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In one swift motion, Tubbo slams a piece of paper down on the wooden desk in front of Dream.
Blinking, Dream glances between him and the paper. “What is this?” He asks slowly, pulling back the book he’d been writing in and clearing away some other miscellaneous objects from around said paper.
Tubbo clears his throat and rightens himself. “I want a divorce,” he declares.
“A…divorce,” Dream echoes stupidly.
Tubbo nods, firm and partially stubborn, as if he’s already being denied. “My husband is dead,” he says, with a particularly emphasized wave of his hands, “and since the saying is ‘til death do us part,’ I want to part. Now. Thank you.”
Dream scoffs, though a smile is playing on his lips; this is amusing, yes, though he’s not exactly sure anyone’s come to him asking for a divorce from a deceased partner before. There’s a first for everything, it seems.
“Well,” he says, peeling the paper from his desk and airing it out to give it a once-over, “can’t deny a request like that, can I, Tubbster?”
Tubbo frowns. “Don’t call me that,” he mutters. “You promised when you were sixteen. I remember.”
“More than your husband does, I presume?”
He winces and bites back a small laugh; it’s not funny, but he can’t help laughing when his brother is the one telling a shitty joke. Even if it is about his failing-slash-already-failed marriage.
He decides upon, “Shut up,” instead.
Dream hums a response instead of pushing Tubbo’s buttons further, glancing through the messily-written list of totally-official-and-not-at-all-impromptu reasons he’s filing for divorce. At the very top, the blond notes the particularly bolded font, reading, “My husband is dead.”
“This is…certainly something,” he says after a moment, setting the paper down once more. “I can do it though—not like we have a stable legal process here, anyway.”
Tubbo’s eyes widen as he leans forward onto the desk palms-first. “Really?” He shouts, stars in his eyes and ecstasy in his veins; it’s a bit of an exaggerated response to getting a divorce, but who is Dream to judge? He might know a few people who would react the same at his own funeral. “You’ll do it? You’ll divorce us?”
Dream hides a laugh behind a cough into a balled-up fiat. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do it.” He nods and pulls a pen out from the one of the drawers of his desk to scribble down a signature that’s supposed to be some sort of legal acknowledgement of the request for divorce, but he’s mostly just making this shit up as he goes along. Dream is a warrior, not a lawyer. He doesn’t know shit about the legal process for divorce, but who’s going to stop him? Quackity? Been there, done that.
After he pushes the paper back toward Tubbo, the latter springs over the desk and wraps Dream into a tight hug, which only has him thinking, When the fuck did Tubbo get so strong? But then he releases him, acting more like he’s just won the lottery than having signed a divorce paper as he skips happily out of the room.
It leaves Dream a bit flabbergasted, rubbing out an ache in his neck whilst blinking away the surprise from his features.
※ ※ ※
Tubbo is, frankly put, euphoric. It sounds a bit mean, and it is a bit mean, to be so happy about a divorce, but really, can you blame him? A dead husband isn’t worth much, and he’s hardly seen Ranboo in forever anyway. Even before the whole…lost-all-three-lives-now-he’s-a-ghost thing.
The paper in his hands is something he wrote himself, and with what very little knowledge he—or anyone, really—has about the legal system, he’s aware that Ranboo has to sign this document as well. Though, that does beg the question: can Ranboo even hold a pen?
He’s a ghost, so he can float through walls and all that junk, but holding a pen can’t be that hard, can it? Surely he can use his newly-gained paranormal abilities to levitate the pen and poorly-scribble his name in black ink over the page.
Hell, Tubbo’s handwriting isn’t much better. It looks almost identical to Michael’s cute family portrait drawings in crayon (he wonders if he can rip Ranboo out of those, too, since it’s not likely for a dead parent to win custody over a living child in the first place. He doesn’t have to worry about that).
Needless to say, Tubbo is hardly certain of where he should even start to look for his deceased, soon-to-be-ex-husband. He’s never anywhere Tubbo is, and that’s not exactly working in his favor when he needs him to be here right now to sign some stupid paper so that they can get divorced. And, really, if he’s surprised, it is in no way, shape, or form Tubbo’s fault. Ranboo should have seen this coming, what with dying and all. Tommy was revived, so he didn’t have any reason to cut him off as a friend (there was a funeral and everything—still, he can’t just move on from a friend who’s still around. That would be rude! Thankfully, Ranboo’s dead, so he doesn’t have a reason to think this rude).
He’s honestly just wandering around at this point, mulling around Aimsey’s house and kicking his feet in the dirt when he catches a glimpse of red stark against the lush green background.
Finally.
“Ranboo!” He calls, knowing well enough that he’ll either be avoided entirely or rushed upon and dumped with egregious amounts of affection that he doesn’t deserve or appreciate at this point in time.
Right enough, it is indeed Ranboo that he saw floating about, doing whatever it is the dead do when they’re stuck in a mortal plane. And, much to Tubbo’s displeasure, he gasps wide and loud as the largest smile he’s ever seen the boy wear spreads across his face.
