Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The ceiling of the bus terminal is higher than Skeppy had expected it to be, all metal sheets broken up by corrugated plastic windows. The rain thuds against it, fierce and loud.

Bad is late.

Skeppy's eyes are heavy. After nearly a full day of travel and a week of bad sleep, he's so exhausted he can barely see colours - if this is some kind of payback, then he really wishes Bad had chosen a different day.

But the café he's in is a kind of commercialised cosy, books lining the walls, fake candles swaying merrily in strategic points, like nobody will notice they're not real if they can't see the top properly. Everything's clad in the same wood-print laminate, the same weird alien face repeating itself on tables and shelves and the countertop in front of the poor barista Skeppy had ordered from.

He looks around, trying to stay awake. He's awash in a sea of too-similar faces, all miserable and bleary, fingers clutching at their coffee mugs like the caffeine will clear up the weather if only they wish hard enough.

Bad is still late. Skeppy blinks hard once and checks his phone again.

Bad had given him an ETA of ten minutes about ten minutes ago, and there's no sign of him. It's not like he wouldn't stand out, either - it seems like everyone here is old or young, teenagers coming home, older relatives coming to greet them.

The chair he's on is this weird curvy stool thing that makes his back hurt.

Someone comes in from the car park entrance, but it's some mid-40s soccer mom with a rainbow scarf. Skeppy doesn't like to assume, but he doesn't think that's Bad. He's photoshopped him bald too many times to be fooled.

(He eyes her anyway.)

Above him, the rain hurls itself against the corrugated plastic. Skeppy has been listening to it for long enough that it's started to warp into a song, like some kind of Faster remix - the sound of the rain the drums, the hiss of the bus brakes the cymbals. People chattering the vocals.

He taps his fingers along the side of the phone, stringing it all together into some stupid tune.

Three minutes late. Not that he's watching the clock.

Skeppy gets up and orders another coffee, feeling dead inside. He's barely even passed two minutes by the time he gets back, which is such an awful revelation that he flicks his phone off and just lets himself slump into his drink, groaning dramatically.

Laughter.

Laughter he knows.

His head snaps up, and there he is.

Skeppy isn't too ashamed to admit he freaks out some. He'd banked on, y'know, seeing Bad from across the terminal, having a minute to get his act together, but no. Of course Bad has defied all expectations Skeppy had had of him - it's practically his unknowing hobby.

Bad looks differently than he'd expected, mostly in dumb ways Skeppy will never admit to aloud: for one, he associates Bad with his Minecraft skin, since he sees it all the time in-game and in fanart, and he's stupidly caught off-guard when he realises that Bad's just wearing a hoodie and jeans.

For another, Bad is older than the thumbnails Skeppy edits of him.

(Yes, he knows he's an idiot. Shut up.)

"Sorry," Bad is saying, and when he smiles Skeppy is pretty sure he has dimples. Skeppy is also pretty sure that he's going to die. "I had a hard time finding a parking spot."

"It's fine," Skeppy says automatically. He leans hard on one foot, trying to get himself to focus. "No worries. Hi. Hello."

"Hi!"

They look at each other.

Bad knows what he looks like, is the thing - he tends to stream with facecam on, whereas Bad tends to not. In all honesty, he's not sure what Bad's looking at.

He stares back at the glasses and the hair and the maybe extra inch Bad has on him, and then his mouth opens and out comes:

"Wow."

Bad's forehead pinches in a slight frown. His hands twitch and retreat into his hoodie pocket. "What?"

"Nothing," Skeppy says, feigning over-casual. "I just can't believe you didn't shave your head for the occasion."

Bad half-laughs, surprised, and gives the same, "Oh, you did not," that Skeppy has heard so many times over the years.

It's accompanied by a wry twist of the mouth, a narrowing of the eyes: Skeppy grins back at him, feeling like someone's turned on a light inside of him. This is already different in so many ways, so many good fucking ways - he can feel them piling up in the back of his mind, somewhere behind the excited chant of Bad is here Bad is here he's right in front of you that just won't stop.

Bad lifts his arms and says, "Hugboyhalo?"

Skeppy laughs, a little overwhelmed. "Yeah, okay."

He slips off the stool and into Bad's arms. Bad tucks him in close: he smells faintly of rain and dog. He's still warm from being in the car, which bodes well because Skeppy is freezing.

After a moment or two, Bad's shoulders start shaking. Skeppy frowns, suspicious.

"What?"

"Nothing," Bad says, like a liar.

"Bad, what?"

"It's just -" He starts to snicker in earnest: Skeppy pulls away, already braced. "You got off the chair and you're so short."

He can barely even finish the sentence. Skeppy hates the fact that he's laughing too.

"No - dude, shut up, come on." Bad is laughing harder, eyes screwing shut. "Don't do this to me - Bad!"

He whacks Bad lightly on the arm and turns away to swing his backpack on, huffing. By the time he's picked up his coffee as well, Bad has recovered enough to steal his suitcase.

Skeppy looks at it. "I can carry that," he says, uncertain.

"I know that, you muffin." Bad bumps shoulders with him, smiling. "I'm just being a good friend, that's all."

Skeppy hides a broad smile in his coffee.

Bad leads them both to the entrance, then stops. Skeppy walks straight into his back, having successfully zoned out in the full two seconds of not being spoken to: Bad looks back and laughs at his dazed face a little, then takes him by the elbow and draws him around to his side.

"What do you think are our chances in that?"

Skeppy looks out, eyes wide.

The rain has worsened since his bus had pulled in: he's been listening to it fall on the roof, but the sound can't hold a candle to the actual thing. The car park tarmac is one big puddle, almost shaking with the force of the rain coming down - the splashes overlap and interrupt each other, spattering further into the terminal than should really be logical.

Visibility is so bad that he's not sure if he can see more than fifteen cars away. As close as they are, the sound is incredible.

Skeppy is awake enough to say, "Holy shit."

"I - language!" Bad is flustered enough by the swear that he misses his hoodie pocket three times. "Oh, for - there we go." He pulls out a collapsible umbrella and waves it. "Luckily for us, I planned for this kind of weather!"

Skeppy eyes the crappy, weak-jointed umbrella. Looks out at the nearly-apocalyptic weather outside.

He hadn't intended to say anything, but Bad rolls his eyes like he'd read his mind anyway. "Oh, come on. It's, like, three feet to my car."

Skeppy scans the cars closest to them in hope.

"Well, maybe that was an exaggeration," Bad mutters. His gaze is resigned, set on something that's far away enough to put dread in Skeppy's stomach. Sure enough, he points out into the downpour and says, "It's that red one, the Nissan."

He follows Bad's finger. Slowly, like a horror movie, his eyes fall on a car they can barely see, being steadily pelted with rain with the air of a tired dog who doesn't have the energy to shake any more.

"Please tell me you're kidding."

"I'm not."

Skeppy lets his head fall back and groans. "We're going to die."

Bad scoffs. "We're not going to die," he says, waving the umbrella around again. "I have Mister Umbrella here, after all."

Skeppy swivels his head to look again, hoping that Mister Umbrella will have miraculously transformed into something actually practical.

It hasn't. "We can't call him Mister Umbrella."

Bad frowns. "Why not?"

"Because that's a terrible name." Skeppy straightens up, makes gimme hands at it. "Like, come on. Even you have to admit that's not your best."

"It -" Bad makes the pff noise Skeppy has heard him make when lying so many times. It looks a little ridiculous: all badly-concealed smile and shifty eyes over the top. "It is. One of my best."

"No, it's not," Skeppy says easily, giving him a warm smile to curb any offense. Bad smiles back, eyes bright. Skeppy looks down at the umbrella, suddenly overcome again. This is ridiculous.

"I'd like to see you do better," Bad challenges.

"A better name would be, uh. . ."

"Uh-huh?"

"Um. . ."

"Stop stalling," Bad sing-songs.

Skeppy glares at him. "You suck," he says.

"That's a terrible name for an umbrella, Skeppy."

It's a stupid enough joke to surprise a laugh out of him, as much as he resists it. Bad's got a delighted grin on his dumb face: Skeppy shoves the umbrella back into his hands and covers his face so he doesn't have to deal with it.

"You name the umbrella," he tells his palms.

"You're the one who didn't like my name in the first place." There's a pause. Bad hums, thinking. "What about Splashy?"

"Splashy?"

"What? It's not like you can complain, Mister Couldn't-Think-Of-Anything."

"Wh-" He wheezes a little. "Don't be mean!"

"I'm not being mean," Bad says in full know-it-all voice. "I'm being realistic. Now are we going to make a mad dash for my car, or not?"

"My coffee," Skeppy says weakly, still kind of hoping for a miracle let-up in the weather.

"It's got a lid," Bad reminds, raising an eyebrow. He opens Splashy the Umbrella with a flourish and takes a pointed step forwards, outside. "Let's go?"

Skeppy squares his shoulders and sticks his hands in the pocket of his hoodie, willing one last degree of warmth into them. He nods once. "Let's go."

They run for it.

Bad's got longer legs than he has, as loathe as he is to admit it, and Skeppy can feel raindrops on his shoulders where Splashy keeps swaying out of line; at their feet, the water rears up in waves and determinedly begins to soak the tops of his socks.

They don't so much stop at the car as on the car - Bad manages to stop himself with just a hand on the boot, but Skeppy runs full-tilt into it and sprawls there, panting dramatically, until he realises that his entire front is now wet.

He jumps back, screeching. Bad is already giggling, Splashy the Umbrella shaking wildly as he does.

"Shut up," Skeppy groans. He can feel his lips tugging up into a smile. "Bad, shut up."

"Skeppy, you're soaked," Bad squeaks.

"Nothing even happened," he denies. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm talking about you running into my car," Bad drawls, a gleeful twinkle in his eyes. "How grippy are your shoes? You looked like you were on ice."

Skeppy thinks about making a joke about Minecraft physics, or Fundy's mod, but he can't make it work. What his mouth says instead is: "I'm aquaplaning, dude."

"Aquaplaning?"

"Yeah." He can barely get the word out around his laugh: it's such a dumb joke, but Bad is smiling from ear to ear. He picks his suitcase up and walks around him, trying to get to the boot. "Can you open this?"

"Yeah, hang on."

Bad holds the umbrella over Skeppy's head while the boot opens, then steps neatly away while Skeppy's lifting it.

The rain soaks him through in seconds.

"Bad!"

It's a scream. Skeppy doesn't care.

Bad is cackling into one hand, but he comes back and puts the umbrella back over the both of them; Skeppy slides his case in and straightens up, glaring at him through dripping hair.

"I hate you," he says, acid. He's decided it. "You're not funny."

Bad tries to say something, but all that comes out is a string of nonsense giggle-words.

Skeppy shakes his head, unable to deny the fondness written all over his face. He's even colder than before, somehow wetter than if he'd just walked to the car in the first place, but -

Bad is here. They're officially moving in together.

Rain or not, it's a pretty good place to be.

Chapter Text

Skeppy is mostly asleep when they pull up in front of Bad's place; it's pretty much identical to the others, suburban and kind of squat, the second floor rooms rising up more towards the back. The driveway is just a neat square of grass.

Skeppy looks at it and yawns.

He covers his mouth with one hand, horrified. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry - that was just bad timing, I swear."

Bad laughs a little, coming around the front of the car. "Nah," he says, "don't worry about it. I mean, it is pretty boring."

"But it's your house," he says.

"And now yours!" Bad indicates the front door with an arm flail and a little ta-da! sound effect. "I was gonna save this for the morning, but I'm too excited - here, hang on."

Skeppy adjusts his hold on his luggage while Bad fishes in his pockets. They've both shoved themselves under the porch to get out of the rain, since Splashy is apparently a car umbrella, whatever that is. Skeppy has nearly been elbowed in the stomach at least twice by the time Bad finally yanks a key out.

It's pressed into his palm. Skeppy stares blearily down at it until his head catches up and inhales sharply, gaze snapping up to meet Bad's.

