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It was just for one night, it couldn't hurt.
Tubbo needed a place to stay, a place where he could relax and heal that wasn’t the abandoned building they’d been in for the past week or so. Just one night, that’s all he needed. It’d help him recover beyond what Tommy could do for him. The two of them were street kids anyway, nobody would care if they just disappeared out of the blue– heh .
He didn’t mean to make that pun. Not that it was really funny.
He didn’t really like the color blue anymore.
Tommy took a deep breath and looked at Niki.
"Could we…could we stay the night?"
Tubbo's hand was tight against his wrist, squeezing tight enough to leave a red mark that probably wouldn't go away for a while. He didn't know how to keep his strength in check yet, not many people did at first from what he’d heard.
"Please, Niki."
Niki's eyes widened at that word. Tommy was known as one of the kids who wouldn't ever say the word 'please' if his life depended on it, much more eager to cuss out whoever was telling him to say so. He did know manners, f*ck you, he just didn't like using them cuz it just made him think of the stuck-up idiots who'd said he had to use them in the first place, as well as, y'know.
The scientists.
The scientists who’d helped and been helped by the stuck-up idiots, the one who'd made this disease to 'keep the population in check' .
Tommy wasn’t an idiot, he knew overpopulation was an issue in the Compound, he and Tubbo were two of the people directly, life-threateningly affected by it. The only things the scientists cared about was more money in their pockets and more food in their bellies from the government, though the ones who needed it most were the ones who were getting targeted by the stupid Sickness.
But the scientists couldn't count on one thing. Survivors.
Survivors were the outlier, the unexpected.
And Tubbo was showing signs of things he was definitely not able to do before he got sick.
Things like accidentally breaking a plate in half as soon as he grabbed it, and bending a spoon when he tried to pick it up off the ground. Things like having luminescent tears that stained wherever they dripped a glowing, electric blue and gave his friend’s brown eyes a ghostly light.
Things that, if discovered, would make him deader than the virus would’ve.
So Tommy had combed Tubbo’s unwashed hair over his eyes to hide the eerie blue glow they now held, put one of his own sweatshirts on the shorter boy to hide how skinny he’d gotten from the sickness, and held his hand the entire way to Niki’s house, dragging the semi-lucid, still-feverish, sweaty brunet behind him in the dark.
He was glad he’d memorized where Niki lived, and how to get there from anywhere in the city.
And when she opened her door, Tommy breathed a sigh of relief.
It had been hard, taking care of his sick friend, but it’s not like they hadn’t done that for each other before. He’d have stayed with Tubbo until the end, until the bright blue rose out of every bodily orifice and his fever blazed like molten metal and then the two of them would’ve…but the end wasn’t gonna come right now, not if he could help it. Tubbo didn’t die, he’s getting better, Tommy told himself as he lightly tugged his sweaty friend through Niki’s door and into her hallway, dark from the Compound’s government-mandated blackout.
Things wouldn’t be perfect now, he’d have to hide Tubbo’s symptoms from Niki, but at least they’d be easier.
For the first time, he was glad he hadn’t gotten Tubbo registered as someone having the Sickness. If he had, the government would’ve come looking for him.
And then they’d both be dead.