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“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Tubbo’s voice came from the kitchen doorway, distracting Ranboo’s tired mind from where it had been zoning into oblivion, occupied only by the low-key tones of Pebble Brain and inherent dissociation of cookie clicker. His exhaustion was also why, although Tubbo clearly thought the topic at hand was obvious to both parties, Ranboo had no clue what he was talking about.
“Hm?”
He looked up from his computer to see his boyfriend round the counter and grab a glass from one of the high cabinets, stretching up on his toes slightly to reach it. The sight shouldn’t have been endearing, yet Ranboo felt a smile pull at his face anyway, slumping down to rest his cheek on his hand as he stared. He blinked long and slow, thoughts moving like molasses.
“Being on stream together? In VC?” Tubbo explained as he ran the tap. While the glass filled, he glanced up at Ranboo, who watched his face break out in a wide, embarrassed smile. “What? What are you looking at?”
Ranboo hummed. “You.”
“Shut up,” Tubbo laughed, rosy splotches blossoming on his cheeks in the low kitchen lighting. Ranboo wanted to burn this moment into his brain: the uncontrolled curl of his hair around his ears; the drape of Ranboo’s shirt on his smaller frame, how it fell slanted on his shoulder and wide around the neck; the way he held himself, slightly hunched inwards, either from the chill in the air or the weight of the night, exhaustion pulling at him as much as it was at Ranboo. It was simple and it was domestic and it was everything Ranboo had now that he wouldn’t for months to come, a reality that had been slowly breaking over him with each day that ticked down on his counter. The thought of it now threatened to ruin the sanctity of the moment, running ink stains over the vignette he was painstakingly constructing in his mind, and so he pushed it away for now, choosing instead to enjoy it while he could still live in it rather than bask in the memory of what was.
“So?”
Ranboo blinked again, pulling away from the proverbial camcorder recording the current happenings for a posterity constructed exclusively of his own future selves in favor of tuning back into the conversation at hand. Something about the early hour of the morning, or perhaps simply the absolute delirium of being awake for nearly twenty hours, made it difficult to follow along with the lines of dialogue, like a script written out of order. Once again, Ranboo found himself without a clue of what Tubbo was saying.
“What were you asking about again?” he slurred, the words catching at his tongue like honey and weighing it down in his mouth.
“Are you serious?”
“I’m tired, man. Give me a break.”
Tubbo rolled his eyes as he pulled up a stool next to Ranboo and plopped down, full glass of water placed carefully on the counter next to him. “The stream. Us together. Talking. It was fine, wasn’t it?”
Oh. Ranboo’s shoulders tensed slightly at the reminder, clear minded sobriety dripping into his brain like ice melt. Tubbo wasn’t wrong, was the thing. It had been fine, for a while. He’d forgotten, for a moment, where he was, the thousands of people watching, had returned back to months ago, when he was locked in his childhood bedroom, completely detached from the fact that he was broadcasting his feelings for the whole world to see. For those few moments, he could laugh with his boyfriend while they played a ridiculous game together, easy and relaxed, the moment entirely theirs.
Until it suddenly wasn’t.
They’d talked a few days ago, about Ranboo’s warped anxieties surrounding people’s perception of their relationship and what it entailed about him as a person – his morality, his personhood, his godliness. Unlearning was a difficult thing, and easier in theory than in practice. Ranboo knew liking guys didn’t matter, he knew there was nothing wrong with it, nor wrong with other people knowing that about him. But it didn’t matter what he knew when his brain decided to shut down all logical functions and run on panic and trauma alone.
So, Ranboo had avoided confronting it, procrastinating joint stream ideas, avoiding Tubbo’s open invites in Discord groups to join VC, even snapping at Tubbo, whole body tensing and thrumming like a livewire, when he walked in on Ranboo’s streams. He’d pushed it and pushed it until it hurt them, culminating finally in the ever foreboding “Let’s talk,” Tubbo had dropped on him far too early a few days prior.
It had been during this talk, at Tubbo’s proposal, that they decided to try “desensitizing” him in slow intervals, a few minutes in VC here, a short IRL stream there – enough to separate the panic impulse from hearing Tubbo’s voice on stream. Earlier that night had been one of their first attempts, Ranboo joining in with Tubbo and a few other friends on his GTA stream, and it had been fun . It had been so much fun – watching Tubbo run around with Oli in an ill-fated attempt to take out the hacker who’d murdered him over and over. Enough fun that Ranboo had forgotten where he was, talking with Tubbo alone in VC like it was April again and they were half a world apart. His head had been light with laughter, even with the beginnings of drowsiness seeping into his voice and mind.
That is, until Bill joined back in the call, reminding him once again that he was talking in front of a very large live audience.
Like he’d suddenly been dumped in an ice bath, Ranboo had snapped back to reality, neck aching from the whiplash. It had felt like a car wreck, too – heart pounding in his chest as his mouth ran dry, the sudden realization that he’d been venting his insecurities to his boyfriend in front of thousands smacking him over the forehead with all the force of a truck. He’d done his best to come back from it, joking along with Bill – who was, luckily enough, very easy to get along with – and avoiding engaging directly with Tubbo, as if that could somehow convince his audience once again that they were friends, or barely that – acquaintances maybe, roommates only for the sake of content and nothing more.
Content that didn’t even happen anymore. Right.
