Disclaimer: All characters and events related to Meet the Robinsons are owned by Williams Joyce and Walt Disney Animated Studios. Currently looking Cover Art commissions.
Warning: This story contains representation of both homosexual and heterosexual pairings, implications of sex between members of opposite and same sex, and infidelity. Please reconsider reading this story if you are sensitive to these types of content.
Testimonials for Here's to You:
Thank you to The Fabulous A.J, Hillary Alex Dishbin, and I. D. Gr for the reviews! Thank you to iRaWRaLOHa, Hillary Alex Dishbin, SkyHighFan, EvanescentDream93, xol225, and JesseJamesSaint for adding to your list of Favorite Stories! I genuinely appreciate all of your support.
More Than You Will Ever Know
Wilbur rested his head on his lover's bare chest, their arms wrapped around each other. The late Sunday morning sun's rays filtered through the glass panel of their apartment's bedroom window, onto the white cotton sheets that draped over them. The dark-haired young man tilted his head up to look at the other twenty-year-old.
"Was I your first time?" Wilbur teased. The sandy-blonde turned away, lying on his right side.
"I wasn't?" Wilbur questioned. He was a little surprised and curious, but not angry.
He wrapped his arms over the boy again, pulling himself close and resting his chin on the blonde's broad, freckled shoulder. "Gabe?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Gabriel mumbled.
"Who was he?" Wilbur asked with a smile, giving a quick kiss on the boy's ear.
"It was a she— You know, I told you I didn't want to talk about it…"
"A she?" the twenty-year-old exclaimed, his smile widening. "When did you?"
"When we were seventeen," Gabriel mumbled again. He wished Wilbur would stop asking questions. He knew he was landing himself deep enough.
"Seventeen?" the dark-haired boy blurted. "Oh my god, Gabe! Who was she?"
"Uh… H-her name," Gabriel swallowed. "Francesca."
"Hmm…" Wilbur thought. "Don't know any Francesca. Was she in our graduating level?" Gabriel blinked.
"She was older," he replied flatly.
"Really?" the brown-eyed boy questioned. "By how much?" Gabriel coughed violently for a couple of moments.
"S-she was, uh," he managed after recovering from his fit.
"Hmm…" he hummed, rubbing Gabriel's neck and back soothingly.
"F-forty-four." Wilbur's smile disappeared, and his eyes widened.
"What?"
"She was more than twice my age," the blonde confessed, feeling like such scum.
"W-what did you say her name was?"
Franny rested her head on her husband's exposed chest, listening to his beating heart. Her hand was placed delicately on the right side of his chest. His arms enveloped around her, holding onto her tightly. They were both buried underneath the soft, cozy, fluffy white comforter all morning long. Franny lifted her dark head up just enough to look up at the spiky blonde.
"Cornelius?" she called softly.
"Hmm?" he responded, stroking her arm with his large hand. Franny said nothing as she rested her head back down.
"What time is it?" he asked after lying in peaceful silence for a while.
"About nine-thirty," she said. Cornelius stretched, and Franny shifted as her husband readjusted himself.
"Mm, stay," she playfully whined.
"I have to go to work!" Cornelius feebly replied, continuing to stretch. The dark-haired woman giggled, as she sat up and grabbed her white fleece robe. Cornelius swung himself over on the side of the bed, and slipped on boxer shorts. He then leaned over to Franny, and gave her a kiss.
"I wish I didn't have to…" He gave her another kiss. "But it's Sunday. I'll only be gone for a couple of hours today."
Franny tied her robe's belt tightly, as she giggled again. She raised her hand to his face, and kissed him again.
"Okay," she acknowledged. "Don't be long," she teased. Cornelius smiled, and then walked into the bathroom.
The forty-seven-year-old woman strolled over to the bedroom's entrance, and opened the door. She was startled to see her son standing right in front of the entrance, his right arm supported against the doorframe. His face was red, and entirely drenched with tears. His chest shuddered.
"H-how c-could y-you?" he managed to say through the sobs.
"Wilbur," Franny hushed, as she reached out to him.
"No!" he cried. "How could you?"
"Wilbur, what's wrong?" she asked, her concern continuing to grow. "Are you hurt? Did something happen between you and Gabriel?"
"I should be asking you that!" Wilbur spat.
