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Etho crawls out of the dungeon spitting blood and crying. Okay, so not exactly a good Decked Out run, but he’s had worse. At least he had made it out, this time- albeit a little broken.
Tango crows his congratulations, hopping down from his vantage point above the dungeon to meet Etho by the main entrance. He slaps Etho on the back, wincing as Etho pukes all over him, then holds a potion bottle to Etho’s lips and tips its contents down Etho’s throat.
Healing potion flooding his veins, Etho shivers as his body knits itself back together around him. He inhales a desperate breath of fresh air and uses Tango as leverage to heave himself off of the floor.
Everything hurts and he feels like shit. Swallowing his own saliva feels like an insurmountable task, and when he tries to crack his neck every muscle in his body aches.
“Well done! You almost got the artifact, that time!” Half-laughing, Tango wipes Etho’s face clear of blood and debris, then pats him on the back. “You’ll get them next time, tiger!”
Rolling his eyes, Etho leaves Tango’s side to collect his items. Tango frowns, taking a seat on the player respawn bed and settling his gaze on Etho’s back.
After a moment of silence, broken only by the sounds of Etho emptying his chest, Etho asks, “Is there anyone else waiting to run?”
“You actually want to go again?”
Etho nods. “Sure. Need to get my runs in.” He takes a step back from the chest, licking blood from the corner of his mouth and wiping his forehead. He glances over at Tango. “Now, if the dungeon master hadn’t made such annoying rules about rollover shards….”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tango grins and follows Etho out of the first chamber when he goes. The dungeon changes modes, readying itself for the next player, and Etho takes a seat to wait for his next turn.
That won’t be long. The dungeon is surprisingly empty in the late afternoon, quiet aside from the two men in the foyer. On the waiting bench, Etho kicks his legs out in front of himself and tips his head back, closing his eyes and lessening the bright lights by covering his face with his hands. He groans as the dungeon announces that it is ready for its next victim all too quickly, forcing him to begin readying himself to go again.
“You know,” Tango starts, trailing after Etho as they head towards the dungeon entrance once more, “you look awful, man. Are you sure you want to go again?”
Less resolutely, this time, Etho nods. “Gotta get my runs in. You know how it is.”
Tango does know how it is, and sometimes he regrets setting the rules as they are. Still, regardless of the rules, Etho does look like shit, and there’s no way that someone in this state should be running the dungeon.
Noticing the look in Tango’s eyes, Etho concedes. “Fine. One last run, then I’ll go home.”
“One last run.”
Really, Etho should have stopped two runs ago. He had known from the minute that he had stepped into the dungeon that he wasn’t going to come out of it well, but he had forced his way through the motions anyway. I mean, he’d already put the shard in- there was no point to just walking back out!
He’s on two and a half hearts and the dungeon’s third level. He does not have a plan. Blood drips slowly down his jeans from the wound in his side. There is a warden somewhere in the walls.
He heaves a ragged breath, coughing into his fist. The sound does absolutely nothing to help his predicament, immediately alerting every warden in the country to his presence.
Their heavy breathing echoes through the citadel. He knows they can hear him moving.
Etho still has another level to go down, but has yet to pick up a Permafrost Key. The stone beneath him creaks as he sneaks around the next corner, hoping to find that precious key waiting for him in his favorite loot spot.
Instead, he makes direct eye contact with a warden- the one that has been tracking him for the past ten minutes. Instead of loot he finds the face of his nightmares, spirits spilling from the beast’s chest and mouth gaping.
The warden fixes him with a gaze that he knows is going to hurt.
At least when he respawns nothing feels bad. Well- that’s mostly a lie. Drying blood still gums his jeans to his legs and adrenaline still beats through his veins, so he certainly doesn’t feel good, but when he breathes it comes clearly and he can walk without his legs shaking. Small mercies.
Tango steps into the fist chamber and leans against the wall, arms crossed.