Eventually, he’d excused himself, the ready – and true – excuse of the ridiculously late hour spilling from his mouth without his full awareness. He’d listened long enough for Tubbo’s light-toned “Good night,” before clicking out of VC, the echoes of his voice, soft and sweet and draped over his frazzled mind like a blanket, residing in his brain for many moments longer. Then, it had been a slow retreat inward, the exhaustion eventually winning out over his panic as he played through the new Lovejoy EP on repeat.
Which brought them to the current moment.
Apparently, Ranboo had hid the freak-out well enough from Tubbo that he’d labeled the night a success, or maybe it was just that Tubbo was just as out of it as he was, tired lines etched into his face at the corners of his eyes, one for each hour of his never ending stream, and he didn’t have enough awareness to catch Ranboo out in his lie.
Part of Ranboo wanted to protect Tubbo in this, to continue on with the lie that Ranboo was better, was somehow magically over all the internalized bullcrap his upbringing had drilled into his very being. It was tempting – fake it till you make it, right? Surely, if he kept compressing all his feelings into a tighter and tighter knot in his chest, they would eventually disappear. But, unfortunately, Ranboo was too good at physics to believe that – as volume decreased, pressure and heat only increased, until the confines became too weak to contain it and it burst out in a supernova of messy, mangled emotions that would only hurt them more in the end.
Instead, he decided to follow with one of the promises he’d made in that fatal talk: honesty.
“It was okay at first,” he admitted, fingers drumming at the countertop. He ignored how Tubbo’s mouth pulled down in a frown, focusing instead on phrasing the rest of his words. “I got a bit in my head near the end there, though.”
Tubbo didn’t seem upset, or angry, or any of the worst case scenarios Ranboo had crafted in his brain. Tubbo wouldn’t leave him just because he couldn’t be perfectly okay with their relationship after one night of trying to be better, he reminded himself. They were together in this. Or, so he hoped.
“What do you mean?” Tubbo asked, leaning forward on the counter and closer to Ranboo.
So, Ranboo explained the night from his perspective, avoiding eye contact the entire time. At some point, Tubbo’s hand fell over his own twitchy one, just resting there as a familiar and comforting weight. He listened the whole time, silent, brow knitted in concentration, as Ranboo said his piece, stumbling over describing his emotions both due to lack of practice and because it was his nature to trip over words – explaining and reexplaining and clarifying a thousand times over until his audience had forgotten the point in the first place. Not Tubbo, though. Tubbo stayed tuned in the whole time, attention rapt and unbreakable.
When Ranboo finished, he waited in the silence that followed with bated breath, chest burning. He braced himself for the “Next time you’ll get it,” or “Do better,” that he expected, some disappointed admonishment or half-hearted encouragement. Tubbo’s actual words, though, took him by surprise.
“I’m proud of you,” he said, and Ranboo snapped his eyes up to him. The tight ball in his chest loosened slightly, hot ribbons of light spilling out at the slightest chance of escape.
“What?”
“I’m proud of you,” Tubbo repeated, and with it, more of that hard shell cracked away. “I know this is hard for you. I don’t … fully understand – I mean, I get the – the shame stuff, just not all the–” He made some vague gesture with his hand. “–other stuff. But I know you’re struggling. You tried. And you did well, so. I’m proud of you.”
With that, the dark emotions in his chest unravelled completely, pouring out into the cavern of his ribcage like the gooey insides of a Gusher, warm and gentle and devastating. Ranboo’s eyes burned, and he had to blink to stave off tears. Under Tubbo’s hand, his own clenched into a fist, nails digging half-moons into his palm until Tubbo coaxed his fingers apart, flipping his hand over to slide his own in between.
This was progress, he realized, the truth of it spreading through his body in a steady stream of light and love. He’d been so drilled down in the failure of the second half that he’d forgotten to bask in the success that had preceded it, convinced they cancelled out into nothing when, in reality, each was as valuable to examine as the other.
“I love you,” Ranboo said, the confession wet and heavy with the emotions pooling in his throat.
Tubbo smiled, though it was blurred in Ranboo’s vision. “I love you, too.”
A few tears slipped past Ranboo’s eyelids, sliding down his face in hot tracks of salty shame that Tubbo wiped away just as quickly and just as gently. He was always so patient – in wiping his tears and coaxing out his emotions and with Ranboo himself, standing by his side in what would likely be a long journey ahead of them. He couldn’t imagine doing this without him by his side – either physically or metaphorically, as it was about to be in a few short weeks.
“Do you want to try again tomorrow?”
Ranboo nodded, afraid if he spoke he might end up sobbing instead. There were other nights for that. Tonight was not one of them.
“I’m glad. I’ll be right there with you, I promise.”
They made their way to bed shortly after that, falling into it side by side as the early morning light slanted into the loft from the wide windows. It wouldn’t take long for them to drift off like that, both awake for far too many hours of work to last much longer. But just for one last moment, they curled into each other, Ranboo’s hand cupping at Tubbo’s cheek as their foreheads pressed together, sharing the same minty breath between them.
This was what he was working for, Ranboo reminded himself. This was worth all the turmoil and hardship, all the hours spent dissembling block by block the towers of falsehoods his church had carefully constructed in him since birth. It wouldn’t come quickly, and it wouldn’t come easily, but it would come, and Tubbo would be there with him the whole way.
Ranboo would make sure of it.