Chapter Text
There’s a storm on the horizon.
Tubbo’s been aware of it for the past few days. The news stations started reporting a hurricane against the coastline on the 26th, and despite the clear skies that have lingered this week, it seems only imminent that an aftershock hits where they live. That the temperatures will dip, or even worse, they’ll rise, and the precipitation will wreck the electricity lines and shaky roofing of these stout neighborhood houses.
Tubbo isn’t scared of it. He’s a light sleeper, always has been, and as a kid he would wake up to the sound of lightning all the time. It’d scare him, seeing the sudden light’s appearance, but the thunder was always worse. It had been harder, then, to get through it. Now, a little older, it’s not so bad. He still can’t sleep through a storm, but he doesn’t duck under his sheets to cower from it.
No, Tubbo isn’t afraid of the storm. He’s excited, actually. There’s some muted exhilaration in watching it from a distance, eleven in the afternoon and far past sundown, clouds still light enough to see from the steps underneath his back door. He sits out there, legs folded under him, a can of beer laxly held between his fingers. The beer had been loaned from a happy-to-help Jack, all for a good cause, and the house is dead silent behind him. Tommy’s at a party, Techno and Phil are at some refined social gathering, Wilbur’s holed up in his bedroom. All the pets are sleeping.
And Tubbo is out here. A Budweiser carelessly crushed at the ends from his metal-grazed fingertips, the house silent aside from the settling noises characteristic to this time of year, and a storm out on the horizon like a public execution.
Ten minutes past midnight on New Year’s day, and he’s sitting out here. Has been since nine, since the house cleared out and he could scrounge up some excuse to go outside. If it weren’t for the snow, the beer would’ve thawed out and lost its taste. Tubbo figures it’s still fine, though, considering the circumstances and considering he had to get it from Jack, all his other supply emptied out and the slow tread of not having a supplement wearing on him. Barely enough of an alcoholic for the cold turkey to knock him clean off his feet, but an itch building under his skin anyway, and urge to drain out the ugly smog inside of him.
God. He’s fucking pathetic. He’d be fallen from grace if he ever had any of that to begin with, a kid already doomed from the start, growing up to be a fucked-up teen. Decent grades in his classes, a good shot at college, a great thing going with his friendships– thrown all away for the thing that killed his cousin and probably everyone before them.
The anti-alcohol campaigns they fly around in school would probably love him. Never expected to live long enough to be a success story, but definitely an easy example of what not to do. Someone who had everything at his fingertips, and still managed to fuck it up. The schools would feast on that story like mutton to a dog.
“He follows me like a lost puppy!” Schlatt used to gloat, like that meant anything. Quackity tailing after him, it always seemed normal. Codependency, it was their medicine.
Out here, barely even drunk but using the frost to numb his body, he feels more grown up than he ever has before.
Laugh at the kid who grew up too fast. Has a shit ton of things shoved under his floorboards, a drink he got from his buddy in his hands, people who make him smile but not enough to fix a damn thing. When Tubbo feels empty– and man, does he feel empty often – it’s easy to slip into a caricature. He is one now. Some archetype of a person that’s an asshole, that has some person on the side waiting for them to come home, someone who loses it all anyway. Gambling themself to death. Crying over a dead mother. Tubbo makes all the moves to become them.
He laughs. This is ridiculous. Ten minutes after the new year started, and Tubbo hasn’t changed at all. He’s barely even grown a second older. Still as much of a dead-end as he always used to be, just, what? Less alcohol to drink? More people to become family? Two people who he’s forming genuine connections with aside from his to-be family? One of those people being someone he’s in love with? Big moves, sure, but half-hearted ones.
There’s a storm on the horizon. How much does Tubbo care about what he has to fake a shit about the thought of losing it? Everything’s a dull ache. This is a prison.
“Why can’t you just quit it?” Quackity would yell, voice raw but tearless. He’d cried enough times over the same thing, dogs and tricks. “You’re fucking up everything! Why can’t you just quit it?” Quackity didn’t know what it meant to be trapped in a prison, but he was starting to learn quick.
How did he even get here?
Maybe it started when he was born. He’d been born a little larger than most kids, which if he didn’t spend a few years being fucked up and hallowed out under Schlatt’s wing, he probably still would be. Would be much healthier, at least, he doesn’t really care how that translates on a doctor’s slip of paper.
Either way, he was born big and named something he hated, and his mother died pretty soon after, just straight up killed herself despite being in a hospital, and he got passed off to a family that didn’t want him. They made calls, trying to get him off to the other person in his father’s biological family, but that branch never answered, and in fact disappeared off the face of the planet as soon as the sibling, Tubbo’s aunt, hit the age of eighteen. Or so the story goes.
A story he heard from Schlatt’s dad, because that’s the one who stayed.
Schlatt’s dad, Schlatt, and Tubbo. Years of hell, years that would take Tubbo being on the brink of death to remember the full extent of. The basics were barely there, partly of his own doing– he ate sometimes; he learned math fast but couldn’t figure out reading until he was knee-deep into being eight, and only then he got the half of it; he played with toy trucks and washed-up dolls and he was called weak for it even though he thought gender norms would be deconstructed in a house with two gay kids, one being trans, and a tolerant enough dad.
But no. Tubbo was the crybaby, Tubbo was weak, Tubbo couldn’t sleep through a storm. Mice got in the house, and those were the better pests to have. The worst were the bugs, but Tubbo was an outdoorsy kid, Tubbo was signed up for all the free summer camps, Tubbo was supposed to deal with the bugs and so he did. Still a crybaby. God.
“Cry about it!” Schlatt would say, to Tubbo, to Quackity, to anyone. He never grew past the teenage jackass he used to be.
Then everything happened, and suddenly the tides changed, and suddenly Tubbo was in hell and the entire house changed and he got a cat and older Schlatt talked about leaving and J Schlatt cried for the first time, fat wet tears sliding down his face. And Tubbo doesn’t like to think about it, but that was the fixing point. If things were about to get better, they would have.
But they didn’t. The shithead left, and J Schlatt was abandoned with a kid and an addiction with no idea how to fix either of them, and then his boyfriend entered the picture, and it was like Tubbo had two parents and neither of them were functional. He thinks his biological parents were probably like Schlatt and Quackity, though both were nice enough to not leave Tubbo entirely alone the way his parents did, even if they couldn’t muster enough kindness to do much more than that.
That was the tragic descent of J Schlatt’s life, one might call it. A person grows up picking fights and trying to be a monster, gets a few years to try and turn things around, but then he buckles down and power becomes the new thing and a man will try anything to get his fix, and Schlatt fought tooth and nail against the very things trying to be his human shield, and his self-sabotage is what destroyed them all. At least, it was at the heart of it.
Tubbo, after seeing hell, never was too surprised at what followed. He’d already seen enough, and J Schlatt wasn’t the worst of it. The hardest part was knowing that Schlatt was trying, that if Schlatt was with different people, he would have still been an asshole, but things wouldn’t have been so bad. Things could have been fixable.
But they weren’t. Not when he had too much to take care of, not getting into his dream university and settling for a local college in the same shithole town, having to get a meal on the table for his little cousin who’d feel too sick to eat half of them anyway, trying to navigate a relationship that was falling apart at the seams because Quackity and Schlatt both liked it traditional in the opposite ways. He had to pay for the utilities, sign all of Tubbo’s permission slips, figure out when the fuck to study for anything so he could get what he finally wanted: a job that paid. Money and power.
Tubbo doesn’t know when everything really changed for Schlatt. If he tries to trace it back, there are so many times where it seemed like Schlatt was apologetic. Crying in Tubbo’s room when he thought the other was sleeping, mumbling out drunk apologies as Quackity pushed him into bed and shut the curtains taut, sitting both of them down and saying I’ll get it right this time, I’ll do it right.
By the end of it, Quackity stopped staying for those talks and Tubbo would sit there waiting for the next fuse to blow. And then they stopped happening, and Schlatt was still trying, but nobody taught him how to value anything that wasn’t money and power, that wasn’t control, and so he fell back to his habits.
After seeing hell, Tubbo still felt a bit of a sting around Schlatt, but by the end it thudded out into a dull ache, into a mind full of thoughts as to what could have been.
Tubbo ultimately knows that Schlatt was never good at heart, but he has to wonder what the hell he would do if he was in his position.
“We’re fucking cursed,” Schlatt had told him once in a typical Friday frenzy, Quackity out getting groceries. Tubbo stared at the book in his hands, wondering if Schlatt would be any better at reading it. “We’re fucking cursed, kid. Shit doesn’t get better for us. Schlatts don’t get a damn thing handed to them. We’re fucked.” The front door opened. “We’re fucked.”
Tubbo looks out at the horizon. The storm’s still coming, lightning in the distance if he squints hard enough to convince himself that the crawl is coming faster, that if he squints so hard his eyes shut that he can maybe sleep through it. He knows he won’t be able to; it’s not impossible that he’ll be in Schlatt’s position, and the storm on the horizon has set out to prove it.
It’s never been scientific, after all. Just abstract, aimless curses. Tubbo values practicality more than superstitious bullshit, but life doesn’t always give him that choice.
There’s not enough of a discrepancy between Tubbo and Schlatt for there to be any sort of self-security and assurance that Tubbo won’t become his splitting image. He has someone that he loves, after all, someone that he loves that he can’t navigate a damn friendship for, much less a relationship. And he’s got a train station with its schedule memorized, and an addiction that he can’t escape, and a bunch of shit under his floorboards for when he finally buckles under the weight of everything.
Schlatt was smart enough to quit before everything ended, let Tubbo get off free and stumble through the papers while Quackity yelled at him, rotting mattress on the living room floor as the electricity bills piled up.
When is Tubbo supposed to quit? When is he supposed to realize that nothing in life is ever really going to work out for him?
There’s adoption paperwork in the process for him. If he has to meet a social worker, he could tell them lies, royally fuck everything up, get booted to the street and left abandoned and alone to die. He could tell the truth, too, get himself a permanent place in a family that will never be his, have to live with the guilt that he’s going to leave them all behind eventually, that he can’t be their next addition when he can’t even sit through a holiday celebration.
It’s not just the family. It’s all of Tubbo’s friends at school, keeping him company and telling him the homework and not understanding a goddamn thing. It’s Jack Manifold, who Tubbo is helping get back on track but could abandon in a second and it wouldn’t be new to Jack, it’d just be another roadblock in his rage-carved trip to having a better support system. And it’s Ranboo, who Tubbo went out with only two days ago, who Tubbo saw across the diner’s table and thought this is it, this-
Tubbo takes a drink from the can, then crinkles it. A droplet slips onto his finger, and the metal prods the rest, and he can’t be bothered to give a single shit about it.
