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Ranboo was a hopeless romantic. He always was. He didn't have a name for it until he was around 13 years old and made his first foray onto tumblr, but it had always been there.
He had been 10 years old and bored at the library, and wandered into the poetry section and pulled a book from the shelf at random. It was entitled Love: poems. He flipped through it, and landed on a page where he read the lines, "I live, watching you, loving you. Being in love is my nature." It was something Ranboo had always known, somehow, and he didn't really know how he knew it, but it felt right. Being in love was his nature, wasn't it? It was.
He hadn't really been a sensitive kid, but when he hit puberty, something happened, and he had a lot more appreciation for little things. Time passed more quickly now, and he found himself with a pang in his heart every time he was aware of it. If you knew him well, you might be able to see it happen. He walked with a friend to the park and laid in the grass with her, and laughed out loud during a lull in conversation. He sat on the train with his younger brother and grinned a little, hearing him complain about homework. Most of his peers couldn't recognize it, but older family members would sometimes smile wistfully and remark on how much he had matured emotionally since the last time he saw them. He had, really. Sometime recently he had experienced an emotional growth spurt, getting an early start to gaining a grasp on what was going on inside.
One of the most important things during that time was when he saw Rent. Ranboo's older sister brought him into her room and played her favorite movie, one that she had finally deemed Ranboo old enough to watch. His sister sang joyfully on some of the numbers, and cried at others, but Ranboo sat on her bed clutching a pillow in his arms, barely speaking or moving his eyes away. Something about it resonated in his core. He watched, enraptured, at Mimi dancing in the club, at Roger's sad song of his lost love, and Maureen's oddball performance of 'Over the Moon'. It was at the end of the second half of La Vie Boheme that he heard the line "to people living with, living with, living with- not dying from disease!" that his heart ached a bit, and he held on tighter to the fluffy pillow. He held his sister's shaking hand when Tom sang 'I'll Cover You' when Angel died. At the end, when they sang the finale, with everyone joining in to sing confidently, while still holding the strong grief in their voices, Ranboo found himself gripping the pillow, with tears streaming down his face.
His sister gave him the CD version, and he listened to it on repeat constantly. He wrote down the line "to people living with, living with, living with- not dying from disease" on a piece of paper that he kept pinned to his bulletin board above his desk. He didn't know why it meant so much to him, but since his only knowledge of the AIDS epidemic was from a 3 minute long video in health class, he decides to do research. He reads wikipedia and decides that he'll look a little further, and emotionally prepares himself first. He cries despite trying to stop himself. He doesn't know what he's mourning, but it feels like an important part of him. The next week he joins the GSA at his middle school.
Ranboo had never had a crush. Not on a girl, not on a boy, not on anyone. His dives into tumblr and the GSA teach him about more labels, including asexuality, and he ponders that for a while. He eventually decides against it, not feeling the need to label himself just yet. He's only 14 years old. It's not necessary.
In the first semester of his freshman year of high school, he meets a person named Cynthia who talks about books and has short hair and glasses and sings a lot and listens to Lemon Demon, and she teaches him about how she feels gender-nonconforming, and dresses androgynously and femininely and masculinely and loves it all. Ranboo falls for her a little, and he admires how she's so fluid, and he is struck by how androgyny is just so damn attractive . Girls who are masculine and boys who are feminine, and feminine girls who smell like strawberries and masculine boys who have deep voices. Oh.
He comes out as bisexual to the other kids in GSA, and they welcome him with open arms, that same girl laughing at him, because she "totally could tell already". The next time his phone case breaks, he gets a new one that's clear, and blushes bright red when he realizes he's just played into stereotypes he wasn't even aware of. That summer, his sister is home from college, and she gives him a knowing look when he sings Sweater Weather under his breath, but then shows him a picture of her dorm room, where she has a bi pride flag hanging above a collection of Rainbow Rowell books.
Ranboo comes out to his parents when he's 15, and his parents nod approvingly and remark on how it runs in the family, mentioning out of the blue how his dad had a boyfriend in college. Ranboo nearly chokes on his glass of water. His younger brother teases him about the fact that he likes boys and girls and is still alone, and Ranboo locks him out of the bathroom for an hour.
Ranboo takes his newfound appreciation for all the love and beauty that people have to offer and ends up stuck inside because of covid right before his sixteenth birthday. He reads love poetry and writes letters to Cynthia, who has moved away. He doesn't know why he feels so empty and so full at the same time. The world is so beautiful and wonderful, he thinks. He is sad and angry and disappointed and in love, madly in love with the idea of someone being with him. He reads stories where people recognize the beauty all around them, and wonders why people are so wonderful and tragic. He spends time on discord and adores the way people change their statuses to little things that matter to them. He collects lists of things he loves about people and sends them to his sister. She has some nice talks with him, and they're different in their hopeless romanticism, but alike. His sister puts all of her love for the universe into songs, writing music that she has showed Ranboo a few times before. Ranboo takes everything he loves and writes it down, stumbling over the lines, just trying to express some of what he feels so deeply.
He's pent up and angry at the world and wants to do something, to hug people, to hold someone in his arms and kiss their cheek. Ranboo is lonely, a bit, and he wants to communicate to someone out there. He wants a connection, any form of connection. He longs for it. He starts making Minecraft videos, something he's tried to do before but never had time to. Well. Now he's gonna do it. He streams, and records videos, and laughs about his height on tiktok, and he does well, and all of the sudden he has people watching him do something. He feels determined to make it count.
Ranboo meets Tubbo, and it's his first crush on a guy, and his second crush ever, and oh . This is what people are talking about when they talk about love. In Ranboo's defense, he's been very lonely and is a very emotional person, so it's not his fault that he falls for Tubbo, hard . Ranboo's heart has been bursting with affection, and it spills out on Tubbo. His sister sends him a book called Red White and Royal Blue with the promise that he'll like it, and he does. He finds it unfairly similar to his current situation, being a bisexual American boy crushing on a British one from across the ocean.
Tubbo's giggly laugh and sleepy voice at night and weird obsession with South Park all make him kryptonite to Ranboo. Tubbo speaks, whispers, "hey sexy", and Ranboo positively melts. He dreams at night of twirling with him under the stars, and doesn't think he's ever woken up so happy. Blissful hours pass, as they watch The Office together and Ranboo treasures the memory of Tubbo's surprised little snort when Ranboo explains what "that's what she said" means. Ranboo is so in love with him.
He's in love with everything, really. Being in love is his nature.