Chapter Text
The camera flickers on.
A hand is held over most of the frame, and the sound of mumbled curses rattle with the spinning floor. The view pans, shudders, and even if the careless fingers weren’t there, the lighting would be too dim to make out much. But through the haze, the viewer can see just enough to be intrigued. The viewer can see stone and concrete and dust - can hear the hiss-pop of dying lights and the groan of metal on metal. Calloused fingers, a flash of a smile - someone is not where they’re supposed to be.
“Your host, Wilbur Soot, is here.” An eye blinks into frame. “And more than ready to kill some motherfucking demons.”
The video has twenty thousand views and counting.
The viewer leans back in his chair and smiles. There is graffiti on the wall behind the man. There is neon-bright red that forms a circle, in jagged slashes and curved lines.
“Let’s get started, shall we?” video-Wilbur grins, and the viewer smiles right along with him.
…
“They’re not letting me do anything fuckin’ fun.”
“Mmm.”
“It’s all ‘Tommy don’t eat that,’ ‘Tommy, that might be possessed,’ ‘Tommy, don’t touch the corpse’ - well, maybe I fuckin’ want to get brutally murdered by a demon bastard!”
“Sure, bossman.”
“Maybe I want to get arrested for squatting in a graveyard again and- hey. Hey, bitch, are you even listening to me?”
Sighing, Tubbo pauses his video, rolling his chair away from the table with a groan. As he does so, he takes his time popping his spine back into a semblance of normality, straightening up with a low hum. Tommy’s eyes burn into him, impatient, throughout. He’s sure if he looks over, he’ll see what’s been pacing in and out of his view for the past hour or so - flushed cheeks, messy, blonde hair, a permanent scowl, but he doesn’t bother. What he currently is watching is far, far more interesting than whatever is the latest Watson spat.
“Totally, big man,” Tubbo says agreeably all the same. His eyes drift back to his monitor - he built it himself at eight, and it’s been a permanent fixture of his room since - as his hand inches back to the mouse. “Something about wanting to get shanked.”
“God, Tubbo,” Tommy grumbles. There’s a thud, as Tommy presumably throws himself onto Tubbo’s bed. What a drama queen. “It’s about the principle. Try and keep up, would you?”
“You better have taken your shoes off before you went on the blankets,” he says back mildly. His hand inches closer; the play button looms. There’s a beat of silence, before a quiet shuffling and the sound of velcro being ripped off. Goddamn it, he’s going to be cleaning dirt out of his sheets for days. “That’s what I thought.”
“Oh, shut up, bitch. You’re just jealous my family and I are actually investigatin’ paranormal shit and not sitting around.”
Jealous, huh?
Tubbo fishes in his backpack for a notebook, gaze still locked on the screen. He takes out a beat-up red one, fumbling for a pen as he flips to a new page. Meticulously, he begins to copy a neon-bright design. He’s spoken with Wilbur, when he goes to Tommy’s house, about recognizing the patterns, the shapes, and arrows. It’s not his fault that the other didn’t notice it. It’s not his fault that Tommy doesn’t have the patience, that no one listens to the kid with the laptop and grit.
He doesn’t answer Tommy as his pen dances across paper. He can tell his friend is starting to feel a little bad in the following silence. It was Tubbo’s idea for the Watson’s - Phil, Wilbur, and Tommy - to start a Youtube channel, to pursue their passion for the paranormal, after all. He had helped them film a lot of early videos, editing footage late into the night. But when their fanbase had started to grow, so did the need for perfection. So did the need for danger - and Tubbo got pushed to the side. Now that it’s happening to Tommy too, he can’t bring himself to feel all that bad.
“Get over it, or get out.” That’s what his dad would say, slurred words over a bottle of beer.
“Get over it, or grow a fuckin’ spine and take a gamble.”
Tubbo leans back and looks at the symbols - the summoning circle - with a feral grin.
“Not for long,” he says. “Not for much longer, indeed.”
…
Tubbo thrives off the unexplained.
When he was ten, when his father was in the midst of drinking himself into an early death, he had wandered into a cemetery. At the time, he had told himself it was for research. It was for preparation - for the sake of readying for the inevitable. He had trailed soft fingers along cold stone as his feet crunched over leaves, weaving between memorials. Somewhere beneath the dirt and tides of change were the dead. Somewhere beneath his sneakers lay a rest that never ended, and he wondered morbidly what it would be like.
