Archive of Our Own

There are several truths to everyone's lives. 

Ranboo hates summers. That is his first one.

"I just don't understand how you'd never thought of this," teases Tubbo, for the third time since this whole operation began and Ranboo really, really doesn't have anything new to tell him, so he just repeats-

"I don't like ruining things." 

And he doesn't. 

He's used to things being used as made, as intended, pristine and perfect and if they aren't, then the fault lies at his own feet. Stepping out of the lane is nerve-racking, almost anarchistic, and oh so holy when Tubbo is the one holding the knife, the one prodding at the profane button-sized holes in his new cap.

Isn't it heredical?

Doesn't it feel so freeing?

"I'm not ruining it. I'm improving it, you ungrateful dick." Tubbo's hands continue dismantling the threads even as he complains, the motion clearly practiced. There's a growing pile of black and white scraps all over his lap, some stuck to his T-shirt and the rest assimilated into the carpet, outline like that of a dead man marking his room.

A rough sound escapes Ranboo's throat. "I didn't say- I mean. Yes, yes you are, I just-" he pauses, desperate to scramble his thoughts into something coherent, something noble and justifiable. "I- I don't know." 

There it is again–the anxiety. Seeping through his skin into volcanic ash that confines him alive.

Why does it feel like he's running for his life?

Why is he sitting on Tubbo's bed, fiddling with his hands like someone will tear down the door the second he breathes wrong? The sun shines on his tail from beyond the blinds, doing nothing to ease the monster crawling at his insides and it's inherently stupid, so tragically laughable, because this whole debacle is about a cap. 

A cheap, second-hand thing.

One that he doesn't need, but that Tubbo pointed out in the store nonetheless–black and white, like everything about him–he thought he'd look cool with it. And Ranboo should have told him no and left and thought of other ways to prepare for the upcoming months. He didn't. Tubbo said he'd make it so that he could wear it, despite the horns protruding from his forehead.

He can't decide if he agreed in a fit of weakness or clarity.

"We should have just bought the visor hat," he croaks at last.

Tubbo does a full body turn, his face contorting into a myriad of emotions and Ranboo snaps his jaw shut in quick succession out of shame. 

They already had this conversation in the store. It didn't go over any better back then.

A soundless beat carries through the room, darkly amusing in the way all of their bickering is. Ranboo can smell fire scalding the arch of Tubbo's eyebrows as he glares, inferno forming behind his lips heating up the room when he inhales. His tail swishes in anticipation.

…

"You're being a little bitch about this, Ranboo,” he accuses at last. “Stop it, please." His words have a gentle edge hidden between the consonants, a tone of voice softer than Ranboo was led to believe.

When Tubbo's eyes glance at him minutely, his irises are pools of fuchsite under the afternoon sun. 

He looks like something holy on his old broken chair, born of Ranboo’s dreams and nightmares and the syrup his mum used to bring him when he was so feverish he saw angels on the ceiling of his bedroom. 

He swallows painfully.

Tubbo's hair falls back into his eyes. "We're not doing anything wrong, bossman, we're just modifying clothes. No harm in that." Then he's back to hacking away at fabric. The knife glistens in his hand.

There are thousand and one thoughts swimming at the surface of Ranboo's teeth, each worthy of less than the one before. 

"Thank you," he mutters instead. 

His friend grins. 

He still hates summer when he puts on the finished cap–hand sewn and perfectly fitting–hours later. The insects cry around their feet as they make their way toward a bus stop not far from Tubbo's house, a dainty sign with no roof to hide from the scorching heat, the premonition of worse times yet to come.

And as much as he wants to be miserable, curse at the stars and the void and everything more and less than that, he can't. 

"Is it any better, now?" Tubbo asks matter-of-factly as they walk past their third church, like he knows exactly what Ranboo's thinking, can feel his dejection from beside him on the sidewalk. 

The tip of Ranboo's ear twitches in embarrassment. 

“Yeah–a lot, actually. I can see now,” he admits.

Tubbo hums to himself. 

Warm wind brushes against their back as they watch the traffic light, waiting for it to blink to life, to let them escape the shadeless concrete.

"Y'know," Tubbo begins, "my dad used to do that for me a lot when I was a kid–the hat modifying I mean. Back when my horns first started growing out and all that. Apparently, grandpa taught him how to do it, and I learnt from watching him and…” he laughs then, a feeble thing, “and so forth, you get the gist.”

