on love (c!ranboo drabble)
When Ranboo wakes up, drowsy and slightly aching, the sunlight comes to say hello through thin curtains, warmth pressed against his cheek. Rays of light fall onto him, brighter in Snowchester than anywhere else due to the iridescent reflections of the ample snow, and though he loves the constellations that paint the night, his infatuation for Overworld days never tires him.
Snowchester is small, but it is loved. From the bedroom, he can hear the soft sounds of a piglin snorting in the kitchen, as well as the bright rings of mugs clinking together. The faucet turns on and off intermittently, and laughter intersperses the spaces between the crackling of the fireplace.
The scent of spruce wood fills the house, too, as usual. Far better than the sting of crying obsidian and the sound of a crackling music disc, his home is vacant of haunted waltzes. Snowchester is alive, and even its eternal wintertime is no match for the warmth. A commune once built in tense circumstances, unfolding to a place of love.
Ranboo doesn’t always understand his own emotions, nor can he recall the behavior of those he came from before he lived in the Overworld. What he does know is the feeling of love is all-consuming, an aurora of soft hums, pink tulips, and snowy boots-- the tune of his senses, the well-worn path that guides him, the airiness of laughing, the softness of sunsets, the fondness of sunrises. He can feel it in his fingertips, fractaling in his irises, flooding his chest with overflowing warmth. To Ranboo, love is everything, and perhaps he feels too much, but he has a husband and a son who will allow him this. So he loves.
The intensity of his love is matched with the intensity of his anxiety. The fear that leaves him paralyzed or frantic, spiralling into denial. The constant insecurity of not being a good enough husband, or secretly being a bad person, or being forgotten, or, worst of all, forgetting.
The fear of forgetting everyone he knew started long before he married Tubbo and adopted Michael, when he was still the minuteman, keeping the tipsy president company and wondering who would forget more in the morning. Now, his fear has shifted into the fear of forgetting Tubbo and Michael, the fear of forgetting himself.
But, he has an anchor now. Where the debris of war was a firestorm of mayhem and dislodged truths, peacetime is a place of planting his roots in something he trusts. Even the days his memory is vague, he knows to trust this. To trust the woods, and the lake, and the buildings, and the man who married him here.
He yawns, stiff from hours of mining the previous day, but pushes himself out of bed regardless. There’s coffee waiting for him in the kitchen, and a son who adores him, and a husband who crinkles his nose when he smiles. The ache of his body aside, the missing memories of the previous day aside, he has himself; alive in a commune that he made his home, and he loves in turn.
rbs help lots! ao3 @/nightmare_rivulets