Archive of Our Own

“If you hog the blanket, I am going to put my cold feet on you,” says Tommy, and he means it, glowering at Ranboo over the edge of the fabric that he’s pulled up to his chin. Ranboo blinks at him for a moment, eyebrows raised slightly in indication that this was not something he’d expected to hear. Good. The element of surprise was a very important one, indeed.

“I don’t think I’d enjoy that very much, actually,” says Ranboo, and then: “Do you even wash your feet?”

Outraged, Tommy sputters. “Ranbitch, I’m willing to bet you a tenner than yours smell like old cheese,” he spits, and then pushes his body forward from where he’s laying on his back across the couch, shoving his heel into Ranboo’s side.

“Agh,” says Ranboo, scrunching his shoulders close to him and snorting. “Don’t kick me.”

“I’d clart you, bitch,” Tommy says instantly in reply, but Ranboo is still on a different wavelength, staring at him with confusion written across his face and gears turning in his head. 

“Isn’t— Old cheese is supposed to be good, I think, it ages with wine—”

“Mimimimimi,” Tommy mocks, “my name’s Mark Ranboo and I love cheese and being angsty and making my viewers cry all of the time.”

Talking about viewers, Tommy has found, is a lot funnier when nobody is live. Of course, it’s not healthy to be hung up on it all the time, because life is life and Twitch is Twitch, but this is different, this joking thing. Ranboo can pick a cereal Tommy doesn’t like at the Tesco, and Tommy will go, You know, I don’t think the viewers would like Lucky Charms, Ranboo, and Ranboo will laugh at him, ask if he thinks chat would like Wheaties better. And Tommy will tell him that yes, they absolutely would, because they aren’t wrong’uns with no taste— at least, Tommy would hope they aren’t.

They’ve also gotten Tubbo with this joke a good few times, and it drives the oldest of the three crazy. Tommy would do it to Wilbur, but he knows about Wilbur’s aversion to his fans speculating about his private life, so he finds that it’s best to let that joke die around the older man, out of courtesy. Tubbo, however, is an easy target, especially since it doesn’t freak him out and only makes him pissed off. (Jack Manifold is also easy to bother, but that generally extends far past their viewers joke— Jack is their scapegoat for lots of jokes.)

He and Ranboo have gotten quite good, he’d say, at finding the perfect moment to interject a conversation with the jokes. In fact, Tommy has picked up a habit of delivering a joke that would normally be subpar in just the right manner to make everyone collectively lose their shit. Ranboo is good at that, Tommy finds, and it’s a good quality to have when you’re someone like Ranboo, someone who isn’t as loud and boisterous and doesn’t start every stream with the crack and hiss of a Coke can and lots of swearing and desk smacking.

In any case, Tommy discovers that he likes Ranboo’s company a little more than he thought he would. He knew it was going to be a little awkward at first, and it was (especially on Ranboo’s end, being from shitty America and all), but it’s gotten easy fairly quickly, and Tommy’s surprised by how simple it is to slap down a stream idea, a vlog idea, or just something to do off-camera— and Ranboo will pick up on it instantly.

He learns fast, and Tommy’s so intrigued by it that he streams less and less the more he gets to visit Ranboo and Tubbo’s place, because there’s no use making content out of everything— he knows that. There’s a content clout-chasing line, and he’s never crossed it (that’s what Wilbur says, at least), even though he’s made a couple jokes from time to time. Ranboo usually laughs, or says Ope! in that strange American Ranboo way, and it’s easy and familiar and fun.

So that’s how he finds himself trying to kick Ranboo’s ass at Mario Kart on a Friday night, well past midnight. Earlier, they binged a few movies and mowed down two and a half solid bags of M&Ms, and now Tubbo’s out like a light already, fast asleep on the other couch. The TV is turned down quiet so they don’t wake him, because Tubbo’s grumpy when he first wakes up, and Tommy doesn’t want that to be the pinnacle of their night. Besides, while being loud is part of his personality, it’s not all of it. He can put away the showman’s visage when Tubbo’s trying to catch Zs.

“Ope, there I go,” says Ranboo (there it is again, Tommy was just thinking about that), jamming the buttons on his Wii remote but to no avail. “You seem to have run me off the road.”

“You were the one who suggested Special Cup, you prick. You knew it had Rainbow Road. Are you going back on your decision, pussy?” he questions haughtily, and Ranboo groans when he’s knocked off the road by a computer player again immediately after being dropped back on it. 

“Yeah, man,” Ranboo says bleakly, “definitely.” 

Tommy laughs, leaning forward slightly, and decides that laying isn’t comfortable anymore. He shifts and sits up, pressing his back into the couch and letting hair fall into his eyes. It’s cold in here, and he wants to turn down the aggressively blasting aircon, but if Tubbo wakes up and it’s not exactly how he left it, he’ll probably flip his shit. 

Tommy remembers the You’re getting footprints all over my wall conversation from the first media share stream and grins, simultaneously jamming his finger into the B trigger button on his Wii remote to try and blast Princess Daisy into the moon. His red shell works, and she stops and spins in the road, so he hits her as he shoots by (playing as Princess Peach, naturally). Daisy goes flying off the course, and Tommy smirks to himself, finding great satisfaction in beating the shit out of the computer players for fun.

“What are you smiling about?” Ranboo asks him after a second, and then, after a glance at the other side of the split screen: “Crap, you’re behind me.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how you ever got ahead of me, Ranboob, seeing as I am massive and you are simply shit at this course.”

“I am,” replies Ranboo miserably. “I’m not in front of you, Tommy, you’re lapping me.”

For whatever reason— maybe it’s the fact that he’s still a little hopped up on sugar from earlier, or the fact that it’s Ranboo, and Ranboo is constantly effortlessly funny without even trying— Tommy lets out a short burst of laughter. For a moment, Ranboo is laughing softly with him, and then Tubbo groans something from where he’s laying, face down on the couch, and Tommy exchanges a wide-eyed glance with Ranboo.

“Tubbo?” he asks tentatively, after a quiet second, and the boy doesn’t reply. Tommy lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, and the Rainbow Road aura comes back as it was, Ranboo struggling and failing to reach any higher than eleventh place and Tommy flying past him to take third. 

Moments pass, and the Special Cup is over; Ranboo doesn’t place awfully, at fourth overall with Rainbow Road having brought him down, and Tommy places second, beaten only by Daisy, no doubt. Tommy stares at the screen for a moment, and Ranboo mirrors him, and then they speak at the same time:

“I hate this twat Daisy—”

“Look at Tubbo—”

They fall silent, and it’s a little awkward, which Tommy should have expected, considering the dynamic tended to be a little strange when it was Ranboo and nobody else. On stream, or when Tubbo was there too, it was easier. Tubbo was the glue that held them together; Tommy liked spending time with Ranboo, but it was hard not to make things a little weirder than they should’ve been.