His hair is in his face again. It always is, these days. Ranboo forgot what it was like to freely see the blue of his eyes.

"Makes for a nice family tradition when you think about it," Tubbo concludes, a bit sheepish.

Tubbo’s family is surrounded by sleepless nights on his couch, breath that could fuel forest fire and shaking hand that grips his own when they sit on Ranboo’s bed in silence, on the particularly bad of nights, when he ignores the wet tears on Tubbo’s face in favor of keeping him safe. All in all, the thought of them has Ranboo fighting emotions he’d rather not, something about anger and thunder born of protectiveness and yet–this particular detail feels almost domestic for once. 

Like it should be more than Tubbo lets on. 

Like he could somehow be part of it, if he just-

The crossing signal makes his heart jump.

"We don’t have anything like that. Ma doesn't have horns and mum's are really tiny so… It's never been a problem. Until me, that is, but- That’s fine! It’s fine, I can manage," he blurts instead, words stumbling one after the other, as do his feet on the black-white acrylic. He can't take this from him. That would be too selfish.

A bus in the other lane stops, filling the moment with wheezing brakes on burning asphalt and voidless chatter of the passengers. One of them has a dog.

"I see, I see. So you desperately need me for my hat modifying expertise, is what you're saying. You want to marry me into the family and let me inherit all of your riches once you disappear under mysterious circumstances."

He exhales through his smirk and the whole world shifts on its axis.

"I'm marrying you?"

There's something so genuinely gleeful in Tubbo's expression at that moment, sweet like lilac and the first hug you ever share with a new friend. Like coming home.

"Duh, wasn't that obvious from what I just said? Or…" The pause is purely theatrical, dramatic like the boy himself.

"Do I need to woo you first?"

His smile is so, so contagious.

"No- No I don't think that will be necessary."

Tubbo jumps into his personal space, hands behind his back like a mock picture of innocence, like his grin isn't the most tempting image under the sun, he tilts his head until the curtain of hair sways. His eyes are impossibly blue.

"So you've already been wooed?" he asks, his voice rounder as he tries for a semblance of seriousness.

The laugh that pours out of Ranboo's throat is one he couldn't stop even if he wanted to.

"Sure."

The sun boils at his skin and Ranboo feels like there should have been something different there, something less raw and true and vulnerable. It doesn't matter. He never did like lying to Tubbo, anyway.

Tubbo is divine and beautiful and covered from head to toe in drying seaweed.

And about to vomit on the front steps of Ranboo's porch.

It's almost June, the wind leaving a hint of glaciers on the exposed skin of his arms. The sky promises a languid beginning after the bitter end, one-two clouds in sight between branches of budding leaves but not one more than that. The whole world is calm. Steady, breathing alongside his lungs. 

The cheerful singing of the birds does nothing to disguise the sound of the boy's stomach emptying a breath away from Ranboo's feet. It mixes in with the dry heaving in an idyllic rhythm. Almost picturesque.

He just-about doesn't wince when the second wave hits the greenery.

Ranboo hopes that mum didn't like the bushes too much.

"Tubbo," he greets, uncertainty marking the tip of his tongue and worry chasing after the boy about to collapse into the roses, "are you… Is there anything I can do?"

The neighborhood is so eerily silent, everyone either working or still yet to wake. 

Tubbo makes a choking sound and Ranboo wonders for two whole seconds if kneeling down would be rude, if the pity would weigh on the other boy more than his own misery. His affection wins the battle, in the end. 

Tubbo doesn't move to look at him as he inches closer, knees unnaturally sharp and tail carefully balancing. This feels more comfortable. Less like he's on top of things when he truly isn't.

"Sorry about…" Tubbo's sentence gets lost in the wind, the sentiment obvious yet unspoken. 

Sorry about the bushes. 

Sorry about the entirety of me. 

He's drunk. Or high from exhaustion. Maybe both.

"I shouldn't be here." 

Ranboo would ask him where he thinks he ought to be, instead, but the missing glint in his eyes tells him that he'll sleep better at night if he doesn't hear the words out loud.

"It's okay. It's okay, I don't mind."

