. He can't let Wilbur see him right now. He's such a mess, and he's just going to make Wilbur upset because apparently he just exists to piss people off. Tommy has known for ages that he's annoying but he never thinks about why that is. It's because he takes what people are proud of and he mocks it, mercilessly.

But fucking hell, he has not looked around this room yet. Wilbur has definitely been here. It's the least affected room of the house, but there's nothing on the floors anymore. His desk is tidy, for the most part. The door to his closet is shut. It's never been able to shut before, always blocked by a heap of clothes or his dumb little scooter or something like that. His keyboard is actually empty. Historically, it was just another shelf until Tommy actually wanted to play on it, at which point he would knock everything off onto the floor to join the preexisting mess.

It sounds worse than it was. There was nothing rotten in here, at least Tommy doesn't think. He always used the trash can. But now it seems like his problem was a lot larger than he ever realized if this room can actually look like this.

Tommy never enjoyed cleaning his room. Once Mum was gone, he pushed cleaning off until the very last moment, when he had friends coming over or some similar motivation. It's like he's a kid again, sitting in a room this clean.

If Tommy hadn't taken those psych classes, then he would just sit here feeling sorry for himself. He would probably go out and yell at Wilbur again. But after a couple of uncomfortable realizations while sitting in those lectures, he hasn't been able to stop himself from thinking more analytically at times. Tommy, analytical! Who would have thought in a million years that Tommy would turn into an analytical person? But it's true, he's just sitting on his bed asking why .

The irony is not lost on him, nor are Wilbur's intentions. Wilbur just wanted to make him happy by doing what Tommy asked. Tommy apparently doesn't want what he asked for. So what does he want if it is not indeed what he claimed?

It wasn't for Wilbur to live in squalor. That was what offended him most last time – he came back and realized just how bad of a life Wilbur was leading by shutting himself up in this house all day. He didn't want to come home to such a rotten area, but he didn't want Wilbur to live like that either.

Tommy thinks about it more and realizes that he has questions. So after a lot of internal debate, he does leave his room. He pads across the house to knock on Wilbur's door.

"Come in." The words sound awfully reluctant.

Tommy pushes the door open to see Wilbur laying on his bed, oddly stiff. It's as if he doesn't want to mess up his pristine bed covers. He tenses a little bit as Tommy comes closer, sitting down in the chair by the desk.

"How long has it been clean for?"

"Clean? Months, now," Wilbur says. "The paint is only a few weeks old."

"Which paint? On the outside or inside of the house?"

"Inside paint is a few weeks old. The exterior is the first thing I worked on."

"And you did this all by yourself?"

Wilbur shakes his head. "I had help from Phil."

It's impressive. Tommy can't deny that. It doesn't stop the anger and unpleasant something from churning in his gut. This isn't what Wilbur's room is supposed to look like. It's as if Tommy stepped onto that train in one universe and stepped off into another. Who is this Wilbur, actually being productive? What has he done with Tommy's brother?

"Do you not appreciate it?" Wilbur says, sitting up. "Is it not pretty enough for you?"

"It's plenty pretty."

"Then why the hell don't you like it?"

Tommy already said, didn't he? It's because this isn't home. But Wilbur already knows Tommy's reasoning, he's not looking for an answer. He's looking for a fight. Tommy is almost always down for a fight but just this once, he does not give in to Wilbur. He remains silent.

This is against the natural order, that's why. This house is not supposed to be pretty. Mum was always bending over backwards trying to achieve the impossible. She tried so hard to make Wilbur and Tommy into the neat little boys she wished they were. But Tommy was always ready to muck things up, and so was Wilbur. They embraced mud and all things dirty.

She gave up. She couldn't handle it anymore, so she left. Changed her number, her name, and her mind. Nowadays Tommy could not care less. She doesn't want to be a mother so Tommy will not be her son. Wilbur was always her antithesis and Tommy loved that about him. He was the opposite of everything Tommy hated about Mum.

And now he's... asked him to pull himself together, and he has.

Wilbur wasn't supposed to be able to pull himself together.

"It's like Mum's here again," Tommy mutters, not fully intending for Wilbur to hear.

"So you're saying I'm like Mum?"

"Don't put words in my mouth, you wordsmith freak."

Wilbur rolls his eyes. He picks himself up off the bed and immediately sways, as if woozy from the motion. Then he stalks forward and lands a heavy hand on Tommy's shoulder. In another context, it would be friendly. He doesn't know how to describe it right now.

"I did what you asked. Did you want something to be angry about?"

"Kind of, yeah."

