Chapter Text
Five hundred coins for three hundred damage dealt was a pretty decent deal.
It wasn’t like Tubbo’s biggest concern right now was accumulating huge amounts of coins. He believed in the fact that the Town of Fobo would grow more from his and Foolish’s shared efforts than it would from accumulating small amounts at a time. But… currently, he was pretty fucking useless in all aspects. And a little coin was better than nothing.
At some point during his little exploits, Pac and Richarlyson showed up.
“Hey, Tubbo!” Pac called out, smiling brightly. “Where’s Sunny?”
“She’s sleeping,” Tubbo responded absentmindedly, swinging his sword into the stomach of a zombie and noting as it poofed away. He looked over his shoulder to raise a brow at Richas. “No sleep for you, twerp?”
Richas shot him a smug expression and bounced over to place a sign. ‘we can all be sleep deprived together tío >:D’
“All right then!” Tubbo said. “Don’t take all my kills.”
With that warning, he charged into another two monsters. He dodged an arrow from a skeleton, stepped to the left and ran his sword into a spider, turned back around, and knocked the skull right off its head.
“Wow, Tubbo!” Pac exclaimed. “You’re so good at that!”
Tubbo scanned the area, found no new monsters, lowered his sword and arched a brow. “Thanks?”
Pac’s eyes seemed awfully focused on… Tubbo. They were on Tubbo in that usual attentive way, but a bit to the left. Tubbo couldn’t really explain it. He didn’t try to.
“Let’s find more!” Pac urged. He walked over to Tubbo and started pushing him further into the forest, seemingly very eager to kill more mobs.
“Right.” Tubbo sort of just let himself be pushed along. The monsters would show up on their own with all three of them wandering like this. “Does this have anything to do with dealing more damage than me and therefore earning more money than me? If so, I must ask you to leave. Foolish is already doing much more for Fobo than me, and this is the least I can do right now.”
“Of course not,” Pac frowned. “And you’re doing enough. Foolish should feel very lucky to have you.”
Was his tone weird? Tubbo thought his tone might've been a little weird.
“Uh huh,” he said slowly. “Well then, I’m not gonna stop you.” And I like it when you’re around. And I’m never going to ask for that. And I’m one second away from insisting you should go somewhere else.
Pac beamed. He and Richas fell into step with Tubbo.
He didn’t put much effort into talking with them. It was the end of the day—no, it was night, and he couldn’t focus on too many things when his brain was as asleep as his body should be. He could kill monsters because swinging a sword and dodging attacks was second nature to him. Maybe not to the same degree as it was to Etoiles, Fit, and Phil, but he knew how to handle himself. He knew how to kill. Enough so that he could turn off his mind and fall into familiar motions.
Monster, attack, dodge, repeat.
He heard Pac and Richas chatting with one another, but he was too lazy to check the translator to follow their conversation.
At some point, hundreds of metres away from Fobo, they ran into a big flock of monsters. A flock big enough for Tubbo to think he may not be able to handle it on his own. Based on Pac and Richas’ cheerful voices, they hadn’t noticed yet. And they’d been very polite so far, not actually doing much but watching Tubbo go about his task, but Tubbo looked at the flock of mobs like a starving man hallucinating in a desert, replacing greenly skin and skinless bones with limbs of coin.
He ran directly into it all, so by the time Pac called out his name, he was already using every last inch of focus to kill.
And he was good at it, as mentioned earlier, but maybe not good enough for this task without proper weapons and tools. He felt scratchy sharp nails grabbing at his shoulder, which forced him to turn around and force his sword through the zombie’s neck, which gave a skeleton the opening to send an arrow into his stomach.
He bit back a groan and regained his footing, taking out the skeleton too. If he thought he was acting on instinct before, all his senses only sharpened after that. It was no longer Tubbo fighting, it felt more like when he’d been fighting the eye workers who killed Empanada. He’d done things, balanced the creature between life and death and admonished it for what it had done. But all of that was a blur, a reaction calculated through instincts.
In summary; he zoned out. He didn’t die, but everything from the initial ‘oh fuck, I may be in deep shit’ to heavily breathing while Richas forced food down his throat and Pac fretted was a huge nothing.
Oh, and Pac’s fretting was kind of overwhelming as shit. It was all light touches and watchful eyes that stared into his soul, and Pac kind of didn’t have the inhibitions that would keep most people from lifting up someone’s shirt to check out the injury left by an arrow.
And he talked. A lot.
“Wow, Tubbo, that was—wow—you really just killed them all. You looked so—cool.” It sounded like the word tasted wrong to Pac, who repeated it anyway. “It was cool, you know?”
And his hand was cradling Tubbo’s cheek, tilting his head to check for wounds. The warmth from Pac’s hands seemed to spread to Tubbo’s cheeks. It felt dangerous.
“There were like a hundred and you just took them all out like that!” Pac retreated his hand and looked Tubbo in the eyes, intensely. “You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine,” Tubbo said, narrowing his eyes to make out Pac’s expression. Not just his expression, his whole vibe was off by a mile. “I mean, did I tell you about my kills on Egg Island? Because they were in the hundreds.”
“Yeah,” Pac sighed… dreamily?
Tubbo didn’t linger on it, because there was nothing to make of it. “Yup. So, no need to worry about me. Right, Richas?” He looked down at Richas—a bit of an excuse to look away from Pac—who raised a hand and made an ‘eeeeeh’ motion. Because Tubbo was never going to impress the kids with his avoidant behaviour. “Rude, kid.”
Richas punched Pac away and placed a sign in his place, right in front of Tubbo.
‘still lonely and depressed?’
Tubbo shot him a scandalised look. “Richas, I have a roommate now. The place might be a bit cramped so far, but that just brings us closer together.” He realised that did nothing to argue with the statement about him being ‘depressed’, so he tacked on: “And I’ve never been happier.”
“With Foolish?” Pac asked from the side.
“What?” Tubbo uttered, mostly to himself, quickly processing the words. All his brain landed on was the organic version of an error message. He could simply not figure out Pac’s tone. “Sure. We have a good thing going on.”
Pac pressed his lips together and looked weirdly sullen. He seemed to use a microsecond to switch that whole thing around, and grinned instead. “How about instead of going back to Foolish tonight, you come back with me.” Richarlyson punched him. “Me and Richas!” he clarified.
