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11:47 PM glared from the dashboard clock, unblinking against the dark, like it was judging him for still being awake, still being here. Somewhere ahead of them — hours, maybe minutes, maybe a lifetime — the raleigh sunrise would crawl up over the horizon and pretend everything was fine. Right now, though, to Wilbur the sun felt more like a hypothetical.
The road stretched on, mostly empty, a long ribbon of asphalt swallowed whole by night. Streetlights drifted past overhead in slow intervals, each one briefly illuminating the windshield before blinking out behind them, tired stars giving up one by one. The pavement was still damp from earlier rain, reflecting light in smeared golds and whites, and the car’s tires whispered through it steadily, soothing; one could say.
Wilbur drove because he’d said he wanted to. His hands were steady on the wheel, knuckles pale under the dash lights, grip just a little tighter than necessary. He was sitting like he was bracing for impact even though the road ahead was clear. Every now and then, a faint wave of nausea rolled low in his stomach. A reminder to him that his body knew something his brain was still trying very hard to ignore.
Phil — Dad — sat in the passenger seat with the window cracked open, letting the cold night air pour in. It smelled like rain-soaked concrete and something faintly salty, it reminded him of the ocean and how long he hasn’t been. He remembered the rain from earlier, how it had soaked through his shoes on the walk home from his last classes of the day.
A plastic convenience store bag rested on Phil’s lap, crinkling softly whenever the car hit a bump. Batteries, technically. And donuts. Tommy had looked at them like the world would end if they didn’t come back with donuts. The smell of fried dough and sugar clung to the car was a small and warm mercy.
Wilbur had offered to come along without really thinking about it. Or maybe he had thought about it too much. One last excuse to be out late. It felt symbolic in a way he refused to unpack, as if when he acknowledged it, it would mean something — and Wilbur was very good at pretending things didn’t mean anything at all.
Graduation hovered at the edges of his thoughts, a constant pressure behind his eyes. College prep, moving out, being expected to know who he was supposed to be. Endings stacked on top of endings. Though Techno pretended he didn’t care, of course — his twin had always been better at acting unaffected — but Wilbur knew better. He is as human as him, he hopes.
Wilbur kept his eyes on the road. He didn’t let them drift to the clock again, or to the reflection of his own face in the windshield, pale and half-lit and looking a little too thoughtful for comfort. He would keep moving. He would never lose sight of it, the road unspooling ahead of him, a promise he hadn’t decided whether or not to believe in.
Somewhere behind them, people were tucked into beds, alarm clocks already set, lives paused only until morning. It struck him, not for the first time, how small and self-contained it all was. How everyone was the center of their own quiet universe, dreaming through the same night he was driving through.
He knew the shape of this town better than he knew most people. The burger van on the corner near the old tree, where he’d been a regular to the point that the guy running it stopped asking for his order. The bar off Main Street with the sticky floors, where he and his friends had flashed fake IDs with hands that barely shook and laughed too loudly once they were inside, giddy with the thrill of getting away with it. The park bench behind the library where he’d sat through entire afternoons pretending to study while actually watching people pass by.
All of it existed without him now, even though he hadn’t technically left yet, and they will keep existing even if he does. That was the strangest part. The town would keep breathing, keep cycling through its routines, long after he packed his things and drove out for good. Someone else would become a regular at the burger van. Someone else would sneak into that bar, hearts pounding, convinced they were the first ones clever enough to try.
Really, he was just one blip in it all. A momentary flicker in a town that had existed long before he learned its streets and would continue long after he forgot them. In the grand, incomprehensible sprawl of things, his leaving barely registered.
Somewhere out there, at this exact second, someone was dying in a quiet hospital room while someone else took their first, startled breath. A door was being locked for the last time. A light was being switched on. A murder had taken place in some city he’d never visit, and a child had taken their first unsteady steps across a living room floor, greeted by applause that for a second felt like the whole world. Time only moved one way, after all.
He had done things here. He’d stood behind podiums with his heart in his throat and won debate tournaments on the strength of his voice and his ability to sound certain even when he wasn’t. He’d run for student government with carefully printed posters and speeches that mattered very deeply at the time. He’d stayed up too late with friends, sprawled across bedroom floors, laughing about nothing until it became something just because they were together. There were days he’d felt untouchable. There were days he’d gone home and sat in the shower, letting the water run until his fingers wrinkled, wondering how everything had gone wrong so quietly.
He’d loved, in the way you do when you’re young and scared and convinced that wanting something too much might make it disappear. He’d collected regrets like souvenirs — things unsaid, moments mishandled, apologies swallowed back until they curdled.
But it was only high school. Four years in a life that, statistically speaking — or hoped, he had some odd habits that would not guarantee that — would be much longer. You never know. He would meet new people. He would grow up. He would become someone less tightly wound, someone who didn’t feel like every ending was a personal failure. This, too, would pass.
And yet.
“I really wanted him to work out,” Wilbur said.
