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This was not like him. Tubbo was known for being pessimistic, yes, but people didn’t look at him and envision him walking to Manifold Hotel a little past two in the morning. Hell, he didn’t think he was doing that badly until he was about a block away.
Fuck.
He knew he wanted to do this. It wasn’t a difficult choice, exactly. With his dad the way he was, and his mom waiting for him past death’s door, and his only friend living two cities away, Tubbo didn’t exactly have much going for him. Ranboo could probably make a list, but Ranboo wasn’t here , and that was part of the problem.
So Tubbo finds himself at the very top of Manifold Hotel, staring down into the plummeting streets below.
Now was not a good time to be afraid of heights.
Fear was a stupid thing here at all. Fear was meant to protect you from danger, to keep you from dying, and yet that was exactly why Tubbo had come here in the first place. To take a nice swan dive off the roof of the city’s tallest hotel, splat on the concrete below, and hopefully be followed by a creative but ultimately unrealistic cartoon piano.
Tubbo took a deep breath.
“Namaste,” A voice behind him said, fake seriousness in their almost-whispering voice, and Tubbo screamed.
“Fuck man, what do you want?”
The kid, who Tubbo could now make out as someone he recognized from somewhere, probably the halls in school, shrugged as if this was normal for him. As if he was used to coming up to the roof and finding people about to kill themselves. He took a ( very dangerous, why wasn’t this kid afraid like Tubbo was?) haphazard seat on the ledge overlooking the town, staring at where Tubbo stood closer to the center of the roof.
“Thought you were meditatin’, the kid says, and Tubbo wonders if that means he doesn’t know what was going to happen. “Most people do, or at least something similar, before the big plunge.”
Fuck. This kid was either going to try to talk him down, call someone for help, or push Tubbo himself. None sounded very appealing.
Tubbo wanted Ranboo.
“Shut the fuck up,” Tubbo snarled instead. “You don’t know shit, bitch.”
“I know the look of someone who thinks they want to die,” Tommy shrugs. “You think I just visit roofs at two in the morning for no reason?”
“What, you get off on thinking you’re gonna save me?” Something in Tubbo, a terrible ache in his chest, made him wish the kid would say yes, because then at least someone would have a reason to care.
“Nah,” The kid looks back over the city. “It’s–I lied, a bit. Sort of. I’m not here to check for leapers. I’m trying to find someone specific.”
“Well, you might want to hurry, then,” Tubbo scoffed. This wasn’t fair. Why did someone else get to have someone look for them? Tubbo had nobody. “Before they follow through.”
The kid laughed, something scarily harsh, as if the kid was forcing it out to hide something else.
“Come sit,” He said instead, and Tubbo shook his head.
“You’re gonna fucking fall, asshole,” He bites. “I’m not getting caught up in a double. They might think it was a couples suicide, and as pog as men are, I am not interested in a roof-hopping hero of self-harmers.”
“You won’t fall,” The kid rolls his eyes, but he does stand up, allowing the wall to at least have some use. “I’m Tommy.”
“We’re not friends.”
“Jesus, you’re an asshole,” Tommy laughs, but it’s not mean like the other kids at school were. Tommy was laughing not because he saw Tubbo as less but because he genuinely found humor in someone as fucked up as Tubbo.
Maybe that meant Tommy was a little fucked up too.
“I’m Tubbo,” He huffs, leaning on the wall with Tommy and adding in a quick, “Bitch.”
Neither says anything for a while, and Tubbo notices that a lot of things seem smaller from up here. His dad can’t be any more than a smudge on the ground in the park, still passed out where Tubbo had found him earlier. The school looked like a miniature for building big sculptures. The park and its stoned inhabitants were all a blur of their smoke.
“I’m waiting for an old friend,” Tommy says. “He’s–got some issues with sleeping, and so sometimes he ends up here, almost over the edge. He doesn’t even live in this city.”
