Chapter Text
Apo now knows what happens when someone takes a stimulant (sugar) and a depressant (alcohol) at the same time of the same dose.
They crash.
It's fascinating how Tubbo managed to maintain such high, unhinged energy for so long before crashing, but when he crashed, he crashed hard. As in, Apo watched the fastest rat he had ever seen in his life just suddenly freeze and stop moving in the middle of the room, almost stuck in place as everyone else scurried underneath tables and counters to hide from the maid stomping into the room. Apo heard her shriek, then saw a huge hand reach down and grab Tubbo off the ground, the woman running out of the room without a moment of hesitation all while Tubbo was just—frozen.
It was a little unnerving, if Apo is being honest, but that didn't stop him from bursting out into satisfied laughter at the sight. He waved off Scott and Beks when they offered to go save him with Apo, saying that he doesn't mind getting the newbie on his own since he wanted to tease him a little bit. It's deserved. A little bit of teasing would be nothing compared to the borderline hellish experience he was put through less than an hour ago—he doesn't have the heart to let Tubbo actually start fearing for his life, but it's basically the universe giving the guy his karma and Apo was not about to pass up on that opportunity.
Only—when Apo did enter the blue room and spotted Tubbo in the cage, he wasn't pouting or screaming or doing anything as insane as Apo would have expected from him; no, Tubbo isn't even moving, not even when Apo runs up to the very front of the cage and puts his own hands around the buzzing bars. He's just staring at the ground, a dazed look of frustration and fear making his face twist slightly, as if he tasted something sour.
Apo doesn't really register that something may be wrong at first. "Oh, look how the tables have turned."
Tubbo scowls at him and makes an obscene hand gesture; Apo simply smirks. "You know, I don't think you're a real rat," he sneers. "Are those ears real?"
Tubbo drags a paw down his face and just groans. "I can barely think right now, man," he says, rubbing at his eyes. "Do you have to my last living moments miserable?"
"I might let you out," Apo says, leaning on the bars. "If you can give me something for it."
Tuubbo hums. "I can give you an empty bottle of wine," he manages, plopping down in the corner of the cage, digging haphazardly into his pockets. Apo blinks. "Or—a bit of a cube of sugar, oh, yes please."
He wrangles his hand out of his pocket, pulling the white grains out and shoving them into his mouth unabashedly. Apo's face twists into an expression of disgust. "I don't know how you eat that stuff raw like that."
"You get used to it," Tubbo says with a wink and a finger gun. "I've even almost stopped getting the immediate headache, really!" He winces. "Almost."
"How are you so calm about this?" Apo says, slightly flabbergasted. "You're going to die if I leave you in there."
Tubbo doesn't respond for a few moments, his eyebrows pulling in on one another in a tight frown before he shrugs. "If you let me out, cool. If you leave me in here, cool. You ever stared death in the eyes before, Apokuna?"
He makes bug eyes at Apo, and he takes a half-step back. "Yeah, like, thirty minutes ago. Did you forget that you almost let me die literally within the hour?"
Tubbo rolls his eyes and blows his bangs out of his face, pushing himself off the ground and almost stumbling towards the front of the cage, jutting a finger in Apo's direction. "This is why I don't think you're a real rat," he slurs, more accusatory and aggressive than he was just a couple seconds ago. "You and everyone else here are so—you're so weird like that."
Apo pulls away from him, a scowl etched deep into his face. "Weird how?"
"Weird like—like expecting to be saved." His brows pull further in. "Like we're supposed to go out of our way to save you."
Apo opens his mouth to respond, disgusted and just confused as to how someone could care so little for other people's lives, but Tubbo cuts him off with a dejected laugh, letting his head hang and lean against the thin bars. "You know what we'd do if a rat got caught in the Shelves?"
Apo blinks a few times, furrowing his brows. "The shelves?"
"The Shelves of Starvation," Tubbo snaps, as if Apo was supposed to be keeping track of his inane ramblings. "You aaall can keep track of Trash Rat's tragic backstory, but when I do it—"
"I thought you were kidding about that!" Apo exclaims, recoiling as his tail swishes behind him nervously. "I thought—hang on."
Apo himself was starting to get more nervous than the person actually in the cage—he jumps down and pushes the lever down with his weight, the trapdoor slamming onto the table and making Tubbo stumble forwards and almost fall. The kid sways a little bit, apparently stunned as he stares at Apo, unblinking.
Apo laughs nervously. "You wanna get out of here, or...?"
"You realise there's no food in the house, right?" Tubbo asks suddenly, sounding completely and utterly disbelieving.
"Uh..." Apo's gaze flicks into the sky as he tries to remember whether they're in a state of famine right now—they seem to fluctuate in and out of it every other hour. "Probably?"
Tubbo continues staring. "So you—you're not gonna—?"
Apo blinks at him, waiting for him to continue. "Gonna...?"
Tubbo stumbles, holding his head and letting out a sharp exhale. "Woo. The sugar is hitting."