“I’m a busy man, Pac,” Tubbo said. “The only way I can make up for all the things Foolish has done, compared to the rubbish he’s gotten from me, is to give him my time.”
Some kind of darkness settled over Pac’s eyes. “Has he been saying that?”
“Well, no. On the contrary, he’s actually been pretty quick to assure me that I’m doing enough—” For some reason, that didn’t make Pac look happier. Tubbo had never felt more lost in an interaction. “So I guess It’s more of a personal thing? But the point is that while I’d love to keep you and Richas company, I was actually planning on staying out here all night? Sorry.”
“It’s fine, Tubbo!” Pac assured, giving Tubbo a playful shove. “You can stop by at some other time, or come hang out with me and Fit, and Ramón and Richarlyson—with Sunny too, of course—and you can always whisper to us in chat.”
“Right,” Tubbo said. “I’ll totally take you up on all of that.”
“You promise?” Pac asked, playfully, expectantly.
“Sure,” Tubbo agreed. “I mean, I’m gonna be super busy for a long while, especially with Foolish and Fobo, but I’m sure we can hang out at some point.”
For some reason, Pac’s eyes narrowed, and there was a certain fire in them; a determination that Tubbo knew he was capable of. He just had no clue what it was doing here.
But he bid Tubbo goodbye, dragging him in for a hug before, just for good measure.
Richarlyson lingered for a moment. Tubbo looked between him, and Pac’s silhouette.
“Is it just me, or is your dad acting really strange?”
Richas only had one thing to say about that. And that thing was: ‘O_O’
“What?” Tubbo asked, it felt like that single word could encapsulate everything that happened tonight. “Richas, what does that mean?”
The kid smiled and turned his back.
Arriving at this part of the island had felt like a blank slate. There were no external threats, no code monsters or eye workers, no weird slim-waisted enemies that threatened to take them back to that hellspace. There was a building; dark and gold, and a general feeling of new that seemed to hang over just about everyone.
After a few days, Tubbo even started to have moments where he didn’t feel completely inept. He knew all that was standing between him and absolute power was the limit to his technology, he found solace in gathering resources in a more primitive way. Then he could go home each night and add more to the town of Fobo.
Foolish was, in a few ways, a blank slate too. They’d never been in any major conflicts with each other, just like they’d never been the closest. The town they were building got to grow alongside their bond—as lame as that sounded. He didn’t have any of the complicated history with Foolish that made it so strange to interact with Fit and Pac.
Sadly, there was no starting blank with those two. Maybe, if the world granted him a chance, he would let them all forget. The Federation could clearly fiddle with memory. There was something there. It had been a while since he’d seen Cucurucho around, but maybe one of those bunnies would hear his plea.
After all, ‘Hey, can you erase my friends’ memories of me so we can be less awkward?’ only sounded a bit out of pocket. It was all Tubbo’s fault anyway, with the whole trying to sabotage their relationship thing. But in his defence, they weren’t making things easy for him. Especially not Pac.
Pac, who wasn’t at the birthday party, but showed up at Fobo the next day.
“So, Fit told me you and Foolish got very close at his birthday.”
See, recently it seemed Pac couldn't start a conversation in a way that made sense to Tubbo.
He settled for a shrug. “To be completely honest, that whole party is a giant blur to me. Something really weird happened and then I tried to get Em her life back and then I just hung out with the kids for a while.”
Pac hummed as Tubbo continued his task at hand: preparing his backpack for a journey. He was gonna get Fobo all the loot, and then he wouldn't feel like dying. He'd packed food, of course, and enough iron for spare armour should that come to it. He ran through the basement chests in search of coal next, and when he found it, he dumped it into the backpack and looked back at Pac. Who was just… watching him.
“Is there anything I can do for you on this fine day, Pac?” Tubbo asked, ignoring the absolute scrutiny in Pac’s gaze.
“No, no, no, I'm just here to say hi.”
And stare at Tubbo while he did menial tasks, it seemed.
“All right,” Tubbo said. “Go stupid go crazy.”
Pac smiled. “What about you? What plans do you have for today?”
This, at least, was familiar. “I was gonna go do some dungeons. Maybe start thinking about an exp. farm too.” He smiled, a bit bitterly. “It's funny. There's always so much to do when you've been stripped of everything you own, but without my machines, I feel like none of it is enough.”
Pac’s smile morphed into something more grounded. “You're amazing with machines, Tubbo. But you didn't have them in Purgatory either and you were the best leader there. So I don't think you need them as much as you think.”
The words were so nice and genuine that Tubbo didn't have the heart to argue that Purgatory had been composed of clear missions to complete with following rewards.
And Tubbo didn't want to go back to Purgatory. Foolish helping him out of the water after the eye worker had dragged him beneath the surface was what made him say that out loud while the water slowly started filling his lungs. But he missed the structure and reward of it all. He missed the purpose.
Dangerously enough, Pac seemed to be able to read all that from his expression.
“I didn’t have to be a scientist like you and Mike,” he said. “You don’t have to either.”
Tubbo let out a laugh. “Are you trying to call me out on hypocrisy right now? Because you know I’ll argue with you. I will.”
He didn’t want to. He really didn’t want to argue with Pac of all people. That wasn’t something they did.
And he didn’t like the way Pac grinned, standing with his back against the stone walls with his arms crossed. “Go ahead.”
Tubbo was silent for thirty, excruciatingly painful seconds before he turned his back completely and pretended to be very occupied with finding something in Leo’s chest. “I don’t have time for this. Don’t you have a boyfriend to not kiss or something?”
“I do,” Pac said. He didn’t move.
This was just Pac’s brand of weird. It had been a while since Tubbo had a chance to hang out with him, so he’d totally just forgotten that Pac could be pretty fucking eccentric.
“Okaayyy,” Tubbo said. “Weird vibes coming from you today, man. Do I need to message Fit? Or like, personally escort you to his house or something? Give me something to work with here.”
“I wouldn’t mind that!” Pac bounced over from his spot and grabbed Tubbo’s hand. “Let’s go to Fit’s.”
Being frozen was something Tubbo was intimately familiar with, but usually, it didn’t involve this much warmth. Warmth in his hand, mostly, but his whole face felt too hot. He used every last brain cell left functional to not do something stupid like fumble or trip while Pac dragged him towards the ladder.
A new rule appeared at the forefront of his mind, big red letters against a black background: AVOID PAC AT ALL COSTS.
