Chapter Text
Snowchester was hit by a blizzard that night. The icy winds ripped through the little commune, blowing pine needles off of spruce and cedar trees, and forcing everyone to stay indoors, away from the below-zero temperatures freezing the landscape around them. The little cabins along the shore shook with the force of the winds, high pitched whistles shrieking down their chimneys and into the houses.
It woke Tubbo up, it always did. He was already a bit of a light sleeper, and the storms never helped. Rolling over in bed, he saw Ranboo asleep. No jewelry, no fancy clothes, just a big baggy T-shirt and too-short sweatpants, body curled around his small piglin son like a dragon. It was rare to see him here at night; usually he would leave before dark, heading back to an entirely different snowy tundra to his own home.
But the storm prevented it, and thus he was sleeping with Tubbo and their son, who was surprisingly never awoken by the loud winds. Maybe the shrieking of the Nether caused the snowstorms to sound simply like white noise. Or maybe just being with his dads was enough to keep him feeling safe.
Sitting up, Tubbo pulled on the thick sweater thrown over the foot of the bed. Once he woke up, there was no going back to sleep. May as well get some work done.
He stepped down the ladder to the bottom floor, lighting a lantern hanging by the wall as he went. The house smelled like mesquite smoke and balsam from the now-smoldering fire in the fireplace. Teeth slightly chattering, Tubbo pulled the fire-poker out of its holster by the mantle, and stoked the flames back to life a tad. His hands felt icy, and the cold metal of the poker didn’t help it. But once he added more kindling, and the flames caught, he could set it aside and slowly feel the room warm up. His hooves lightly clacked against the wood floors as he headed to his back room.
Tubbo knew that it wasn't uncommon for people to find him there. Staying up into the wee hours of the morning, hunched over, drawing out blueprints for complicated buildings; walls littered with traps or slime block elevators for nuclear test facilities. It was soothing to get wrapped up in 90 degree angles and protractors and chemical compositions. If he focused on his projects, then he felt better. If he focused on the projects, his face wouldn’t feel itchy or tight, and his hands would stay steady if bracing a ruler against a gridded paper.
But his focus was broken by the sound of a door creaking open behind him. “Ranboo? Why are you up right now, it’s like four in the morning?” Tubbo asked, turning away from his redstone machine he was tinkering with. He knew it was Ranboo; his ears were trained to pick up the differences in people's footsteps. Ranboo was extremely light, his strange anatomy making him hardly weigh a thing despite his height. Speaking of heights, Ranboo was hunched over more than usual, seemingly almost unable to fit in the back room of his cabin.
Tubbo thinks for a moment that if this were the mansion one hundred feet away from him, maybe Ranboo wouldn’t have to crouch over.
“I could ask you the same,” Ranboo muttered, his static-ridden voice speaking in that language Tubbo didn’t know. His husband’s eyes were a brilliant purple, and they seemed to be staring directly at him, though not in his eyes, but right between them. A sort of faux eye contact. “I had a nightmare, so I woke up.”
“Boss man, I’ll be honest, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.” Tubbo watched his husband’s ears drop, and they walked closer, sitting down on the floor next to Tubbo. At their current height, sitting on the floor put them at eye-level with Tubbo, still sat in his chair. Ranboo’s eyes grazed over the blueprints, and Tubbo could feel that they possibly understood a bit of it for once.
“You’re missing a piston here,” Ranboo said, pointing at part of his circuit plans. Tubbo followed his finger, seeing a missing piston, a comparator put in its place. He quickly erased it, and drew in the piston.
“Thanks. How do you know about this? I thought you weren’t big into redstone?” he asked. Ranboo usually liked to watch Tubbo work, handing him bags of dust or torches whenever he needed them. So seeing him pinpoint an exact part of his machine blueprints that needed fixing was… jarring.
“I used to read a lot about it. Never did much with it though. I can help you at least,” Ranboo replied. Tubbo sighed, running a hand through his bangs, which bounced directly back down almost over his eyes.
“Ranboo, can you not talk in Common at all right now?” he asked.
Ranboo shook his head. “Too foreign in my mouth. Once I have my memory back permanently, I'll be able to speak in both perfectly.” Tubbo poked him on the nose, and he scrunched it up in response. “Knock that off!” He lightly screeched, swatting Tubbo’s hand away from his face.
“Sorry, can’t understand you. Did you say to poke you again?” Tubbo grinned, jabbing his finger into Ranboo’s forehead.
“Ow!”
“Sucks to be you. You should teach me your fancy Enderman words so I can understand you,” he said, turning to add a few more lines of redstone leading into a dropper clock.
“You remind me of my sister.” Tubbo turned away from his work again to see Ranboo smiling in a melancholic way. “She was always good with the mechanical stuff like you are. She could even work an Elytra, haha. I was never any good with that.”
Ranboo looked a little distant. Whatever they were saying, Tubbo felt that it was very personal. “Yeah?” he replied dumbly, not really knowing what to say since he couldn’t understand.