He doesn’t want to think about Ranboo. He knows he will anyway. That’s how it’s always been, with Tubbo clinging to him through thick and thin. There’s a lot there, dancing behind Tubbo’s eyes at night like a ballet show in its second act crescendo, or some bullshit like that, he doesn’t know dance terms. What he does know is the way that Ranboo’s cheeks flush whenever Tubbo calls him pretty, the way that Ranboo laughing at him makes Tubbo kind of want to let the other bully him forever, the way that Ranboo grabbed his sleeve to steady him on the train tracks, the way that Ranboo’s expression stayed steady even as he admitted he can’t remember his past, the way Ranboo’s eyes flashed with something when he looked at who was texting him-
Tubbo squeezes his eyes shut, but Ranboo gets caught on his brain anyway. The way that Ranboo felt so close and yet so far that entire time, how Tubbo felt like they were close to something when Ranboo flushed and the diner’s light caught on him and Tubbo watched half of the sunset in the reflections of his eyes-
and how goddamn exhilarating it felt, finally having Ranboo close enough that Tubbo knew he was okay, that despite the melancholy and the bullshit and everything, he could grab Ranboo’s hand and know that the other was still there, still breathing, that there was a pulse and Tubbo could feel it, he could fucking feel it.
It felt like some kind of sign from God, not that Tubbo believes in that, not ever since he saw hell eye to eye, but there was something looking out for them that night, enough for Ranboo to finally open up, for Ranboo to smile and laugh and blush when Tubbo had to spend weeks convincing himself, each and every night, that the other was still going to be alive by the morning, the consolence that Tubbo is shit company but at least he bought Ranboo time away from someone else-
but that was how it crumbled, and Tubbo shuts his eyes tighter, like if he sees the colorful shapes from the pressure behind his eyelids long enough, he could forget it, but his memory is better than he wishes it was and it’s impossible for him to.
At the very start, when they were still in the car, Ranboo jerked the car wheel to the side, not enough to cause an accident but too sharp of a turn on an ordinary roundabout. And Tubbo had reached out to ask if Ranboo was okay, grabbing his hand, but then Ranboo shut down on him, and all Tubbo could think of as he was letting go was the text messages after their phone call, how Ranboo has this way of icing Tubbo out even when Tubbo catches him in the midst of something, be it a thought or a fucked up social encounter– because he was naive to think that Ranboo was just with his former foster brother that day when it had to have been Dream who was texting him on those railroad tracks– and it’s fucking terrifying.
There’s not a lot that scares Tubbo. He used to be a pussy when he was younger, but he isn’t one anymore. He’s sitting on his ass, right now, waiting for a really bad storm to come faster. He’s not scared of nearly as much shit now.
But the way that Ranboo has started to get when he doesn’t want Tubbo to know something scares Tubbo to death.
He doesn’t even think Ranboo notices it. It would be hard to, if Ranboo isn’t staring at himself. Because it’s not just the blunt tone underlined with the urgency that accompanies most of his lies; it’s the way that Ranboo’s eyes get sharper, the way that his body tenses up like he’s about to get into a fight, the way that everything about Ranboo’s body behavior screams don’t push this, don’t fuck with me.
Tubbo can’t help but feel like this wasn’t how it used to be at the start. He’s only caught it a few times, and those times have been recent, because before all of this, Ranboo acted a lot like Tommy used to. He would get quiet and panicked and be an absolute shit liar, but Tubbo would give him space anyway, thinking that just like Tommy, Ranboo would open up in the end and it’d be fine.
And yes, sure, Ranboo did open up to Tubbo, and he opened up about something pretty fucking important. But it doesn’t seem like Ranboo’s ever going to talk about the Dream thing, almost like he’s gotten more adverse to it, and maybe it’s Tubbo’s desperation that only hindsight can save him from rather than something Ranboo consciously does, but it feels like Ranboo has gotten to be a better liar.
Tubbo doesn’t know, ultimately. He feels entirely in the dark when it comes to Ranboo, and it’s terrifying because it’s absolutely unavoidable at this point that Tubbo’s a little in love with him. But even if he wasn’t, and Ranboo truly was just his friend, not some bootleg Quackity to Tubbo’s more legitimate Schlatt the way they’re half-destined to be, Tubbo would still be scared knowing that Ranboo is in the company of a legitimately bad person and won’t say a thing about it.
And Tubbo doesn’t know , ultimately, and it seems like he may never, but he can’t stop torturing himself with the thought of what Dream must be doing. Because with Tommy, he had the naivety to not think so hard about it; he knew something was up and Tommy was sad, but they were kids and Tubbo didn’t even hear the name Dream until after Tommy wound up in the hospital and Techno was in the waiting room muttering it over and over under his breath. Never clarifying, but giving enough that eventually, one day, Tommy would spill it all out to Tubbo while the two sat in his bedroom, and it would all click for him.
And because of that, Tubbo knows what Dream is capable of. Knows what a vile, abusive, manipulative piece of shit he is. Knows that the bruises he saw on Tommy weren’t the accidents Tommy swore they were, and can still see sometimes the way that Tommy will say things that seem uncharacteristic, ideas taught to him long ago.
And Ranboo is with Dream. And Tubbo has no fucking clue what the fuck he’s doing to-
Tubbo buries his face into his knees, leaving the damned beer can beside him as he tries to remember to breathe.
It’s not fine. Tubbo can’t even console himself right now, because it’s not going to be fine. Ranboo had been right there- right there- and Tubbo still let him go, Tubbo couldn’t take a second to stay the night, to make sure that after everything, Ranboo wouldn’t-
Breathe. Goddammit, he has to breathe. He needs to stay calm, and he needs to breathe, and he needs to finish off this fucking drink and go back inside and watch a shitty nature documentary and kiss last year goodbye, and he needs to breathe.
So he braces one hand against the steps, and he shuts his eyes as he takes in a deep breath, and he’s four seconds into it when he hears, no, feels the wood creak behind him, a door squeaking shut.
“Rough night?”
Tubbo doesn’t turn to look behind him, wanting to convince himself that he’s unsurprised by the appearance of Wilbur. Even still, his shoulders tense and spasm in a moment of surprise, and Wilbur’s surely able to see it. The other must be standing, but Tubbo can swear he feels him breathing down his neck.
“You could call it that,” Tubbo says, trying to inject as much faux casualness into his voice as possible.
Wilbur laughs. “Care to have company, then?”
“Somehow, I get the feeling that you’d stay even if I told you not to.”
“Do you really think that lowly of me, Tubbo?” Wilbur asks, but the wooden stairs creak as the other sits down nevertheless. So really, words aside, it’s not like Tubbo was wrong. “Do you think I have some kind of motive, here?”
“That depends, Wilbur.”
“Oh?”
“Do you think I would usually choose fucking Budweiser to drink as a celebration for the new year?”
Wilbur pauses, and Tubbo opens his eyes to look at him. It didn’t take a lot of guessing for Tubbo to figure out who cleared the wine cabinet– either it was Wilbur, or someone else who got tipped off by Wilbur– and even if Tubbo doesn’t pursue this thread for long, he at least wants Wilbur to know that Tubbo’s aware of who orchestrated that. And, moreso, that Tubbo is pretty rightfully pissed off about it.
But instead of answering, Tubbo watches Wilbur pull out a cigarette and a matchbox.
Tubbo scoots farther away from Wilbur, justifying it as, “I don’t want to get smoke in my mouth.”
“Of course, of course,” Wilbur says, almost understanding, as he lights his cigarette and puts it between his teeth. He inhales, and despite what Tubbo said about not getting secondhand smoke, he watches Wilbur’s movements. It’s nothing unique– Tubbo’s seen people smoke before, he and Ranboo could smell it when they hung out– but Tubbo still watches it.
God. Ranboo , though. The bastard’s going to keep haunting him the entire time he’s out here, isn’t he?
“I hadn’t been aware,” Wilbur starts, and Tubbo takes the distraction, even if he can already tell it’s bullshit. “That you were addicted enough to it.”
Tubbo snorts, because this is all so stupid . It’s not even like Tubbo is that much of an addict, but still, that reasoning is complete bullshit to the point it’s comical. “What did you think, then? That I did it for fun?”
“That it was a more casual thing.” There’s a beat, and then Wilbur adds, “I’m sorry.”
It does nothing to fix the problem– Wilbur has just been burning the leaves of a plant with roots deeper than he could even conceptualize, and Tubbo’s been letting him for months, which is almost worse – but Tubbo waves it off, because it’s nothing substantial, really, just a thing to hold over Wilbur. Just something to be mad about when he’s trying to be less pissed about other things. “It’s fine.”
Funnily enough, Tubbo almost feels bored at the thought of talking any more about it. There’s ample enough topics, he guesses, none particularly good, but if both of them are doing this right now, they can at the very least entertain one another.
“Care if I ask what you’re thinking about, out here?” Wilbur asks, seemingly done with the subject. Tubbo’s not sure what he expected– a lingering silence, a singular pause before they carried on? That’s not very Wilbur, because Wilbur always has an agenda, and Tubbo always is on the defense.
He’ll take the straightforward path first, for plausible deniability. “I’d rather not say.”
“You sure?” Wilbur pushes, because Tubbo expected him to. “You seem upset. It’d be wrong of me to stay holed up in my room and leave you to the wolves.”
“It’d make things easier for you.”
Wilbur laughs. “Who says I like it easy?”
“Your silence for months,” Tubbo points out. “You knew I was drinking, but you never said a thing until now. If I never went out for it, you probably would leave it be, still.”
“Talking to you wasn’t going to work, Tubbo,” Wilbur defends, unfazed by Tubbo’s accusations. “I waited until I thought it was at its worst.”
“It was at its worst long before I ever met you,” Tubbo mutters.
Wilbur lifts an eyebrow. “Care to talk about that?”
Tubbo picks up the Budweiser again, taking a sip of it before replying, “No thank you,” feeling like he’s plucking out each word as if it were a thorn. “I’m good, actually. You’re free to go.”
“You can’t dismiss me from my own backyard,” Wilbur points out, and Tubbo suppresses a mix between a swear and a laugh. God, this is absurd . “Something’s up, and if I can’t get you to talk to me, then at the very least I’ll extend to you some company.”
Tubbo shakes his head. “I don’t want company.” He thinks he’s making this abundantly clear, but he’ll spell it out anyway. “I need to sit and think about shit.”
“You want to mope.”
“And if I do?”
“That’s fine,” Wilbur says, “but it’s only fair that you let me mope too.”
“What about?”
Wilbur’s lip quirks up. “Secret for a secret, Tubbo.”
Tubbo huffs. “You’re annoying.”
“And you’re acting differently.”
That should be obvious, but Tubbo’s still going to stick and hear the rest of it. “Yeah?”
