Chapter Text
Ranboo is okay.
He tells himself that every day. That the red-hot anger that courses in his blood is normal, that it’s okay to feel like the world is after you, chasing you, and you can’t get away.
It’s normal to lash out if you feel threatened. Ranboo just… feels threatened more often than most.
“Ranboo.”
Ranboo snapped out of his thoughts, his head jerking up from where he was resting it against the ice-chilled window. A chill passed through his body, from the tips of his split-dyed hair to his boots, and he shivered through the threadbare fabric of his old patched-up black bomber jacket. “Yeah?”
“Ranboo, what happened this time?” Ranboo could see Sam looking at him in the rearview mirror.
“I–” Ranboo swallowed his words. “He deserved it.”
“I’m gonna need you to give me a little more context than that.”
“I hit someone. Again.”
Sam’s eyes softened slightly at the shame blooming red on Ranboo’s cheeks. “Ranboo. I can’t… I can’t keep bailing you out.”
“I know, Sam. I’ll try harder, I promise. I’m… I’m sorry.”
Radio static enveloped the car like a blanket, sending Ranboo’s whispered apologies scattering to the October wind.
Ponk was already waiting for Ranboo when Sam’s police cruiser pulled up to the shelter. He always knew everything; there was no use trying to lie to him. The car slowed down, then stopped, and Sam got out. Ranboo slunk further into the leather seat. He didn’t feel like moving.
Suddenly, the car door he was leaned against opened, and Ranboo tumbled unceremoniously onto the harsh pavement. Despite himself, he started cackling at his own ridiculous predicament. Sam helped him up wordlessly, not even cracking the smallest smile. Seriously, would it kill the guy to not look so concerned all the time?
Sam walked over to Ponk, and started talking to him. Ranboo, since he had no real obligation to sit and listen to them talk about “Whatever are we going to do about poor Ranboo now?”, pulled open the door to the shelter and walked in.
Instantly, a little green-shirted ball of joy bounced over, burrowing his fluffy mop of brown hair into Ranboo’s chest.
“Bossman! You ate shit, dude!! That was hilarious!”
Ranboo laughed, feeling a blanket of heavy-heartedness he hadn’t even noticed was there lift from his shoulders. Tubbo always seemed to have that effect on him. He wasn’t actually a foster kid here anymore, since he’d gotten adopted a couple of months after Ranboo met him, but he always came back to help with menial tasks and keep in touch with everyone. “Yes, yes, my death is hilarious. A prime source of entertainment for all the villagers around.”
Tubbo grinned. “Seriously, though. Why are you back here so soon? I thought that last place was the right one, what with Michael and all.”
Ranboo shifted on his feet, looking everywhere except Tubbo’s eyes. “It… well… it happened again.”
“Again? Dude! I’ve known you for two years and this is, what, the tenth time you’ve gotten kicked out for punching someone?”
“I know, I know…”
Tubbo sighed. “Did they at least deserve it?”
“Oh, absolutely .”
Tubbo burst out laughing. Just like that, they were back to normal, cracking jokes and laughing like they were without a care in the world.
Good things never last forever. Before five minutes had passed, Ponk was waving Ranboo into his office, that awful disappointed look on his face. Ranboo waved goodbye to Tubbo, sitting in the cedar-wood chair and breathing in the smell of fresh wood stain. Ponk must have just got his desk refinished.
“Ranboo,” Ponk sighed. “I’m sure you know as well as I do that what happened tonight was absolutely unacceptable.
Ranboo sighed, too. He wondered if it was contagious, like yawning.
“You’re staying here tonight, but there’s already a foster family scheduled to take you tomorrow.”
Ranboo blinked. That wasn’t normal. He’d never been at the shelter for less than a week.
“It’s a guy named Phil. He has three adopted kids, and they’ve all dealt with similar problems to you, so it should be a great fit. Don’t even worry about it.”
A pen rolled off Ponk’s desk and Ranboo caught it unconsciously. He started to fidget with it. For all Ponk said about how perfect it would be, he knew it wouldn’t last long. Those types of people were nice to you just long enough to get the papers signed, and then it was game over.
Ponk grabbed the pen from him. “Did you get that? 12pm tomorrow, be back here with all your belongings.”
Ranboo nodded slightly. Without a word, he rose from the chair and walked back to the shared bedroom he always slept in. The clock on the wall read eleven pm, but he didn’t feel tired at all. Ranboo sighed. It was going to be a long night.