Bad's eyes crinkle when he smiles. "It's yours," he agrees warmly. "Care to do the honours?"

It takes a bit of rearranging to get Skeppy in the right place, and Bad is essentially trying to meld into the wall, but it all loses focus as Skeppy raises the key and unlocks the door.

It swings open. Skeppy stands there while Bad steps in, body angled down to meet the excitable little dog that comes bouncing down the hallway.

"Lucy!" Bad coos, picking her up so she doesn't clatter right past him and into the street. Not that Skeppy thinks she would: her tail is going like she's trying to helicopter herself into Bad's arms through willpower alone. "How have you been, cutie pie? Did I go out to pick up Mister Skeppy and leave you all alone? I'm sowwy."

Mister Skeppy, Skeppy mouths to himself. He pockets his key, fingers lingering on the body-warm metal, and then heaves his suitcase up the step and in. It bumps against the back of Bad's shins a little, but he steps easily out of the way instead of complaining.

Bad turns to look at him. Lucy is still enthusiastically licking his face; Skeppy kind of really wants a picture. "I thought you were bringing Rocco?"

"I am," Skeppy says, holding a hand out so Lucy can sniff it. "He's staying at my Mom's right now, he didn't like the way everything was changing. I'll go and pick him up when I've, uh." Is he sounding presumptuous? God, he hopes he isn't. "Settled in a bit? If that's okay?"

"Of course it is, you muffin," Bad says. "Settle in all you like."

He looks at Skeppy's clothes, grin still hovering around his mouth.

"Though maybe put on something dry first?"

///

They bundle Skeppy's stuff into his room. By 'stuff', of course, he means one backpack and a suitcase, and by 'room' he means it has a bed and a barren nightstand and nothing else.

Bad is standing in the doorway like he's bracing himself. Skeppy sits on the bed and looks at the soft blue walls, the sunlight coming in, the white curtains. The room is wide and airy; Bad must have closed the windows just before he left, because it smells like rain and outside.

"Cool," he says, quiet for once.

Bad perks up. "Cool? So it's okay?"

Skeppy looks over at him for the first time, startled, and instantly feels guilty. "It's more than okay," he assures, face melting into an easy smile. "Bad, this is perfect."

"Well." Bad rubs a hand on the back of his neck, visibly flustered. "It's not that great. It's just an empty room."

"My room," Skeppy corrects with a pleased little smile.

Bad looks at him for a second, then laughs softly, smiling. He comes over and sits next to him, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. Skeppy hopes he doesn't notice the way he's steadily going deadweight: the bed is quickly developing a kind of siren call, and sitting down isn't helping.

"Come on," Bad says, voice soft to match the laugh. "Let's get some food in you before you actually fall asleep. Or a shower."

Busted.

Skeppy lets his eyes close. Leans fully into Bad's shoulder. "You saying I smell?"

"I'm certainly saying you smell of travel," Bad says, deft. "And since you need to change your clothes anyway, it just makes sense, right?"

Skeppy's agreeing hum is more reluctant than anything else, but the shower is good, warming up his bones until he's practically melted. His eyes are leaden as he cleans off the mirror, enough that he mostly relies on touch. He pours himself into an oversized hoodie and some pajama bottoms and shuffles out to find Bad.

He follows the sound of plates and muffled music to the kitchen, where Bad is putting Chick-fil-a on plates. Skeppy huffs something like a laugh and pulls himself onto a stool, rubbing at his eyes with a fist.

Bad grins sheepishly at him. "Surprise?"

"Nice surprise," he agrees, smiling tiredly back. "How did you know what to order?"

"Sometimes you mention what you have," Bad says, offhand like he didn't take the time to remember Skeppy's Chick-fil-a order. "The rest of the things I just got because they're good."

"Thank you." It's not enough, but it'll do.

///

As much as he tries to keep himself awake, the combination of food and finally being able to sit down is heady. It's about when he's tucked his legs up onto the sofa, curling up into a ball against the arm, that he hears Bad come into the room and stop.

"Skeppy?"

He doesn't open his eyes. "Yeah?"

Bad laughs a little under his breath, coming closer. His footsteps are quieter. "Are you falling asleep?"

"Mm." Bad leans on the sofa, behind him; Skeppy lets it carry him backwards, opens his eyes and looks up at his fond expression. "No."

"You are."

"Nope."

There's a knowing tilt to Bad's head, like he can tell Skeppy is crashing. "Do you want a blanket or anything for bed?"

"Nah, I'm good." He unfurls his legs and stands, swaying a tiny bit. Bad's hand comes and touches his arm, steadying him, and Skeppy shoots him a smile. Bad stares back for a second, like he's looking into a bright light, then smiles back like he's helpless to it.

"Goodnight," Bad says, hand still on his arm. It's warm through his hoodie, strong and gentle where it's helping him keep balance.

Skeppy really needs to go to bed.

"G'night, Bad."

Chapter Text

Skeppy wakes up to the rain still going strong, pounding against the windows. It takes him a second to remember where he is, but it's a warm, hazy kind of confusion instead of a panic.

Outside his door, he can hear Lucy excitedly clattering up and down the hall. Bad is frantically shushing her, but he's almost making more noise than she is.

"You're going to wake him up," he hisses. Lucy barks three times, too thrilled to care. "Lucy, please. . ."

Skeppy blinks at his ceiling, barely awake, then hauls himself out of bed and goes to open his door. Bad and Lucy's heads shoot up at the same time to stare at him like some kind of bit: Skeppy squints back, still trying to figure out what's going on.

Bad's face breaks into a grin. "Good morning, Skeppy."

"Murgh," Skeppy says.

Bad generously ignores this. "How did you sleep?"

His hair feels funny, like it's all squished on one side. He really wishes he had his glasses.

Lucy's tail had started tapping against the floor at the sound of his voice, a rapid thwap-thwap-thwap that's not helping him focus.

"Good," he manages. It's still kind of garbled, but hey, it's a word. "You?"

"Very well, thank you," Bad hums. His expression is blurry, but Skeppy doesn't trust the delighted tone of his voice. "I'm going to take Lucy for her walk," he adds before Skeppy can say anything. "Are you gonna be okay on your own?"

"Cereal."

Bad laughs. "It's in the cupboard next to the cooker," he says, then pauses. Skeppy can feel him looking again. "... do you want me to stick a post-it on the one I mean?"

"Nah," he mutters. It'll give him an excuse to figure out the kitchen a bit. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Bad stands up, taking Lucy with him, and Skeppy promptly has a really weird moment where he forgets that the white dog in the room isn't huge and weighs, like, forty kilos. He spends a second or two in shocked silence before he remembers that it's just Lucy, not Rocco.

Bad hesitates again at the door, probably reading his expression. "You're, um. You're sure you'll be good?"

"Yep." He's certainly more awake after his stupid mix-up - awake enough to decide he really is an idiot, at least. "Cereal and I'll be good."

Bad hums and clips Lucy's lead onto her collar, apparently not noticing that the longest word in that sentence was literally cereal. He leaves with a little wave, and then Skeppy takes a breath and realises that he's alone in Bad's house for the first time.

It's a weird thought.

There's excitement, yeah, but it feels weird here without Bad, his absence like a sudden hole after being attached at the hip for a solid day. Skeppy isn't sure he likes it, so he keeps himself busy; throws on some new clothes, grabs his phone and his glasses, wanders out to raid the kitchen.

He's careful not to touch too much, not wanting to actually invade Bad's privacy without him there. But the cupboard on the left of the stove is crammed with pots and pans, towered like an avalanche waiting to happen, and the cupboard on the right has syrups and chocolate sauces on the top half, rubbing shoulders with the cereal. The bottom shelf is yet more pans.

"Oh my god," Skeppy mutters, going back to the other cupboard to double-check that these pans are at least different to the rest. They are; the ones under the cereal are long and flat, more trays than anything else. "He's a hoarder."

Something next to the hob catches his eye as he closes the left cupboard - it's a plain white tin, battered and chipped. There aren't any words or symbols on it. Skeppy picks it up and hesitates, then forges ahead and shakes it. It's surprisingly hefty, like it's full of batteries or something, but the noise it makes is more of a tap than a rattle.

"What on earth?" he asks it.

The tin doesn't say anything. He puts it down, but he eyes it the entire time he's eating.

///

It still feels weird being in the house, like he's just visiting or something, and it feels even weirder when he's alone: more like all-out trespassing, maybe. The kitchen quickly feels uncomfortable, so Skeppy washes his bowl and retreats to his room under the guise of unpacking.

Since most of his stuff is coming later on, Skeppy only has what's in here - the wooden dresser, the nightstand, his bed. He folds his clothes roughly and shoves them unceremoniously into the dresser, then starts sorting through his other stuff.

Bad comes back not too long after he's done, though Skeppy doesn't hear him. One second he's sat on his bed checking in with staff on his laptop, and the next Lucy has come careening into his room and broken his concentration.

He leans down to stroke her ear and looks up. Bad is in the doorway, smiling at him. "Hey."

"Hi," Skeppy says.

"You look a lot more awake," Bad teases. "And you're not squinting 'cause you don't have your glasses on, that's also an improvement."

Skeppy exhales, "Dude," laughing and breathless. Bad's nose wrinkles as he giggles; Skeppy slides off the bed and lets Lucy clamber onto his lap to take his mind off the way his heart skips several beats at once, wildly unable to handle this kind of thing in person.

Lucy looks up at him, eyes shining. She's wagging again, excited to see him. She's as cute as Bad is sometimes.

"Bad is laughing at me," Skeppy murmurs to her, like he hasn't got a big smile on his face. "He's mean, isn't he, yes he is."

An affronted "Hey!" comes from the doorway.

Lucy sneezes.

"See," Bad insists, coming over and crouching down next to him. Their knees touch; it's the tiniest thing, but combined with the nose wrinkle Skeppy is almost definitely going to combust. "She knows that's not true. Skeppy's a big liar, isn't he?"

"Now you are being mean," Skeppy snorts.

Bad makes a face at him.

He seems much more relaxed about accidentally offending Skeppy in person: he's never thought of himself as particularly transparent, but Bad seems to be able to read him in a single glance.

"Hey," Bad says, on cue. "Everything okay? You were kinda frowning when we came in."

Skeppy blinks at him. "Oh," he says, surprised. He looks back at his laptop, re-reads the discord staff chat still open on it. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just having some server issues."

"Server issues?"

"Yeah," Skeppy says again. He scratches at his chin twice, then leaves his hand there. Hums. "We've got a ton of phantom blocks that show up in the schematic for the Halloween map, but they only appear sometimes."

He types out a quick response to one of the builders. It's riddled with spelling errors, but his staff are more than used to that by now.

Bad makes a thoughtful noise. Skeppy looks up and he's leaning back against the nightstand, eyes on the ceiling as he tries to think, and suddenly he can't focus a single brain cell on the glitched blocks. All he can see is Bad, here in the flesh. They've spent hours debating server issues online, sure, but now Skeppy can see the way Bad's hands fidget, the way he's biting his lip a little.

Skeppy's chest warms. His cheeks feel equally hot - he ducks his head and focuses back on discord, as though any of the builders have actually sent any new messages.

"I'll keep it in mind," Bad promises, apparently drawing a blank. He sits there contently for a minute, Lucy bundled on his lap, then adds: "Have you eaten?"

Skeppy's head pops back up. "Uh - yes, sorry. I stole some of your cereal. And your milk."

"It's not stealing, you muffin," Bad huffs. "This is your house too."

He's got that big smile back on his face, like he can't believe that that's actually true. Skeppy knows that expression very well: he's been feeling the same way since his plane had taken off yesterday.

But there's something else in Bad's voice, too, hidden in the inflections. Skeppy knows him all too well: he raises an eyebrow, challenging. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Bad says instantly.

He sounds guilty, but not like he's hiding something bad - more like he'd wanted to do something nice, but he's too embarrassed to say it out loud now that he's been caught. Skeppy covers his mouth with a sweater paw to hide his huge grin.

