Chapter Text
It’s one of those days.
Whenever Tommy refers to lazy and uneventful early afternoons as one of those days, he is always on a call with Tubbo. It’s not bad, sometimes three-hour calls and counting with the short brunet is exactly what he needs when his energy is low and he is not being extra entertaining.
“Fuck! This is fucking bullshit!” Tubbo exclaimed, hardly warning Tommy’s ears as he slightly pulled his headphones away.
He could just imagine a frustrated Tubbo. Brows drawn together to form crease lines on his forehead and a dissatisfied downturn of his thin lips. Tommy clicks his tongue before getting his headphones back in place.
“Christ, Toby! Warn a man next time! What’s got you all mad anyway?”
An exhale of exasperation releases a bit of the edge off Tubbo’s voice to talk more calmly. “Sorry. I’ve just been working on this machine for hours and it’s not doing anything for some fucking reason. It’s pissing me off!”
The brunet is talking about something in modded Minecraft, something that Tommy could barely understand with his little attention span and even tinier patience.
“Why do you even need mods for Minecraft? It’s already perfect the way it is, why don’t you just play vanilla? It’s simpler and less complicated.” He supplied passionately.
“Says you with your mod videos,” Tubbo retorted in a sneered pout.
“Yeah, but at least they don’t take away the gameplay of the game, y’know? It’s still Minecraft with no added extra steps.” Tommy raised a good point, he could tell by the contemplative silence from the other end of the call.
“You’re right, but it’s so boring to play it on my own though!”
Maybe it’s Tubbo’s whiny tone that gets too much after a while or he just wants to move on from doing anything besides working all day, but there’s an easy solution to this problem and he is already loading the game.
“Then fuckin’—play it with me! You could’ve just asked instead of yelling in my ear.”
The small jab doesn’t do anything to Tubbo and it doesn’t nearly express any sort of true frustration within Tommy.
“Okay, but… Aren’t you busy editing a thumbnail right now though?” Tubbo might sound reluctant, but Tommy knew his best friend like the back of his hand. There’s an eagerness to him that he catches and recognizes without the need to see his face.
“It can wait. Right now, I want to play Minecraft with my best friend.”
He knows the brunet is lighting up.
When they set up a whole world just for them, Tommy knows it can’t get any better than this. It feels sort of nostalgic in a way, returning him to the good old days when it’s just the two of them. Just Tommy and Tubbo.
The brunet just told him he found a cave he wanted to explore and he gave him the go signal to get them some iron while he explored the surface for a bit. They slip some jokes and stories in between the gaps of playing the game and… It feels nice.
This feels very nice. A bit heartwarming, if you will.
Maybe it’s a little selfish to want more days like this, but he lets himself hope, lets himself want for more because it can get better than this.
“We should start a hardcore world.” Tommy blurted out, and for some reason, he feels rather nervous about the harmless suggestion.
Thankfully, Tubbo doesn’t seem to pick up on it.
“What? You mean like for one of your videos?”
“No, just a—just one in vanilla Minecraft between you and me,” It feels more like a commitment to something than just another server much more difficult than this. He lets out a nervous laugh before continuing in a rush, a bit desperate to fill in the silence because Tubbo’s thoughts are jarring to think about. “Come on, it’ll be fun. You need to get back into the craft. You’ve changed, king.”
Tubbo giggled.
“I’ve changed, have I?” His tone is playful, mildly amused. Jokes naturally weave it’s way for something more lighthearted and easy to digest. Because god forbid Tommy gets serious and pour his heart out with something. The day that comes is the day when pigs fly…
And Technoblade with a pair of elytra wings doesn’t count.
He puffs out his chest a little. “Yeah! America does that to our people, but luckily for you, I’m here to save your life.”
“Are you now?”
He rolled his eyes at Tubbo’s knowing tone. Sometimes he just doesn’t understand his bits. “Stop it. Do you want to start a hardcore server with me or not?”
Tubbo hums even though Tommy knows he has cracked without any needed pressure, he says, “Yeah, I’m down. That’s actually a really good idea!” His voice pitches higher, usually a telltale sign when he likes an idea before a gasp follows right after. “Can we stream it?”
Tommy is not even surprised that his best friend asked, Tubbo just really likes to stream and that this isn’t really a job to him, Tommy knew he’ll end up going live for like twelve more hours from this, totally unprompted. At least the brunet had something to do, and whatever makes bee boy happy, he supposed.
“Yeah, sure. Just need to take my pre-streaming poo and we can look for a good seed together.”
“Epic.” in Tubbo’s faux unenthusiastic voice is the only response Tommy gets before he got up to go to the toilet.
Their set-up is a little scuffed, but Tubbo likes it that way.
He recorded his screen on discord so that Tommy could give his input on the seed, and his best friend is quite adamant about finding the “perfect seed”, which Tubbo wanted to argue doesn’t exist.
But like most things that involve the blond, he didn’t have the heart to shatter that passionate look in his blue eyes as he went on and on about what makes a good spawn and strategies to get themselves some tools and armor coming from his early speedrunning attempts.