“Sorry,” Tommy says before Ranboo can, and he chuckles, a strange echo of his normal laugh. Ranboo started to say something about Tubbo, and now Tommy’s a little curious, because that’s always been the thing, that it’s a bit. Fans talk about it all the time, and that doesn’t make it true, but sometimes, on the bad nights—

Ranboo is stealing Tubbo from Tommy and it’s so funny to watch , Twitter user beeboybeloved says, and it hits a little too close to home, and he has to close the app and stare at a different screen for a few hours instead.

Tonight isn’t a Bad Night; tonight is fun, tonight is comfortable and feels like home, with the lights dimmed and the popcorn filled with slowly melting M&Ms (especially the brown ones) and the blanket curled around all three of them. He doesn’t want Ranboo— or anyone except maybe Wilbur, for that matter— to know about the Bad Nights, so it’s good that tonight is fine.

That his heart is beating at a normal speed in his chest.

Tommy curls his legs up under him, slouching against the armrest of the couch. “What about Tubbo?” he says, resting his chin in his palm and glancing pointedly to Ranboo as the silver trophy he won spins slowly on the TV screen. 

“Oh, nothing.” Ranboo seems to fumble with his words, like Tommy feels on the inside, but he goes on: “He just— look at him,” he points out, smothering a laugh with a hand, and Tommy does look, and Tubbo is hanging halfway off the couch, his leg flung over the side and nearly touching the ground and his face smushed by the armrest. 

Tommy grins, shaking his head. “He does that,” he says, but it feels less like a fond recollection and more of an attempt to prove himself: he does know Tubbo, he and Tubbo are best friends, they’re close. “What a twat,” he adds under his breath, an afterthought that makes it feel less desperate and more natural.

Ranboo doesn’t even reply. When Tommy turns to look, he’s got his phone up, snapping a picture of the sleeping boy. Something twists in Tommy’s chest, and he glances away, pulling out his own phone. When it unlocks with a quick scan of his face, he swipes through apps and hovers over the camera. Hovers over Snapchat. Then opens Reddit instead, scrolling through predictions for the next MCC. His eyes glaze over the text, not fully taking it in.

Whatever. Ranboo gets to take pictures because he’ll have to leave England at some point. Tommy will leave this one for him; besides, it’s not like he doesn’t already have a multitude of pictures in his camera roll that Ranboo will never have. It’s just that— well— exclusive stuff is usually for Tommy. As of now, though, he hasn’t been seeing anything Ranboo hasn’t. In fact, Tubbo’s been telling Ranboo all his ideas first. And that’s fine, there’s no reason to be upset about it—

But he is. He’s too distracted for MCC predictions; instead, he opens Discord on his phone, even though mobile users are the scum of the Earth, and opens his DMs with Wilbur. He scrolls through a few conversations— one about posting time, one about meeting up for a vlog, one about something dumb he said on stream, one from late at night where all they did was mess around— and smiles, but his fingers hover, hesitate, just like they did over the camera.

It’s stupid to bother him over this. Tommy knows it’s stupid— and they’ve talked about it before, once or twice, but both times have been quick conversations, or ones that were hushed by the chill of night. He’s asked the question before, though it feels so weird and self-pitying to type out: Do you think Tubbo wants to be my friend still? And both times: Yes, Tommy, of course, Tommy, Wilbur said. But that doesn’t help. That’s just mindless support, mindless enthusiasm. 

Are you sure? Tommy would say, and Wilbur would say Of course I’m sure, is everything okay? Do you want to talk more about it? And Tommy says no, no, of course he doesn’t, of course he’s okay, thank you Wilbur, goodnight. Because he knows that if he wanted to ask, if he wanted Wilbur to say anything that’s more meaningful than just a quick yes without even batting an eye, he could. He could ask Wilbur to elaborate, or tell Wilbur that he does want to talk about it, and Wilbur would go on any sort of tangent to reassure him.

But that’s something Tommy has realized that he struggles with, asking for that extra reassurance, because it feels annoying, bothersome, it feels like stepping over the line. It feels like he really is just Wilbur’s annoying little brother, the kid who follows Techno around like a lost puppy, the kid who pestered Phil into becoming his honorary third parent, the kid who cheated himself into fame and somehow got two best friends that he doesn’t deserve, because all he can think about is how eventually they’re going to leave him in the dust because they like each other better.

Oh, fuck, it is a Bad Night. Tommy curls in on himself slightly, closing Discord (it’s a bad idea to message Wilbur on Bad Nights, he gets delirious and makes a fool of himself very quickly) and opening Safari. He thinks back to something somebody mentioned to him, or maybe he heard it from his mother, or some talk show, or some Instagram post—

impostor syndrome, he types into the Google search bar, and then Ranboo’s voice makes him jump halfway out of his skin.

“Sorry— you were gonna say something, right?” 

Tommy stares, owlishly, at the lanky boy huddled across the couch from him. He never thought it would happen, but here it is: Tommy is somehow carrying more anxious energy than Ranboo is right now. That is definitely gonna tip him off, so Tommy straightens, pushing his legs back down over the edge of the couch even though it makes him feel strangely open, and a little vulnerable, and his leg starts bouncing on such a deeply rooted instinct that he can’t really stop it.

“Nothing,” he says with a grin, gesturing to the TV with his phone in his hand and then realizing that Ranboo might be able to see his screen where he has so blatantly displayed his own raging insecurities. Quickly, he yanks his hand back to himself, hoping it won’t look too weird, and aggressively hits the backspace button before switching it off and tucking it under his leg instead of back in his pocket out of sheer panic. 

He remembers what he’s supposed to be talking about and tries to keep the grin up on his face. “Just fuckin’ hate Daisy, is all.” And he wants it to sound natural, wants it to sound smooth and funny and witty, but it doesn’t; it comes out wrong, and stilted, and it sounds like Tommy But A Bit To The Left— and he knows Ranboo is going to notice.

He knows.

Ranboo looks at him, and it’s a little deeper of a look than normal, and Tommy fidgets, and smiles, and Ranboo says, “Are you okay, man?”

And it becomes a problem. Tommy quickly swallows, forcing the lump back down his throat, and shrugs loosely, though his hands feel trembly and he really just needs to go home (or at least to sleep) to wallow in his own self-pity somewhere where Princess Peach’s face isn’t blown up on a TV screen staring at him and Ranboo’s face isn’t sitting across the couch staring expectantly, waiting for him to answer in a way that makes sense.