"You're such a bad liar," he says. His voice is more affectionate than he'd meant to be, but whatever. He's not too bothered.

Bad sputters. "I am not!"

"You are. What is it?" A flash of anxiety. "Oh - did I do something?"

Bad's defensiveness falls away instantly. "No," he says, then swallows and looks at his feet. His voice goes small. "It's stupid."

Skeppy can feel his heart melting in his chest yet again.

"It's not stupid if it's you," he says, entirely without thinking about it.

Bad stares at him. His face is flushing.

They spend a second staring at each other, Skeppy's words hanging in the air, and then Bad clears his throat and waves a hand.

He clears his throat. "I had been thinking," he says, in the lilting way of someone trying to get a conversation back on track, "of cooking something for your first day living here."

Skeppy's mouth drops open. He can't think of anything to say, which is probably why his mouth comes out with, "ChefBoyHalo?"

"I," Bad starts blankly. "Okay, I'm not putting up with this the entire time we live together."

Skeppy beams at him.

Bad rolls his eyes, huffs, but when Skeppy scoops up his laptop and tails him to the kitchen he looks as delighted as Skeppy feels, like Christmas has come early.

Skeppy doesn't want two breakfasts, as nice as Bad's cooking smells, so he just sits and hangs out. Bad cooking is something he's always been curious about - there's the years-old video of him making chicken soup or whatever, yeah, but there's something completely different about watching someone cook without an audience.

A few messages come through: the builders have taken the schematic off and put it on again, and apparently the blocks are back. Skeppy starts up Minecraft to check it out, shooting back a quick confirmation.

Bad seems to have ransacked the fridge while Skeppy wasn't looking. He's pulled a bunch of stuff out, leftover potatoes, ham, some kind of sausage. He's got a chopping board out, is contently cutting it all into even cubes.

Skeppy watches him lift the board and scrape everything into a hot pan. The oil spits, violent enough that Skeppy draws away, wary, but Bad just hums absently and turns a dial on the stove.

Skeppy waits until Bad is out of burn range to speak. "Where'd you learn this?"

He's leant completely to one side, entirely ignoring his laptop in favour of a better view; Bad turns and smiles, quick and small, but doesn't say anything about it.

"You mean cooking?"

"Yeah."

Bad hums again. "I dunno," he says lightly, poking at the pan with a wooden spatula. "I just kind of picked it up, I guess."

"Mm." Skeppy doesn't want to pester him, so he shifts his focus back to the builder issue. The blocks are definitely some kind of bug, and not some weird troll: Skeppy is familiar enough with WorldEdit to recognise what 1% of a space looks like, and there aren't enough blocks.

He offers to restart the test server to see if it'll help, but he's barely put the command in before Bad starts enthusiastically whisking something.

His laptop doesn't need his attention for another few seconds, so Skeppy lets himself get distracted. He pushes himself up in his chair a little, trying to see. "What are you doing?"

Bad peers over his shoulder, all big smile and bright eyes. "Whisking eggs!"

It's such a stupid, tiny thing, but Skeppy loves him all over again, swift and vicious. He smiles back, and it's a soft melty thing on his face, but Bad's turned back so he's getting away with it.

Chapter Text

Hours have passed by the time the moving people bother to call. They'd already said that they were going to be delayed by a few days, meaning they'd have arrived the day after tomorrow, or maybe the day after that.

Now they're telling him that they could be a week or more.

It's not the caller's fault, so Skeppy stays polite on the phone and asks to be kept in the loop with a calm he doesn't feel.

After that, he spends approximately point-two seconds listening to the dial tone before he swears.

It's not nice swearing. It's vicious and frustrated, and then at some point he realises that it's almost all Level 10 words and he sputters a laugh. It's mostly air, and it hasn't got much humour in it, but hey.

Skeppy sits abruptly on the edge of his bed and runs a hand through his hair, so stressed he doesn't think he can talk. There's something clogging his throat, thick and stubborn.

He looks around the room, hoping for a miracle.

Bad clatters into the doorway instead, which is about the same thing. He's out of breath and wide-eyed, like he'd sprinted to get here in time.

"Are you okay?"

Skeppy stares back at him, helpless, then nods wordlessly. His hand scrunches in his hair, then lets go. He probably looks like an anxious mess, but he'd forgotten how much Bad worries, had thought he'd have a few more seconds to hide it instead of Bad literally running through the house to come and help.

"Skeppy," Bad insists, only a little placated by the nod. "Skeppy, talk to me. What happened?"

Skeppy clears his throat, still reeling a little. "The moving van's going to be another week," he manages. "At least."

"Another - what?"

"Week." Skeppy drags a hand down his face, leaning forwards with his elbows on his knees. "Shit."

"Language," Bad says, but it's soft. Skeppy hears him come over, feels the bed dip as he sits next to him. "What happened to it? Do you know?"

"Van mix-up." The lady on the phone had said it was a fault in their computer system. "All my stuff went to Canada, it's gonna take them ages to get it back down and drive it all the way here."

Bad sighs heavily. Skeppy peeks over at him and he's got an unhappy twist to his mouth, like he's upset on Skeppy's behalf.

A twinge of guilt. Bad had been having a good day, and now that Skeppy's lumped this on him. . .

Bad glances over and catches him looking before he can think of anything to say to cheer him up. His mouth crooks up into a smile, worried expression lifting.

"Hey," he says. "You'll be fine."

"I don't have anything," Skeppy reminds, disbelieving. "No stuff for Rocco, no computer, no clothes. . . Nothing." He'd only packed enough for four days, maybe. Not over a week.

"So we'll figure it out." Bad says it like he doesn't know how, yet, but he's going to make it work or else. "We can call your Mom and ask her to look after Rocco for a bit longer, right? And in the meantime," he says, brightening as something occurs to him, "you could always borrow my clothes!"

Skeppy stares at him. "Your," he starts, then stops. "Your clothes?"

"Yeah! What's wrong with my clothes?"

He can't believe they're having this conversation. His brain is melting. "They're your clothes."

"So?"

Bad has to be fucking with him, but when Skeppy tries to read his expression he can't see any mischief.

"It won't kill us to share for a week," Bad coaxes.

"I can't believe you're making me sound unreasonable here," Skeppy manages. He doesn't know if he can handle wearing Bad's clothes for a week: he might actually implode.

"Oh, come on. Most of it's our merch anyway, you won't notice a difference."

Skeppy bites the inside of his cheek a little, but can't resist. "If you're sure it's okay," he says hesitantly, and then Bad grins at him and he says, "then alright."

Skeppy's had many bright ideas over the years, but he's not actually sure he can survive this one.

///

Bad takes him on the Official Grand Tour to try and get his mind off things, complete with a vlog camera that he ducks back into his room to get. All their friends know that they're moving in together, but they haven't told the fans, yet - Bad had just retweeted Skeppy's post with a teasing 'good luck to your roommate', and he'd only laughed when Skeppy had joined his Teamspeak to tell him he wasn't funny.

They're planning to just drop a vlog of them moving in together with no warning. Mostly because it'll be hilarious.

Skeppy peers through Bad's open door and sees dark grey walls, a half-made bed, and a huge whiteboard like the ones he, Spifey and TapL had had back in LA. Scribbled on yesterday's square in bright blue pen are the words 'SKEPPY ARRIVES!!!' with little :D faces all around it. Skeppy grins stupidly at it until Bad reappears.

They start off in the hall. Bad turns the camera on but doesn't particularly point it anywhere, yet - they're probably just going to cut straight to the interesting bits anyway, not really bother with much of the full tour thing.

Skeppy shuffles his hands in his hoodie pockets and says, "I didn't think you were big on house tours?"

"I'm not," Bad says. "But you're here, and it'll be kind of cool, don't you think?" There's barely a second's pause and a fleeting smile. "Besides," he adds, "people will probably need to know why they can hear you screaming absolute murder in the background of all my videos."

"It's because I'm trapped in your basement," Skeppy says instantly.

Bad gives the same familiar scoff, but there's a fondness to his face that's entirely new. "It's not!"

He can already tell that this little snippet is going into the vlog, even if it's just blurry footage of their legs in the hallway with subtitles over the top.

Skeppy lets his mischievous smile grow, says, "It is."

"You're not staying in my basement, Skeppy." Both of their rooms are off the entrance hall, on the left, and Bad takes a few steps to fling the door open and pans the camera around, cheering - "You're staying in here!"

"Woooo!" Skeppy hovers in the doorway and laughs as Bad points the camera his way. An idea occurs to him. "Hey, gimme that."

Bad narrows his eyes, wary. "Why?"

"No reason."

Not only is Bad not fooled by his innocent expression, he's also too well-versed in Skeppy's sense of humour. "You're going to take the camera to my room, aren't you?"

"Maaaaybe," he sings.

"Then no."

"Bad," Skeppy whines. "You're showing them my room!"

"Skeppy, you don't have anything in your room."

"It has my dignity."

"Oh," Bad says, "Yeah, like I said, empty," and then Skeppy really does have to take the camera.

///

They don't end up showing much, mostly because none of it feels particularly video-worthy: they spend a while standing around in the living room, having a weird argument about whose Netflix account they need to cancel. They film the kitchen properly though, its cramped little breakfast bar island thing and the Terror Stove across from it.

"So that everyone sat there can watch the cook go up in flames," Skeppy declares, which is enough to make Bad stifle a laugh.

"I'm a safe cook," he disagrees, like it's obvious.

"Not according to your stove." It looks worn but feels worse, one of the burners wobbly and uncertain. Skeppy had walked past and caught his hoodie arm on it, and the metal ring had clattered and come off, then refused to be wedged back on again. "You know your front right burner is broken, right?"

"Yeah. I just don't use that one."

Skeppy can't help his startled, half-laugh exhale. "That's not a solution!"

"It works," Bad argues. "What do you want me to do, be all reckless and use it?"

"Just buy a new stove," Skeppy says. "It's not that deep, dude."

"I like this stove. Its oven is actually on-temperature."

Skeppy knows what's going on here: he raises an eyebrow, lets his mouth curve up. "Bad," he says. "What's its name?"

Bad looks back at him, stubborn, then gives in with a dramatic sigh. "Mister Sizzles."

Skeppy tries to stifle his laugh with one hand, not wanting it to come across the wrong way, but Bad wrinkles his nose at him and jostles where their elbows are touching. Skeppy hadn't even noticed that they were standing that close, but he just lets himself sway back instead of questioning it. The extra momentum pushes him closer to Bad, just for a second, and he can feel how warm he is, the soft shakes of his laughter.

His heart jolts in his chest. Skeppy's grin slips into a genuine smile as he listens to Bad giggle for a moment longer.

///

Bad shows him the stairs, tucked away in one corner of the kitchen; they're basically a thin hallway, but they open out at the top into a big enough landing, somehow airy despite just having two closed doors.

One leads to Bad's recording setup, his green screen and his computer and all that mostly in a straight shot from the door. The room is square, though, and the rest is taken up by other stuff. There's another whiteboard, the same as the one in Bad's room, and another desk, which is littered with snippets of wires and a stack of paperwork that's weighed down by an unplugged soldering iron.

In the middle of the room is the debris of a just-finished PC. The PC is missing: probably already with whoever it was made for.

"Oooh," Skeppy says, more than a little curious. Bad usually tells him when he's building computers, but Skeppy hadn't known about this one. "I didn't know you'd built another computer recently. Who was it for?"

He leans into the room a little more as though it's going to help him see better. He can't tell just from looking at the leftover parts, but he's not sure what he's expecting - a gigantic neon post-it note with somebody's name scrawled on it in capital letters?

"Hang on," Bad answers, a little absentminded.

Skeppy looks over and Bad is frowning down at the camera, struggling to focus it. Skeppy goes up onto his tiptoes, hoping Bad doesn't notice, and wordlessly fixes it for him.

