Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A collection of one-shots usually originating from my twt. If these are inspired by anything in particular I'll link it, if you enjoy I'd recommend follow me on twt. smile emoji.

(O_<)

Chapter Text

It's your first date with a man you had met a couple weeks ago, Argbur. He's a tall man with chestnut hair who plays guitar and thinks that's a personality trait. Despite his incessant pretentiousness, you take up on his offer to go out together, he tells you he knows a place that you might like.

At your destination, you find yourself stood in the middle of a dark, genuinely freezing forest, but Argbur silently offers you his coat and the gesture is so kind that you rethink your hesitance, sitting down on one of the two damp tree-stumps that your date has seemingly found in preparation for this specific event. You think it's sweet, you've always had a pension for nature and the forest felt somewhat romantic if you disregarded the plenty bugs and likely chance of rabid foxes.

You look at each other once you're sat down, Argbur is biting his nails - a habit you had grown used to seeing on him - and you flash him an awkward smile. It starts to seem that he had no plan for this date until he reaches behind his back, and for a second, for a reason you do not know, you feel unsafe, as if he was about to pull a weapon or tool from behind him, a gut feeling that something bad is brewing. However, Argbur does not hold any of these things, but rather a beige guitar decorated with scratches and chips as well as a half-snapped E-String.

He places the instrument in his lap, nervously snapping his neck up towards you to make sure you're not disinterested, gifting you dry but attentive chuckles every few seconds, seemingly to fill in the awkward silence. When he finally grips the guitar without fumbling and fretting, he takes a deep breath - likely for confidence - and lucky, it's already tuned.

You carefully watch as his porcelain, slender fingers fiddle with the strings, a crease forming in the space between his eyebrows, and his bottom lip catching between his lips, gnawing on it as a substitute for feasting on his fingernails. As the melody progresses, you figure it's an original song. The opening is gentle and beautiful, almost resembling the theme tune to a delightful fairytale from your childhood.

Chapter Text

You're sat in your cluttered bedroom warming up on your kazoo skills, the hunk of shiny silver metal rested upon your soft lips is occasionally replaced by a pre-rolled cigarette. Today is the day of your boyfriend's arrival from his month-long tour, he had been texting you nonstop the evening prior to remind you of how excited he was to return to your homely arms.

He even jokes about how much he had been cheating on you while he was away, commenting that he plans on staying. To this, you scoff. You understand the possibility of him cheating would be valid with any other man, but Wilbur was yours, and you were his. It was a fact known by the universe and the soil beneath your feet that you were meant to be together.

Just as you're about to take another puff of your cig, an annoyingly clamorous ringing sound echoes around your flat, at first, you grunt before standing up to answer the door, but begin to sprint towards your door as you realize the man at your door is Wilbur. You had been so preoccupied with your musical abilities that the time had completely slipped your mind, Wilbur had texted you letting you know he would be over to yours at approximately 6:30PM.

With a grin plastered across your face, you grasp the door handle and swing open the hinges to meet the face of your beloved. He is grinning almost as sweetly as you, but his eyes are underlined by deep, purple bags, and his eyebrows are almost permanently knitted together in a frustrated-frown type of expression. You pout at the crease above his nose bridge but decide to put your worries aside for a second, pulling the significantly taller man into a brutally tight hug. He grunts and then giggles, his throat sounding sore and overworked as he hums into your hair, hugging you back.

After a couple minutes of awkward yet comforting silence, you pull away and flash Wilbur a toothy smile, grabbing his bags for him and skipping into your apartment. He follows suit behind you, closing the door and immediately slumping off to the living room, dumping his lanky frame on the sofa and closing his eyes, grunting a sensual noise straight from the back of his throat.

With his lanky arms above his head, he stretches and his white t-shirt rides up ever so slightly, giving you a tempting glimpse of his lower abdomen. You quietly strut over to his spot on the couch, sitting down in the space beside him and pulling his head into your lap, at this he hums contently and smirks, putting his feet up on the seat and his hand on your thigh. Combing his curly brunette locks between your fingers, you ask him how his exhausting day has been, and if travelling has been treating him nicely. Wilbur tells you about how the airport food was trash, how the band were getting along, how much he hated packing and unpacking his bags, but you're not really listening, just humming and nodding along.