“Well, hotshot? Get what you wanted?”
Etho sighs and throws a towel at Tango, who dodges it effortlessly. He takes the towel when it is handed back to him and wipes his face with it, shaking his hair dry of the residual sweat that has already built up there. Then, aware that Tango is still waiting for an answer, Etho grabs his stuff and makes for the door.
“I’m–”
“And I don’t want to hear it, Etho.” The Dungeon Master follows hot on Etho’s heels, voice dipping somewhere between that of a human and that of his warden companions. “You will not run the dungeon again.”
Etho stops dead and Tango walks straight into his back. Cursing and rubbing his nose, Tango turns away to find something big to hit Etho with, but stops when Etho speaks.
“FIne. I said I’d only do one more run, so I’ll only do one more run.” Pulling his communicator from his pocket, he types a quick message and checks the time, then shoves it back in his jeans. “I’ll get out of your hair.”
Suspicious of the sudden change, Tango whips around to find Etho already gone, sprinting towards Decked Out’s entrance.
“Etho– Hey!”
Etho ignores him, pitching himself from the side of the entrance platform.
Warm afternoon wind greets Etho kindly, the scent of cherry blossoms and birch on the breeze. Opening his wings as he plummets through the sky, his descent softens into a glide and he eventually floats steadily upwards. He passes a hand through his hair as he squints into the distant sunlight, trying to school his appearance into something socially acceptable, before giving up and shaking his head so that the wind does his hair untidily for him instead.
Etho takes a deep breath. This world tastes fresh in every way that Decked Out doesn’t. As much as he loves the game that Tango has poured his heart and soul into, Etho has to admit that it isn’t the most breathable of buildings, the atmosphere heavy and cloying. It doesn’t help that Etho has had an exceptionally bad time today, and the scent of death still clings to him.
Regardless of his terrible performance, stepping into flight always feels good. As backwards as it is, Etho can feel his heart rate slow as he brings himself to hover above Decked Out, watching Tango’s tiny silhouette run around angrily. Etho grins at the miniscule image of his friend searching once more for something to shoot Etho with.
The wind cuts through Etho’s sweater, not wholly unpleasantly, and he realizes sharply that he’s fucking exhausted. All at once the fear and hard labor of running the dungeon like it’s a 9-5 job catches up with him and he almost crashes out of the sky. Well, microdosing on fighting for your life isn’t good for anyone, I guess.
At this realization, Etho decides that maybe it really is for the best that he heads home. He waves to Tango far below him and shoots him a quick message on the communicator, then takes off into the sunset.
A minute or so later, his communicator buzzes with another message and his heart skips a beat. He checks it, not quite daring to hope, and- yes! It’s Cleo responding to his earlier message, begrudgingly allowing him to come over and crash on her couch.
Etho slows to a halt, beating his wings to keep himself afloat some half mile above the shopping district. He intends to do nothing more than answer the message, but finds himself distracted momentarily by the horizon. Close to sunset, pink light illuminates the clouds from behind and outlines everything with a haloic glow. As he hovers there, he wonders briefly whether it would be so wrong to toss his communicator and fly into the neverending distance until his friends can’t find him anymore. He’s not entirely sure where that desire comes from, but he indulges it for a few moments in his own mind.
He does not, of course, do this. Instead, he plots a course on his communicator to Cleo’s base that does not have him flying directly into the sun the entire time. The device tells him that it will take twenty minutes to fly there, but he knows that he can make it in seventeen.
Etho forgets to brake and crashes hard into Cleo’s window, seeing stars as he does a forward roll through shattering glass and lands on her coffee table.
Well- he had gotten the room right, at least! He’s in the living room nestled deep within Cleo’s quarters in her castle. Don’t let anyone tell you that mazes are hard to navigate when you know the person who made them- or, at least, when you come at them from the outside at a hundred miles an hour.
Cleo is sitting cross-legged on the couch, hand-sewing details into the bodice of an enormous dress. They look up at Etho, dazed on the coffee table, and sigh.
