Reminiscing All Those Happy Endings

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HEADCANON — wonder

REQUESTED BY: anonymous

AUTHOR’S NOTE: hanahaki is def my favorite trope thats out there i think. i changed the title from i wish i could live without you to wonder because i found the latter to be more fitting. tbh this is a mess im so sorry

WILBUR ;

wilbur had lost his mind some time ago. he never bothered to hide his slowly crumbling mental health, but it came across in his shattered mind as if no one else cared except you. (never-mind how tommy pleaded and cried and begged for him to come back to who he used to be, giving up his youth for this because he wanted it. never-mind how fundy was ashamed of who he was becoming — out of his head, out of his life. never-mind how niki gave him everything she had, her trust and faith in him as her friend broken. wilbur would secretly find the whole ordeal quite aesthetically pleasing if he were removed from it.)

wilbur found peace out of the pieces (bridges breaking, drifting further, lost hope, lost courage, he faded to gold — worse, to shadow). even if just for a few minutes. being around you made him feel sane again. your smile became his most precious treasure and a thing he silently vowed to protect. you made his life a beautiful array of tenderness and memories.

it takes him some time to realize that he’s in love (what even is love, he wonders). when he does, he buries his feelings deep in the back of his subconscious. he has a mission to fill, destiny to follow — his unfinished symphony.

no matter how much he wants to be with you, he can’t.

wilbur essentially brings the hanahaki disease upon himself (“i’m addicted to hurting,” he swore up and down to himself in his lonesome, drowning in liquor and apathy, cigarette smoke filling his lungs — soon to be replaced by the elegance of petals and love, such bittersweet, cruel, unforgiving love. love will be the death of him). it wasn’t long before he sputtered a fist-full of pink flowers, their beauty tainted with spit and crimson blood. over and over, he threw up the bright flowers from deep within his chest. (oleander, his brain numbly supplied through the lack of oxygen.) he wasn’t an expert on botany, but a few perusing in the library told him that not only did the oleander flower represent destiny and understanding, but everlasting love is attached to the meeting. such a funny thing, fate is — what a lovely, toxic-upon-consumption, flower that crowded his burning lungs with its spreading stems, taking up space he needed to breathe. wilbur nearly laughed. fate found pleasure in seeing him suffer.

“you have it, too?” you said after stumbling upon wilbur, his hands clutching at the rim of a toilet, pink, blood-soaked petals clinging to his lips (go away, go away, go away, go away —) “hanahaki?”

his heart tore for various reasons that day. after learning that you were indeed coughing up flowers, too (he interrogated you enough to learn that you were coughing up marigold flowers), the pair suffered together in silence. you refused to tell him who your unrequited love was for, and vice-versa.

“how would it feel like?” wilbur mumbled by your side one day. your brows furrowed together as he met your vague stare, squinting as if trying to decipher what havoc was churning in his mind. he cleared his throat, voice seemingly aloof as he clarified: “to fall in love.”

you scoffed. guiding a finger to the center of his chest, nose wrinkled up as the corners of your lips jerked downward, you uttered, “you’re already in love. if you’ve forgotten, please be my guest to try to breathe properly.” protesting, he inhaled deeply before the tightness in his chest strangled his lungs, twisting around the base of his neck and squeezing. the frantic urge to cough itched in the back of his throat. he struggled to hold it down, clearing his throat, only for the familiar irritation of what sprouted in his lungs to prompt his body to fall forward, erupting into violent, dry heaving. “catch your breath.” chummy, placid, ribs at wilbur. (how can he catch his breath when all he’s breathing for is you?)

“am i in love?” he quietly hummed, dread sinking into his stomach, unwilling to dissolve as he wiped away the pink petals that lingered on his lips, “or am i trying to fill my gaps with heartbeats?”

wilbur found love to be a rather fickle thing. he wondered how it would feel like, looking to everyone for answers as he chased around and down in circles in search of something he couldn’t comprehend. missing pieces (sally, my darling, please return what you took with you when you left) stopped him — from trying to learn somehow, from living life like he feels he could’ve, or should’ve, when he was young, and time and hope was all they had. even after losing someone he believed he had loved and even after his lungs suffered from the result of unrequited love, he still doesn’t know how to feel about it. but he felt as if he was learning, with all that you’ve shown him despite all his attempts to keep holding it down. he wondered how love would feel like, but ever since you’ve been around he finally thinks he has it figured out — what he missed then, he sees now. he knows now, against all his wishes. wilbur knows.

“you’re going to die for love. i’m sure it’s real,” said you, burying your face in your hands with a dreadful groan. yes. it is, wilbur is sure of it now (he is going to die for a love that will never be returned).

living with this flower blooming inside his chest was painful, burning like a kindling ember, but the knowledge that the person he loved would never return his feelings (feelings that no matter how he tried to let go remained in his fragmented heart) was excruciating. the sensation of having to cough flared up in the back of his throat once more. (escape is what he needs — bring him and drown him out, lay him down. end the aching of his fragile heart. unfinished symphony.)

(a long, drawn out pause filled the air as philza curled his hands — calloused from centuries worth of wars and fighting — around the outstretched handle of a sword. his features were pressed into the same distant expression wilbur was so used to him wearing. “do it,” wilbur whispered firmly. the flowers inside of his chest throbbed painfully. he would rather die by his father’s hands than by a concept he had only just begun to fully understand.)

no matter how much he wants to be with you, you weren’t in love with him.