Tubbo understood, in a way. Ranboo had sleepwalked before, and getting hurt had always been Tubbo’s concern. He’d stay up all night watching, waiting, praying Ranboo would stay safely tucked into the bed Tubbo had refused to take.
“Why are you up here?” Tommy asked, and it was like the weight of the world came crashing down on him all at once, a weight so eternally heavy that he couldn’t fight the exhaustion it brought along.
“You know why.”
“Not the reasons. Just the execution. Which, if you do follow through, wait until I get down and make sure you do a backflip so I can score it and put it on your gravestone.”
Tubbo hated that it made him laugh. He hated that this kid, who Tubbo had definitely watched get beaten up in the library, who Tubbo had seen hiding behind Wilbur and Technoblade Watson, who had never spoken in any of their shared classes, was so easily falling into something worthy of love.
Tubbo envied him.
That was it. He envied how Tommy could be so effortlessly funny, how he could get the scariest guys in school to treat him like a little puppy, how he had people to worry about disappointing enough to not tell them about bullies.
“You’re a dick, you know that?” And despite the green leaking into his voice, Tubbo knows he’s smiling, just a bit.
“You still haven’t answered.”
“My only friend lives cities away, my dad is a drunken asshole, and my mom’s long gone. Is that answer good enough for you, your highness?”
“Why yes, I suppose it is,” Tommy bowed, even though kings definitely wouldn’t bow to people like Tubbo.
“Okay, my turn then,” Tommy looks confused for a moment. “Why don’t you tell Wilbur and Technoblade about the bullies? They’re practically wrapped around your finger somehow, and yet the bullies show up every day and don’t have any worries.”
And Tommy is a little paler when Tubbo is talking, and his eyes drift out over the city again, as if the lights will tell him what to say.
“They’re my foster brothers, soon to be adopted brothers,” Tommy says, and now Tubbo feels bad. “They’re scared I’m gonna get hurt, ‘cause they’re pussies who never saw the foster system. If I tell them I’m dealing with those pricks, my life is as good as over. Wilbur will go full mother hen, Techno might even kill one of them, and I’ll never be allowed to be alone anywhere ever again. I–I love them, but–they’re temperamental, you know?”
Tubbo doesn’t know, but he nods and acts like he does. He wishes he had a family so willing to throw everything away for him, would do anything for a Wilbur or Technoblade Watson of his own.
“I think, maybe, if you tell them that, they probably won’t be assholes about it,” Tubbo speaks slowly, because it’s very bold to give advice while sitting on the roof you plan to turn into a diving board. “Everyone knows they’re obsessed with you. Literally just manipulate them.”
And now Tommy laughed, and this time it was an actual laugh. Tommy’s chest shook a little, and he wheezed just a little, and his entire body was thrown into the movement.
Tubbo hated how he loved making Tommy laugh.
“Maybe,” He says when he’s finally calmed down. “But not tonight. I’ll be too busy getting my ass kicked for disappearing at two in the morning again.”
“Again?”
“I told them I would stop if they’d just adopt Ranboo too, but no-”
“Hold on, Ranboo?” Tubbo prays Tommy slipped up, that the late-night sleepwalker was anyone but the boy he loved so dearly.
“Yeah?” Tommy tilted his head. “You know him?”
“You’re fucking joking with me. You’re telling me that Ranboo, as in the tall motherfucker that lives in Essempi with his fucking gorgeous sister, the guy that’s afraid of a pole, that Ranboo?”
“So you do know him,” Tommy smiles. “I thought I recognized your name. You’re the one who watches him while he sleeps.”
“Oh, because letting him get all the way out here is better?” Tubbo scoffs. “I wanted to make sure he didn’t get hurt, and clearly I had the right idea!”
“Hey, mate, I’m not saying it was a bad idea!” Tommy held his hands up, as if he didn’t know how creepy it sounded to say that kind of thing. “I’m actually really glad he has you, man. He feels normal for the first time in his life.”
Tubbo couldn’t stop himself.
“Normal?”
