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“So…why was this movie made?” Ranboo asked, looking at everyone curiously as they all settled down across the various couches and beanbags and the pillow fort in the main room. “I know it’s not exactly historically accurate, considering someone mentioned a happy ending.”
Gasping, Bad looked around. “Who spoiled it?”
Holding up his phone, Ranboo replied, “I don’t like movies with gay main characters where one of them dies in the end.”
“Good point.” Tipping his head to the side, Tommy flopped down beside him and rested his head against Ranboo’s shoulder and Tubbo did the same on Ranboo’s other side. Staring forwards, Ranboo paused and spoke quietly.
“I have been chosen as a headrest.”
“You’re a very comfortable headrest.” Tubbo mumbled, leaning into him more. Tipping his head to the side, Ranboo curled into his friends and Eret threw a blanket over them all. “Thanks, Eret.”
Pog clambered up and Tommy pulled her down so that he was between her and Ranboo. “Hey, babygirl. Who’s a good girl?” Rubbing the dog’s ears, Tommy leaned over and gave her little kisses. Smiling, Tubbo and Ranboo shared a quick glance.
“Give her a hug for me.” Ranboo said, and Tommy grinned before hugging Pog with a nod. Staring over with a look somewhere between discomfort and absolute love, Pog sat there patiently until Tommy leaned back. “Thank you.”
“No problem. She gets hugs.” Tommy played with Pog a little bit more, and then the dog bolted off before coming back and jumping up next to him. “Do you have the zoomies, babygirl? Yea? Do you have the zoomies?” Laughing, he watched her race along. “I love her so much.”
“You better. She’s helping keeping you from pass out when you can’t read your blood sugar.”
“Hey! That’s not all she does!”
Ranboo paused and looked over. “Huh. That’s cool.”
“Okay, before we get there,” Wilbur waved his hands and indicated the movie screen, “It’s beginning.”
Everyone settled down and Techno half-slammed, half-placed a bucket of popcorn mixed with a whole ton of things in Ranboo’s lap. Glancing up, he met Techno’s gaze. “MnMs, chocolate chips, marshmallows, chocolate drizzle, and there’s also some pretzels in there.” He warned, striding over and then spinning around right as he got to the chair and then draping himself over it like a goth over an overhead luggage compartment of some form of public transport.
On screen, the credits of the people who’d made it flashed by. Ranboo turned, watched as the golden cursive faded and the black screen slowly transitioned into a panning shot of some woods. If he had to guess, probably somewhere in one of the big filming servers, they had a lot of…well, everything they could. Massive cities, larger biomes designed specifically for filming, all of that. Some of the best of the best worked there, although every once in a while there would be a scandal (he remembered Dream and some of the older guys, Phil and Techno and Wilbur and Bad, chatting about something called Yandere. He hadn’t wanted to look it up, and apparently it was some sort of horror show or something? Either way, it went pretty horribly wrong. One of the guys was in prison, another was exceptionally hard to contact, and he was pretty sure the third one had to change his identity completely in order to fully get away).
The scene switched to inside a little cabin, where an older man was looking over a picture book as a woman with blond hair, presumably his daughter, bustled in a kid with her hair colour and brown eyes. “Sorry for dropping them on you all of a sudden, but we really have to go.”
“No worries, sweetheart.” He mused, glancing up. The kid dropped down with a grumpy expression, and Ranboo felt Tommy stretching next to him and shifting to pet Pog some more.
“This is a good movie. My favourite character is the youngest pilot.”
“Of course he is,” Wilbur chuckled, rolling his eyes, “His name is Tommy, he’s blond, and he acts like you.”
“Exactly! The best young man I’ve met.” Tommy replied, barking out a laugh while Wilbur rolled his eyes and they all turned back to the screen. There, the old man was showing his grandkid some old pictures. One of them included a group of people dressed in WWII pilot’s gear, arms slung over each other’s shoulders and grinning like crazy. “Whoo! There he is! There’s my boy.”
Chuckling, Ranboo coiled his tail up a little bit, and Tubbo leaned into him a bit more. Onscreen, the kid and grandkid were giving more exposition about who they were, and Ranboo yawned before grabbing a blanket with his tail. “Oh, don’t fall asleep yet. You’ll miss the good part.”
