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Tubbo feels Quackity’s eyes on him about thirty minutes into an uneventful shift. An unyielding, persistent pressure, Tubbo continues milling about the kitchen as if nothing is awry. He scrapes at the cooled griddle until a burnt meat chunk comes off, then preps more onions, and even has the time to search for that one knife that cuts the best. All while Quackity lingers in the corner of his vision, shifting from foot to foot and head twitchy, not quite hesitant but — just not right. Tubbo rubs his fingers together as he searches for the word. It comes to him suddenly and he snaps them.
Fidgety. Quackity is standing in his own crappy restaurant, in the country he owns, looking fidgety of all things.
His first thought is simply, what the fuck did Quackity do? His second thought is somewhat more morose as he then wonders, why the fuck am I involved?
Tubbo briefly considers sending a prayer, lack of faith be damned. Instead, he keeps his head down and sweeps the onion scraps into a bin. Just as he is cleaning the station, Quackity voices his presence.
“Hey, uh–” Quackity breaks off, starts again, “Tubbo. Could I talk with you for a minute?”
Tubbo glances up to the stainless steel expo in front of him and catches Quackity’s figure shifting behind him in the dull reflection, the distortion painting him as something inhuman. His hands pause in their scrubbing for just a moment before he dips his head back down and continues wiping at the counter.
“It can’t wait until my break?” He asks, even though he knows the answer. Panic has never looked good on Quackity, and it is apparent now more than ever. This is more an exercise in seeing what Quackity will choose to tell him.
Quackity’s figure jerks around dramatically, trying to make some point. “I mean, it’s not like you’re busy now.” Then suddenly, as if just remembering, “Also, I’m your boss. Your break is whenever I say so.”
Tubbo sighs. “‘Course. Meet me out back.”
The bell rings on the door as Quackity walks out. Tubbo keeps scrubbing at a stubborn mark in the metal. He doesn’t acknowledge how his calloused hands begin to shake.
—
Sun beating, air chilly, Las Nevadas is chock full of contradictions — just like its founder. Tubbo steps out the back door and squints as his eyes adjust. He rubs his hands off on his apron while he walks further to the patio. There, sitting at a worn picnic table, is Quackity. The man sits with his head bowed over the table, hands clasped together above himself. A cross between his hands and he’d be the picture of devotion.
Tubbo quietly sits down on the bench across from Quackity, posture rigid. He starts simply.
“So, what did you do?”
Quackity tilts his head up and squints. “What do you mean?”
“You look all,” he gestures at the man. “You know. You only look like that when you’ve fucked up. What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. That’s – what?” Quackity stumbles over his words. The pit in Tubbo’s stomach grows. Quackity doesn’t stumble ; he’s false hesitance and sharp eyes. Jovial nudges, an easy arm around the shoulder, charisma that simmers under the surface. Quackity’s seen more than most ever will — he’s built a city from the drive of his well earned paranoia. Whatever’s happening has to be bad enough to faze him.
Tubbo reassures himself that he would know if anything truly catastrophic happened – there are alarms here for basically every disaster imaginable. Tommy would have messaged him if it was something beyond these borders. Still, there’s always something that could have gone undetected. Distantly, he feels his breath catch as he thinks of Michael. For once, could he get there in time?
“I didn’t do anything,” Quackity repeats, shaking his head. “It’s just – I don’t know.” He gives up then. “It feels stupid now.”
Feeling uncomfortably thrown, Tubbo replies, “Sorry, what? What’s stupid?”
Conversations with Quackity are typically a familiar dance. He’s been navigating the layered intentions and jokes that aren’t really for as long as they’ve known one another. Tubbo thought he knew what steps to take, but this version of Quackity feels like a stranger. He’s uncertain where he should be doubling down and missing the cues for their shared punchlines. Tubbo wrings his hands together but stops when he realizes who he’s mimicking.
“Me! I’m fucking stupid because I can’t figure out how you do it — and I sound insane trying to even talk to you about it, and maybe I should go.” Tubbo grabs for his arms before he can stand and looks at him frantically.
“Quackity — Quackity stop. How I do what?”
“Anything! How do you fucking do all this after all the shit that you’ve done?”
He reels back a touch incredulously. His head distinctly is like an antiquated piece of technology, shutting down and rebooting in choppy motions. “Are you asking how I live with myself?”