Needle still in hand, she gestures to a spot next to her on the couch, only most covered in glass fragments. “Make yourself at home,” she says, voice tired in a way that Etho can only find amusing. “No need to knock, or anything.”
Etho grins sheepishly and clears the glass with a wave of his hand, pulling two fresh panes from his inventory and replacing the broken window. Finally, some practical use for that light gray glass he always carries around with him! It’s not quite the same color, but Cleo definitely won’t notice.
When Etho turns around, Cleo is glaring at him. Okay, yeah, so maybe she did notice.
Ignoring his faults, Etho picks himself up from the coffee table and stretches, groaning as his spine pops. He throws himself unceremoniously down on the couch next to Cleo, head as close to being in her lap as he can get without risking being stabbed with the needle she wields so well. Face-down on the couch, he kicks his legs over the arm of the chair and sighs.
Doing his best not to get muddy footprints on Cleo’s nice carpet (though that has probably already happened), he toes his sneakers off and lets them fall to the floor behind him. He struggles through tugging his elytra over his head, reaching behind his back and making pathetic little noises until Cleo finally helps him out of them.
He buries his face in Cleo’s lap, groaning as she reaches down and scratches his head. Feeling more like a cat than a man, he nuzzles up into her palm and complains when she pulls away to return to her sewing. But, content to do nothing but lie in her presence, Etho rolls on his side and closes his eyes.
Quietly, as the minutes wear on, Etho realizes that he can hear Cleo's heartbeat in her thigh. He swallows thickly, trying to move past the way that it makes him feel.
But this silence cannot last forever, and it seems like only minutes later that Cleo is sighing and folding the dress in her hands and doing other such things that people who are about to move so often do. Etho rolls onto his back to look at their face, dutifully accepting the kiss pressed to his forehead, but complaining nonetheless when Cleo does get up.
“Where are you–”
“To start making supper,” Cleo interrupts, storing the unfinished dress in the corner of the room. She looks down at Etho and smiles. “Sleep. You need it.”
He groans in agreement, hauling himself to his feet and accompanying Cleo to her bedroom to steal blankets and pillows for his bed on the couch. Cleo helps carry the spare duvet out into the living room for him, and they return to find Etho poking through their jewelry.
“Find anything nice?”
Etho jumps, which makes them both laugh. He holds a pair of coral earrings, bright red, up to his ears and mimes putting them on.
“How do I look?” he asks, like he expects Cleo to make fun of him.
She leans against the doorframe, admiring Etho's mild discomfort with this whole thing. “You look good,” she says, and Etho’s eyes widen sharply. “Matches your eyes.”
Etho laughs and he is beautiful, the light from the window cutting across his face in bright lines. The earrings really do look good ‘on’ him, though his hands shake with laughter and he's having a hard time holding them anywhere near his ears.
Here is the boy that Cleo is in love with, his mismatched eyes and stupid smile. There are other people, of course, but there is a quiet joy to loving Etho that nobody else will ever quite get.
She does not, of course, say this. Instead, they look at Etho across the room. “You should sleep,” she says, not unkindly. “My couch awaits you.”
Etho does as she says.
It is to the sound of Bdubs’ voice that Etho awakens. He knows that Bdubs isn’t talking to him, by virtue of the fact that he’s barely awake, but Bdubs’ nearby presence is still as comforting as ever.
Etho groans, yanking his blanket up over his chin and burying his face in his pillow before he realizes that he has not at all woken up where he had expected to wake up. He freezes, caught momentarily off-guard by the unfamiliar smell of the room, before his mind floods with images of Cleo’s face and the memory of her words. Right, he’s at Cleo’s house. Of course.
Bdubs- why is Bdubs here, then?
At first, Etho assumes that Bdubs must have business here. After all, what better reason to visit someone? That is, until he’s awake enough to hear them both in the kitchen, talking about what to make for dinner and the weather and what groceries they need. Bdubs is here for pleasure.
