Chapter Text
On this day in particular, the summer sun was like an arrow, piercing the world with an aching heat. Not a single one of the women in their suffocating gowns was seen far from their fan. Shopkeepers along the road kept a bucket of water nearby, clinging to the shade of their awnings and roofs. Even the stray cats that prowled the dirt roads looking for scraps shied away from anything that wasn’t in the shadows.
But as he ran through the back alleyways, darting between side-streets, it seemed the monstrous sun simply couldn’t keep up with Tubbo. The boy’s bare feet flew over the familiar ground, acting on muscle memory like they had a million times before. Brunette bangs so overgrown they usually covered his eyes were blown out of the way by the force of his speed.
If he tried to run through the open streets like this, he risked running into someone. And if he did that, it’d be a miracle if he avoided getting hit.
“Rule Number 3: Avoid inconveniencing others at all costs.”
So he memorized the alleyways and backroads, and they felt like home to Tubbo as he darted through them, energetic beyond reason. Perhaps it was from keeping all he had to say bottled up inside him all the time. Thank God he has Wilbur to talk to, he thought, or he might’ve gone crazy.
“Rule Number 1: Never speak unless you are given express permission or addressed specifically.”
Coming to a stop at the back door of what might’ve come to be his favorite building in the whole city, Tubbo stopped to catch his breath. Leaning back against the stone wall next to the door, he ran his fingers through his knotty windblown hair. Wilbur always hated to see it messy, but it wasn’t like he knew how to take care of it on his own. Even if he managed to nab a hairbrush from God-knows-where, the closest thing he had to a mirror was the fountain in the center of the marketplace.
As the teen boy heaved a sigh, already anticipating another one of Wilbur’s fatherly lectures, the door to the building swung open. The scent of fresh-cooked food wafted from the kitchen it was connected to, reminding Tubbo just how hungry he was.
“Tubbo, is that you? You’re here early.”
There in the doorway was Wilbur, the owner of the bakery they were stood behind and one of the only people that served to remind the brunette boy of human kindness. Wilbur was a tall man in his early thirties, with chocolate brown eyes and soft curly hair to match. Tubbo often found himself wondering how a man like that had a child with hair as red as Fundy’s, though he assumed it had something to do with the younger boy’s late mother. He’d never known her well, but in the stories Wilbur told of her she seemed lovely.
“I wanted to run today, Wil! Summertime is the—“
“The best time, yes, you’ve told me every summer to date.” The older man heaved a sigh, wiping his brow with the back of a flour-covered hand. “Easy for you to say you enjoy the weather, you’re not working in a kitchen all day. Why don’t you come inside, then you’ll see what I’m going through.”
As the duo entered the aromatic kitchen, Wilbur gestured to a table in the corner for Tubbo to sit down at. Tubbo nodded, as if he hadn’t been sitting at that same spot for years. Wil came over with a plate of warm food and a glass of water just as Tubbo sat down. A roll fresh from the cooling rack and a generous slice of turkey; Wilbur was a god amongst men.
“You’re a saint, Wil,” Tubbo remarked, through it came out sounding more like “Er uh phaint, Wil”; the boy had already started in on the bread. He was met with a chuckle and a gentle pat on the head as a means of reply, as Wilbur pulled up a chair to sit with the brunette boy.
Tubbo readied himself for today’s lecture on proper hair care, or perhaps a rant on an article Wilbur had read in the paper, or a story about a particularly good or particularly bad customer. But it seemed the older man had another subject in mind for that day’s lunchtime discussion.
“Say, Tubbo, have you considered finding somewhere to work?” It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but it was surprising enough for the boy to all but choke on his bread; because no, he honestly hadn’t considered it. He’d been living off the city streets for a decade now, longer than he hasn’t been, he realized.
“I know you wouldn’t get paid for it, and of course that’s not fair, but you’d have somewhere to stay, and you’d have new clean clothes, and you might even meet some other kids your age wherever you go.” Wilbur ran a finger along the rim of his own glass, a nervous habit of his Tubbo had picked up on over their years together. “Plus, I mean, I left home to look for work when I was around your age. Granted, our situations aren’t exactly comparable...” At this the man glanced over to the cluster of stars tattooed upon his wrist.