Wilbur seems happy to explain, for once. “You’re harsher. Less willing to turn our conversation on its head to make a joke. More irritated, and look at the way you’re sitting. It’s hard to tell, with that can in your hand, that you’re a seventeen year old.”
There’s some point to all of that, Tubbo guesses. It’s not like Wilbur’s ever seen Tubbo that angry before, seeing as every time Tubbo lets the floodgates of rage open up, he’s all the more willing to let people make jokes at his expense to cover it up. And Tubbo’s always tired, but Wilbur’s probably never seen him this tired– nobody has– where he’s sitting in some kind of way that makes Wilbur think he looks experienced in this and Tubbo feel like he’s a carbon copy of his cousin. He’s exhausted, and that either makes the emotions spill out thoughtlessly and recklessly in a way that could be considered dangerous, or it makes Tubbo feel like an empty husk of a person, unsure who he is or what he should be doing.
He’s been too emotional recently, anyway. Sure, Wilbur is sort of right in that Tubbo’s out here to mope, but it’s more that Tubbo’s moping because Tubbo has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, what the fuck he should be doing, and who the fuck he is in the first place.
But he’s not going to tell Wilbur that, because Tubbo has a responsibility to stay stagnant. Easy to talk to and easier to shove your feelings at, because Tubbo’s arms are always open to carry the burdens of everyone else. Tubbo made the choice years ago to never tell anybody about his past, and with that choice came the acknowledgement that he was just going to live his life holding everyone’s burdens, and further, live his life forgoing any sense of changing who he is. Small changes, sure, they ripple but not so bad; but if Tubbo ever had the desire to try and puzzle out what’s happened to him and why he’s like this as a result, and moreover how to fix it , that would change everything.
Thank God Tubbo wore out that want years ago.
He’s blocked out the parts that are important. The rest he can live with every day, lugging around behind him until they debilitate him and he crumbles. He’s used to surviving like that. He only holds onto the parts he knows, like Schlatt’s behavior and how it’s mirrored in him and everything that’s obvious, that doesn’t challenge a single thought in his head. And all of the parts of him that have the power to ruin his life are carefully suppressed in the back of his brain.
All it takes is surviving nights like these. Ones that make those memories claw at the back of his head, amorphous smog creatures that twist into several tendril-like amalgamations, all armed with sharp points at the end that scratch and scrape at Tubbo’s head, constructing migraine after migraine, until he caves and let them tug at his vocal chords and rewire his brain. All it takes is knowing that they could kill him, but avoiding them anyway.
Wilbur is not making it easier to keep control. Neither are the memories of the 28th.
At the very least, Wilbur seems like he’s fallen quiet, clearly waiting for Tubbo to make a move. Tubbo could feign opposition before reeling it back, fake-out a real conversation over and over again until Wilbur finally grows tired of it just like he had a few days ago; Tubbo, if nothing else, is good at being enough of a burden to get people to leave. It’s the cause of half of his problems, sure, but he’s done enough to deserve reclaiming it as a weapon, he thinks.
If everyone’s going to leave, why not make them leave when he wants them to?
Because everyone will leave. Wilbur will, obviously, and Phil and Techno will in turn, because Tubbo getting adopted doesn’t mean that they’ll chase him to the ends of the earth if he runs. Tommy might, but Tommy has more going for him than whatever Tubbo could give him, and once Tommy realizes that Tubbo’s a dead-end kind of person, maybe he’ll learn to let it go. Jack’ll go, all his friends will go, Ranboo-
Fuck. Ranboo.
He can’t tell if the thought of Ranboo leaving him hurts the worst or the least. On one hand, all his complicated emotional bullshit makes him attached to him, as previously established a million times. On the other hand, Ranboo is the only person that Tubbo is more likely to get abandoned by, for reasons that are entirely unrelated to Tubbo himself.
Tubbo has to do something, goddammit. He can outsmart Dream, maybe, figure out the days where Ranboo’s supposedly busy with something and chase them both down, look Dream in the eye and get him thrown in prison, even if Ranboo hates him for it. He can sit down with Ranboo and tell him over and over how much he cares about him until Ranboo breaks under the pressure of compassion and opens up to Tubbo. Tubbo could try and pull the strings he likely has buried in some family ancestral history and former business associates to try and get Dream mysteriously taken care of, because Tubbo’s world is nothing like Tommy’s, dark and full of grey morality, and though he doesn’t like to think this way, if he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get Dream taken care of, why not think about every possible method?
Tubbo almost died, once.
He’s not the only one. Tommy almost died, too.
But Tommy believes in superheroes and God and deus ex machina. He believes in some higher power that holds a moral code, and he believes in the good in everyone, and Tommy threatens to do a lot but he really is all bark no bite, because Tommy wouldn’t kill someone if that’s what it took, he’d always look for another way.
Tubbo has thought about killing Dream since he was fourteen years old. That shit isn’t going to stop now.
Because Tubbo was never got taught that responsibility bullshit. He grew up learning that the only way to live in his best friend’s house is to keep supplies underneath a floorboard and steal enough pocket change to buy himself things. And even before coming here, he was living in a shitty house with shitty people, and he learned from Quackity and Schlatt that control is everything, that the only way to survive in a world that wants you dead anyway is to have power over it.
Tubbo has suppressed that part of him for a while, isn’t so keen on the thought of stepping into the very shoes that would make him Schlatt 2.0. But if anything is going to get him to do something fucked up, it’ll be Ranboo.
Love makes you do fucked up shit, Tubbo’s supposedly heard. He never got that in a romantic sense, could never see himself committing a crime for some pretty boy that he’s known for only a few minutes. But, in some sort of way, he guesses that he’s only known Ranboo for a semester. And Ranboo is certainly a pretty boy, one that Tubbo would commit a crime for.
Tubbo has to wonder what Ranboo would think about all these hypotheticals. Ranboo has a lot more similarities to Tommy than either would like to admit; Ranboo doesn’t seem capable of committing a crime. He’s a hard-working citizen in the cogworks of capitalism, and for all that’s worth, he seems like the type more likely to report a crime than help cover up the evidence. That’s a different kind of survival, Tubbo thinks, and he doesn’t want to call Ranboo a snitch– especially not after keeping Tubbo’s whole alcoholism quiet until Wilbur fucked it up– but he’s not so lovestruck that he’s able to ignore how Ranboo would hate him for all the things he’s thinking.
It’s just like how Quackity used to be. So in love with Schlatt despite his flaws that he literally offered to raise a kid at his side when they were teenagers, and yet, when everything started going south, Quackity flipped the switch.
There’s only so much that Ranboo can take out of Tubbo’s dead-end life.
Tubbo’s not a fan of books, but he knows he’s read this story before. A million times, in fact. And he’s never going to change, because shitty people like him don’t, and Ranboo is going to keep believing in him until a day before his heart stops, where he’ll pull the plug for the both of them and leave them both in purgatory.
He can’t drag Ranboo into that.
But he has to help him, dammit, or else- or else-
Tubbo takes another drink. He can feel Wilbur’s eyes on the side of his head, and he lets him look, because there’s nothing new to see, really. Of course Wilbur sits on the side facing where the scar is, but it’s not like he’s seeing anything that hasn’t already been shown to him countless times since Tubbo first came there.
He knows that it’s his turn to break the silence, that there’s a reason that Wilbur is waiting here. But the stare grows more and more suffocating by the second, and eventually the thoughts in Tubbo’s head cause him to snap as he spits out, “For fuck’s sake, can you just say something?”
“You make quite miserable company, Tubbo,” Wilbur comments, statement unkind inherently but his voice soft nevertheless, damn him. “Truly, I’m here to help.”
“Unless you know how to make me an entirely different person, I don’t think you’re gonna be much help, here,” Tubob states plainly.
Wilbur tilts his head. “If you could be anybody aside from yourself, who would you even want to be?”
Someone with a predicted life span of sixty seconds, just so he can tie that knot off much quicker. Someone with a functional brain and stable parents who gets made fun of at college for never having tried alcohol. Someone with a charming smile and controlled emotions that could be a good enough brother for Tommy and a good enough friend for Ranboo. Someone with a worse set of impulse control so he could have nipped this in the bud when he was a kid and made sure none of them ever made it this far-
God. And Tubbo acts like he’s the victim. Schlatt, Quackity, Tubbo– it was all a game of who would kick the bucket first.
Tubbo shrugs in response to Wilbur’s question, because he’s not going to confess a damn thing about anything. “Someone else.”
“Hm.” Wilbur pauses, then asks, almost rhetorically, “Well, what’s so bad about yourself?”
Tubbo laughs, because how else is he supposed to respond to that?
Wilbur looks at him like he’s expecting an answer, still.
After a few seconds of tension, Tubbo gives in and says, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Wilbur, but I’m kind of a bad person.”
Wilbur stays silent, not pushing or pressing, and Tubbo sighs. What’s the point in trying to push this off and pretend like he’s fine? Clearly, he’s fucked up bad enough that his whole illusion has dropped for the other, and he feels tired down to his very bones, like the marrow is just filled with heavy clay. He can’t let Wilbur know everything– he doesn’t want him to know anything, really– but how long can he let this go on for?
Leave out the details. Leave out the shitty childhood, leave out Ranboo, leave out the floorboards. Just pitch the story like Tubbo’s some watered-down version of a depressed teenager you see on screen, let Wilbur be his AA meeting, and move on. What else is there to do other than sit in silence, wait for Ranboo to call him despite knowing the other never will, and feel like shit?
Tubbo focuses on the cold air around him, making his legs feel numb where they sit, awkwardly jutted out in front of him. Like the heating bill has flown past without a penny spent on it. Wilbur certainly isn’t doing much to comment on it, though Tubbo wouldn’t put that small talk past him.
He’s just waiting for Tubbo to give up, to swallow down some more beer and throw another rhetorical question back at him. “Ever occurred to you that I don’t exactly, y’know. Belong here? Even a bit?” Convoluted way to ask it, but fuck it, if Wilbur wants to corner Tubbo into a talk about adoption, Tubbo will give it up. Red herring to the issue. Tip of the iceberg.
Wilbur shakes his head, probably to be a contrarian and piss Tubbo off more. “I told you before, Tubbo, you’re like a brother to me. You have your own bedroom, your own seat at the table, your own everything . Obviously, you belong here.”
“Okay, yeah, I live here,” because that’s what Wilbur is describing, “but it’s not about that. You, Techno, and Tommy have no biological link between you, but you all are similar. Like, you could fool me just by the way you act.”
“And you think that’s not the same for you?”
