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Tubbo has not stopped hearing sirens since the first of December. He thinks it’s been a couple days since then, maybe a week by how heavy his bones are, but whenever the noise muffles out it pops back in and makes him bleed.
He checks his ears one more time, it’s routine now, they aren’t bleeding. He doesn’t think they ever were but the feeling of something cold on the side of his face has yet to leave. He doesn’t know how much longer he can take the sound of sirens. He looks behind him towards the window, for some reason he’s always facing away, and he spots Tommy leaning against it.
He has a jacket on and so does Tubbo. He put it on because it was cold, maybe. The house is warm and suddenly he feels like he’s sweating out of his skin.
“The lake is frozen.” Tommy says, his voice muffled but Tubbo thinks that might be because of the sirens. “We should go there.” The way his eyes focus on Tubbo…it doesn’t make him uneasy, exactly, but he feels like he’s missing something between the words. A joke, maybe. They have jokes like that, where a look is the punchline and stupid words are the set up.
Tommy isn’t saying anything stupid, so Tubbo thinks he’s just being paranoid. No, no that’s not the right word. It’s—His mind can’t come up with anything else he could be being. Maybe irrational. Maybe a little bit forgetful—but it doesn’t matter. Tommy offers Tubbo his hand and he takes it without a thought. He feels the fabric of gloves that are definitely not thick enough for December—it’s December still, he thinks. It might be February for all he knows.
Sometimes Tubbo gets like this, where seconds turn into hours that turn into weeks then months. But if the gloves Tommy wears are not good enough for December then they are in no way good enough for February, so it has to be December.
It has to be December.
The snow landing on his nose is chilling, but it melts off of him with a puff of warm breath. He hears the crunching of branches mixed between the snow under boots he can’t remember putting on—He can’t remember Tommy leading him outside, either.
“I’ll follow you.” Tubbo says it out of nowhere, head beginning to fuzz and blur.
“How far?” Tommy asks in a way that’s unlike him. Tubbo must be rubbing off on him, because it sounds just like his own voice.
Either way, it doesn’t matter. He thinks he would go to the end of the world like this, with blunt nails against his knuckles and snow-freckled cheeks. He lets out a long and trembling exhale. The snow doesn’t melt off him this time, his eyelashes feel heavy but there is a comfort to the cold.
There’s a violent shake that takes hold of his body and Tommy doesn’t even look back at him—He keeps walking, hand so loose in Tubbo’s own that it slips out.
He tries to grab the fabric of his sleeves, but Tommy moves between a tree and Tubbo doesn’t think he can take another step. The branches dig against his skin, there is no longer comfort to the warm air from his mouth because it is gone. He rubs his arms through his jacket and hopes it helps but knows it won’t.
He’s low to the ground, suddenly. His elbow pushes against ice as his teeth grind together. Tubbo pulls himself away from the tree, boots pressing against the bark of birch and peeling it.
He forces his nails to stop pressing into his arms and digs them in the ice instead, he’s at the lake.
Tubbo looks around, searching for…for Tommy, but he isn’t here. He tries to take a step forward, but his boot slips and—
Tubbo’s cheek hits the ice hard, there’s a sharp sting of cold and he feels himself trembling as his arm pushes into water. His coat clings to his skin and he can’t reach far enough down. There’s panic in his chest, sinking its claws deep inside him. Above all, he cannot breathe.
Tubbo has not stopped hearing sirens since the first of December. He sits near a fire and watches a flame. Maybe that’s why he never looks outside, he feels too cold to pull his gaze away from the embers.
When he looks behind him Tommy is blocking his view of anything else. But he smiles, so Tubbo doesn’t pay any mind to much else. “The lake is frozen.” Tommy says, offering his hand. “We should go there.”
He holds onto Tommy’s hand as firmly as he can. He isn’t sure why, but he does. Icicles poke between their freezing fingers, Tommy’s thin gloves are fingerless because he thinks it’s more convenient and for a moment Tubbo finally agrees. He thinks, together, their body heat will melt away all the ice and snow.
The icicles stick to both their fingers, it doesn’t turn into dripping water but maybe that can be good too. Tubbo is so cold that he thinks any liquid will just turn to more ice.
“It’s cold.” Tubbo says with a coarse cough. He might get sick after this, but he won’t mention that. He won’t tell Tommy about the ice in his lungs or the corners of his eyes.
“You’re complaining.” Tommy glances back at him with an airy smile and blue eyes. He holds onto his hand tighter, despite it. There’s not enough heat coming off of him for it to do much of anything. Once again, the words aren’t his.
Probably, Tubbo wants to respond either way. But this isn’t how this conversation went, so he doesn’t say a word.
