A Christmas Carol, First Edition

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A/N: I'm just letting ya'll know right now, I had so much fun writing this, but I also am so fucking proud of the fact that I managed to write 15,000 words in the span of three days. Yes, you heard that right; I wrote this entire thing in THREE. DAYS. 

With that in mind, go ahead and read the story. I'm rather proud of it (;



Ranboo turned over in his bed, stifling a muffled groan. 

The clock sitting next to his head threatened to wake him up, the chimes of the hour-- one AM-- ringing in his ears already. A thick, scratchy woollen blanket held him to the wrinkled satin bedsheet, his head propped up on a stiff pillow.

The loud, heavy ringing finally tore him from his sleep, pulling him upright to rub at bleary, sleep-clogged eyes. He yawned widely, scratching behind his neck, and glanced at the clock on his mantle.

Wait.

But . . . he didn't have a mantle.

He was staying in some crap hotel with his friends, introducing them to the wonders of America. There weren't many, but perhaps that was why they were more focused on ghost hunting than sightseeing. Tommy and Tubbo were many things, but tourists? Ranboo pictured Phil in one of those gaudy, button-up floral shirts and shuddered.

Dear God, no.

But back to the matter at hand: what was he doing here? Where even was here? It wasn't some terrible hotel, that was for sure, but it definitely wasn't a 5-star suite either.

He turned over in the bed, noticing for the first time how uncomfortably the woollen blanket scratched at his legs. He kicked at the covers, shoving them off his lower half, and sat up in bed. The entire scene around him was dark, strangely so: night never got that dark, at least not with all the light pollution going on in Wisconsin.

Ranboo reached out with both hands, and the fingers of his left hand brushed against some sort of thick, soft fabric wall. There was something surrounding the bed-- his bed? No, it wasn't his bed. He looked down at himself just to make sure there wasn't any body-swap nonsense going on, flexing his fingers and all ten of his toes, and breathed a sigh of relief when all he found was familiarity.

Now to figure out just where the hell he was.

He reached out again with trembling fingers, this time grabbing a fistful of the strangely heavy curtain. At first, he tried to pull it down, but that didn't work, and he quickly gave up on that idea (he didn't want to pull the entire ceiling down as well as the curtain-wall). Then, he tried to tug it to the side, yanking it away from his face.

To his great surprise, it worked, exposing a thin sliver of the room beyond. Ranboo couldn't see much of it; the entire place was dark at best and the fact that it was completely unfamiliar didn't help at all. Still, summoning all of his courage, he tentatively reached one hand outside.

Nothing happened. Armed with newfound courage (and a great curiosity, too), Ranboo dipped his leg out of the curtain-surrounded bedspace, and found that while it wasn't dangerous, it was very, very cold. He shivered, and reached over the bedsheets to grab the scratchy blanket he had thrown away just a minute ago.

Clutching the wool blanket-turned-cloak tightly around his shoulders, Ranboo slipped fully outside of the protective shell of a bed and into his new surroundings.

From what he could see, he was standing in a large, brick-walled room. A crudely-constructed table was next to him, a dirtied vase and some cheap flowers stuffed inside were propped up clumsily on a doily sitting on the tabletop. A rug stretched the length of the room, so scratchy on Ranboo's bare feet he could have sworn it came from the same unhappy sheep that the blanket did. A brick fireplace was shoved into one corner of the room, inside of which there was a small slope cut out of the wall to accommodate a small nest of blackened wood behind an iron grate.

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