"I cannot believe you." Wilbur lets go of Tommy and yanks the door open. He does not slam it, but he might as well have. Regardless, Tommy follows him into the kitchen where Wilbur goes about aggressively making a cup of tea. Most would not think of tea-making as an aggressive act, but back when he lived in this house, Tommy perfected the art of angrily making tea and now Wilbur is trying to copy his artistry. The side-eye he shoots Tommy is a creative addition.

It does make Tommy sigh. It's going to be hard to come back from whatever this is. Still, he can try to apologize to Wilbur or at least calm him down.

... If he can actually figure out why he's so upset in the first place.

The time it takes him to figure things out is about the same amount of time it takes for Wilbur to finish making the tea. It's not a lot of time, but it seems to move at a snail's pace as Tommy loses himself in his own head.

He starts with what he knows. He doesn't like this place. It reminds him of his childhood. Wilbur and clean do not belong in the same sentence; it's like mixing oil and water. The next problem is that he didn't expect this from Wilbur. Wilbur wasn't supposed to be able to clean up. Tommy asked him before to fix things and he didn't. Even back during Tommy's teenage years, yeah Tommy didn't hound Wilbur about the state of the house, but other people did. Phil often told Wilbur that he needed to keep up a certain standard if he didn't want people to ask questions regarding what was going on. The only time the house was remotely clean was the day before Phil made his occasional visits.

Phil is a close friend of Wilbur's from university. A couple of years older than Wilbur and a lot more mature. He's the only friend of Wilbur's that actually sticks around through the periods where Wilbur maintains a constant resting level of dickishness. There are times when Wilbur is a pleasant person and times when he is not. Phil cares, no matter what.

Even when Phil tried to kick Wilbur into gear, he wouldn't. Wilbur didn't fix things up until now. Suddenly, he's gone all out. Tommy never expected him to repaint the interior walls. Did that take him a long time? It must have, he had to move all the furniture out into the middle of the room, if not out of the room entirely. It looks like he repainted every single room.

He's done all of this in the last six months. Tommy expected him to maybe make progress on de-cluttering one room.

If Wilbur could do it now, then couldn't he have done it before? When it would have actually helped? When he could've made things just a little bit better for Tommy?

Lately, Tommy has been thinking about his past. He already knew he had a shitty childhood. Shitty teen years are harder to accept. Wilbur did everything he needed to. He took Tommy to doctor's appointments, forced Tommy to stay relatively on top of schoolwork, and helped Tommy apply to university. But he never made this house a home for Tommy.

And it looks like Tommy could have had that this entire time.

Tommy and Wilbur were one and the same. They were both funny and smart and handsome (in Tommy's case). But they were messes. Emotionally and physically. Everybody has their drawbacks and the Soot brothers' problems were that they were hurricanes. They would come into your life and toss it around. Make a mess of everything you hold dear. Apparently, that isn't true of Wilbur.

So what does that say about Tommy?

Wilbur is almost done with the tea and Tommy is almost there. Wilbur isn't the problem in this scenario, is he? It's Tommy and his impossible expectations.

How does he ever go about apologizing?

He starts like this: he takes the tea Wilbur offers him. He grabs his own sugar from the cabinet instead of making Wilbur get it down for him. And he says, "I'm sorry." He said it before, but hopefully, it sounds a bit better this time considering he actually means it.

"Let's go out and do something," Tommy says, turning to Wilbur with the tea in his hands. "Something fun."

Wilbur waits for a moment, suspicious. "What do you have in mind?"

"I don't know. Whatever catches our fancy."

It's appealing. Some of Tommy's most precious moments are the times that Wilbur took him out for fun activities. They would go bowling or to a theme park or just walking through the fields of some rural area, telling made-up stories. These were around the time that Mum left; some stories from beforehand and some from afterward. As Tommy grew up a bit and started going out with friends instead of his brother, these became less frequent. It's something that Tommy wants to return to, and Wilbur does too.

In all likelihood, Wilbur is still mad. Tommy doesn't know what he feels anymore. He pushed a lot of it under the surface because it doesn't make sense and he just wants to live a bit.

They're going to go out and at some point, Tommy is going to try to find the words to explain that he's not upset. If anything he's proud of Wilbur. He just never imagined he would see the house like that again and honestly, he's a little jealous that Wilbur has himself together.

But he's going to thank Wilbur because he tried. Doesn't matter if it's a little bit late.

The two of them step into the car and speed off toward bigger and better things. Distractions that will turn into stories of a lifetime. Soon they'll forget all about this little spat.

Tommy is so excited to live again.