He wondered what it would be like when his father’s name adorned the stones.
When Tubbo was ten, he fell asleep in that graveyard and woke up to see a ghost.
It was a wispy, near-invisible thing. It was hardly a breath in the crisp air, a refraction of light and shadow and all that never can be again. It watched him with something resembling sadness, and then it was gone.
He ran all the way home. He shook his dad awake, rambling about legends and the make-believe, and his dad slurred that he should “shut up and forget it.”
He never did.
He never will.
Tubbo stands over a boxy, ugly-looking grave and simply breathes. Night coats the world around him, a darkness that pulls at his mind and makes him want to leave, run, get away while you still can - but Tuboo doesn’t move. He stares at the dirt, humming lowly, as the wind ruffles his hair. He’s been coming here every week for years. If something - something like the ghost he saw, ages ago - were to hurt him, it would have already happened.
“About to do some fucked-up shit.” Tubbo pats the grave calmly. “You would be disappointed, I think.” The thought fills him with something almost like peace. His phone buzzes with a notification, and with the added light, he can make out the words he knows by heart, etched into stone.
Schlatt.
Lost too early.
It always makes him laugh. His dad was lost when he was seven, and he forgot Tubbo’s birthday. His dad was lost when he took a bottle to a wall a little too close to his kid - when he screamed himself hoarse about useless, pointless things. His dad was lost too early, sure, but it wasn’t to the cold embrace of death.
Tubbo shrugs, reading his text message. It’s from Tommy. It’s been a few days since they’ve hung out, and apparently, the Watson’s are letting Tommy come with them to a haunted apartment complex. Another video, another week. “Srry cant hang out big man ill make it up to u,” his phone tells him. Tubbo would be upset if he didn’t already have plans.
He knocks his fist against the grave. It stings his knuckles as he begins to walk again.
He has a summoning circle to make.
…
“I am chanting,” Tubbo says frantically. “Chanting is happening - I am speaking Latin and everything and, shit, this better work and more fuckin’ chanting-”
The circle he made out of red spray paint and a few Bath and Body Works candles begins to glow. Tubbo takes this to be a good sign as he flails his arms, purple light now spiraling across his body. The grass turns a near-red, the trees morphing to desperate, reaching fingers as paint begins to thrum. He feels a bit woozy, but maybe that’s from dealing with the nasty bits. Maybe that’s from hiking all the way up to this hill, only to realize he forgot to grab the chicken blood he bought from the grocery store and having to go back and get it.
“More chanting,” Tubbo wheezes. “Chanting is commencing - chant, chant, chant -”
He also does not know the right words for this ritual. He knows the circle is legitimate - from his own research and the crumbs from Wilbur’s video, but actually doing it proves a lot more difficult than just reading. Just setting it up took well over two hours. Tommy will be finishing with filming soon, and he’ll expect some sort of reply.
Fuck.
“Fuck,” Tubbo throws into his tirade. The light shines brighter. Ooh. “Fuck, balls, shit-”
It finally flashes, something booms, and everything stops at once. Tubbo throws his arms over his eyes, his harsh breathing the only thing filling the nothingness. And then, quieter, barely a noise beneath the night, a squeak.
Tubbo blinks away stars. His eyes stubbornly refuse to adjust, as he strains his ears for more. Something excited begins to curl in his stomach, fighting its way through stubbornness and apathy and gritty soil. It makes him feel alive - the tingle in his fingers, the rush in his lungs, the air on his face. He listens, and another noise cuts through the space.
A tiny, barely audible vrwoop.
Tubbo grins with all his teeth. “Eat this, Watsons,” he croons. He laughs, surrounded by the dead and the not-quite. He wonders where he falls between. He finds he doesn’t care, as the wind starts again, blowing fond notes through his hair. “More than ready to kill some motherfucking demons,” Wilbur had said, in that stupid fucking video. He had never delivered. Tubbo was about to, and the knowledge that he beat them to it almost makes him laugh again.
But then, his eyes adjust.
And the knife he had cupped in his hand freezes from where he raised it.
The demon looks terrified.