Franny's eyes widened. "Oh god, Wilbur…"
"Yeah, he told me," he said, his voice bitter and sarcastic.
"Wilbur…" Franny started. "What happened between us…" She tried to find the easiest way to explain. "What happened between us was never suppose to have happened."
"Oh, come one, Mom!" Wilbur scoffed. "This isn't about Gabriel sleeping with you, or you sleeping with Gabriel. It's about you…" He took a quick moment to breathe, and whispered, "Cheating on Dad…"
Franny turned her face away, tranced in deep thought with a half-lidded gaze in the direction of the closed bathroom door to her right. She did not speak for two full minutes.
"Wilbur..." she finally said, her voice dazed. Slowly, she made her way to the queen size bed and sat down near the lower right-hand edge. Gently placing her hand against the space next to her, she finished her sentence in a compassionate whisper, "Come here."
The young man looked dubiously at his mother. He thought he was angry with her. He thought his trust was betrayed by her. Yet he hadn't expected her to react this way. Her mannerisms threw his emotions off course. Obviously he was about to hear something important from his mother, and he wanted to hear it. He still wanted to trust her.
Quietly, Wilbur walked over to her and sat down on the corner of the bed. With his shoulders slightly slouched, he looked up at her with puppy dog eyes that made him appear several years younger than he was. His mother slipped her arm around him, hand rested on his shoulder in a comforting manner.
"I- I just don't get it," he admitted. "Some things aren't matching up. I thought you and Dad were happy..."
"We are," she reassured him, but underneath her surface, Wilbur could sense that his mother was refraining on revealing crucial information. Maybe they weren't, at one time? Wilbur gently pressed on to gather more details.
"And Gabe?" he inquired, inwardly shuddering. "How did he fit into all of this?"
Franny was silent for a moment, trying to gather the words to appropriately describe the situation. "... he was there," she said simply.
Swallowing a hard lump in his throat that prevented him speaking at first, he reluctantly asked, "How did it happen?" His eyes darted down, and added, "I- I mean, you and Gabe."
Patiently, she told him of the night of her seemingly forgotten anniversary. The dejection she felt when she received the news of her husband's cancellation, feeling foolish for dressing up so elegantly for a wasted occasion. Then the noble waiter who offered her a helpful hand and comforting shoulder which soon spiraled into a destructed path of lust to fill the void of loneliness. To complicate matters, her attendant happened to be the teenage schoolmate of her son's.
By now, Wilbur seemed to empathize with his mother. After many disappointing missed birthdays and other special occasions by his father, the teenage boy increasingly came to the conclusion that the man cared more about his work than his family. At the end of the day of each incident, when the boy would be moping about in his bedroom, his mother would come up and comfort him.
During these moments, she would always affirm that his father did love them, and did everything he could to pull through on his promises, but the demands of his job would constrict him from being where he wanted to be. And sometimes he would believe her, other times he stubbornly convinced himself otherwise. Wilbur always felt it was a little too good to be true that his mother would always stand by her husband throughout the years without feeling the least bit disheartened.
When the truth of his mother's affair came to his awareness, only then did he realize that his mother was also human, and eventually it was her turn to slip down the lane of doubt. She knew that his father loved her, but on this certain event, it let it get to her, and her coping method led her to do something that she would never had done if her insecurities hadn't clouded reason.
"You're not going to tell Dad, are you?" he asked wearily.
Franny sighed at her son's question.
"That question had been rolling through my head ever since that night," she admitted.
Wilbur knew that his mother was intelligent with strong morals. She wouldn't had done something so reckless without justification. She knew she made a mistake, and so she owned up to it by ending romantic involvement with the teenage boy, but Wilbur could also understand how terrified she was to resolve her errors.
He connected his thought-process with his mother's; if she were honest with her husband, then she would have to face the possibility of divorce anyway, even after severing any means of an intimate relationship with her son's friend. Why taint a perfectly good marriage by surfacing this dark secret? And so she hid her regrets away, allowing to live with the guilt in order to stay in love with the one she really wanted to be with.
It was then did his mother's response that caught him off-guard.
"He knows," she murmured.
Staring up at her in surprise, he asked, "When? How?"
"A couple months after that night," she said softly. "He... your father saw that there was something wrong."
