Chapter Text
Tubbo’s days are often more busy than not.
He’ll find himself on his knees in the beet farm, cross-legged on the chair in the warehouse, fingers shaking as he gardens or sketches out designs for nukes. He bakes cookies with Ranboo, dusts down his armor, and reinforces the enchantments. He follows Tommy around, hovering and keeping a careful eye out as the above mentioned recklessly throws himself head-first into situations Tubbo knows he can’t handle despite his insistence. Tubbo is busy. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Ram horns curl around his face and grow every day, layers of keratin inviting in sinful thoughts. They shine through in the tremble of his fingertips, how he ties Ranboo’s tie for him, how he lets his hair grow long and unruly. He breaks the rules. He works.
Saturdays, however.
Saturdays are days of rest.
Saturdays, Tubbo doesn’t pull himself out of bed until noon. Saturdays, Tubbo ignores Ranboo’s teasing quips and shoves him out the front door with a grumpy face. Saturdays, Tubbo takes down the usual two bowls from the cabinets of their huge, mostly unused kitchen in the mansion. One he fills with wheat-grain cereal, munching absently as he fills the other with a chocolate monstrosity. Milk next, and a spoon for each. It’s work, but not the kind that’s meant to fill his head with fuzz and stave off the terror. This is a monotonous routine, one that ends when he unlocks the door to Michael’s room and nudges his way inside.
Saturdays are Michael’s days.
It’s sort of ironic, Tubbo thinks to himself as he watches his son scarf down the bowl of sugared cereal, sitting on the floor in their pajamas and laughing when Michael spills milk down his front. Ironic that a teenager with devil’s horns and an idle mind takes care of an innocent soul with a saint’s name.
Or, a not-so-innocent soul, as Michael takes the rest of his cereal milk and spills it all over their brand-new finished wood floors.
Once breakfast is over and everyone’s cleaned up (including the floors), the day is theirs.
They do whatever. Sometimes, Tubbo takes Michael’s tiny cloven hand in his own and weaves him stories as they walk through the halls of the mansion. He talks and talks and talks, filling the silence and echoing halls with his own voice as Michael listens on. He explains what race cars are, how loud crowds of people can get. He explains festivals and parties, the thrill of tournaments. He weaves with deft fingers and silken tongue a story about a lost king and his fallen kingdom. Occasionally, Michael babbles along with the stories. A new one each week, as they trail down hallways and slip-n-slide across marbled floors in their socks. Ranboo is always worried around Michael– Tubbo is less so. He’s of the personal opinion that when someone takes a tumble, they must be able to right themselves at some point.
Prime knows he’s done it enough.
(Thick skin.)
But, Tubbo’s there. He’s there for skinned knees and to pick Michael up again when he falls. He’s there to comfort, to bonk forehead against forehead and reassure that yes, Michael did a very good job.
Tubbo’s always had to pick himself up. He’ll be damned if Michael has to as well.
Sometimes, they dance.
When Tubbo was a little bit shorter, his horns barely poking out of the top of his skull, hair shorn neatly above his ears, he’d roamed the wide empty halls of another building. He’d chewed on sleeves and stared at the great paintings of leaders past. His footsteps had echoed lonely with no one beside him. Occasionally, the hallways would be filled with noise. The sounds of bottles breaking and shouting voices, or maybe the hushed sounds of a lover and a taker, slotted up against each other like two pieces of a puzzle forced to fit where they shouldn’t have to.
In line with his rebellious Saturday tradition, Tubbo refuses to let the hallways of his home be a similarly morose echo chamber.
So he plays music. He laughs. He puts on a disc– Strad is the first in the rotation, as it’s Michael’s favorite. He carefully moves his tiny feet in a way that is both familiar and haunting–
a memory underground, of a hulking warrior showing a girl with baker’s hands how to do one of the traditional dances of his people
–but in the end, feet are stumbled over and giggles are heard as the disc continues it’s circling journey. Tubbo joins in as Strad fades out and taps his fingers against Michael’s hands, picking him up under the armpits (gentle, gentle, always gentle) and swinging him in circles. He’s glad he can do this now. He hasn’t gotten to pick someone up in more recent memory. Any jovial times of messing around and play-fighting have long been lost to the wars of this damned server, crushed under the boot of a devil disguised as a serpent-tongued ram and a fallen angel backed by glorious explosions.
There’s a smiley face mask in there somewhere too, but Tubbo’s not too keen on thinking about that particular evil. Not when the very mention of it sends Tommy into panic, when Ranboo dissociates, when the very water of Church Prime flows dark with just a hint of his name.
Tubbo relishes in the fact he is strong enough to pick up his son with gentle hands, spinning him in circles and setting him down again. He relishes the fact he’s able to be gentle at all with his calloused fingertips, holding Michael’s and spinning them both, footwork carrying them up and down the halls of their home as music pours from the library and fills the shell of the mansion with light and laughter.
Tubbo knows he is already damned. He’s very aware of the fact as curved horns creep closer and closer to his eyes with every layer of keratin they grow. He’ll make sure the halls of his home are loud with love nonetheless.