Bad smiles at him like the sun coming out, full-force and blinding. "Thanks!"

Skeppy shoots a thumbs-up back at him, not able to function as far as words right now. Luckily enough for him, Bad's got the camera turned to his office still, is giving some explanation of the room that Skeppy barely hears a word of.

He tunes back in just in time to hear Bad segue into talking about Skeppy's office. Excitement hits him in a flood: he hasn't seen his office to-be yet, and by the time the camera lands back on him he's bouncing on the balls of his feet again.

Bad's face breaks into another smile, which really just isn't fair. Skeppy is vividly aware of the camera in his hands, tries desperately to keep his face the same as they leave Bad's office and negotiate their way to the door on the left.

"And this is yours," Bad says, all showmanship as he swings the door open, a little quirk to his smile like he knows something Skeppy doesn't -

Skeppy's eyes land on the PC, tucked demurely underneath the desk.

"What?" he breathes, eyes on it. He looks at Bad, whose smile is larger, eyes fonder. "What? It was for me?"

"Surprise!" Bad chirps.

Skeppy steps into the office slowly, feeling like he's in a dream. The walls are a plain white, the same as the ceiling, the floor the same polished floorboards as the rest of the house. But the window looks out onto green gardens and trees, and the room feels bright and hopeful. It's a far cry from LA, when he'd felt trapped and lonely for all those months, with the closest nature being a wilting tree on his balcony.

He turns in a circle in the middle of the room, taking it in. His eyes land on Bad as he finishes the turn, still filming in the doorway.

Skeppy is suddenly intensely grateful. That Bad is his friend, that they're living together now, that Bad has built him a PC as a welcoming gift. That Bad has put up with him through so much and forgiven him, time and time again, and helped shape so much of the person Skeppy is today. That, when you put the whole being in love with him thing aside, Bad is very possibly the most valuable friend he has.

Skeppy flies over and hugs him. He buries his face in the flat of Bad's shoulder and sniffs a little, unable to think of a single way to get across what he's thinking.

The camera is pinned between their bodies where Bad had frozen in surprise, but Skeppy feels him flick it off and blindly shove it into his hoodie pocket. He misses his pocket and puts it in Skeppy's instead, but neither of them notice.

Bad's hands come up to hug him back, gentle. "Skeppy? What's this about?"

"Thank you," Skeppy whispers.

Bad makes a soft noise. "You don't have to thank me for being your friend."

"I am." He's torn between staying here and pushing away so that he can look Bad in the eyes and make sure he gets it. He hugs Bad tighter, hopes that the tears in his eyes aren't going to leave damp spots on his hoodie. "Thank you. For everything."

Bad laughs a little, lost. "Thank you, then," he says, going with it. His voice is thick with affection. "Thank you for making my life brighter. And for being my best friend."

Skeppy hides his silly grin into Bad's shoulder and says, "No problem."

Bad is cupping the back of his neck, though Skeppy doesn't know when he started. He feels all wrapped up and safe; he never wants to leave.

"Welcome home," Bad says, soft into his hair.

Chapter Text

Bad turns out to be a good cook. Like, a really good cook.

Skeppy spends a significant chunk of dinner completely silent, too busy eating to respond in more than three-word sentences. He's trying not to be rude about it, but he doesn't need to worry: Bad keeps smiling down at his plate, all pleased.

"It's just macaroni cheese," he says at one point. "It's not exactly anything special."

Skeppy makes an over-the-top incredulous face at him so he has time to swallow. "I don't even," he manages, "know where to start disputing that."

Bad laughs quietly into his next forkful. He looks back at his plate again, but this time his smile is even wider.

If Skeppy's chest feels warm, it's definitely just because of the food.

///

Since Skeppy doesn't have a monitor or a mic here yet, he still can't record videos. He sits and stews in guilt about it, worrying about his upload schedule, his fans, what they'll all think, right up until Bad figures out what the issue is. He startles Skeppy out of his spiral with a fond nudge, shoulder-to-shoulder where they're sat next to each other.

He keeps doing this, keeps invading Skeppy's space in unconscious little moments, but as much as it flusters him he can't seem to bring himself to mention it.

Bad's smile is rich with affection. Skeppy can't bring himself to mention that, either, so he just averts his eyes and tries to keep track of his thoughts.

"Look," Bad offers. "What if you show up on my streams? You can borrow an old mic of mine and a monitor. It's a bit broken, but it'll tide you over. Plus, that way you can make a few videos - though it's a bit fuzzy so you might have to excuse some, uh, some crispy audio."

"I - don't you need your monitors, dude?"

"I do," Bad says. "This is an. . . an older one, I just haven't got around to fixing the connection issue yet."

Skeppy wrinkles his nose, wondering why Bad is even bothering to keep this mysterious older monitor if he's got two perfectly good ones and hasn't got time to fix the third. They head upstairs, to Bad's office, and then Skeppy's eyes land on the monitor and he knows exactly why.

"That's. . . mine." His fingers brush over the top, a little awed. "My old one, the one I sent to you after the pizzas, remember?"

He looks up and Bad is watching him, exasperated and fond.

"Yeah, you muffinhead," he says, "of course I remember. It was seventy-two pizzas."

"Hey, I should do that again."

"You're gonna be the one eating them if you do, mister," Bad warns.

"Aww."

Skeppy inspects the monitor while Bad roots around for his old mic, weirdly happy to see it again. There's a new scratch along the back, and the on button is wobbly from use, but it's been years by now and it makes him grin, just a little.

Bad turns around, victorious, and grins at him. Skeppy had been right in the bus terminal, because he does have dimples, subtle and sweet.

He hopes his face isn't too lovestruck, but he changes the subject and drags Bad next door to start plugging things in just in case.

///

The next morning is as soft as yesterday's, though thankfully without the weird where am I moment when he'd first opened his eyes. Bad laughs at him the entire way around the dog walk, though he seems flattered that Skeppy had wanted to come. He keeps mentioning it, in that roundabout I'm asking way that he does sometimes.

"House was weird without you," Skeppy grumbles eventually, focused on resisting the urge to rub the sleepydust out of his eyes.

Bad makes an aborted noise of surprise off to his left, but Skeppy doesn't pay it much attention.

"Weird how?" he says, voice odd.

Skeppy forces himself a bit more awake, then promptly experiences a deep horror at having very nearly let the cat out of the bag.

"Just weird," Skeppy says. He fires a mischievous expression in Bad's direction, watches as suspicion pools warily on his face. "The temptation to mess with your things was huge."

"You didn't."

"Didn't what?"

"Do anything." Bad doesn't sound sure, though: he's still watching Skeppy's face, trying to read him. Skeppy keeps his face even and cheerful and watches back. "I would have noticed if you'd done something."

His eyes are boring into Skeppy's, intense. His shitty little facecams don't do them justice: they have a certain light to them, in person, the sunlight canting in through the leaves and lighting them a fiercer green than usual.

Skeppy doesn't realise that he's forgotten what he was doing until Bad leans back, looking satisfied.

"You didn't do anything," he says, more firmly this time, like an affirmation. He shoots another glance to where Skeppy is blinking at him and grins, a quick tilt of the mouth. "You should know better than to try something on me in person, Skeppy."

Bad starts to walk again. Skeppy stands there for a second or two, still reeling. He hadn't recognised that expression, the flare of amusement and the little quirk afterwards, but if he didn't know better then he'd have thought it was -

Flirting.

He jogs a little to close the handful of steps between them, and tries to put it out of his head.

///

They settle back into their normal back-and-forth surprisingly easily, and around forty minutes later they're back at the house. Skeppy had had a fit of giggles that had left his cheeks hurting, and Bad hadn't helped: just kept adding something on whenever Skeppy had nearly recovered.

Bad lets them back in, keys jangling. He's got a few keychains on there, but Skeppy can't see them too well where they're tucked into the curve of Bad's palm.

They eat breakfast together, which is kind of new to both of them. Skeppy is awful at working and eating unless someone's around to hang out with, and Bad is much the same from what he's gathered. It's easy to eat toast at your desk while you check in with everyone in earlier time zones.

Skeppy doesn't eat toast today, or even cereal: Bad makes them both pancakes, fluffy and syrupy and kind of burnt. Bad looks embarrassed about the last bit.

"It's been a while since I made some," he says sheepishly as he hands them over. "Especially ones for people."

Skeppy waits for Bad to come round and sit before he starts. "What do you mean by 'for people'? Who do you normally make them for?"

Bad wrinkles his nose. "Well. Me, yeah. But I still don't make them much. And it's not like I count, anyway."

"Wh- of course you count!"

Bad waves a hand to show that Skeppy has the wrong idea, shaking his head. Skeppy waits impatiently for him to finish his mouthful, hoping he has. Surely Bad can't think lowly of himself: Skeppy can't even think of a single situation where he isn't significant.

"Not like that," Bad says eventually. His voice is still thick where he'd spoken a bit too soon, but Skeppy relaxes a little and doesn't pay it any attention. It's gone when he speaks again. "Of course I matter, it's just different when you're cooking for someone else. Right?"

Skeppy nods. He can get that.

"Well," he says, shooting Bad an encouraging smile, "I think they're delicious."

Bad smiles back at him, soft and bright, and says, "Thank you."

They mostly finish the pancakes in silence, though towards the end Skeppy makes eye contact with the white tin again and all his curiosity comes flooding back.

He levels his fork at it. Bad's head turns to follow before he's even opened his mouth. "What's in that?"

"What's in what?" Bad echoes, confused. He's scanning the countertop, but he can't seem to figure out what Skeppy's talking about.

"The tin."

"Oh." His eyes land on it. "Oh! That's my recipe tin."

He turns to Skeppy with such a delighted look on his face that he can't bring himself to make fun of him for it. Skeppy shovels the last of his pancake into his mouth instead, puts it all in his cheeks like a hamster so he can talk.

"What recipes have you got in there?"

Bad goes, "Manners, you muffin," but indicates his plate. "These pancakes are in there. Um, the macaroni cheese I made last night." He goes to scratch the back of his neck as he thinks, then lights up as something occurs to him, leaving his arm to fall back unnoticed. "Skeppy!"

He doesn't know what the idea is yet, but Skeppy finds himself already reflecting Bad's excitement. "What?"

"I have a muffin recipe in there! We should make some!"

Skeppy gasps, then remembers how godawful he is at cooking and balks a little. "Uh. . . I'm pretty bad at cooking. You'd have to carry pretty hard."

"I'm used to that from Minecraft Monday," Bad teases, and laughs when Skeppy kicks him. "But seriously, that's not a problem. Remember what they said in Ratatouille? Anyone can cook!"

"Not me," Skeppy says.

"Oh, come on," Bad snorts. "How badly could it possibly go?"

Chapter Text

The muffins go horribly wrong.

It starts going downhill before they even have a chance to get any ingredients out, when Bad wanders into the kitchen and catches Skeppy standing on the countertop to search the high cupboards on camera.

He starts to say, "Hey, are you ready to -" then looks up and gasps.

Skeppy stares back at him, caught. Bad's look of surprise melts into sheer glee; he can feel himself bracing.

"Are you trying to reach the tall cupboards?"

"No," Skeppy says, wondering hysterically if he can somehow play this off. "I was just. . . sitting down."

He starts to slowly sit, but Bad's already got one hand coming up to cover his mouth in a giggle that Skeppy has only heard every so often. He's sure he hasn't seen it in person - surely he'd have remembered the way Bad's face scrunches up in laughter, the happy stutter it sparks in his chest. Every possible excuse disappears from his head in one fell swoop.

"Skeppy," Bad squeaks. His voice is barely recognisable, it's so high-pitched.

Skeppy is helpless not to laugh with him, and so he's halfway giggling as well by the time he speaks. "Bad."

Bad doesn't respond. He's tucked the camera close to his chest without noticing, and it's shaking wildly with his laughs like it's at some kind of rock concert: this footage is going to be unusable.