“I know it’s not.” Wilbur seems skeptical, and Tubbo huffs out a frustrated sigh, almost feeling like a child. “I’m not built for the life that this family has. I’m built for a different one, one that’s a lot worse, because I’m worse. So-”
“You know,” Wilbur casually cuts him off, “that Techno’s childhood made him the way he is? Skeptical and aloof and independent to a fault. Won’t let people know something’s up ‘til three years pass and he mentions it like he’s bringing up the weather.”
Tubbo doesn’t understand what Wilbur’s getting at, but he continues anyway, “And Tommy is skittish and religious and wants to save people. That’s his biggest dream, being loved and saving people, he thinks he’s some kind of hero.” Like those mangas Tubbo walked past. “And me, I’m the fuck-up college dropout with the smoking problem, and people tell me my mood swings are so bad I seem like a different person sometimes. A different person, Tubbo.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
“Me, Techno, and Tommy grew up in very different situations, and we are different,” Wilbur summarizes, “so you have to help me out with this: what makes you so different from all of us three?”
I have no family, is his gut response. From there, his brain spits out the others: I lie and I steal and I don’t want to ask for help. Every time I make someone do something for me I feel both like I'm dying and like I’m on top of the world. I’m only on this planet to survive to see the start of my 20s. I don’t have any aspirations. I hate you all so much sometimes it makes me sick.
There’s a loose floorboard in the attic.
“I’m a catalyst,” Tubbo settles on, which is not a thought he clearly thinks but synopsizes them all well enough. “I exist, shit happens, mostly bad or explosive or whatever, and then I go. You all differ a lot, but at least you guys don’t explode and run.”
“You know I went to Europe, right?” Wilbur says lowly.
Of course Tubbo does. He had just started staying with Tommy when it happened: suddenly, his older brother had disappeared off the map, and he wasn’t coming home from winter break. Phil could get a hold of him and Tommy talked to him sometimes, but those calls were short and small-talk ridden, and Tubbo never spoke on them at all. Never even got in touch with the cool and seemingly untouchable best friend’s older brother after his disappearance following Tubbo’s existence in his house.
In some cosmic way, Tubbo wonders if that was his fault. If the house could only take one attic, one runaway, one something. But there’s a difference between Wilbur and Tubbo: Wilbur came back. If Tubbo made a move like that, seemingly out of nowhere, he wouldn’t have ever looked back.
Tubbo has a lot in this town he would miss. None of it would be worth going cold-feet on a plan to get the fuck out of it. Even if someone came crying to him every day, begging him to come back, if he left he was going to stay gone. That’s the whole purpose of it.
That’s why he’s so shaky about leaving in the first place. Because once Tubbo is out, he’s out. He’s getting a job and scraping by without a high school diploma and he’ll die before he’s even old enough to drink here. Like that’s ever stopped him.
But he wouldn’t turn back. Not for anything. Because he knows that if he did, he would never have the courage to leave again.
That should be enough to discourage him from craving the crinkling sound of a train ticket between his calloused fingers. Nowadays, it only seems like that urge is getting stronger, and the thought of permanence will reach its equilibrium point and surpass it in favor of Tubbo’s urge to move on from this life that doesn’t want him anyway.
Wilbur, it seems, had been in a similar enough position to Tubbo. And yet, he never did stay gone, always keeping contact and eventually coming back. Must have realized whatever unbalanced force Tubbo was bringing into the atmosphere by staying with Tommy wasn’t going to leave anytime soon, so may as well bring the two back just to clash a few years later, sitting out past New Year’s.
Or maybe it’s stupid for Tubbo to think he’s all that self-important. The world doesn’t revolve around him and he isn’t the only factor, he’s sure. But he knows that at the very least, he must be one part of it, because Wilbur’s brought this up twice now but neither time can look Tubbo in the eye. His voice is weighed down by both guilt and desperation, neither of which would exist if this wasn’t some cautionary tale brought on by Tubbo’s existence.
It’s impossible to forget when Wilbur went to Europe.
That was when Tubbo knew, from the first week of consistently staying with Tommy, that he wasn’t going to be welcome there forever.
And to think, years now, that Tubbo is being offered up permanent adoption. As if none of this ever happened at all, and Wilbur’s expedition was swept under the rug, the same place that the funeral has gone to rot with Tubbo’s reluctance to talk about it. Everything that has kept Tubbo’s existence here shaky, plus the floorboards underneath that hypothetical strip of fabric.
Wilbur gets up, briefly, to put out his cigarette. Tubbo wonders why he would, when he’s talking about something like this, but then he just comes back to light another one. And really, it’s just wasteful to use up an entire blunt like that, but Tubbo’s not exactly going to critique the guy, not when his eyes look so mellowed out like no nicotine can even touch him anymore.
His voice is heavy in that way that Tubbo knows it to be, still with the charm of a storyteller but the definite exhaustion of one who has told this story either too few times or too many. Either way, it weighs down like a pound of feathers, and Wilbur opens his mouth to say plainly, “I swore I’d never tell you or Tommy.”
Tubbo taps against the side of the can. “Well,” he starts, almost conversational if not for the absolute grave conversation they’re having at this hour in the fucking morning, “Tommy isn’t here, and I might not remember this anyway. So, what’s the harm?”
“It’s not something you should have to know. I promised Techno I’d never bring it up.”
“Well.” He’s clearly stalling. And why does Techno care, anyway? “You’re telling me anyway, so I guess the promise can’t be all that binding.”
Wilbur breathes in the smoke. “I was nineteen. You and Tommy, you guys were fourteen. You had to have just been moving in, and Tommy was several weeks out from the hospital at some point, and I was in school.”
Wilbur had been reluctant to leave after Tommy’s discharge. Tubbo remembers that, sitting with Tommy and playing app games beside him while Wilbur and Phil argued down by the kitchen. School is a priority, Phil had argued, while Wilbur’s argument probably sounded a lot like, well fuck school my brother tried to kill himself, and everything spiraled from there. Tubbo’s job wasn’t really to listen, but the task of keeping Tommy distracted from the noises kind of got stale whenever Tommy’s eyes would glaze over and he’d start staring at nothing again.
And so Tubbo listened to the arguments. What the hell else was he meant to do?
“School wasn’t working for me,” Wilbur says simply, which explains everything and nothing at all. “You know I have bipolar disorder, yeah?”
“Sure,” Tubbo says, because he didn’t, not really, but he suspected. He’s seen the medication lined up in the kitchen; it’s just a matter of who takes what.
“When I was manic, I was getting high, and when I wasn’t, I was neurotic. I was neurotic, Tubbo, set off by the smallest things, racing to get back home but wanting to just up and leave it. Trying to make a name for myself, but too scared to make a choice. Hazes of quitting jobs and having one-night stands, or, well-”
“I know what a one-night stand is, Wilbur,” Tubbo deadpans.
“I didn’t hesitate because I thought you were unaware of the abstract concept of sex, Tubbo.” Wilbur stares down the end of the cigarette, eyes nearly crossing. “Regardless. I was just a ghost, it felt like. I’d come back into my body after a few days away, find myself standing in the middle of a concert I had apparently snuck into, or something of that sort, wondering when the fuck I got there. Over and over, and never once did I decide to go home. I’m sure you can sympathize.”
“And so, I didn’t want to come back,” Wilbur continues. “I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to be awake. A person needs to want, otherwise, what is there for them to do? I was wanted, Tubbo, but I did not want. At the time, it was my biggest failure.”
Tubbo nods, and then Wilbur states, “My roommate found me.”
“... What?”
“Oh, I’m sure you understand what I mean, Tubbo,” Wilbur says with a scoff, but Tubbo can hear some underlying amusement there. Laying beneath that amusement is bitterness, though, all stacked up into a single sound that makes Tubbo feel like he’s caught in the spotlight, like there’s something horrible he has to uncover, something so horrible Wilbur can only manage to laugh.
And then it clicks.
Tubbo’s eyes widen, then he steels his face into a more controlled expression, fingers tightening around the can as he replies, “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh God, Wilbur.”
“You believe in one?”
“No,” Tubbo half-lies, “but- but fuck’s sake, man, I-” Tubbo pauses, clears his throat and asks, “Why are you telling me this?”
“That’s the reason I went to Europe,” Wilbur explains. “Because I, Wilbur Soot, had failed , and home was a forbidden concept, and I couldn’t crawl back there with my tail between my legs, looking like a lost puppy, and meet Tommy’s eyes. He would have been elated to see me, not knowing what I had nearly done. A bit of a sore spot for him, suicide was.” Wilbur laughs humorlessly. “So I went backpacking. I went from place to place, a restless ghost. I met a guy and nearly proposed to him. Fuck man, I flirted with a few girls over a guitar. Got higher than any honorable man should have– not that I cared much for honor, back then. I had already done enough. I didn’t think I would make it long enough to be twenty.” Wilbur takes a deep breath. “I was nineteen, Tubbo.”
“Yeah.”
“And I didn’t think I’d make it to twenty.”
“... Yeah.”
“And I look at you now,” Tubbo freezes as Wilbur continues, words spilling out almost carelessly, but Tubbo has never known a Wilbur that didn’t have a plan, “and I see a seventeen year old who doesn’t think he’ll make it to eighteen. Much less be old enough for the things he drinks.”
Tubbo takes a deep breath. Because- because yeah, yeah, sure. Wilbur has a point, here, there is a parallel. Tubbo always saw more Wilbur in Tommy and Schlatt in himself, but maybe that was a close-minded way to look at that. Maybe Tubbo is just a compilation of every person he’s ever known– his father’s lack of commitment, his mother’s selfishness, his uncle’s violence, Schlatt’s defeat, Quackity’s rage, Techno’s distance, Wilbur’s history.
How much easier it must be, to be a whole enough person on your own.
How much nicer it must be, to know you have a say in your own future.
How much lovelier it must fucking be , to be able to grin and say that anything happened for a goddamn reason.
And that’s what it is, isn’t it? “Why does it matter?”
Wilbur gives Tubbo an odd look. “What?”
“Why does it matter that I don’t think I’ll make it to eighteen?” Tubbo asks, and Wilbur opens his mouth instantly to refute, but Tubbo raises his voice and keeps going. “Wilbur, I have nothing going for me. Fucking nothing. Things here were good, they used to be easy, but now it’s all messed up, and- and I can’t keep a friend that’s just mine without it being a mistake, and I can’t even be in love with a person correctly, and- and Wilbur, what does it matter? Is it really so bad to live your life by the day? Isn’t that what everyone says you’re meant to do?”
“There’s a lot to process there, Tubbo,” Wilbur says uneasily, and Tubbo laughs.
“Then, Wilbur, we don’t have to process it.”
There’s so much glee in making Wilbur uncomfortable, some sick satisfaction that Tubbo isn’t the only one, freezing his ass off trying to process the fucked-upness of his entire life. Recently, Tubbo’s started to realize that he kind of craves that feeling, likes the idea that people feel upset or off-put by his presence, because good. Fucking good. After everything, Tubbo’s finally got the upper hand in something.