“I guess I hadn’t thought about it before. I mean, I’m getting by well enough, Wil.” Here he faked a pout, sapphire eyes glistening with false hurt. “Could it be you’re finally getting tired of me?” Wilbur laughed, a smile lighting up his face as he playfully pushed Tubbo away.
Though, underneath it, they both knew Tubbo was small and scrawny for a seventeen year old boy, and the skin of his chest stretched tight over his ribs. He wasn’t “getting by well enough” by any means.
“After all this time? You’ve grown on me by now, kid.” A calloused hand found it’s way over the boy’s smaller one before he continued, brown eyes soft as if melting with compassion. “Tubbo, I understand you don’t like visiting Marketplace Center after what happened, and I don’t blame you, but...there’s a notice board there where people post job offers all the time. I’d be more than happy to walk you down there after this if you wanted to take a look.”
The hand that wasn’t holding Wilbur’s drifted to Tubbo’s cheek, tracing over the scar that slashed across it. It cut right through the crescent moon branding burned into his face. With all the the scars, freckles, and smudges of dirt on the boy’s face, you could make shapes out of them the same way you might with clouds.
“It’s fine, Wilbur, really. That was years ago. I’m almost a man now!” Tubbo flexed his twig-like arms, trying to show off muscles that simply weren’t there. “I’ve just gotta stay out of the way and I’ll be fine!”
“So you‘ll go, then?” Hope was written all across Wilbur’s face, as clearly as if with ink.
“Why not? No harm in checking the place out.” Washing down the last of his meal with a sip of water, the brunette boy leaned back in his chair as he turned to face his friend. “But won’t you miss me if I go off to work somewhere? And what about little Fundy? You’ll have to pay the next babysitter in more than just free meals and hand-me-down clothes.”
“I’d break every law ever written if it meant I could visit you, Tubbo. You know it wouldn’t be goodbye for us.”
Even so, he hugged the smaller boy extra tight before he left that day. All of his love, his worries, his cares and concerns squeezed into one embrace that could’ve lasted five seconds or five hundred years.
———
“You’re such a worry wart, Tubbo. You know Wil wouldn’t tell you to do something if it could get you in trouble.”
Out under the summer sun again, Tubbo was feeling just how hot it was now that he wasn’t sprinting through it. Stepping left, then right, then left again to avoid other people, he rolled up the frayed and dirtied sleeves of his old green shirt. According to Wilbur, it used to belong to his wife.
“Do you remember the time when he let you help him with the cooking, and you nicked your finger on the knife blade? Poor old man almost had a heart attack trying to make sure you didn’t die of blood loss or something. Look, it didn’t even leave a scar!”
Tubbo wasn’t able to talk to people aloud. So he talked to himself in his head. About people he saw in the marketplace, the flowers growing on the side of the road, something Wilbur had told him that day. Right now, though, he was trying to talk himself out of his worries.
“Seriously, Tubbo, Wilbur’s the biggest pussy we’ve ever seen. I think you’d be more likely to put yourself in harm’s way before he ever would.”
Yeah, I know. That’s the problem. Tubbo reached up to wipe the sweat off his brow, while also trying to brush the hair out of his eyes.
I’m scary good at finding trouble.
The scar on his cheek smarted with phantom pains, as if reawakened by that last thought.
And then, with a final turn past the millionth row of shops and stalls, he found himself at Marketplace Center.
If you took any given set of lefts and rights, any road in the city could take you here. It was quite literally the center, in that sense, but it also got its name from being the center of attention. A diva of a place.
Or maybe it was an anthill, crawling with insects. Except the insects were people, and they were everywhere he looked, and just knowing how many he’d have to walk by made Tubbo’s stomach twist and turn and tie itself in knots. For someone living on the lowest step of the societal staircase, he was usually a pretty cheerful person. But now, he felt as if his knees would give out under him if anyone so much as looked at him funny.
