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“Fuck off, dickhead! Go on then, go on! Shoot me! Shoo-”
Tubbo was never the best at self-preservation.
The thought is wry, swimming to the surface from childhood memories of falling over and tripping their way through rockpools as kids. It’s fond. This doesn’t stop Ranboo from gasping and pressing his hand to his mouth as he hears the BANG. His eyes are wet under his sunglasses.
Nathan is freaking out, and Ranboo is freaking out, and he has to fight for breath as he holds his hand out and bends reality in the boys bathroom. For Tubbo.
-
“Holy shit, get in!”
“Tubs!”
“Go! Go on, get out of-” Warren takes another blow to the face, and Ranboo casts one last look at him before scrambling to get into the passenger seat, fumbling with his seatbelt as Tubbo floors it.
Ranboo knows he probably looks like a scared animal, he knows, long limbs wrapped around each other and cramped in such a tiny space, but he can’t really bring himself to care. Because Tubbo is here, sitting next to him, in a truck- holy cow. He should be breathing into a paper bag or something.
“So you’re back in-“
“You dyed your- ”
Both of them try to talk at the same time, and the clash of words is awkward. Tubbo’s terrible driving throws them left and right in their seats, but even that isn’t enough to distract from the awkward silence which hangs over them like a cliff’s face.
“You’re back in Arcadia Bay,” Tubbo repeats, too sweet to be genuine. “Nice of you to let me know.”
Ranboo swallows, wishing he could shrink in his seat.
“Yeah. I, um. I was going to visit you.” He really was. He was.
“Were you, now.”
Tubbo doesn’t sound like he believes him, and Ranboo can’t blame him. He really went ghost on him. He’s been…
“I know, I was a- a bad friend.”
Tubbo sighs, and his knuckles are white from how tightly he’s gripping the wheel.
“Yeah. You kinda were,” he agrees, glancing from the road to Ranboo’s face and back again. “But I was too. It’s… good to see you again, bossman.”
Ranboo’s face heats up at the attention, and he fiddles nervously with his camera in his lap. Or, the remnants of it, at least. God damn it.
“I’m,” between breaths, he can still see Tubbo’s body on the boys’ bathroom floor. “I’m so happy to see you, Tubbo.”
And because that’s still too raw, and he’s speaking to his best friend for the first time in five years;
“I like the hair.”
Tubbo smiles, and though he still looks tense (he’s looked tense every time he’s seen him today,) his grip on the steering wheel is no longer quite so crushing.
“Yeah, I’m quirky, little quirky blue haired boy!” he sing-songs, shaking out his hair as if to show off the patchy blue streaks and fringe, having to blow his fringe out of his eyes when he’s done. He looks pleased with himself. “Tommy went red, so we could match.”
“Tommy? Like- like Tom Innit?”
Tubbo puffs his cheeks out, drumming his fingers anxiously against the steering wheel. For a moment, he had forgotten he was missing. Again.
“He was Tommy to me. Is. He’s still out there, and I swear to god, I’m gonna kick him in the dick when I see him, for worrying everyone like he has.”
Ranboo nods, turning back so he’s facing the road again.
“Right, right.”
He’s not about to burst his bubble.
-
“Dude, you have fucking superpowers!”
“Shh!” Ranboo hisses out, firmly holding his hand over the bluenette’s mouth. “Don’t tell the whole world!”
Tubbo licks his hand, and uses Ranboo pulling away in disgust as a chance to speak.
“Why not! Dude, you could take over the world with something like this, you could fucking- kill the president, or rob a bank, or-”
“Or help people, maybe?” Ranboo reminds him, glaring at the manic spark which has ignited in Tubbo’s eyes.
Tubbo blows a raspberry at his chiding tone, rolling his eyes and sliding further down in his seat.
“That too, I guess.”
“Mhm, you guess.”
Tubbo fails to hide the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, made more obvious as he tangles his legs with Ranboo’s under the diner table.
“See, that’s why you’re the one with the powers, big guy. That moral compass of yours.”