The air around him doesn’t feel as cold and his entire body hurts less. Before he can agree he stumbles forward, closing his eyes for just a moment but when he opens them again Tommy has let go of his frozen hand. The icicles burrow between his veins, he cannot feel it.
Tubbo walks onto the lake.
Then, he starts to run.
There’s a cracked circle in the middle of it and that’s what he’s running to. He’s never been that good at being on ice, it’s no surprise he trips. Or—no, he threw himself forward on purpose, but that doesn’t matter.
He breathes, then—
Tubbo’s cheek hits the ice hard, there’s a sharp sting of cold and he feels himself tremble while his arm dives as far as he can push it into the hole. His coat clings to his skin, pushed by the water, and he can’t reach far enough down. There’s panic clawing at him, now. His heart beats far past his ears, the sound crushing his lungs in a tight hold. He screams, pulling out his arm like it burns and falling backwards. The ice slides him away, water and sweat cling to him like acid and he doesn’t think the shaking is because of the cold anymore. Tubbo pulls at the zipper of his jacket and throws it off. He doesn’t see where it goes, he doesn’t care where it goes. He realizes he’s been gritting his teeth and his jaw feels sore even when he stops. Even so, he weakly stretches his now bare arm as far as he can into the crack in the ice. He can’t remember why—did he ever even know why?—but it feels like the most important thing in the world for him to get…something out of there.
His brain is fuzzy, like static pinching his nerves and making him jolt. There’s sky all around him—there’s solid sky and he…Tubbo doesn’t know what’s going on anymore. His eyes feel heavier as he tries to check if it’s a reflection of the…the what?
Ice. The ice—he needs to get something out of there. He feels the erratic thumping of his heartbeat resonate deep through his chest, going all the way up to his ears. It sounds like—
Tubbo has not stopped hearing sirens since the first of December. The jacket he’s wearing isn’t his, it belongs to someone else. His mind blurs, still, but he remembers that he’s hurt. No, no he already knew that—obviously he can…can feel the hurt. He remembers that it didn’t hurt so much before, that’s the new thing. He grits his teeth near the fire once again and curls in on himself.
Tommy waits by the window, his body covering the sun and casting a shadow into the room, and only when Tubbo notices does he look at him.
“The lake—” Tommy starts, voice grating into Tubbo’s bleeding ears—He inhales sharply, the feeling of static overtaking his icicle grown fingers and—
Tubbo has not stopped hearing sirens since the first of December. He clutches at his chest, backing away from the fire because the warmth makes him hurt worse and he looks at Tommy.
“The lake. The—The lake it’s—” This time it’s Tubbo who talks, despite the panic and stutters he sounds no different then Tommy did. His voice crushes itself into a fine and even calm. “It’s frozen.” He’s forced to finish, but those words aren’t his. They can’t be his, they sound like his but he wouldn’t say that. The lake is crumbling, Tubbo—He needs to get something out of there. The fire crackles and it makes his brain feel too sharp. Embers dig into his arm, burrowing deep in his flesh, biting the bones and he needs to go. He has never needed to do something more than he needs to go back to that broken lake.
He stands as far away from the fire as he physically can but the sparks still burn right under his skin. He leads Tommy away from the window, but somehow his body still covers the view from outside. It doesn’t matter, nothing matters more than the lake.
He turns around, hand stretched to reach for a doorknob but instead all he touches is snow covered trees. Tubbo doesn’t take a step back in shock, he sidesteps the branches in his way and pulls Tommy along instead of hesitating. Icicles between their palms, they walk together.
Tubbo exhales without any white puffs clouding his vision, he squints between falling snowflakes and keeps trudging along even when Tommy lags behind.
“Keep walking.” Tubbo barely manages to force out—Despite the fact these are the first words that feel like his. Despite the fact his throat is torn raw and dry with his own voice feeling wrong, filled with static blaring so loudly because this is not how it happened and—
Sirens, the first of December, and a jacket he knows belongs to him.
Icicles growing on the tips of his ears.
“The lake.” Tubbo begins, but he doesn’t remember saying anything else. The only thing he can hear is snow crunching beneath his boots. The only feeling he has is his chapped lips moving to form words and the fabric of Tommy’s thin gloves that won’t be good for much.
He’s the one stumbling, this time. His feet hesitating at every small pile of snow and his eyes half-lidded. But he’s close, Tubbo is so so close and if he doesn’t reach the lake now he never ever will.
It’s determination that keeps the heat of his body from escaping out of his nose and fingertips. Determination that burns so hot he’s surprised he hasn’t burst into flames. His jacket is suffocating, the fur on the neck itching his skin and Tubbo is burning. But when he hears the sounds of sirens coming for him, when he hears the sound of his demise, he brings both Tommy and him behind a tree and smiles.