The expectation is overwhelming. His stomach flutters, not in the good way, and Tommy laces his fingers in his lap. “I’m fine, Big Man,” he replies, trying to look like he’s confused, trying to look like he’s so unbelievably fine that he’s unsure of why Ranboo would even question it. He’s trying too hard, but it’s fine, because overdoing it is better than the alternative, which is not doing it at all and admitting the truth, and that is a mountain Tommy cannot hike over right now.

Because the problem is not that he hates Ranboo. Ranboo is fun to talk to and hang around with, and he’s calmer and quieter than Tommy but still funny at the same time, and Tommy doesn’t understand how he can do that, because it never worked for him when he tried it, and that’s the problem. Tommy knows he has his strengths, Wilbur always talks about people can’t be compared because everyone has different strengths, but all Ranboo’s strengths seem to be Tommy’s, too. And that leads to Ranboo doing so many things better than him— being friends with Tubbo, being funny in a way that isn’t exceedingly obnoxious, other things— and Tommy can’t even hate him for it, because he’s so nice, and everyone likes him.

And that’s the problem. Tommy doesn’t know how to solve it. He grins at Ranboo, meekly, and Ranboo isn’t buying it, and there’s nothing in his brain that stands out to him that would be the right thing to do here, because he doesn’t know how to convince his friend that he’s fine. He’s not that great of a liar, never has been, and it’s showing.

“I just mean—” Ranboo shifts where he’s sitting, and Tommy glances at him, his fingers dangerously close to his mouth. (He remembers Wilbur reminding him not to bite his nails, but it’s hard to resist, at this point. It feels like it would help. He doesn’t, though— not yet. He’s not that desperate yet.) Ranboo tilts his head, some of his hair falling into his face, and Tommy shifts his arm about three times awkwardly before giving up and setting it on the armrest. Yeah, he looks natural.

He stops bouncing his knee. Less than fifteen seconds later, it’s up and down and up and down again, so he gives up on that, too.

“You look,” says Ranboo, and Tommy winces inside his own mind, because he really did try not to look but he still does, “like you’re, uh— like you’re stressed out about something.”

And there is silence for a second as Tommy determines, resolutely, that yes , he is extremely fucking stressed out about something, several somethings, and who cares if it’s a Bad Night, he should have messaged Wilbur, because whatever is happening now is not what he wants to be happening, and he has no fucking clue how to stop it. 

Tommy clenches and unclenches his fists, and then his chest pulls tight, and there’s nothing he can do— he has no choice. “Yeah, I— uh, can we—” He keeps overlapping himself, not sure how to get through the sentence he wants to force out of his mouth without sounding like a massive dickhead. “I’m… um.”

Ranboo seems like he’s not going to push it, though, shifting and clearly making himself more settled into his seat. It helps a little, knowing Ranboo isn’t going to force it out of him, but it’s still there, hanging over his head: the expectation. It’s still there. It will always be there, with Ranboo, until Tommy can figure out how to map out the thoughts in his own head. 

“Do you need a minute?” Ranboo finally asks, and Tommy is so relieved that he’s offered an out. He practically leaps up from the couch, and then, remembering it isn’t in his pocket, turns and grabs his phone from off the couch cushion. 

“Yeah,” says Tommy. “Sorry— yes. I’ll, uh, I’ll be right back. Swear.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Ranboo, and it looks like he means it, so Tommy nods nervously, feeling his shoulders curve over, curve forward and in on himself. He retreats, taking careful steps away from the couch, and then fights with his brain for a minute (bathroom or backyard? Bathroom or backyard?) before deciding that it’s too dark outside, and a little too cold, and Ranboo is going to be able to see him if he goes outside, so if Tommy has to sit down, or bury his face in his hands for a minute—

Yeah, to the bathroom it is. He darts out of the main room, off to the side, and slips into the much smaller room with the tiled floor, closing the door behind him. He flicks the fan on for good measure and then presses his back into the door, pulling his phone out with shaking hands. It’s a Bad Night, and he’s having a Bad Time, and maybe it would have been fine if he just steered clear of the Tubbo And Ranboo Dynamic Duo For Life thoughts, but he hasn’t, and he’s regretting it, but there’s nothing he can do about it now, and his fingers are dancing across his keyboard, and shortly, he has sent a message:

TommyInnit Today at 2:13 AM

are you awake

And then he stands, and he sways, and he waits, and it’s terrible, and then the screen moves, and his eyes flick back down rapidly. The small box above the message bar appears with the fluctuating ellipses, indicating that he’s typing, and soon, there is a message from Wilbur, his only savior, waiting for him.

WilburSoot Today at 2:14 AM

what’s up?

Relief crashes through his bones, and Tommy grips his phone tightly, already thumbing out a new message to send to Wil. can i call you, Tommy is typing, makes a typo, backspaces to try and fix it, and before he can even hit send, a screen pops up in front of him. Wilbur’s icon, and the accept or deny call buttons. Tommy presses his thumb into the green one as quickly as humanly possible, pulling the phone up to his ear and holding his breath.

“Tommy?” 

As soon as Wilbur greets him, if not a second after, Tommy dissolves into manic Bad Night energy, and he slowly slides to the ground, back still shoved rigidly up against the bathroom door. “Hi,” says Tommy, and this time it’s Tommy But A Bit To The Right, which is still just as bad, and he’s sure Wilbur will notice immediately—

“What’s wrong?” Yeah, there it is.

Tommy swallows, his eyes wide. “Wil,” he says breathlessly, feeling the panicked energy rocking through him, and it’s not an anxiety attack, or a panic attack, Wilbur has described those to him before (and he’s pretty sure he’s had one, or maybe two, but maybe he’s blowing it out of proportion, self-diagnosing, so he doesn’t consider them real). 

No, this is different. It’s not panic; it’s distress, at its core, that has gotten a little too fast. A distraught feeling that has grown too big in his mind and made his pulse skyrocket a little further than usual. It’s okay, it’s fine, he can fix it. He just needs help— and now his help is here.

“I’m at— at Tubbo and Ranboo’s, I’m in the bathroom.” It’s immediate, something he’s used to because of habit. Wilbur has told him before that it’s a good idea to share his location immediately if he’s having a Bad Night, which he doesn’t always do, because he doesn’t always contact Wilbur— but when he does, and he needs reassurance that somebody knows exactly where he’s sitting, it helps. 