“You would have liked her. I wish you could have met her,” he said, his smile crinkling his purple eyes even more. Tubbo put his protractor and isograph pen down, turning to face his husband fully. The difference in what their eyes held was astonishing. When they got like this, the years of information lost were suddenly shown in dimly glowing violet. “I miss them a lot, Tubbo. Like... It's strange, right? Even when I dont have my memories, and I'm wandering around aimlessly, I still find myself missing them. Do you know what I mean?”
“I…” What was Tubbo supposed to do here? He couldn’t understand a word Ranboo was saying, and he was definitely acting differently. “Is there a way you can write this down or something? So that I can at least know what you’re talking about?”
Ranboo paused for a bit. Tubbo watched his eyes almost glaze over a tad, contemplating something in his mind. It was like he was fighting internally with himself. Eyes flicking back and forth, he mumbled in Ender under his breath. Finally, he grabbed the isograph pen from Tubbo’s desk. On an empty page of his journal, he began writing. It was probably because he was so much bigger than normal, but the pen was much too small for his hand, making his handwriting sloppier.
‘I want to tell you, but I can’t.’
Staring down at the words, Tubbo sighed. Of course there was another roadblock in understanding him. This couldn’t just be easy, could it?
“Okay big man, I get it. Translations don’t work and all that,” Tubbo guessed.
“No, that’s not why- nevermind,” Ranboo sighed, exasperated.
Tubbo stared at the sloppy words again. “What can you tell me, Ranboo?” The Enderman didn’t hesitate for a moment, picking up the pen again, and writing in near chicken-scratch:
‘I care about you and Michael still.’
Tubbo’s breath hitched in his throat. Something that… intense was not what he was expecting. But Tubbo did what he did best: joke about it.
“Ha ha, I would sure hope so! Otherwise I’m kicking you out into this blizzard. Divorce is imminent-“ his attempt to brush off the vulnerability were knocked out from under him when Ranboo’s massive clawed paw-like hands reached over and held his face.
“I do, I do care. And I need you to know it. I’m going to keep you both safe. Hell, even Tommy. I’m going to keep you safe. I’m not going to lose the people I care about again.” He rubbed his thumbs over the scar tissue hidden by Tubbo’s bangs. “I’m going to protect you. I don’t care what it is I have to do. I’ll do it.” Ranboo pushed his hands upwards, pulling Tubbo’s hair from his eyes, looking directly in them, knocking the breath clean out of Tubbo’s lungs.
If Tubbo was honest, he tried to keep eye contact to a minimum with Ranboo, even though they were comfortable around him. He just thought it was a nice gesture.
But that also meant he hardly ever saw his husband up close, never really studied his face like he could now. Little dots peppered his face like freckles or stars, but Tubbo knew they were scars from the rain. His cheeks had two long stripes carving their way down, formed from tears like erosion creating a canyon. He had long eyelashes, and the purple of his eyes looked like it swirled like a Nether portal. His ears had notches in them from jewelry being ripped out while exploring or fighting, and his horns had tiny little cracks, hidden by rings of gold and silver.
He watched their hair shift as they turned to write something else on the paper, one of their hands leaving his face. Tubbo’s face felt cold without the paws against his cheeks. Their paw once more gripped the isograph pen, trying to make it legible. When they were done, they turned his head with the hand still pressed to his face.
‘Come back to bed.’
Tubbo sighed. He really should. The bags under his eyes from his sleepless nights- nearly every night- weighed heavy on his face. It was like acknowledging the thought of sleep reminded his body of how tired he was. He nodded, reaching up to hold the massive paw cradling his face. “Okay.”
It shouldn’t have been surprising how easily Ranboo picked Tubbo up into his arms. The Enderman carried around giant axes and went out for hours mining just for fun. And yet Tubbo’s eyes widened as he was hoisted into the air, held against his chest like he was moving Enderchest away from their food, as he did some nights. Tubbo sunk deep into the embrace, large sweater acting as a blanket. He heard Ranboo talking again.
“My moms were always really caring, too. Mother was always more serious, though, than Mom was. But Mother also was the one I went to when I cried. Mom didn’t know how to help me. She couldn’t touch my face because it would hurt her.” They spoke as if they were telling a bedtime story, carrying him back up into the bedroom, turning out the lantern as they went. Setting Tubbo on the edge of the bed, hooves dangling off, they lifted his arms slightly. Tubbo got the hint, and let Ranboo pull what would soon become an incredibly suffocating and stuffy sweater off of him, leaving him in his T-shirt and shorts. Tubbo always had trouble with long pants ever since the hooves and horns and floppy ears started appearing. Luckily, at least the fur kept him warm, cancelling out the cons of the digitigrade anatomy.