“Mhm, mhm. What does that make you? My sidekick?”
Tubbo leans over the table, all bright eyes and evil grin.
“Yep! Or the guy in the chair- like, the cool hacker dude. I’m a hacker now.”
“You hack in Minecraft, dude, I don’t think- ”
“Transferrable skills!” Tubbo insists, and Ranboo has to cover his mouth to hide his laughter.
-
“You never smoked before, big man?”
“Uh- no? Dude, I’m a scholarship kid, what did you expect?”
Tubbo grins and shrugs, smoke curling out of his nostrils and between the gaps in his teeth. He looks devious.
“You were always such a swot, lol.”
Ranboo silently forgives Tubbo for saying “lol” out loud, for the hundredth time.
“…Wanna try?”
Ranboo looks Tubbo up and down, from his relaxed pose, to his easy smirk, to the blunt held lazily in his left hand. The light of the setting sun makes him look soft. He hopes the heat rising in his cheeks isn’t noticeable.
“Um.” He shuffles forward, the old bed creaking under his weight as he does so. “Show me how?”
Tubbo giggles, high off his ass, and heaves himself up so he’s in a sitting position, leaning in close.
“So what you wanna do, is…” he raises the blunt to his lips, eyes never leaving Ranboo’s, and inhales for a long moment, before slipping closed as he holds the smoke. He holds up a finger as he does so, bopping it in the air each second, before letting the smoke out in a thin stream out the corner of his mouth.
“Those weren’t instructions,” Ranboo giggles, leaning in ever closer. “You just smoked slower and got uncomfortably close.”
“But did you learn a thing or two?” Tubbo asks, raising an eyebrow and holding the blunt up between them.
Ranboo can’t keep his eyes off him, darting his focus from his eyes, to his hair, his lips, the mole just above his lip. He thinks, maybe, he finally has a name for the fluttering in his stomach whenever Tubbo laughs at his jokes.
“Maybe,” he breathes out, taking hold of the paper. “Maybe.”
Tubbo’s eyes are scrunched up with his smile, dark eyelashes caught in dyed-blue hair. Ranboo wants to impress him. (He doesn’t think he’s holding it right- like a pen, maybe?)
“So I just…” he looks down at the blunt, bringing it slowly to his mouth. He just inhales, right? Sure, he can breathe, he’s managed it this long.
No, he can’t actually. He’s hacking up a lung, and Tubbo is laughing at him as he pats him firmly between his shoulder blades, and maybe Ranboo can forgive him for looking so amused if he keeps looking at him like that.
“Yeah, pretty much!” He giggles, taking the blunt back from him and inhaling like it isn’t an evil little stick of burning smoke and weed-smell. “Don’t worry, bossman, everyone dies their first time.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Ranboo wheezes out, but he’s smiling.
-
“It’s mine!” he rushes out of the closet (ha) before he can get too scared. He can’t stand to see Tubbo get hit again, and punching David for it probably won’t do him any favours in the future.
“The um-” what had David called it? A fucking reefer? Christ, he’s old. “The reefer’s mine. I brought it here.”
Living through the scene again, he’s thankful to see Tubbo is significantly more relaxed than before, even as his hands shake- he’s not cowering.
David grabs the front of his shirt, and Ranboo has to stop himself from gulping in fear as he’s yanked down to the man’s level. He’s a solid six inches taller than him, but there is no way he could take a punch from this guy- he’d had to rewind before he could retaliate.
“You keep your type away from my son, you hear? He’s had enough of your kind of influence.”
As if to emphasise his point, he looks Ranboo up and down in disgust before letting go of his undershirt. Does he dress like a stoner?
Like a queer, a mean little voice whispers in the back of his mind. Perhaps the security guard can see both in him- weed and religious guilt twisting over his skin until it’s visible to the naked eye. Ranboo’s not sure what he’s getting at, there, but he nods anyway, and David is finally gone.