He wants to reach out and cradle him until the vermilion drains from his eyelids, until he's the unshakeable earth again, rich and dark and so full of life it puts the spring to shame. Even now it's like the soil beckons him closer, maple hair tangling in thorns and dewy petals sticking to the small of his back, trying to claim back what the sea couldn't.

A ladybug lands on Tubbo's wrist and the boy's attention sticks to it like glue. 

"Can I use your shower?" he asks, more to the insect than Ranboo. His voice sounds of salt and sharp gravel that cuts your feet if you're not careful. "Please."

Ranboo's second truth is this: he is terrified of water.

The shower does nothing to wash the sea off of Tubbo. When he emerges from the bathroom, a snake of heavy moisture following after his step, he's still seafoam and sharkskin and drowning panic underneath the cheap dollar-store shower gel. 

"I lost my phone," he announces to Ranboo as he walks by the kitchen, flushed from the boiling water and sporting some of Ranboo's older clothes. As much as he's tried, they're still enormous on his body. As much as Ranboo's tried, he cannot but grow fond at the sight. "I need to go back for it."

Ranboo gives up trying to operate the coffee maker.

"I can go with you."

Something falls to the ground.

"You don't have to come with, bossman. It's not exactly close," comes the response, under fluttering of footsteps.

 It wasn't close the first time around, either, yet he's still here, he's still standing in Ranboo's house with wet hair and red eyes, looking like he'd fall apart if he so much as touched him, like he lost much more than just a phone.

"I can go with you," Ranboo repeats, not unkind. "It's not like I have anything better to do."

As he puts on his shoes and locks the door behind them, he wonders if he really needed to add that pesky sentence to his confession.

It must be almost noon by the time the wind picks up and the soil turns to stones beneath their shoes. The beach looks like no one has stumbled upon it in years; seagulls complain loudly above their heads at the intrusion, while the weeds resolutely stay dead at their footsteps.

The boy next to him halts to a stop near a slope. This whole trip was his idea, yet he makes no move to proceed now, just stands there and digs his nails into his palms like Ranboo does when he wants to cry.

"I'm not going back there, Ranboo," he says, at last.

Into the water , he means. 

I'm not going to fill my lungs with sea water and liquor again. I just need my phone back.

"I know."

Tubbo breathes and he exhales and he finally turns his head at him and says:

"Do you?"

No.

"Yes," makes it past his lips instead.

He's trying.

Tubbo closes his eyes and lets his arms hang loosely at his sides, shoulders relaxed, letting the cold wind carry him whole. A picture of serenity, of a saint, of a boy made of sleepless nights and dried leaves and petrichor summers.

The breeze ruffles his hair and he opens his eyes.

"First," he announces, "we're going to find my phone. Then we'll go back to your house, make so much hot chocolate we throw up, and then we'll watch a movie on the foldout couch. Sounds good?"

He's beautiful. A waterfall that swallows you whole if you brave the jump.

"Cool. Cool, cool , I can do that. Yep."

"Sweet." Then they're off.

Since they don't have the slightest idea where the phone could be, memory fogged by miles of endless coast, each square foot just as obsolete and mocking as the next, they decide to split up. Tubbo stumbles around the rocks with newfound fervour, seemingly unbothered by the sharpness of their edges and the glacier wind beckoning him to crash.

Ranboo must have encountered every single weed and cactus the beach has to offer five minutes into wandering along the coast. It's pattern seeking, grey on brown, coarse gravel sticking to the soles of his shoes, stones and shells and the occasional turtle sticking out its head from between the grass. The last one isn't bad. The rest feels like it would be more relaxing, were the circumstances of the whole day just slightly different.

Granite upon quartz, basalt upon slate. Sandstone pebbles, washed up glass, a smashed up circuit board near an anthill–the closest thing he finds to a technological device. Then there's more granite and the occasional corral, on the times that he gets lucky.

A crab scuttles off from a particularly dense bundle of weeds and Ranboo kneels down then, intrigued, maybe a little bored, definitely tired and frustrated and craving any semblance of a distraction. He squats until the heels of his feet safely touch the ground.

What a tiny creature.  

Its beady eyes are covered with specks of sand and dirt. It is weirdly cute, in a way that makes him want to prod at it with his finger, out of primordial curiosity or honest wonder, just to see what it would do. 

He doesn't even notice his tail wagging until it scares the crab into a flight, gone just as quick as it appeared.

