#i'm distraught over current events on the dsmp and this is how i'm coping

[painless-innit-colourful]

‘Where I Go, Will You Still Follow?’ - A Clingyduo Fic from the Hunger Games AU

In the most ironic twist, I missed Tommy’s lore stream on Monday writing Clingyduo comfort/hurt (in that order). I wasn’t sure whether this fandom needed any more angst right now, but whatever, take this anyway. This fic is set in a Hunger Games AU where the characters of the Dream SMP reside in Panem and must compete in the Games. Only Tommy + Tubbo appear in this fic though. Angst reigns supreme on Reaping Day, where the boys face the possibility of being picked for the deadly Hunger Games for the first time. (Also I promise you don’t have to have read HG to get this.)

tw nothing really, they’re only being reaped here.

word count: 3102

On the morning of the reaping, two boys tread carefully through a desolate orchard.

At this time of year, the trees are mostly left to their own devices. In about six months their boughs will bear fruit, and there will be plenty of people scurrying to and fro beneath them collecting their bounty to be stored and sent to the Capitol. Those very boys will join them. However, on that late Spring morning there is no one about. During this season the trees require only the occasional pruning, and everyone’s still in bed this early anyway. No reason to get up on a day where you don’t need to. Public holidays like this are rare.

Tommy and Tubbo hold hands as they move through the trees. Old habit, they suppose, a defense mechanism against getting split up, for better or worse. With the number of people in their district it can make public gatherings hazardous for lonely children, and if there’s anything worse than getting caught alone in a stampede, it’s getting left behind in a chase. If one boy falls, so does the other. If one boy is caught with his hand in the larder, the other will be nearby. The two of them are a package deal: where one goes, the other follows.

They only stop when they’re sure they’re properly alone, deep in the orchard. It would take anyone hours to find them; it would take most people hours to get out from this point. But years spent traversing these paths - both from the ground and the branches above - have given them an instinctual knowledge on which way to go. They settle in beneath a large apple tree; lush and green now that the blossoms have since blown away. They go about unwrapping several grease paper packages that were previously weighing down their pockets as Tommy hums a tune to keep them company. Tubbo shuffles uncomfortably as they lay out a small breakfast of half a loaf of bread - dark and dotted with seeds, District 11’s signature - a petite disc of cheese that Tubbo suspects Tommy sat on at some point, and an apple each. Food they either squirreled away from the pantry at the orphanage or stole outright. The thought pinches Tubbo’s cheeks.

“What’s that sour face for?” Tommy asks him, flicking his eyes up every so often as he arranges the cheese on the bread with a tiny knife stashed in his boot and breaks the half-crescent of bread roughly in half. “You’re not still worried about getting caught.”

Tubbo sighs, and it tells Tommy all he needs to know. “C’mon! We covered our tracks and literally no one saw us.” When Tubbo’s expression doesn’t change, he puts a comforting hand on his friend’s arm. “Well, definitely no one saw you. I’ll take the hit for it, if they find out.”

“No, it’s- fine.”

“Your face says otherwise, my friend.” All the same, Tommy retracts his arm and finishes haphazardly spreading the cheese upon the bread. He nudges one of the apples towards Tubbo with his foot, “Here, start.”

“Excuse me, the apple comes after the main course, how dare you break tradition.”

“My apologies, my liege.”

The easy smile returns briefly to Tubbo’s face as they laugh, then quickly melts away again. Tommy fixes him with a sympathetic look. “What?” Tubbo asks, locking eyes with him as he finishes brutalising the cheese and hands him his half. “You’re worried about the reaping.”

“And you’re not?”