Quackity huffs and pulls his hands out of Tubbo’s grip. “Yeah, guess that’s what I’m asking. Not, like, judgmentally.”
“You’re genuinely asking.”
“I am.”
Tubbo sits back and tries to roll with the meteoric curve balls being thrown at him. He laughs drily. “I don’t think I’m the person to ask that.”
He should ask Tommy. Or Techno and Phil. Or – and this one would be riveting — Wilbur. They’ve all got the whole life thing down better than he ever has, ever will. Tubbo can barely consider what he does as living. The only time he can manage liveliness is when he’s around Micheal – and even then, it’s a poor mimicry of what he’s observed from others. Enthusiasm, firmness, control, all taken and fitted over his apathy.
“But you are! You’ve got a nice place —”
“So do you,” Tubbo gestures around.
“And a kid —”
“Having a kid doesn’t mean a person’s got it together. It actually probably means the opposite,” he jokes, guiding the conversation back into familiar territory. Tubbo can’t name a single parent that’s any good. The first figure that comes to mind is Phil, and he’s a trainwreck and a half when it comes to raising people. Distance is his influence. Tubbo has the urge to ask the man what he did when Wilbur was a little kid. To know what to avoid at all costs.
Quackity doesn’t take the bait. “You keep losing people and you’re still here.”
He can feel his face shut off, the mask of casual conversation dropped. Whatever Quackity’s trying to get at, Tubbo doesn’t think he can give. “Where else would I be?”
Glancing off into the distant snow covered sand dunes, Quackity huffs. “I don’t know, man.” He squints his eyes. “I just thought you’d get it.”
Tubbo suddenly feels dense, any thoughts surfacing clumsy and wrong-footed. He tries to look into Quackity’s expression, tries to find what the man wants from him, but all he finds are eyes dark as burning wood and a scowl that pulls at the gaping scar on his otherwise youthful face. He wonders if Quackity’s found gray hairs on his head too. If he’s dying in the same breath as he’s growing. Eulogizing his present, mourning the future. Tubbo blinks and Quackity rights himself in one smooth motion, any previous distress feeling more like a mirage. A trick of the desert.
“You can – y’know, get back to work. Don’t worry about it,” Quackity almost whispers. Sand sweeps all around them, onto the concrete benches and tables. Tubbo rubs his grain coated fingers together. The sun comes out from behind a cloud and blinds him for a moment. In the time it takes his eyes to adjust, Quackity has vanished.
A desert mirage, alright.
—
Despite his best efforts, Tubbo finds himself stuck in their conversation. How do you live with yourself? Quackity’s voice parrots, as he drinks his morning coffee and plays with Micheal and stares out into the winter sea. The words echo and pull at his skin, molasses coating his legs and halting momentum. The sun sets and sets and sets, and he gently cups his hands around it when it hits the water. He searches for answers along the rough plane of his palms, in the small gap between them that gives way to blazing light, like they can deliver him absolution.
How do you live with yourself? The only answer he can clutch at is he doesn’t . What does it mean to live?
When asked this, Tommy glanced at him oddly and swung into his meandering monologue, incoherent thoughts thinly linked through anecdotes and asides. He gesticulated and widened his eyes; Micheal fell over from how hard he giggled, too captured by the delivery to inspect the message. Tubbo was able to dig for it, though, and the only answer he can find is this: living is being able to do the meaningless. The capability to discard reason and efficiency for something smaller.
Tubbo doesn’t know how to do that. He wasn’t ever taught, if it even is a learned trait. If it’s meant to be innate, then he’s as good as dead. When he sinks stiff hands into bitter soil, he sees a foundation upon which he can build — he doesn’t care for the cool soft feeling under his fingers. He is walls, nukes, and sprawling farms. The sea is a vessel and the sky is his lungs, and he is on this planet to survive.
That is the distinction he can’t discern, he thinks. All his life he has survived. Spitefully, cheeks scarred and arms bloodied, but survival nonetheless. There’s no program in his head that enables him to switch gears. Surviving is not living, and that makes no sense at all to him but settles smooth as water over Tommy.
It frustrates him. He keeps trying to understand but it never quite clicks. He’s swarmed with a clawing guilt, one that tightens his throat and roots him in the soft blanket snow. Because he doesn’t even know how to live and he’s the one that’s survived. Because Tommy and Ranboo were robbed of this, and he can’t even be grateful for what he’s kept.