Something childlike in Ranboo makes him look over to the dry grass, searching for more of them, or perhaps for a ray of serenity burrowed within the boxthorn.

Anything that could stop the carefully concealed shake of his hands. In the end, it's not a crab, turtle, nor a hug that he finds there. It's a pebble. With a hole in it.

He pockets it and runs after Tubbo.

He finds the boy standing near a rickety boardwalk on the eastern part of the beach. His eyes follow Ranboo's movements as he comes near.

"Why are you running? Did you find it?" Tubbo asks.

Ranboo carefully stands in front of him, barely catching his breath.

"Not- Not exactly, no. I uhm…"

The question is obvious in the curve of Tubbo's eyebrow yet he says nothing, waiting for the other to finish on his own terms.

"Give me your hand, please?" Ranboo asks at last. Tubbo obeys wordlessly, extending his right hand, interest evident in the slightest tilt of his head, like an animal too curious for its own good.

The pebble looks bigger in the palm of Tubbo's hand than it did in his own.

"You found a fae stone?"

He carefully picks it up, his fingers itching with uncertainty.

"I did and I- You said that we're married and this…" Ranboo feels his traitor tail sway behind him, feels the tip of his ear twitch against the side of his head, "this looked like a ring so I thought I'd give it to you. Because, well, you can't be married without one, so... so It's like a promise ring of sorts?"

Tubbo looks dumbfounded for a heartbeat or two, fingers toeing around the hole like they want to slip through, but it's merely a pebble, hardly the size and shape of a proper ring. When his fist closes around the red-ish stone, protective more than anything, Ranboo looks up to see that he's fighting a smile.

"Well, it's no diamond but–I suppose ," he drags the word with a theatrical sigh, "I suppose it could do for now." 

The boardwalk creaks under their feet as he rocks on his heels. "Wait, holy shit, come with me," Tubbo jumps up. "I think I also saw one fae stone around here earlier."

"Wait, why another one?" asks Ranboo. If he's weary about the rotten wood complaining beneath them, he tries his best not to show it.

"I can't be the only one with a ring, Ranboo, what kind of cringe-fail husband do you think I am?" quips Tubbo back, already striding past him.

The seagulls never stop circling above their heads.

From a frying pan into a fire, Ranboo thinks, standing on a pier five minutes later–a third of a mile further than the last wooden structure and two thirds as stable, covered with layers of salt and feathers and one very animated Tubbo.

An old banner hangs from one of the rafters overseeing the sea, torn beyond all recognition.

"I should technically be able to pull it out from here if I'm careful–just need to not eat shit and fall," Tubbo announces. He's perched on the very end of the pier, balancing on his tiptoes as he stretches his neck to look down, past the onyx sea and foam almost close enough to touch, at a final rafter of the structure. And just as he said; between seaweed and oysters and half eaten fish skeletons, lays a single pebble, with a dainty hole in its centre and salty shine on the granite surface.

Ranboo would rather not ask how he even found it in the first place. There are more pressing matters at hand.

He carefully walks closer to the other boy, mindful of his distance from the sea and the wood dividing them.

"You can hold my hand if it makes you feel safer," Ranboo tells him, pointedly not looking down. There are better ways to meet the sky head on.

"Isn't that just more dangerous?" Tubbo replies.

"So you don't want to hold my hand, is what you're saying."

…

"I- This is- You're insufferable."

And he may be, but a warm hand slides into one of his, and so the loss is inconsequential by default.

And he thinks it's somewhat ironic, as he's falling after Tubbo a few seconds later–from a pier that's been rotten a day too long into a vast pool of liquid sky, holding a hand of a boy that smells like the sea and rust and his own laundry detergent–that that's how he gets dragged into a nightmare again.

The water is freezing. He closes his eyes.

It's almost June. The wind bites at his skin where he lies on the stony beach, adrenaline pounding through his head and lungs gasping for oxygen. The sky is dotted by several clouds, flowing aimlessly above them all. It looks better without the seaweed. The whole world is calm. Steady, spinning between his ragged breaths. 

Tubbo doesn't say anything as he lies next to him, hand still holding his. 

Two fae stones lay between them.

Ranboo is a dreamer. That is his third truth. It is a detrimental one.