(Though, maybe he’s making too big of a deal out of it. He used to make people uncomfortable all the time, when he was a kid. There’s a reason Schlatt tried not to bring him up, a reason that people in the convenience store would turn their cheek to the kid that, by strictly appearances alone, looked like an only slightly beaten down angel.
Fallen, now, though. Surely. They’d made sure of that.)
“Not processing it was what fucked me up in the end,” Wilbur states. “I didn’t- I was- I thought that if I just kept moving, then suddenly, everything would stop. I went up to The Alps, Tubbo, the fucking Alps, and I felt like I was breathing for the first time. The air there, it’s so- it’s so clean, and clear , and I stood up there, all alone, and I thought, I can’t leave this place and keep doing what I’ve been doing my entire life. Something has to change. Because it was the most lovely place– you would have loved it, you and Tommy and Techno– and I was making an ass- no, a fool out of myself, because I was too wound up to even admit to someone that there was something wrong with me.”
“I’m glad you got better,” Tubbo says earnestly, “but what does that have to do with anything?”
“How long can you run, Tubbo?”
“A long time. I’ve been doing it since I was able to walk.”
Wilbur lets out a frustrated noise, and out of all the things Tubbo’s said, he’s surprised this is what provokes it. “ Why, Tubbo,” Wilbur lets out, a bitter laugh caught between his teeth, “why don’t you understand what I’m telling you? I’m- I’m not trying to fuck with you, man, I’m not trying to hurt you. You have to know that were I sitting here with anybody else except you, I would have given up. But I’m not giving up on you, Tubbo, because when I came back-” Wilbur’s breath hitches, and Tubbo thinks he might be on the verge of crying, but he can’t remember the last time Wilbur’s done that, “-when I came back from Europe, and you saw me, you hugged me. And you and Tommy refused to let me be alone, you let Phil call you guys out sick the next day so you could- so we could just hang. And I’ll be damned if I leave you here, wallowing in your own misery, because you don’t think- you don’t think anybody would do the same for you.”
“So you’re doing this all because I hugged you two years ago?”
Wilbur slams his palm into the wooden steps suddenly, and Tubbo jumps. Wilbur shouts, “Stop fixating on the tiniest things, Tubbo! You’re- if you’re trying to piss me off, you’re doing a damn good job, but I’m not leaving. I’m not. You’ll have to fight like hell to let me leave you alone, now that I’ve seen- now that I’ve seen how bad things are, fuck, Tubbo,” Wilbur’s voice drops again, and he hisses out a quiet, “Sorry. I’m sorry for that. I need- I need to calm down.”
“We’re going to be caught at a standstill, Wilbur,” Tubbo warns him, not unkindly. “Nothing is going to change from just this conversation. There’s too much else there, things that- things that I have under control, kinda. Things I can’t bring you into. There’s things too dangerous to get too many people involved.”
“Tell me something not dangerous, then,” Wilbur insists. “Tell me something- hey, you said you’re having issues with friends, right? You- you said you might be in love with someone, and surely, surely I have better advice on that than- than anyone else. I used to be quite the hearthrob, Tubbo, if I can stroke my teenage self’s ego a bit-”
“That’s what I can’t talk about,” Tubbo replies. “It’s not that easy.”
“Then tell me about Tommy.”
That surprises Tubbo. “Tommy?” He wants to add, what about him, or otherwise do something that isn’t just repeating his name, but it gets caught in his mouth and he swallows it back down, because this was going to come up eventually.
There’s an agitation in Wilbur’s eyes, and it has nothing to do with Tubbo. He’s only ever looked that way when it comes to his younger brother. “You two have something going on. It’s- it’s fucking with him, Tubbo, I’ll be honest with you. It’s really fucking with Tommy, and I don’t like when things upset you but I especially don’t like it when it upsets Tommy.”
“Playing favorites?”
“I’ll cut you a deal,” Wilbur says, “make yourself an option, and I’ll let you be my favorite brother. It’ll be a secret.”
Tubbo shakes his head. “Sorry, Wilbur. Also, Techno’s not on the table, now?”
Wilbur doesn’t seem surprised by Tubbo’s refusal. “Techno isn’t my favorite brother, but he’s my favorite person.”
“I see.”
“Who are yours?”
Tubbo pauses, thinking it over before saying, hesitantly, “Tommy’s the closest thing I have to a brother, since I don’t have any,” he ignores the look Wilbur gives him, “so he’s my favorite brother. Probably.”
“Is he your favorite person?” Wilbur presses. “Or is that the mystery person?”
“Probably the mystery person, just to keep my options diverse.” It’s likely true, though. Tubbo likes Ranboo a lot, enough that the thought of him is making his chest tighten up again, so he shakes his head to himself and focuses back on Tommy. “Things have been weird, yeah. It’s not something you can help with, though.”
“He came into my room, the night you came back from your supposed walk,” which is still a pretty bad excuse, but Tubbo’s not going to nitpick Wilbur on it right now, “and he told me that he’s worried about you. That he doesn’t know how to fall asleep because he can’t stop thinking about- about something. He wouldn’t tell me what the something was, Tubbo, just said it was on you.”
Tubbo’s brain blanks. “Oh.”
Because on one hand, good. Fucking good, praise to God, hallelujah, all that shit that Tubbo can only say with a grimace. He has to celebrate in one way or another, though, because it means that Tommy knows Tubbo’s upset, that Tubbo’s agony isn’t just this- this ignored thing that sits and festers while everyone dumps their shit on him. Maybe this will get people to stop seeing Tubbo as their pseudo-therapist, maybe this will get people to actually bother enough to act like they want him around, maybe this will make him more satisfied when he leaves, because he knows that he’s not leaving a place that will forget he was ever there at all. He can curse the damn town like his family cursed him, and he can curse every bus seat or train pole that he hangs onto, and he’ll go on until he dies and nobody knows where to put his grave.
On the other hand, hearing that Tommy– his Tommy, his best friend, his near brother who he’s been treating like shit– is worried for him feels like the worst outcome of any of this.
Tubbo wants people to care. But Tubbo hates when people worry.
And this conversation is fucking miserable, but if it keeps Ranboo off of his mind, then maybe he’ll take the bitterness over an outright panic attack.
“He shouldn’t have to be worried,” Tubbo insists, not sure who he’s arguing against anymore. “I’m fine. I’m living, aren’t I? I just- I don’t get why he’s getting worried the second I do anything without him. Like, I don’t- I’m not just around to fucking follow him til the end of the universe, I have things to do, I have people to hang out with, it’s not just Tommy. It’s not just Tommy. But it’s not Tubbo either, I- why is he worried about me? What am I doing wrong, here, where do I need to cover my tracks? Tell me Wilbur, because you hate seeing him upset more than I do- as much as, I mean. You- how do I get him to give up on me?”
“I have a question, Tubbo,” Wilbur says, voice even.
“It seems like you have a lot of those.”
“Can I ask it?”
Tubbo waves his hand. “Go ahead.”
“When you started staying with us three years ago,” Wilbur starts, before shaking his head and rephrasing. “When Tommy took you in three years ago, finally giving you a place to stay after you had lived elsewhere, how did you feel?”
“That’s a hard question,” Tubbo says.
“You’re stalling,” Wilbur replies, callous enough for Tubbo to know that he has a point he’s trying to get across, that there is some kind of right answer buried in here, one that will leave Wilbur satisfied and Tubbo defeated. The ideal position, Tubbo figures, for Wilbur to try and help him, because that’s never been an organic process that lives without its clockwork.
Still, Tubbo doesn’t exactly have another choice, so he takes the risk and admits, “I was happy. I was- I was happier than I had any right to be, because I knew you guys weren’t my family, but I still- I mean, I loved Tommy. I love Tommy, of course I do, you have to know that he’s like a brother to me, even with all this shit. So I was happy, yeah, can you blame me for that? My life could have ended, right then and there, and I could go to hell knowing that at least I died on a high.”
“Mm.” Wilbur hums.
And it irritates Tubbo, that after everything he just said, feeling like he had to twist a knife into himself and bleed out what had to be the truth, Wilbur looks at him like he just told the stupidest lie in the world.
“What?” Tubbo says, voice betraying his frustration. “That’s the truth. Fucking obviously. You would- you would feel the exact same in my shoes, getting to live with your best friend, I was happy as hell. I’ve literally never been as happy as I was in that moment, three years ago, so-”
“Yeah.”
Tubbo narrows his eyebrows at Wilbur, who is relaxed like he’s just won his prize, sitting lazily in front of him all for his taking. Tubbo’s gut churns with anger, at being looked at like he just handed it over to Wilbur, who is really starting to press the buttons of this supposed gift horse that’s just trying to tell a heart-warming story, goddammit, isn’t that what Wilbur wanted?
But what Wilbur wants is impossible for Tubbo to tell, he realizes, even when it starts with the same predictable proposal of, “Can I ask you another question, Tubbo? Just one last one, I promise, then I’ll give you your mope time.”
“Fuck it.”
Wilbur smiles, and it’s triumphant and despairing at the same time, in equal measures. It’s bittersweet, but the sweetness and the bitter are intertwined so heavily that both are weighted down. It’s the kind of smile Schlatt must have given himself in the mirror every day since Tubbo left, knowing that he fucked up badly, but that he’s just lost someone because some stupid bitch with a bleeding heart came and stole him away-
And for a second, Tubbo thinks he gets it, but he’s only just reached his hand out to start prying apart the sick feeling he’s gotten to understand the cause when Wilbur hands it to him, gift horse that he is:
“Tubbo.” There’s a stray firework set off, just behind Wilbur’s head. “When Tommy took you in three years ago, the only thing you felt was hate. Hate for having to recklessly abandon your previous life, hate for yourself for not seeing it as a blessing, hate for Tommy having taken control of something you thought you should have done on your own. And you shoved that deep down inside you, refusing to accept that that was how you felt, but it’s starting to hit a fever pitch, isn’t it? Tubbo, you hated Tommy. And I think you two are starting to realize it. Nothing’s changed, Tubbo, and in fact, there is not a shadow of doubt in my mind when I say that nothing has changed, and you know that.”
Another firework goes off, and the Budweiser goes spilling out into the dried grass as Tubbo’s hands twist in his hair. Thicker skin, protruding veins, holding him down like a baptism as his eyes closed to see red- and he’s never left that, has he? He’s never spent a day away from Hell, and the hellfire is enveloping the two of them as Wilbur rips out the throat of God to accuse Tubbo, forever guilty,
“Tubbo,” forever guilty, forever guilty, let him go what the fuck are you doing have you gone senile look at him is he even breathing what the fuck do we do they ain’t taking me to jail they ain’t they ain’t what did he do to you - “You hated Tommy,” it was an accident kid get the book quick oh God kid wake up for me it was fucking Ishmael Ishmael Ishmael oh God I ain’t going to hell not for this- “And you still do. You hate Tommy, Tubbo,” I can’t do this I can’t he’s just a fucking kid how could you have done this it wasn’t my fault and you know that damn well I ain’t going to hell I ain’t going to hell forever guilty forever guilty,
“You hate him for giving you a second chance you don’t think you deserve.”