Now that he thought about it, he did recall some slight changes in his mother's personality in the early summer of his seventeenth year, about a month after he confessed his growing feelings to Gabriel. The transformation wasn't that obvious at first. Franny did an incredible job of keeping her true emotions concealed, so she appeared as she normally would. But as the end of June rolled into July, red flags slowly began to pop up.
The first sign was the disruptive change in her sleep pattern. She'd anxiously wake up every hour throughout the night, and end up sleeping late into the morning to catch up on the lost bit of sleep. Most of the time she would lie in bed awake until she dozed off at around six o'clock, and waking up again well past nine or ten. Sometimes, during the worse of times, Franny would sleep until eleven or noon.
Wilbur caught her still in bed on a couple of occasions, wondering why she was still slumbering so late into the day. After all, "sleeping in" for his mother used to be at eight o'clock, and that usually occurred on weekends; typically she'd be ready for the day by no later than seven o'clock.
The second sign was her change in appetite. She was never hungry. Though she ate regularly during family meals, so no one had initially suspected her altered palate. If only they realized that she forced herself to eat because she knew she had to, not because her stomach craved food. Over a month later, the result of her actions began to show her subtle shift in body weight. Then the rest of the Robinson clan started to catch on. Yet, no one was brave to point it out to her for another while longer.
The third sign was when she would sit around the house and do nothing, and every time she would attempt to distract herself by absorbing her attention in some random activity, she showed no sign of enjoyment or interest at all and resulted back into doing nothing.
Everyone was curiously worried when her rehearsals with Frankie and the Boys ceased. Occasionally during dinner, someone (usually Lucille or Bud) would lightly bring it up, saying how they missed hearing the wonderful zealous tunes wafting throughout the house. Franny would smile politely and say that she had been extremely exhausted lately, and would start up again once she had rested a bit.
Finally, the last alarming signal that something was wrong was when she would spontaneously weep throughout the day. It usually happened when she was alone in her bedroom, so the warning sign went undetected from her family. The only one who had caught her in this state was her husband.
When he took notice of his wife's gradual change, naturally he became worried. He was so distraught over her erratic turmoil, and eventually could not bear to hold back any longer when he confronted her one day.
"This needs to end, Fran. I can't stand to see you like this anymore," Wilbur had overheard his father say to his mom, when he had went to their bedroom to announce his departure for the afternoon. But upon hearing their grim conversation, Wilbur hovered right outside the front of the entrance.
"What can I do to help you?" his father pleaded. "I-I'll do anything." He sounded choked up a bit. Wilbur peeked through the door to see his father bury the woman in his arms, and two small trails of tears were streaming down his face. Crying. His father was crying.
Frowning, Wilbur took off without reporting to his parents of his retreat. He was sure that they wouldn't be upset that he left without saying so for this one time. It seemed better than to interrupt their weighty situation. Besides, he was running late meeting up with Gabriel as it was. Yet, it was then did Wilbur miss the vital details of their discussion.
"I'm sorry," she heaved the words in a sob against her husband's chest. Gently, he pulled away to look at her, still cradling her in his arms. Confusion spread across his face. "I'm so sorry," she repeated, her pained brown eyes held honesty as she stared deep into his.
"I didn't mean for it to happen, it just..." A hitch in her breath. "Our twentieth..." she whispered. Then, swallowing, she spoke a little more clearly, "I mean, we never do anything special..."
Then it dawned on him. "You thought I forgot... I'm sorry."
New tears started to brim, and caressed down her cheeks as she shook her head. "No, this is my fault. I shouldn't have doubted you. But when he asked if I had wanted to talk about it, I lost it, and then we..." She trailed off when she took notice of her husband's expression.
Cornelius looked stunned. Silence hung through the air for a good, long moment. "Is there someone else?" he finally asked.
"No," she answered immediately in a clear voice, shaking her head along with her verbal response. The answer she provided made her seem so certain of herself, yet it was laced with doubt, like she was convincing herself it was true. "No," she said again.
Franny took a huge breath. "It happened once, but I ended it. It's over, done."
"Done...?" he repeated in a small voice. His eyes widen from the incredulous blow. So there had been someone else?
Franny breathed some more to calm herself in order to steadily explain, "He was the waiter at the restaurant. He gave me the message, paid the dinner bill, and offered me a ride home."