Don’t look at him, and his much too attentive eyes. Don’t think about how pretty they were—and don’t, don’t, don’t ever acknowledge every flimsy excuse Pac seemed to make just to establish contact. Holy shit, do not even interact with Pac at all.
He got away with dodging everyone but Sunny, Foolish, and Leo for a solid twelve hours before he ran into Fit and Ramón on his way back from a dungeon.
“Tubbo!” Fit greeted. “Nice to see you around. How have you been?”
Should he mention Pac? No, right? That would be a very strong opening sentence: yeah, I’m great, but your boyfriend’s being weird, so maybe you can talk to him about personal space before I’m driven insane.
He cleared his throat. “Things have been good! So good. How about you? Have you been accumulating any riches?”
Fit let out a light chuckle. “Something like that. Are you feeling better?”
Tubbo squinted. “In regards to what exactly?”
“You seemed down at the party,” Fit responded. Ramon nodded in agreement.
It was a bit uncanny. No. It was weird as shit to be approached by Fit and Ramon with this, considering the fact that they were both as emotionally obtuse as Tubbo. And yet here they were.
“I’m so over all that,” Tubbo said, starting to walk a bit in the direction of Fobo. “We’re getting create back soon, and I have two lives now, so everything’s a bit more exciting than it was before.”
“What?” Fit asked.
Tubbo kept walking. “Well, technically, only one left because I died on the night of the party.”
“Tubbo, what are you talking about?”
Tubbo paused in his steps because Fit’s voice sounded serious. Enough so that even Tubbo could pick up on it. He turned around and came face to face with Fit once again, this time with something vaguely uncomfortable hanging between them. Because God forbid Tubbo have normal interactions with his friends.
“The lives,” Tubbo said, throat weirdly dry. He felt like he’d gotten caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to even though that made no sense. “I asked for it. Things are a little more exciting when you’re living with actual stakes, right?”
Fit and Ramon shared one slow, painful, excruciating look, and Fit spoke again, voice dangerously low. “You’re not telling me that you willingly put yourself into the same hell the kids have been in since the start? Are you? And I want you to answer really fucking carefully.”
“No?”
He couldn’t really get himself to look either of them in the eyes and chose instead to pretend that the river next to them was the most interesting sight in the world.
“Tubbo.”
Not the fucking name again. Not in that tone.
Tubbo groaned and dragged his hand down his face. “What, Fit? Can’t a guy have a little fun?”
He turned back around and fixed Fit a defiant expression. It was the most he could do to match the stern energy he was met with.
“You’re gonna die,” Fit said.
“What? No. The whole point is that I don’t die. Besides, your kid survived on one life for months, right, Ramon?” He looked down at Ramon, who looked so very unimpressed with him. “Sure I wasted my ‘fun life’ a bit quickly but now Em’s not all alone in her predicament either. Nothing bad has come of this.”
“Nothing bad?” Fit repeated incredulously. “What did Sunny think of all this?”
Tubbo held back a wince. “She was a bit upset. And I get that. But I won’t die. And even if I did, she… there are people who would take care of her.” Like you, like Pac, like Bagi, and whoever else I vaguely trust to not extinguish the sun. “But I’m not going to die, Fit. So it hardly matters.”
Fit furrowed his brow. “Look, Tubbo, you’ve been an asshole lately, but this is— different.”
“Oh my god,” Tubbo said, words tumbling out of him faster than he could keep track of. “Dealing with Pac is actually easier than this. Neither of us want to have this talk, so let’s just agree to disagree and let it be over before—”
“What was that about Pac?” Fit interrupted.
“Huh? Oh. Ah. Mm.”
They stared at each other.
Ramon placed a sign in front of Tubbo.
‘you’re being really disappointing’
“Well, no one asked you, Ramon,” Tubbo bit back.
He regretted it pretty much instantly, not just because Ramon’s eyes widened ever-so-slightly, and Fit’s eyes burned into him from the side.
He forced himself to look up, just to see if he’d be completely scorched by the flames. It wasn’t the first time he’d been on the receiving side of Fic’s fury. That was a vaguely common occurrence between them. Tubbo liked to prod and poke, to push people’s buttons and see how they’d react; and Fit reacted. Not all of the time, no, he was much too level-headed and used to Tubbo’s antics to react ninety-nine per cent of the time. But that one per cent, like the time Tubbo got a little too close to Pac, or the time he intercepted their date, was such an easy pattern to figure out.
Tubbo crossed a line with one of Fit’s closest people, and Fit reacted in the way his instincts demanded. He killed.
He couldn’t kill Tubbo now, not with the permanence. Rather than sending a message, it would turn into an execution. But this was the first time Tubbo had directed his poison at Ramon, and it felt terrible; it was terrible. But worse was the fact that it was necessary. He just wanted Ramon off his back, because, unlike his father, Ramon had made a real effort in calling out Tubbo after foiling the date. The kids might hate it, but he knew how to use his words better than his father. If he needed to hate Tubbo, that was fine.
Oh, and Ramon had been the one to say that Fit and Pac would never leave him, and Tubbo wanted to prove that wrong. Just because he could.
So he held back on the apologies he knew he should be saying, and watched as Ramon slowly realised that it wouldn’t be coming.
“You know what?” Fit said, turning his back, starting to walk away as he should. “Figure out your shit, Tubbo. And then we can talk.”
“Not if I die first!” Tubbo called out in a sing-song voice.
It was perfect. He wouldn’t even have to actively avoid Fit anymore. That would all happen naturally. And with Fit this mad at him, Pac would reasonably follow. Which was a total win.
Wrong, he acknowledged.
Admittedly, he was a man of a lot of wrongs with a few ‘rights’ in between. He’d also thought burning the bridge between him and Fit would naturally lead to Pac being cut off too. That was on him. He should’ve known better. It was so easy to think of them as Fit and Pac—and Tubbo, instead of Fit and Pac and Tubbo. They were three separate islands, and burning one bridge wouldn’t do much to affect the other.
But Tubbo didn’t actually have the heart to actively push Pac away, because, well, he was Pac. He couldn’t even explain that further.
Yes, he could try to avoid him by following his name on the map, but he couldn’t be cruel. With Fit, he knew exactly what he’d get, with Pac, it would either be sadness or disappointment. He was the personification of ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ which everyone knew was worse anyway.
Pac showed up at a time when Tubbo was so engrossed in finally having a task that he didn’t have time to figure out any excuses.