He looks out into the dark sea and searches for something more. The churning waters turn his stomach. The orange red sky prickles his skin. Still, he feels nothing. No life. He’s starting to believe he’ll never find it.
—
This time, he’s the one that seeks out Quackity. It’s an uncomfortable break from normality that buzzes at his nerves. He finds the man deep in the casino, crouched by a slot machine with its guts in his hands. The carpet is crisp under his feet, and the dim lighting coats his world in red.
Quackity startles when Tubbo gets close enough, dropping the wires and turning to him with urgency. He settles when he realizes it is Tubbo. That notion leaves him raw, even less certain in his choice to come here.
“Something wrong with the restaurant?” Quackity asks, ever the businessman. His sleeves are rolled up, white button down scuffed.
“No.” Tubbo’s mouth rapidly shuts, tongue sticking to the spot behind his teeth.
When he gets the impression that Tubbo won’t continue, Quackity looks at him with furrowed brows. He laughs awkwardly and says, “You’re freaking me out a bit, man. You look like you saw a ghost!”
This is something Tubbo can work with. A trend he’s already studied and understood.
“That doesn’t really hold up when there are actual ghosts here.”
“Yeah, yeah, be a smartass,” Quackity smiles. Tubbo is struck by the way his cheeks bunch, looking too young and too old all at once. Is that what people see in Tubbo? A child soldier and a president, naivety and corruption swirling in and out of focus.
When the machine makes a broken noise, Quackity jerks back over to it, hands digging into the side of it with frustration. Tubbo eases himself closer, sinking down to the carpet and grounding his palms in the threads.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” he begins, but he’s quickly distracted by Quackity expertly navigating through the mess of wires. “I didn’t…” he trails off.
“You didn’t what?” Quackity urges him on.
He takes the easy way out. “I didn’t realize you knew how to do this stuff.”
“You’re not the only person that knows how to work technology, Tubbo.”
“I know, I know, but I swear you couldn’t do this back in —”
“Yeah, well everything falls apart and you’ve got no idea why you’re even here anymore, and you think you might as well learn a couple new skills, y’know? Make use of all that wasted potential.”
Tubbo had fixed Quackity’s communicator at some blurry point between his inauguration and the execution. The man had come up to him one night, chuckling as he thrust a mangled corpse of metal into Tubbo’s hands. He’d sat in the workshop with Tubbo for the three hours it took to salvage it, his chatter washing over the room like calm waters. At some point, Tubbo gathered the conviction to ask why Quackity couldn’t just fix it himself.
Why would I learn how if you’ll just do it for me? He’d laughed, doubling over at the stormy look Tubbo threw his way. I’ve got other shit to do, Tubso. I have a million things on my list right now, and figuring out this tech shit ain’t one of them. I mean, have you seen the state of this place?
Tubbo had rolled his eyes. No, Q, I have no idea what you’re talking about. It’s not like I’m president or anything.
Quackity pitched his voice up mockingly. Right, I’m so deeply sorry for forgetting, your highness.
Ignoring him, Tubbo had rolled on. And don’t lie to me. I know for a fact that you’re done with your work for the next few days.
There’s always more work, Tubbo.
Tubbo had huffed and focused back on the communicator. Don’t I know it.
He didn’t know it. Not until Quackity had pulled him into a meeting room days or weeks later, maps and weapons laid out with a manic precision, dark eyes sharper than ever. And by then, it was too late.
“So you’ve got new hobbies,” Tubbo prods.
“Can we cut the shit?” Quackity says. His face is oddly blank. “You and I don’t do this. Social calls, or whatever. And your hands are shaking like leaves. What’s up?”
Tubbo sputters, some ugly desperation pulling at his head. “Maybe I’m trying to be the kind of person that does ‘social calls.’ Maybe I want to talk about — about fucking hobbies and the weather and not have it mean anything at all. Is that a crime, Quackity?”
Shaking his head, Quackity grins without any real humor. “That’s not who you are, man.”
“Then who am I?” He grits his teeth. There’s water in his ears and rockets in his ribcage.
“You’re — you’re Tubbo. You’re they guy that spends spend thirty hours locked in that dingy ass workshop, who built a whole fortress just to fuck with me! I don’t — I can’t put it into words well, but you’re not whatever this —” he pulls one hand out of the machine to point at Tubbo, “— is.”