The blonde's lips twitched into a nervous smile, followed by an equally nervous response, "Sounds like a gentleman..."
The tears started to form again. "I felt so alone," she confessed, "that I kissed him."
"Kissed?" He was thoroughly perplexed. "That's it?"
"It didn't stop there," Franny whispered.
"Oh..." his voice tapered off.
"The entire time I was with him, I was thinking of you," she cried. "I'm so in love with you. After knowing you for thirty-four years, I still love you. You're the only one I want to come home to me each night. It's pathetic, I know, and I don't know how anyone would believe this, but when I made love to him, I imagined I was making love to you."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked gently, the anger she expected to hear in his tone was vacant.
She glanced up at him, as he pulled her closer to him. He lifted his hand up to brush her dark hair away from her tearful brown eyes, tucking the loose strands behind her ear. He cupped the side of her face with the pads of his fingertips. Nearly staring in disbelief at how he had already forgiven her, Franny dropped her head down and let it rest upon his shoulder.
"I should've tried harder," he quietly spoke in her ear.
"No, don't say that. I'm the one at fault. I should've known that you didn't forget, or didn't care. I should've known that you would make it up to me, with flowers and everything. If I had been more patient-"
He cut her off. "No, you have been patient," he said seriously. Resting his forehead against hers, he continued, "By putting up with me for thirty-plus years." Franny couldn't repress a giggle at his attempt at humor during this somber moment. Their noses brushed against each other's.
"You always put my needs before yours," he told her. "When I needed an extension to start up the industry, you were willing to postpone the wedding just so I could get it done. Then again, with Wilbur." He took a moment to catch his breath. "When we decided to have a baby, you waited for me while I dealt with all the politics of the company to die down."
Closing his eyes, Cornelius let out a sigh. "And everything else that I missed out on. Parties, birthdays, recitals... If I had wanted to, I could've been there." He reopened his eyes as Franny lifted her head up to look up into the sapphire blue.
"But you did," she reassured him. "You had wanted to be here all those times, and you did try to come."
"That's my point, Fran," he gently argued. "I should've tried harder, and I could've been there if I did. We wouldn't be here right now if I had, and I'm done having you wait for me. The company has had its time, now it's yours. From now on, this family comes before work."
It all made sense to Wilbur now. As summer came to an end, and Wilbur started up school again, he overheard the news of his parents meeting up with a marriage councilor. He was suspicious, as he had thought his parents were happy, save for the incident he had witnessed earlier that summer... Did it have anything to do with that? his seventeen-year-old self wondered.
After Wilbur left the house that afternoon upon seeing his parents' quarrel, he quickly met up with his friend with the sandy blonde hair for a game of Chargeball.
His crush on Gabriel had grown as time went by. Wilbur always knew that his soul mate would be his best friend, boy or girl; sexuality didn't matter. The two met when they were fourteen, and became friends as they neared fifteen. As the years of their adolescence went by, Wilbur began to feel a close bond with the other boy, and knew in his heart that he would want to spend the rest of his life with him.
Arriving at the front of his friend's family home, Wilbur saw the worry in Gabriel's distinctive green-blue eyes as the door swung open. The look of torment written on his face must have been more apparent than he thought.
"Wilbur, what's wrong?" the other teenager asked, and the Robinson boy was almost hesitant to answer.
"It's... nothing," he brushed off. "Nothing, just forget it." But the anxiousness was still twisted in his expression, so Gabriel pressed.
"Wilbur, I've known you long enough to know when it's not nothing."
The raven-haired teen sighed. They sat down on the front step of Gabriel's porch.
"It's my mom," he said once they settled down in their spots. He was taken aback when he saw Gabriel flinch, giving a bigger reaction than he would have expected from his friend.
"Is she okay?" he asked, placing a comforting hand on Wilbur's arm.
He shrugged. "She's been acting depressed lately. No one really knows why."
"She hadn't said anything?" Gabriel probed, possibly a little too eagerly. Wilbur noticed, but decided to ignore his friend's uncharacteristic mannerism.
"Hadn't said about what," he replied. "My dad was just arguing with her about it half an hour ago."
The two teenagers sat in silence for a couple of minutes, the air between them was strangely amidst awkward and relaxing. Their stares were unfocused on the ground. Wilbur heard the other boy take a huge breath as he opened his mouth to speak.
