Chapter Text
Tommy and Tubbo lived in the same town for their entire lives. And when you live somewhere for your entire life, you learn things, repeat things, memorize things, until eventually you know every street, every building, every nook and cranny like the back of your hand. And by the age of ten, the two boys had claimed this town as their own personal playground, with all the best playspots, hiding spots, food spots, everything on a visual map in their heads. The two boys knew how to live in that town.
They also knew that every wednesday during the month of July, the sun would set at just the right point, that it would reflect against the lake in just the right way, and it would shine brighter than a million stars. They knew the best time, they knew the best spot, they knew the best view.
And so every wednesday, the boys would sneak out to their favorite spot- an old park bench- and watch the sunset over the lake.
Tonight was no exception. Tubbo was kicking his small legs back and forth, drawing in a sweater and overalls that were a couple of sizes too big for him, and his hair was freshly dyed blonde, though Tommy’s messy job left a considerable amount of brown patches still showing. As for Tommy, he was practically bouncing off of his seat. Both of his sneakers were untied, bandaids littered his knees, arms, and face, and his wide grin brandished a missing tooth gap.
Somewhere amongst the squabbling and giggles, Tommy pulled out a notebook and crayons from his backpack. Tubbo looked at it curiously.
“We gotta make a bucket list!” he screamed and flipped the book to the first page. Almost immediately, he started scribbling little doodles and swirls around the edges of the page.
“A bucket list?” Tubbo asked, peeking curiously at the page.
“Like a, like a list of places we gotta visit!” Tommy explained and he threw a couple of crayons over to the other.
The two worked at the list eagerly. Scribbling down location after location. World wonders, places with sentimental value, places with a breathtaking view, places that were so far beyond the town that they knew.
By the end, among a plethora of doodles and drawings, they had ten locations. All that was left to do was fill the spot at the top of the page, awaiting a title.
The two boys looked at each other for a moment before Tommy nodded, and wrote down:
‘Tommy and Tubbo’s super big dream list!’
_____
Despite being a spur of the moment idea between two children, the list always stayed at the back of their minds. Of course, as they grew older, the list was pushed further and further back, under school, and work, and other endeavours. But that didn’t matter, they were still young. They had all the time in the world to finish it.
_____
Not many people tend to ride the bus this late at night. It’s virtually pitch black, lest for the street lamps that animated a temporary streak of illumination with each pole they passed. The light bent across every angle of the seat in front of him, the floor, his body, until it flicked away into a cold darkness yet again. Maybe that’s one reason no one’s on the bus, that or it’s very late into the night.
If there were any people there, they weren’t uttering a peep of noise. At least, nothing over the frankly ironic pop music that was filtering in through his ratty and tangled earbuds. Maybe an old couple on vacation that still needs to get to their hotel, maybe some teenage girl sneaking off to her boyfriend’s house. He remembers earlier, some super drunk guy clambered onto the bus, but his ruckus died down as well. He could see the man’s limp hand hanging over the seat just in the middle of the rows. The bus driver was quiet, the patrons were quiet, Tubbo was quiet.
Tommy was quiet, but that’s to be expected.
Tommy. Tubbo found himself clutching the backpack on his lap tighter. His multitude of keychains clattered against each other every time the bus hit a particularly large pothole in the road. Apparently there’s a lot of those in Arizona. One of the keychains- a bee that Tommy had gotten him for his tenth birthday- was particularly loud as it swung against two music disk ones- those used to be Tommy’s. He stole them off of the boy’s car keys.
Curled up in a ball with his hands wrapped around his knees and backpack, Tubbo leaned his head against the cold glass of the bus window. Or at least tried to. The vibrations of the road created a buzzing in his brain and every time the bus so much as shifted, his head would be sent thunking against the glass. You couldn’t see much outside other than desert, maybe some sedimentary mountains, but anything was better than scrolling through his phone, which was surely now filled with instagram posts worried about him and his whereabouts.
Speaking of his phone, as if on cue, it vibrated in his pocket.
Cold electric light lit up face as he turned it over into his view. It was a text from Technoblade. He had already blocked Wilbur and Phil, it hadn’t even crossed his mind that Techno would be the type of person to reach out and text him. Even before all of this, their conversations would always be one worded confirmations of locations whenever he and Tommy needed a ride.
Technoblade: I’m not going to ask where you are. I’m not going to ask where you’re going. I just want to know that you’re going to be safe about it.
Technoblade: We’re all grieving here, kid.
The lump in Tubbo’s throat that seemed ever present in the past month had increased tenfold. Technoblade was texting him. They were really worried. His eyes burned with pushed back emotion, something prickly and sour that encased his eyes and sinuses, that rang in his emotions- begging for attention, yet refusing to release. He could ignore the text. He could ignore the text and solidify his plans without any hitches. He could- He could-
And before he could make any smart decisions- the first of many bad ones he had made in the past twenty four hours, he sent his best friend’s brother a reply.
Me: I’ll be safe
He could give them that, at least. He even checked it over one, two, three times for spelling errors before sending it. Technoblade didn’t reply to that one, simply opting to leave the message on seen. But deep down, he knew he did the right thing.
