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It’s these moments that make Tubbo wonder what they’re gonna do with all the mansion space.
Michael was born in the Nether, wild and parent-less. He’s adjusted well, usually gazing out the window and waiting patiently for one of his fathers to come by, but he sometimes acts - Tubbo was only just taught this word and he’s surprised by how quickly he’s getting to use it - feral.
Tubbo climbs up the ladder to Michael’s room after a long day - Tommy’s not… the same, anymore, and he won’t talk about it - only to find Ranboo trying to wrangle a speedy pig-child, long arms outstretched as they run in circles. Tubbo stifles a laugh and Ranboo looks up.
“Thank Prime you’re here,” he sighs.
Ranboo’s mid-run pause causes Michael to bump into his legs, which gives Ranboo the perfect opportunity to hoist him up by the armpits.
“Aha!” They peer at each other and Ranboo’s shoulders heave as he breathes. “I gotcha.”
Michael squirms and pouts. Ranboo holds him tighter.
“You need to calm down,” he admonishes. His expression is stern, but his voice betrays his feelings, affection dripping from every syllable.
“You’re terrible with discipline,” Tubbo remarks drily.
Ranboo hands off Michael to him. “You do it then.”
Something warm stretches across Tubbo’s chest as he holds his son in his arms, but he still huffs in mock-complaint. Tubbo takes Michael over to the bed and plops him down; Michael promptly gets underneath the covers before looking up at them both expectantly. Ranboo coos and Tubbo turns to look at him.
“What do I do?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs, “tell him a story.”
Tubbo frowns, playing with the fraying edge of his sleeve. “I don’t know any happy stories.”
Ranboo opens his mouth like he wants to say something, but he seems to change his mind halfway through and shakes his head. “It’s not like he’s gonna understand what you’re saying.”
In the back of Tubbo’s mind, there’s a book of myths, read to him by firelight. It’s the first thing he thinks of.
His skin had clung to his bones then, cardboard still startling. But those stories are blurry to begin with, made worse by the way they echo - Theseus, Technoblade called Tommy, Tubbo just barely remembers that one, something about an inescapable maze - and his relationships with the people who read them out are strained at best.
All he’s known in a long time is himself.
“Once upon a time,” Tubbo begins, because that’s how stories usually start. His isn’t some kind of fairytale, though, so maybe that was a mistake. “There was a boy.”
He glances at Ranboo, who nods encouragingly.
The boy was barely old enough to live on his own, but he did. He used to live with his best friend, but times had changed. The boy worked in an office, for a great nation.
(Tubbo raises his arms dramatically as Ranboo pulls up a chair.
“The office had giant windows, like this.”
Michael solemnly mimics the motion.)
The boy’s boss was pissed all the time, but he was a really smart man. He had other people do his work for him and he knew a lot about what was happening, even when he wasn’t around. All the land feared him, but they respected him too.
(“They did?” Ranboo asks, head tilted.
Something catches in Tubbo’s throat as he remembers standing, spine at attention, a calloused hand in his hair and a gruff voice praising him for his excellent work.
“They did,” he affirms.)
The man knew that the boy had a secret. It wasn’t an awful secret, it was just that he was still talking to his best friend, who’d been forced to leave. The man didn’t trust the boy, even though the boy worked very hard. When the man announced a festival, the boy was the one to decorate it. He was excited and thought it’d be fun. But the man had other plans.
(Michael makes a sound and Tubbo rubs softly at his cheek, grinning when Michael nuzzles in.)
The festival started out great. An old friend of the people the boy used to live with, a talking pig-
(“Like you,” Ranboo jokes, tapping the end of the bed.
Tubbo stops himself from shuddering, tightens his smile like a noose.)
-a talking pig even came from far away. They played games and stuff; the boy’s best friend and his brother even snuck in to talk to him. They asked him to do something for them, something that would get rid of the man, but he wasn’t sure. The man was harsh, but he’d done some good things, and the brother was acting weird. The boy didn’t get to ask more questions because it was time for his speech.
(Michael says something, Tubbo can’t tell if it’s Piglin or babbling, and a knot somewhere in his ribcage unravels and dissolves.
Nothing like that - that feeling of helplessness, that choice presented as a test - will ever happen to him. Tubbo will make sure of it.)
The boy had worked very hard on his speech. He wasn’t a very good public speaker, but he wanted to do a good job. He talked about the man and his work and how good things were, but he made the split-second decision to go along with what his old friends wanted.
(“You’re just a yes-man, aren’t you?”
Wilbur had rolled his eyes, not a hint of familiarity behind them. His skin was pale and coal dust stained his coat sick.