He doesn’t even know where to begin explaining, and he’s hoping somehow that Wilbur will just know, but he knows it’s impossible, because he hasn’t even given him any information yet. “I’m, um, I’m sitting. On the floor. It’s cold.” Fuck, this is irrelevant. If only he could pass his information straight from his brain to Wilbur’s. It might’ve been better for his speech skills to have this conversation over text, but his shaking hands would have betrayed him, and Wilbur’s quick comforts and soothing reassurances had much less effect when Tommy couldn’t hear them in his voice. “I don’t know how to fix it, it’s just so many problems,” he says, completely jumping topic, and immediately, he is shut down.

“Slow down,” Wilbur says, and Tommy knows that his whole attention is devoted to the phone call, and that’s good, because that’s what he needs, Wilbur’s full attention. “Take a breath.” And right now, Tommy will do anything Wilbur tells him to— he just needs someone to give him directions— so he does, taking in the deepest breath he can muster, and it’s jagged and crooked and not a full inhale, but it’s better than no air at all.

Still, though, he feels that he needs to elaborate as quickly as possible, needs to overcompensate for all of the stupidly complicated emotions he has. “We were watching a movie, some movies,” he says, correcting himself as he goes, and then he realizes that that’s also completely irrelevant to what he wants to be talking about right now. He needs to get his brain in order, but he doesn’t know how, and every breath is a little too shaky, matching with the quiver of his thoughts. 

Wilbur takes a breath, and Tommy hooks on it, clings to it, begs the next sentence to be the life preserve that will pull him out of his panic. “One step at a time,” he tells Tommy, which is good, because all he can do is put one mental foot in front of the other. “What movie did you watch? More than one?”

Tommy’s voice breaks when he speaks next, but he bulldozes through the sentence, awkwardly and quickly and way too wrong. “I wanted— suggested the new alien movie. The— The—” Tommy shakes his head. He’s too frantic, and he isn’t supposed to be frantic (this is why he does not call Wilbur on Bad Nights), but he doesn’t know how to mitigate it properly, only Wilbur does (this is why he has called Wilbur on This Specific Bad Night). “Fuckinnn’— uh. Tomorrow War,” he says, finally, fuck, “but Tubbo and Ranboo already watched it together, on stream, and I forgot— I’m so stupid, Wilbur—”

“Tommy,” Wilbur interrupts, sharper this time. “You didn’t answer my question. Listen more carefully this time. What movie did you watch? Not the movie you wanted to watch. Which one did you watch, Tommy?” Wilbur’s saying his name a lot, and the repeated question feels like a teacher asking a five year old what he did wrong, but it’s grounding, the repetition of the only thing he recognizes as his own in that moment (his name).

With this newfound revelation, his head is slightly clearer, and he can stitch himself back together partially. “One from a year or two ago,” Tommy mumbles, meeker, but the small voice is embarrassing, so he fixes it the next time he speaks, trying to be normal, loud enough for Wilbur to hear but quiet enough that Ranboo doesn’t. “Tubbo had it on disc. It was a— it was some fuckin’ war movie, I don’t—”

“Good,” Wilbur says, which lets him know that he doesn’t have to continue about that topic, that he’s free to move on, and it makes Tommy feel just a bit better, the short-lived praise and acknowledgement. It leaves him waiting for more, which Tommy dimly recognizes is the method Wilbur is using, hooking him in. “Anything else?” says the older man, and Tommy racks his scattered brain, half afraid that he’s going to be shit out of luck, but he finds it, and he offers it.

“Part of, um, another one called Yesterday— with something about the Beatles.” Tommy moves a hand to his neck, pressing it into the carotid artery (he can thank biology for that, though he hated the class) and feeling the quick, steady thrum against the pads of his fingers. “One-two-three-four,” says Tommy at the appropriate speed to let Wilbur know how fast it’s going (and half to silently ask if it’s normal, but he knows it isn’t). 

“I liked that movie,” Wilbur says, and his voice sounds open, and like he’s smiling. Tommy likes that he can tell the difference between when Wilbur is talking normally and when he’s talking while he’s smiling. There’s a slight difference in the intonation, and maybe it’s from those years of choir and voice lessons (or maybe he’s just a creep), but he can tell Wilbur is smiling for him, or at least smiling in general. This is good, helps him focus. “Now, can you tell me why you wanted me?”

“Help,” Tommy says immediately, and then backtracks. “I mean— fuck. Fuck, sorry. Fuck,” he repeats, over and over. “Shit, it’s— it’s late. I think I’m fine now, Wilbur, I—”

“No,” Wilbur says, and that’s that. “Absolutely not. You aren’t fine, and you can’t leave in the middle of a conversation, either,” he admonishes, “that’s bad phone etiquette.” And he simultaneously hates and loves it, because Wilbur is setting him up to feel bad if he leaves the call, and he knows that’s the way it’s supposed to work, Wilbur is doing it on purpose, but he can’t help the inherent need to shrink back from guilt. “You can do it, Tommy. I want the reason you messaged.”

You can do it, Tommy. It echoes, rolls around in his head, sinks into his bones. “Fine,” Tommy says, slightly reserved. “I called because I— shit, Wilbur, I fucked up.” 

“I need more than that, Tommy,” says Wilbur gently, and Tommy’s knees are pulling into his chest, and his forehead is dropping down on top, and he’s holding back a groan that so desperately wants to escape, because explaining is hard.

Finally, though, he feels like he has some semblance of direction, the end of a rope to grab onto and pull himself up into the opportunity of a beginning. “It was fine,” Tommy starts, and he knows that this will be the time where he finally elaborates properly, because half of the shake has been reduced thanks to Wilbur, and most of the problem left to deal with is the ravaging hurricane in his head. 

“I was playing Mario Kart,” he says next, because it’s true, he was. “With Ranboo. Tubbo was asleep. And then—” He has to reset himself, before he starts talking about the Mario Kart tournament placements, or checking the MCC predictions on Reddit, or the term he almost Googled earlier (and god, he really has to wait a second before telling Wilbur about that last one, because he’s curious, but he still can’t take it, still doesn’t feel like anything in his head is so bad that it deserves a label). 

“Then,” Wilbur prompts, at just the right time to pull Tommy back to his main point. Wilbur always knows the right time.

“Ranboo said something about Tubbo sleeping, ‘cause— I don’t know, he was laying like a twat, like he always does.” Tubbo wasn’t the one notorious for weird sleeping positions; Tommy was actually pretty sure that was him. In any case, though, it was easy to generalize in explanations like these, when he was just trying to pull himself out of the mirror maze in his head but he kept running into the walls. “And— and he just— I don’t know,” Tommy says miserably, to which Wilbur replies:

“Take your time. We have plenty.”

“Yeah.” A shaky breath, and then Tommy clears his throat, and it’s fine. “Ranboo took a picture,” he finally drops, like it’s a heavy weight off his chest. There’s silence for a few beats, and Tommy worries that Wilbur’s abandoned him, but no; he was just processing, Tommy guesses, because then he’s back.