Tubbo’s hands were occupied with putting together iron upgrades for chests when Pac’s voice spoke behind him.
“What are you doing?”
Tubbo let out a yelp and turned around quickly. “Holy shit, Pac. You scared the shit out of me.”
Pac smiled. “Sorry, sorry. I forgot how focused you get when you are working, you know?”
“Yup,” Tubbo said, throat slightly dry. “I was all gone.”
He kind of wanted to scream something like: SUNNY SOS SUNNY COME IN HERE RIGHT NOW. He needed a buffer or something. But he should probably figure out the reason behind the visit first.
“So, what brings you here today?” he asked very casually, half-leaning, half-sitting against the crafting table.
Pac followed suit and sat down on one of the double-chests. “I just wanted to come by and say hi. Like old times.”
Huh, Tubbo thought, well wasn’t that something?
He raised a brow. “So it has absolutely nothing to do with a certain bald man and his child?”
Pac merely tilted his head, a small tug of his lips. “No? Why? Did you talk?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tubbo said. “I’d say we had a very good conversation.”
A conversation Fit clearly hadn’t bothered to share with his boyfriend, strangely enough. Two bridges, Tubbo reminded himself, and no collateral. Pac still saw past the ugly parts of Tubbo because he hadn’t gotten to the rot yet.
“What did you talk about?” Pac asked. Which was kind of the opposite of what Tubbo wanted to talk about, but he’d admit he kind of laid out the foundations for Pac to ask that.
“My newfound mortality, mostly,” Tubbo said. “I guess I should tell you too. I had the Feds give me two lives like the kids. Already lost one.”
“What?” Pac exclaimed. Same word Fit had used, but instead of being delivered flatly, it was doused in genuine distress and confusion. “Why?”
“For the thrill, Pac. You get the thrill right? It makes everything a lot less bleak. Now I have a reason to keep going, to at least make an effort to stay alive. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“But what if you die?”
Tubbo rolled his eyes. “I won’t die.”
“You just said you've already lost one life,” Pac pointed out, stress seeping into his words.
“Happens to the best of us,” Tubbo dismissed. “It’s no big deal, Pac. I’m good at surviving, I just haven’t had a reason to before.”
Did that sound bad? He genuinely couldn’t tell anymore.
“What about Purgatory?” Pac asked. “What if you get taken again? Or if the Federation does something. You aren’t the most careful person when it comes to them, you know?”
It should be funny, the way Pac’s reaction boiled down to Fit’s “You’re gonna die,” but with more steps. But it wasn’t funny. It was just bitter. Everything was so bitter.
“The kids survived for months, Pac. And if they hadn’t left, they would’ve lasted longer. This isn’t as impossible a task as you both made it out to be.”
“The kids,” Pac repeated. Behind his eyes, some small flare of ‘knowing’ seemed to glow. “They only survive because we’re all helping them all the time. Are you saying you’ll need help from us too?”
Was that a hopeful edge, bending the question out of Tubbo’s control? How did two exchanges of the same topic take such different turns?
Tubbo shook his head, to himself, and to Pac. “Well, no, because they’re literal children and I’m an adult. Also, I’ve got Chayanne. This will be a good thing for me. And hey, you don’t see Foolish freaking out about this, and he’s my business partner. He has more stakes in it if I die. The only person I’m really worried about is Sunny because—wait, what’s wrong?”
Pac wasn’t even looking him in the eyes anymore, gaze distantly fixated on the floor. They looked weirdly red too, and his shoulders slumped. “Nothing, nothing.”
“No, like, clearly it’s something?” Tubbo said before he could stop himself. It was pretty simple actually. If Pac sad; make Pac not sad. He walked across the room and sat down next to Pac, holding out his little finger. “Pac, I’m not going to die. Pinky promise.”
Pac turned his head slightly, evaluating the promise with sullen eyes. “The thing about death, Tubbo, is that it’s not something we choose.” He raised his hand and linked their pinkies together. “But I know you’re going to try. For Sunny.”
He sounded so solemn, speaking as if ‘For Sunny’ was a sad acceptance. It almost felt like there was something missing there. A full piece of something sliced right off, but Tubbo can only work with what he was given, and if Pac decided that there was the right place to end then… it was.
“For Sunny,” Tubbo repeated, forcing a grin.
Things sort of returned back to normal after that.
Except that ‘normal’ was very hard to define. Tubbo used to think it was the morning crew, all three hanging around on the other part of the island, or in Purgatory. But even Pac had defined them as ‘old times’ and they felt so, so far out of reach that grasping would be pointless.
The current ‘normal’ was Tubbo spending all his time in Fobo, accumulating what wealth he could, while avoiding Pac a little less. He steered clear of Fit, which was kind of a dick move, and also Sunny kept pointing it out.
‘why are you avoiding uncle fit?’ she’d ask.
The day she chose to ask just happened to be when Bagi and Empanada were around too. All of them were at spawn to check out the bounties. He suspected Sunny planned for as many people to hear it as possible. She wanted allies for this.
And Tubbo would smile and put on his best bullshit parental voice which fooled no one. “I’m not avoiding him, Sunny. I’m strategically keeping my distance until he forgets several uncomfortable confrontations we’ve had. He’s old, so it’ll only be a few days.”
He heard Bagi laugh. But Empanada was the one who had something to say, placing the next sign.
‘is this how you think conflict resolution works?’
“Em, Fit didn’t hesitate to kill me when Bagi ruined his and Pac’s date. This is for my own safety. I only have one life left, remember? We’re twinning.”
She looked extremely unimpressed with him. ‘i really don’t think he’s going to kill you’
“I agree with that,” Bagi added, fixing Tubbo a serious expression—what was it with everyone trying to talk with him these days? “Whatever you two fought about could be fixed if you just talked.”
“Wrong,” Tubbo argued. “Fit and I are shit at talking.”
Sunny gently smacked him on his lower arm and pointed to an orange sign. ‘you said that hanging out with him meant a lot to you’
“I—” sentiment tasted wrong on his tongue. “I’m not denying that,” he settled on. “Would you be mad at me if I said you’ll understand when you get older?”
If she got older. Oh, fuck, what if she didn’t—
‘yes’ she answered, fire in her eyes.
“Okay, then.” He couldn’t do this. He was never enough for Sunny. He could never properly meet her emotional needs and he’d only prove that time and time again until she was just as messed up as him. And somehow they were the best things to happen to each other. What kind of joke even was that? “By now you know not to make an example of me. But I’ll always try my hardest with you, okay? You know that too.”