Tubbo half-heartedly listened, giving his own input every now and then. He likes when he’s the listener sometimes while Tommy takes the reign in talking. It’s nice because the blond almost never runs out of things to say and he doesn’t mind just letting him.
“There’s no deaths to be had in this server, alright? No death SMP, that’s what we call this. Once you die, it’s all over for you. No cheating the system, no telling chat to close their eyes, none! Got it?”
He blinked rapidly at his monitor as if he was just coming back to himself. “How come you’re already assuming I’m the first one dying?”
“Because you are,”
“No, I won’t! If anything, you’ll die to a random creeper and then ask me to make a special exception because you – dying – doesn’t count.” He calls him out on his shit before it happens because he knows he’s right by the immediate silence that followed before Tommy’s hurried denial.
Sometimes, it’s a curse to know someone so well.
“No, I won’t. That’s so offensive! That’s so offensive, Toby. The fact that you’d even suggest that I would cheat my own death is beyond unforgivable. Fucked up, even.”
And Tubbo isn’t necessarily phased by his dramatics as he loads up another seed with the same lopsided grin on his face. “Uhuh?”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t—don’t uhuh me!” The blond stutters out in true Tommyinnit fashion whenever his mouth is racing to say something faster than his mind could comprehend. “If you die, it’s going to be my server then you’re gonna be annoying about it and—wait! Stop! That’s it... That’s the perfect seed!”
“What?” Tubbo admittedly stopped paying attention to the game as soon as Tommy brought up who’s dying first and when he looks at his screen again, he only becomes confused.
“Tommy, this is just a normal jungle biome.” He stated flatly, because there’s nothing special about it. They could practically get this from the 1.16 version.
“I know. Jungles are pog, innit?”
He doesn’t get it. “What happened to your talk about wanting to spawn in a cool and unique biome?”
“… Yeah, but jungles are pog, Toby.”
“It’s literally just a jungle.”
“Jungles are pog.”
“Tommy, we can find a better seed.”
“Jungles are pog.”
“We could—we could spawn in like a flower biome with the badlands and the corals in one area,”
“Jungles are pog, Toby.”
Okay. He knows what this is.
He knows that this is Tommy’s infuriating way of telling him that he has made up his mind and there’s no room to argue with him no matter how many good points Tubbo makes. It’s that unsettlingly calm and low effort tone that Tommy uses that just breaks him!
Tubbo sighed in defeat. “Okay.”
Jungle seed it is.
A stream alone with Tubbo started off pretty great.
It’s always a good mix of how their raw dynamic is without the cameras and how they’re slightly playing off the word clingy associated in their duo name.
“Why are we called clingy duo?” Tubbo had asked him, knowing perfectly the exact reason why.
He had Tubbo’s stream pulled up on his third monitor. The little webcam showing the brunet’s neutral expression doesn’t nearly convince him in the slightest. But instead of calling him out, Tommy plays into calling Tubbo the clingy one before hollering at him not to leave his boat. It’s just been their dynamic since and it’s still their dynamic now.
His chat collectively loses their minds and eats up the interaction before inevitably devolving to breaking into song while they’re in a boat and Tommy calling Tubbo an anti to climate change for using wood for their fireplace. It’s basically a whiplash for the viewers going from spamming aww’s to kekw’s in seconds.
“Uh, oh. Two baby zombies! I need help!”
He is admittedly struggling to axe crit the fuckers as they ran around him with their tiny legs. It all came down to asking Tubbo for help as he towered over them with the little spare cobblestone he had left from making the fence gates.
“Okay. I’m coming. Where are you?”
Tommy couldn’t pay attention to the stream so he can’t tell if Tubbo had any sense of urgency at all. But another zombie fucker joins the pile and he gasped out loud, the mic probably picked it up. “Three!”
“Where are you?!”
“I’m in the cave!”
“Wait. The water cave?”
“Yes, the water cave!”
Okay, at least Tubbo is picking up on the urgency as he glanced at his third monitor to see his character heading his way with his shield and sword ready.
“Okay. I see, I see, I see! I’m on my way down!”
“Not through the wet.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not going through the wet. I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming. I’m coming!”
“I see you. I see you. I see you—don’t. Don’t do that!” He can’t help it. The word has been butchered in his head for childish jokes as he grinned at the slightly disgusted look Tubbo is wearing.
“What?”
He’s unable to keep the smile off his voice as he moves on and asks Tubbo to come deeper down the cave, who loses a bit of focus as his character in turn, loses a bit of speed at trying to understand if he heard Tommy right.
In the end, Tubbo reaches him with only one baby zombie blocking his path instead of three. Still, his best friend saves the day like the born hero that he is and they mine in the cave closely together.
“… I feel like I could have taken that single baby zombie, you know.” It’s a quick afterthought now that he realized how bloody stupid he looked, screaming after one baby zombie like he was relieving Philza’s season three death.
Needless to say, the breathless wheezy giggle that Tubbo lets out is definitely worth it. It’s the kind of laugh specifically tailored for his jokes. Not to gatekeep, but he has never heard his best friend react like that to anyone else. Not to Aimsey, not to Billzo, and not even to Ranboo.
