Chapter Text
“That fucking BASTARD-”
“Tubbo get down-!”
“That bastard tried to take EVERYTHING from me-” Tubbo stood at the top of the bar like a preacher standing before his flock, a glass of bourbon in one hand and the other waving violently around, threatening to whack anyone within swinging distance. His hair clung to the sides of his face in a sweaty sheen, wisps of pink and purple sticking out at every angle. “EVERTYHING! Did I- Did I get a sorry? Did I get a ‘thank you’?”
He spun right around and kicked over a napkin dispenser.
“NO!” He threw his head back in a laugh. “No, of course not!”
“Tubbo-” Tommy reached up to tug at the hem of his shirt from her bar stool. “Tubbo, you’re fucking hammered! Sit down and- and have some water or something, man!”
“I don’t need- I don’t need water!” He took another swig of bourbon. It dribbled down his chin, and he wiped it off with the back of his hand. “I need-”
He put a hand on his chest to steel himself as he felt a sudden, sharp pain, and just as the crowd was about to die down, he went back to raving.
“I need that sonofabitch- hic- DEAD!”
“And more liquor!”
“AND MORE LIQUOR!” He raised his glass up until it clinked against an overhead light, causing it to swing back and forth and send a layer of dust cascading down like snowflakes. “For me ‘n- for me an’ whoever wants Wilbur Soot’s gods damn head on a fucking PIKE!”
Tommy hid her face in her hands with a hearty groan that was quickly overshadowed by the cheers of their fellow patrons, who were all just as drunk as Tubbo- or were at least on their way to being so.
She felt like the only one who was sober save for the bartender, who just wiped down the counter wherever Tubbo stood with a damp washcloth. He’d probably seen far rowdier than this, because he didn’t so much as flinch when Tubbo’s hand nearly got him square in the nose.
“He- He took my fucking country!” He was slurring his words faster than he could speak them. “He took my fucking- he took my fucking husband! Can you believe that!? He-He already had my best friend followin’ him ‘round like a dog, now he’s got the missus nippin’ at his heels!”
Another long swig went down the hatch.
“What a fucking joke he is!” He spat at his feet, gaining another round of applause.
“Hey, is that your buddy up there?” Tommy felt someone nudge at her shoulder and ask, far too enthusiastically for her already headache ridden ears.
“I have never seen that man before in my life.” She muttered through her palms.
“He fucked me over! He fucked- Tommy- he fucked you over too, didn’t he?!”
“Toby for the love of Prime-”
Tommy blamed the enderchest behind the bar.
He had already downed three more tankards of beer after his first two and was hankering for something with a bit more of a kick when it was brought to his attention. He asked if he could access it, and right after that, he had heaved a satchel of diamonds right in front of the bartender, and asked for top shelf. There wasn’t a moment's hesitation between the realization and the request.
If Jimmy hadn’t been looking for his wallet and asked to check, then he might never have gotten the idea in his head that he could afford top shelf.
Once he did, however, he insisted upon buying Jimmy a shot of whatever he wanted. Because he was feeling generous. He relented and accepted the offer, downing a shot of whiskey with an ease that made Tommy’s chest burn just from watching him. He then extended that same offer to Tommy, but she just scrunched up her nose, the smell already seeming to get to her. Instead of any alcohol or spirit, he paid for her to have a Shirley temple- and threw in a tip when the bartender included one of those little umbrellas.
This was all before he was hit with the realization that there was severe lack of warmth around his cheeks, and his words were still coherent.
He said he was going to get cowboy sloshed, and damn it, he meant it!
Despite telling him repeatedly that it wasn’t a good idea, neither Jimmy nor Tommy had been able to stop him from switching from the weak and tasteless beer to the strongest booze that money could buy in this establishment.
But at least when Jimmy was here, he had been able to cut him off after the first glass, telling him that he already had enough alcohol in his system, and that he’d regret it in the morning if he wasn’t stopped now. They went back and forth for a bit- Tubbo insisting he was a grown man who could handle his hooch, Jimmy telling him it was his town and ergo his bar, rinse and repeat for about twenty clicks before Tubbo just gave up and ordered himself a cheeseburger.
Unfortunately for all of them, Jimmy had to be called back to the ranch house.