He feels himself sink back, making room for that vicious creature he knows he can be. The one he learned to be from Quackity through whiskey and matching wounds — with words more jagged than the glass in his feet.
“And you think you’re acting like yourself? Why didn’t you just hire someone to fix this and do dirty work for you like normal?”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” Quackity denies. “I’m just doing what I always do. Fixing the shit that no one else will.”
The machine sputters once again, and Tubbo uses its interruption to stand up swiftly. He winces at the way his left knee joint pops. Quackity mutters something indiscernible as he pries wildly into the exposed panel, face tense and unreadable. Tubbo places his hand on the metal, feels the familiar warmth and faint hum, and takes a breath.
“I shouldn’t have come here.”
Quackity glares up at him. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Alright. Go, then.”
Tubbo takes a step away from Quackity, looks away from the broken slot machine. The rest of the casino floods back into focus. Garish red presses into his corneas, and he resists the urge to shut his eyes completely. As he walks towards the dark tinted glass doors, Quackity calls his name. Despite his instincts, he turns.
“Really though, what’d you come here for?”
Tubbo shrugs. “I just thought I’d try the whole living thing out for a bit. Maybe you’re right, though. It’s just not who I am.”
He barely has the time to see the way regret washes over Quackity’s face before he turns and bursts out of the casino, feet moving faster than his mind. It’s a good thing he didn’t stay, let Quackity pull him in with concerned eyes, let Quackity turn him inside out with that practiced way of his. It’s a good thing Tubbo’s already miles away when his throat fully tightens, eyes stubbornly welling up.
It’s a good thing Tubbo always knew he was a walking corpse, anyways.
—
Tubbo goes home and does what he’s supposed to. He makes lunch, plays in the snow with Micheal, makes dinner, tucks Michael in, walks the perimeter, even chokes down half a loaf of bread. He gets into bed and pulls the thick sheets over himself. His body is tired, eyes drooping, but sleep never pulls him down.
Maybe I’m going about this all wrong, he muses, as he gets up and walks to the front door. He opens it for a moment to test the weather, and immediately moves to grab his coat. He yanks his boots on lethargically, wraps the coat tight around his torso, and steps into the night. The door shuts behind him, but he doesn’t process that as he stares blankly ahead.
Is surviving for others not enough life? Tubbo wouldn’t be anything if he wasn’t here for other people. He’s as animated as Quackity’s slot machines, functional only with a user. What is life if not the impact one leaves on others?
His footsteps are the only noise in the dark, snow crunching smoothly under his heels. He hopes that none of the other residents will see him. Quietly, he marches to the barriers by the shore, lanterns illuminating the cobbled walls. When he reaches them he climbs up deftly, slipping once on icey stone, and sits himself on the ledge.
The waves lap at the base of the wall. His gaze is transfixed on the purple blue black horizon, the way the water seems still when so far away.
Tubbo’s never been blue. He was always pleasant greenhouses, humming mustard bees, burgundy fire lanterns floating in the plaza. The ocean didn’t call to him like it did to others. There was always something too unfathomable about it, depths forever beyond his reach. It used to remind him too much of Schlatt and Wilbur, he thinks. The way their eyes churned and darkened, pits that only knew how to take . The sea is distance — it’s the way Tommy loses himself in grief, the way wanderlust tugs at Phil, the way tear streaks mar Ranboo.
Ranboo liked the sea, Tubbo knows. He used to sit on frigid sand with Tommy, eyes pinned on the surface as if it had every answer in its belly. He’d watch when Micheal and Tubbo approached the water, smile forming as he asked the question he always asked.
How’s the sea today? He’d question, and his eyes would squint into half crescents.
How it always is, was Tubbo’s dry answer. Wet.
Describe it to me, then. Like you’ve never felt it before.
And that’s what doesn’t make sense, because Ranboo never got to touch the ocean but Tubbo is the one who remains. Maybe that’s the point of life: doing everything the people before you couldn’t. Creating beastly machines that carry you into the sky, constructing atriums to preserve beauty that previously decayed, going down to the shore and touching the water .
He drops down into the lapping waves, shivering as the cold soaks into his legs. He sinks his hands into the blue abyss, watches as they disappear under the moonlight sky.