As he's speaking, Wilbur pulls a tin from his jeans pocket and hands you a joint, you smirk and kiss him a 'thank you'. You both light up with a white lighter and smoke in a bittersweet silence, marinating in the smoke as if you are both amongst your own shared forcefield, completely shut off from the rest of the world. Just the pair of you.

You trace his facial features with an index finger, paying attention to every little crease of his eye when he smirks at the sweet parts of his story, and every dimple in his cheeks when he grimaces at the grotty parts of his travel. He knows you're not really taking in his words, and eventually just dies down to humming parts of the band's most recent release; I'll look good when I'm sober. Grinning at his vocal ability while literally half asleep, you smile to yourself, leaning back onto the couch while cradling Wilbur's head in your lap like a cat, petting his hair and scratching behind his ears.

After 45 minutes of this position, Wilbur's humming dies down and is replaced with a low and quiet snore. It's quite odd, you feel the vibrations of his snores move through your flesh and dance amongst your bones, a strangely intimate feeling, like a lullaby slowly coercing you into a deep, comforting slumber. Drifting off to sleep, you let your hand rest in your boyfriend's hair, succumbing to the warm embrace of a nap.

Chapter Text

It has been 2 weeks since Niki had ended her childish affair with Wilbur and life has never before been so dull. Quiet. The worst part is that after everything, Wilbur's unconditional love for Niki still sits stubborn in his heart like a fatal kidney stone. She was the greatest woman alive to him at one point, and now his mind doesn't know whether to resent her or yearn after her. The couple had so many shared interests and beliefs that sometimes it felt as if The Lord himself had clipped her wings and sent down his best suited angel as collateral for a doomed future.

No man, woman or living being who came before or after Niki would ever offer Wilbur such raw, unrestricted love. She cherished him like a bird would her own egg and supported him through anything life shamelessly tossed his way. Niki's love resembled a glistening diamond at the bottom of a deep pit of rubble, debris and rocks, whereas Wilbur's love was the type you'd find shimmering beneath a pile of trash in a dim and ominous alleyway, pitifully gnawed on by rabid foxes and diseased raccoons having mistaken it for nutrition rather than what it is - stray trash.

An unbridled rage builds up in Wilbur's bottomless pit of a stomach whenever the thought Niki's new relationship, Jack Manifold, lightly brushes his mind. In all fairness, Manifold was a good man, considered a close friend of Wilbur's. Most of his creations were decent, his mannerisms and morals were decent, even his unconventional appearance was decent in most aspects. Sometimes, he fantasizes about sending death threats to Jack under an anonymous name, being able to watch the slow deuteriation of his acquaintance's mental state, or maybe just threatening him in real life by catapulting rocks into his apartment windows or leaving an envelope of dogshit on his doorstep, something petty yet significant. Wilbur despises everything about Jack; his voice, his hobbies, his work, the way he walks, the way he talks, the way he flashes Niki oh so many hopeful glances from across a room, everything sent him utterly maddened.

However, above all competition, Wilbur hates himself. For his actions, the air he breathes, the waste he makes. In the eyes of most who know him, everything to ever come from the scummy hands of William Gold has been, and forever will be, a complete fucking disaster.

He's never kept a woman around for long enough to consider her a solid figure in his turbulently silent life, they usually find the slim chance to escape around the time he settles down and begins to show his true colours. Dumping all of his problems onto their shoulders, the women in Wilbur's life would grow used to cleaning up after him, coddling him when they manage to catch a break from the manual labour enforced by a man-child.

Awake deep into the night, not a wink of sleep considered, Wilbur lays in his trash-cluttered bed with a sickening pit in his stomach. Phone in hand, he willingly witnesses every wonderful thing that's entered Niki's life wrapped in a pink ribbon since he left, every small victory he never got to celebrate alongside her, every little milestone he'll never be able to congratulate her for. He watches how her life quality increasingly changes with him gone, she meets new people almost every day and seemingly never stops growing closer to her beloved Jack. Niki posts a picture of her and Jack together, they're huddled up against a headboard, the headboard of the same bed in which Wilbur had held Niki in his arms and recounted to her his grievances and adorations. The woman he had once considered his own, now moved on and seemingly happier. It makes him sick with envy.