"Wilbur, I should tell you..." He looked up at Gabriel. The blonde stopped abruptly when he stared up into his tentative green-blue irises, choking back on his words.
"Uh- I'm..." Wilbur stared as he waited for his statement. Then, "I'm really sorry about your mom. I hope she gets better soon."
Anger towards himself started to muster inside, as Wilbur remembered that day three years ago when he told Gabriel about his mom. The boy seemed overly concerned for his mother's well-being. Sure, he was Gabriel's best friend, and he appreciated that Gabriel felt close enough to care about his family. It must have been for that reason Wilbur was falling in love with him. Only now did it occur to him that there was a bigger connection between Gabriel and his mother than he thought. Was that the reason why he was so apprehensive about the news about his parents?
"You had a right to know," Franny told him, rubbing her hand against his arm. "Gabriel and I should had been up-front and honest with you. Will you ever forgive me?"
Defeatedly, Wilbur rested his head on her shoulder and nodded. All he could think about now was Gabriel. By the time that they graduated school at eighteen, they officially professed their love for each other. Soon after, they moved into an apartment together to call their own. For three years, he was truly happy, and now he couldn't help but feel like he had screwed up his chances the one guy he had ever cared about. Just like that, three years down the drain.
After stroking her fingers through his dark hair (just like she did when he was three), Franny wrapped her arms around him and gave him a tender hug. She added a kiss to his cheek, and swept the strands of hair out of his face one more time before getting up from her seat on the bed.
"Would you like me to make you some hot chocolate?" his mother asked as she moved towards her closet, pulling out her green dress with the print of piano keys trailing on the skirt. It was his favorite of his mother's outfits; the pattern matched her personality so well.
Nodding his head to her question, he told her as he got up from the bed, "I'll meet you in the kitchen." Then he moved out the door, and down the hall. The same thought repeating through his mind as he passed up the seemingly countless rows of photographs hanging on the walls. Three years, three years down the drain...
His head was hung low as he merged into his destination, until a figure sitting at the counter caught his attention, and his head shot up. The figure stood up from his seat as quick as lightning, with the sunflowers he held in his hand dangled by his side.
The wrinkled, faded blue oxford shirt he wore hung open over a white tee shirt, and his blue jeans, held up with a black belt, looked like they were worn from the previous day. The white shoelaces on his black and grey vans sneakers were sloppily tied. His wavy golden hair was left unbrushed and his green-blue eyes glistened with apology.
The young man rushed over to Wilbur before he could blink. He wrapped his arms around him, one hand rested on his shoulder with the other tangled through his dark hair.
"Wilbur," he said remorsefully. "I-I'm sorry." Tears were running down his face. "T-there were s-so m-many ti-imes that I w-wanted to tell you..." His chest trembled.
"Gabe..." he spoke softly. The blonde pulled him closer, and let his chin rest on the other man's shoulder. Tears seeped into the fabric of Wilbur's black shirt as he cried a bit more.
"P-please take me back," he whispered.
Wilbur pulled back a little to look at his lover. "I still love you... And I want to spent the rest of my life with you."
Gabriel gave a weepy smile. His hand reached into his back pocket of his jeans, and pulled out a silver ring.
"Wilbur... Will you marry me?"
He rested his head against Gabriel's, smiling, and gave him a kiss.
"Like you even needed to ask..."
Cornelius picked up his briefcase and adjusted his tie as he made his way towards the door, just before Franny stopped him in his tracks. Her hands rested on his shoulders for support, and she leaned forward to plant a kiss on his lips. Pulling away, she gazed into his eyes warmly.
"I love you more than you will ever know..."
The End
Author's Note: After writing "Here's to You" in December 2007, fellow Fanfiction author and former friend The Fabulous A.J (formerly D.H. Knightly) was very impressed with the Gabriel character, and wanted to read more on the relationship between him and Wilbur. Thus, I wrote the first half (the first 693 words, to be exact) of this sequel in her honor. This part of the story dates back to December 19th 2007. Regretfully, it never got posted... until the encouragement of the dedicated reader, I. D. Gr (formerly Poppins) led me to complete the story. It was now time to bring this story out into the daylight.
9 September 2011