She pouted. ‘uncle fit is family pa’
Nothing more, nothing less. But it would all be simplified by a child’s mind.
“Right.” Tubbo held back on doing something stupid like screaming with frustration. Or worse, crying. “Sunny, you’re literally always right. I’ll talk to Fit when I’ve got the time.”
“Don’t you have time right now?” Bagi asked innocently.
She was clever like that, putting Tubbo in a position where he couldn’t possibly say no. Yes, he did have time, because he was utterly useless right now. There were no more bounties. The storage was done. Fobo had a bunch of resources. Tubbo could only excuse himself by saying he had to dig his own grave or something, but the problem with that was that he already had.
“I guess I do,” he said through gritted teeth.
All three of them looked much too vindictive.
If everything went well, Fit and Ramon killed him on sight. That would show everyone.
They didn’t kill him on sight. Fit didn’t even try.
Tubbo had taken his horse to Fit’s place with as much reluctance as he could. His hands had involuntarily trembled around the reins. The whole point of avoidance was to avoid reactions like that. He couldn’t now, not when the small platform came into view, and not when he jumped off Frank, putting him back into the cage.
It was not too late to turn his back and lie his ass off in front of the kids. That might come back to bite him later, but it was the most bearable option.
Yup. Fuck this. He placed the cage back on the ground and placed his hand on top.
That was as far as he got before he heard a voice from above.
“Tubbo?”
Tubbo let out a strained chuckle and turned around, leaning his arm on top of the crate. “Hey, Fit. How are you, man?”
“I’m good,” Fit said, squinting down at him from on top of the platform. “And you?”
“Miserable,” Tubbo said out of instinct. He cleared his throat. “Still no create.”
“You hate to see it.”
Where was he supposed to go from there? Anyway, remember the other day when I told your son to fuck off and acted out of cruelty? Oh, and everything else too? Hell no. Then again, as much as he wanted to run away, Sunny had a point. Fit meant a lot to him. So much that it was suffocating. So much that he didn’t know what to do with it.
So much that he knew he had to make amends. He just didn’t know where to start.
Maybe if he just took it from the simplest point, he could build on it from there. One step at a time.
“I’m sorry I was a dick to Ramon,” he said. “I feel like, in general, I maybe haven’t been super considerate of his feelings.”
Fit snorted and crossed his arms over the fencing. “Yeah, he’s pretty fucking pissed.”
What kind of play was even this? Fit elevated above him, evaluating his words with a casual posture. Maybe he was so far beyond angry that he could get through this with satisfaction. Tubbo would fumble, and he would literally be looking down on him.
Tubbo fidgeted with the cuff of his cardigan. “Is he awake? I’m ready to squash beef.”
“No,” Fit said. “He just went to bed.”
“Ah,” he responded, pretty much murdering that part of the conversation.
He remembered a time when words came easy to them. And for the most part, within most contexts, they still did. If Tubbo had come here with some grand business plan, he was sure they’d be able to fall back into their usual banter. But… now? Amends, right.
He looked down at the grass. Not on purpose, it was just that looking up at Fit was actually impossible. “I wasn’t nice to you either. Today… and before. Sorry.”
Sharp as a blade, Fit asked: “Why?”
“Why?” Tubbo repeated quietly, testing the word. It confused him. Why was he sorry? There were so many reasons to be sorry. So many things to make up for now and so many things to make up for in the future. Things he’d rather die than ever say out loud.
“Yeah, Tubbo. Why have you been such an asshole?”
Oh. They were going there.
Tubbo took a deep breath and looked back up, meeting Fit’s unimpressed expression with wide eyes. “Isn’t apologising enough?”
Fit’s mouth twisted into a slight smirk. “You’re kinda shit at it.”
That was familiar.
Tubbo pouted, clasping his hands together. “I will literally give you anything. I’ll give you everything I own. I’ll give you all my coins. I’ll build you a whole factory when the Feds give me access to create. Anything,” he repeated for good measure.
“All of that to not talk about your feelings?”
“I’m not a man of much dignity, Fit.”
“Trust me. I know.”
Fair blow, Tubbo thought. He started walking towards the ladder and spoke while climbing it. “Look, man. Don’t act all high and mighty with me. You hate this just as much as I do.” He peeked his head through the gap in the cobblestone and supported himself halfway through, arms resting on the cobblestone. “So you don’t want riches or whatever, but the deal is still valid. You tell me what you want from me that’s valuable enough to put things behind us.”
Fit had turned around, leaning his back against the fencing with his arms crossed. “What I want, huh?”
“Yup!” Tubbo said. “Anything within the realm of possibility is yours. That’s how desperate I am.”
Was explicitly saying ‘I would rather give up everything I own than talk about my feelings with my best friend’ kind of like talking about his feelings? It certainly was paradoxical. He hadn’t said anything about how hard it was to see Fit and Pac grow closer and closer while he was left in the dust, or that he was scared they’d be used against each other at some point. No, instead he’d just continued to show Fit that he was a garbage person who made bad decisions. He was never going to win.
“Come hang out more often, Tubbo,” Fit said. “All I’ll ask for is your time.”
Tubbo ignored the way those words made his mind buzz. “But—Pac?”
Fit separated himself from the birch railings and crouched down where Tubbo was still very much balanced halfway up the ladder, and held out his hand. “He’ll be there too. We’re the morning crew, asshole. So are you done fucking neglecting us?”
Tubbo took his hand and let himself be hoisted up as if he were light as a feather. That was rather dizzying, though not quite as much as Fit’s hand in his.
“I might be,” he said quickly, retreating his hand. His voice sounded so normal and not at all too high.
Fit smiled at him, and it was the best and worst thing ever, tinted with fondness and condescension. It made Tubbo question whether he should keep trying to deny himself it.
“It’ll be good to have you around,” Fit said, annoyingly casual. “We can make sure you don’t die in an accident or piss someone off enough for them to kill you.”
“But I’m so good at pissing people off,” Tubbo whined. He had the gun wounds to prove it.
“Too bad,” Fit teased. “We’ll keep you on your best behaviour.”
Was Tubbo delusional or were those words within the same realm of weird as Pac’s? No, right? He was being delusional again.
He sighed dramatically, a desperate move to keep up a casual front. “I really don’t think that’s necessary. Besides, you’re supposed to enable me. You’ve been around for like ninety per cent of the shit I’ve pulled, and you’re gonna start reining me in now?”