Well, this entire situation was pretty wrong , but it felt right. That’s Tubbo’s new life mission, to feel right again.
His hands were cold. His hands were cold, and his feet were cold, and his nose was cold, which is stupid because he’s in the middle of the desert right now. His hands were cold, and his very core was cold. His shivering rib cage opened up his frigid organs, his frozen lungs, his dead heart, and he was cold. His entire body felt as if it was dipped in a frozen lake and he was left with the eternal bite. It was horrible. It was horrible. It was horrible and he felt as if he wanted to die. Which is morbid, and evil, and a horrible thing to say considering his best friend is dead. But he’s cold, and the fire inside of him was burned away along with his best friend’s bones.
He was so, so cold, and he felt as if he could cry if it were not for the searing burning that came from his backpack. Like the marble of the urn was a malleable piece of molten metal that burned and bubbled his horrid cold skin through the backpack it was hidden in. He huffed and clutched the bag tighter. If this was grief, he didn’t want to feel it anymore. He would much rather ignore it, or throw it away, or let himself be consumed by it whole, anything to stop the virus infecting him.
Grief was like an illness that couldn’t be helped with kisses, or soup, or Tommy coming over to occupy his mind with Mario Kart. Even though that feels like the only thing that could heal him right now. But Tommy can’t come. Thus him feeling this all in the first place. It was a horrid cycle that sucked him in, thrashing him around like a ragdoll.
Tubbo feels like dying, but he can’t. Because he has to live for his friend that can’t. Which makes him want to die even more. But he can’t.
Cycle. Cycle. Cylce.
The song that was bellowing out from his headphones was peppy, and upbeat, and had a catchy drum beat. He remembers listening to this song when he was twelve, and his class was going on a field trip to the zoo. This song felt like a loud overbearing bus, like his best friend complaining that his braces hurt, like ice cream and lemonade, like elephants and giraffes and tigers. And this song felt like crushing a design into pennies, and throwing pellets at goats, and pocketing candy from the gift shop with snickering and conniving grins. His mother always skipped this song when it came on the radio, she said there were too many suggestive lyrics. But Tubbo liked it. Tubbo liked elephants.
The song barely had any time to finish before the bus came to a halt. The driver said something about kicking him off, but all he could hear was mumbled. He hadn’t even realized that everyone else had already exited the bus at his point. He hadn’t even realized that the bus could stop at his point. Like his state curled up in the back of this quiet, dark bus was some sort of sick purgatory, a rift in time that would never end. But here he was, stumbling down the steps into the cool desert air, bidding the driver goodbye with a nervous wave, and watching the vehicle drive away.
He was out in the middle of nowhere. It was the middle of the night. And that was his last ride to somewhere even remotely safe or civilized.
Tubbo was irrevocably fucked. But at least the Grand Canyon was pretty.
Leaning against a not so safe railing, he breathed out into the wide open world. The stars were quite beautiful, weren’t they. They painted and speckled the sky and it was truly, truly breathtaking. Maybe even more so than the canyon. Though there was something spectacular about the swerves and crevasses, and striking colors that made something fizzle in his core. What else could he say? Nothing really. He couldn’t say anything. Just look.
Soft air brushed against his face, reverberating off of the deep chasms of the canyons.
He hasn’t cried yet. When Tommy was in the hospital, and those machines were doing more living for him than he was, he didn’t cry. When the very words were uttered that his best friend had just died, he didn’t cry. He didn’t cry, not at the funeral, not when he was laying aimlessly in his bed, not when school started up again. He wanted to. So badly, he wanted to. He wanted to sob and bawl at the fact that his best friend was gone but he couldn’t. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t, instead he was just numb. Holding his friend’s limp hand, all he felt was numb. Holding Technoblade in a tight and unexpected embrace, all he felt was numb. When everyone was coddling him in his stuffy black suit at the memorial service, he felt numb.
His best friend is dead and he hasn’t cried once.
Ain’t that a kicker.
. . .
There’s a strange man standing next to him now. Which in almost all cases should be a great cause for concern considering, one, he was a child by himself, two, it was the middle of the night, three he was in a foreign country, and four, well, combine all of those and the probability of Tubbo getting axe murdered is sounding pretty high. Wait. He’s in America. The guy probably has a gun.
He should run. He should really run, considering the guy looks like he just got hit by a truck, he’s a good foot and a half taller than him, and he was wearing a cloth mask on his face. Yea, that definitely wasn’t promising. Who even shows up in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night anyway? . . . besides Tubbo.
He should really run now.
But the guy doesn’t look all that harmful. In fact, he’s kind of just minding his own business. And if Tubbo squints real hard, it looks as if the person is around his age. Maybe that whole feeling numb to grief thing is seeping into his other emotions, because he’s having a hard time feeling fear right now.
Fuck it. Tubbo’s always been the compulsive one with zero self preservation skills.
“How many people’s ashes do you think are down there?” He speaks into the open air. His voice is loud compared to the deafening silence, almost crisp in a sense; biting. The question is gesturing towards the canyon displayed out in front of them.
The guy next to him falters for a moment, shooting a glance over to him with his eyes furrowed in confusion. He looks back over to the canyon and thinks for a moment.