“Did it upset you?” Wilbur asks him, his voice seeming welcoming and genuine and everything Tommy needed it to seem like, because otherwise, nothing was going to come of this conversation.

He almost wants to lie, even though he’s already in this deep. He almost wants to tell Wilbur it was a prank, tell him he was actually joking the whole time, because he can’t deal with this, and he has no idea how to say yes to this without seeming like a massive asshole. There’s no reason to dislike Ranboo, Tommy knows, and Wilbur’s going to think he’s such a stuck-up dickwad for being so petty about something like this—

“Tommy, you aren’t breathing,” and oh, no he’s not, he’s definitely not, so he takes in a gigantic breath like it’s a mouthful of fresh water and he’s been stranded in the desert for a month. Wilbur is good at noticing things, like breathing, and apparently not breathing, and that is why Tommy’s had to call him tonight. Otherwise, all the little things like breathing would have flown over his head. 

“This is stupid,” he grumbles as he forces another breath down his windpipe and into his lungs, half to himself and half to the man on the other end of the line. “My body is supposed to do that for me. This is extra work.”

Wilbur laughs, and Tommy smiles, gripping the phone a little tighter. That’s a good sign, if Wilbur is laughing. That’s what he wants. “Okay, Tommy, breathe for a second and then we can keep going,” the other man chuckles, and Tommy scoffs, pulling himself out of the disgustingly uncomfortable emotional scene for just a moment.

“Sorry, can’t talk right now, too busy breathing.”

Wilbur chuckles again. “You’re getting dangerously close to the quote book,” he says, and Tommy feels warm about that, because that’s exactly what he needs to hear—

But then that’s the sentence that becomes his unwinding, the sentence that brings him to his downfall. “I don’t get it, Wilbur, I don’t, and I’m trying, but—” He swallows tears, and the pause is a little too inviting on accident, and then Wilbur’s voice is breaking through again.

“Whoa, hey— hey.”

But he can’t stop and pause and breathe, like Wilbur is suggesting, because everything wants out, and it all wants out right now, and the second his lips part again, there are more and more and more words: “Everyone likes Ranboo. I like Ranboo. He’s so cool, he does everything he’s supposed to, I just can’t— I can’t— Tubbo doesn’t like me anymore,” Tommy blurts, all at once, and Wilbur is soft on the other end, Wilbur is mild, Wilbur is quiet. Just for him.

“Tommy, we’ve talked about this.”

And it’s so painful, because they have talked about this, and he thought it helped, but apparently it didn’t, because now he’s on the floor of a bathroom that doesn’t belong to him, and his arm isn’t in it for a funny story, and he’s not taking some silly pre-mod video shit, he’s just here and it’s messy and he very much hates it. “Yeah,” he cries, straining as he holds his tears in, “we have, and I’m sorry, I didn’t want to bother you with it again, Wil, but— he’s— I mean, yeah, Tubbo likes me, I get it,” he says, “but he— he really likes Ranboo,” he finishes, voice breaking on the really and making him sound so fragile, and so breakable, and so brittle. 

It’s disgusting. He wants a refund on whatever night this is, because it was supposed to be fun, and it’s something he was looking forward to, and now it’s all going wrong. Maybe he should’ve eaten a few less M&Ms and gotten a few more hours of sleep, and this wouldn’t have happened.

Then again, though, that would mean this all stayed floating around inside his head, so it would have come out some time, anyway.

“I have things to say,” Wilbur says at last, and Tommy sits up straighter as if Wilbur can see him slouching over himself in the room. “First of all, Tommy, you and Tubbo have been best friends for years, and something like this can’t change that. Are you getting what I’m saying?” 

This is something Wilbur likes to ask on the rare Bad Nights that he witnesses: are you getting what I’m saying? Usually, the answer is yes, a resounding yes, but sometimes it wavers, when Tommy can’t pull himself out of his own head. Right now, he’s on the fence, but he thinks this is pretty straightforward. Obviously he’s been friends with Tubbo for a long time, obviously it would take a lot to break that, but— and oh, Tommy is falling off the fence— Ranboo is a lot. Ranboo is growing rapidly. Ranboo has more subs, better humor, a nicer community. 

Ranboo outmatches him without trying, and that’s what makes it so awful. Because Tommy is trying, but it feels like he has to put on a new mask every day just to get all his different friends to tolerate him for half an hour at a time. With Tubbo and Ranboo, he needs to put on different masks, and he can’t put them both on at the same time, and it doesn’t work, and Tommy trips over himself while he tries to catch up.

And Ranboo, with his one organized mask, is the one to reach back and help him up, and it hurts, because he’s so nice, and Tommy is so mean.

There is a choked sob, and it takes him a second to realize it has come from himself. He’s lost in his head, lost swimming in a pool that keeps rising and rising, faster than Tommy can swim up to the surface. “No,” he tells Wilbur, because it’s all he can do, other than swipe at his eyes to make sure there aren’t tears and hope the man on the other end missed that part.

“Okay,” says Wil, seeming as calm and accepting as ever, “then let’s fix that. Tell me where your brain is making the mistake, where you’re going wrong.”

“I— I can’t—”

“You can,” Wilbur reprimands, though it’s careful. “Let’s take it in pieces. Yeah? I said you’ve been best friends with Tubbo for years, and this isn’t something that could change that. Which part are you stuck on?”

Tommy inhales, and it feels constricted, but it’s so much better than not breathing, and this is starting to feel like a school assignment that he can break into sections and tackle in little pieces at a time, like Wilbur says. “What do you mean by this?” he asks Wilbur tentatively.

“That you shouldn’t let Ranboo being here drive a wedge between you guys. It’s a good thing he’s here,” Wilbur starts, and instantly, Tommy feels his gut twist, because he knows, knows that Wilbur thinks he’s such an asshole, such a piece of shit for this. 

“No, I— I know,” Tommy cuts in hurriedly, before Wilbur can keep going. “I don’t— I’m not trying to put him down, I— Ranboo is great.” His voice is wet with the tears he’s holding inside, and the back of his throat burns, but he’s not letting them out. Not here, not now, not in front of Wilbur.

“Ranboo is great,” Wilbur repeats, and Tommy can tell he’s smiling when he continues, “but you are, too.”

And the tears, the tears, the tears. They’re hot, and they’re instant, and there’s nothing he can do anymore except try his hardest not to let Wilbur hear his hics or sniffles or the way his voice always tapers off at the end of his sentences when he’s crying. It’s better over the phone than on a video call, at least.