Etho expects jealousy, but is greeted with only joy. How else is he supposed to feel when the two people he is most in love with are here in one house together?
Rolling onto his side, Etho pulls the blanket up to his chin once more. On his side he can see the square of orange light on the carpet from the open kitchen door, and the shape of Bdubs and Cleo in the shadows there. He finds he doesn’t really mind being woken up if it’s to their presence.
Cleo laughs and Bdubs shushes her, though he’s laughing too. On the floor, their shadows pantomime Bdubs putting his hands out to try to get Cleo to stay quiet, but him laughing too hard himself to stay still.
“Shush! Etho’s sleepin’!”
“Oh, piss off! He’ll be asleep until Monday, with the state he’s in.” The comforting, methodical sounds of cooking filter in through the open kitchen door- vegetables being chopped, water simmering, Bdubs being a general nuisance and trying to do the dishes at the same time as cooking. “He looked awful.”
Bdubs hums some vague and non-committal noise. “Decked Out’s been beating his ass lately. He needs to get some rest.” The sound of someone grabbing a knife by the wrong end, and Bdubs’ frustrated hiss. “You?” he asks anyway. “How are you doing?”
“Fine.” Cleo’s shadow crosses the window of light and Etho hears the sound of the garbage can opening. “I mean, not great, but as good as you can be, really.”
Bdubs laughs, voice deep and glorious, and Etho forgets whatever it was he was going to think about next. Bdubs is just like that- so always like that.
“Of course, my king. Always the fighter.”
Etho can practically hear Cleo rolling their eyes. He certainly sees the playful shove in the silhouettes on the floor as Bdubs’ laugh echoes through the room.
The radio clicks on and Etho knows that Bdubs is responsible for it. Some song that Etho doesn’t recognize starts playing, not quite melancholy and not quite upbeat, and the shapes in the square of light grow messy.
“No,” Cleo argues, but there’s no force behind it. “I'm cooking, Bdubs.”
There is a hand outstretched in the square of light, palm upturned. A beat of silence floods the room before Cleo takes the offered hand and huffs a laugh. The food goes ignored, water simmering as a baseline to the radio’s muffled melody.
Careful, doing his best not to make himself heard, Etho sits up on the couch. He props himself up on the arm, blanket pulled up to his chin. Pillow supporting the ache in his back, he sits just high enough that he can see over the other arm and into the kitchen.
Lit from above by the warm yellow lights, Bdubs and Cleo are half-dancing to the slow music. Bdubs is a lazy dancer- every step he takes follows Cleo’s body, stepping into her space and keeping to her careful rhythm. Cleo shifts her hands to Bdubs’ waist, keeping closer to him, and when she moves Bdubs moves with her.
Etho watches, enraptured, as they make peace with each other’s bodies in Cleo’s kitchen. Here is the person that he might be in love with, his fluffy hair mussed and his eyes glowing. Here is the person that he might be in love with, gray skin doused with orange blush and her sweater slipping down over her shoulders.
They are beautiful- it’s that simple. It has grown dark during Etho’s nap, and their bodies illuminated against the evening gloom that pervades the living room look ethereal.
The song grinds to a gentle stop and fades into narration about the weather. Bdubs kisses Cleo on either cheek, stepping back with a grin. Cleo ruffles his hair with a peeved laugh, then allows him to return to cutting potatoes.
Etho wants to join them. There, in the kitchen, with its orange light and smell of food and the people that he may or may not be in love with.
He does not join them. Instead, he sinks back onto the couch pillows. His body still hurts too much to try to do anything with it, and he knows that he needs to sleep more.
Cleo and Bdubs return to their conversation. The warm smell of food finally floods the living room, spicy and reassuring. As their talking gently melts into the sound of food being prepared, Etho yanks the blanket up to his chin and slides his arm underneath the pillow.
