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Disease spreads at whatever pace it pleases. The only way to stop it is to live through it, or find a cure. Tubbo does neither of those things. He knows Tina takes weeks off at a time to rest, to keep herself going, and it shows. She's energetic, thrilling, and happy. She rests and paces herself and it looks so nice.
Tubbo can’t do that, well he could. But Death knows he won't.
He has reasons of course, he justifies it to himself. “My daughter can’t be left alone” he says, she has no one else, except he has left her to Fit before, what stops him now? The worry that his obsession with his boyfriend would leave his daughter in the dust?
Yes, it’s a stupid excuse, it’s a weak one. But it makes sense to Tubbo.
So, he wakes up with achy muscles, pulling himself off of the copper floor he slept on and coughs into his palm, until black ink drips down his chin. It takes a while to consider cleaning it. It’s only when he hears the jingle of his daughter's hells against the footpath that he splashes his face with water.
“Morning poppet!” Tubbo called behind him, wiping his face off with a towel, watching it stain grey before he turned his head. Sunny was smiling brightly as she trotted up, brown skin shimmering under the morning sun. She’s already dressed, today in a white shirt with puffy sleeves and jean shorts with a small sun embroidered on the pocket.
She smiles and takes off her sunnies, clipping them onto the collar of her shirt before moving in for a morning hug. She’s warm as fire as Tubbo grins and pulls her up into his chest, supporting her weight with the hand he hadn’t coughed on.
Sunny nudges into his shoulder and ducks her head in the little spot like it was made for her. “Grumpy?” he asks.
She wrinkles her nose and sticks out her tongue but gives no other reaction as Tubbo holds her there with one hand and the other moves to his storage system. The weight of her against his chest is akin to a blanket really, she’s light as a feather without her frilly dresses on. She tends to wear her shorts whenever she wants to relax or has to help with the factory so Tubbo isn’t shocked when she just grumbles there.
A chill day then.
“Wanna have a picnic while I work on the outside of the tree farm?” Tubbo tilted his head so that she had more space to breathe from where she was hidden. He watched her blink her eyes open again and smile, nodding before wrapping her arms around his neck. Something warm bloomed in his icicle of a chest as he grinned and leaned down to the storage system.
He tucked a red and white checker blanket under his free arm and grabbed a few task biscuits for her to nibble on while he worked.
The sun was shining as he gently laid the blanket down with one arm, careful not to be whacked by a very clingy girl as he moved her around, knowing better than to put her down. He put the baggie of biscuits in the middle, and bumped Sunny. “Wanna head down now?” he questioned.
She grumbled, before bringing one hand down to finger spell. ‘You too.’ she huffed.
Sunny was smarter than she let on. She’d heard him hadn’t she?
Her clingyness was an act, a call for him to rest.
Tubbo sighed and sat down, back against the blanket with Sunny lying on his chest.
It was a delicate balance. Tubbo knew she knew, he knew she could tell there was something wrong with him. She was always worrying about him.
She never asked, and he was glad for it. It was an open secret. She knew he was dying, but confirmation would break her little heart. Tubbo wrapped Sunny in his arms as she laid on him.
It felt bad not to work. Like it was some primal coding in his brain that hated when he laid here like this, not working. Usually he’d never be pulled away for this long. Even a minute was too much, it felt like his skin was itching and blistering every moment he didn’t hold a wrench in his palm.
If it were anyone else he’d be back in the factory by now.
But this was Sunny, and what Sunny wanted, Sunny got.
“Just for a little while.” he huffed, one hand curling around coiled hair that followed his finger while she spread out like a starfish over him. She popped her head up so it dug into his chest and rolled with eyes.
Tubbo sighed, smiling as he watched her consider his proposal before shaking her head. ‘3 hours.’ she decreed.
The engineer squinted his eyes at her in disbelief, he’d go mad in 3 hours if he didn’t get his hands around a cog or hell even a belt.
“10 minutes.”
‘3 hours.’
“30 tops!”
‘2 and a half.’
Tubbo groaned, knocking his head back into the blanket with a pout. She was good. “1 hour and half?”
She stopped to consider this, pausing before nodding. He sighed. At least his arms were busy holding her, he didn’t want to scratch himself in front of her.
Hours later, more than 1 or even 3, Fit would later tell Pac about how he stumbled across Tubbo laid on a blanket, gritting his teeth under the mass of his sleeping child. Who had fallen asleep on purpose right on top of him, because Sunny knew her Pa would never disturb her beauty rest.
And years later, Fit would find Tubbo white as a ghost after finishing another project for the Regime, and would mourn the fact there was no one here who could do the same for him now. Fit never said it, but he knew that the loss affected him, he could read it clear as day.