Tubbo pushes himself up to his feet shakily, digging his raw bitten nails into the peeling paint of the house as he blinks his eyes, over and over, trying to shake the searing feeling of fire against his skin, licking at his body, his mind going white from the effort to stand up and rip apart the past until it’s smaller than ash, staring his future brother in the eyes and not call him Isaac, and the sky is ripping apart with bullet wounds in bright colors like a million men are trying to kill God, and he’s been every single one of them before realizing they’re shooting at a sky that holds nothing past it, a facsimile of a hope that could save you when all that’s really there is cruel fate and a bunch of fucking stories.
And Wilbur believes in nothing but the sound of his own voice and the dirt under his nails and the callouses that line his every lyric and closing statement. Wilbur has no faith in God, just saw a future in the mist of the Alps, and Tubbo wishes he saw a future like that, one lined with precipitation rather than rotting hardwood floors and the sick noise of something bubbling-
Tubbo shoves his knuckles in his mouth and bites, trying to forget the blinding pain of it, how every crest of rage that ravages his body is a mimicry of it, that the only way he can escape the agony of near-death is to never feel a damn thing at all, trapped in a world where people will kill themselves over his lap like a saint to plead for him to have any emotion at all. His teeth rip across the epidermis, and Wilbur takes a step closer to him, but Tubbo lets out a choked sound like a bastard mutt slipping into its feral state before becoming twitchy and catatonic in the grass, infected and alone, so Wilbur watches as Tubbo makes himself bleed in a rash, ugly attempt to tie his emotions up again and keep them hostage.
This midnight talk could have never amounted to anything, and Tubbo knows this viscerally, because his heart still bleeds for a boy that’s killing himself for absolutely nothing, set in a world where Tubbo is nothing but so is the bullshit excuses one can make for their own sacrifice, and so is Dream, and his head still aches trying to decide if he loves his fake brother or hates him viciously, if this was all some act on his own part to try and convince himself that he’s anything other than a monster, that he rips the lungs out of every present he’s ever gotten and uses the ribbon like a bandaid, and his body is shaking violently with the pressure of not destroying himself, because there is a day tomorrow and he has to live to see it because there’s never been space for him to do anything other than live begrudgingly, resentfully, agonizingly , in spite of everything that’s tried to kill him.
He tears his hand out, mouth tasting like metal, and he spits it onto the grass because he doesn’t fucking care, he doesn’t fucking care, when has he ever cared? When has Tubbo been a person built of anything other than archetypes and rage, when has Tubbo ever had an emotion organic to himself, when has Tubbo ever let himself feel even when crying his eyes out in the arms of someone that he loves that has seen his mistakes?
Never, is the answer, because Tubbo has never felt, has never cared, has never deserved a damn thing, and the fact that this is just a mounting lie makes Tubbo want to abandon everything, but he forces himself to believe it, forces himself to keep going day by day, because it’s impossible to stomach the processes of life when you realize that you feel too fucking much for anyone to understand. That Tubbo has loved every single thing he has come into contact with, Jack Manifold’s shitty basement and Wilbur’s out-of-tune spare guitar and Techno’s favorite coffee place and Philza’s twin pet doves and Quackity’s birthday texts and Tommy’s voice and Tommy’s mind and Tommy’s heart and Tommy’s spirit and Ranboo and Ranboo and Ranboo Ranboo Ranboo Ranboo
Tubbo chokes on his own spit, metallic and mixed with bile, and coughs up a pathetic, “Leave me alone,” like that’s not a sentence remedied so easily with cough syrup down his throat, God, ever fucking person he’s met has that cough syrup taste, he must be diseased, and so he shouts, rough and ripping at his vocal chords, “ Leave me alone,” and that’s not enough, is it, because Wilbur is looking at him like he’s trying to defuse a bomb, and Tubbo wants him to set it off, to bury them both in the dirt, to eradicate the myth of sons that are too bad to love, but he can’t, and there’s a mirror, and Tubbo screams, “ LEAVE ME ALONE!” as the fireworks keep searching for the myth of a power higher than the pain their explosions inflict on others.
And Wilbur, persistent and valiant and desperate to be a good big brother without realizing he’s already fundamentally failed that, looks like he’s ripping a limb off his body as he turns to leave, the cigarette pack and lighter fallen on the grass and the lit joint still between his fingers.
Maybe he’ll make a mistake. Maybe that saying is true, that he and Wilbur get along like a house on fire, and that’ll be their satisfactory sad ending.
But neither he nor Wilbur make mistakes, just miscalculations.
So Tubbo kneels on the floor, tears streaming down his face, and he manages with shaking hands to light a cigarette, shoving the end in his mouth like he sees in the movies. He gags, then chokes, not expecting the direction the smoke comes in despite all his time breathing it in second hand, body unwilling to give him control for the thousandth time in his life.
And as he coughs his lungs out, staring up at the stars, he can’t help but laugh.
The smoke on the 28th, the day he saw Hell, the convenience store after the breakup– it all smelled exactly like this. Smoke is smoke is smoke is smoke is smoke.
And Tubbo is Tubbo is Tubbo is Tubbo is Tubbo, just the same.
–
It slips out after Tubbo’s brought all the gel electrophoresis equipment over to the lab table in the corner, Tommy sitting on it with no disregard for the purpose of the ethanol spray bottle he holds in his hands, escaping as Tommy asks, “It was alcohol, wasn’t it?”
Tubbo squints his eyes, sparing Tommy a quick glance before shaking his head and trying to read through the instructions in the lab packet. The font is way too small for him, and he’s getting frustrated just trying to parse through the overly complicated syntax that would have been fine if it was even slightly legible to someone with dyslexia. He’s not surprised that the teacher didn’t take that into consideration, but goddammit, it would have been nice if he didn’t have to get Tommy to read out the whole sheet of paper to him.
Especially since Tommy seems distracted, with that cleaning supply spray bottle and a pensive expression on his face. So Tubbo will just read the damn paper, then, it’s not like anybody in the class is actually going to nail this right on the first try.
Assigning a lab on the first day back from winter break, January 2nd at 10 in the morning, was probably this teacher’s worst idea. Especially since she can’t even bother to stay in the classroom for five minutes without having to run to grab copies of something or check out the school’s greenhouse, but hey, if Tubbo had to be a high school teacher, he’d probably try to get away from his students as much as possible, too.
… Tubbo’s been a bit pissed off since he woke up this morning, admittedly. This whole lab shit doesn’t help, because he likes labs, but he likes ones he can actually understand, being done with a partner that actually helps. For all the shit that Tommy has given him, at least Jack is an actually decent person to work with in lab, while Tommy mostly just fucks around and skips corners trying to get it done as fast as possible.
It’s not his fault, though, if Tubbo really thinks about it. Tommy doesn’t like STEM classes, has lamented in the past about how the words just don’t stick with him, how he feels like he’s a million meters behind the rest of the class trying to get how intracellular biology works. And Tubbo gets it, because he’s the same with English class, feeling stupid as all hell as he stares at a blank sheet of paper, a condescending voice of a teacher’s assistant in his head as he’s told if you don’t finish this by the end of class, we won’t have time to give you feedback before the actually graded essay.
So, Tubbo can’t blame Tommy for not wanting to do biology labs. Tubbo’s slightly pissed off, and he kind of has a headache, so it’s not like he really wants to do this either.
But he’s going to try, because he doesn’t want to fail this class, and he doesn’t want Tommy to fail this class, either.
And Tommy just asked him a weird question, didn’t he, so Tubbo spares a second away from analyzing the black-and-white printed diagram to carelessly throw out, “What?”
“On the holidays,” Tommy elaborates, and this is probably the worst time the two of them could have this conversation, but it’s not like Tubbo and Tommy have really been having conversations recently. Mostly Tubbo’s fault, that is, but Tommy has a way of making himself inaccessible if he really tries. “You came back, and I hugged you, and you smelled like something. That was alcohol.”
“What makes you think that?” Tubbo asks, and it sounds a little patronizing even to himself, but he’s not exactly mincing his words right now as he tries to focus on the lab instructions. They’ve got to make sure they don’t fuck up the agar plate– great, he’ll make that Tommy’s job, once he puts down the damn liquid container. Tubbo’s hands haven’t stopped shaking since New Year’s, anyway, where he slept in late and got a killer hangover and Tommy lied and said he had some work to do as if it wasn’t the last day of break already.
Tubbo was fine with the space. The two still talked at mealtimes– at least, dinner, since that was the only one Tubbo was awake for– and it’s not like Tommy seemed hostile. Just… distant. He had been gone while Tubbo and Wilbur talked on the patio, anyway, at some party to celebrate the fireworks. Tubbo wouldn’t be surprised if something went south there, especially since Tubbo’s pretty sure Jack was in attendance.
He hadn’t thought that the distance thing was because of himself, but in hindsight, that kind of makes sense. Wilbur had said that Tommy’s been worried about him, and Tubbo’s been dealing with this anger that simmers in him and tastes like metallic guilt since that night. So things are a little fucked up, to put it simply.
Still, things can be fucked up in a different place, and this conversation is a pretty grim one to have while they’re literally at school. Not that anyone’s paying attention, of course, but Tommy’s volume regulation skills are shot and if he starts screaming about alcohol in this high school establishment, someone will bat an eye.
At the very least, though, Tommy’s voice remains quiet right now. “I went to a party, Tubbo. I smelled alcohol and drugs and weed and marijuana and Mary Jane-”
“Those last three are all the same thing.”
“Yeah, well, we’re friends with a whole lot of stoners,” Tommy says, almost bitterly, as if he hasn’t made jokes about smoking weed ever since he knew what the damn herb was. It’s not like Tubbo doesn’t know this, either– it’s fucking high school, what do you expect? “And- and I smelled alcohol, so- so I guess I’m friends with an alcoholic, too.”
Tubbo scoffs, because Tommy’s right, but he can really shove that judgemental voice up his ass, if Tubbo’s honest. It’s been a well-established fact that Wilbur smokes, and Phil recreationally drinks, and if Tommy has anything close to Tubbo’s perception skills then he’d know that Jack’s been drinking since the start of junior year. Of course, Tommy put his whole heart into those DARE programs, and he and Techno are both pretty adamantly against mind-altering substances or whatever, but it’s stupid of Tommy to even try and draw the line at Tubbo, because really, this shouldn’t change jack shit.
