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When Ranboo Beloved joins the Dream SMP for the first time, freshly launched on the campaign trail for the presidential election of L'manberg, he doesn't expect to be making friends with its president so quickly. Once he manages to find safety in the Holy Land for the first time, meeting several other server members, Tubbo meets him on the path. It's the first time they'd ever met in person.
His suit's too large. It makes him look smaller than he is, and he's already so much shorter than Ranboo.
Tubbo takes him on a tour of the server. It's larger than he'd heard, and seeing it firsthand is so much different than hearing stories. He finds himself with wide eyes, trying his best to crack jokes that barely land but leave Tubbo laughing regardless.
(Months later, laying on a snowy rooftop in the dark, Tubbo will admit to Ranboo that that was the first time he'd been treated like an actual kid in months, and it was genuinely the most relaxed he'd been since being put into the president's office.)
Ranboo moves into L'manberg, just as he'd planned. He's got a little house of his own next to Philza's, free for him to decorate however he wants. Tubbo stops in with a smile, dropping off some supplies to help him get started.
He's a good president. Maybe, Ranboo thinks, he could be an even better friend.
Slowly, L'manberg is rebuilt, from the crater Ranboo had first seen with scaffolding and houses scattered around the edges to somewhere that could genuinely be called home, a place with people and homes and walkways stretching across a newly filled lake.
(He doesn't know Tommy all that well, not yet, but looting George's house felt like a good way to get to know him at first. When the walls start going up around L'manberg, when the trial starts, when Ranboo watches as Tubbo is forced to make an impossible choice, he doesn't feel much but overwhelming guilt. He'll go visit Tommy. He'll make sure Tubbo has someone to keep him company.)
There aren't many people in L'manberg, despite the fact that it was an entire country of its own. Ranboo finds himself working his way up into President Tubbo's inner circle without even trying, being chosen first as his minutes man for Tommy's trial and then as a permanent cabinet member without a true title.
He doesn't really realize how close they've ended up until Tubbo shows up at his door one day, eyes red, and asks if he wants to do something together. They build a dome for bees in one of the open patches of land where once there was Old L'manberg. Tubbo likes bees, he knows, and building something would be a nice relaxing distraction for both of them.
Ranboo's pretty sure it's that day that gets Tubbo to finally let him in fully. Before long, he's getting roped into the Butcher Army, something so secret only three other people had known about it before.
(He doesn't like violence, he'd found. But he'd seen how stressed the thought of an attack from the outside made Tubbo some nights, had heard vague stories of what Technoblade had done. He was pretty sure Tubbo felt just as cornered as he did.)
Even through the disaster of the execution, even through the Festival and the nuclear doomsday that followed it, Tubbo never abandoned him, even though he could have done it easily the moment the word traitor left Dream's mouth. Ranboo would later hear directly from Tubbo that Quackity had wanted his execution, and Tubbo had been the one to stop it.
Even though they live in separate places now, the two of them make an effort to spend time together. It gets to the point where Ranboo's seriously considering having a separate home in Snowchester, because he starts to spend nights there instead of making the trek back to the Arctic for sleep.
(Ranboo's noticed Tubbo talking less to Tommy than he used to. They vanish off one day to fight Dream, and he remembers it's one of the few times he'd ever actually seen them together.)
For Valentine's Day, the two of them decide to joke around together instead of trying to do anything serious at all. They rescue Ranboo's piglin Michael from the nether, taking him back to Tubbo's place in Snowchester instead of trying to sneak him past Techno and Phil. They probably wouldn't exactly approve of him being such close friends with the ex-president of the country they blew up, after all.
(Snowchester feels more like home now.)
Sometimes the two of them just lay on the snowy roof of Tubbo's house, talking and staring up at the stars. They're so much brighter out in the snow than they were in L'manberg, blocked by light as they were.
"Eret's got a new tax law out," Tubbo says out of the blue one night. "People who are married don't have to pay."
It takes Ranboo a second, but he finally processes that. "Tubbo. Are you suggesting we commit marriage fraud?"
"Nope. I'm suggesting we get married."
Ranboo sits up, untucking his hands from under his head where they'd been acting as a pillow, and the look on his face must have shown his surprise because Tubbo laughs and gives him a cheeky grin. "Cmon, boss man. No taxes. And we could even say Michael's our son. Besides, I'd do it anyway. You're my friend."
"You'd-"
"Yep."
"Oh. "
"Yep."
They end up flipping a coin for who gets to propose. Ranboo gets it.
"There aren't any laws on any of this stuff on the server yet, are there? Couldn't we just... say we're married now? No ceremony or anything?"
"Pretty sure, yeah. Not like anyone's gonna check."
"So.... that's it, then."
If this is what home feels like, Ranboo never wants to leave. He's pretty sure spending time with Tubbo is the closest he'd ever gotten to home, anyway.