“Not as great,” Tommy says, timidly, and it’s painful, it hurts, because he knows it’s true, but it sounds so stupid and pitiful when he says it. “He does— he—” He can’t say he does everything better than me, because Wilbur will go on about how people can’t be compared, how everyone has different strengths— ah, right. That’s what he meant to say. “You say we all have strengths,” Tommy begins, shaky as all hell, “but Ranboo— we have the same strengths. And he’s just— he outdoes me in the only things I can do right.” 

Wilbur inhales, quiet but quick and a little sharp, and Tommy realizes how objectively depressing and self-pitying he sounds right now. It makes him cringe, to be so awkwardly and blatantly open about the feelings he was hiding away, and to say that Ranboo is just better. Because there’s more to it than that.

But there’s no other way to put it. He’s fucked up, somewhere, made it sound worse than it is, exaggerated into hyperbole that Wilbur doesn’t like, and that’s what the little mini-gasp was for.

He expects a lecture. Instead, he gets: “Oh, Tommy,” and it makes him want to cry harder, but he tries not to, because he doesn’t want Wilbur to know that much, really. “Tommy, your strengths are different. You don’t share every specialization with Ranboo. You’re really good at talking to new people, or reaching out about things, and Ranboo can struggle with that. You’re both effortlessly funny, but it’s in different ways—”

“My way’s bad, Wilbur,” Tommy whines miserably, because he’s starting to give up on the whole not sounding like a wallowing twelve year old from my own YouTube comments thing. Because it’s hard not to talk down on himself when there are already so many things that are waiting to be downtalked.

“Your way is not bad. It’s headstrong, and some people don’t like it, but others do.”

“But everyone likes Ranboo humor,” he replies, miserably, because it’s true; Ranboo humor is calmer and easier and probably even funnier, but Wilbur tuts. 

“You think everyone doesn’t like yours? Jesus, Tommy, you wouldn’t still be on the SMP if that was true. You wouldn’t still be streaming weekly to over a hundred thousand viewers every time you go live. You wouldn’t have a diamond play button, Tommy.” Wilbur is earnest, and it makes Tommy’s heart a little warmer, because it’s always good when Earnest Wilbur speaks.

And what he says is probably true. Tommy feels significantly better about his humor with this small reminder, but still, his personality… “Do you think I can make—” make people like me? He doesn’t want to finish, because that’s such a conceited thing to say, but he doesn’t know what else to do. Tommy neg is trending on Twitter every other day, and that’s a whole different problem, but it’s related, and it drags him down into the dirt (Wilbur says stay off Twitter, but it’s so hard not to check when there are tweets shittalking you to thousands of people). “How,” he says now, approaching it differently this time, “do I get people to like me for my personality?”

“Sometimes it’s a toss-up,” Wilbur’s voice rings out. “They’ll like the content but not the man behind it, or they’ll like the person themselves, but not the stuff they can bring to the table. The internet doesn’t see everything, Tommy, that’s the hard part. They see what you want them to see, which is a fraction of your life.”

This is steering in a direction Tommy can’t keep up with. He wipes at his face, hoping Wilbur doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary, and frowns. “But that doesn’t— that doesn’t help,” he says, and then feels immensely ungrateful. “I mean— I need people to like me like they like Ranboo. I need— I need you guys to, and Tubbo.”

“Tommy,” Wilbur says softly, “they do. We do. You’re getting into your own head, man.” And he’s right; that’s it. Tommy is getting into his own head. That’s the point, the whole reason he called: he can’t get out of it now. “What do you need to hear, Tommy?” Wilbur asks, and Tommy knows he can’t answer this without feeling conceited, too big for his own body.

“I don’t know,” he replies instead, reluctant. “I don’t know. Everyone tells me I do a— I do fine—”

“Because you do well.”

“—but it’s, like—” He can’t even finish his sentence. “It feels like they’re lying to me,” he forces out, throat thick with the threat of more tears than the few that have slipped past, and then:

“Tommy, it’s— that’s okay. But you deserve it, you know. You’ve done so well, you’ve worked so hard— you deserve the stuff you have right now. You’ve spent so much time working your ass off, Toms, I—”

“I don’t,” he says, and

“You do,” Wilbur says, and

“Wilbur, what’s impostor syndrome?”

And then there are tears, more than there were before, and they’re tormenting him, running two shuddering lines down his cheeks. His shoulders shake, and there’s half of a sob, and then a whole one, and he feels so bad because he never should have bothered Wilbur about this, but maybe he would’ve felt worse if he didn’t, and it’s some sort of paradox that he can’t escape, because he feels like shit either way and he doesn’t deserve what he gets and nobody will ever like him as much as they like Ranboo, and that’s fine, he should be fine with that, but he can’t, because if he’s left in the dust, then it will hurt. It’ll hurt so much worse than it already does, which is a prospect Tommy can’t even imagine.

“Oh, dear,” Wilbur says, like he’s some old grandfather, and then: “This may be a question better suited for a conversation in person, Tommy, but we can talk about it. Next time we see each other, sometime soon?”

He wants his answer now, but he’s smart enough to know that good things come to those who wait, so Tommy emits another small, half-finished choke-sob and sniffs roughly to keep his face from becoming a wreck. “Yeah, okay,” he mumbles, “sorry.” Because— is Wilbur just passing him off? Is Wilbur trying to tell him to fuck off? “I can—”

“Don’t apologize,” says Wil, firmly. “It’s nothing on your end. I just think it’ll be— clearer, I guess is what I’m trying to say, if you hear it from me face to face. I’ll be able to organize my thoughts better. Okay?” A pause, very brief, and then, “Or do you need me to come get you right now?”

“No, no, no,” Tommy says, quickly, strung together. “Don’t— don’t do that. I’ll be— I’m fine, it’s just— it’s dumb. Nothing that big of a deal.” The shuddering breath he has to force himself to take after seems pretty big, though, and he can’t imagine that Wilbur hasn’t noticed—

“It isn’t dumb, Tommy, you’ve been ranting to me for like fifteen minutes. Clearly, it’s important to you.”

Fifteen minutes? His blood runs ice cold; Tommy yanks his phone back from his ear, and sure enough, there’s the Discord call screen, reading 17:34, 17:35, 17:36. “Fuck,” he says, lifting his phone quickly to his ear. “I need to go soon, I’ve— I’ve been in here for ages.” He wipes at his eyes, standing up and then holding his phone with his shoulder held to his head so he can grab tissues to blow his nose.

“Well, we aren’t done,” says Wilbur, which is true, but they clearly don’t have enough time to finish, and he’s leaving Ranboo hanging, and honestly, it’s kind of a shitty thing to do. At least he isn’t the host of this particular event. That would be even more rude.