The demon is curled up in a ball at the corner of the circle, hands held protectively over its head, looking scared shitless. And sure, its eyes are too wide, colored a luminescent red and green, with skin half like the void of space and half the white of the stars, but it watches him like he’s the monster. And Tubbo’s vision doubles, and he can swear the knife in his hand turns to a bottle, alcohol poignant in his nose. He sways, and the wind feels cruel now.
He feels cruel.
The demon vrwoops again, pressing against an invisible barrier, and Tubbo lowers the knife with clenched teeth. The excitement dies, a flower ground beneath his heel, and all he feels is tired. It’s two in the morning. He has school tomorrow, a best friend who will want attention, and an empty house to get back to.
‘Fuck,” he groans. The demon whimpers. “Fuck, I need to stop thinking of ideas on caffeine highs. This is going to be a bitch to explain.”
…
“Tommy, bossman, best friend of my entire life-”
“What do you want.”
“Will you pick me up two McDonald’s meals and drive to the cemetery.”
“What the fuck-”
…
Tubbo greets his best friend with a hand on the tree and his back to a monster, not even an hour later. His fingers are sticky with blood and paint, and his breathing rattles like cymbals in his lungs. The glow from the circle is all but gone now, leaving only those two, oddly-colored eyes staring back at him. Red, green, red, green - Underscores aren’t supposed to feel guilty.
Underscores aren’t allowed to show weakness. He is meant to be crushed flowers, bad soil, alcohol-soaked spite; Tubbo is not supposed to feel bad. If there’s one thing he’s learned from his dad, it’s that, and so he ignores the spiked foliage in his heart. He turns away, turns towards the graveyard, and focuses only on the wind in his hair. The assignment he has due in a few days, the allure of taking a shovel to the ground and seeing what he’ll find.
The inexplicable, the unknown - they have always been his weakness.
Tommy knows it, too. When he rounds the hill, a scowl twisting his features and bent near in half, he already looks very, very done. “What,” he starts. “Did you do now?”
Tubbo throws him a grin. He’s been making red handprints on the wood of the tree, and he traces one of them now. Tommy watches him with narrowed eyes. “Nothing, bossman. Everything is perfectly a-okay.”
“...Fucking bullshit-”
“The question is,” Tubbo interrupts. “Did you bring the food?”
“Yeah, yeah, all I’m good for, apparently,” Tommy sneers, but hands over the Happy Meals all the same. Tubbo fist pumps the air with a cheer, and there’s a scared-sounding buzz from behind him. “What was that?” Tommy asks, suspicious.
“Nothing?”
“Tubbo.”
“Okay, fine, fine. I’ll show you,” he sighs. Pushing himself off the tree, Tubbo spins on his heel and walks back towards the circle. Leaves crunch underfoot, a crackle that feels out of place with the drawstring tension of before. It’s almost worse than when Tubbo walked up here to do the goddamn ritual himself. It’s worse because he can hear Tommy’s panting breaths, the mumbled cursing - can hear the exact moment he sees what Tubbo’s done. He rifles through the take-out bag as Tommy stares, painfully, obviously, silent.
It never lasts.
“What the FUCK?”
Tommy falls to his knees, scrambling along the ground and looking like he’s seen the devil himself. Upon finding a stick, he points it at the circle with a shriek. The demon shrieks right back, staticky and off, pushing against a force that’ll never cave. Tubbo drew those lines himself - he would know. Still, he simply looks on as Tommy pokes at the paint, wild-eyed.
It’s really rather funny. He takes out some fries, squinting at them with a hum. They seem slightly soggy. How disappointing.
“I would stop doing that,” he tells Tommy through a mouthful of food. “That paint is the only thing between us and that bitch going on a murder spree.” He doesn’t let the doubt seep into his words. Tubbo doesn’t say that he brought a knife and is in a graveyard and was more than ready to finish the job if he was sure. He just eats his food and watches Tommy panic, because he has to get his joy somewhere. And both the McDonald’s and the demon sobbing in the corner have fallen far too flat.
“What the fuck, Tubs-”
“Yeah,” he shrugs. “My bad.”