There's a reoccurring dream that he has, time and time again like actually living through it wasn't enough. 

Is it truly a memory?

Is it just another figment of his imagination?

It is a mess, a flurry of distressed strokes and patterns, and most of the days, it goes as follows:

He wakes up in the middle of the southern plains. 

There are times when he is drowning instead, pulled by currents stronger than his ten-year-old body can fathom into the heart of the ocean, screams pulling him lower in the embrace of bubbles and algae and death. 

However, most of the time he's not. Most of the time, he's standing in a field of wheat,

or flowers,

and he is ten and completely, utterly alone.

The field goes on as far as he can see, in every direction, endless cacophony of rye, hairgrass and fescue.

He won't know the names for them at this time. The poor boy doesn't even know his own name. He doesn't know who he is, nor who he was before he awoke in the blanket of grass. 

Insects crawl all around, some bathing in the sun, others surely hidden in the safety of the shadow and while he can't see them, he can hear them crystal clear, all the way to the centre of his brain. 

The heat all around him is nauseating without any trees, any water, relentless to lay him to rest within the meadow.

He cries,

and cries,

for hours.

But no one comes.

This is the least common ending. It isn't the worst one, truly just an ending these days. That doesn't mean he's fine when he wakes up. Just that it used to make him more hopeless before.

The dreams get marginally worse when someone does answer his prayers.

"Did you think I was being serious?" Tubbo gloats in a patch of poppies, horns sharp and heavy crowning his head. He usually doesn't look at him. "You keep on touching me, following me like some kind of freak. Who the fuck does that?"

"We made a mistake," his mum tells him. "Why couldn't we have taken a normal child instead?" ma continues from beside her, cheeks wet with angry tears.

"You're the fucking reason that he's so sad all the time, you asshole!" yells Tommy. "You're the reason we had that argument!"

Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of their shouting, ears ringing with words he'd rather bury deeper than his hands could ever reach. He cries on those nights. It's hard not to.

If he's still ten by the time they end their tyrade, they leave him in the field. It is better for them this way, it seems, and he doesn't protest, because he is ten and they are right. He doesn't even know his name.

On the very rarest of days, however, the dream goes differently.

He is ten and he wakes up in the middle of the southern plains, with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. The world around him is still, wind unmoving in a suffocating embrace, sun beating down on his skin with relentless fervour. It's so hot he can't breathe. He tries to walk, tries calling for help, but it's like he's stuck in a vertigo, no matter how much he walks the field never gives way.

He tries to run.

Again.

And again.

Until he finds himself on the ground, mouthful of ash and dirt-marks on his knees to his nonexistent name. The cicadas are so loud they might as well be in his ears. A second later something registers, new and unpleasant and so so wrong, and when he raises his head to look, his sight gets blurry with tears. There's a rock underneath his hands, and some blood flowing from the scratches, a couple of pebbles embedded into his palms, and his index finger–bent at an unnatural angle.

He is ten. He doesn't know who he is, where he is or where he should go. The pain leaves him gasping for the little oxygen around him, a staccato of useless breaths. It is so unbelievably hot.

He is out of tears by the time someone finally finds him. The last thing he remembers is a tight hug, crying that isn't his own, and then nothing else.

On those nights, he wakes up with the scent of incense still fresh on his skin and a pleasant sense of comfort enveloping him whole. 

And sometimes, his hand is held. This one is the most recent development.

He studies it, relinquishes in the rarity of the calmness, in the warmth and care. His index finger still bends outward more than it should, not awfully, not like that afternoon, but more than usual because of a fracture healed late. The person doesn't mind. Neither does Ranboo. It's his sole reminder of what truly happened, despite what his mind tries to tell him. 

He falls asleep watching the person calmly breathe inches from his body. He never dreams again on those nights.

It is hard to describe just how rare the tranquility is, though.

Ranboo is a dreamer, and dreamers cannot only have iterations of one and the same dream.

He's awake when he stumbles through the front door of his home. 

Sounds of metal against porcelain carry from the kitchen. The charm on the door-handle chimes as it's closed shut.

He dutifully places his shoes next to the others on the shelf, the domesticity of the motion providing him with a sense of peace never noticed before. The precisely framed family photos, incense burners and that one drawing he made when he was seven–right next to ma's thesis painting project–they all sound of safety. 