On a Monday morning, Wilbur stares off into the distance sat in the lone chair in his cold, barren kitchen, his mind numb as a lobotomy victim as he simply contemplates revisiting his romance with Niki. It reminds him of the mornings in which she would plant a warm kiss on his left cheek and hand him an even warmer cup of coffee.

On a Wednesday night, Wilbur drowns his blood and stomach in vodka, standing across the street from Niki's new home, he glares into a window he *thinks* he can spot his ex-lover and her new bachelor chattering away in. He doesn't do anything, not physically.

On a Friday evening, around lunchtime, Wilbur mounts a pile of unwashed women's clothes on his bed, vigorously rubbing himself against Niki's old clothes. The bras, underwear and shirts reek of her old perfume and mould, both smells the man cannot bare to let go of.

On a Saturday night, Wilbur visits a nightclub known for being populated by younger women and gay men. In this club, he manages to sneak past the bouncer and attempts to blend in with the crowd of ravers, the only completely still person amongst a sea of ecstatic teens. It reminds him of Niki's endearingly youthful innocence, the only difference between the pair.

On a Sunday, Wilbur fiddles with the guitar strings between his slender, blistered fingers. He makes up melodies and lyrics to somehow make sense of everything he feels. Chord after chord, strum after pluck, Wilbur finds nothing. No sensical verse can sum up his feelings.

Wilbur's loved ones die, cut him off, fade away, or simply just lose interest; this is an idea that terrifies him. Anyone can leave him at any moment, so he figures, why bother? If one day, you can have the world, and the next, be kicked to the mud, why get back up in the first place? Everything is set in stone, the future is inevitable, after all. Niki was never meant to love him forever, his heart was never meant to belong to her, or anyone for that matter, and one day this will all happen again.

William Gold's heart will never fail to leave him clueless, no matter how many miserable songs he writes.

Chapter Text

Nervously prancing towards the turntable stand, Wilbur erratically hums and dances with his lips pressed into a neat yet crazed smirk before unveiling the record he'd delicately and thoughtfully plucked from his collection of many, Tommy couldn't however catch a glimpse of the cover due to the angle at which he had been so strategically placed. Almost like a prized possession, if you will, a decorative doll behind a protective window of glass.

A firm belt of leather across his chest, thin shins tied together like two succulent legs of lamb and even thinner arms bound thoughtfully just above the small of his back, making for a somewhat comfortable sitting position, young Tommy is on a surgery table of sorts, his capturer, slash - best friend, had endured quite the fuss to bare while wrestling the boy onto the surface, he recalls through a fuzzy haze thrashing and struggling against painfully bony arms, hopelessly kicking his trembling legs against Wilbur's lanky, well-dressed frame to no avail - the older man was seemingly much stronger than his sickly thin appearance displayed.
The second a pair of slender fingers drop the needle on the record, the gentle plucking of a harp emerges from the speakers, seemingly soothing the man into a trance-like state.

Wilbur turns on the heel of his beautifully polished shoe and meets the panicked gaze of his subject, raising a pair of chestnut eyebrows affirmatively, a gunshot into the air, as if to confirm the beginning of a rigged game, an affair the teen would almost definitely dread.

The Swan, Carnival of the Animals, a piece Wilbur had held near and dear to his picky heart for as long as he could remember, his feet knew every miniscule movement to make to match up perfectly with every pluck of a harp, every note of a piano, every painful drag of a violin.

Despite Wilbur's obviously blissful state, Tommy had never felt so panicked in his life. He had attempted to scream, truly, his throat clear as an ashtray following every yell and cry. However, Wilbur made a point of letting the boy know rather calmly that the room had been soundproofed, that nobody would even *bother* saving him lest they had a death wish of their own, that no being with half a mind would care so much for a boy like him; scrawny, talentless, leaching off of the fortune of those so, so far above him.