“I know, but you said— you said we should finish in person,” Tommy stammers, and Wilbur hums in acknowledgement.

“I know what I said. But you don’t want to go out there with nothing to say, do you?”

“What do you mean?” Surely Wilbur isn’t implying what Tommy thinks he is. He’d rather die than have a heart to heart with Ranboo— that’s so embarrassing, holy shit. Tommy’d keel over on the spot. “Wilbur, I don’t think—”

“Well, you’re in luck, because I do think,” says Wilbur, effectively cutting him off and making him smile all in one breath. “Now, you can’t just rush out, go into hiding for nearly a third of an hour, and then come back acting like nothing is wrong, can you?”

Wilbur is right— Tommy knows he is— it would be particularly tense and awkward to go back to how everything was before he ran out. “No,” he says quietly, miserably, and Wilbur makes a noise of approval, or maybe mostly agreement. Tommy just wishes it were approval.

“Right. So when you go back out there, and he asks you something, try to answer honestly, if you can or if you feel comfortable. And I don’t mean comfortable as in feeling completely not awkward. Because that’s not gonna happen. I mean it in the I can say this without starting to hyperventilate way.” Wilbur clears his throat, and his water bottle cap turns open so he can get a drink, and Tommy waits, listens, leans his weight on the corner of the vanity to help hold himself up (doing everything to avoid falling back into the abyss in his mind again).

Until finally, Wilbur is talking again. “If he doesn’t initiate, then you say something, just mention it when you get back. Give him an opening for a conversation.” This sounds a lot more nerve-wracking, and Tommy really hopes it doesn’t come to this, because Wilbur hasn’t given him any specific examples to use, which makes his hands shake ever so slightly again, so he forces himself to ask.

“What do I talk about?”

“Just tell him you had to take a mental health break for a second,” Wilbur says. “It’s as easy as that. I can assure you he’ll understand— we all take them, it’s not like he never has before. Then, after that, if he acts like he wants to keep talking about it, and you aren’t on the verge of another crisis, then you can.”

Tommy swallows. This is a lot to remember. He wishes he could write it on his hand, but that would look strange, anyway, and he’s sure he can keep at least half of it, the general information, in his head. “Okay,” he says, unsure. “That’s it?”

“Yeah. And Tommy, you don’t have to apologize to him— or anyone, for that matter— because you haven’t done anything wrong.”

And that’s it. Then it clicks. This is what he needed to hear— because Wilbur always tells him when he makes a mistake, so if Wilbur says he didn’t, then he didn’t. 

With a watery sniff, he clutches his phone and asks, “What about the Tubbo thing?” Because still, he hasn’t gotten proper closure, or had a full conversation about it. Still, it was brief, offhand mentions here or there, and Tommy being on Twitter at the wrong time wrong place, and he wants that to be over and done with, or else he’s never going to feel any better. 

“We can talk about that when we talk about impostor syndrome,” Wilbur says, “but you should try to talk about it with Ranboo if you feel comfortable.” He does not feel comfortable, he knows that, but Tommy grumbles gently.

“Better come and see me soon, then, bitch.” 

Wilbur laughs gently, and Tommy smiles, resting his forehead against the cool wood of the bathroom door. “Okay, are you good to go?” the other man asks, and Tommy sighs, feeling hesitation and frantic energy building in his throat. He swallows, batting the two away, and then exhales.

“I think so.”

“Call me if you need anything else, okay?” says Wilbur, and that, plus the nothing wrong comment, is what Tommy has been needing to hear this whole time. Wilbur doesn’t care if he calls again. It’s okay if he calls again. Tommy isn’t bothering him. “Don’t push yourself too hard.”

So: “Yeah,” Tommy replies. “Thank you.” And he means it, because fuck, what would he do without Wilbur? He’d be a massive wreck, that’s for sure. He owes so much to Wilbur after these quiet chats, the ones where he just needs to remember how to breathe.

Wilbur seems satisfied with this. “Yeah, of course, Tommy. Do you want me to hang up now?” he asks, just to make sure, and Tommy grins, feeling grateful warmth spread across his limbs. Wilbur’s asking him what he wants and Tommy likes it, likes it a lot, because that gives him control, that lets him know Wilbur cares. 

Not all of his problems are solved— he still has to talk to Ranboo for a few minutes, and he still has to be the person who walks behind the group when the sidewalk narrows, and he still has to figure out what to do about the inherent jealousy that comes with Tubbo and Ranboo’s friendship, but there will be fixes, later on. For now, this is more than enough to live on. “Yes, please,” he says finally, and: “Thanks for this, Wilbur. Sorry to bother you.”

“I was awake anyway,” Wilbur says mischievously, and Tommy can picture the shit-eating grin on his face so perfectly, an expression that both he and Wilbur share. “Goodnight, Tommy. Take some deep breaths and kick ass.”

“Might kick side instead,” says Tommy, barely louder than a whisper so the microphone won’t pick it up, because Wilbur won’t understand the joke, but the other man’s already hung up anyway, so who cares? 

Tommy wraps his hand around the doorknob, hyping himself up with a breath or two, like Wilbur told him. Then he turns it, and he takes a step, and he stops, frozen, in the hallway. Fuck, it’s hard to make his legs move. He really doesn’t want to go. Really doesn’t. Maybe this was what Wilbur was talking about— the mental barrier, not the actual act. 

Tommy is a little shaky, a little trembly, but he forces himself onward. One foot in front of the other, and then he’s emerging into the living room, legs feeling like jelly and arms feeling like heavy rubber. He doesn’t say anything at first, coming around the couch and sitting down as gingerly as possible and eyeing Ranboo.

And his friend’s body language is wide, and open, and maybe it will be better— or at least not a train wreck— this time. 

“Hey,” Tommy says, quietly, and Ranboo glances up from his phone as if he didn’t turn and look up when Tommy came back into the room. “Sorry, for— being gone so long.” He’s already broken Wilbur’s advice, but he can’t help it; the need to say sorry for lots of things is ingrained in him, and it’s the only way he knows how to start the conversation.

“Oh, it’s fine,” Ranboo says. He fixes his posture, sitting up in a presumably more comfortable position, and then drops the bomb: “Are you okay?”

It’s Tommy’s least favorite question in the entire world, making his fingers interlock tightly and his stomach do nauseous flips and his face burn red, especially when the answer is no like it is right now. What did Wilbur tell him to say (minus the no apologies part)? For a second, he flounders, but after a few seconds, he has it.