“Should I be?” When Tubbo gives him a sideways glare, Tommy shrugs. “Dude, it’s a tiny chance. Two in thousands and thousands. You’re more likely to get struck by lightning than have either of our names fished out of the bowl.” And though Tommy was likely skewing his numbers a bit, he supposed it was true. It was their first year of reapings and neither of them had taken any tesserae. They were about as safe as you could be between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Still…

“Besides,” Tommy continued. “If your name gets called, I’m sure someone would volunteer for you.” He barely makes it to the end of his sentence before Tubbo’s noise of dismissal drowns him out. “Yeah right. Let’s be realistic here.” Tommy leans back against the tree as he eats. Sunlight peeks through the branches at random intervals, illuminating him in softly glowing patches. He turns his head slightly and beckons Tubbo over with a nod. They shift their bodies and the food around until they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder between two large roots, and Tubbo finds that the sunlight is almost as warm as Tommy beside him.

They remain in that position for some time, eating their way through their swindled picnic. It’s a bit much for an ordinary breakfast, but it’s somewhat of a tradition to have something special on reaping day. Makes the hours standing in the square while the Mayor drones on about how it’s right to send two children to their deaths a bit more bearable. According to those traditions, you’re supposed to celebrate with a meal after the reaping too, though neither boy is quite sure where that convention came from. Not many in District 11 could afford it in any case.

At some point Tubbo drops a hand to the floor between them, and at some later instance Tommy places his where their fingers can interlace. “You’re nervous too.” Tubbo states without looking at his companion, instead remaining as he is, staring past the leaves to the clear blue sky. “No way.” Tubbo giggles at Tommy’s indignant tone. “A big man like me is not scared of being picked in the reaping.”

“Fearless he is, Big Man Tommy.”

“Too right!” They laugh, and the terror their giggles mask bubbles just beneath the surface, a pot mere seconds from boiling over. 

“Look, Tommy,” Tubbo’s voice becomes serious, and Tommy’s laughter peters out. “It’s all well and good laughing and joking about it, but… In the event one of us is chosen…” Their eyes meet and Tubbo squeezes Tommy’s hand, to which Tommy returns the grip. “I need you to tell me you remember our promise.” In response, Tommy sighs, drops Tubbo’s hand, puts that arm around his best friend’s shoulder, pulls him close and runs his free hand through his hair, almost all simultaneously. “Yes of course I remember it.”

“And?” Tubbo replies expectantly.

“And what?”

“Say it, you dummy.” Tommy places his free hand over his heart like a salute. “I, Tommy Innit, promise my dearest friend Tubbo Underscore, that if he is chosen for the Hunger Games in this afternoon’s reaping, I will not volunteer to take his place.” He waits for Tubbo to relax, satisfied, before tacking on: “Thus letting him be led away to a faraway place to be on television then get brutally murdered, also on television. “ He can feel Tubbo’s eye roll without even looking. “You made me promise the same.”

“Yeah I did, didn’t I?” He admits quietly, leaning his head against his best friend’s, brown curls obscuring half his vision.

“It’ll be okay, right?”

“Yeah.” Tubbo’s hair smells faintly of apples, somehow. Tommy squeezes his best friend and hopes he won’t have to betray him.

Unbeknownst to him, Tubbo has the same thought.

---

The duo spend the hours before the reaping as they usually do: sleeping in each others embrace somewhere they technically shouldn’t be, pretending the clothes they have to change into back at the orphanage are any better than what they’re changing out of, and hogging the second floor bathroom for way longer than necessary. The black storm cloud that is the reaping casts a longer shadow than previous years, but they manage to ignore it for most of the morning with enough shenanigans to fill their quota for the year. The clouds threaten to burst however when the time reaches half twelve, and the parentless teenagers of the district begin to make their way towards the square where the ceremony will take place. The once-blue sky darkens as the crumbling facade of the Justice Building comes into view, as if nature were waiting for her cue, and Tommy wonders if he jinxed himself with his earlier comments about being struck by lightning.

