Work Text:
Everyone had their little rituals.
It was one of the few things that Tubbo understood about people. He had never been the social sort, and he never found the same interest in observing people as he did in observing the way insects transformed into different creatures or how radiation decayed at an exponential rate.
His early morning ritual was this:
1.) Wake up and head to the bathroom. First he would wash the dried tears from his face (there were always dried tears; his dreams hadn't been kind to him in years.)
2.) If needed, he would clean any blood off of himself (a habit of scratching at his own skin when distressed combined with the amount of heavy scarring he had often lead to him waking up with his poorly healed skin shredded.)
3.) Take pain medicine. He was told once, what felt like two lifetimes ago, by an older brother who never gave him a second glance that too much pain medicine would destroy your liver. It would be a painful death, he'd said. Tubbo usually took his with alcohol. It helped with the inevitable hangovers.
4.) Check on Michael. Michael never woke up before Tubbo did. The void grey of the early morning was no time for a toddler to be up. Still, without fail, Tubbo needed to make sure he was alright. Invariably he was. It didn't make the knot of tension in his chest any looser.
5.) He would message Ranboo. Earlier on in their relationship, before Ranboo had gotten so distracted, there was no need for this part of his ritual. More often than not, he'd woken up sharing a bed with his beloved. He'd wake up with less tears, and would find it a hell of a lot easier to sleep without alcohol or drugs or both. He hadn't seen Ranboo face to face in nearly three weeks, and Tubbo didn't know how much longer he could take Michael's sad eyes. (He never was the favorite, was he? Not even with his own son. Not even when he raised him almost alone. A teenage parent who could barely take care of himself but)
Tubbo finished his early morning ritual by shutting the locked cabinet next to a chest in his room a bit harder than he should have. His hands were trembling, still, and there was an acrid taste on his tongue from the pill that he'd chewed so that he'd feel its effects faster. The powder coated his teeth and grit stuck underneath his tongue and he couldn't help but bite down on the grit with vigor. It would make him feel better, he remembered thinking. The world seemed brighter and swayed gently with the wind and the tides of the sea outside and nobody was going to notice how dialated his pupils were, anyways, so why shouldn't he? Maybe Michael noticed. Maybe that's why he hated him.
Water didn't wash the taste of drugs out of his mouth as effectively as alcohol, Tubbo learned long ago, so why would he even try?
Tubbo's late morning ritual was this:
1.) Wake up Michael. Usually, Michael was awake or nearly awake at this time anyways. A solid sleep schedule was important. Michael didn't know that Tubbo was a hypocrite. Or maybe he did and maybe that was why he was never as excited to see Tubbo as he was to see his other father.
("He doesn't hate you," a soothing, deep voice said somewhere from the clogged canals of Tubbo's sluggish memory. It was kind and warm and it had been nearly a month now, since Tubbo had last heard it in person. "He just sees me less often, so it's more of an event when he does see me. He loves you too, Bo."
"I don't see you that often either," Tubbo doesn't say. "I grew up with an absent dad too," presses at his lips, but he remembered how Ranboo's face had crumpled the first and last time he'd ever said it. And oh, wasn't he trying his best to keep his family safe? Didn't he have responsibilities too? Tubbo should feel ashamed of himself. That last part was never said, of course. But it rang in the air all the same, whether Ranboo had intended it or not.
"Okay," Tubbo did say. And when then they didn't see each other for nearly two months, Tubbo bit his tongue until it bled.)
2.) Make Michael breakfast. In another lifetime, Tubbo had made breakfast often for his brothers. His baby brother insisted that he could cook too, but anything Tommy touched burned, as Tubbo had always so gleefully reminded him. Tubbo hadn't seen him in months either. Tommy hadn't reached out to him or responded to his messages. Tubbo was fine with it though, right? Tommy had asked. He's made of stronger stuff, of course. Plus, wasn't it good to work their codependency business out? Michael liked pancakes with smiley faces cut into them, and honey instead of syrup.
3.) Clean Michael up. Tubbo remembered some nights, less than a lifetime ago, being deep underground with his older brother. Sometimes in the morning, he had to clean him off too. He wondered if his baby brother had ever seen the blood that soaked his older brother's sleeves. He wondered if he had, if he would've stepped up and done something. His older brother was dead but was not dead but was not alive either, not really. The first time he'd seen his older brother in nearly a year he said nothing to him. Michael always smelled like oatmeal and honey. It was the same baby-gentle shampoo that Tubbo had always used. He was careful when cleaning the rotting flesh around his son's eye. Michael played in the bubbles of the bath water.
4.) Get Michael dressed for the day. He'd always loved dressing himself up, but he'd stopped. Getting Michael dressed in all of his cute little outfits and costumes occasionally did something to fill the yawning hole in his chest. Sometimes if felt like someone had dropped a fistful of dirt in the chasm where his heart used to be. Sometimes he wondered if that had burned away with his face and fingers and ear. Michael wanted to dress like a dragon. Tubbo remembered the old superstition surrounding dragons that had been around since before he was born, baked into the fabric of the world: Dragons were not to be killed. He watched his son roar and flap his arms clad in dark fabric like wings and hoped.