There’s a beat of silence, the air still uncomfortable after being barged in on, before-
“Holy shit!” He has an armful of Tubbo, his face pressed into his chest and arms wrapped around his middle. “My hero, fukin’ hell!”
Getting over the tiny oof he let out at being barrelled into, he can’t help but grin, hands coming up to hug Tubbo back and spin them around, just a little.
-
Ranboo is very, very nervous about Tubbo and train tracks, but he supposes he can endure the anxiety in his gut for as long as their hands are gripped tightly over the gap, each wobbly step taken in sync.
“Who knew Ranboo M. Beloved could pull out a gun, ey?”
Ranboo smiles beneath his mask, and he knows Tubbo can tell by the way his eyes scrunch up (and, he supposes, just by knowing him well).
“I was just really scared,” he admits, reluctantly letting go of Tubbo’s fingers as the shorter hops down from the raised steel and into the centre of the tracks, sitting cross-legged between the slats. He looks nervously down the forest, listening carefully for incoming trains before joining him on the ground. “Frank is a loser, so I don’t feel bad about it, but I probably should’a just punched him.”
Tubbo giggles, knocking his leg against Ranboo’s and leaving it there.
“So violent, Ranboo, I can’t believe it.”
He laughs quietly, adjusting his mask nervously.
“I dunno, man, everyone in this town is just lookin’ to get punched, for some reason.”
“Cruising for a bruising, are they?”
Ranboo snorts, though he supposes that’s one way of putting it. A rattle in the distance makes him look up.
“Ah, shoot- train.”
-
Tubbo is crying, and Ranboo is crying, and Tommy’s corpse is directly below their feet.
“He’s not fucking dead, Ranboo, Tommy doesn’t fucking die,” he growls out, fingers clawing through the dry dirt. “We’re not going to find anything, he’s still out there, he just ran off to America like he always said he would, he’s not-”
Desperation is making his words heavy, thick with accent and mangled plosives, and Ranboo isn’t sure how he can make this better.
“Bo-”
He wants to say something, anything, but Tubbo’s hands are touching a black plastic bag, and Jesus Christ, the smell, Ranboo is thankful of his mask-
Tubbo screams.
Tubbo screams, and Ranboo holds him, because there is nothing else he can do.
The sun is high and bright above them, and Ranboo can feel the tears soaking through his shirt as he holds the shorter boy close. He wants to fix it- he wants to, so so bad, but he just doesn’t know how.
-
The lighthouse is still standing by the time they arrive. Lighthouse? When did he-
Ranboo blinks rapidly, shaking his head and looking down to see that Tubbo has been dragging all 200 pounds of him up that goddamn hill, and he’s been passed out in that nightmare world, and Tubbo kept dying and living and leaving and he’s finally real when he meets his eyes.
“Boo, it’s- you were right, holy shit, okay, the fucking twister is headed straight for us-”
He forces himself to wake up enough to stand on his own, hand still linked firmly with Tubbo’s as he turns and faces the horizon. Twister had always seemed like such a weird, slang-y term for something so destructive, but Ranboo gets it, now. The whole sky seems like it’s spinning, water swirling around a plughole, twisting clouds and lighting and holy shit, is that a door caught in the tornado? He half expects to see a cow fly by, just like in the movies-
Tubbo forces him to face him with a tug on his arm, a pained look on his face as he stares up at him.
“Ranboo, I- ” he lets go of his arm and backs away, running his hands through soaked hair as the rain pelts both of them. “My mum’s down there,” he whispers, looking desperately down at the town as the bench overlooking the sea rattles dangerously.
Ranboo follows his gaze, and he can see it- the diner, battered and half-crushed by telephone poles, and wonders if the only reason it isn’t on fire is the storm. He turns back to his friend, wanting to say something, or run for cover, but he’s interrupted before he can speak.
“Ranboo, I need you to look at me.”
Ranboo already is, but he nods anyway as Tubbo grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him down to his level.
