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He liked his best friend, and he hated himself for it. Why couldn't Ranboo be normal and just... like a girl, or something?
The smaller, angrier voice inside him wondered why people couldn't seem to imagine him and Tubbo as anything other than platonic.
"Ranboo," Tubbo had mentioned conversationally, "When you come to the UK, we're gonna dance to so many songs."
"Okay," Ranboo had replied softly, finding his lips curling up into a grin unintentionally- over the Discord call, the soft clicks of his fingers against his mouse and keys sounded like white noise.
"I don't even care if you don't dance," He had said, energy muddling his tone, fondness seeping through his words, "You're gonna partake in my silent dancing in the kitchen at 3AM."
The conversation had been days, no- weeks ago, but it still plagued Ranboo's mind whenever he found himself unable to go to bed, staring up into space. Music couldn't always work to help him to sleep- not when a whole private playlist of love songs was there, reminding him of the very reason he couldn't sleep.
The popcorn ceilings that were just a tad bit too low for him stared right back, until it felt like Ranboo had no other chance but to look away. Almost always, his eyes wandered to the door-
"Ranboo!" Tubbo's voice in his head was louder than any chorus that played through his earphones, mocking him for everything he wanted, but couldn't have (not yet, not until he could travel.) "Ranboo wake up! It's 3AM, boss man, we ought to dance!"
He looked away from the (notably closed) door, once more favouring the ceiling's ugly, white paint.
"My mushroom boy!" He heard Tubbo's bright, teasing voice again, and let out a groan into his pillows. Loving Is Easy began to play, and he let out an even louder groan- because no, loving was not easy, how dare you lie to him, Rex Orange County?
It wasn't fair.
It wasn't fair that Jack could drive 30 minutes and spend the day with Tommy, wasn't fair that Purpled could meet up with his friends and milk it for content, wasn't fair that it seemed like every streamer and their mothers were meeting up with each other, while Ranboo was stuck in some small, shitty town in America while his closest friend was hours away.
It was around 3AM for him, but Tubbo's timezone meant it was 8 in the morning- no way the boy was awake, let alone willing to muck around on Discord with Ranboo just because he couldn't seem to make his dumb mind shut up.
Ranboo snorted at the absurdity of the thought- imagined himself calling Tubbo for no reason, only to say the following:
"Hey, Tubbo! It's 3AM, but for some reason I can't think about anything other than all the weirdly intimate- but a hundred percent platonic and NOT queer- activities I've planned for when I can finally visit you! Haha! I'm listening to a whole playlist of mushy, gushy love songs because I'm a hopeless romantic and I think I might be in love with you, but maybe platonically! Not sure yet, not really! Anyways, how's TubNet going?"
Yeah, he'd definitely be hung up on, maybe even blocked because of how weird it was. (Tubbo likely wouldn't do either of the two, but Ranboo always liked to imagine the worst-case scenarios for some reason.)
Tubbo was someone Ranboo trusted, and he didn't want some... stupid feelings that he himself wasn't even sure about to change their friendship.
The whole thing was new to him, really- the most romance Ranboo had ever been personally exposed to was his sister getting a boyfriend, and if you wanted to get technical, roleplay could also be counted- as well as the numerous musicals he had seen online.
But expectations from books and songs and family members couldn't really be compared to the real thing, could they?
He had never really experienced an actual crush- sure, Ranboo had always managed to stumble across a few girls that were pretty, but they never really seemed to stick to his thoughts- sure, he could always find a couple guys on his volleyball team that were charming and well-built, but fantasizing a future with them never really felt right.
Ranboo loved love, but for the life of him, he could never find it for himself.
Well, at least, not until now.
Tubbo had consumed his waking days, with soft smiles and sassy quips, teasing greetings of "Hey sexy," that always made Ranboo positively flush.
For once, he could see someone to spend the rest of his life with. Sure, sometimes it involved Tommy, too, but Ranboo didn't mind. After all, Tubbo and Tommy, they were a force of nature, they were inseperable, and Ranboo learned to not get jealous over it.
And any future with Tubbo, in Ranboo's opinion, was a future worth longing for. Off stream, once, Tubbo had meekly mentioned that he was already looking for any small apartments the three could live in, after they all finished uni.
Was it a crush? Ranboo's stomach would be filled with moths and bees, and he would find himself instictively softening his tone whenever he spoke to him.
(And it hadn't gone unnoticed, how could it have gone unnoticed? People on Twitter had taken to calling it his 'Tubbo voice', and he cursed himself at how obvious he was.)
It was stupid of Ranboo to imagine living with Tubbo when he couldn't even visit the boy.
Stupid- stupid feelings, stupid crushes, stupid dreams, stupid heteronormativity on Twitter that pushed him into second guessing himself with every stream.
Slash p, slash p, slash p, platonic tone indicator. They were platonic in every sense of the word, obviously! Ranboo was weird to think otherwise! Platonic husbands, platonic soulmates, platonic partners, platonic streamers, platonic fucking... best friends. The word was thrown out ever other second, overuse making it feel like nothing but a weight on his shoulders.
The word was like lead in his mouth, and he couldn't get the taste out no matter what he did.
His gaze turned to the door again. He could already imagine the rapid pitter-patter of footsteps, and Tubbo's open-mouthed grin greeting him with bluetooth earphones in hand and plans to slow dance to Rex Orange County or Frank Sinatra in the kitchen.
'Platonically, obviously,' Ranboo chastised himself, the thoughts of pressing lips against lips immediately being written over with the thundering piano riffs of the Merry-Go-Round of Life... which was annoyingly enough, a great song to picture himself dancing with Tubbo to.
"Whatever," He muttered, "It's stupid, anyway."
But as he curled in on himself, his heavy weighted blanket wrapped around him, he couldn't help wondering if Tubbo felt the same.
(Later, at around 9 in the morning, he woke up to see that Tubbo had changed his Discord status from Do Not Disturb to Online, and Ranboo grinned without even realizing.)