TransBoo

3.

tw: gender dysphoria, coming out

Tommy muted to end the stream and Ranboo leaned back, considerably more awake than he had been at the start of the stream. The others were chatting absentmindedly but Ranboo wasn't really listening. He stared at his monitor, looking at his wallpaper. It was a drawing of him and Tubbo that someone had done on Twitter. He smiled at it, knowing that so many people loved him. Then his smile faltered at the remembrance that he was lying to all those people, even the person drawn smiling next to him. He placed his head in his hands and sighed.

"You okay there, Ranboo?" Niki asked.

"Yeah, yeah I'm fine. Just tired I guess," he replied.

"Maybe you should go and get some sleep, seeing as you said you were up until like, six, was it?"

"Yeah, okay. Thanks, Niki. Bye everyone." He was met with everyone in the call saying goodbye to him before he left the call. He wasn't tired, well he was, but that wasn't the reason he had been acting off in the call. His sister calling him by his dead name really hit him hard toward the end of the Jackbox stream. It really hurt him to not tell his sister that he was, in fact, her brother, not her sister. But how would he come out to his sister if he couldn't even come out to his best friends? He was just pathetic. Ranboo pushed himself up and walked partially down the hallway before stopping. He glanced up at the ceiling and stared at the hatch to the attic. The attic was his safe space, he went up there when he needed a break from it all. He reached up and pulled open the hatch, he was tall enough to not need the metal rod if he stood on his tippy toes. He gently pulled the ladder down and climbed into the darkness. It smelt of dust in the cramped room but it was comforting to the teen. He pulled himself up and sat in the dust, staring at the many cardboard boxes they had stacked up in the small space. One caught his attention, a box with his dead name scribbled on it in messy black marker. He shuffled over to the box and pulled off the lid, revealing photo albums, well his family never used the photo albums where you put the photos into a plastic file, they used old looking notebooks and glued the photos in, they thought it made them look cooler. Having completely forgotten about all the photos, Ranboo picked up a red leather-bound album and opened the first page. On the brown paper, in his mom's handwriting, it read 'October 2003 - October 2004'. These were photos from his first year of life, well sort of, some were before he was born. The first photo he saw when he flipped over the page was a photo of his mom, pregnant with him, in her overalls, decorating for Halloween. It was dated 26 October 2003. Ranboo smiled. She looked so happy. The next photo was from Halloween. His mom and dad were on the couch together, their old golden retriever, who was just a puppy, sprawled on her back. He flipped the page and saw a photo of him the day he was born, 03 November 2003. Sighing, he replaced the notebook into the box and pulled out another. This one was dated September 2010 - February 2011. The first few photos were of him and his sister, lying in piles of orange leaves, wide grins plastered on both of their faces. Ranboo remembered this clearly even though he was only six and a half and was notorious for his terrible memory. The leaves had turned orange a lot faster that year and on one of the walks their entire family went on, him and his sister and decided to make a leaf pile with the newly fallen leaves. They'd tried to throw their brother in with them but their mom wouldn't let them since he was only a few months old. He'd had so much fun that day. Then the photos turned into Halloween. There was a photo of Ranboo, grinning toothily at the camera, in a cheap witch costume, holding up his plastic broomstick. Then there were random photos until finally he found the photos from his seventh birthday party. It had been Mario themed because he was a nerd. There was one particular photo that he couldn't stop staring at. It was a photo from the end of the table, him at the head and his friends down the sides. The Mario cake was sitting in front of him and the candles were lit. His Mario hat was too big for his head so it was sitting on the table next to him but that let him see his long hair. Ranboo hadn't seem himself with long hair for so long. In the photo it had been pulled back into two French braids, leaving his curly fringe free. He looked so different. He looked so happy. He wished he could just go back, go back to when he thought he was cis, when he didn't worry about passing, when he didn't have to time how long he had been wearing his binder, when he didn't have to lie to every person in his life, friend or family. But now he had to lie. Lie every single day of his gods damned life.