As does the gentle singing, enveloping him once he steps into the kitchen.

Ma is sitting on the kitchen counter, a plate of breakfast forgotten next to her and a steaming cup of coffee warming her palms. She kicks her legs ever so slightly.

"Good morning, love," she greets, with a smile to match. "Back already? I thought you weren't coming before lunch."

"Ah uh… Tubbo had to go somewhere so- so I had to leave early."

Not quite. He ran away after he woke up and noticed Tubbo's head on his chest.

He looks around. "Has mum left already?" he asks instead, forcing that particular train of thought to a halt.

Ma hums to herself around the rim of her mug. "Mmhmm. It's just the two of us, dear." She takes a sip. "Did you have a nice time over at Underscores' house?"

He had a dream that he kissed his best friend and then panicked. They also had  pancakes.

"It was… it was nice. His dad wasn't home, so we made pancakes for dinner. Watched a movie," and fell asleep on the couch, side by side , "that- That's about it. It was cool, though." He warbles. "Neat."

Ranboo catches himself wrangling at the fluffy end of his tail.

A beam of morning light shines through the curtains, painting the room in a slight green tinge. The tiles underneath his feet are pleasantly warm. 

As his ma soundlessly jumps down from the counter, mug left in the safety of the fake marble, he thinks maybe there's no way he could have hid his anxiety from her in the first place. 

At full height she barely reaches his shoulders. His chest hurts with the pang of nostalgia, of the times he could curl himself up on her lap, with her arms safely around him as she read, and he'd be the safest boy in the whole wide world.

"Oh Ranboo…" she sighs now, pale hand reaching up to cradle his cheek. "Is everything okay?"

Ranboo leans into her warmth, closing his eyes.

"I'm just so… scared," he whispers into the sanctity of the kitchen. "Of hurting him."

Ma hums something sad then, a noise like a songbird longing, like winter breeze and saying goodbye. She hugs him. He reckons he could no longer fit on her lap.

"Beloved, it's okay to be scared. Especially when it comes to the ones you love. You don't want them to be in pain. That's okay."

"I don't know if- That's- If I -" his words disintegrate into a jumbled mess of sounds, too raw to be common, too crooked to make sense either way.

Ma draws circles into his back with her palm.

"Are you in love with that boy?" She asks, ever so gently.   

"No!" he startles, "I mean- Sorry I just… I'm not sure."

"There's no shame in it, dear, none at all. You're allowed to be in love with your friends. Relationships they… aren't as straightforward as people try to tell you."

The warmth subdues as she pulls away from the embrace. Her face looks no older than when he was a child; but then again, he isn't known to have the best memory, and her eyes do hide crow's feet now. If anything though, it just makes her look happier these days.

"Do you want to tell me what caused this?" she asks. 

Somewhere along the line, it must have been decided that Ranboo is in need of tea–correctly so–because she turns to rummage through the cabinets with practiced grace, pulling out leaves of chamomile, lavender, and a jar of honey. With one more jump, she takes out his mug: a painted thing covered with cats. 

Ranboo barely knows where to begin. 

"Well I uhm..," he tries and ma nods in support, "I- I woke up today and he was there. Next to me. Sleeping and holding my hand and his head was on my chest and I just- I was so- so- …afraid . I couldn't tell if I was still dreaming, if it was really happening or if I'd just gone completely mad. I'm scared that I'm being too much, but he's letting me do it and and -"

He stops for a second to fill his lungs, but the words continue pouring out of him like a broken dam.

"It's just, there's no line . Wasn't there supposed to be, like, a clear distinction between loving your friends and loving someone as a partner? But then we're sitting in a window and talking and it's raining like crazy and all I can think about is- is- " 

-is how much he wants to lean down and kiss him. 

The kitchen falls silent, except for ma's occasional chirps and the kettle about to boil over. A bird lands on the windowsill outside. She smiles, maybe a little too mischievous, and he knows that she understood exactly where his thoughts were going.

"And do you want to do it?"

Steam rolls out when she pours the water into the mug.

"I mean- I mean I would, given the chance, but it's also like, not pressing?" he asks, more than answers. "Like I don't need it to live, it's not that- I'd do it, if he asked me to kiss him I'd gladly do it. I- that would be nice, I think."