The smile is so far from willing, but there’s nothing else he can do but let his teeth push his cheeks up in a shallow imitation.
“We’re almost there.” He promises. It feels like a promise, the way the words are strung through his tongue. The icicles are still all around him, but melted water makes him feel like blood is on his hands sinking between the lines of his palms.
“I’ll follow you.” Tommy says with his blue cheeks and frozen eyes. Tubbo swallows thick before the words are ripped from his mouth, shaking in perfect rhythm with every stupid syllable.
“How far?” He asks and Tommy smiles in response, a chuckle carving his throat just as violently as the one that breaks Tubbo’s in half. Tubbo is laughing along, as if he knows the joke. As if he understands the fact that what he said was amusing, somehow. There shouldn’t be a soft smile tugging at his lips when Tommy tells him he’d follow him inside a boiling volcano if Tubbo thought it was a good idea.
A volcano sounds good right about now, an erupting one burning off both their bones.
He doesn’t know what he’s thinking, he can’t understand what he’s thinking—the lake is close, and the farther he goes in the forest the less the cold burns. He can’t feel his legs or his nose or his ears or anything but he is so fucking close.
No. No, that’s wrong. He can feel a couple things. He can feel the numb of his hands around Tommy’s, he can feel the sweat running down his back, and he can feel the ice beneath his feet.
“It’s cold.” Tommy says. It’s the tone he uses when he wants to be annoying about something, or when he wants Tubbo to gain magic powers and fix every problem in the world, just for him.
“You’re complaining.” Tubbo feels as if he’s dumping salt into Tommy’s wounds. He can’t understand how he could ever say that—He’s shaking, and he isn’t cold. But Tommy is and—and Tubbo holds his hand tighter, his bones cracking at the effort. He doesn’t want to let go. But by the way his hand can barely move he doubts he even can, he doubts he can hold on either.
Tommy laughs, his voice all static and thin pieces of ice. Tubbo blinks and Tommy is in front of him, now. Pulling him further on the lake. Tubbo holds onto him as his boots move flecks of snow around. It’s slippery, but they’ve never taken a fall they couldn’t get up from before.
He feels himself smiling differently, no longer unwilling and this time eager. Tommy kicks at the ice, and they both slide. He forgets why he was ever so desperate not to smile.
“Tubbo,” Tommy starts, and then he repeats it like a melody. Stating his name over and over and over again until it becomes as constant as the wind biting against him and the blood on his hands drawn by Tommy’s nails clinging onto him.
Drops fall onto the ground, dragged around by their boots and staining the layers of snow. Tommy looks bloody and pale. Tubbo looks dead on his feet. The ice reflects them both, while crumbs of snow hide most of their features Tubbo can just barely make out the shape of his face.
He looks at his reflection for a moment, and then next he knows his sliding has come to a sharp stop. He doesn’t understand why he’s so…obsessed with that spot of the ice. It’s normal, surely. He tilts his head and watches it mirror his movements. He can see the water, he realizes. Maybe that’s what’s different—He never could see the water so clearly before.
“Tubbo.” The song is right next to his ear but he can’t find the will to flinch at how sudden it is. His body lags behind him, he thinks of looking up several seconds before he manages to do it. Tommy is smiling at him, his mouth open in…
Tommy is speaking—yelling—shouting—screaming. Whatever sweet sound he echoed Tubbo’s name in is far gone and replaced by the snapping of strings and beating of drums.
The ice cracks beneath him.
Tubbo’s body lags behind.
He thinks of reaching out a second to late. By that time he’s blinked, his eyes feel frozen shut and his eyelids feel like they’ve just cracked stone when he opens them again.
His cheek hits the ice, hard. Numbness pushes against him but he isn’t shaking because of that—His arm is deep in the water, he doesn’t know when he took off his coat but he hears a scream that he can barely register as his own through all the noise. There’s a layer of frost over his face he doesn’t even feel, the only thing he feels is his heart pounding violently between his ribs.
He yells something out, maybe it’s a plea to anyone who can hear, maybe he’s telling Tommy that he has to get out or he’ll never forgive either of them.
He hears the sirens so loudly. The urge to slam his head against the ice to silence it is tempting but he can’t—He can’t waste a second, not anymore.
Maybe Tubbo is telling Tommy that he will never forgive his bloody hands as they push the deepest they can in the water but freeze stiff when they feel the fabric of glove—He will never forgive his cursed mind, his torn out scream, or the foreign hands that grab him just as he’s about to fall in.
Tubbo looks out the window with contempt, the glass looks like ice and it is his downfall. The sirens have been outside his home for ten minutes, and he has lost so much more than just his favourite jacket.
Today is the first of December, Tubbo will not have a body to mourn, and he once again craves the comfort of the lake.