It’s not like Tommy had to grow up with alcoholics all his life and got traumatized enough by it to want people to stop. No, it’s just the gentle Tommy concern that bleeds into everything, wanting people to not have unhealthy coping mechanisms. As if Tommy hadn’t been using much worse coping mechanisms just a couple of years ago.
Tubbo doesn’t say all of that, because he’s pissed, yeah, but he’s not going to let that out in some long-winded rant. Instead, he just says, voice neutral, “That’s one hell of an accusation to throw at me. You probably smelled like it, too, after that party.”
“I locked myself in a room,” Tommy retorts, and Tubbo raises his eyebrows. Tommy takes a deep breath before elaborating, “I- I didn’t like the smoke, and the drugs, and- and everything. It was kind of funny at first, but then it wasn’t funny, so- so I hid for a bit. Eryn got me and we played games together, though. I was gonna call you, but I- well, I sort of- I sort of figured you wouldn’t answer.”
“I mean, it was, like, two o’clock in the morning,” Tubbo points out, “so yeah, probably not.”
Tommy takes another heavy inhale. “I didn’t want to smell like it,” he admits, “I don’t- I don’t like the smell on it. It makes people worse, Tubbo, you- you know that. All that shit, it just makes people worse. Scarier.”
“Uh huh,” Tubbo says mindlessly, focusing back on the sheet of paper. This is such a stupid fucking conversation. They need the baby pipettes for this, not the big ones. Tubbo’s way better at pipetting, shaky hands be damned, so he’ll do that as soon as the agar and machine are set. It’s ten past ten, funnily enough, but that means they should probably get going.
“You don’t scare me, Tubbo,” Tommy says pointedly as Tubbo reaches around him to pull out the agarose sheet in front of him. The teacher already prepped up the gel apparently– thank God, Tubbo was second-guessing the decision to let Tommy cut in the grooves already– so they don’t have to fuck around trying to make it. They do have to pour the buffer into the electrophoresis box, though that shouldn’t be too hard. Pour it in, shove the agarose shit in there, and then start pipetting. Tubbo gets started while Tommy continues, “But- but the fucking- I don’t like it. I don’t like the way it makes people. Even big man Philza, it- I don’t like it. I don’t like it, Tubbo.”
“Okay,” Tubbo replies plainly. “Sorry. Can you pass me the pipette tips? You’re kinda in the way.”
Tommy huffs loudly, but slides the box over anyway. Tubbo mutters a thank you under his breath, and Tommy continues, an urgency in his voice, “You aren’t listening to me, Tubbo. I- it really freaks me out, man, that you’re doing that. I- how long has that been a thing? How much do you- do I- what do- why?”
It’s a shame that amidst his stammering, Tommy settled on the question that’s the hardest to answer. Tubbo puts the tip on the pipette and starts with the standard mixture– if he fucks it up, at least there’s more somewhere else.
“Why aren’t you listening to me, Tubbo?” Tommy sounds more desperate, though his volume stays low. “I- I’m telling you that this is shit, Tubbo, this- you shouldn’t be doing this, why are you- could you not have at least told me?”
“And what,” Tubbo responds dryly, “have you react this exact way sometime sooner? You didn’t need to know, Tommy.”
“Everyone always says that,” Tommy complains, and he’s going to make this a more large-scale thing than it is, which is both pretty good and pretty bad for Tubbo’s current situation. “They always say I can’t handle it, I don’t need to know, I don’t- I’m not a kid, I’m fucking seventeen years old, Tubbo, I’m seventeen years old.” He’s two days younger than Tubbo, so this information isn’t exactly inaccessible. “I’m seventeen, and- and nobody listens to me! I’m too distracted, too- too childish, too stupid, and I can’t-” He takes in a loud gasp of air, “Nobody trusts me, Tubbo, I thought you- I thought you thought- I thought-”
“Lower your voice, Tommy,” is all Tubbo can say, which maybe he should have kept to himself, because it just seems to piss Tommy off more.
“I bet you’re thinking, ‘oh, I wish I wasn’t doing this with Tommy,’” Tommy seems almost tearful, which is really bad, actually, because all of Tubbo’s anger will dissipate the second Tommy starts crying, and Tubbo kind of needs his anger when he’s in a situation where someone’s interrogating him about something he doesn’t want to fucking talk about. And then makes it Tubbo’s fault, because of course it is, it’s always- “‘This is all Tommy’s fault, he’s such a bitch about things, I’d rather be drinking tequila with my boyfriend than- than be with my best friend right now.’”
“What makes you think Ranboo drinks tequila?” Tubbo asks, trying to fake a sense of humor about this, because if he doesn’t play that off like a joke, then he might fucking explode right here and now.
Tommy groans, shoving his face in his hands, spray bottle resting on his legs. Thank God everyone is either too distracted or tired to pay attention to the two of them, since Tommy’s making a fucking scene out of this whole thing. “I don’t want to talk about Ranboo right now,” Tommy says.
“That’s perfect,” Tubbo replies, “because I don’t want to fucking talk about him either.”
“Oh, but aren’t you two so happy together?” Tommy mocks. “It’s so much better being around that fucking prick than me, isn’t it? He just makes you so, so happy, and the two of you drink together-”
“Ranboo’s intervention was way more effective than whatever the fuck you’re doing right now,” Tubbo interrupts to point out, ignoring the way that Tommy’s shoulders still at the comment. Tubbo fucks up the starter liquid, go figure, but these grooves were really badly carved out anyway. He probably would have done a better job himself, had the teacher let him. “Just saying.”
“You told him before me?” Tommy says, voice quieter than it was even at the start.
“Yeah, because he wasn’t going to freak out over it.” Tubbo hears Tommy sniffle under his hands, letting out a choked sound, and Tubbo rolls his eyes, “Look, if it makes you feel better, it was an accident. And he didn’t exactly corner me in public about it, so I was a bit more compliant in the process.”
“Is that what I did wrong?” Tommy asks, probably rhetorical but Tubbo listens anyway. “Should I have- should I have just done this at home? Waited ‘til- God, Tubbo, when should I have- I don’t- I have no idea how to do this, I don’t- I’ve never had to do this, nobody’s ever- fuck. ” Tommy shakily exhales, and Tubbo has to tell himself not to flinch.
He has to tell himself not to reply to that, either, which is a little easier of a thing considering that Tommy switches the topic and goes back to an accusatory voice, spitting out, “You like Ranboo better than me. You promised you wouldn’t.”
“I promised that if Ranboo was a dickhead, I’d leave him,” Tubbo states, “and you promised you weren’t going to be an ass about it in the meantime.”
“Not- Tubbo, he knows- he- you can’t be serious.”
“Who opened the door for Quackity when he came over to see Wilbur?” Tubbo poses, and Tommy lifts his head to give him a weird look, the question what does Big Q have to do with this on the tip of his tongue, but Tubbo doesn’t let him ask it. He’s not sure he even has an answer. “If it makes you feel better, Ranboo isn’t even at school right now, so you’re really talking shit about someone who isn’t here to defend himself.”
Curiosity beats out fear in Tommy’s mind, a clearly won struggle as he asks, “Where is he, then?”
Tubbo shrugs, then laughs. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. You think he tells anyone when there’s a problem? He opens up to me once and then he disappears, read receipts turned off.” Maybe the laugh sounds a bit more like a sob, when Tubbo reconsiders it. He shakes his head at himself, voice firmer as he repeats, “I don’t want to talk about Ranboo. Okay? Leave him out of this, he’s done nothing wrong.”
Tommy scoffs, “Except be best friends with-”
“Have you even seen him, recently?” Tubbo snaps, realizing a second too late his sentence kind of doesn’t make sense. “Like- like before the break. Have you seen- Tommy, you know exactly what’s happening-”
“I don’t want to think about that,” Tommy says, voice shaking again, “I don’t want to think about that. I don’t- it’s not my fault, I don't- I don’t want to think about what’s happening.”
“Yeah, well imagine how I feel having to watch it happen,” Tubbo says, seething, and he doesn’t realize his mistake until Tommy lets out a choked sound, half incredulous and half angry. Even then, Tubbo has no time to amend it before Tommy’s slamming the spray bottle on the table, turning to face Tubbo with eyes that are welling up with angry tears.
“Yeah, well-” Tommy’s shoulders shake, “imagine how I feel, having to- having to go through that, Tubbo!”
Tubbo could apologize, should apologize, but Tommy’s been pissing him off this entire time and he’s not going to drop it now, not going to let this be another conversation where Tommy wins, because Tubbo’s used to playing conversations like they’re games to beat, and even if Tommy doesn’t, Tubbo isn’t going to drop that mentality just for him, just for something like this. “Yeah, well, imagine how I feel having to watch you lash out at the person who’s going through the exact same fucking thing-”
“Imagine how I feel, having to see you like him so much better-”
“Imagine how I feel, asking you if that was okay and you fucking lying to me-”
“Imagine how I feel, watching my best friend drink to death!”
Tubbo swallows heavily, one stray classmate’s eyes on them, and it takes a single glare to get them to look the other way. Funny, how little everyone cares, while Tubbo feels like everything is shattering around him.
Tommy looks terrified. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s a first.”
“It’s- it’s really not, man, it’s not. I’m- I’m really sorry.”
DNA sample into the next well.
“I didn’t mean to- I don’t- I’m scared, Tubbo, I-”
Tubbo spills it, because of course he does, and Tommy just watches him clean up the mess.
“I won’t bring him up again, I’m sorry, but you- you gotta talk to me, man, I don’t-”
DNA sample loaded up again. Gotta make this time count.
“What do I have to do to get you to like me more than him?”
“Tommy, can you just shut the fuck up ?” Tubbo shouts, louder than he should have.
Another pair of eyes land on them. More, this time. The teacher’s out of the room; Tubbo just flips them the bird, because hey, most people don’t want to fuck with him. He can’t imagine the kind of rumors that have spread around him, shit that Tommy’s probably easily let slip easily, Tommy’s sketchy twin brother, hanging around that fucking freak-
Tubbo slams his fist into the lab table, hard, and Tommy hurriedly asks as he flinches, “Why do you have bruises there already?”
“Got into a fight with Wilbur,” Tubbo answers honestly.
Tommy looks confused. Of course. “Fist fight? You fought Wilbur?”
“No.” Tubbo rubs his knuckles against his jeans, as if that will help soothe them. “It was an argument.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Probably would have been more fun for you, if it was an actual fight,” Tubbo points out. “Could’ve told all your friends at that party that your addict brothers got into fist fight and bruised each other up. I bet you think that’s what happens when I drink, I get all scary. ”
“Tubbo-”
“How’s this, then,” Tubbo shouldn’t admit this, but he barely has a choice against his impulses anymore. “I’ve been drunk around you plenty of times, and you’ve just never noticed. That make it better?”