Tubbo swallows the memory. It goes down sharp.)
The man pulled out buckets of concrete and built a box around the boy, trapping him on the stage podium. He asked them what they were doing, but no one answered, and the man called the pig up to the stage.
(“What?”
Tubbo deliberately doesn’t look at Ranboo, whose question sits, tense, in the set of his shoulders. He knows it’s there without looking; that’s how Ranboo is. Too easy to read.
Michael stretches a trotter out and Tubbo lets him grab onto two of his fingers.)
The man told the pig to do something, but the pig didn’t understand. The boy did, though, and he was scared. The boy messaged the person who’d made the plan and was told that the pig knew about the plan too. He was on the boy’s side. The boy was relieved.
(Ranboo leans back in similar, apparent relief and Tubbo almost laughs.
Get ready for the plot twist, big man.)
The man very clearly explained what he wanted done and the boy knew he was too weak to stop it. The pig apologized, once, but it wasn’t clear how much he meant it, and that was it.
“It?”
Tubbo reaches forward and taps the end of Michael’s nose gently. “Bang,” he whispers. “Fireworks.”
Michael’s good eye blinks up at Tubbo and he half-murmurs something as his grip loosens on Tubbo’s hand. He seems to protest against himself for a bit before he slowly begins to succumb to sleep.
Tubbo smiles, tucking the blankets tighter around him.
“What happened to the boy?” Ranboo asks quietly.
Tubbo stands up. “It’s just a story, Ranboo.”
Sunlight on the edge of the horizon slants in through the window, glinting off of Ranboo’s crown as he stares at Tubbo. Ranboo doesn’t usually meet his eyes, gaze fixed somewhere close to his heart, but the message is clear; he’s not buying it.
Maybe he should’ve been more subtle.
At least Michael seemed to like it.
This was probably inevitable. He’d just kind of hoped it would get out somehow and Ranboo wouldn’t try to do that thing where he suggests they talk about their feelings. Tubbo sighs and rolls his sleeves up.
The burns are worst on his forearms, on the insides of his wrists. He raised his arms when Technoblade fired, as if his hands - ones that clenched into helpless fists in the Final Control Room, ones that would later do nothing to catch L’manberg’s last breath - would be able to protect him.
“The boy died.”
“I didn’t- I knew-” Ranboo inhales heavily and exhales fast and loud; they both flinch a little, looking over to make sure they didn’t wake up Michael. He appears blissfully undisturbed and Ranboo breathes in and out again, softer. “I didn’t know that’s where those came from.”
Tubbo tugs the fur cuff of his coat back down, gnawing on his lower lip. “Yeah, well.”
Everybody else knows, Tubbo thinks.
It’s a slightly bitter thought, and not technically true. Foolish doesn’t know, and some people who were around back then probably never quite found out the full truth, but the memory still has a permanent seat in his head, reclined and rotting away.
People watched him die there. He wonders if it stains their perfect conscience or if it’s just one more thing everyone’s willingly forgotten.
Sure, Tubbo was a dictator. A horrible president everyone hated. He ran L’manberg into the ground. Nevermind the fact that he kept that country so close to his chest, Wilbur had once reprimanded him, saying it seemed like he was physically incapable of giving it up.
Maybe that’s what this is, maybe this is him still holding on.
Ranboo gathers Tubbo into his arms, abruptly knocking him out of his thoughts. Ranboo’s palms are clammy and Tubbo has to shift to hug him back, but once adjusted, they stay there for a brief moment in warm silence.
“I didn’t think-” Ranboo falters.
Tubbo can feel the tension in his frame. He remembers Ranboo’s little house on the edge of Technoblade and Phil’s land, remembers the way he let Tubbo just sort of be after they’d gotten the news about Tommy, remembers the very minute they got engaged, some kind of unmatched freedom in the binding of it.
“Yeah, well,” Tubbo repeats, laughing lightly.
It’s not like it’s Ranboo’s fault. If anything, it’s the opposite. Ranboo stood next to him when Technoblade came to Snowchester, even with the obvious risk.
His expressions are easy to read; Tubbo knew right away that if it came down to it, Ranboo would cross the bridge to his side. Enderman and ex-president against self-proclaimed blood god.
The two of them against the world.
Tubbo taps three beats against Ranboo’s skin, a wordless affirmation, and lets himself relax.
He doesn’t have any happy stories, but he knows that he will. In days, months, years. When Tommy doesn’t look over his shoulder like something’s coming. When Tubbo can watch fireworks and see beauty in them again, instead of just scarlet.
These will be them. Security, family, all the mushy stuff.
Michael and Ranboo and the amber hue of an evening with nothing waiting.