These words hit like daggers, daggers coated in a miserable elixir designed to make Tommy feel as if he were possibly the greatest fool of all time. Wilbur meant a lot to Tommy, if anything, the receiver of such admiration was bound to know it more than the perpetrator himself. Humans weren't crafted to receive constant praise, Wilbur knew this as a fact, but he couldn't help but surrender to the feeling of euphoria at every hopeful glace his teenage companion shot his way in response to the most mediocre of acts.

A murderously clean porcelain plate clatters down beside the restrained teen, holding a collection of surgical instruments delicately lined up seemingly in order of sharpest to dullest. Glistening below a flickering yet blinding overhead lamp, a scalpel stares back at Tommy in a dauntingly beautiful manner, every precise edge of the tool designed to dissect the most intricate of subjects.

Wilbur finally struts towards Tommy's dedicated spot and slides him a quick, superficial smile. "This won't take too long, just relax and sit still." His voice is laced with a hint of trickery and malicious intent, leaving the teen twice as frightened, and not, in fact, relaxing. A worryingly bony hand reaches down to grasp a felt-tip pen from his white lab coat, popping the cap off and bringing it up to Tommy's stomach to mark his work.

He gestures for Tommy to take the item of clothing off and once he does, Wilbur snatches the shirt with a gloved hand and tosses it carelessly to the floor. Once a strict line is drawn out along the lower left abdomen, a navy blue tattoo marking Wilbur's work, Wilbur picks up a teasing needle and a scalpel, one in each hand. Tommy looks up at the man with eyes fearful enough to bring the devil guilt, his eyes glossy with anticipation and his knee bouncing anxiously is merely stopped by a large hand resting upon it, an attempt to calm the soon-to-be-butchered boy.

Placing the pointed end of a tool against soft skin, slight pressure is applied as its teasingly dragged along the ink marking, pain soaring levels as the blade reaches deeper and deeper into the patch of flesh. Tommy arches his neck in agony, his eyes crossing as pure ache and sting dance along his nerves and straight to his brain.

Wilbur's pupils dilate at the sight of dark crimson seeping from the slit, his hands restless and shaky with eagerness to send the blade so deep it disappears, but he manages to somewhat keep composure, humming along to the melody of the classical record buzzing on in the background.

Black spots twist and twirl around the teen's vision, his surroundings fading into blurred shapes and the droning sound of Wilbur's sing-song drilling into his mind, almost like a hypnotising siren burying itself within his eardrums. With no way of surrendering, Tommy lets the darkness consume him as static fills his consciousness, Wilbur seemingly not taking notice of his faulter as he fiddles with his patient's insides, running intestines along his fingers and tossing a kidney between silicone-coated hands, the same crazed look in his eye never disappears as blood soaks into his every pore.

Chapter Text

"Fuck- shit.. fuck.."  

Such immature swears could only come from none other than a frustrated teen, a teen who just couldn't perfect his musical skills despite his incessant devotion to the topic. Wilbur had been practicing the guitar for a while - 3 years, to be exact - to the surprise of nobody in his family.

The boy had always found comfort in the delicacy of such strategically formed music, his bedroom decorated head to toe with records and posters from artists he saw himself playing beside at some point in the future. He'd spend most of his days, when not in school, fiddling with rusty strings in patterns designed by much better players, berating himself for every tiny detail he fumbles or doesn't hit just right.

Some would call him pretentious for his taste. Wilbur would scoff at his infant brother for not recognising Ella Fitzgerald, and he'd sneer at anyone in his minimal social circle for even mentioning mainstream pop. It's just that nobody gets him, and Wilbur uses these comforting words whenever he feels just a tad out of place. One day, he'll find his people.

Unlike his younger brother, Wilbur never really got the chance to impress those around him with his talents. He'd slit his own throat before playing in front of his peers, well, everyone but Tommy.

Deep into the night, the teen could find himself sat up in bed, restless. He'd gaze out of his window and trace the stars with his imagination. Every single star out there is not particularly special, but they were lucky enough to gain his attention, something Wilbur thought of as honestly greater than anything else.

He had to be something special. If not, who would remember him once the tide washes over him like every other hopeless being is fated to? That couldn't happen to him. Not in a million years. The concept of death was something that graced his mind every waking minute since the demise of his mother. He had thought of her as powerful, before. A radiant, powerful woman with every star in the centre of her palm, the type of person you'd assume indestructible. 