“How would that make it better?” Tommy has the gall to sound heartbroken. “How would that- Tubbo, I-”
“I wish I was scary when I’m drunk,” Tubbo says darkly, under his breath, “Make you tell Philza to stash away those adoption papers before he makes an offer he can’t hold up. Bet you’ll do that when we get home, just, ‘oh, Big Man Phil, you’ve made a mistake.’ Like that.”
Tommy stares at him, eyes wide and still full of tears. Tubbo’s surprised he hasn’t fully cried yet. Awfully courteous of him, to hold off until Tubbo’s rage goes to a standstill and he has to deal with the consequences of what he’s said, once the two get home.
Or maybe Tubbo doesn’t go home. What’s the point of doing that? There’s nothing for him there, just the place where he and Wilbur talked, the obvious argument awaiting between him and Tommy– because that’s not getting buried here, obviously– the familiar address Ranboo could drive to, oh wait, Ranboo’s not even here. He’s gone, without even a text in Tubbo’s direction, and Tubbo just has to heave his way through today hoping the bastard he’s in love with isn’t dead yet.
What’s the point of going home? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, at this point.
Where the fuck is Tubbo going to go?
“I just want this to go back to normal,” Tommy says quietly, almost pleading. “I want it to be you and me again, Tubbs, and we- and we can just- we can just talk, and laugh, and play video games and do- and do all that shit. No alcohol, no arguing, just- just me and you, hanging out. Why can’t we do that, man, what- what went so wrong? Where did we fuck up?”
Tubbo stays silent for a few seconds, making another attempt to pour the DNA sample in. This time, it’s successful. Fucking finally, at least they have one goddamn trial set up. He’ll take a C for this grade if he has to, and he’s sure Tommy wouldn’t even notice the barely-passing score.
It’s only after he’s done that, discarding the pipette tip and ignoring the way Tommy lets out a whimper as he fights the guilt that must be mounting in his own head, that Tubbo tells him, “It could have been fine, Tommy, I was going to let it be fine.”
“Then-”
“Then Phil brought up the adoption thing,” Tubbo states calmly, “and you and Wilbur both brought up the alcohol. And now it’s not fine anymore.”
“Tubbo-”
“I was happy to let your life be perfect, Tommy,” Tubbo insists, frustration pooling into his voice again, because dammit he can’t keep it out of his words for very long, can he? “I was happy to let you have your sort-of brother figure, and your perfect fucking family, where nobody does anything bad and nobody has any friends aside from you and everything is just great. I tried to give you that for so fucking long, Tommy, dropping every argument you ever started, carefully hiding the fact that Ranboo wanted to text me, how scandalous of him, wanting a friend. I did everything I physically fucking could.”
Tommy’s hyperventilating, breaths soft in his chest but words ragged, “Tubbo, I-”
“And you still wanted more,” Tubbo spits out. “You still wanted more, after everything. You wanted the brother that went through everything with a smile, you wanted the older sibling that didn’t piss off to Europe for a year, you wanted the brother’s best friend that just drove you around and paid for our food and never had a goddamn thought about you past that. You wanted more, Tommy, and there’s only so much I can lie to your face about, there’s only so much I can do.”
“All I wanted was- was for us to be okay,” Tommy insists, face pale, “I just- that’s all I wanted. Tubbo, you’re killing yourself.”
“Yeah,” Tubbo agrees, because he is. “Doesn’t make me the first to do it.”
“Please stop talking about that,” Tommy begs.
Tubbo sighs. “I’m not okay, Tommy. I don’t think I ever was. Good things happen, I smile and lap and clap like a stupid fucking seal, but it doesn’t change anything. I don’t belong here, I don’t belong anywhere. My family is dead or written out of the will, you all keep asking for a brother that never fucking existed, Ranboo’s- forget him, you all want something I can’t have. I can’t do it. It was never going to end anyway that wasn’t like this.”
“Shut up,” Tommy says weakly.
“I think it’s the end of the line,” Tubbo confesses, because it is. He had one of the nicest nights of his life with Ranboo, but Ranboo’s gone now, and the wine cabinet is empty, and Tommy’s looking at him with an expression more heartbroken than anything he’s ever seen. Tubbo’s still going to drink, and Tubbo’s still going to live, but soon enough his addiction will kill him in a town a few hours away from here. It’s the end of the line in every way that matters, and there’s only so much Tubbo can say to Tommy, really, considering that. “I’m just a pawn in this bullshit game, and this is checkmate. I suggest you resign, give in, and let this stop here.” I love you, you’re the best brother I’ve ever almost had, and I hate you more than anything.
If Tommy were a wise man, he would bow his head and nod. He’d let them finish this in silence, and Tubbo would collect his things from under the floorboards and go without another word. Maybe the two would reconnect in a couple of years, and Tubbo will fly back in to greet him again, and then the two would part once more and never meet again until Tubbo’s funeral date is set.
But Tommy isn’t wise. At some point in time, maybe that’s what Tubbo appreciated most about him.
And so Tommy grabs Tubbo by the front of his shirt, making him drop the new pipette tip that soundlessly hits the floor, and he looks him in the eyes and says, “No.”
Tubbo can’t help but laugh, but Tommy’s grip just tightens, and he’s finally, finally started to cry. And just like Tubbo predicted, the sight of it melts away a bit of anger in his chest– not the whole thing, but enough for Tubbo to actually meet his stare, and listen, even if just for a second-
“This isn’t it, Tubbo,” Tommy says. “You’re fucking stupid if you think I’m just- I’m just going to go and leave you like this. You’re my best friend, Tubbo, we’re brothers, I’m not letting you go anywhere that I can’t follow. I- I’ve got your back, always, you know that? You- you used to know that.”
“I’m not the brother you want,” Tubbo insists, and fuck, his eyes feel wet now, too. “I’m not even the best friend you asked for.”
“No,” Tommy replies, either agreeing or disagreeing, but nevertheless persisting, “but you’re Tubbo Underscore, and I’m not leaving you, no matter what bullshit you tell yourself about checkmates and dead families and bullshit.”
“My family is dead.”
“Yeah,” Tommy says, agreeing clearly this time, “but I’m not.”
“Who says I want you to be my family?” Tubbo argues, just for the sake of throwing wood into the flame, trying to get the flickers of fire to catch before he deflates right here and sobs into Tommy’s arms, giving up the act of strength he’s been fighting to assemble for this very moment over the past seventeen fucking years of his life. “Maybe I don’t want that. Have you ever fucking considered that?”
Tommy hesitates, but it only lasts a second before his eyes clear over and his voice steels again, tears still dripping down his face and snot still caught up in his throat but still undeniably the Tommy that stays determined no matter what, like the superhero comics in the bookstore.
“You stayed.” Tommy lets go of Tubbo’s shirt, and Tubbo grabs the table with his fucked up hand, hoping to get an escape, but Tommy won’t look away from his face. The same hue of blue eyes that he has, reflected back at him. “You stayed no matter what. You stayed when I was- when I was in that hospital, you stayed when I told you what happened, you stayed when I pushed your new best friend into the side of his car, you- you stayed through every shitty thing I did. And there was no reason- you- nobody else would have stayed, Tubbo, you forget this- this isn’t my first family, either,” and Tubbo feels awful for a second, but Tommy keeps talking, seemingly unaware of it, “You fucking stuck by me, and you- you’re a damn good best friend and an even better brother, and I- I know you want to be around me, Tubbo, you can lie about a lot of shit- and that’s shitty of you to do anyway, mind you- but you can’t lie about that. I know who you are, Tubbo, you can’t pull this shit on me.”
Everything falls silent between the two of them, both of them staring at one another. Tommy’s face is filled with tears, but his eyes are clear and decisive; Tubbo must be slack with shock, but his expression is nothing short of nebulous. And still, they stare at one another, like this is all that matters, like the only things in life are just these two best friends reconciling with one another while the world goes to shit around them.
It would be nice, if it was just this. If Tubbo could take Tommy’s words in past skin-deep, let them into his bloodstream and soak them up, believe that these two can fix everything that’s gone wrong by sheer willpower and affection. That both of them are just like the movies, flipped the other way, where the superhero reconciles with his best friend after saving the city from mortal peril. Both of them getting to feign normalcy, for once. Kicking back their legs and watching the TV, like Tubbo and Tommy could shove the world aside and play another round of Super Smash Bros like nothing happened. And that’s so goddamn tempting, isn’t it, getting to allow himself that, the thought that Tubbo could finally let himself have something.
But Tubbo can’t do that.
He lets out a sob, instead.
Tommy’s eyes widen in panic, but the sob turns into a strangled gag in his throat, and then another one. Half-formed choking from the anxiety of this entire situation, but half-faked too, some easy excuse to escape. Tommy must not see that, because he watches Tubbo gag like he’s asphyxiating on poison, like those DARE campaigns would tell you, and it doesn’t take long before the teacher returns from her little break and sees Tubbo gasping for air in the corner.
“Is everything okay?” she says, oblivious to what the other classmates had a peek of seeing, before Tubbo glared at them and got them to fuck off in every way that mattered.
Tommy opens his mouth to say something, but Tubbo beats him to the punch. “I feel sick,” he says, a white lie muddled by the truth. “I- I’ve felt kind of light-headed, and now I feel a bit nauseous. I think I might have- might have caught something from over the break?”
“Do you want to go sit in the nurse’s office for a few?” The teacher offers, and Tubbo nods immediately, ignoring the way that Tommy’s eyes scream what the fuck are you doing?
And Tubbo continues to ignore him as the teacher writes up a slip, just as he ignores him when he’s shouldering his backpack and walking out the door, making sure his steps are slow and measured so that when he eventually reaches the front of the school, it’s the same time that the hundred or so half-day kids are pooling out, heading to the buses or their cars without a second glance from the attendance faculty.
Tubbo walks out with them, head held low, pass shoved inconspicuously up his sleeve, and he slips away to crouch behind a parked car that’s drowning in the scent of exhaust fuel and a hint of gin.
He stays there, crouched and waiting, until the entire parking lot and bus lane of the school clears. It takes way longer than he expects, but it’s worth the wait so he won’t have to sneak around stray teachers, and by the time they’re all gone, Tommy’s stopped spamming his phone nearly as much, seemingly defeated.
Tubbo stands up, legs aching beneath him, and he leaves Tommy on read in favor of calling the one person who would pick him up at a time like this.
“Tubbo?” His voice comes out low and confused, probably not expecting a call at this hour without so much as a text’s notice. “Is everything okay?”
“Hey, Big Q,” Tubbo greets easily, tears in his eyes. “How fast can you get to D’Essempi High?”