***
When Ranboo woke up, he felt like he’d barely slept a wink. It was one of those night’s sleeps where you barely shut your eyes and then suddenly you’re opening them, light and sound and memory flooding in like it never left.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. 11:45. Shit. Ponk hated it when he was late. Hastily, Ranboo threw on plain black sweatpants and some band tee he’d gotten from Goodwill. He’d never even heard of the band. His stuff was thankfully still packed from last night, though, so there was that.
Ranboo paused, suddenly. He hadn’t eaten breakfast. Biting his lip, Ranboo weighed his options. He could eat breakfast, and be super late… or he could just skip it.
His stomach let out a protesting growl. Skipping breakfast it was then. It’s not like he hadn’t done that before.
Ranboo ran all the way to Ponk’s, bursting through the door at 12:02.
Ponk rolled his eyes, gesturing to the cedar chair Ranboo had sat in yesterday. “You’re lucky today. Phil’s not here yet.”
No sooner than he could close his mouth, Phil burst through the door. He had shoulder-length blond hair and was wearing a faded green and white bucket hat. “I’m so sorry I’m late! Did I miss anything?”
“No, no,” Ponk laughed. “Ranboo just got here too. Overslept, the idiot.”
Ranboo bristled.
“Alright. There are papers I need to sign, I presume?”
Ranboo scoffed a little. Presume.
“Of course, but first there are a couple things you need to know about Ranboo. He’s a very smart kid, but he gets in a lot of fights in school. He… we think it might be best to find him some sort of anger management class. Teachers have also complained about attitude problems.”
Ranboo felt his blood heat up a little. He didn’t hate Ponk, in fact, he was one of the only adults he respected at all, but when he talked about him like he was some broken toy that needed to be fixed, it made his blood boil.
But he wasn’t here to lament about Ponk. He was here to meet Phil. Ranboo narrowed his eyes at the man, slightly. He seemed… Well, to be frank, he seemed almost too nice. There was no way he wasn’t hiding something below that sickly-sweet exterior, and Ranboo would make him crack.
Maybe when he finally called the police on him, Ranboo would see Micheal again. That’d be nice.
“Ranboo! Are you listening?”
Ranboo snapped back to the present. Phil was standing in front of him. “Not really. What?”
Phil didn’t even seem to care, just smiled and laughed a bit. “I asked if you wanted to get some groceries with me? I need to pick up some things before we head back to my house.”
“Um. I guess. Whatever. I don’t really have a choice.”
Ponk gave Phil a look, like “Teenagers, right?”. Phil returned it.
Ranboo waved goodbye to Tubbo, who he could see through the window. Phil tried to lay a hand on his shoulder, but Ranboo flinched violently and pushed it away.
“Don’t touch me.”
Phil looked at Ranboo, the pity in his eyes all too familiar. Ranboo narrowed his eyes and turned away, sitting himself down in the passenger seat.
“So, is there anything I need to know about you? Stuff that wouldn’t be on the record, like your triggers or pronouns?”
Ranboo fixed his dead stare on the asphalt in front of them. “Insomnia. Pronouns… um, I don’t care. ‘He’ works fine.” Ranboo turned to Phil, and fixed him with his most threatening gaze. “If I feel unsafe, I will protect myself.”
Phil didn’t react, just kept looking at him with that sad, sad pity in his eyes. “We can pick you up some Melatonin from the pharmacy while we’re at the grocery store. What makes you feel unsafe?”
Ranboo paused, thinking. “Yelling. Threats.”
Phil nodded. “Yelling triggers Wilbur, too, so we don’t do it much. And I can promise none of us will purposefully threaten you.”
Phil’s car pulled up to the grocery store. He went off to get the Melatonin, plus whatever milk or something he needed to get, and told Ranboo to just get something he wanted.
There’s something to be said for that feeling when you step inside of a grocery store, and someone else says they’ll pay for you. You never quite know what you’ll end up with in your hands, and it’s often better to just let it happen and see where the world takes you. Ranboo, for instance, ended up with two boxes of spaghetti and one of cinnamon rolls. He decided not to question it. Thankfully, neither did Phil.
Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at Phil’s house. Ranboo saw a cat in the window, a gray tortoiseshell, and smiled. They had better be treating it well here. He’d sent someone to the hospital once for kicking a cat, and he’d do it again.