"Bad," Skeppy manages, clearer. Rat's ears have tugged forwards in interest, tail starting to twitch; he's still standing on the countertop, all bare feet and scruffy hair and Bad's Skeppy hoodie because for some reason he'd just forgotten that Bad had wanted to film this. He can feel his mouth tugging into a smile without meaning to. "Dude, this isn't that funny."

"It is." Bad coughs a little, trying to calm down. He's grinning so widely that Skeppy's cheeks hurt for him. "You're just an angry potato because I caught you on camera."

"I'm not. I was just sitting down, you didn't catch me at anything -"

"Uh-huh, and I'm the Prime Minister of France," Bad hums. He raises an eyebrow, eyes still bright with mirth. "I was going to ask if you were ready to get started, but since you're literally climbing the walls to get the ingredients. . ."

"I'm not climbing the walls, your Majesty, I'm just doing real-life parkour."

"Oh my goodness." Bad smothers his face with one sleeve. "Do not try some dumb parkour thing just to prove a point."

"Maybe I will," Skeppy challenges, eyeing up another section of countertop with no intention of actually jumping to it. "That is, unless we get started in the next ten seconds."

Bad pulls his hand away from his face. His expression is all exasperation with no heat: Skeppy grins back at him, now sat and swinging his legs mischievously.

"Oh my goodness, fine." Bad comes over and hands him the camera with a dry looks, then pulls the recipe tin towards him. "But I'm just stating for the record that you have the attention span of a two year-old."

"Hey."

Skeppy's been keeping the camera focused on what Bad's hands are doing, well aware that he's not comfortable with facecam without Bad having to say it, but at this latest insult he pans it around and makes a sad expression right down the lens.

He doesn't get through it without laughing, though, and Bad looks up and rolls his eyes.

"You'd better not be pity-mongering over there, Mister," he threatens, and he's shaking his head a little but he's still smiling. "Especially since you're the one sat there not helping."

"Wh- you're trying to find the recipe card for it!"

"You could be getting ingredients out."

There's a pause after could that's familiar: an unconscious slip that means Bad knows he's not actually got an argument.

"And how am I meant to know what I'm getting out?" Skeppy feels his eyebrows tick up a bit, amused and trying to hide it. "Or," he adds, remembering his hunt for cereal, "where I'm supposed to be getting it from?"

"You have a good point," Bad says, huffing. He shoots a begrudging look Skeppy's way, then wrinkles his nose playfully. It's cute enough that Skeppy nearly drops the camera, which. Not great.

Bad goes, "Ah-ha!"

Skeppy's heart jolts again, which probably isn't good considering he's still not recovered from the fucking nose wrinkle. Skeppy has never been more thankful for Bad being easily distracted; by the time the recipe is being brandished at him he's managed to even his heartbeat somewhat.

"Found it!" Bad says, as though Skeppy hadn't noticed the recipe card attempting to cut his face into shreds. He flips it back around to read the ingredients, says, "We neeeeeed. . ."

Skeppy is passing over the camera before Bad has finished lifting his hand to reach for it: Bad carts it over to the fridge, not seeming to notice, and films himself rifling through with one hand, chatting away.

Skeppy blinks at his empty hands for a second, then shakes the thought off for later. He leans forwards, almost on a horizonal angle, as though he'll be able to see what Bad is getting out if he's practically falling off the counter.

What Bad pulls out is a tub of condensated blueberries, chilled enough to rattle against the inside when he shakes it. Skeppy can feel his face brightening as the plan clicks together in his head.

Bad cheers, "Blueberries!"

Skeppy kicks his legs, excitedly goes, "Blueberry muffins?"

"They're your favourite, aren't they?"

His face is aching a bit, but he can't stop smiling. "They are!"

Bad makes a little, "Yay!" noise that should not be as adorable as it is, and starts to get ingredients out properly. He piles it all next to Skeppy, the box of blueberries and caster sugar, the kind of fancy vanilla extract that Skeppy has never been able to justify buying. He picks up the bottle and rolls it over in his palm for a second, then puts it down quickly with an innocent expression when Bad turns around.

His eyes narrow, flickering between Skeppy's hands and his face. Skeppy lets Bad's suspicion build and tries not to laugh and ruin it.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

Bad hums disbelievingly, but turns away to get out the sugar. Skeppy spends a moment mourning the ability to mute: he's trying not to shake holding in his giggles, but he can tell from the slow curve of Bad's lips that it's not working.

"Okay," Bad says finally, setting down a bag of flour. "What's going on here?"

"Nothing!"

"I don't believe you!"

"Bad, I have done nothing."

"I've got my eyes on you," Bad grumbles.

Skeppy kicks his legs again, laughing a little. "Oh, really? Am I sus?"

"You're certainly lying about something."

"Bad," Skeppy gasps. "That's so rude! I would never."

Bad blinks at him, snorts. He picks the recipe card back up and runs a finger down the ingredients list, mouth still barely holding back a wide smile.

"Alright, Mister. . . Exaggeration," he says, and it's such an absentminded, Bad kind of insult that Skeppy finds himself throwing his head back and laughing.

By the time he's bent forwards to muffle his giggles in his sleeves, Bad is huffing at him, trying to talk around bursts of his own laughter.

"Listen, Skeppy - stop laughing!"

Skeppy tries, but can't: he doesn't want to anyway, is thriving here in Bad's kitchen while they poke fun at each other like normal. He doesn't even care about the camera, still rolling somewhere; he gets swept up, revels in how nice it is after being alone for so long in LA.

"Skeppy," Bad whines. "You're laughing at me."

That's enough to get him to wind down. He wipes at one eye, says, "I'm not, I'm not." Clears his throat. "Are we baking these muffins or not?"

"We are."

Bad hands him a mostly-crumpled bag of flour. The paper is soft where it's been folded again and again and it's so light that Skeppy can barely believe there's actually any flour in there, but when he peeks in the top there's maybe two cups' worth waiting at the bottom.

"Put that in the mixing bowl," he says, still focused on the list. "You can just put the entire bag in, it's about one and a half cups."

Skeppy slips off the countertop, looks at him in surprise. "You're not going to measure it?" He looks into the bag again, trying to estimate how much is there. "It might be more than one a half."

"That's fine," Bad dismisses, eyes crinkling. "You measure ingredients with your heart anyway."

He picks up the camera and balances it precariously on top of a jar, pointed at both of them and the countertop with the bowl on it. Skeppy waves enthusiastically at it and frowns at Bad at the same time, glad that it's not filming above their shoulders.

"Last time I measured anything with my heart I gave myself food poisoning," he complains.

Bad pauses. "Please tell me you didn't."

"Okay, I didn't, but I'm just saying, that's a bad idea."

"It's not! It's the only way to get the right amount of chocolate chips."

"Wh- that's not true!"

"Well, how do you do it then, fancy baker man?"

"I'm not a fancy baker man," he laughs, but he pulls the recipe card toward him and reads it with his head tilted. "Um. . . It says here to put in a cup of blueberries, right? So if it was chocolate chips, then I'd put in a cup of chocolate chips or whatever it said."

"What if you wanted more chocolate, though," Bad challenges.

Skeppy points the card at him. "We're getting off-track. Am I putting in all of this flour without measuring or not?"

"Not!" Bad cheers. He starts chanting: "Not, not, not!"

Skeppy upends the bag about a foot above the bowl. It comes out in a flood, hits the bowl, erupts into a cloud of white powder and makes the entire kitchen messy.

Bad stands there with his mouth open in shock for long enough that Skeppy considers shoving raw flour in it, then decides not to.

"What," he says eventually, voice as stunned as he looks, "did you do?"

"I don't know!"

He means it to come out as a whine, so that people laugh, but Bad's still looking like a UFO just landed in the back yard and he can't even make it through the sentence without shaking into laughter himself.

"It is a cloud, Skeppy," Bad laments. His hair has gone white: Skeppy reaches up to cover his face as he laughs harder, and there's powder there too. Lucy sneezes somewhere down at their feet. "The kitchen is foggy."

"Okay, it looks like it's snowed at best," he scoffs, but he can't repress the warmth in his tone either. "Don't be so dramatic."

"Don't be so - we haven't even stuck two ingredients together and you've wrecked my kitchen!"

"Here," Skeppy says, and throws a pinch of baking powder in. Bad got it out, so they must need it, right? And he's pretty sure he remembers something about putting all the powders together before you add all the eggs and stuff. "Ta-da! Two ingredients!"

Bad makes an alarmed noise and yanks the bowl towards himself, protective. "What are you doing?"

Skeppy doubts that's a trick question, but he keeps his face straight says, "Baking?"

"You didn't follow the recipe!"

"I did! It's all - dry stuff first, yeah?"

"You can't have read the card," Bad says flatly, "because I have the card. And you are -" He glances down at it, reads the step off, sighs. "- very lucky that you're right."

"Yay!"

Bad studies the contents of the bowl, like he's going to be able to tell one white powder apart from the other white powder. "How much did you put in?"

"I dunno." Skeppy hopes it won't affect the muffins too much if he got it wrong. "Like, a pinch? You know, a -"

He mimes the pinch he'd done with his hands, then realises that Bad is watching him like he's the most endearing idiot he's ever seen. Skeppy's neck goes hot, but thankfully it doesn't seem to spread to his face.

"Shut up and bake muffins," he orders, and shrieks when Bad sets down the bowl to dump more flour in his hair.

///

The kitchen is bombed.

Every single surface is covered in flour. There are stripes of jam flung on the walls and ceiling, too, spatters on the countertop and their clothes even though they didn't even use it in the recipe: Bad's loaned merch hoodie is covered in batter and egg and flour, both from the initial explosion and the flour fight that had followed swiftly after it.

Several eggshells and an empty blueberry tub were crushed in the chaos of Skeppy's attempts at "folding the mixture". He's never been yelled at for being too mean to uncooked batter before, but he has now.

Skeppy slumps on the breakfast bar, strangely winded. His face is aching, but in a good way, and the soft smile that's lingering on Bad's face is only adding to his contentment.

There's a moment of comfortable silence.

"I can see you sending worried glances to the oven, y'know," Skeppy tells his forearms.

Bad's attention snaps to him. "You have your eyes closed, you don't see anything," he teases.

They've both calmed down a little while they wait for the muffins to bake. Bad had turned off the camera a while back - ostensibly to save it from the jam, but Skeppy knows him far too well. They're going to be doing a dramatic reveal before he's gonna get to eat any - and it's only added to the casual, chilled atmosphere.

Chilled and anxious. Skeppy hums, pointed and knowing.

Bad sighs. "Fine," he complains, giving in. "I don't want these muffins to come out wrong and everyone to judge us." Skeppy cracks open one eye and Bad is fiddling with a nail, biting his lip. "I had fun making them. I don't want - that ruined by some comments, you know?"

Skeppy pushes himself up, props his head on one hand so he can talk to Bad properly. "If we both had fun baking them, and we eat them all before the video goes up, then it's not a problem, yeah?"

Bad laughs softly. "I guess."

That's not it. Skeppy knows that's not it. He's nervous about it too, about the memories of this being sullied somehow - not just from today, either, all of it, the memories of moving in and meeting Bad in person and hugging him for the first time ruined by their viewers somehow.

But that's not going to help Bad right now.

"I think they're going to come out great," he says, firm. "And even if they don't, then it'll just be another funny part of the video, yeah? And it'd be my fault, because I was the one who was fucking around for all of it."

"Language."

"Sorry. But I'm right." He meets Bad's exasperated look with a cheeky grin. "And hey," he adds, "if we somehow do get this spoilt by the viewers, then I'm down to make more memories with you."

Bad smiles back at him. It's more real this time, hopeful and grateful, and Skeppy's heart flutters in his chest. He can't help but beam back.

Chapter Text

Not only are the muffins good, they're practically perfect.

