Chapter Text
Ranboo couldn’t sleep without Tubbo anymore.
He wasn’t sure when it happened. When his body had adapted to having another in bed beside him. But he couldn’t deny it anymore. He knew how it felt, back in the Arctic, sleeping alone in his bed. Wrapped in a dozen blankets and still unable to keep warm. His bed was too cold, and the pillows too hard. The cows in his farm were too loud, and as much as he would never admit it to them, having Phil and Techno living next to him was not as comforting as it should have been.
I mean yeah, they could hold their own in a fight. And Ranboo was nearly certain they wouldn’t hurt him. However, there was no doubt that they had a lot of enemies. A lot of people didn’t trust Ranboo as much. People who wouldn’t hesitate if he got in their way.
These nights at his arctic home never served him well. Hour after hour of tossing and turning made Ranboos head spin. He got up in the mornings feeling like his body was caked in cement, dragging him down to the bottom of the ocean. He tried taking pills to help him go to sleep, he tried drinking coffee in the mornings and sticking to decaf whenever he got the craving in the evening. Nothing would shake him of this uneasy feeling he got, alone in his room.
Slowly but surely he began spending more time at his husband’s mansion in Snowchester.
He tried to write it off as incidental at first. “Accidentally” staying too late with Michael or working on interior decorating with Tubbo until it was way past midnight. Or he would tell Tubbo he had an early meeting with someone in town and didn’t want to travel all the way from his home.
He wasn’t sure if Tubbo had picked up on it or not, but he was sure he didn’t mind. As long as he could spend every night, curled up under the covers of their shared bed. Running his fingertips through the other boy’s messy brown hair, and listening to his soft breathing. All the stories he had read talked about a persons breathing evening out as they fell asleep. Ranboo wasn’t sure if that was an old wives tale, or if the mountains of stress on Tubbos shoulders were just too much to let him fully relax. Either way, the short intakes and long exhales were nothing but comforting to Ranboo. Wrapped up in the arms of the other he felt safer than he ever had with anyone else. He didn’t care how many excuses he had to make up, Ranboo knew he didn’t want to spend another night without him.