He moves like the wind toward Tubbo, swirling and spiraling in the air with no rhyme or rhythm that the brunet is bracing for impact by the time Ranboo plants himself merely a foot off the ground in front of him.
“Christ, never do that again,” Tubbo scoffs, taking a step back to gain some sense of personal space back; he’s more than grateful when Ranboo respects it, though this is the bare minimum and he won’t be praising him for it. “Uh, anyway.”
“Tubbo,” Ranboo chirps, swaying from side to side. He moves like some kind of strange RPG character—an idle animation that he’s not allowed to break from. Standing still would kill him twice over, apparently (though standing in of itself seems impossible, too). “I’m so happy to see you!”
This has him grinding his teeth; he’s not mad, necessarily, no, Tubbo just knows that this isn’t what he had, nor is it the truth. He’s seen this behavior with Ghostbur, and he’s not about to fall prey to it again with Ghostboo.
“Yeah, uh, that’s great and all,” he starts, clenching the paper in one hand, “but there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“A favor?” Ranboo cocks his head to one side, ghostly silhouette draping with the movement. “Sure, anything! I’d love to help, Bo.”
And that’s the one that hurts.
Somehow, somewhere inside this translucent ball of goo floating in front of him, Ranboo still knows. He doesn’t, not consciously, but inside of him is still that sickening memory of what they had and what could’ve been.
Tubbo tenses himself and furrows his brow to maintain composure. “Thanks,” and he leaves out the returning pet name he gave Ranboo back, because it doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead. “I need you to sign this for me, then. Legal stuff and whatnot. You know.”
Ranboo hums as Tubbo holds up the paper and carefully takes it into his eerily-draped hands—one, so he can hold objects, and two, why the fuck is he even holding it like that to begin with? His smile is still bright as ever, all the way up until his eyes scan the paper and follow the words further and further down the page.
“Oh,” is all he can really say.
“Please,” and Tubbo doesn’t know why he’s begging. It’s stupid, because he doesn’t care anymore; that’s what he’s told himself every single fucking day that went by with no Ranboo, with no husband anywhere in sight. And the worst part of all is that his voice is breaking on every word and he can’t seem to keep himself in one piece anymore. “Just sign it.”
“Tubbo, I—”
“Ranboo.” Tubbo steadies himself, inhaling shakily. His cheeks are wet and he’s not sure when he even started to cry, but he takes a step further backward when Ranboo reaches out to him again. “I’m not—I’m not compromising this.”
Here he was, in shambles in front of his deceased, soon-to-be-ex-husband, when only a few hours earlier he was beaming and feeling higher than the moon to be rid of him. How pathetic.
Ranboo looks down again, and in the smallest voice he has, because Tubbo knows it’s the smallest voice he has, says, “Okay. I’ll sign it.”
And he does.
※ ※ ※
As is required, Tubbo and Ranboo travel back to Dream in silence. It’s a painful sort of silence, tense and full of prickly spikes that might impale one another if either of them speak a word.
So they don’t, and by the time they’re back where they need to be, Tubbo is the one reaching up to knock on the office door while Ranboo hovers around behind him. He creaks the door open the slightest bit, then holds it for Ranboo as they’re both welcomed inside.
“That was quick,” Dream remarks, eyeing Ranboo as he moves to the corner of the room; ghosts can’t exactly get themselves comfortable in chairs, but Tubbo can, so he does. “Eager to get rid of each other?”
“Shut up,” Tubbo mutters, much less bite than he had this morning, but his voice is as rough as ever.
Dream huffs out a breath, then offers one hand for Tubbo to transfer the paper. It’s a bit crumpled on one side, which is thanks to the both of them (neither were quite merciful in their grips upon it), but he smoothens it out against the desk before dipping an ink pen into its glass container and, for the first and last time, finalizing their divorce.
There might’ve been more to it, perhaps in a place with sturdier legal facilities and a world run by anyone other than Dream, but this is all it takes when legalities are run by warriors—skilled in battle, not law.
And then, Dream leans down and pulls out a Manila folder, slotting the paper with its still-wet ink inside and shutting it between his fingers. In the same instant, he slips it back away to where it came from, gazing between the two boys across from him. Tubbo can almost smell the pity he has for them, but one quick glare brings an amused smile back to his brother’s face.
“Well,” Dream says, patting his thighs as he slides his chair back away from the desk, “that’s that. Anything else?”
Ranboo is quiet, running his fingers over each other, curled into himself—perhaps he thinks he can run from this, or convince himself that it isn’t real (can a dead man truly hide from his sorrows, when death consumes him in them?). He mouths a quiet, “No,” but it’s rushed, revealing his desire to escape even more.
When Dream’s gaze falls to him in the next second, Tubbo shakes his head solemnly. He does, however, look up toward Ranboo with a pained face (and god, he doesn’t mean to—he hates to, really, because he knows this is just as much his fault as it is Ranboo’s), as if he was there, in that moment, watching his ex-husband die the same death over and over for all of eternity. Ranboo doesn’t look back at him.
And so, he opens his mouth, a winded and broken breath: “Til death do us part.”