“He won’t be able to hear the good part if you two keep talking over it.” Phil chided, and Tubbo and Tommy both grinned sheepishly. Crossing his arms just to get them out of the way, Ranboo watched as a plane appeared onscreen.
“That’s a B-24, just so you know.” Everyone looked to Bad, who shrugged. “What? I used to be into warplanes.”
“Right, before you got into throwing knives and shooting competitions.” Skeppy mused casually, flipping the page of the book he was ready.
“Wait, what?” Ranboo asked, but then the kid onscreen started talking, pointing at people in the picture.
“Is that you and Grandpa?” A soft voice asked, and there was a huff.
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me about him?”
“Sure.” There was a moment’s pause, and the bomber was flying over the ocean again. “Your…your grandpa was one of the best men I’d ever met. Very brave, and very strong. He gave me my nickname.” There was a rise in music, and distantly Ranboo heard the kid ask where they met. With another laugh, the grandfather said, “I met him on Christmas Eve, on a trip with my best friend Nick. We were moving around the States, on a bit of a trip after graduating, and we ended up in this bar called the Rockslide Bar, in Flight’s Creek.”
“Flight’s Creek?”
“Okay, I met him up in Delaware in 1937, he was wearing red lipstick that matched his pretty vest—”
“Your girl was wearing a vest?” Another voice chimed in, one that sounded slightly older. The clouds shifted in, and the screen went dark for a moment. Soft guitar tones rang through the speakers. They slowly shifted into the sound of a propellor spinning, wind running through clouds.
“Shut up.” There was a cut to a young man sitting at the controls of a plane, a sly grin on his face. Beside him, sitting in the cockpit, was a young man that kind of reminded Ranboo of Wilbur.
“Come on. Tell us more about this girl.” There was a particular kind of look to his grin, like he knew something no one else spoke about. “What was her name?”
“I never got a name. Nurse. British exchange student.” Some of the other guys tossed laughs to one another, and there was a cut to a man who looked remarkably like George working at a station, organising bandages. “Sweet person. It was a Christmas Eve party, and this was ’37. Before the war.”
Ranboo watched calmly. Then, gunfire split the air, firing off like lightning to shatter the sky. It struck the plane, and there was a scream.
“Tell me more.” The kid’s voice asked. The screen switched, this time to the blond pilot struggling with the controls. His friend was slumped over in the seat beside him, and there was commotion in the background. One of the men was trying to focus the guns on their enemy, and fear split his face for a second as the plane came onscreen again. Within a moment, there was another shot fired off.
“What do you want to know?” The nurse was rushing through the halls, a gurney beside him, shouting about something. Beside him, on the gurney, was the young blond from earlier, blood spattering the side of his neck and face and eyes half-closed. The screen cut to the rest of the group, blood-spattered and bandaged and bruised staring after them.
“Everything.” Pink light drifted down over two men dancing in a bar, one of them the nurse from earlier with bright red lipstick and a matching vest on. A white button-up shirt with rolled sleeves clung to his shoulders and he smiled softly up at the pilot, who was holding onto him.
“What’s your name?” The pilot asked, tilting his head to the side softly. Both of them looked up to see the mistletoe above them.
The scene switched again, this time to them in New York and looking across at one another with wide eyes. Running over, the pilot ran to the nurse, and that was when everything kept switching between the pair leaning in to kiss one another (at least, that was what Ranboo thought they were doing).
Right as they were about to kiss, the title and then all the other information flashed across the screen.
Grabbing the pillow closest to him, Sapnap yeeted it onto the ground and yelled, “Damnit—"
“Language!”
“It gets me every time!”
“Hold on, that was the end of the preview?” Looking around, Ranboo looked ahead. “Why did we watch that before the movie? Aren’t we putting it on in a second? Why—what—” Running his hands up into his hair, Ranboo said, “I—why? I have so many questions?”
“Let’s put on the movie!” Tommy yelled, and everyone let out affirming noises themselves.
Getting up, Techno set down his book to put it in. “Yo, Tech, what are you reading? Another book about Greek mythology?”
“A bunch of kids get yeeted into another universe and have to beat a dragon to get back home and there are lesbians who use magic. It’s fun.” Techno replied, kneeling down to set everything up. Meanwhile, Eret put even more popcorn in Ranboo’s lap. As if they needed more popcorn.
Actually, considering the fact that it was Ranboo, Tommy, and Tubbo sitting together with food and the last time that happened things had been interesting…they probably did.