The notice board was posted on the wall of a building opposite to where Tubbo stood, frozen in place. Maybe he’d melt under the sunlight, let himself turn into a puddle of a person and get washed away. It couldn’t have been more than thirty feet away, but there might as well have been an ocean between Tubbo and that wall, and he held his breath the entire time he crossed it. By the time he made his way over to the building, he was gasping for air.
But before he could so much as glance over the fliers, posters, and notices hanging there, something shook him out of the watery haze he was drowning in.
“Are you okay?”
Sapphire eyes widening in surprise, Tubbo turned to face the source of the mysterious voice that cut through the noise around them. He was sure it wasn’t one he recognized, but that only made him all the more curious.
In hindsight, he was glad he looked. Because the person who had called out to him was nothing like anyone he’d ever seen before.
Tubbo wasn’t one to stare; if anything it was just another unnecessary way he could draw attention to himself. But he couldn’t look away from this boy, not this time. Maybe it was the way his hair was split right down the middle, one side raven black while the other was white as starlight. Or perhaps it was the eyes, one a glistening ruby red and the other so green it could’ve been encrusted in emeralds. It could easily have been the other boy’s height as well, for he had too have stood around a whole foot taller than Tubbo.
And though he was craning his neck to look up at the stranger, though he was breaking just about every rule he’d ever set for himself on how to get by...
Enamored.
Tubbo was simply enamored.
———
Ranboo had been counting down the months, weeks, and days until his birthday the way one might count the seconds until a bomb detonates. And his family, oblivious to his dread, seemed all too anxious to set it off.
Maybe he’d purposefully fail at hiring a few new servants to work at the family estate, a task his father had assigned him to “prove he was ready to inherit his title and land” or something. Maybe he’d be able to buy himself another year or two of childhood if his parents could see how incapable he was.
And yet, he’d sat hunched over his desk making the perfect flier to put on the notice board. He’d accepted a carriage ride to Marketplace Center, which he spent fidgeting with the ribbon bookmark of his notebook. If he wasn’t doing that, he’d be picking at the leather bound cover, tapping his foot rhythmically against the carriage floor, looking out the window and counting things as they passed. Nervous habits that piled up like snow in the winter. Filling up the holes in his mind where memories should be.
It was scorching hot outside, but Ranboo still told the carriage driver to go on home, said he’d be walking back. He’d been absently running his fingers through his own two-toned hair as he said this, though, a telltale sign on lying. He knew he wasn’t coming home until the sunset was covering the sky with a blanket of warmth, lighting up the horizon and signaling it was time for dinner. The longest he could get away with.
He could breathe better out here. It’s not like house was physically suffocating; the mansion itself was huge and the land is was on even bigger. But emotionally, it had the same effect as a hand wrapped around his throat.
And so, he’d stay out for a while. But first, he’d go put his silly flier on the message board, because he didn’t know what else to do besides smile and nod and do as he was told.
Except, there was already someone standing there. And while that didn’t stop him from being able to access the board, it did distract him. Because the boy standing before him was shaking, hugging his chest and gasping for air. Almost as if he was drowning. The least he could do, Ranboo figured, was offer him a lifeboat.
“Are you okay?”
The boy turned to look at him, so fast his overgrown bangs flew out of the way for a moment, showing off his big blue eyes and the shock rippling through them. The next thing Ranboo noticed, after the eyes, was that the boy was definitely looking up at him. He was small, not just in height but in every other sense. His shirt, a stained and ragged button-up that might’ve been green once, swallowed his bony frame.
His face was covered in freckles and scars and dirt, as well as the burnt branding on his cheek that marked the boy as a Crescent. If he remembered correctly, Crescents had to be given permission to speak to those who were higher class to him. And while Ranboo had always thought such a strict caste system was bullshit, he pushed it to the back of his might right then. The only thing he cared to think about then was the boy standing before him.
“Oh, uh, you can speak if you want. It wasn’t a rhetorical question.” No, no, backtrack. That sounds rude. The last thing Ranboo wanted was to come off as rude. “You seemed a little out of it, I wanted to make sure you were alright.”