…
It’s calmed down some when Tommy finally brings up the inevitable. They’re sitting near the red lines, Tubbo with his bag of food in his lap and Tommy attempting to steal it. The second one sits untouched a few paces away, sad and slumped over in remorse. Tubbo keeps looking at it because it’s easier to look at than the demon. It’s easier to think of eating, sleeping, and schoolwork than the fact that it’s three in the morning and he has a whole supernatural being stuck in a shitty trap. With sprawled out legs, Tommy has no such reservations. He gapes at the demon, and the demon cowers back.
Eventually, the unsaid is spoken. The obvious, painful answer is brought to light.
“We can call my brother - my dad,” Tommy rushes out as if the words burn. “We can take care of this; it doesn’t have to be our fuckin’ responsibility-”
“No,” Tubbo says. The knife glints at him, a leaf gliding over the blade. “No,” he says, and Tommy’s mouth shuts with a click. The silence lingers, like the scent of grease and paint fumes - like the chill of the dead and those that are a bit too close to it.
Tommy has never been good with the quiet. He starts to talk, as he always does, but this time it’s with the demon. Gesturing with his stick, yelling curses, dancing - none of it gets any reaction besides fear. Tubbo watches with thinly-veiled amusement and thinks it’s as good of an apology as any. The fact that Tommy’s here at all after filming, listening to him, is proof enough. He won’t give in, though. This is his project, his work, and he’s so fucking sick of being ignored. He’ll make it work. He always does.
“Hey, bitch, can you understand us?” Tommy yells. The demon just whimpers back with large, watery eyes. Jesus, this thing is pitiful. Tubbo is starting to feel like he kicked a cat or something. Pushing away his thoughts, he lets the curiosity creep through with a snort.
“Maybe it’s the Bath and Body Works candles,” he says out loud. Tubbo nudges one with his foot as Tommy perks up. “I bought them on clearance. Maybe we got, like, a Walmart-version demon.”
“That feels offensive,” Tommy tells him.
“Oh, shut the fuck up.”
With careless abandon, Tubbo tosses the extra fast food in. The knife he has clenched in one hand proves to be pointless, as the demon doesn’t even twitch. All it does is flinch back, as the bag tumbles over itself to lay in the grass near its head. Soggy fries spill out, sad.
They stare at it for what feels like ages.
“Maybe,” Tommy eventually offers. “It’s a fuckin’ - a fucking vegetarian or something.”
Tubbo rubs his forehead. “Fuck, I really managed to summon the lamest demon ever, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay, bossman.” Tommy pats his shoulder in faux sympathy. “There’s always the next satanic ritual you can perform in a creepy-ass graveyard.”
Tubbo laughs, and it all might even be okay. There are unsaid things, hurt like pine needles and ivy, but Tommy’s cackling, throwing an arm around his shoulder with a grin. Things are fine, and he settles back with his food, content.
…
Things are definitely not fucking fine.
Things are not fucking fine because he fell asleep in a cemetery, grease-stained fingers and a crick in his neck, only waking up when the sun peaked over the horizon. This proves to be a problem, however, as it’s a school day. And, upon checking his phone with a curse, they have to be there in five goddamn minutes.
“Tommy, fuck - shit - Tommy, get your ass up-”
“Huh?” Tommy says groggily.
“Wake the fuck up, you bitch - we’re fucking late for school and - SHIT.”
Tubbo freezes, grass in his hair and clothes disarrayed, as he catches sight of what adorns the top of the hill. Two sleepy eyes look back at him, and the memories of last night rush back all at once.
“What the fuck?” Tommy murmurs, sounding slightly more awake, but Tubbo doesn’t pay him any mind. Under the early morning sun, without the barrier of dark and denial, everything feels more real. More weighted. Tubbo locks eyes with a monster and is suddenly hyper-aware of the cheap, flaking paint, the candles that have long been extinguished. Its proportions are stretched, too long limbs and eyes that are too wide, too bright for a human. Monochrome colors, it looks like something that is made for the night. It looks like something that should remain in storybooks and children’s tales, with claw-like nails and a tattered suit.
He can’t look away.
Tubbo can’t look away. And as he stares, frozen, the monster goes eerily still. It starts to shake. Slowly at first, then faster as it seems to vibrate out of its very skin. Bones stretch, crack, a cacophony of violence, but its gaze never wavers. Tubbo gets the full view as purple seeps like ink into its eyes, pooling in the corners like tears, and it opens its mouth with a screech-
(It will kill you; it will end you. Some things are worse than death and bottles and words of ancient promise-)
A bag is thrown at his head.