Ranboo has had crushes before. Sickly sweet, intoxicating liquor painting his thoughts in flowers and pink. They were always, without a fault, liminal. They made him feel like he was on a cliff looking down, and the adrenaline caused the fever, derailing all his thoughts. This is nothing like those times. This isn't a crush. 

This is someone coming back for him when he's lost in a field of barley and hairgrass, embracing him, taking him home without an ounce of judgment.

Ma strokes one of his arms where he's crossed them and he lets go with a heavy exhale.

"I don't know what I should do," he tells her at last.

She places his tea on the table beside him.

"You just have to follow his lead and trust him, love. You seem close. I'm certain that he'd tell you if you did something that made him uncomfortable."

It seems so trivial, mocking in its simplicity but he knows it's not, it's just the reality of things, stripped of his anxiety and nightmares. 

Follow his lead. He doesn't know any other way to be around Tubbo. And he wouldn't dream of knowing.

He gives her a hug, a fleeting one this time, a silent thank you.

"Oh yeah, ma," he remembers, and pulls out a warm fae stone out of his pocket. "Do you happen to have a spare chain I can borrow?" 

Ranboo, as he's found out, would follow Tubbo to the end of the world. That is his last and most terrifying truth.

They're on a roof. A straightforward way to be, uncomplicated for once, unlike everything else they do. It is a tradition to meet there at this point. Ranboo thinks the height does something peculiar to his brain, making him more focused and less aware of his surroundings.

Tubbo's reason is more simple: the roof is a free access to the vast night's sky.

The cosmos blinks at them from above. With light pollution, their view is obscured even dozens of feet above the ground, but the sentiment is breathtaking still, even with airplanes flying across planets and dead stars.

Lying on the roof is easier than Ranboo used to think. He's long since grown used to the chill of the tiles beneath his palms and the small of his back, learnt how to hitch his legs in the curves without breaking anything, without kicking out any windows on his way up. 

A flock of fireflies flutters around them.

He wonders about the constellations far away, the ones he cannot recognise to save his life. How they are stories intricately etched into the patchwork of space–by people who've long since turned to dust. How they're alive despite everything. What a wonderful thing it must be, to be immortalised in a star. To just watch. And be.

A voice startles him from his thoughts.

"You look so much more at ease now, at night," Tubbo mumbles next to him.

When Ranboo turns his head ever so slightly, he finds the other boy already looking his way, blinking lights reflected in his eyes. His ear flicks against the maple halo of hair.

"I do?"

"Yes. It's like you're glowing," he tells him. "Well, okay, I guess that's stupid. Your eyes are quite literally glowing."

Ranboo chirps involuntarily and Tubbo's eyes turn to crescents. He fakes his annoyance despite.

"Goddammit now the metaphor seems lame…"

A couple argues somewhere in the neighborhood, loud, violent. Possibly drunk. 

Ranboo smiles. "I… guess I am. It feels right, somehow. Like I was meant to bleed into the night from the very beginning."  

"Mmhmm. You would make a very good forest cryptid, I reckon. You're lanky and spiny enough for it. Or you could pretend to be a weeping willow, grow out your hair and shit, really sell it. Make a living out of scaring the local kids," Tubbo says.

His eyes land on the dark of Ranboo's skin, past the claws and scars and a finger long broken. 

He suddenly feels small beneath his scrutiny. 

The moon and the stars merely look on.

"Aren't you.. uncomfortable? With how I look? I mean I'm-"

"Nope," Tubbo pops his P and Ranboo snaps his jaw shut with a click. 

"You're wonderful, actually." 

Oh.

Easy like breathing. 

"Really scary sometimes, too, though I'd say that's part of the charm." He yawns, and his voice gets impossibly smaller, so faint that if he wasn't inches from his head, it'd be lost to the passing cars and shouting and television audible from the house next to this one.

"Kind of like angels," he confesses into the night. "You know how angels are usually depicted as these… little fellas with wings and robes and whatnot? When in reality, they're supposed to be a divine amalgamation, too complex for our minds to comprehend. All.. wings and eyes, halos and teeth and blinding light. And- and they are scary, but people still saw them and chose to worship them.

"I think you're kinda like that. You have this faint purple glow around you at times, like tiny glitches in reality all over your body, and it just makes absolutely no scientific sense to me, yet it's there. And your eyes also glow, because I guess someone, somewhere , has decided that you'll just look like a twilight miracle. And you do.