“...I’m alright now . Thank you.” As he spoke, a shy smile played across the small boy’s features. His voice itself was lighter and quieter than Ranboo’s, yet still distinctly male.
They say when you meet your soulmate, it feels like Cupid’s pierced straight through your heart. Rose petals cascade from the sky like April rain, and fireworks set your mind alight. Ranboo was starting to wonder if there was such thing as a platonic Cupid, and if he was on his side.
Ever since the day that curse had rooted itself in his mind like some sort of weed, Ranboo had struggled with new friends, new people in general. He should’ve been expecting it; he had been in a sense. He knew it was coming, his dad had warned him many times.
“The curse is genetic, Boo, always past to the first son of the family. I wish I could promise you more, but it’s just something you’ll have to power through.”
Of course, nothing could prepare you fully for the feeling of waking up everyday with new holes in your mind, opening up and swallowing your precious memories. Having someone approach you like a friend, when to you they’re a total stranger.
Everyone eventually stopped trying to get Ranboo to remember them, moving on and talking to other kids who wouldn’t forget who they were the next time they saw each other. And so, Ranboo stopped trying as well.
It had been years since he met someone who made him want to try.
“What’s your name?”
“...my name?” Ranboo nodded. “ My name?”
Judging by the other boy’s reaction, it seems he had also stopped trying. Though Ranboo was sure it was for different reasons, not because his brain was a slice of Swiss cheese.
“If it helps, I can tell you mine first.” The tall boy extended a gloved hand towards the smaller one. “I’m Ranboo, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Well, I’m Tubbo, and the pleasure is really all mine.” Multicolored eyes watched as the brown haired boy, Tubbo , frantically wiped his hands on his trousers, giving an awkward bow before finally shaking Ranboo’s hand.
Ranboo couldn’t help it; he had to laugh. Seventeen years of being a Sun, Caste system term for a high class pretty boy, and he still never got used to all the formalities. They felt stiff and uncomfortable to him, another barrier separating him from other people.
“I promise you, Tubbo, you don’t need to be so formal with me. If anything, I’d rather you didn’t. Makes me feel like I’m at another one of dad’s prissy brunches.”
Insensitive much? Ranboo could’ve passed out right there. God, had he really just made an off handed comment about brunches to a kid who probably didn’t get to eat more than a couple of scraps a day, let alone a full brunch? Clearly, he was out of practice when it came to banter.
“Ahem. What I’m trying to say is—“ But, to his surprise, Tubbo was actually giggling at the comment. He calmed himself down, then smiled up at the other boy. “If it’s okay to say so, Ranboo, I really like you. May I ask what you’re doing here?”
“Just here to put up a flier. ‘Help wanted’, the usual stuff. Thrilling, I know.” He rolled his eyes at the last part, putting further emphasis on the last part. “How about you, Tubbo?”
Those same sky blue eyes from before we’re now overflowing with excitement, maybe even hope. Tubbo was clearly struggling to stand still when he said, “I was actually looking for a job when I came down here today.” He flashed Ranboo an impish smirk. “‘Help wanted’, the usual stuff. Thrilling , I know.”
“If it’s okay to say so, Tubbo, I really like you.” Ranboo chuckled, returning Tubbo’s smile. Then he did something he’d wanted to do for a while.
Going against what his family wanted him to do.
“Here, why don’t you just...” His voice trailed off as he handed the flier that was meant for the notice board directly to the small boy. “Take this off my hands. If you’re interested, we’d be happy to have you.”
Tubbo took the flier, hands shaking with excitement. And, logically speaking, this would be where they part ways. Say some quick goodbyes, their unspoken promise to meet again clutched in his hands.
“But is that what you want to do,” Ranboo asked himself. And to himself he answered, “no.”
Slowly, as not to startle him, Ranboo reached out and grabbed Tubbo’s free hand. Looked him in the eyes.
“Hey, would you be willing to spend the afternoon with me?”