Etho sleeps.
When Etho next wakes, it is to the sound of Bdubs’ breathing.
Etho jerks awake, flinching away from the body on top of his. After all, it is just a body before it is the body of someone that he recognizes.
“Etho.”
Etho looks frantically up at the source of the voice, chest heaving. It is, of course, no one that he needs to be worried about- Cleo is sitting in the nearby armchair in her pajamas, that unfinished dress once more on her lap. His fear is met with their calm gaze,
“Etho,” she says again. “You’re okay. It’s just us.”
It’s just us. Just us, at the end of the day.
Etho heaves a breath that tastes more like adrenaline than oxygen, and drops his head back against the pillow beneath him. Bdubs, entirely unconscious, continues to sleep comfortably on Etho’s chest, his arms wrapped around Etho’s midriff.
Etho pets Bdubs’ hair and stares at the ceiling.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, after a long pause.
Cleo’s warm laugh fills the space between them. “Don’t worry about it.” Etho looks over at them as they return to their sewing, the sheer fabric illuminated only by the nearby lamp’s orange light. “There’s food in the kitchen, if you want it. We saved you some.”
Etho nods, then pauses, then nods again. He runs his fingers through Bdubs’ hair in the dark. The man shivers, wiggling deeper into the space between Etho and the couch and pressing his face into Etho’s shirt.
Two naps deep and finally not feeling like shit, Etho’s basic human needs start catching up to him. He’s hungry and needs to piss, both of which urges outweigh his desire to stay here and be comfortable in the presence of the two people that he is most in love with ever.
Quietly, Etho slips from Bdubs’ clutches and pads towards the bathroom. Cleo smiles fondly at his soft footsteps, that gentle reminder that Etho has a past that none of them talk about. Sleep disrupted, Bdubs rolls off of the couch and onto the floor and any hope for a moment of peace is abandoned as he hits the ground.
Etho returns a minute later, shaking his hands dry and expertly avoiding Bdubs’ sprawling limbs. Bdubs chirps a greeting, dutifully ignored, and scrambles to his feet to follow Etho into the kitchen.
It takes Etho twenty-three seconds to turn the kitchen lights on low, open the fridge and start shoveling curry into his mouth with his hands.
He’s not really hungry until he’s eating, and then he’s fucking ravenous. Sure, he could stop and grab a fork, but fingers are as good a utensil as any and Etho is more than efficient at eating with his hands. Even when Bdubs appears from nowhere and wraps his arms once more around Etho’s waist, he continues piling rice into his mouth and chewing just barely long enough to taste it.
Bdubs rests his chin on Etho’s shoulder, sighing heavily into Etho's ear. Ignored once again, he sighs louder, like he's some kind of puppy dog who only knows one way to get the attention that he wants.
Etho puts down the rice he's holding and blows spicy air at Bdubs’ face. Gagging and coughing, Bdubs springs back and staggers around the kitchen like a man dying. Unphased, Etho returns to his rice.
“Heartless!” Bdubs cries, clutching at his chest. “Heartless! I’ll never forgive you!”
Etho licks his fingers clean and shuts the fridge, the Tupperware inside now much lighter. He opens the freezer, stepping back to look the contents over.
“That’s nice, baby boy,” he says, while locating the ice cream bars with expert skill. “Do we have any milk? I didn’t look.”
“You’re a disgusting piece of work,” Bdubs replies, finally ‘recovering’ enough to sit on one of the stools under the island counter. “Nope. I’ll pick some up tomorrow.”
“Damn.” Etho settles for just ice cream, no milk.
“Yeah.”
Bdubs falls quiet, but opens his arms for a hug that Etho walks into. This is the moment that he has been waiting for, with Etho safe in his arms and the lights dimmed. He wraps his arms around Etho’s waist, though the man doesn’t hug him back, and he rests his forehead in the space below Etho’s ribcage. Despite the faint scent of blood still clinging to him, Etho smells mostly clean, and somewhat like how Bdubs imagines soap would smell if the fragrance actually stuck to your body after you got out of the shower.