Fit merely shrugged. “Whatever it takes to keep you alive.”
“Mhm,” Tubbo hummed loudly. A thought popped into his head. One that would make everything a bit more awkward. “If I— do die. I—uh—I can count on you to take care of Sunny, right?”
What an awful thing to ask someone. But by now it was a question of who died first, Tubbo or Sunny, and that deep decaying part of him wanted it to be himself. He just knew she wasn’t ready yet.
“Of course,” Fit said slowly. He paused for a moment, brows drawn together. “You might want to talk about that with Pac and Bagi too. Just in case.”
Strange words coming from a man who knew Tubbo would latch on to them until he’d picked them apart and put them together in his head.
“In case of what?” he asked.
There was nothing incriminating about Fit’s expression. “This is Quesadilla Island, Tubbo. Anything could happen to any of us.”
Technically; true. But that couldn’t be the thing he’d meant. Could it? Everyone understood how powerless they were against the Federation and whoever their enemies were, but they could at least pretend it wouldn’t. And Fit had secrets. Tubbo was sure of it. He had a past shrouded in violence that Tubbo honestly didn’t give two shits about. Maybe he should have.
“Okay,” Tubbo said, brain whirring. “So what you’re telling me is that now of all times, when I’m asking you to take care of my daughter in case of my early demise, is the perfect time to point out what we already know? You see how that’s suspicious as fuck, right?”
“Tubbo,” Fit warned, voice sharp and authoritative.
Which was a point for Tubbo because it meant he was right. But, oh, he couldn’t keep this line of questioning without tearing apart the patches he had just put on their strained relationship.
“Fine, whatever.” Tubbo shrugged and walked past Fit, towards the fencing that lined the edges of the platform. “I have secrets too, you know? You’re not special.” He climbed over the fence and balanced his feet on the boundary of the cobblestone. “I gotta get back to Sunny now, but we’re so good, right?”
“If you stick to our agreement and come back to apologise to Ramon.”
Tubbo flashed him a grin. “You know I will.”
With that, he jumped off, a few hearts chipping away as his feet touched the ground. He turned around one last time to wave back at Fit. He was also kind of sure Fit watched him until he was completely out of view.
A bunny and a misunderstanding, and the things that followed, made Tubbo realise a few things.
It happened a few days ago, but Tubbo had sort of written off some smaller parts of the interaction because he got what he wanted from it. He finished the storage with the crafting terminal, he kind of managed to talk his way out of a fine, maybe. So why linger, right?
Today, he only intended to go to the bank to see if there was anything more to earn over there so he could afford the twenty-thousand coin price that would unlock his purpose. But he ran into Pac and Bagi there, and the three of them started talking about the bunnies, and what the fuck they even were compared to the faceless workers.
And Tubbo ended up saying, “I think they’re kind of like the faceless workers in the sense that they don’t really understand people all that well. One of them totally thought Foolish and I were partners just because we were living together with two kids.”
Pac immediately looked grumpy. Like, not even subtly. He pouted, crossed his arms, and sounded almost childish. “You might be roommates, but you’re not roommates, you know? I guess the red bunny is just dumb.”
“He was totally flirting with me too,” Tubbo added. “Said some shit about my desires being met.”
Pac rolled his eyes. Bagi laughed and smiled at Tubbo.
“You’re not even doing it on purpose, are you?” she asked, sounding deeply amused.
He blinked. “Doing what on purpose?”
She laughed again, but quickly shook her head and got back to the topic at hand.
Weird.
He shrugged it off.
Only four hours after that he met up with Fit and Ramon, because he had an apology to make. He was probably still on Ramon’s bad list, but the kid had said ‘brothers fight’ in response, which did make his heart melt, slightly. He’d followed it up by writing ‘and im used to your toxic tendencies by now’ but Tubbo didn’t take that particular bit to heart. He hadn’t destroyed their relationship completely. That was a win.
The way Fit looked at the two of them when they made up was distracting though. Tubbo could see a change in his eyes from when they were on Tubbo to Ramon, like a filter changing. It had always been like that. Of course, Fit was going to look at his son with endless fondness, while maybe letting Tubbo bask in a fraction of it. But it almost seemed… equally divided now, while inexplicably distinct.
He shrugged that off too.
People like Fit, Pac, and Bagi started meeting him with protectiveness—and so did the kids, with Sunny and Chayanne in the lead, and Em and Ramon close behind. It was silly. He could barely leave Fobo without running into someone, unless he was clever with excuses and hid his location on the map. Just for room to breathe.
It got to a point where Foolish felt like he had something to say about it.
“This is like the third time in a row you’ve been escorted home,” he said, checking the stats of a horse with a scrutinising glare. “Weren’t you just at the ATM’s?”
Tubbo sighed, dreading that it sounded a little bit to the dreamy side. He swung his legs back and forth on the edge of the horse-murder-pit. “You’re so allowed to point that out to Fit and Pac specifically. Everyone else has been so chill about the one life thing.”
“Those two, huh?” Foolish said, placing his hand on his chin in thought. “Can’t really blame them for being a bit over the top when their boyfriend decided to live his life hardcore—which I totally respect by the way.”
“That’s good to hear—” Tubbo felt like someone dumped ice all over him. “Wait, what was that?”
Foolish turned back to the horse and looked milliseconds away from another massacre. “I’m just saying, you do you and all that. It’ll be a bummer if you die, but I won’t cramp your style. You’re capable of survival.”
“No,” Tubbo said hoarsely. “Swear down to me that you did not just call me their boyfriend.”
“Huh?” Foolish glanced over his shoulder, looking as genuinely confused as Tubbo probably did. They were similar like that. “Why wouldn’t I call you that?”
“Because I’m not?” Tubbo’s voice sounded warped and high to his own ears. “Like, we are not even remotely in that general area of—relationship… Why would you even think that?”
“Because Pac told me?” Foolish said.
Everything clicked. It didn’t slowly fall together, no, it felt more like the equivalent of if all snow in a storm fell at once, knocking everything down in one grand disaster instead of slowly laying a soft blanket over the landscape. Tubbo’s brain genuinely turned into porridge.
What a fucking disaster. The only positive was that Tubbo had only been a small part of the issue. He’d mainly blame Pac for keeping him in the dark about… this? Thing? Who the hell told other people they were together but didn’t bother informing one third of the parties involved of their claims?