“Uh, yes and no,” he finds himself answering, sitting straighter on the couch. “It was kind of not very pogchamp. It’s better now, I talked to Wilbur—” He takes a deep breath, facing Ranboo and setting himself back on track. “I just, um. I know I’ve been acting weird sometimes,” he says, fidgeting and twisting his fingers. “So, yeah, sorry about that. I just have, I don’t know, some weird complex where my brain tries to tell me I’m not cool and awesome and so damn hot. Weird, I know,” and he laughs nervously, trying to add levity, but it’s not working, because Ranboo is looking at him with sympathy— then Tommy looks again, eyes flitting to Ranboo’s face, and it’s empathy he sees.

“Mhm, mhm,” Ranboo replies, in a very Ranboo fashion. “It’s fine, man.” Tommy’s not inclined to believe it, but Ranboo looks like he means it, and kind of sounds like he means it, so he’s not really that nervous yet. He sits, waits, because it looks like Ranboo has more to say, and he’s right. “I get that too, sometimes,” the taller one says, “that— that feeling where you’re not, like, all the way good enough, if that makes sense. It makes it hard to stream sometimes, or, uhh— or talk to certain people.”

Tommy nods, slowly realizing that Ranboo is the same as him in that field, too. This fact, however, is much more welcomed: if Ranboo gets the same feeling, then maybe he’ll understand, and maybe he won’t be pissed or anything if Tommy goes on. “Yeah,” the blond agrees, still pulling at his fingers. “Just wanted to let you know, like, if I’ve seemed jealous or anything— I’m— I’m not.”

“Is this about Tubbo?” Ranboo asks very quietly, very carefully, like he fears he’s overstepping, and Tommy sucks in a breath, cheeks burning with shame.

He rubs at the back of his neck. “Partly,” he admits. “It’s not you, I just— it’s not you,” he says again, worried, because Ranboo’s going to hate him for being such a jealous asshole, and then—

“I’m sorry, man, really. I seriously didn’t mean to get between you guys— I knew you were friends but I honestly didn’t even think he’d like me that much, or that you would, and—” Ranboo cuts himself off, eyes finding everything but Tommy’s face to look at, and it’s dawning on him: Ranboo feels the exact same way he does. They have the exact same fears, the worry of disappointing people, of being unloved, of being left behind, of making so many mistakes that people walk away, of being boring enough that people slowly start to click off of the videos, streams, vlogs.

“Ranboo,” says Tommy, and then chuckles quietly, halfway in disbelief. “Big Man, you’re the reason I was having the crisis.” Then, when Ranboo looks stricken: “No, fuck, shit,” Tommy amends, waving a hand in the air with wide eyes, “not like that. I mean, like— you’re so fuckin’ cool and shit.” 

For a second there’s silence, and Ranboo stares at him in disbelief, and Tommy shifts awkwardly under his gaze, his smile starting to fade, because what if Ranboo didn’t really find it as funny as Tommy did? But then it’s fine, because Ranboo runs a hand through his hair, starts talking again: “What— what do you mean?”

“Ranboo,” Tommy says, mock-seriously (because he can’t handle saying it Real Seriously), “you are a supremely massive, pogchamp individual and it makes me worry about myself.” And it sounds pathetic, laughably pathetic, when he puts it like that, but Wilbur told him he should be honest, so he’s being honest. 

Ranboo looks like he’s either going to laugh or cry, looks like he doesn’t really believe Tommy, and Tommy doesn’t blame him, because he can’t for the life of him remember the last time he was so painfully vulnerable around the taller boy. “Tommy,” he says slowly, “you’re joking.” 

Tommy snorts. “If I was joking, I wouldn’t have had a twenty minute mental breakdown in the bathroom, Ranboo,” he fires back quickly, and it’s a dumb joke, because he doesn’t usually joke about his own insecurities, his own vulnerability, but it lands, and Ranboo laughs.

“Tommy, you’re the reason I have crises— among, you know, many many other things.” Ranboo crosses his arms over his chest, and Tommy finds himself mirroring on accident, but he doesn’t mind that much, and if he moves, he’ll look suspicious and stupid, so he leaves it, and they both sit there, arms crossed, and then it hits him.

“Wait, what?”

“That’s what I said,” Ranboo laughs, and it’s halfway to a giggle, which makes Tommy grin, too. Ranboo brings a fist to his mouth and clears his throat. “You’re just— you know, I think you’re— I mean, I look up to you, even though,” Ranboo says, gesturing to himself and the clear height advantage. Tommy gives him the evil eye for fun, and Ranboo smiles nervously, but less nervously than usual, and Tommy considers that a win. “We’re just— I think we’re same braining a little too hard right now.”

“You’re telling me, man,” Tommy breathes, exhausted, and throws his head back, a laugh slipping out— and this time it doesn’t echo, and it feels more normal, and Ranboo is laughing with him. “Shit, Ranboo, we did the classic bitch move from the movies. The miscommunication shit. That drives me fucking mad, it does,” Tommy insists.

Ranboo does his dumb, deep little sigh noise, and Tommy resists the urge to make a joke about it. “The viewers will not be pleased,” Ranboo says in a solemn voice, and the two laugh again, and when it settles, when the dust clears, Princess Peach and Ranboo are both still staring at him, and it’s still a Bad Night, and he still has unsolved problems, but one of the knots criss-crossing in his stomach has come loose, and if he grabs onto one of the strings from the right angle, he’ll be able to pull it undone.

Ranboo gets there first. “Seriously, though, if you want me to back off—”

“I don’t want that,” says Tommy immediately, rolling his eyes. “God, Ranboob, you’re so toxic, you don’t even listen.” And Ranboo laughs anxiously, and Tommy knows he has to be serious for a second, to help both of them out. “I said it earlier, but listen— it’s a me thing, Big Man. It’s— I have to work it out with the power of fuckin’, I don’t know, pixie dust or something.” Ranboo chuckles, and Tommy shrugs. “I’m just saying— Tubbo’s allowed to have other close friends, and you’re—” He stumbles, embarrassed. “You’re my good friend, too, so.”

And it feels weird, and not all the way resolved, and Tommy figured that would happen. It’s because he still needs to talk to Tubbo and Wilbur to clear the rest of it up. This, though— this is a third of it done, and while it’s incomplete, it’s a lot better than nothing. Now he can breathe easier, move easier, exist easier. His leg can stop bouncing, and the tornado inside his own head can stop spinning so damn fast. Ranboo really is nice, but if he’s set on hanging out with Tommy ( looking up to him, he’d said—!), then Tommy supposes he himself might be kind of nice, too.

The impostor syndrome can wait. This Bad Night has been defeated with the power of determination, or some Undertale shit Ranboo would say.

“I hope the pixie dust doesn’t fail you,” Ranboo replies, saluting, and Tommy laughs, because now he feels like he finally can.

“Twat.”