The words slipped out before he could stop them. He didn’t look at Phil when he said it. His stomach twisted unpleasantly, bile creeping up his throat in a way that had become uncomfortably familiar over the past few days. He hadn’t been feeling well (hadn’t really been for a while). Food tasted wrong, it was too bitter. The thought of eating, the smell of it, settled in him like a stone. A simple stone in his stomach. How dreadful. This wasn’t new. And the feeling itself wasn’t new either.
He remembered vividly when this feeling first came up. He’d been a sophomore then, fifteen and stupid in the specific way that came from being praised too early. Debate’s golden boy. The so-called protégé. He’d worn that name like it made him untouchable. And then Quackity walked in — some freshman, he first thought — and tore him apart in front of everyone.
Objectively, it was fair. Debate was competitive. They were competing. Wilbur knew that. He knew it, even then. But knowing something and feeling it were two entirely different battles.
Maybe it was the shock of finally finding someone who could keep up, a yin to his yang. Maybe it was the lack of sleep the night before, maybe it was his thoughts already fraying at the edges. Or maybe it was the way the sun had poured in through the classroom windows behind Quackity, backlighting him with stupid, treacherous halo.
Wilbur remembered the bile rising in his throat then, too. The way it burned, the way his chest tightened. He remembered the insult he’d vomited out instead, something ugly and meant to wound. He remembered the split second Quackity — god forgive him — looked confused, and how he had shot back after that in response.
And little did they know, that was how they’re going to spend the next three years, Arguments spilled out of the debate room and into the halls, into student council meetings, into anywhere they both existed at the same time. Snide comments. Eye rolls. Too-close standoffs that crackled with something nobody ever named. They became famous for it; two sides of the same coin, locked in orbit, constantly colliding.
But at the end of the day, when the sun had gone and the tide receded, it was Wilbur who lay awake.
Phil didn’t look at him right away. He kept his gaze on the road, on the way the streetlights slid over the windshield in slow, rhythmic bands of light.
“I know, Wil.”
“It’s stupid,” Wilbur said, staring straight ahead. “We never even— I mean, y’know. Nothing really happened. Not officially, anyway.” He swallowed, throat working around the words like they were something solid. “It’s not like there was ever a moment where it made sense.”
Phil hummed softly in acknowledgment,neither agreement nor dismissal.
“I don’t—” Wilbur exhaled through his nose, frustrated, searching for language that refused to cooperate. “All this time, I think I treated him more like a concept than a person.” He frowned faintly. “Like something inevitable. Something… larger than me. I don’t know. I misattributed him to something almost divine.”
Which was unfair, really. Quackity wasn’t divine. He was real. Painfully so. Human in all the ways Wilbur had tried not to look at too closely. He wasn’t just a rival or a constant force to push against; he was a person with a life that stretched far beyond Wilbur’s line of sight. One that would keep going whether Wilbur was part of it or not.
And Wilbur had always known that. On some level, at least. He’d known what they were — and what they weren’t. He’d known it wasn’t what he wanted.
What he wanted had always looked the same, no matter how hard he tried to reshape it. Quackity in all his ridiculous, overwhelming glory. The way he laughed when something actually got him, the soft one, the one that stole the air straight out of Wilbur’s lungs. The idea of seeing that smile and knowing, without question, that he was the reason for it.
He’d imagined giving him stupid, saccharine words he’d never admit to out loud. Writing him songs he’d never have the courage to sing to his face. Dates that weren’t framed as coincidences. Late nights that didn’t end in unresolved tension. Shared earphones. Arguments that burned hot and bright and then dissolved into laughter instead of distance.
God. It sounded so simple when he let himself think about it.
Almost funny, really. A divine comedy. A joke so elaborate he’d managed to convince even himself. Years spent lying, dodging, denying, and playing every role except the honest one. Pretending the hurt was accidental, circumstantial, unavoidable, when he’d been inflicting it on himself the entire time.
“I keep thinking,” he admitted quietly, “maybe if I’d just said something earlier. Or clearer. Or — God — less like a coward. After break, maybe. Or after this, or after I got my shit together.” His mouth twisted, the words piling up too fast to catch. “Maybe—” He cut himself off with a sharp breath. “But it doesn’t matter now.”
Wilbur’s grip loosened on the wheel, just slightly, a small mercy on his body. “He’s gonna be fine,” he said, more to convince himself than anything. “He always is. He’s got friends. He’s got that fire. He’ll do amazing things.” A pause. “I just thought… maybe I’d be part of it.”
His jaw tightened. He blinked hard once, vision blurring at the edges, and fixed his attention even more fiercely on the road ahead, as if it might demand enough focus to keep everything else in place. “I mean— he’s a good person. Actually. He always was.” A humorless huff escaped him. “He was just like that to me ‘cause I’m a piece of shit.”
His voice cracked despite his best efforts, splintering right down the middle. “And maybe that’s better. Maybe if we’d tried, it would’ve ruined it. Or ruined him. Or ruined me.” He swallowed. “I’ve never exactly been good at keeping things intact. People included.”