For once Tubbo wasn’t the dysfunctional one.
But he was about to fucking be.
For someone who dodged confrontations like this, Tubbo jumped into this one without a parachute. He’d fall. He’d crash so fucking hard and break all his bones, but he felt rightfully upset. And confused. And a third feeling that he buried so deeply beneath layers upon layers of ice that nothing would ever break it out.
He left Foolish in charge of Sunny—who was busy decorating her and Leo’s room anyway—and walked out of Fobo, and into the forest. He wasn’t in any real danger, not with the sun beaming down on him; the monsters' ashes in the grass. But he wanted to be.
Because what could reasonably match the pure panic coursing through him, but a little scare? Just a little one.
He brought out his comm and checked the map. Pac, Fit, Richarlyson, and Ramon were all hanging around Pac’s house. Which was only a few hundred metres away. Tubbo started pillaring upwards with whatever materials he had in his inventory. Wood, dirt, stone, cobble. All of it making a mismatched tower tall enough to down him. Should he fall.
He typed a message into his comm and looked at the cracked glass with a small smile.
You whisper to pactw: hey boyfriend. did you know that with full protection 4 gear and feather falling 4 you can survive a fall of 103 metres
You whisper to pactw: fascinating right
pactw whispers to you: ???
You whisper to pactw: guess how high up i am
pactw whispers to you: are you okay tubbo?
You whisper to pactw: 107 :P
The part of this plan that kept him redeemable was the fact that he wasn’t planning on jumping at all. Mostly because Sunny would see his downed message on her comm and have a panic attack. He just needed Pac to feel a little bit scared. Maybe he’d show up with hands as shaky as Tubbo’s own.
He waited up there, swinging his legs back and forth.
Without any trees or structures to serve as obstacles, the wind up there was sharp, cold, and forceful. With all the days spent in Purgatory, teeth clattering in the subzero temperatures, or the time spent frozen in ice, one should think he’d be used to the cold. No one ever talked about how cruel and merciless it was, how it sunk into the skin until it coated every vein and bone in the body. That part of it felt like something few truly understood.
It felt like home.
He placed one last block, just to make enough space for him to lie down and stare up at the sky. It was dramatic. He knew he was being dramatic, bordering on demented. Cruel too, in some ways. But if Pac could understand and sympathise with him after he tried to ruin the date, he could come all the way up here and explain himself.
So Tubbo waited. A minute, and another, and a few more. Until he heard the sound of ladders slowly being placed on the side of his little, tiny platform.
“One hundred and seven,” Pac said breathlessly when he finally reached the top. His hands grasped at the ladder frame with a white-knuckled grip.
Tubbo sat up and brought his knees up to his chest, resting his chin on the top of them. “Hey.”
Pac let out a breath of relief and scrambled onto the platform. He sat down with his knees against the floor, hands hovering over Tubbo as if hesitant to touch. “You didn’t jump?”
Tubbo snorted. “I promised I wouldn’t die, didn’t I? It was a pinky promise too. I don’t take those lightly.”
“No,” Pac said, voice airy. “I mean—you—why did you do this?”
“I ask myself that question on a daily basis,” Tubbo joked. Which did make Pac let out a little chuckle, but he also kind of looked like he expected more of an explanation. So Tubbo sighed. “Foolish told me something interesting. He told me you’ve been calling me your boyfriend.”
It was just the wind and cold that made Pac’s cheeks pink. He smiled, warmly. “I might’ve told Foolish that. And Bagi.”
That made nothing better. Or, well, those two weren’t exactly anyone. One was Tubbo’s current business partner and the other was the person who’d let herself get kidnapped for a shot at supporting Tubbo in the second round of Purgatory. It wasn’t exactly careless. But it was so, so scary.
“That’s a weird thing not to tell someone,” Tubbo pointed out steadily, trying to stick to some illusion of sensibility. “You realise that, right? Especially after—” he cut himself right off.
Pac furrowed his brow. “After what?”
Tubbo fought against the immediate urge to deflect. That alone should be a big enough sign that everything up here existed in its own realm. He was about to talk about things again.
He looked anywhere but where he should be looking—into Pac’s eyes—and spoke. Miserably. “After the date, you asked me why I did… what I did, and—I told you, Pac. I told you I was scared about what would happen to you, and Fit, and the fucking kids. And back then, I was kind of just trying to earn sympathy points, but it only worked because there was some actual truth to it…”
He was scared, now and then, more and more, less and less, that the Federation, or any external enemy they hadn’t even heard of yet, would pick all of them apart in an instant. And it was justified. Because it had happened. They were powerless.
“But…” Pac started slowly, with a small wrinkle between his brow that was actually quite cute. “You’re scared of being left behind too. That was it, right?” Even then, he’d known. “But Fit and I—we’re never going to do that. I think that’s more important. Don’t you? And Cellbit and Roier got married a long time ago and they haven’t been held against each other, you know?”
“I know you’re making a good example,” Tubbo said lightly. “But the last time we saw Cellbit, he killed us with genuine glee. He should not set any kind of precedent for something ending well. Like, hopefully, this isn’t his end, but he’s a sad, sad man. So, try again?”
Pac let out a small laugh, eyes wrinkling at the corners. He reached out and gently grabbed both of Tubbo’s hands. “Didn’t you catch that first part?”
Did he not know that Tubbo was made for the cold? Or did he want to see if he could melt him? Because he could. That wasn’t even a question.
“You can’t promise that,” Tubbo argued, voice low.
“You promised to stay alive too,” Pac retorted.
Tubbo squinted up at him. “Yeah?”
“So can’t we all promise to do our best, and not think about all the ways it could go wrong?”
Tubbo kind of got how Fit could fall in love with Pac—oh, fuck, he was too far gone already. Was it too late to cut it off? He was pretty sure he couldn’t tamper much more with the line between ‘sympathetic actions’ and acting like an irredeemable jerk. If he pushed away Pac now, they’d either start the most toxic game of cat and mouse Tubbo had participated in since Cucurucho lost interest in him, or someone more sensible than either of them would convince Pac that Tubbo was a lost cause.
How could Pac even say any of this when he knew Tubbo’s life was more fragile than ever? He was opening himself up for so much pain and hurt because—
He really did care, didn’t he? What an idiot.
Fit probably cared a lot too, because there was no way these two didn’t talk about this at all. Did that mean Fit had just contently been walking around with that label that tied them together? And how long? And he hadn’t even cared to mention it.