So, as best as Tommy could, he tries to make Tubbo wheeze as much as he could until his streamer juice inevitably runs out.
He completes his objective for the day twice more before they’re completely arguing over something else again.
Like how he keeps repeatedly telling Tubbo he has changed to remind him how the brunet has been gone for weeks in America, leaving Tommy on his own, which is admittedly pretty lonely since they always text each other throughout the day.
He ought to be obnoxious about it.
“The old Tubbo would never pressure me. You’re built different but not in the poggers kind of way, in the—in the weirdchamp kind of way,”
“In the Philzo K Man kind of way.”
“… What?”
Maybe it’s Tubbo’s voice being slightly distorted in his headphones or maybe Tommy is just stupid, but he didn’t understand what the brunet just said and he stops altogether for a moment.
“Philzo K Man.” Tubbo parrotted like it’s supposed to make sense.
He types it in-game, completely lost and confused. “Who’s Philzo K Man?”
Just like that, he completes his objective for the third time as Tubbo loses his shit while abusing his poor arm rest with a heavy hand.
It becomes even more confusing as the hivemind that is Tubbo’s Twitch chat, spams Philzo K Man and nothing else.
“It’s an emote. It’s an emote,” Finally, Tubbo spares him as he types back in chat. “It’s FeelsOkayMan.”
He missed this. He genuinely missed this. Not just Tubbo in general. But also playing vanilla Minecraft with Tubbo specifically. It just reminds him of simpler times when they’d mess around in Dream SMP before lore was a real thing and before they were busy in their own way.
It turns out Tommy could last a little much longer in his best friend’s stream without his energy level depleting. He usually gets tired pretty easily but he can still keep up with Tubbo, doing bits that were suspiciously homiesexual.
Listen, it’s not his fault that they ended up sharing a treehouse which means he has to place their beds together and sleep right next to each other. His humor is admittedly so broken and weird sometimes, Tommy is fully aware, and how Tubbo hasn’t given him shit for it yet, he has no idea why.
They go back down the cave, in full iron armor this time, and Tommy being a dumbass says something that they have talked about prior to the stream.
“Let’s start an OnlyFans.”
Tubbo doesn’t even flinch when he responds and says, “You know what? Go on then!”
Chat goes absolutely crazy, going kekw and telling them no before they had to clarify they’d only be posting photos of their dogs. In his case, it’ll just be a photo dump for Betty and Walter while Tubbo had his whoreish dog, Rosie.
They move on relatively quickly from that to explore and get more resources from the cave. They get some coal, more iron and some lapis before finding two piss-colored axolotls.
“I’m with you.” Tubbo says, which naturally prompts him to do another clingy bit.
“Stop telling me you’re with me.”
“… You literally ask me to be with you.” The brunet deadpanned.
Fair, but the chat and the sixty five thousand people watching them doesn’t need to know that. “I don’t—I don’t wanna hand holding. I let a girl hold my hand. You’re not a girl.”
Tubbo is admittedly at a loss for words as he works through what to say. “I—okay… O-Okay?”
Tommy just laughs at his friend’s flabbergasted look, muttering incoherent words because what he said doesn’t really make sense. They’ve held hands before, strictly so Tubbo could pull him down the beach whenever he felt like going if the blond is ever staying over at his place.
“Sometimes I stump you.” He stated, which Tubbo doesn’t even argue him for.
He reads his chat, and since it’s Tubbo’s chat, they immediately side with their streamer; calling him out for being extra mean and argumentative and brash. Tommy knows they weren’t being serious, but it’s a bi-product of being close friends with the brunet.
The serious answer is that, they’re always a little mean towards each other before someone finds them huddled closely in a corner, stuck in their bubble as they laugh about dumb shit.
But since he’s in a stream and he is meant to be more entertaining, he gives them the silly answer.
“I’m not being rude today, everyone. I just spent two and a half hours on 2b2t with Ninja. I’m at the end of my thread.” It was a fair excuse to be a little bit more mouthy.
If that’s a bit mean, the viewers, including Tubbo, were unprepared for when the duo resurfaces back to their base. Tommy was being more pushy with his jokes than usual, it’s just his way to get back at him for leaving him for America, also because Wilbur is too busy to barge into the stream and demand him to apologize and be nicer to Tubbo.
So, when Tubbo, god bless his kind and patient soul, pointed out that he got the idea for his overlay on Mizkif’s stream because it was subtle, it was like a golden opportunity opened up for him to be an asshole as a mischievous grin splits his face in half.
“You know what isn’t subtle?” He paused, only to make sure Tubbo heard this. “When you flew on a private jet and committed violent carbon emissions.”
The brunet’s reaction is absolutely priceless and he breathlessly cackled, not looking where he’s going until he’s falling into the water, only to add more salt to the wound. “That wasn’t subtle. Especially to the polar bears.”
Tommy dribbles on himself.
He’s enjoying this more than usual. Mainly because he’s with Tubbo. The amount of times he forgot that his best friend is actually live is tremendous.
For this reason alone, Tommy stays just a bit longer.
He enjoys this.
They should play this more often.
He lets Tubbo know with a message on discord after he leaves.
We should play again soon! :D