Something about a tractor, something about ‘jank redstone’, and something about his ex-boyfriend- Tommy hadn’t been paying much attention to anything other than the fact that their designated driver was now outside of the bar and had been for the past two or so hours.
If her communicator wasn’t completely bricked, she’d have been able to call him. She thought about going over there and getting him herself, but that would mean leaving her drunken idiot of a best friend to his own devices, and she didn’t trust him with anything more than using a spoon right now.
And so, without someone looking over his shoulder and telling him not to do so, Tubbo had already gone through the equivalent of half a bottle, and it didn’t seem like he was stopping any time soon.
In fact, from the way he climbed up onto the counter moments ago, it looked like he was just getting started.
The bar erupted into cheers.
“FUCK WILBUR SOOT!” A random voice in the crowd called.
“YEAH, FUCK WILBUR SOOT!” Another laughed, raising their glass.
“FUCK WILBUR SOOT!” Tubbo led the cheer, pumping his fist up and down in the air.
Obviously if Tubbo was talking to a bar full of complete strangers about Wilbur of all things, right after saying that he would ‘miss him like he’d miss a tumor’, then it was clear to anyone who knew for more than five ticks that he was so beyond hammered that they needed to invent a new word for it.
Ultra hammered. Hammered plus. Hammered premium.
Tommy could come up with these all day; she CLEARLY had nowhere else to be!
She was abruptly pulled from her thoughts glass when the glass that had just been in Tubbo’s hands flew at the wall like a bullet.
She let out an ear piercing shriek and gripped the sides of her stool so that she wouldn’t go flying herself.
The glass completely shattered on impact, sending shards across the ground in a spray of jagged edges. The dominant scent of bourbon permeated the bar as it seeped into the walls, droplets landing on the hardwood floor.
Once again, he was met with nothing but cheers and applause from the lunch rush.
“What the FUCK?!” Tommy shouted as loud as she could over the jeers, and the smashing of more glass from the patrons. “Tubbo! You’re losing the gods damn plot! Get down here NOW!” She frantically looked around at all the blurry faces, and said, “Is anybody going to stop him?!”
Tommy looked out into the crowd of roaring laughter and thunderous cheers and felt like she was going mad.
Like Alice through the looking glass, all she had to do was blink for the world to become topsy turvy, and that was without barely any alcohol in her system.
The beer had worn off hours ago, leaving her only with cheeks in a dusty rose and needed to hold onto Jimmy when she got up to use the girl’s room. The room had spun for only a moment when she entered the single stall, but after splashing cold water onto her face, she was able to return like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She came to the conclusion that either she didn’t drink that much and beer was weak as shit, or that the VPN’s running through her bloodstream did a lot more than she gave them credit for. Maybe that’s why Doc was always so adamant on her keeping up to date with them. Nobody wanted to see a drunk Tommy-Anne Innit.
Because of her sobriety, she could see just how far Tubbo was letting himself fall.
Every other word was an expletive, and despite being a massive hypocrite on that front, it was beginning to become almost juvenile. He cursed like he was getting paid by the word, even if they all slurred together to become a soup of words that she didn’t think she’d ever heard him use before. Whether Wilbur was one or not, Tommy didn’t think a certain four letter word would ever fly out of Tubbo’s mouth with such ease.
It reminded her of…
“I was THIRTEEN!” Tubbo shoved his hands into his chest as he hunched over. “I was- who does that to a fucking preteen?! What sort of MANIAC puts- and then I was called- they called ME a TYRANT! ME!”
He ran a hand through his hair and laughed.
“I-I SHOULD have been!” He tugged at his roots. “I-I should have been a tyrant! I should have- hic- JSchaltt- hic- oh and don’t get me started on-!”
Her blood suddenly ran cold as ice.
That was who she was thinking.
Tommy leapt from her seat to wrap around Tubbo’s arm before it could reel back a second time.
They both staggered backwards- Tubbo in an attempt to shake her off, and Tommy in a desperate attempt to hold onto him as tight as possible. Her limbs flailed in all directions, especially when he took a swing at her. It missed her by a hair, but she still cursed right back at him, growling in his ear for him to knock it the fuck off.