"Okay, get down," Apo says, exasperated, hooking his arm within Tubbo's and starting to pull him off the table. "No going to do anyone any good if you fall off the table and die."
Tubbo lets himself be pulled, but not without making his concerns known. "See, see, look. In the Shelves?" He scoffs. "Well. Well. I think the only good I would do is if I fell off a table and broke my neck. At least then someone wouldn't be starving for a little while. You know? You know."
"No, Tubbo, I don't know," Apo says, the cogs in his brain turning and trying to figure out what he meant by that. What he means by that. The inside of his mind is just a jumbled mess of words and ideas—the Shelves of Starvation, Tubbo expecting to be left for dead, being completely unconcerned with letting someone die in a trap, thinking that Apo was going to do something to him—
It all falls in place very suddenly—Apo freezes underneath a table, Tubbo tripping over his own feet at the sharp stop and throws a confused look back at Apo, only to be met with the taller rat's look of horror.
"Tubbo—" Apo starts, choking on his words simply out of disgust and shock. "Did you expect me to let you die so I could eat you—?"
"Shhh, sh, sh," Tubbo says, pressing a hand to Apo's mouth. "Shut up, you're going to wake the trauma."
"Tubbo, what the hell—"
"We should go to the attic," Tubbo says suddenly, starting to pull out of Apo's grip. "Haven't been there yet, apparently it's so cool—"
"Tubbo."
"And—are you a builder? All the small bits are dancing around my eyes, I can't see a thing, really," Tubbo snickers at himself, but it's clear he's trying to change the subject. "Think I took too much sugar? I don't think I can take too much sugar."
"Tubbo," Apo insists, grabbing the kid by the shoulders. He pulls him around to meet face to face, and Tubbo's eyes are wildly flicking around the room, looking anywhere but Apo's face.
"You think the humans are gonna learn to reach under the tables soon?" Tubbo blabbers, making random gesticulations with his hands. "We probably shouldn't stay in one spot for too long before they do—"
"Tubbo, listen to me," Apo interrupts, shaking Tubbo by the shoulders just a little bit and waiting until Tubbo's eyes, pupils contracted by panic, meet his. He lets out a quiet sigh and softens his tone. "We have enough food here to not starve, okay? Sometimes it gets a little short, yeah, but we'd never ever go to that extent for food."
"But—"
"No. We have a rat that can farm, for Christssakes, we're never going to run that low on food. And even if we did, we would just go..." Apo shrugs. "Somewhere else! We're not going to eat each other, that's wrong!"
The tips of Tubbo's ears go pale, so thin they're almost transparent. "It is?"
"Yes!"
"Oh," Tubbo says quietly, gnawing on his bottom lip with concern scrawled across his face. His voice peaks a little bit when he asks in a similar volume, "Does that mean that I'm wrong?"
Apo pauses. "What?"
"I mean, it wasn't wrong on the Shelves," Tubbo says, words coming out faster as he sways a little under Apo's grip. It's hard to remind himself that Tubbo is—under the influence, he'll say, when he always sort of acts like he's under the influence. But no, this is different—all that nervous energy and raw excitement that keeps Tubbo chugging along is distorted and twisted in a way that makes it so Apo can feel his tiny heart beating a concerning amount of times faster than it should be, that makes his body consistently shake and his pupils contract into the tiniest of dots. Here, Tubbo looks scared. He pulls himself out from under Apo's hands and runs a hand through his hair. "I thought you were all weird for being all...nice and selfless with each other. Oh, whiskers," he points to himself. "Am I not a real rat?"
Apo...does not know hot to respond to that directly. Instead, he gently puts a hand around Tubbo's shoulders and starts to lead the way from under the table and towards the entrance to the attic. "You're a real rat, king. We just do things differently around here."
"So you are the weird ones?"
Apo huffs. "I guess we're a little more considerate than other rats, sure—"
"Huh."
"But that doesn't make us any less rat...ty." Apo winces at his limited vocabulary. "Look, I get that you came from a different background than the rest of us, is all, and I'm not blaming you for anything you did out of...necessity...in the past. Just, ah..." He trails off, then nudges Tubbo softly. "Let's just avoid cannibalising our friends, okay?"
"Huh," Tubbo repeats. He shrugs. "Alright. I'll tell Shelby, then."
"What, Shelby too?" Apo exclaims.
"Well, yeah," Tubbo says shortly. "We both came from the same cupboard."
Apo pauses. Thinks for a moment. "How many other rats were in that cupboard before you two were let out?"
Tubbo snorts. "You said we're supposed to be considerate, yeah?"
"Yes...?" Apo replies, confusion evident in his voice.
"Right, well," Tubbo lets his shoulders slump, closing his eyes and rubbing the space between them (probably to soothe a sugar-induced headache). "I'm being considerate and sparing you the details of what went down on the Shelves. What happens on the Shelves stays on the Shelves. Ask Shelby, she'll tell you the same thing."
"Right."
"Cross my heart," Tubbo says, raising his right hand. "Hope to starve, stick a needle in my heart."
"Sure, Tubbo."