“This week… this week has been the best of my life. You made me smile, you made me laugh more than I have in- you cared about me, Boo, and you’ve probably saved my life more than I deserve, and with everything with Tommy-”
His voice keeps breaking, and Ranboo places a comforting hand on Tubbo’s arm as the shorter boy squeezes his eyes shut. In the pouring rain, it’s impossible to tell if he’s crying. Even as the lighting strikes.
“But this mess, the- the snow, and the moons, and the eclipse, and the whole of reality tearing itself apart” Ranboo wants to stop him, tell him it’s worth it all if Tubbo’s alive, but his throat feels clogged. He knows what’s coming next.
“Maybe, if you go back- before me, before all this, maybe you can fix it.”
Ranboo finds his voice.
“Tubbo, I- no- no, I can’t do that to you, I can’t choose- please, Tubbo, don’t make me choose. You’re eighteen.” You’re too young to die.
“I’m one person! I’ve done enough in my life! I’m not worth a whole town, Ranboo, surely, surely you see that?”
“That doesn’t matter! You, you’re- you’ve been my priority from the start, I did it all- ” Ranboo is desperate, searching for anything to say that isn’t please don’t leave me. “How can we even be sure, right? The tornado- it might not be us. It might not be! What happens if I go back, and you die, and it’s all for nothing?”
“You’re willing to risk a whole town on that?”
“I’m not willing to risk you!”
Tubbo grips the front of his shirt, yanking him down so their eyes can meet, noses less than an inch apart. His eyes are steely, and full of tears, and beautiful- Ranboo can’t imagine a world without them.
Time is often effusive around Tubbo, and Ranboo isn’t sure if its because of his powers or just the normal effects of a teenage crush.
But time really does stop in that moment.
His vision stutters and flickers like old film developed improperly, Tubbo’s face blending into the world like watercolour as Ranboo’s heart breaks in two.
Tubbo or Arcadia Bay.
His old home-town, all those people down there, thousands- or Tubbo.
Morally, he knows what he has to do.
He fucking knows, okay? He understands- those people, they have families. They’re not all Nathans and Victorias and Mr. Jeffersons, some of them are Kates and Warrens and Joyces, but God, Christ, heavens and hells, Tubbo. Time is frozen, but he thinks it’s through sheer force of will that he’s able to grip Tubbo’s arms tighter, blood running over his upper lip as he takes in every detail of his face; the curve of his cheek, the slope of his nose, even the way his eyebrow arches and bends into the troubled expression he’s wearing now.
He treasures all of it- because it’s fascinating, world-stopping, marvellous by virtue of being Tubbo.
He knows what he should do.
But at the same time, he knew from the moment he was faced with this choice, he’s not going to do what he should.
So when he lets time start flowing around them, and uses the newly-born moments to surge forward and press his lips to Tubbo’s, he squeezes his eyes shut tight against the end of the world. He’s selfish. He’s in the wrong, he supposes. But he’s also in Tubbo’s arms, and that’s all that ever mattered.
The hands twisted in his hair tell him Tubbo doesn’t begrudge him for it.
-
The truck is on it’s last legs, as Tubbo aggressively turns the key three times to get her working, rumbling to life with a spit and a clang.
They’re both in shock, probably, staring out at the ruins of Arcadia Bay with a kind of awe. As they pass the diner, Ranboo looks over to Tubbo, and sees his white-knuckled grip on the wheel, lip caught firmly between his teeth.
Ranboo reaches over, placing a warm palm on his knee and rubbing his thumb over the rip in his jeans, and counts the smile Tubbo sends him as a victory.
The town, or what little of it survives, grows more and more distant in the wing mirror. Ranboo keeps his hand where it is the whole time, as they drive into what he knows will be the rest of his life- days, nights, photos, making Tubbo coffee every morning and leaning over to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth at every red light. Helping Tubbo dye his hair, picking out an apartment, buying their own curtains; a whole future rolls itself out in front of him, peaceful and domestic in a way that it could never be in Arcadia Bay, but is almost-reachable in the rest of the wide world.
He rolls down his window, and breathes.