5.) See if he had a response on his communicator. Usually he did, but sometimes all he was greated by was the stiffling image of his own message typed to him wishing a good morning. He didn't know which was better sometimes. He remembered what it was like to hold someone close to his chest while he slept. It didn't keep the nightmares away entirely, but it softened them, at least when he woke up certain that everyone he loved was dead. Though maybe it was okay that he was so far away now. He didn't want to interrupt his rituals. He found it strange that he somehow walked the border between touch-starved and touch-repulsed. He wondered if having the one person who could soothe the ache within him so far away was punishment for all of the physical affection from everyone else he'd shunned.
("I just don't do hugs," He'd said a half a lifetime and a country ago. The office looked fancy, but peering at any of the fine details too closely would reveal just how fake and brittle they were. Fool's gold and plastic in place of metals. Unclean wool dyed in bloody browns instead of crushed red velvets. A desk that was too big for him but he sat at anyways. A suit that scratched and scraped and opened up the tender, still-healing scars on his skin.
"I just think you need one. Is that okay?" Said a near-stranger that Tubbo was pretty sure he was a little in love with already. Tubbo was tired, and he swayed when he got up. The hug was tight and held him steady and he wept so much that he burned the near-stranger's skin.
He wondered if that had fixed his revulsion when it came to others touching him. It hadn't, but that was fine. Nobody wanted to be around him anymore by that point anyways. Nobody but that perfect near-stranger with the red and green eyes and the pretty voice and the sharp teeth.)
Tubbo was startled out of his noon ritual (1.) Clean up Michael's room) when he knocked over the precarious pile of plates on the counter.
It was stupid and entirely his own fault for not washing the dishes in weeks and now there was shattered glass all over the floor and oh God, what if Michael got hurt? And they didn't have but so many plates, and Ranboo had never gotten mad at him or even raised his voice at him but what if that was the final straw?
He didn't realize he was on his knees until Michael's panicked yells broke through whatever horrible self-pitying prison Tubbo had found himself in. Oh. He had sat down in the glass and remnants hard, and now his legs were all bloodied even through his wool and it soaked the ground and Michael was scared and crying. He barely felt the pain. He'd been high on something and too drunk and on too many pain killers for too long for his nerves to send out any signals stronger than a vague warmth and dull throbbing. He stood up and picked the glass out of his flesh. It wasn't anything bad. Michael was crying. It was the worst injury he'd ever recieved.
"I'm okay, sweetheart," Tubbo assured the baby piglin, carefully picking his way around the minefield of glass and remnants of disgusting food and he really needed to clean, didn't he? Before Ranboo came back? "I just slipped and fell, it's not bad at all."
"But you're bleeding!" Michael insisted, and suddenly Tubbo was four years old again too and telling the same thing to his older brother and was brushed off and given excuses after excuses. But he remembered that he'd known something was wrong. That they may have been accidents but those accidents were unavoided on purpose. That it was easier to explain away a bruise from a fall or a missing fingertip from a sharp knife from cutting than it was to explain away razors.
(Tubbo remembered the worst day of his life. He remembered telling his baby brother not to become his older brother. He really was a hypocrite, he thought.)
Patching himself up was easy. He had been a soldier for more than two lifetimes and stitching up a wound was something he could do with his eyes closed, even if he had to shear away bloodied wool before he could do it. It didn't hurt, but it looked bad. He entertained the thought of letting himself bleed. Maybe if he was hurt bad enough, Ranboo would have to come home and take care of him.
But what about Michael? And Tubbo was really too much of a coward to do it anyways, wasn't he? He stitched himself up with shaking, burned fingers. He fantasized about hurting himself so badly that his beloved had to come home. That had to be its own special type of evil, didn't it?
And so Tubbo continued on with his rituals after that. He cleaned Michael's room after soothing him and telling him that he had just been clumsy and promising he'd be more careful next time. He played toys with him and colored and his heart clenched when Michael asked when his other dad would be back because he had such a pretty drawing to show him. And the day continued onward.
His nightly ritual was this:
1.) Get Michael ready for bed. After dinner was done (which was the last of his late-afternoon-rituals) he would make him brush his teeth and wash up and be tucked into bed all safely with the nightlight on to keep away the monsters and the stuffed animal there to cuddle with. Sometimes Michael pleaded for him to tell him a bedtime story. He always complied. (Once before Ranboo had told him his stories were too dark for children. He remembered his older brother telling him the same tales, though, so he continued on as he was.)
2.) Get something to drink. A drug addict and an alcoholic and a teenage parent, Tubbo mused, were some of the worst things to be, especially in combination. Still, it couldn't be denied that things became much softer and less sharp and painful when he was drunk or high out of his mind. He slumped onto his bed and pulled out his communicator.
3.) Talk to Ranboo. He always told him how much he missed him. He didn't think Ranboo understood the emptiness inside of him. Ranboo asked him how Michael was doing and Tubbo told him the truth, that he missed him too. Ranboo gave an excuse and Tubbo tasted iron on his tongue. Ranboo had important things to do. He was keeping his family safe. He was being productive. Tubbo was selfish. Tubbo didn't know how much longer he could go on like this.
4.) (Optional.) Drink some more. It took quite a lot of alcohol to really get him out out of his senses, and he didn't always need it, but on nights like these where the ache in his chest that clawed at his stomach and brain was equal only to the dull roar of agony from his cut up legs, he decided he deserved it. After all, hadn't he done a good job today? He made it through the day, and wasn't that impressive enough?
5.) Sleep. It came fitfully. Even with the drunkeness, it was hours before he found sleep. In the morning, he would begin all over again.