"But you also have the softest hair I've ever touched. And when you see something you like, your eyes get really, really round and your tail starts wagging and it's so fucking endearing. And I feel safe. And… And so, you're like angels, Ranboo." 

Tubbo's tiredness seeps into his laugh.

"Sorry, I lost my train of thought somewhere in there, I think."

He's like coming home. Like the hug of a dear friend you haven't seen in years, like lilac and petrichor, like a crude boy who just described you with so much care you might as well be the sky above.

"Thank you," he warbles, because those are the only words that don't feel like a confession of love.

Tubbo smiles at him from beneath the light of the moon. "You're good, bossman."

He lies on the rooftop of Tubbo's house. With cold ceramic beneath his palms and fireflies lining his arms, he watches the night sky and desperately tries to remember how to breathe.

Crickets sing in the grass along to the tune of the wind, languid and warm. 

"Hey, Ranboo?"

He hums in acknowledgement.

"What… What exactly caused that pale mark on your body, anyway? Is it like a discoloration?" Tubbo asks.

Ranboo has to scramble his memories for an answer. "I don't- I'm not really sure."

"It's- Mum told me it could be something with my chromosomes, since I'm a hybrid, she thinks that uh… That, like, basically, both of the genes are active at the same time. Which is why half of my body is just a completely different colour. Apparently that happens in some extremely rare cases."

Tubbo sits up then, as much as the roof and his own balance allows him. Ranboo follows his movements through the moonlight, catching the swing of the pebble around his neck, the flex of his arms as he works out where to lay his weight. He doesn't slip. 

"Well, I think it's very pretty," Tubbo mumbles.

When he looks down at Ranboo, the moon forms a halo around him. His palm rests just shy of Ranboo's shoulder. 

Ranboo breathes and thinks about how easy it would be to kiss him right now.

"Can I…?" The question is lost in the slight rise of Tubbo's other hand.

He has no idea what he's asking permission for. Ranboo nods all the same.

Tubbo raises his hand further up, above Ranboo's head, giving him enough time to make up his mind. When he doesn't, a few seconds pass, until a feather light touch on Ranboo's right horn startles him. The instinctive wince comes right after, and Tubbo immediately pulls his hand back like he's been burnt.

"Sorry-"

"It's okay! You're okay, it just… tickles," he croaks.

Tubbo's ear flicks again.

Then the finger on his horn is back, still just as careful, mapping a patch of iridescent white within the sea of black. Ranboo's world swims.

The sensation leaves for a heartbeat. 

Then with a swift brush of his bangs it reconnects at his hairline, a winding path down his forehead, around one of his eyebrows.

"It's warm," Tubbo remarks.

Ranboo's throat lets out a choked laugh. "No- no I think… That's just me. That's not the mark, my face is literally just warm."

Tubbo scoffs. "You're really ruining my fun here."

When he goes along the arch of his nose, Ranboo blinks his eyes closed for a second. 

It is warm. And so unbelievably pleasant.

He gets through his smile line to his lips, a flutter of cartography that finally, finally stills on the tip of his chin.

They breathe in.

Ranboo would kiss him if he asked. 

He lies there and watches Tubbo watch him.

And he is kind, 

and oh so beautiful,

And despite the anticipation humming beneath his skin, Ranboo understands. 

He knows Tubbo won't ask. 

And he's okay with it. He's okay with the way his heart is running amok, with the way his hands are shaking where he's grasping them in his lap.

Tubbo's smile is lenient. 

"You have a patch here that looks like a cloud, big guy," he tells him, like he's just discovered the eighth wonder of the world. He pokes him in the neck then, presumably to show him where exactly the spot is, so important that he knows and understands this, but it just causes Ranboo to laugh.

Then Tubbo's wheezing laughter joins in.

And Ranboo gently grasps this feeling in the palms of his hands. It flutters like a hummingbird, like pure rays of sunshine on a warm summer day. He takes it all and allows himself to feel.

I love you, he thinks, and it's one of the truths.

He doesn't remember how they get down from the roof, or when or why. He does remember mocking Tubbo for struggling with the key on the lock. 

He remembers falling asleep in Tubbo's childhood bedroom, underneath an old patchwork blanket with the other boy right besides him, holding his hand like a prayer.