It's more than a little suspicious. Skeppy is pretty sure he's seen professionals bake worse muffins than these ones, and he's not just saying that because Bad made them - they're fluffy and light inside, tearing away in chunks with a wisp of steam. Even the smell is curling softly throughout the room, filling the air with the smell of cinnamon and blueberries.

It's completely at odds with the wrecked kitchen. The muffins sit in innocent rows of four on the cooling rack while Bad opens the oven again, triple-checking that the ones they've taken out aren't a mysterious second batch neither of them remember making.

"I think these might actually be our muffins," Skeppy says, amazed.

He pokes at one. The dent fills itself out, cheerful and delicious-smelling.

"That one's yours if you touched it," Bad says without looking.

Skeppy laughs. "I don't have cooties."

Bad glances over and grins at him. "I don't know about that," he teases.

"You hugged me at the bus terminal," Skeppy shoots back. "That means now you have cooties too."

That earns him a laugh. Skeppy can't get over how Bad looks: the bright excitement whenever he gets a dumb idea, the relaxed, easy posture he seems to have whenever Skeppy talks to him. The warmth in his face.

He doesn't realise he's spaced out until Bad prods him. "Are we trying one of these or not?"

"Hell yeah!"

They unearth the camera again. Bad does a few excited shots of the muffins, making ooh noises for show as he pans it past the crumble tops. Skeppy laughs as he zooms in and out a few times.

"Whoever edits this," he calls, "I'm sorry."

Bad makes a dramatic, hurt expression. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're swinging the camera around a lot, you're gonna make everyone seasick -"

"Psh," he goes. Stops. "Wait - did you say whoever edits this?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm editing this, you muffinhead. I already told you that."

"Oh." Skeppy doesn't even think about it for a full second before he lights up. "Hi, future Bad!"

Bad rolls his eyes while Skeppy waves into the camera, but there's a smile tugging at the sides of his mouth and Skeppy has done far more embarrassing things to make Bad happy.

"When you get to this bit you should go into my room and say hi," he says, nodding sagely. "Or go to bed, if it's, like, 3AM and I'm asleep." He narrows his eyes and points a finger. "I know you, you stay up late enough as it is. Love you, bye!"

"I do not stay up too late," Bad says. "But I love you too."

Skeppy raises an eyebrow at him, mouth curving up into an amused smirk without him meaning it to. We both know that's a lie, it says.

Bad huffs at him, then turns the camera off and sets it down.

"You're not filming us having a first bite?"

"Nah." He picks up a muffin, pointedly far away from the one Skeppy had touched. "I'll just put some text on the screen saying they were delicious or something, eating on camera isn't really. . ."

Skeppy nods, not needing the rest of the sentence. "Gotcha. Hey, toast me."

Bad's eyes land on the muffin Skeppy's holding up. He laughs, surprised and delighted, and finishes freeing his from the wrapper to lift it and touch them, crumble to crumble.

"To our muffinversary?"

Skeppy cheers - "Muffinversary!" - and shoves his muffin in whole.

Bad gapes. "Skeppy!"

"Whag," he manages, chewing and hoping he doesn't choke trying not to laugh.

"That's not savouring our hard work," Bad laments, taking a neat bite out of his.

"Yub not sabing aw hab wark."

"Close your mouth."

Skeppy looks away, closing his mouth and actually slowing to enjoy the taste. Their muffins are as good as they look: all sweet blueberries with a kick of cinnamon, warm and tasty.

Bad doesn't let him take another one, but he'd kind of seen that coming.

///

They separate eventually, spending a few hours working upstairs, though Skeppy is distracted the entire time. He's high off the knowledge that Bad is right there, running some kind of staff meeting or something just one wall away. Skeppy lives with him! His best friend!

"Can you please focus," Zelk groans. "I get it, you love Bad because he's the best person on earth and now you're living with him and you're both gonna be insufferable, yadda yadda, can I please talk to you about the hackers on kit now?"

"Sorry." Skeppy pulls himself back to attention. Christ. Zelk is right: it's focus time. "What's up?"

For all he'd groaned about getting on with it, Zelk still stops to tease him several times while he gives his report.

///

Considering Skeppy had spent most of the afternoon barely able to pay attention, within another hour he gets so sucked in that he misses the sun going down and Bad leaving his office. He'd left his door open so Bad could just disturb him whenever, but when he actually does it Skeppy barely notices.

"Hey - oh, are you still working?"

Skeppy hums absently, frowning at the stone block on his screen. He's back on the build test server, has reapplied the map until the glitch had happened again so he can look at it again. He knows it's a just a bug on Minecraft's end, that it's common as hell and there's nothing he can do, but maybe he can curb it, do some kind of final delete on the blocks or something -

"Skeppy?"

He runs a hand across his mouth and wonders if he can constantly run a command block with a Worldedit command of some sort plugged into it. It would probably add a bit of lag, but this is a build test server, not one with actual players, and he's pretty sure all the people who need access to this have fairly good computers. . .

"Skeeeeeeeppyyy," Bad sings.

"Uh-huh," Skeppy murmurs, attention still entirely focused on the screen, and then his chair is being spun and he's looking into Bad's amused face.

He blinks. "Hi."

Bad's smile edges wider. "Hello. Do you want dinner?"

His stomach rumbles like it had been waiting for Bad to ask. Skeppy smiles sheepishly. "Yes please?"

Bad laughs. "What do you want?"

"You're the chef," Skeppy says, quickly clicking out of Minecraft and turning back. "What do you feel like?"

"Not potatoes."

"I could order pizza?"

Bad shoots him a distrustful look, one that's only a little bit ruined by the sheer warmth in his eyes. "I don't think so, not after what you said when you got your monitor back." He taps his fingers on the back of Skeppy's chair. His hand is close enough that Skeppy is quietly getting flustered, slowly but surely. "None of the neighbours are having a convenient party, either."

"You probably could have frozen it, you know."

"Cold pizza is one thing, but frozen is probably all soggy and bleh." Bad makes a face. "Besides, do you know how much space I would have needed? If I'd had an empty freezer I couldn't have fit them all in."

"Fair enough."

Skeppy tails Bad down the stairs and into the kitchen. He's still not too used to the layout of the house: it feels a bit strange, not really helped by the way Bad has turned the two upstairs bedrooms into offices, but it works.

Skeppy sits at the breakfast bar, not wanting to push his luck by going near the Mister Sizzles twice in the same twenty-four hours.

He swivels slowly back and forth on his stool, head down, listening to the sounds of Bad moving around the kitchen, heating oil in a pan, cutting something with a knife. The kitchen slowly warms as Bad cooks, and the quiet is content and easy.

Skeppy had been reading off messages from their friends, but eventually he turns his phone off and lets himself sit with his chin on one hand, just listening.

Bad must spot him at one point, because the sound of crinkling packets and the solid think knife on chopping board slow to a stop.

Skeppy cracks open one eye, and finds Bad looking at him. "What's up?"

"Nothin'," Bad says, in the slightly accented way he does sometimes. "I kinda thought you'd fallen asleep or something, but you haven't."

"Mm. No."

Everything seems to have hit him at once, though not necessarily in a bad way. The day of travel and the two exciting, high-energy days here have all come together to feel more like the aftermath of a good stretch, leaving him satisfied and sleepy.

Bad moves around for a bit before he speaks again. His voice is soft. "You're different to how I'd thought you'd be in person," he admits.

He doesn't say it like it's a bad thing, but Skeppy frowns anyway, anxiety ticking into motion.

"What did you think I'd be like?"

"I don't know." There's the sound of something opening, then the quiet hiss of it being added to the pan. "I guess I was a little worried that it'd go wrong, and we'd drive each other insane with arguments every five minutes. Or that you'd troll me by logging onto my computer and messing with my server."

Skeppy protests, "I don't do that any more."

"I know, I'm sorry." Bad sets down his wooden spoon and turns around, leaning against the countertop. "But I think I still kinda worried about it. But you've moved in, and all, and it's just - you."

He has to open his eyes at that. "In a bad way, or. . . ?"

"No, no!" He rushes out, hands coming up. Skeppy has to crack a little grin at the sheer horror on his face. "In a good way, in a really nice way. I didn't know living with anyone could be this nice."

"Just nice, huh," Skeppy teases, a smile playing at his lips. Bad's answer has settled him somewhat, and it's not like he hadn't worried about similar things.

Though not the server one.

"You know what I meant," Bad harrumphs, shooting him a quelling look then turning back. He stirs whatever's in the pan - which looks more like a whole-ass wok, now that Skeppy has his eyes open and is actually looking at it.

"What the heck are you cooking?" he blurts.

Bad blinks at him, then looks back and snorts lightly.

"You need to actually open your eyes once in a while, mister," he advises, levelling his wooden spoon at Skeppy. "It's stir fry, you absolute heathen."

Skeppy perks up. "Stir fry?"

"Yeah, I had some vegetables to use up. That alright?"

He doesn't think he's ever going to say no to Bad's cooking, but saying that might be a bit extra, so he goes with the safe, "Yeah, of course, dude."

(It tastes like the atmosphere in the kitchen: easy and warm, with a sweetness curling around the edges that Skeppy never wants to let go of.)

Chapter Text

The day after that is a Saturday, which means Bad needs to stream. Skeppy has been involved in Bad preparing for streams before, but like everything else it's different when he's actually here: Bad is a well-oiled machine as he gets ready, checking wires and starting up the game, making sure that there isn't too much lag.

Skeppy leans in the doorway and watches him do a last-minute check with the staff helping him out. He knows who they are in an abstract kind of way - he doesn't think he's ever spoken to them in person, but he still knows who they are through Bad.

Bad realises he's there and flashes him a huge, warm smile. He hits his mute key and says, "Hi."

It can't have been anything less than reflexive. Skeppy's heart melts in his chest.

"Hi," he echoes, soft.

Bad glances between Skeppy and the screen. Skeppy would feel like he's intruding, but it feels a lot like Bad doesn't want to look away long enough to focus on setting up.

Skeppy shoots him a little grin the next time he looks, mentally shying away from whatever that could mean.

He clears his throat. "Need anything before you start? Water?"

"Oh! That would be nice, thank you."

Skeppy nods and turns away. He's still not too familiar with the kitchen - though at least he knows where the flour and eggs are now, thanks to yesterday. But it's easy to get a bottle of water, and then he goes to leave and his eyes land on the covered plate of muffins.

"Cool," Skeppy hums, and gets a plate out.

Bad's started the stream by the time he's got back upstairs. He's still in the middle of saying hello, kicking his heels waiting for everyone to show up; Skeppy hovers in the doorway, wondering if it'd be better to just walk in and interrupt Bad's train of thought now or wait.

"Yeah, we're just waiting for ooone minute," Bad is saying, reading through the chat. "The notifications can take a while sometimes, so we'll see if we get anyone else."

He turns his head like he'd expected Skeppy to be there, though Skeppy has no idea when he'd been spotted. Another smile spreads across Bad's face, and he twitches his fingers off his mouse in a little wave.

Skeppy lifts the water in silent question. Bad makes gimme hands at it, paying half an eye to a dono that's coming in.

He can't resist a little bit of mischief: he waits until Bad starts responding to it before he produces the muffin.

"Yes, I will - ooh!"

Skeppy muffles a laugh while Bad's face freezes.

"Sorry," he says, somehow making it seem natural. "I made muffins yesterday and I have one here with me, I forgot that I was gonna tell you guys about it - but yes, I will say hi to Skeppy next time I talk to him, thank you for the dono."

Bad narrows his eyes up at him. Skeppy grins innocently back, watching more of his amusement rise to the surface.

Bad mutes his mic.

"You're not helping," he whispers.

Skeppy pouts. "You're not saying hi to me either."

Bad does an elaborate eye roll. "Hi," he says dutifully, a smile twitching at his lips when Skeppy cheers. "Now shush, I'm unmuting."

Skeppy's still holding the plate with Bad's muffin on it. He listens as Bad easily covers for the brief silence and moves onto explaining the server event he's running. Bad pauses for a moment, then turns and shoots Skeppy a mischievous look of his own that nearly makes him drop the fucking plate.