When he walked in the door, he saw three others in the house, all teenagers. One of them had fluffy blond hair, one had round glasses and a yellow sweater, and the third had long pink hair and was wearing a white poet’s shirt like a ren faire nerd (Ranboo couldn’t judge, but really).
“Oh hey!” the glasses person called. “You must be Ranboo, right?”
Ranboo didn’t say anything.
“You’re really tall,” said the blond kid. “Probably taller than Wilbur.”
“Tommy, have you ever considered you might just be short?” the pink-haired guy asked, setting down his book.
“Oi!”
“Boys, boys, calm down. You don’t want to scare off your new housemate, do you?” Phil smiled. “This is Tommy,” he gestured at the blond kid. “This is Techno.” The ren faire nerd raised a hand in acknowledgement. “And this is Wilbur,” Phil gestured towards the glasses kid. “All of their pronouns are He/Him, and so are mine.”
“Okay,” Ranboo said. He didn’t really care. He was going to be out of here soon anyways, if the world kept chugging on like it always seemed to.
“Alright.” Phil cleared his throat. “Your room’s just up the stairs and down the hall, second door on the left. We’ll give you some space to unpack and settle in. I’ll get one of the boys to call you when dinner’s ready.”
Ranboo just nodded. He felt kind of like he was floating through space, just aimlessly drifting through the fog of nothing. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but he knew it would make it hard to protect himself. Ranboo walked to his room, barely making it through the door before collapsing on the bed they gave him. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to just… rest his eyes a bit…
Ranboo was woken by a sharp rapping on the door of the bedroom. He groaned, pushing himself up. There was drool on the corner of his mouth. “Who’s there?”
“Wilbur. We’re having dinner. Come on down.”
“One minute.”
Ranboo waited until he heard Wilbur’s footsteps fade away down the stairs, then pushed himself up on his elbow, rolling off the bed. He scrubbed at the corner of his mouth, but it was a lost cause. Oh, well. He didn’t owe a presentable appearance to this random ass foster family anyway.
He walked downstairs to see Techno, Wilbur and Tommy sitting down at the dinner table, Phil walking over with fried chicken and tomatoes. Ranboo stifled a gag. He hated potatoes.
Dinner progressed like any normal dinner Ranboo had experienced in a foster home. Small talk was forced and awkward, never leading to anything. Phil asked him how his day was, Ranboo bit back the insult hiding in his throat. Ranboo picked at the chicken slightly, avoiding the potato.
Techno looked at Ranboo’s plate and snorted. “Do you not like potatoes or something?”
“So what if I don’t?”
Techno shrugged, turning back to his plate where he was on his fourth baked potato. “Just seems kind of weird that you would decide not to eat potatoes. They’re the best food.”
Ranboo felt his anger bubble over. “Well, judging by your hair, you’ve also made some bad decisions in your time.”
Oh, now he’d done it. There was no going back; this was how he was getting kicked out. He tensed his body, waiting for… something.
Instead, the whole table burst out laughing, even Techno. Ranboo flinched, his face heating up. This wasn’t normal. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
“I–’m going to bed.” Ranboo stood up suddenly, pushing his chair back from the table. He half-tossed his plate into a pile by the sink, and practically ran back to his borrowed room. He could hear Phil and his kids whispering about him behind him, and his nose scrunched up in distaste. He hated people whispering behind his back.
At around seven thirty, there was another knock at the door. Ranboo didn’t respond.
“Hey, Ranboo, It’s Phil,” the person behind the door said. “I’m sorry if we offended you by laughing at dinner. We joke around a lot in this family, so it’s a normal occurrence for us. Let me know if you need anything tonight, my room’s just by the kitchen on the right.”
Ranboo stayed silent. Talking took energy.
“Good night, Ranboo. Sleep well.”
Phil’s footsteps echoed down the hall, fading into the monotone hum of the furnace and fridge.
Ranboo sighed. He rolled over, popping his earbuds in and connecting them to his old flip-phone burner phone type-thing. He hit play on one of his downloaded playlists, and let himself drift into space.
She woke me up at dawn, soft-spoken as a spider
Spinning webs of holy words while she was still asleep
Kill the moon beneath my window, pull the covers tighter
And hear her voice go swinging like a hatchet through the trees…