Tubbo has been everything people have asked of him his whole life. He’s fought the wars and claimed the meeting rooms and stood silent vigil at wake after wake. All this time he’s been trying to survive – live – in spite of it all. Damning the nightly ghost stories along with the bloodied corpses. Torching the quiet conversations on the stoop right by the musky locked rooms. Maybe —
Maybe, Tubbo isn’t alive in spite of anything. Maybe he’s living because of everything.
Life is the way the trees frame his path to work in the mornings. Life is knowing exactly what’ll get Tommy to choke on laughter, the blend of coffee and milk that makes it actually palatable, the feeling of fur lined coats on his skin after an eternity of pressed dress shirts. Tubbo’s life is him not knowing how to live in the first place. It’s his existence in the wake of all consuming death, the smother of grief. His life is pushing scarred hands into freezing water in the middle of the night, and his life is hearing the memory of Ranboo asking, how’s the sea today?
It’s terrible, he thinks, as his visions goes blurry from tears. It’s glacial and dark and wet and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt.
His cheeks are already numb and his pajama pants are laughably thin — he is so unbearably cold. It bites at him, fraying his nerves, setting them on fire. The pain sparks like a shot from a flare gun in the starry night sky. Undeniable proof of life.
Finally, Tubbo closes his eyes and breathes .
—
“Hey, Tubbo!” Quackity calls out to him, days later when he’s out on another walk at night. The man ambles up to him at a leisurely pace, face bright from the wide grin adorning it. Tubbo knows it’s the kind of smile that means trouble. “What do you say we get wasted, eh?”
Quackity pulls his hands out from behind his back to reveal two bottles. His eyes are vivid, something almost deranged in the excitement radiating. Tubbo hesitates.
“Why?”
The man laughs. Loudly, “Because life is fucking meaningless and why the fuck not?”
Tubbo smiles. He knows this is the closest he’ll get to an apology.
“You had me at meaningless, bossman. Hand me a bottle,” he demands, hands reaching out eagerly. The smooth glass lands in his palms and he’s transported back to an ornate room and purple blue bruised skin. He shakes the thought as he turns it over. Quickly, he pulls the cap off and takes a greedy sip, and he succumbs to the buzz of life under his flesh.
They drink and yell and laugh louder than socially acceptable in the darkness of the night, and Tubbo feels more like a teenager than he has in years. When they’re both suitably tipsy, Quackity decides to talk.
“Half the time I feel like a — god how do I even say it, like a meat sack. An empty, drained thing, and my only purpose is to be a vessel for my — my legacy. But then I’m like, ‘what’s the point of having a legacy if you weren’t alive in the first place?’ y’know?”
Tubbo nods. “I know. Some days I’ll get up at dawn on instinct, and the bootcamp regiments I used to follow feel more natural than normal life. And then I think that I might be a better soldier than a person.”
“That’s bullshit, Tubbo. You’re — you’re not a soldier, man, you’re the president! The guy in charge, the generous leader. ”
He laughs and says, “I mean, maybe sometimes, but most of the time I was just the figurehead. Going along with what everyone else wanted.”
“Yeah, well, you still did better than most people would’ve. Better than I would’ve.” He giggles, “Better than I did. The one project I took head on ended with this.” He gestures to the scar running through his cheek. “God, that was a mess.”
“Life’s a mess. Everyone’s a little stupid — but at least we know we were. I was —” he burps, “I was a coward and a fool, Quackity, and it wasn’t really ok, but it’s life.”
“We’re still alive anyways.”
“Exactly. Still alive anyways.”
“Damn, Tubbo, when’d you get so smart, huh? Didn’t know you had it in you,” he bellows, and suddenly the sky doesn’t seem so tall, the sea feels shallow. Because Tubbo is drunk for no real reason and Quackity’s going through the exact same bullshit as him.
“I can’t stand you,” Tubbo says, and he shapes it like an I’m sorry.
“Right back at you,” Quackity taunts, and it sounds like a you were already forgiven. He grabs onto Tubbo, pulling them both towards the sea.
Tubbo settles into the water, head turned up towards the inky sky. His eyes scrunch as saltwater washes over him. This is life, he insists in his head. He has a pulse, and maybe that’s not enough to feel alive yet but maybe it will be one day. Maybe Tubbo can put down the pen to his eulogy, stop searching for the scars and gray hairs, and float on the beach next to a stranger he knows all too well.
Tubbo looks at the sky and knows that he’s alive, and that is enough for now.