“He grew up in the foster system,” Tommy said, as if this much wasn’t common knowledge. “You know, couldn’t be adopted but didn’t have any family legally able to take him in until Niki had turned 18.”
“I know that much already.”
“Yeah? Well, he didn’t really get to make any friends outside of the system. Did you know that, too?”
Tubbo didn’t reply to that one.
“It’s hard to be friends with someone if you’re not even sure you’ll be in the same city next week, so Ranboo just stopped trying. We were in the same layover house a few times, so we got to be friends through that, but eventually his sister aged out and the Watson’s got hold of me, so now we only see each other when he’s sleepwalking.”
“He never mentioned you,” Tubbo says without thinking, without realizing how much that might hurt Tommy.
“I never mention him,” Tommy shrugs. “It’s not shame, it’s necessity. You protect what you can, and people can’t attack things if they don’t know about them.”
That made sense, sort of. Tubbo didn’t mention Ranboo to his dad, so he understood a bit.
“You’re not going to tell Ranboo about this, right?”
There’s a shame that wells up in Tubbo as he asks it, as he realizes what Ranboo might be forced to think if he finds out that Tubbo died.
“You’re not going to follow through, right?” Tommy asks instead, and isn’t that a funny question when Tubbo hasn’t reevaluated anything.
“Why shouldn’t I?” Tubbo huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “You don’t know shit about me. All this has proven is that Ranboo has someone waiting if he can’t find me.”
“He liked you a hell of a lot more than me,” Tommy scoffs. “And if you think that kid doesn’t read the obituary every morning, praying our names aren’t in it, then you’re sorely mistaken.”
Before Tubbo can reply, there’s a quiet knock on the door, almost hesitant, and then Technoblade Watson is walking onto the roof, rubbing at tired eyes.
“Tommy, we made a deal–hi, Tubbo–that I wouldn’t tell anyone as long as you let me come with,” Technoblade sighs, as if the dropping of Tubbo’s name wasn’t a culture shock that almost made him dizzy.
“You know me?”
“I know everyone,” Technoblade barely spares him a glance before he’s glaring at where Tommy smiles nervously at him. “We had a deal. You promised.”
“I know, I know, I’m–”
“Tommy’s being bullied,” Tubbo says, praying that them causing a scene up here would be enough to go unnoticed as he fell off. Instead, Tommy watches him like a hawk, betrayal stuck firm to his face.
“...What?” Technoblade asks, and Tommy realizes that maybe he got the twins confused when he hears how devastated Techno sounds. “Tommy?”
“Look, I didn’t–Tubbo, you fucking–it’s fine! Oh my god, this is not how I wanted to tell you.”
“So it’s true, then?” Techno asks, and there’s the infamous danger in his eyes. Tubbo’s expecting a lecture, a dragging-Tommy-out-by-the-arm, a way to get these two away from him so he can get away from everything.
“Look, it’s–okay, Techno, I’m from the foster system. I can handle myself.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell us?” Techno asks instead, still glancing furiously between Tommy and Tubbo, which is not what he was supposed to be doing. “We could help!”
“You know how Wilbur gets,” Tommy shrugs. “You know how you get. I like being able to go to school, contrary to popular belief.”
“Dude, how long has this been a thing?”
“That doesn’t matter,” Tommy huffs, and now he’s glaring at Tubbo, which…good. One less person to worry about him later. “I can take care of myself.”
“But you shouldn’t have to, Tommy! That’s the point!”
“Look, we can talk about this later, but right now–Tubbo, back the fuck away from the wall–we need to get this idiot,” Tommy gestures crudely at Tubbo, who thought he had been discreet. “Somewhere less dangerous. Fair?”
Technoblade sighs, running a hand through his hair roughly.
“Fine. But I’m not dropping this anytime soon. And stop picking up strays, for the love of god, Tommy!”
Tommy doesn’t reply to that or even explain what it means, instead just grabs Tubbo and drags him down the stairs with him, babbling about video games and sleepovers.