Though she was too late to stop the glass, she still wrapped herself as tightly as she could around Tubbo, locking her arms together across his shoulders. He might have squirmed and thrashed, but she refused to let go. She even hiked her legs up to wrap around his waist, now fully clung to him like a human backpack.
“Get off me!” He exclaimed, his face flushed red and his eyes desperately searching for something to focus on. Wild blonde hair invaded his vision, and then that was replaced by darkness as two hands clamped over his eyes. “Get off me, Tommy!”
“You’ve gone fucking crackers!” Tommy shouted as loud as she could over everything. Over the jukebox, over the other patrons, over her own racing heart- she had to be as loud if not louder than everything else just so Tubbo had a chance of hearing her pleas. “Get- Get off the table!”
“You get off the table!”
“I’m only on the table because of YOU!”
“Why?!”
“Because you’re going to get yourself fucking KILLED that’s why!”
“Woo!” A random patron shouted. “Ten diamonds on the scrawny girl!”
“Fifteen on pinkie!”
“I got twenty that they BOTH eat shit!”
“ARE YOU LOT A BUNCH OF FUCKING LOONS?!” Instead of her ire being focused solely on Tubbo, now she whipped her head towards the sound of the jeers, a fire burning on her eyes. “I HOPE TO PRIME NONE OF YOU HAVE ANY FUCKING KIDS.”
“Booo! Buzzkill!”
“YOUR MUM IS A BUZZKILL, ASSHOLE.”
“Tommy I’m fucking serious- get the hell off me!” Tubbo’s hands flew up to tug at her hair, and he grinned when he heard a yelp. “I’ll- I’ll- HIC- I’ll pull again! Your hair’s long as shit, I’ve got plenty of pulling I could do!”
“Oh yeah?! Pull THIS-!”
Tubbo gasped as the wind was knocked right out of him.
One moment he was stumbling around like a drunken horse and struggling to pull the girl who had latched onto him with a tentacle-like grip off of him before she sent them both careening behind the bar.
And the next…
“Why…am I on the ground?”
“Get up, son!” An elderly man with an accent as thick as Jimmy’s pulled him to his feet. “I reckon ya got a brawl to win with your lil’ girlfrien’ there!”
“I would-” He groaned and swallowed down a thick lump of bile. He’d like to think it was from the comment, not his lunch swimming back up the pipes. “I would rather castrate myself.”
“Well, you’re no peach either!”
Now Tommy was the one standing on top of the bar. She had her hands on her hips and was glaring down at Tubbo like she had any authority over him. Clearly, she was trying to model herself after Grian, but it fell flat on the basis that, well, she wasn’t all that scary.
“Are you going to sober the hell up now?” She asked.
“Are you going to mind your own business?”
“It’s ALL our business Tubbo, we’re in public!” She exclaimed. “Aren’t you- you’re always telling me to behave an’ shit! Take your own gods damn advice or people are going to think you’re nuts!”
“Oh, NOW you want to listen to me!”
“I always listen to you, man!”
“Not his girlfriend my left-”
“SHUT UP!” Both of them shouted at once to the man, who instantly put his hands up in defense.
“You stay out of this!” Tommy barked, her tail- okay, guess we’re doing vexes now- lashing behind her in a blur of pure white. “And YOU, drink something that isn’t laced with fucking stupid sauce!”
Tubbo sat up and wiped a stray line of drool from his chin. “Or what?”
“Excuse me?!”
“Or. What.”
“Or I’ll-! I’ll-!”
Tubbo stood up- albeit a bit on the wobbly side- and grinned up at Tommy.
He knew she was full of shit.
Even though his mind was submerged in a lake of vice and his body swayed sluggishly from side to side, he knew her well enough that sober or not, he could tell what she was thinking before she could think it. It was always written right there on her face- her furrowed brow, her scrunched nose, her lips pulled into a snarl- it all culminated in him always being one step ahead of her.
That was, until her eyes softened.
“You’re not like him. So stop acting like you are.”
“Like- Like who?”
“Like Schlatt.”
Time came to a screeching halt.
Neither of them dared to move. Neither of them dared to breathe.
Tommy let her shoulders droop.
And that was when Tubbo lunged.