“I’m not an optimist, Pac,” Tubbo started, dragging out this part of the conversation as far as he could. Maybe because he was scared of what came after. Maybe. “But I’m an idiot and a loser, so I’ll go along with this. It’s like improv. Yup. ‘Yes, and’ might be the only solution left for me.” He let out a strained chuckle. “Is it now we ask that ‘what are we’ question? Because I feel like you kinda skipped a few steps in the process, so I’m pretty fucking lost—” his voice died like a flame deprived of oxygen the moment Pac’s hands cupped his cheeks.
“It’s that easy to make you stop talking, huh?” Pac teased, cheeks glowing. His hands were as warm and soft as Tubbo remembered from that instance with the monsters, but there were no fleeting touches. This was grounded.
He was completely malfunctioning, unable to even get his vocal cords up and running again.
Not until Pac giggled and leaned down, gently pressing his lips against Tubbo’s temple.
Despite himself, Tubbo couldn't hold back an embarrassingly giddy laugh. “We’re doing baby steps too?” he asked, playfulness and honest disappointment colouring his tone. “I’m not a coward like Fit.”
He was playing with fire; only made more dangerous due to his own status as a man of ice, but that didn’t really matter much to him when Pac’s eyes darted downwards. And when it came down to it, Tubbo was all talk. There wasn’t a single part of him that thought he’d ever survive when Pac looked at him like that.
“I’m just kidding,” Tubbo said, very, very aware of Pac’s hands still cradling his cheeks. Worse was Pac’s eyes, intense and excited. Maybe those baby steps were self-preservation from Fit’s side. It was actually kind of upsetting how utterly helpless he was to Pac’s… everything.
But he thought that Pac might be a little bit helpless too. It almost looked like he was letting go of some kind of restraint.
He let out an impatient huff and closed the distance, pressing his lips against Tubbo's.
And he’d been right, so painfully, predictably right in his claim that Pac could melt him. He could feel his heart beating against his chest, the warmth dusting his cheeks red, and he was helpless to it. All of it. But that didn’t matter, nothing fucking mattered but the fact that this was a real, actual thing that was happening.
He tilted his head, letting Pac deepen the kiss, just because he could. Let that moment be his fucking hubris. Time and space didn’t exist up here, but physics did, and that last push sent them both careening over the edge of the platform.
“Oh my fucking god,” he yelled. Yelled at their shared stupidity and lack of situational awareness. Yelled at the fact that Pac was laughing, and that it was so contagious that they landed on the ground, both downed right in front of Fit, Ramon, and Richarlyson, giggling like idiots.
“Woah, what the fuck,” Fit said, him and Richas instantly flocking to Pac’s side to pick him up from the ground. “What happened?”
Ramon rushed over to Tubbo and did the same, looking somehow exasperated, worried, and confused in one strange mix of an expression.
“We fell off,” Tubbo said, feeling dazed and lightheaded. “Oh my god, I need to write to Sunny. Two seconds.”
He typed in a quick message in global, just so no one came running. Meanwhile, Pac talked, a smile visible in his voice, somehow. “It’s so sweet how he thinks of Sunny first.”
“Calm the fuck down, Pac,” Tubbo said, cheeks still hot, stuffing his communicator away into his toolbelt.
“Hey now,” Fit spoke up, glancing between the two of them with observant eyes. “Why the hostility?”
Pac’s smile was lopsided because he was a bastard. Did Tubbo have the right to use new tactics to get that expression off his face? That might prove useful. He wasn’t going to try it yet, mostly because he was pretty sure Ramon wasn’t caught up with whatever their arrangement was now. If he saw Tubbo go anywhere near Pac, he might just kill him on the spot.
“No, no,” Pac said innocently. “No hostility. Right, Tubbo?”
“Maybe not from your perspective, but I’ll have you know that I’m always filled with spite. I am made of spite. And rage. And hostility. You’re not immune just because you—” he clamped his mouth shut.
Pac blinked. “Because I what?”
Tubbo glared at him. But remained otherwise quiet. Cautious, that his voice, or his words, would be used against him.
Richarlyson looked between them with a scrutinising gaze, before choosing to place two signs in Tubbo’s line of sight.
‘what happens on the 107 height tower’
‘STAYS on the 107 height tower KKKKK’
Tubbo nodded enthusiastically. “That’s actually so based, Richas.” He looked up at Pac, who was smiling at the signs too, and Fit, who was too cool to visibly show that he definitely wanted to know what had happened up there.
“So you two are both okay?” Fit asked, as if that was the most important thing.
“Yeah!” Pac said.
“I’m going to need at least four business days to recover from this day,” Tubbo said at the same time. He distantly acknowledged to himself that statements such as these were probably a large factor in people being suspicious of him. “Actually, I’m just going to head back. We can talk tomorrow. Preferably with less kiddos around.”
“Aw, you’re willing to talk now?” Fit cooed mockingly.
Tubbo had no idea where they stood right now. On anything. But that wasn’t exactly a new thing with them, so it was very easy for him to smile with the same amount of toxicity and say, “You fucking wish.”
He turned his back and started to walk in the direction of Fobo, and wasn’t all that surprised when he heard footsteps catching up to him.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out some more?” Pac asked. “We want you to.”
How nauseating. Tubbo shook his head. “Genuinely, I need some time to think. Sorry.”
“That’s fine! But we’ll follow you back to Fobo. Just in case.”
Had it been anyone but Pac to say those words, Tubbo would bite back, taking it as a condescending remark rather than the hint of love it was meant to come across as. People couldn’t expect Tubbo to pick up on things like that, or even react properly to them. But it was Pac who said them. Just Pac.
Behind them, they could hear Fit talking with the kids, simple discussions that thankfully had nothing to do with anything that had happened. It helped cut some of the edge off. They were about halfway there when Tubbo realised he wasn’t even feeling any tension. The atmosphere was good.
It was a frightful thing. So he was quiet for most of the walk, which wasn’t exactly within his character. His brain was in the same state as his factory always ended up being back in the tubchunk: severely overstressed. But for once, he’d just let it be that.
The funny thing was. He wasn’t sure of this arrangement at all, and he knew that meant talking, which was the worst, so tomorrow could happen in so many ways. He was mortal. He was loved, to a degree. He could spend hours questioning what conditions they operated on, but for now, he would just… let them be.