"You know what, actually," he says, "I have a very exciting idea for later in the stream and I wanna know what you guys think. Do you wanna hear it?"

His face makes it clear that this is as much directed at Skeppy as it is to the stream. Skeppy shrugs and nods, curious.

"I was thinking that I could invite some memers to play Among Us," Bad says. "How about that?"

Skeppy lets his face fall into a flat glare. Bad makes what Skeppy can only call puppy eyes, but he keeps his face even, sets the plate down as quietly as possible with his eyes on Bad's mic.

"No," he mouths.

As much fun as Among Us is, he kind of sucks at it, and this is live to thousands of people.

Bad pouts as though half the reason he wants Skeppy to do it isn't to laugh at him. Skeppy scowls theatrically and motions to take the muffin back.

Bad tries to slap him away, grinning; Skeppy dodges, and Bad counters by using both hands to shove at Skeppy's waist, pushing him away entirely so that he can lean towards the mic and say, casual as you fucking please -

"Do you think I can convince Skeppy to play?"

That's it. Skeppy's fate is sealed.

He can't possibly say no now that Bad's said that: he's probably already getting messages on Twitter threatening him to do it or else. (Not that he'd say no to Bad anyway. Shut up.)

He slumps, dramatic and defeated.

Bad's voice actually wavers with the effort not to laugh, but he still cheerfully debates ways of bribing Skeppy into it until Skeppy heaves a great, silent sigh and shuffles out.

Bad apparently does know how to mute his mic, because he calls out a cheerful, "Bye!" and snickers when Skeppy makes a grumpy face over his shoulder.

///

He manages to get a bit of editing in, absently listening to the desync between the Bad in his headphones and the real-life Bad talking in the other room, before he inevitably gets roped into Among Us.

It's a fun lobby, though about 80% of them are Munchy staff: he drags Zelk in with him, though, which means that he's still an easy target but at least feels a little bit better about it.

He keeps Bad's stream up, because honestly he can hear him through the wall anyway so it doesn't really matter if he can see Bad's screen or not. Having more direct audio like this does earn him an old favourite at one point, though - halfway through the first round, he hides by some bookshelves and sends Bad a text, and Bad opens it onstream and laughs softly.

"Skeppy's just messaged me on telegram to complain that he doesn't know this map," Bad tells chat. His voice is warm; he's uploading, so apparently he has time to check his phone. Skeppy would go and find him if he knew where the fuck upload was. "What a muffinhead. I don't -"

His phone pings again. In-game, Bad stops underneath one of the cameras.

"Stop snitching on me to your stream - Skeppy!" he yelps. "Stop watching my stream, that's cheating!"

Antfrost ruthlessly murders Skeppy when he tries to through the airlock thing into specimen. He sits back in his chair and types out a response, grinning at the wall between them.

"Am I not allowed to love and support you," Bad reads out, and huffs. "Oh, come on. What if I was imposter, Skeppy? Then I'd just be muffined." He runs into the building Skeppy's body is in, but blows right over the doorway to the lower half where his body is. "And it would be all your fault."

I'd still love + support you if you wnet on a mrurder spree, Skeppy sends back.

Bad does that little incredulous laugh he does when he can't think of anything good to respond with. Skeppy grins wider, victorious.

Onstream, Bad finishes scanning his pass thing and runs back. Skeppy holds his breath, but Bad still doesn't find his body, just goes straight back to outside. He unlocks another building and dips in for a second, then leaves.

"Chat, he's just being an muffinhead, don't worry," Bad says, which is probably the worst thing he could have said to get them to stop pestering him about it, but whatever. "Skeppy, are you alive? I'm coming to find you."

Skeppy isn't too clear on Among Us yet, but he doesn't think texting back Antfrost shot me in the head is going to go down too well.

In the end, he settles on, Ooo hide adn seek?

Bad huffs. "No," he says sternly, hiding a laugh. "Not hide and seek. We have to do tasks and find the imposter, remember?"

Right - tasks. Skeppy pulls himself back up into more of a sitting position, fires off another text, and takes advantage of being a ghost to make a beeline for where the map claims fuel is.

There's an incredulous laugh from the other room. Skeppy feels an answering grin start to tug at his mouth, and then Bad says, "There's no way you're done with tasks," and it changes to a dramatically affronted face.

I could be, he texts back.

"No, Skeppy," Bad says. Skeppy watches him adjust the tree's settings, or whatever that fucking task is. "For one, there's literally only been one round, and for another, no offense, you're not the best at tasks."

Skeppy sits there in shocked silence, then wordlessly taps out a simple :O.

"Awwwh - no, Skeppy," Bad whines, "I'm sorry! I didn't - chat, he just sent back an :O face." Skeppy can practically feel his guilt from here. "I didn't mean ittt."

Bad runs into the room Skeppy's in just as he's finished refilling his can. Skeppy abandons the task and floats sadly after him instead, wishing he could see ghost forms, but Bad stops at a wiring task, clueless and still making excuses.

Skeppy takes advantage of the pause to send him a sad face.

"No! Skeppy, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, you're great at tasks -"

Skeppy snorts, putting one hand over his mouth in a belated attempt to muffle it. He sends back:

That's literally ehe opposite of what yiu hust said :(

"I was joking," Bad insists. He's still got the wires up, but there's only one connected: Skeppy stifles another grin even though nobody can see it. "Listen, just text me where you are, I'll come and stick with you, how about that?" He makes an exasperated noise. "Chat, this isn't cheating, Skeppy was literally on my stream first."

Skeppy only just manages to turn his laugh into a cough - how on earth is that a valid excuse?

He's not sure whether he should admit that he's dead or lead Bad on a wild goose chase, so he just settles on idk wher you are.

"I'm in. . . electrical," Bad says. "Are you alive?"

Oh, easy. Nope, he shoots back.

"What!" Bad rushes the last three wires, closes the task and goes to flip through cams. "Have you been dead this whole time - no, wait, don't tell me that."

Skeppy follows him as he starts looking for bodies in earnest. His body is found by somebody else first, and he sits back to watch the meeting play out. Bad spends half of it playing up deep sadness about Skeppy's death and the other half quietly collecting information.

"I think this is an old kill," Zelk says at one point. "I don't remember seeing Skeppy since the very start of the round, at, um, dropship."

"Me either," Ant says, like a gigantic liar. "Where was the body again, specimen?"

"Doorway to spec," someone else corrects. "And speaking of not seeing people, I watched Ant go into O2 and not come out again, so I'm pretty sus of him."

"What?" Ant protests, and the game gets into full swing.

Bad leaves the meeting complaining that nobody got thrown into lava. Skeppy doesn't even have time to think of something funny to text him before RedVelvet runs up, stabs Bad multiple times, and jumps into a vent.

"What - no!"

Bad makes a big show of being betrayed as he takes the chat out of emote-only mode. Skeppy wiggles at him to say hi, doesn't even get through typing welcome to being dead before he hears the familiar "You were moved." of teamspeak.

"Oh -" He blinks a few times, fingers held off his keyboard a little. "Hi."

"Hello," Bad mopes. "I got murdered."

"I saw," Skeppy says sympathetically, joining in with the bit. "It was brutal, man."

"He stabbed me." Bad sniffs. "My own staff."

"That's rough." Skeppy floats up and does something with test tubes. "Hey, at least you survived a few rounds, right?"

"I guess that's true." Bad trails after him, which is probably a bad idea because Skeppy has no clue where he's going. "Who killed you? Was it Red?"

"Nope!" He bites his lip. Hesitates. "Can I tell you, or is that, like, cheating?"

"I don't -"

A body gets called, and suddenly there's frantic shouting. Skeppy mutes in TS, makes sure he's still muted in discord, and tries to figure out what's going on. Insta is yelling something about Ant standing over Bad's body while Ant furiously denies it: caught in the act, then, except for the fact that Bad had just told him it was actually Red.

"Oof," Skeppy murmurs to himself, watching Ant tumble into lava. "Unfortunate."

In vengeance for getting Ant out, Red massacres everyone within a single round. The bodies stack in office, one by one, while Bad makes increasingly incredulous noises in Skeppy's ear.

"Why don't I ever get to do this?" he complains at some point, when Red's cooldown only just ends in time to kill Zelk.

Skeppy grins slowly. "I don't know," he muses, teasing. "Maybe you're just not the best at imposter."

"Oh, wow," Bad scoffs, clearly recognising the parallel. "Okay. I see how it is."

Skeppy can hear his smile in his voice.

(All in all, it's a pretty fun game.)

///

(It's less fun when he finally gets imposter, cackles evilly, and then abruptly realises that he forgot to mute in teamspeak.

Bad could have at least tried to stop laughing during the emergency meeting, but whatever. See if Skeppy ever brings him muffins again.)

///

The two of them end up splitting off from the group and heading onto the SMP. Tommy and Tubbo are the only ones online, so Skeppy shoots them a quick hi while Bad logs on. Tubbo sends back a simple 'Hi :D'. Tommy goes full caps and sends, 'HELLO BIG S,' which is more than enough to know that he's streaming.

Skeppy's about to check when Bad joins. Tubbo sends him one of those little arm wave things, but Tommy doesn't say anything, which is pretty telling in Skeppy's experience.

"I think Tommy's streaming," he says.

Bad goes, "Ah, right," and starts to type. Skeppy opens his mouth, but Bad has already put 'I'm streaming o-o' in the chat.

"They're just gonna -"

FUCK, Tommy says. He must have started typing the second he'd seen Bad's message, it's so fast: Skeppy mutes so he can laugh, forgetting that Bad can hear him through the wall until he gets a betrayed face in the teamspeak chat.

He snorts, straightening up to unmute instead of messaging him back. "You should have expected that," he says, still amused. "You know what Tommy's like."

"Yeah," Bad grumbles. "He's a muffinhead."

Skeppy laughs again. "C'mon," he says, starting back along the wooden path to home. "I'm on my way back, where are you?"

"At the mansion," Bad says, surprised. "You went out? Where'd you go?"

According to where he'd logged in, Skeppy had ended his last session practically on the other side of the server - or at least, on the other end of the path, a little ways out into the wilderness. He thinks he might have been falling asleep at his computer and didn't have the energy to run back, but it's no big deal.

He's also got no items on him. He ducks into Eret's castle and scours his chests for food: one has ten steak, another five stacks of carrots and -

Flowers. More importantly: peonies.

He grins quickly to himself, a wry flash of a thing, and scoops up five of the steak and half a stack of carrots. It's worth being teased about his shoddy pronunciation if it'll make Bad smile.

"I went to get you a present." He takes three out, counting them into his inventory: enough that it's not just one lonely flower, but hopefully not so many that Eret will actually miss them. "I'm basically at the wooden path though, so I'll be there soon."

"Alright."

Bad starts chatting about baking the muffins while he waits, carefully framing it so that he doesn't mention Skeppy. Skeppy lets himself smile, soft and fond, where Bad can't see him, and listens. Bad ducks around a detail once or twice that's too tied into the two of them doing it together, like the flour catastrophe or how much their faces had hurt from laughing afterwards.

Skeppy can feel his smile broadening anyway.

In-game, he crests the final hill and stands at the top of the path, looking down at Bad standing in front of their mansion. He's still in F5, talking to the stream, so he doesn't know Skeppy's there yet - he wonders if there's a way to make a dramatic entrance, maybe by throwing the peonies into shot or something, but he can't think of anything extravagant enough that doesn't make noise or involve redstone.

Fine, fine. Simple it is.

He mines one of the dirt blocks next to him and shifts to get closer, trying not to be heard. Bad cuts himself off mid-sentence when Skeppy places the dirt directly in front of him, then coos when one of the peonies appears on it.

"Awww!" Bad zooms in, but his face is still mostly hidden behind the peony. "Skeppy's here," he says, voice warm. "And he brought us peonies. Peo. . . peonies? Skeppy, how'd you say it?"