The back of her head instantly slammed into the shelf behind the bar, causing every glass to rattle violently. Two even fell from their perches- vodka on her left and something that smelled like liquid sharpie on her right. She groaned at not only the putrid scent that invaded her nose, but at how when she lifted her head back up, she could only make out a vague blob of pink towering above her, her shirt collar bunched up in his hands.
“T-Tubbo…?” She said weakly.
A trickle of blood ran down the side of her head.
“I-I’m not like him!” He shouted into her face, sending spittle everywhere. “I’m not! I am NOTHING like him!”
“That’s…that’s what I was trying to say, you fucking prick.” She laughed weakly. “You’ve gotta- oh fuck that stings- you’ve gotta open your ears ‘n listen to me, bee boy.”
“I-!” Hot tears welled in his eyes as he stared down at his best friend.
Red stained the curls around her head like a splotchy halo. Her eyes had a glossy film over them, as now she was the one needing something to focus on- anything to focus on that wasn’t the glass that had dug into her arm. If anyone else had done this to her, then Tubbo would return the favor tenfold.
But he did this to her.
He…
He let go of her shirt. She slumped back down against the wall like a doll.
Tubbo stared at his now trembling hands.
Were they always so soaked in blood?
When did they get in a bar?
Weren’t they just in the arena?
Tubbo looked back down at her.
Blink.
A sword stuck out of her chest.
Blink.
“Tubbo-?” Tommy said, as she attempted to sit herself up.
The doors to the saloon were thrown wide open.
“WHAT IN THE BLAZES IS GOIN’ ON IN HERE!?”
“Shit, it’s the sheriff!”
“SCATTER!”
Like rats the patrons scrambled to make it look like they were doing anything else- anything that wasn’t watching two teenagers throw each other around like potato sacks, and betting money to see which one came out on top. Said diamonds were left abandoned on the floor, being stepped over by the sheriff as he stomped towards the bar.
“Everybody better git out of here!” Jimmy shouted to everyone who was attempting to play it cool. He seemingly wasn’t in the mood for ‘cool’, as his face was so red he could have passed for a magma cube. “I ain’t playin’ around! Git your asses back to your homes before they’re sititn’ in a jail cell!”
He ignored every single ‘yes sheriff!’ and ‘sorry sheriff!’ that was tossed his way in favor of staring down at the two youngin’s, both of whom were now on the floor. At some point Tubbo had fallen to his knees, but he couldn’t recall when.
“H-Hey Jim-” Tommy croaked with a wave.
Jimmy’s hardened expression softened around the edges.
But he still sharply sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“I specifically said ‘no funny business’.”
“I mean…dunno if this counts as ‘funny’ but-”
“Geez- you two are going to be the death of me."
He circled around the bar and stepped over broken glass in order to approach the two properly.
Tommy might have been worse for wear on the physical side, but Tubbo- Tubbo was staring at absolutely nothing, his eyes far off, focused on something that wasn’t there at all. Despite the fact he was staring right at her, it wasn’t Tommy who he was seeing.
“Ally-oop.”
He scooped Tubbo up with ease.
“Huh?” He blinked. “Bwuh?”
“Alright buddy, easy does it-” Jimmy sighed. "Let's getcha to bed."
“Don’ talk to me like I’m a- like I’m a fuckin’ horse. Cuz ‘m not.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could kick a horse’s arse right now, Jim.”
“Whatever you say, pal.”
“Put me down- put me down so I can find a horse.”
“How ‘bout we getcha some water first?”
“Water…my husband can’t have that shit.”
“Well then I reckon it’s a good thing that husband of yours ain’t here.”
“Aye-” Tommy groaned, still splayed out. “What ‘bout me?”
“Let me bring Tubbo out to get a gulp of fresh air”. Jimmy said. “Then I’ll come grab ya. I might hafta make two trips, but- no you know what! Y’all only have yourselves to blame for this one!”
“Ough-” Tubbo’s hand flew to his temple. “Voice, Jim, my head’s killing me.”
“Your head is killing you?” Tommy forced herself to laugh. “Hey Jim?”
“Oh no. Yes?”
“What’s the first sign of a concussion?”
“...”
Jimmy set Tubbo back down beside her and pulled out his communicator. He wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed to himself just as his call was answered.
“Hey, Xander, mind comin’ over to the saloon? I need an extra set ‘a hands.”