He’s holding Tubbo’s hand again - standard crowd procedure - and he’s thankful for about the millionth time that they’re the same age. They head with the other twelve year old orphans to the corresponding pen for their age group, and find themselves sandwiched in the centre. Tubbo exchanges a few words with some of their peers, most likely to be ‘Good luck’, but Tommy’s not really concentrating. The square is already full and still there’s many more people to come, and with every person that joins the crowd there will only be more cramming the possible tributes together like sardines in a tin. There have been crushes at reapings before; they tell them in school about the reaping for the seventh games, where too many spectators packed the floor and there was a panic that killed four people, including one kid in the crowd. In an ironic twist, their name was later pulled from the ball, and their escort had to be informed live on stage in front of the entire nation that they’d died earlier that day.

Decidedly, the odds were not in their favour.

Tommy doesn’t like to admit it, but tight spaces get to him. And here, packed in by bodies with camera crews perched high on the rooftops over the crowd, scanning for the faces that will leave the district tonight, he feels like a fish in a barrel. “Hey-” Tubbo’s voice reaches him through the din of thousands of people talking at once, but he sounds a million miles away. He practically crushes Tubbo’s fingers with his own, and, in retaliation, Tubbo flicks him on the nose. He blinks at him angrily for a second, the distraction welcome despite his show of annoyance. “Breathe, Tommy.” He forces air in and out of his lungs for about thirty seconds just to make sure he still can. Tubbo traces stars on the back of his hand.

By the time the Mayor’s stepped up to the podium and began his yearly recitation of the history of Panem, Tommy thinks he’s calmed himself down somewhat. Tubbo still traces stars in little pentagram patterns on Tommy’s hand with his thumb, and though it’s starting to get a little irritating, something stops him from signalling him to knock it off. He glances briefly sideways to Tubbo, and though his expression is mostly blank, the two have gotten used to watching each other’s tics and tells, signs that are imperceptible to anyone else but them. The small twitch at the corner of his mouth, the way he scrunches his nose slightly when he blinks, even the way he presses a little too hard with his thumb, his patterns becoming less uniform and the edges of his nails leaving little scratches. He’s as scared as Tommy. So he lets him keep doing it, for both their sakes.

The Mayor finishes his history lecture, reads the list of past victors and then finally introduces the District 11 escort, a spritely-looking man in a bottle-green suit called Montaque. He’s been the district’s escort for a few years, and Tommy and Tubbo used to joke his mustache was so spiky-sharp looking you could win a Games by using it as a weapon. He seems to glide across the stage as he gives a speech about District pride or some nonsense, then utters the classic phrase, “Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favour.” 

He crosses the stage to the front where two glass balls sit, holding thousands of tiny slips of paper. A lump forms in Tommy’s throat. Somewhere in one of those balls there’s two slips of paper that could serve as their one way ticket to the Capitol. He knows they’re somewhat lucky: some kids their age have many more slips thanks to tesserae, but Tommy feels a pang in his chest even as he thinks about it. Some kids have parents. Some kids have somewhere to put their tesserae so it won’t immediately get stolen. He and Tubbo may have considered it, but what use would they have for grain and oil when on most days they could barely hold onto their bedsheets? It was one less thing to worry about.

Montaque the Stupid sticks one of his disproportionately-large hands into the first glass ball, and retrieves a slip of paper, and Tommy begs inside his mind, not us not us not him. He reads the name, and the entire world suddenly stops spinning. Somewhere in the back of Tommy’s mind is a lag, like when one person in a chain of people passing produce from a field to a wagon disappears. The chain does its best to keep up, but it’s very quickly overwhelmed, leaving debris in the form of dropped vegetables and a backlog that needs to be attended to.

That’s how it feels inside Tommy’s head as the crowd parts for him, a sea of people craning their necks as they shuffle aside to form a runway for him towards the stage. This can’t be happening. His mind can’t catch up to the fact, doesn’t want to catch up to the fact that this is happening. He glances to his side and immediately regrets the action, for Tubbo stands beside him looking equal parts shell shocked and distressed. Their eyes meet, teary and desperate, and Tommy only has the strength to mouth ‘Promise’, before his feet start to carry him towards the stage alone, and his hand in Tubbo’s becomes an outstretched arm. When they finally let go Tommy can feel the ghost of his friend’s hand in his own, and knows that it will be one of the last kind touches he ever receives. He tries not to think of that as he half-marches towards the veranda. He doesn’t look back for fear it’ll set him off crying, but if he were to, he would see Tubbo standing impossibly alone in such a huge crowd, holding the hand that held Tommy’s to his chest.

