Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
ranboo and iris were gone for nearly two hours. ranboo had texted the other two, letting them know everything was alright. it was late, and tubbo had fallen asleep pretty quickly. tommy was texting phil and jack, the older men trying to help him calm down. but he couldn't focus on anything except his best friend.
ranboo and iris sat facing each other, cross legged, his hands holding hers securely as she told them what had been plaguing her. even the feelings about tommy, which she'd never said allowed before. ranboo listened, his gaze fixed intently on her making sure that he didn't miss a single word of what iris was saying.
he was worried about her. she was clearly struggling, and, as much as they wanted to spend time with iris, ranboo knew this was making it hard for iris to process what she needed to, especially being around tommy so much.
iris had tears streaming down her face, spilling her mind to ranboo and they pulled her into a hug. "do you want me to call your mom?"
she was pathetic, the second she manages to get away, be an adult and spend time with her friends that she'd tried so hard to make, and she goes crawling back to her mum. she nodded, defeated, and ranboo pulled out his phone without letting her out of his embrace. "i'm sorry i ruined our plans."
he shushed her, texting iris's mother with one hand as the other rubbed her back. "you couldn't ruin anything if you tried."
that made her cry even harder, and as ranboo put their phone back into the pocket of their hoodie, they started clumsily braiding iris's hair, moving her so she was facing away from him. "you're surprisingly good at that," she sniffled.
"i need practice to steal your hair," he replied simply. the plan was for iris to spend the rest of the night at toby's house and then she'd catch the train back, with her mum picking her up halfway. ranboo had offered to go with her but she'd declined, wanting to be alone.
she didn't have the balls to tell tommy what was wrong, so she mostly avoided him on her last night at toby's house, thanking tubbo for letting her stay and apologising for leaving early. while the process of leaving had been relatively easy, she still had that knot in her stomach, getting worse and worse as she got further away. she was sitting on a bench at the train station waiting for her mum to come pick her up. she'd been sitting there for 20 minutes when a notification interrupted her episode of of adventure time.
she swiped it away, her mood souring immediately. it stayed in her notification centre for about two seconds before she opened it up again. she closed it, swearing under her breath before opening it up again.
she turned her phone off, ignoring the text and making it way more inconvenient for her to find her mum when she did arrive. she kept her phone off for the next three days, keeping it in the front seat of her mum's car in an attempt to not answer the text.
eventually though, she found herself rifling through her mother's handbag in the early hours of the morning after she'd just got home, looking for her keys. it was almost complete darkness, with the sun not being up yet, as iris unlocked the car and fished her phone out of the passenger side door.
her phone turned on after a moment, and at 4:14 in the morning, iris opened her text messages and typed out a shaky reply.
jack <333 tuesday 9:18 am
hey, iris! it's been a while! can we talk?
today at 4:14 am
meet me at the park by my house at 11am today
— AUTHOR'S NOTE this chapter is considerable shorter than most of the others, but writing has been such a struggle, whenever i go to write this book i just feel guilty for not writing and then i can't make myself do it, but i'm doing my bed!! also, i got james marriott tickets!! i'm going to his concert later this year and i am very excited to go!!
