"I mean— trust isn't all or nothing, you know? I trust you in some ways and not others, in particular I don't always trust your judgement. 

But I trust your intentions. I haven't ever, I've never gotten the sense that you didn't want to do right by me. If that makes sense." 

"How can I-- how can I help you trust me more? I don't know if that's the best way of phrasing it, I want-- I want to be better, I want you to be able to trust me. I want to prove to you that I'm, that I'm worthy of your trust."

You could not push me until I fold and do something you know full well I'm afraid of on purpose because you want me to prove I won't question you. You could stop doing every single fucking thing you just did to Tubbo.

"I mean— like you said, I've only known you for like a month and a half. All the people I really trust are people I've known for years, who I've gotten to see in a lot of different lights. It just— it takes time, y'know?" 

"I guess. I'll just--keep trying.

I'm--glad that you trust my intentions. I just--want to do better, you know?"

"I do know."

He's holding Wilbur's hand again— it could almost be nice, if it weren't for, well. It kind of is nice even given, well. Is that stupid? It's at least a little bit stupid. 

"Why are you--here, if you don't trust my judgement? I mean--not that I'm complaining, I, I love having you here, I think it's great having you around, just--"

"No, yeah, I get it. Hm. —I do have an answer, I'm thinking about how I wanna put it— 

—there's a lot of people who I knew, you know? I had friends, I had family, I— hadn't talked to my family in a while, I was going through some shit, but— I had a community, fuck, I had partners. There were a lot of people who I knew and there were a lot of people who I loved. And now they're just— gone.

In the best plausible scenario, the one I keep worrying isn't going to happen, I never see any of them again. My home is a city with two hundred thousand people in it and if I'm fucking lucky I will never see it again. I'm— grieving, a lot of things, all at once, a lot of people all at once, while, while surrounded by strangers who have the same faces. I'm really fucking lonely, Wilbur. And sometimes you help." 

He shrugs, like it'll defuse the shit he just said out loud. 

"Also I've had a full-time job pretty much since I was thirteen, during that month I had almost nothing but free time and I was constantly inventing new projects just so I'd have anything to fucking do with myself." 

"Well. I can definitely--give you things to do with yourself. No promises on, uh, good judgement." Half-laugh. "I'm sorry about the--everything. If I could--give you everything back, with no problems, I'd take it in a heartbeat, man, it wouldn't even be a question. You know?

There are--other people here, too. It's not just me. You don't have to be with me to not be lonely."

God. 

"...thank you," he says, quiet, maybe a little too emphatic. "Thank you. That's— it means a lot."

Then, lighter, he bumps into Wilbur's shoulder. "Also, I didn't say you were my only option, I said you help, you're not in fact the only person I ever talk to." 

"Good! That's--that's good." He even mostly means it; the jealousy and fear of who Q's talking to and what he's saying to them are--definitely there but also definitely smaller than the fear of Q only being with him because he has no one else. He squeezes Q's hand. "Want to tell me about home? We can trade stories, I tell you about potato farming and you tell me about--whatever it's like where you're from."

"...I'd like that a lot, yeah." He squeezes back. "I've got, uh— stuff that happened to me when I was younger, the kind of work I used to do, particularly cool things that other people did— or, like, I can pick, just, if you have genre opinions—" 

"Whatever you want to tell me about is good to me."

"Right. So, I moved to Dessa, that's the city I currently think of as home, when I was thirteen, for, mm, call it an apprenticeship. And I know you guys don't have seasons, but for about five months out of the year Dessa's fucking cold and my dorm housing did not have the best insulation so I ended up spending a lot of time in this place a block away from my work, which was sort of a cafe and sort of a corner store but the important part was they had a wood stove, they had kind of weird hours so I could hang out there pretty late, they were never full, and they'd let you stay if you got tea or something and didn't look like you were gonna be a problem.

Now, I was thirteen, and I'd previously been living in a pretty small town, so I did not know what it means when a place is nice but always empty and you can't quite tell how they're staying in business but staying in business they are, I just knew I liked being able to feel my fingers—" 

And so follows the story of the corner store slash cafe that turned out to be a money laundering front, and how teenage Q almost accidentally joined the mob when a local barista took him under her wing. (The way he tells it, it's a heartwarming story about friendly neighborhood organized criminals looking out for the community, in which coming to the attention of the actual police or government is a fate to be avoided at nearly any cost.) 

Wilbur definitely finds it heartwarming-as-intended! He laughs and makes phatic noises at mostly appropriate times.

"So, before--before the Dream SMP, Techno lived on Hypixel. Well--that's not exactly it, he also was on SMP Earth with Phil for a while, that's a different story about taking over the world. But Techno, uh-- I don't actually remember what started it, but he decided he wanted to get ranked number one on Hypixel for having farmed the most potatoes--"

The version Wilbur tells of the potato war is nowhere near as clear or funny as the version Techno told, and he forgets several plot points, but he successfully conveys the gist of it, which is that Technoblade is a fundamentally ridiculous person who does absurdly impressive niche feats just for the sake of it.

Man, good for Technoblade. Q, too, laughs at the right moments; Wilbur's version might not be as funny as Techno's but it's sort of an inherently ridiculous story. 

He can produce funny, lighthearted stories about his old accounting job and his sister Leilah's kids and the shit he got up to when he was ten and so on for as long as Wilbur wants to stay on a walk. (There's a fairly conspicuous gap in what he's willing to tell stories about between the ages of sixteen and nineteen, and he never explicitly discusses his family's finances but he does offhandedly mention that a bonus of him moving away at thirteen was that it meant one fewer person to feed. It's probably fine, though.) 

Wilbur's lighthearted family stories: are mostly about Techno, Phil, Tommy, and Tubbo. He's got a lot of them, though.

Eventually: "I should probably head home, it's getting late. See you tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow." 

(He has nightmares about Tubbo dying various horrifying deaths all night. He can't even be mad about it.) 

He's the first one there in the morning, before Ranboo or Wilbur or even most of the residents of Las Nevadas.

Wilbur shows up before long, though. "Q! Good to see you here, man!"

He'd been singing absentmindedly into the empty air— and who in her lonely slip? Who by barbiturate? Who in these realms of love? Who by something blunt?— but he stops when Wilbur arrives, smiles like he did not have the night he just had. "Good morning!" 

"--You know you don't actually have to be here all the time, right?"

"I had in fact noticed that I'm here more than you are. —I, uh, woke up early, I figured I'd rather be here than in Kinoko." 

"Sure, yeah. Just wanted to-- check in that you didn't think I wanted you, like, working all the time."

"Man, I don't think I'm even putting in fifteen hours a week? I've had jobs that wanted me working all the time, this is so not one of them." 

"Great! Great. --I'm gonna send Ranboo a message--" Type type. "He's on his way." He fiddles with the trapdoors that make up the umbrella above a picnic table. "Did you make this or did Ranboo?"