Oil and cheap paper, he gets a mouthful of crinkly trash, and the moment breaks. The demon goes quiet, leaving nothing but Tubbo’s harsh breathing, Tommy’s babbling questions. “Are you okay? Bitch - bossman - fuck, Tubbo, what’d it do-” but he’s already staring at his hands - the knife a bitter burden in his pocket.
“I’m fine,” Tubbo blinks. The sun has risen further. They’ll definitely be late now, but it’s the least of his concerns. He turns back to the demon - careful not to make eye contact - and, huh. It actually is crying, purple tears and mud streaked along its face. Standing on a hill, the drone of cars and a gross taste in his mouth, it doesn’t feel like a victory. It just feels like a mistake. It feels like a teenage fuck-up on a scale never seen before, a mess he needs to hide and forget about it.
“I’m all good, bossman,” Tubbo says. “Note to self, don’t make fucking eye contact. But it looks pretty harmless now, yeah?”
“You looked like you were getting possessed,” Tommy informs him. Half his hair is sticking straight up, which somewhat ruins the judgmental set of his shoulders. He glares daggers at the demon, who’s attempting to crawl further away.
“Well, I trapped it in there, so seems fair enough to me.”
“Tubbo, no-”
“Tubbo, yes,” he shrugs. “I think we should let it go.”
“Tubbo, what the fuck-”
“Think about it-” he insists. Beginning to pace around, he makes note of his work now that he can actually see it properly. Bent grass and scorch marks, Tubbo winces. He was never the best in art class, but goddamn. This is just kind of sad. The demon watches him with wide, downturned eyes, hugging the bag of McDonald’s to his chest like a lifeline. It can’t be very comfortable, but, hell, who is he to judge?
“I refuse,” Tommy says.
“Really, though, it makes sense. Don’t you remember the Banana Incident?”
Tommy winces, slumping over. Crouching down, Tubbo pokes idly at one of the lines and knows he’s won. The Banana Incident - capitalization necessary - was as much a pact of friendship as it was a decimation of all their hopes and dreams. As young children do, they had a tendency to name things and get attached. And when what you’re getting attached to is a moldy piece of fruit and the both of you are already displaying arsonist tendencies, well.
Let’s just say that the smell of burnt fruit stuck around the two of them for days.
“That’s what I thought,” Tubbo hums after a beat of silence. “Bananabitch was alive two goddamn hours. We can not be trusted with literally any living thing-”
“It was three,” Tommy murmurs sullenly. Tubbo shoots him a look.
“-Therefore, we let the bastard go. I’m not ready for the responsibility. And there’s like - a 60 percent chance we won’t get shanked.”
Sighing, Tommy relents. “Fine,” he says. “But if this blows up in our faces, I will haunt you for all of eternity.”
Tubbo hums, nodding. Casting a critical eye over the lumpy circle, he thinks back to his research. There’s a lot of ways to mess up a summoning - placing candles wrong, leaving gaps, using the wrong type of incantation - so it must be as easy to break, surely. Regardless, needless destruction is always a good start.
With a shrug, Tubbo knocks over at least four candles with a sweep of his leg.
He stares.
The demon doesn’t move. The candles roll, roll, roll until they’re out of sight, a spinning plea of “Winter Candy Apple - the scent of holiday cheer!” going by.
“That didn’t fuckin work,” Tommy points out, helpful as always.
“No shit, sherlock.” Tubbo knocks over some more. The demon watches, a confused hum, as candles scatter like ping pong balls. He attacks the paint next. Dropping to his knees, Tubbo wipes at the grass, pulling it up by the handfuls, until there’s a noticeable dirt patch in the otherwise full circle. The demon doesn’t move. He keeps going, Tommy standing over him, until all the border is gone - until dirt is caked under his fingernails. With the sun glaring down, he works until there’s nothing left of last night but trash and mud, but nothing happens.
Crouching back on his heels, Tubbo hisses out a breath. There’s a crinkling sound, as the demon hugs the McDonald’s bag closer with a questioning chirp.
“Fuck,” Tommy says. “We’re screwed.”
“Fucking Walmart-ass monster,” Tubbo says, and this time, Tommy makes no argument against him. “Time for Plan B.”