A rabid dog that didn’t know when to stop biting once it latched on.
“And I didn’t want it to end like that with him,” he whispered. “Didn’t want him to look at me one day and only see… whatever the hell I turn into when I care too much.” His fingers flexed against the steering wheel.
Because Quackity was different. Had always been different. And now, he always would be.
He swallowed, throat tight. “Did I ever tell you? His real name— It’s Alexis,” he added suddenly, the confession almost reverent. “And I’ve never—” His fingers flexed against the steering wheel. “I’ve never called him that. Not once. It’s something I hadn’t earned. I’m not graced with the privilege to do so.”
Quackity — Alexis — deserved the world. Wilbur believed that with an almost religious certainty. Maybe that, too, had been part of the problem. He’d put him on a pedestal so high he’d built the distance himself, brick by careful brick, and then acted surprised when he couldn’t reach him. Convincing himself it was respect when it was really fear. Fear of touching something precious and breaking it. Fear of wanting something he didn’t trust himself to keep.
“He’ll never know me beyond my worst moments,” Wilbur said.
Phil was quiet for a long moment.
“Wil,” he said finally, voice low and even, “you’re being too hard on yourself.” He shifted slightly in his seat, one arm resting against the door. “You always are.”
He glanced over then, just briefly, eyes soft in the dim glow of the dashboard. “You’ve always had this habit of deciding the worst thing about yourself is the only true thing about yourself. Like if you say it first, then no one else can hurt you with it.”
Wilbur didn’t respond.
“I won’t tell you that you didn’t mess up,” Phil continued gently. “You did. We all do. Especially when we’re young and scared and trying to pretend we’re not. But messing up doesn’t make you unlovable.” He glanced over at Wilbur then, just briefly. “You’re just a kid who feels things deeply and hasn’t learned yet how to hold them without hurting himself.”
“Loving someone doesn’t make you dangerous, Wil. It makes you human. Messy, sure. Sometimes thoughtless. Sometimes scared.” His mouth tilted in something like a smile. “God knows I was all of those things when I was your age. And older.”
The lights slid past again, illuminating the lines in Phil’s face — the years, the living, the evidence of mistakes survived. “You didn’t ruin anything by feeling the way you did. And you didn’t protect him by staying silent, either. You just… did what you could with what you had at the time.” He shrugged lightly. “That’s all any of us ever do. And that instinct came from wanting to protect something you cared about.” A pause. “That includes protecting him from yourself, which tells me more about your heart than you think.”
“And as for him,” Phil continued, voice gentle but certain, “he’s not some fragile thing you could’ve broken just by wanting him. You have to give him more credit than that.” A soft huff. “People are sturdier than we think. Including you.”
“You’re right,” Phil said, leaning in his seat and looking at him. “He’s going to be fine. And so are you. This isn’t the only chance you’ll ever get at loving someone, even if it feels like it right now. High school has a way of making every feeling feel like the last one you’ll ever have.” He chuckled softly. “It isn’t.”
Wilbur’s chest ached, full and empty all at once.
“And maybe,” Phil added, quieter, “you don’t get to be part of his next chapter. And he’s not part of yours. That hurts. It’s supposed to. But that doesn’t mean what you felt was wasted. It taught you something about who you are and what you want. About how much you’re capable of caring.” He looked forward again. “One day, you’ll take that and do better with it. I believe that.”
The road blurred just a little. His thoughts drifted, unbidden and familiar, tracing the same well-worn path they always did when he stopped fighting them.
Quackity. Alexis.
The kind of person who walked into a room and bent it subtly around himself without ever trying. Soft brown eyes that caught light like they were hoarding it, sunlight always seeming to linger behind his lashes whenever he laughed near a window. That stupid blue beanie he wore like it was part of him, pulled low, framing a face that was far too expressive for Wilbur’s peace of mind.
His passion. How Quackity cared about everything — debate, student council, arguments, justice, winning, losing, being right, being better. How he burned so brightly it was almost reckless. How he spoke with his whole body, hands flying, voice rising and falling like he was afraid the world might stop listening if he didn’t keep it engaged. How thoughtful he was in the quiet moments, too, when no one was watching; when he remembered details, followed through, noticed things Wilbur pretended not to want noticed.
And the way he smiled. The toothy grin, wide and unguarded, eyes crinkling until they turned into little dumplings, joy compressed into something soft and utterly devastating. The way that smile could light up a room and make Wilbur feel, stupidly, like it was meant just for him. Like if he reached out, just a little, he could catch it in his hands. Quackity had been right there at the tips of his fingers, balanced on the edge of something unnamed and fragile.
Now he would never get him like that again. Never know who Quackity would become next. Never hear the laugh that might’ve belonged to him, never be the person who made it happen. Whatever future waited for Quackity, Wilbur would only ever know it from a distance, as a spectator, if at all.
The car rolled on, carrying them through the dark.
Wilbur nodded once, small.
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess I just… really wanted this one.”