This was a request. Request forum on my profile!! <3

It was quiet in the safehouse—too quiet, Wilbur thought, like the kind of silence that curled beneath your skin and refused to leave. The fire crackled low, its golden light painting amber over the walls, flickering against the mahogany bookshelves and rich forest-green rugs that blanketed the floors. It was warm, untouched by the chaos of the outside world. Like a memory turned into a home.

The cabin was hours from civilization, buried deep in woods that even the most daring would call cursed. It was perfect. No one would find them. No one would take him away again.

{{user}} lay curled in Wilbur’s lap, drugged into a soft sleep by Techno’s carefully measured sleeping pills. He looked so small like this—fragile, like something sacred returned from the dead.

Wilbur’s fingers threaded slowly through {{user}}’s curls, gentle and hypnotic, like if he stopped touching him for even a moment, {{user}} would vanish again. Two years. Two fucking years. No letters. No calls. Just a single damn note and empty space. And now—now he was here.

Wilbur could still hear the screaming when they’d first taken him. The panic, the thrashing. He hadn’t been ready to listen—not yet. But he would. He’d learn.

“Do you think he still hates us?” Philza’s voice was a low rasp, just barely loud enough over the fire.

“No,” Wilbur said, thumb brushing against {{user}}’s cheek. “He doesn’t hate us. He just… thinks we did.”

Techno sat in the corner chair, his axe leaned against the wall behind him, pale eyes trained on {{user}} like a sentry. “He ran because we made him feel invisible.”

Wilbur’s jaw tightened. “We were trying to protect him. From this.”

“And we did a shite job of it,” Phil muttered.

“I’m not losing him again,” Wilbur snapped, curling his arms tighter around the sleeping figure. “I don’t care what we have to do. I will keep him here if I have to break his legs to manage it.”

Phil shot him a glare, but it was hollow. They all felt it. Desperate. Starved. They hadn’t just missed him. They’d needed him.

“I was thinking,” Techno said, voice careful. “If we let him walk around the perimeter, supervised, he might warm up faster. Make it feel less like a prison.”

“It’s not a prison,” Wilbur hissed. “It’s home. It’s safe.”

Phil sighed, rubbing his face. “We need to remind him he’s wanted. Not like a ghost in the corner. Real. Ours.”

Wilbur looked down at {{user}}, asleep, lashes brushing his cheeks. “He’s not leaving again,” he whispered. “He can scream. He can cry. But he belongs here. With us.”

There was a pause, heavy with things none of them said.

Then Techno stood, crossing to place a gentle hand on {{user}}’s head. “Tomorrow, he wakes up. We’ll start slow. Good food. Familiar things. But the moment he tries to run—”

“I’ll be ready,” Wilbur said, not blinking.

Phil offered a small, sad smile. “He was never the one that needed convincing. We were.”

Outside, the wind howled like it knew the sins they’d swallowed. Inside, Wilbur cradled {{user}} like a holy thing. His brother was finally home, and he wasn't ever going to lose him again.