"Peonies," Skeppy says, deliberately correct.

"Yeah, now you are," Bad huffs. "How'd you say it originally?"

"I'm taking this back."

Skeppy punches the flower down.

Bad gasps, flicking out of F5 without missing a beat. He jumps onto the dirt block and shifts, filling Skeppy's screen with enchanted netherite and glowing white eyes. "Skeppy!"

He pouts. Doesn't answer.

"Don't ignore meee. It was funny."

"No it wasn't," he grumbles. "You're just bullying me."

"What - no!" Bad nudges him backwards, voice somewhere between exasperation and amusement. "I am not."

"You are."

Bad tries and fails to take this seriously. "I'm not, you muffinhead," he says fondly, punching Skeppy once. "Here - what do you want to do? You can pick."

"It's your stream," Skeppy says, frowning a little.

"Yeah," Bad says, "and you're my -" New housemate. "- best friend. And if I'm bullying you, then it's only fair, right?"

It's Bad's coaxing voice. Skeppy knows it's Bad's coaxing voice.

"Okay," he says anyway. "Um. . ."

One of his own throwaway comments pops back into his head. Skeppy makes an excited noise, punching Bad back and starting to jump from one statue base to another.

"Hide and seek!"

There's a tiny pause, and then Bad goes, "Huh?"

"Hide and seek," he repeats. "We both get a bunch of ender pearls, I hide somewhere, and you find me."

Bad stops. "How is that fair?" he says. "You can just watch my stream and know where I am, and when I'm looking for you you could just dig down three blocks and put dirt over your head and I would never know."

"Okay, firstly." Skeppy throws the other two peonies at him, which means he's officially back to having jack squat. "I only have four steak and half a stack of carrots, so it's not like I have silk touch to get a grass block. You could just look for dirt." He raises his voice, goes, "Secondly," over Bad's protests. "I could always share my screen with you so I can't cheat."

Bad has a particular tone of voice for when he's narrowing his eyes. "Okay," he says slowly, using it. "But say I agree to this. When I find you, you can just ender pearl away if you have a bunch of them. That's not fair."

"You'd have a bunch too," Skeppy points out, "but I get where you're coming from. What if we just had three?" Bad still doesn't seem convinced, so he tries to butter him up. "They'd be handy for getting to places to hide on your turn."

He does his best, most convincing wiggle for Bad and the stream. They seem pretty on board, actually, which is nice. Skeppy presses A and D again anyway, hoping to make Bad laugh.

"Alright, Skeppy," he says, voice filled with something like honey that makes Skeppy's heart flip. "Let's play hide and seek."

Chapter Text

The morning after Bad's stream, Skeppy wakes up to find the house suspended in quiet. It's a hazy thing that settles across his shoulders like a blanket: it's not hard to tell that Bad's still asleep. There's none of the bustle from the past two mornings.

Something lonely stirs in his chest as he stares groggily at Bad's closed door. He's already way too used to Bad teasing him in the mornings, voice fond and warm while Lucy dances at their feet.

His mind draws to a halt. "Lucy?" he whispers.

Silence stretches afterwards, drawn-out and syrupy, and then there's a series of quiet clatters. Bad's curtains must be open, at least a little: Skeppy can see the four stripes of Lucy's legs, casting shadows in the morning light.

He finds himself crouched down, closer to Lucy's height. She scratches at the door when she hears him move; he laughs softly, reaching up for the handle. He holds his breath, but thankfully the door doesn't creak.

Lucy worms her way out, her tail going a million miles an hour. Her little teeth show as she yawns, excited and too-fast like she can't stand to pause long enough to do it properly. Skeppy laughs again as she bounds around him and nearly crashes into the wall.

"Shh," he whispers. Bad's door clicks, even though he'd tried to be slow about closing it, and Lucy's ears prick towards it in interest at the noise. She barks, once, and Skeppy lets his face pull into something horrified. "Luce! Bad's still sleeping, shh."

He doesn't think Bad's woken up - he hopes not. He deserves a lie-in.

There's an excited whine from Lucy as he straightens again. Skeppy shushes her, but her nails are clacking loudly on the floor and his mind jumps back to the first morning, when Bad hadn't been able to keep Lucy quiet.

"I can see why," he murmurs, peering down at where Lucy is bending down, tail in the air and still wagging furiously. She barks again, then blinks in surprise when he frantically scoops her up and shuffles away from Bad's door.

He bites his lip as he sets her down in the kitchen. She doesn't seem to want to leave yet, staying crowded into his arms and eagerly licking his face.

"Do you want to go into the garden?" Fuck, he doesn't know if it's walled off or not. It probably is, but he'd feel better if he had a lead on her in case it isn't, and if he's putting her lead on anyway then - "Or do you want me to just take you out on a walk?"

Lucy lights up at the word. She barks three times, then once more: Skeppy makes a noise he can only describe as a keysmash and holds a finger to his lips.

Getting her to calm down and stay calm is difficult. Lucy is turning out to have an impatient streak as wide as Bad's - though in her defence, Skeppy doesn't know where any of her stuff is so she probably thinks he's being beyond slow about getting ready. They're almost out the door when he realises that it'd probably be smart to take his phone and has to turn back.

He steps away from the door, leaving her lead hooked on the handle. If looks could kill, then her expression would have disintegrated him instantly.

"You'd be a good murderer," he murmurs to her as they finally make it out of the house. He still feels bleary, something achy settling into his limbs, but he literally just woke up, so. He's fine. "Clean kills, never sussed."

Lucy blinks up at him, thoroughly getting under his feet when he turns back to lock the door.

Skeppy considers her. "Maybe your fur would give it away, actually. Blood and all that."

She barks again, but they're not inside anymore so he's not too worried about it.

"You're right," he says. "I'm sure you could wash it off before anyone saw you."

The morning is bright and fresh, cold enough that his breath mists in the air but thankfully not enough for him to have to turn back and steal one of Bad's coats. Apparently it'd rained sometime overnight, as well - there's a series of puddles on each stretch of pavement, and there's a smell in the air of wet grass.

He misses Rocco. There's a big, idiot-faced hole at his side.

They keep walking. Lucy stops to pee. Skeppy realises that he forgot to bring his keys, so either Bad's gonna be awake when he gets back or he and Lucy are going back in through a window like criminals.

"Shit," he sighs. Lucy stops walking and stares at him. "Sorry. Little ears."

She huffs and moves on. Skeppy's glad that she seems to know where she's going - he'd only absorbed snapshots of their surroundings when he'd walked with Bad, and he'd barely been awake for part of it. But Lucy leads him confidently through the maze of streets to a little park, then sits, expectant.

Skeppy looks down at her. "I'm not letting you off."

He doesn't want to lose Bad's dog on the literal fourth day of living with him. He doesn't know what Lucy wants to do at this park either - she might go and wrestle bigger dogs and accidentally get stepped on, or eat a pinecone and get sick or something. He doesn't want that on his conscience.

Lucy barks at him.

Skeppy narrows his eyes, not budging.

Eventually, they settle on a compromise. Lucy stays on her lead, which she doesn't seem too happy about, but Skeppy barrels around on the grass with her until she seems tired.

At least, that had been the original plan. But it's kind of terrifying in practice, Skeppy worrying the whole time that he's going to step on her, and even though she's so small Lucy seems to have an infinite amount of energy. He's just flopped down on the grass, panting and too tired to swat away the licks at his face, when the sky opens and it starts to rain.

His phone starts buzzing in his pocket while Skeppy's making a headlong sprint for the weird bandstand thing nearby, hoping for shelter. Skeppy swears, waving a hand when Lucy yips.

They skid to a stop under the bandstand, one of Skeppy's hands on a post for support. Lucy walks around it, tangling the lead, and starts to doggy smile at him.

He rolls his eyes at her instead of looking at the screen. "Hey, Bad."

"Hey," Bad says.

He's still tired, Skeppy can hear it in his voice, but there's a tension starting to wind its way through as well: worry.

(That probably shouldn't make him feel as cared for as it does.)

"Did you take Lucy out?" Bad asks, oblivious to the warmth in Skeppy's chest. "Where are you?"

"Yeah, she's with me." He flops down onto one of the rickety benches, threading fingers through Lucy's fur when she hops up next to him. "You were asleep and she wanted to go out, and I didn't want to disturb you, so."

"Awwh, Skeppy," Bad says. He yawns, apparently relaxed now that he knows where his two housemates are. "Where'd you go? I know you, you won't have remembered the walk from yesterday."

"I could have done," he argues, but there's no heat in it and he gives up instantly. "But no, yeah, I just let Lucy lead me around."

"You -"

Bad laughs. It's one of Skeppy's favourites, genuine and disbelieving. Fond. Alone under a bandstand in the pouring rain, he lets an answering grin split his face.

"Skeppy."

"Hey, it worked. I'll have you know we're in a very nice park, having a good time without you."

Bad snorts softly. "Oh, you are, huh? Let me guess, she made you throw something for her to chase and then didn't bring it back."

"Nope," Skeppy chirps. "You weren't here, so I didn't let her off, so the only thing she's been chasing is me."

"What - what d'you mean you?"

"I mean, BadBoyHalo, that I have been running around in a weird park with your hyperactive little dog while she tries to bite my shoelaces."

Baffled laughter is coming through from the other end of the call. Skeppy's smile lingers on his face even though it's cold and he's about to have to find his way back while getting thoroughly soaked.

"Jesus, it's cold out here," he says without really meaning to.

"Language!" Bad yelps. "She's only got little ears."

He shuffles his hands further into his sleeves in a futile effort to keep his hands warm. The handle of Lucy's extendable lead doesn't fit, but she's got her head between her paws like she'd decided he's boring now he's not running around, so Skeppy carefully loosens his grip, hooks his hoodie sleeve over his fingers, then goes back to the original hold.

"Sorry," he chatters out. "Hey, you seen outside?"

"No," Bad says, in a tone of voice that means he's about to say why? He doesn't get around to it, though, because Skeppy hears the noise of a curtain and then, "Holy muffin!"

"Yeah." He can feel his eyes crinkling with the force of his smile. "We're out in that right now. Pity us." An idea occurs to him. "Hey, you happen to know any shortcuts back?"

"Are you at the park with the bandstand?"

"Yeah."

"Just wait there, I'll come and get you."

"What -" Skeppy sits up straighter. At his side, Lucy lifts her head from her paws, tilting it to one side to watch him. "Bad, there's no point in two of us getting wet."

"Skeppy," Bad says, voice dripping in exasperation. "I'm going to drive."

"Oh." That makes a lot more sense. "Right. Never mind. Uh, where are you gonna pop up?"

"There should be, like, a fountain thing, do you see it? It's all covered up because it's winter, but you should be able to see it. There's an entrance near there."

Skeppy spots it after a moment. The actual fountain isn't very high, most of the size swallowed up by a wide rectangle he assumes is a pool or something. Water is cascading down the sides: either it has the cover Bad had mentioned, or the water level is super high right now.

"Got it." It's gonna be decent sprint: the ache in Skeppy's legs and arms hasn't gone away, and he's still really fucking cold, but it'll be a worthy exchange for a warm car ride back. "How long will you be?"

"Like three minutes? Nobody's gonna be driving, I don't think."

"Don't speed," Skeppy teases, not realising how hypocritical that is until it's already out of his mouth. He winces, tries to continue with, "We're chilling here," but Bad is already making a sharp, amused noise into the phone.

"That's coming from you, Mr. Banana Car," Bad says.

"Banana car - you did not just say that."

"It's yellow, isn't it?"

"It's not a banana car, Bad."

"How about mustard?"

Skeppy only realises that he's being deliberately wound up when he makes an annoyed noise and catches the edge of Bad's laugh, stifled but there.

He softens. It may be raining buckets, and this may be a stupid situation, sat in a bandstand in the middle of a park he doesn't know the way back from with no house keys, but he can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be.

Well, maybe back inside, somewhere warm. But shut up.