He mounts the stage and looks out over the people of the district he calls home, a tiny voice in his head telling him to make the most of this last time. Last time. He searches for Tubbo in the crowd, spotting him easily by the empty pathway he just walked down being slowly absorbed back into the crowd. He can see even from here the tears shining on his cheeks, the way his whole body shakes with the effort of holding more back. There’s a couple orphanage kids looking like they’re trying to console him, and, if Tommy should weigh in, doing a pretty sh’it job. He looks away to watch Montaque snatch the second slip of paper from the glass ball, and he tenses every fibre of his being shouting internally please please please. The name is read, and this time Tommy finds himself still breathing and present as some older kid makes his own shaky way to the podium. He’s about fourteen, with a stocky build that betrays work in the crop fields. As he takes his place opposite Tommy, the young boy is reminded that the Games will be full of people like him. Stronger, older opponents. Tommy, at the monumental age of twelve, doesn’t stand a chance.

The moment lingers, and then it keeps lingering, and then Tommy turns to Montaque to find out why the da’mn moment won’t move on. He’s staring out into the crowd once more, and Tommy’s heart, already too heavy, drops straight into his boots as he follows Montaque’s gaze. The crowd parts once more, and Tubbo strides forward, a shaky confidence marking his every step. The murmurs around the square hush, as he comes to stand mere metres from the tributes. Tommy wants to catch his eye, shake his head, scream at him to stop, but Tubbo doesn’t look at him. Tommy knows exactly what he intends to do as he opens his mouth; Tommy mouths the words along with him.

“I volunteer as tribute.”

Now you’ve gone and done it.

Montaque, biggest pri’ck on the planet, waxes lyrical about courage and bravery while he arranges the exchange of the fourteen year old for Tubbo. As if he’d ever know what it is to be brave. As the Mayor takes over once more, reading the Treaty of Treason as he is bound by duty to do, Tommy tries to catch the attention of his best friend, who’s acting annoyingly aloof. He watches as Tubbo stares into the distance, looking alarmingly calm with the whole ordeal. Tommy wants to scream, and do a bit more than scream and call him all the foul names he can think of and demand he un-volunteer and why? You stupid bi’tch absolute idiot why would you volunteer when we had a promise, why did you betray the promise? Why? Why why why why why?

As the Mayor wraps up the Treaty bore-fest, he motions for the two tributes to shake hands. Tributes. Now bound unrelentingly for an arena where they will kill other people. Other children. Maybe even each other.

Tommy feels some comfort in how helpless their situation is. Odds are they’ll die long before each other are a threat. They’re going to be a team obviously, and Tommy’s going to protect Tubbo as long as he can. That’s what he promised him the day they met, and that’s what he intends to do.

They shake hands, and Tubbo finally looks at him. The tears have dried on his cheeks. They take a little longer than is necessary, conducting a silent conversation between them.

‘Sorry.’

‘I am so fu’cking mad at you.’

‘You thought I would really leave you?’

‘I hoped I was wrong.’

They stand for the anthem. They are carted into the Justice Building to wait for people to come and say goodbye. No one comes. They weren’t expecting anyone anyway. They are all they have; all they’ve ever had. And where one goes, the other follows.

Tommy waits alone in the Justice Building, trying to figure out if the first thing he’ll do when he’s alone with Tubbo is hug him or strangle him. Beyond that though, he has to protect his boy. He has to keep his promise. An uneasy feeling stirs his gut. One promise has already been broken today.

And the odds aren’t playing nice.