Ranboo is cleaning their room when he finds it.
Stuffed under their bed, itâs a worn leather book, peeling on the cover, a zipper that takes a couple tries to open. He thinks, briefly, that maybe he should leave it be, but his curiosity gets the better of him, and he opens it. He realises on the first page that itâs a photo album â clearly an old one as well, given the softness on the first face he recognises, which is Tommyâs.
Tubbo walks in while heâs attempting to decipher why all the people in the photos are wearing the same uniform. Ranboo startles, feeling guilty, as if heâs been caught doing something untoward. But Tubbo just blinks, opens his mouth, almost seeming a little surprised, and then smiles, although it looks a little hurt. He sits down next to Ranboo, and flips the page for him. âJust old memories,â Tubbo dismisses. âTommy got the camera for his 16th. Used to Willâs. He was obsessed with the thing, so weâve got tons of photos.â
Ranboo smiles, happy to be trusted with it. He recognises almost all of the people in the photos, although they each look much different now. There is only one stranger. A couple photographs in, after chewing on his lip and hoping he isnât poking at wounds too unhealed, Ranboo finally works up the courage to ask who the young blond standing next to Tommy is.
He doesnt know why, exactly, he never even considered it might be his husband, despite all the similarities he can parse now that he looks for them. Same height, same old green polo, same little glint in their eyes, visible even through the filter of a polaroid camera. Maybe he has just never given much thought to what his husband would look like without scars and grey hair and wrinkles beaten into him too early. This is the only man he has ever known. Itâs the man he fell in love with.
It is hard, sometimes, to remember that there was ever a man before â he is so distant, it is as if he really is a friend long past â someone who left a personâs life long before you came into it, glimpsed only in eulogies and drunk reminiscence. He loves the man he knows now, would not trade him for the world, but he cannot help feeling a secondhand sadness â he gets the sense his husband would have quite liked to introduce them.
titsay
ellievsbear
vaporwave
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
andulkaphoto