“When I was a kid, I actually used to cry more than I do now, which is funny,” Ranboo continued, static-y warbling strangely soothing on his ears. Tubbo flopped down onto his pillow, forgetting Michael was asleep still right behind him. He winced, hoping the little pig wasn’t awoken by him jostling the bed. Ranboo pressed their nose against his forehead. “You’re fine,” he muttered. Tubbo didn’t know what that meant. It sounded reassuring, though.
“Ranboo?” Tubbo spoke up, rolling over to face them as Ranboo climbed back under the covers. A chirp in response. “......keep talking. Even though I, well, have no idea what you’re saying.” He didn’t even know what he himself was saying anymore. Something about Ranboo always helped him sleep during those nights where he couldn’t. Ranboo smiled burying himself under the covers, letting Michael curl up against him, little head tilted and shoved into the crook of his neck.
“Uhm, in that case. I remember fleeing the End. Mom and Mother came through the portal as well, but we ended up in different places. Something about spawning coordinates or something, I don’t know. But, well, I’ve been trying to find either of them ever since I joined the server. It’s one of the reasons I mine so much… one of the reasons I’m gone all the time.” he huffed a very quiet laugh. “The diamonds and iron and… all that other stuff was just a bonus.”
Tubbo felt his eyes shut, like a bag of pie weights keeping dough from rising. He felt those long claws in his hair again. They caught on his horns every now and then, and Tubbo still found it strange how the horns had nerves in them. He never knew that animals like cows or sheep could actually feel things in them, until he had a pair himself. But it wasn’t bad. Ranboo was the gentlest soul on the entire server in Tubbo’s opinion. Hurting Tubbo was the least of their priorities at the moment.
“Thanks Ranboo,” he mumbled, feeling sleep wash over him like a tidal wave. He fell asleep to the sound of the howling winds outside, and Ranboo’s unintelligible words rumbling in his ears like distant thunder during a calm storm.
When Tubbo awoke the next morning, Ranboo wasn’t there. He almost thought that Ranboo had decided to leave first thing in the morning, leaving Tubbo by himself again, but Michael was also not present.
He rolled over, seeing the curtains of their bedroom open, revealing a beautiful fresh layer of snow; at least 3 feet of it.
“Damn, that was a fucking blizzard, alright,” he grumbled. Tubbo pulled the covers back, and pulled on the same sweater, heading downstairs.
Ranboo was fussing over Michael, who was attempting to help them with breakfast. His little hooved hands gripped the whisk, trying to beat a bowl of eggs. Ranboo had his arms out, nervously waiting to see if the bowl would stay in his small arms.
“There we go, that’s it! You got it, Michael, yeaaaah!”
That was Common, not Ender. So he was out of his weird state, then. Ranboo looked up, noticing him, and their ears twitched upward, a smile plastered across their face. “Morning Tubbo! Look at Michael, he’s doing such a good job!”
Michael held up the bowl to Ranboo, who took it carefully, and set it back on the counter, grabbing for the salt and pepper. The little piglin ran over to his dad.
“I helped,” he said, a proud grin on his face, small tusks causing a bit of a lisp in his speech. “Boo said there was a storm! With snow and…. ice!”
Tubbo ruffled his hair. “Sure was. After we eat, you want to go run around in it?”
Michael squealed. “Yes!”
“Okay,” Ranboo said. “Food first, though. All your hard work would go to waste, otherwise.” they winked at Michael.
“Yeah!”
As breakfast made its way onto the table, Tubbo finally spoke up. “Hey Ranboo? What was all that last night?” he asked.
Ranboo looked at him, perplexed. “Last night? You mean beforehand when we watched a movie, or-?”
“No, no, the- uhm- the stuff you said in your weird Enderman language last night at like four.”
Their eyes widened, ears dropping. “I did what?”
“Do you really not remember?” Tubbo asked. He would have thought maybe because it was such a short amount of time ago that maybe Ranboo would have still retained it. Possibly. Maybe. He wasn’t a brain doctor. “You were talking to me in it for a while, and you wrote some stuff down so I could understand.” That’s when he remembered. “Oh yeah, it should be in your notebook.”
He watched the Enderman scramble frantically for it, pulling the book out of it’s holster on their side where it remained at all times. They flipped to the latest page, pupils tiny slits.
“No,” he mumbled. “No, I- I don’t remember writing these down.”
Tubbo frowned. There were so many questions he had. He wanted to know what Ranboo was trying to tell him. It sounded personal; it sounded important; it sounded like more than Tubbo would ever share himself. But his husband couldn’t remember. And that was okay. One day, maybe Ranboo would remember, or be able to tell him when he was in his weird sleepwalking state.
“It’s no big deal, Boss Man.” Tubbo waved a hand, shoveling the rest of his food in his mouth, before standing. “Okay, Michael. Ready to go play in the snow?”
Michael let out another hog squeal, pumping his fist excitedly. Tubbo looked at Ranboo, smiling with his eyes. They’d put it on the backburner. They’d talk about it later.
Probably.