Here is the boy he is in love with, hair white and smelling of soap, standing above him. There are other people he is in love with, but they aren’t here to see Etho with the eyes that Bdubs can.
“Etho?”
“Yeah?”
“You should come back to bed.” Bdubs says it like it’s some terrible revelation that will rip them all apart. Here- this desire of mine to see you vulnerable and half-undressed in a bed that does not belong to either of us. Here- the most incriminating of demands, which will ruin me forever if you don’t laugh it off.
“I know.” Etho brushes flecks of ice cream out of Bdubs’ hair. “My precious fragile flower can’t sleep without me.” He takes another bite of his ice cream, leaving a curry-covered bite mark behind.
“Shaddup!” Bdubs sure complains a lot for a man with his face buried in Etho’s shirt. “I can sleep perfectly well without you. You just need more damn sleep.”
Okay, sure, that’s probably true. Etho bites into his ice cream and thinks about how much better it would be if he had a glass of milk. Bdubs sighs and his warm breath puffs over Etho’s stomach.
“Come back to bed. I’m tired.”
“We were asleep on the couch, so I can’t exactly come back–”
“You suck!”
Cleo laughs from the other room, clearly eavesdropping on their conversation, and Bdubs tells her to shaddup too, which doesn’t go down well. She shouts at him that she will never cook dinner ever again, and that he will simply have to starve, so Bdubs yells back that he’s never going to cook again either, so they’ll both have to starve together. This accomplishes nothing.
Cleo shouts something else that Etho doesn’t quite catch but which Bdubs clearly does, as he shoots to his feet and starts heatedly towards the door. Before he can vanish again, Etho grabs his sleeve and pulls him back into his little circle of light.
Bdubs goes for a kiss on the cheek but Etho kisses him on the mouth, short and sweet and tasting of something between curry and ice cream. Etho’s mouth is cold, so Bdubs holds his face and kisses him until he’s warm again.
When Etho is warm again and blushing like he’s twenty-four and Bdubs has just kissed him for the first time out in the middle of the forest, Bdubs trots off to fight with Cleo. Etho, face in his hands and ice cream dripping onto the floor, listens to them bicker for a few minutes before he regains his composure and grabs a towel to wipe the floor with.
He takes Bdubs’s seat at the table, finishing his ice cream off in another two bites. Really, he could’ve done it in one, but he’s not feeling that brave this late in the evening.
A few minutes later, after it has calmed down in the living room, Cleo steps into the kitchen and offers her hand out to Etho. He takes it, though they don’t pull him to his feet as he expects. Instead, they start checking his nails and wiping dried blood from the pads of his fingers, which neither of them talk about out loud
“We’ve gone to bed,” Cleo says. “Bdubs is in my bed, the sly bastard.”
“Is this a- uh–” Etho stumbles over his words as Cleo touches his palm, which is not a thing he had thought he would ever find intimate but there’s a first time for everything. “Is this a we’ve gone to bed or a we’ve gone to bed?”
“Bdubs is asleep,” Cleo clarifies, a wry smile on her face, “though I’m sure I could wake him up if you keep saying things like that.”
Etho sputters a laugh and grins, sliding his hands from Cleo’s grasp. That’s his call to go home, then, since he has already overstayed his welcome with two naps and dinner.
Cleo fixes him with a good hard look. “The couch and spare bedroom are yours, Etho,” she says, like she knows what he’s thinking. She does. “And, of course, my bed. And the bath if you're really that hard pressed to find somewhere to sleep, but–”
“Thank you.” Etho smiles at her. “I’ll think about it.”
He might just go home anyway. Cleo looks at him, that look in her eyes again, before she kisses him on the forehead and heads to bed.
Etho sits by himself under the kitchen’s orange light. He's tired.