“I uh- I’ve never really thought about that before. Thats- that’s a weird thing to think about,” he remarks. His voice is deep in a weird, smooth type of way while also simultaneously having some hint of a rasp to it.
“Yea, I mean like, we’re just looking at millions of dead bodies right now,” Tubbo’s eyes were wide at the view.
“I am. . .never gonna think about the Grand Canyon the same way again,” the man shuddered, squinting out into the vast horizon ahead of them. He was rubbing his gloved hands together in a warming motion. If Tubbo looked really hard, he could see faint puffs of his exhales reacting with the air.
There was a pause in the conversation for a while, as both boys dissolved into only a mildly awkward silence. That was until the other boy spoke, starting up the conversation this time.
“Are you. . .out here alone?” He looked back over to Tubbo, a faint concert etched on his face.
“Nope,” Tubbo replied bluntly, accentuating the popping noise at the end. With that, he swung his backpack around and unzipped it, gently retrieving and revealing a small urn. It was a light red marble, Tommy’s favorite color.
“Oh,” the boy reacted, and if he wasn’t wearing the mask, Tubbo could’ve sworn he saw him frown, “I’m sorry.”
Tubbo had gotten a lot of “I’m sorry”’s lately. A statement that doesn’t mean anything or make sense, from people who don’t mean it. But for some reason, it felt as if this guy really, genuinely meant it.
“Double pneumonia,” he blurted, causing the other to startle slightly at the information being thrown around, “The doctors basically said he was drowning in his own lungs.”
He said it so casually as if it wasn’t a morbid topic that was clearly making the other person uncomfortable.
“Oh, that’s-”
“Well, that’s not what they said, but it was pretty much implied,” he corrected, hugging onto the urn and looking back out into the sky.
He breathed in. And out.
“We made this bucket list. Of places we wanted to go,” here it is, so quiet, colors dimmed by the veil of night but cast a cold illumination by the radiating moon, “I just remembered it existed, so I did what any rational person would do, and I downed half a bottle of ibuprofen, snuck out in the middle of the night, basically kidnapped my best friend, and took the soonest plane to America.”
. . .
“This was the first place. ‘Got four more places to go.”
The other hummed thoughtfully.
“Where are you running to?”
The other man took a moment to form a reply.
“I’m not running to something. I’m running away from something.”
Just peeking underneath the mask, Tubbo could’ve sworn he saw the jagged end of a fresh scar, a bruise, a burn for good measure. Just because Tubbo started oversharing to this absolute stranger doesn’t mean the other guy is expected to, so he leaves it at that.
“Shitty parents?” He asks.
He chuckles.
“Shitty parents,” the other echoes in confirmation.
He doesn’t know what it is about this guy. Maybe it’s the way his grey eyes look upon the land with such innocent fondness, maybe it’s way the beanie he’s wearing on his head is ripped and torn in multiple places, yet somehow held together by an ameture sewing job, maybe it’s- unlike anybody else, anybody else except for Tommy- he truly listened. He listened, and he listened like every word that came out of Tubbo’s mouth meant something. Maybe it’s how, for the first time in a month, a warmness has bloomed around him that wasn’t sourced by the urn.
“I’ll run away from something with you if you run to something with me,” he offered.
“I-” the other looked slightly baffled, that was a common occurrence considering everything Tubbo had said thus far, “Y’know what, sure.”
And if the boy weren’t wearing a mask, he could’ve sworn he saw him smile.
They stood in silent agreement for a long while, until Tubbo started screwing off the lid of the urn, biting his lip in concentration.
“Alrighty,” he huffed, as he not so gracefully hoisted himself up onto the railing. He nearly scoffed at the immediate worry that filled the other guy's demeanor. Nearly. If his mind wasn’t occupied with the fact that he had missed his footing and started to slip. Before he could fall and tumble to his death, the boy wrapped his arms around his waist, not yanking him back to safety, but holding him there in a safe suspension.
Taking that as his cue, Tubbo tilted the urn and let a small portion of the contents fall into the canyon below. The ashes looked as if they were flying around as they mixed with the air on their journey to settle to the ground; their final resting place.
With the hint of a smile on his face, he leaned back and sat on the railing. The other guy didn’t make any moves to let go of his waist for a moment until he deemed it safe. And then he moved to lean against the railing next to him.
“Ten minutes into knowing me and you already nearly died without me,” he remarked.
Tubbo laughed. Genuine. “What would I do without you?”
He was here. Tubbo was really here. Years and years of planning and useless dreaming, and he was here. He was here. And Tommy was here. And this absolute stranger was here. And it felt as much of an end of something as it did the beginning of something.
“I don’t even know your name,” the boy next to him spoke.
“If you were to ask my dad, Toby. But you can call me Tubbo. What about you?”
“If you were to ask my school, Ryan. But you can call me Ranboo.”
And Tubbo smiled. In the dark, cold world his best friend had left him, he smiled. He looked down to the urn.
“And this is Tommy.”
Ranboo nodded fondly. “So,” both of them looked back out into the big, big world.
“Where’s the next place on that list?”