But, evidently, she was not. If she were so weak as to let death end her reign of unconditional love, leaving her middle son hopeless and confused, maybe she was as good as dirt from the beginning, just as good as every other rotten human above soil-

Knock, knock.

Wilbur perked up, but he did not fret, he knew the only person who'd be so brave as to interrupt his nightly lamenting. 

"Wil..?" A small voice could be heard from behind a heavy door, it sounded weak, frail. Pathetic, so so fragile. Wilbur let these thoughts fester in his mind before standing up, trudging over to his door and twisting the perfectly shiny golden knob. He stared down at just who he had imagined would meet his gaze, a messy-haired, grumpy younger brother rubbing his eyes. Tommy looks afraid, and it planted an odd feeling in Wilbur's stomach, a familiar feeling he could never identify, he detested ignorance.

"Thanks.." The taller boy wordlessly gestured towards his bed and the younger obliged, tip-toeing over to the mattress and sitting atop it, his feet not meeting the cold hardwood floors. 

Wilbur leant down towards the side of his bed, his lanky back creaking in the process as he picked up his auburn guitar, twisting it by the neck in his grasp before plopping down on the opposing end of his mattress, facing Tommy with exhausted eyes. 

"What do you want, then?" 

"Umm.. Umm.. Oh! What about that one you played at your birthday?" 

"Alright, then.."

And so the plucking began, Wilbur attempted to hold back his grimace at the terribly loud volume of Tommy's voice at this hour, instead focusing on the melody so certainly picked out by his brother. This sort of arrangement had become a regular routine over the past few months, particularly ever since the boy's Mother had perished. Tommy would find himself sat in Wilbur's bedroom so intently watching him fiddle strings, listening to his deepening voice mumble and hum lyrics he couldn't yet understand.

Usually, Wilbur could not stand the company of his siblings, especially not during the depths of nights in which he found himself pondering abstractions, but to imagine his brother sat alone in his room on such cold nights.. missing the same woman they had both loved so dearly.. it cast upon him a sickening he couldn't understand. It felt like jealousy, only with considerably less envy.

How peculiarly impossible, he thinks, though chooses not to dwell.

The song Wilbur plays is slow, calming. Torna a Surriento, Ernesto De Curtis, a Neapolitan song Wilbur had loved ever since he had heard it as a child. The lyrics weren't sung in any language he spoke, so it consisted purely of hums and scats. Despite the lack of lyrics and over all gloomy sound, Tommy adored it. The small boy swayed and nodded along to the chords, his lips curled up into a smile so genuine Wilbur sometimes even considered lighting up his own face with a similarly satisfied grin. 

A moment so soft, so wholesome, it honestly could've taught both boys a lesson or two about bonding. Obviously, alike everything else good in this world, it had to come to an end somehow.

During a particularly enjoyable segment in Wilbur's song, Tommy finds himself dancing just a tad too energetically, swinging his right arm too far left and smacking a glass of water to the ground.

The object immediately shatters upon impact with the floor, the loud ringing of the demolition echoing across the now-silent room, likely finding it's way upstairs and into their Father's room.

Tommy knows he's absolutely fucked as soon as he turns his gaze towards a now furious Wilbur, his fingers still against his instrument with a particularly terrifying twitch electrifying his eye. Raw fear courses along Tommy's bones, acting on adrenaline and bolting towards the door.

However, he's not fast enough.

Of course he isn't, he's but a boy.

Wilbur tosses aside his guitar and just barely clasps his brother's shoulders, spinning him around and swinging a hefty punch across the boy's jaw, sending him straight to the floor with another loud thud. His lips pursed together angrily, Wilbur gazes down at Tommy with a look only deserved by the rotten dregs of society, the look he'd shoot a particularly scruffy child at school, or a hopelessly unfortunate homeless individual rotting outside his favourite shop.

His vision clouded with anger, Wilbur seems to black out, rage sending him for an anger-fuelled rampage, the only sound gracing his ears being the pitiful sound of childlike cries for his forgiveness. 

"Oh, Wilbur. When will you learn to manage that temper of yours?"

A motherly voice whispers to him, a message - not at all, but rather - a taunt.