Chapter Text
It all starts when Etho gets back from a truly soul-sucking day of back-to-back classes.
As his tired fingers fumble with the key to his and Joel's shared dorm, Etho mentally catalogs every current strike against his sanity in an act of both misery and comfort.
Stomach:
Empty, other than the half of a burger he'd been able to swallow before dashing off to his next lecture conveniently on the complete opposite side of campus.
Head:
Mired in the beginnings of a migraine Etho can already tell is the kind that won't go away until he actually sleeps for more than 3 hours at a time.
Eyes:
So dry, Etho would call it a miracle his contacts haven't fallen out yet. That is, if he wasn't already rock certain in the fact that any existing god had abandoned humanity a long time ago, leaving them to fend for themselves amidst a wasteland of entrepreneurs and tech bros.
Etho does the mental calculations and determines that, despite how the doorknob is starting to change into fascinating new shapes before his very eyes, he'll have to somehow muster enough energy to last the long night ahead of him filled with rewatching recorded lectures in order to understand the new content, while also looking back over his textbook in order to firmly grasp the old content.
All of this, on a fucking Tuesday.
Every day, Etho's psyche inches ever-closer to that inevitable break, where he finally gives up on the pipe dream of graduating with a biochemical engineering degree and takes the less traveled path in life.
Maybe he'll run away to the forest and get kidnapped by the fae, the kind Lizzie loves to info dump about any chance she gets. Maybe he'll just lay down and die.
But before he's granted the sweet release of death, Etho plans to finally carry out his dream of raiding Impulse's truly unsettling collection of demonic ritual paraphernalia, and selling his soul to the first comer that's willing to put the fear of hellfire into whatever administrator decided that a two-hour window was perfectly reasonable for any and all course registrations.
It'll be glorious.
But alas, he sighs as he finally gets the door open and steps inside the room, today is not that day.
Etho walks in, and has to take a minute to reboot as he's confronted with a seemingly alternate reality.
Joel is standing in the center of the room, red paper lanterns in hand, mouth forming a concentrated pout as he adjusts the positioning of a small kumquat tree on his desk.
Joel is holding Chinese paper lanterns and is putting a kumquat tree on his desk.
Etho simply stands there, mouth physically gaping as his mind mentally runs through the possible explanations as to why Joel, so white he can't handle the spice packets that come with instant ramen, is putting up Chinese New Year decorations.
Has Joel's desire to be an ally and learn about other cultures somehow manifested itself in the dumbest way possible?
Does he think hanging up dollar store paper lanterns is going to increase his racial-sensitivity score in his Asian studies class?
Is this a bit?
That last one actually starts to heat Etho's blood.
The threat of all of his emotions boiling over, putting Etho at risk of engaging in a mortifying display of passion, sets off his internal alarm bells and forces him to take a moment to recompose himself.
A few calming breaths, and Etho's flight-or-fight instincts recede alongside with his anger.
He just feels tired now.
Etho feels himself deflate further as it really sets in that he might actually have to have A Talk with one of his friends about cultural appropriation, microaggressions, and basically all the things he tries very hard to Not Think About throughout his day to day life.
The ridiculousness of it almost makes him want to laugh. He's got enough stress circulating throughout his system to kill an ox two times over without having to add racial tensions on top of that, thank you very much.
And you know what?
What really bites is how, up until now, Etho had firmly placed Joel in the category of The Good Ones.
He'd never made comments about how fluent Etho's English was, never assumed he was automatically a prodigy in any given subject or that his actual skill with math was due to natural affinity instead of experience, and when he mentioned anime, Etho really got the sense it was because Joel genuinely knew his interests rather than treating him like the resident Asian cultural expert when Etho didn't even speak Japanese.
At some point, Etho had let his guard down around his annoying roommate. Joel grew on him like a fungus, and as Etho felt himself be inexorably drawn into Joel's orbit, he might have had the passing thought that maybe it wasn't so bad for him to become a fixture of Joel's life—and vice versa.
So seeing this...cultural themed frat party-level buffoonery happening right inside their shared room feels almost like a stab in the back. The ache in his chest throbs in response; Etho absentmindedly presses a knuckle over his heart.
Etho takes a quick breath and looks back over at Joel, who's by now put down the pack of lanterns he was holding.
Instead, he's seemingly absorbed in whatever he does whenever he's glued himself to his phone, a state that Joel inhabits approximately 74% of the time during his waking hours.
(One time, Tango had joked that maybe it was an online girlfriend in Canada, and Etho had nearly ejected the contents of his stomach all over the Burger King floor.
To this day, he maintains that even if he hadn't managed to keep it in, it would have been far from the worst thing that floor had seen in its lifetime. At which point Joel accuses him of not supporting workers' rights to 'not deal with that shit', and Etho is left suppressing the desire to shake the insufferable grin off of Joel's face as the conversation predictably derails from there.)
All of which is to say, Etho feels abruptly free of anxiety and unafraid of confrontation for the first time in his life. He decides to just bite the bullet.
"Joel?"
Despite his rush of confidence, the name comes out tentative, slipping shyly from his mouth. Etho cringes internally as Joel finally looks up from his phone and gives a questioning glance in his direction.
All of Etho's prepared investigative queries and general brain functions completely fail under the weight of Joel's eyes, leaving him to grapple with the empty space where his mind should be.
Etho opens and closes his mouth a few times, willing literally anything to come out, but it seems like him making a fool out of himself in front of Joel is the hot new trend.
Helplessly he watches Joel's eyebrows raise higher and higher in confusion, until Etho finally blurts it out.
"What's, uh, all this for?"
His hand makes it halfway through gesturing to the unfinished decorations scattered about the room before his mind catches up with his body and decides, that's a bad idea, actually.
A little behind the curve but Etho just appreciates that some part of him has maintained its self-preservation instincts.
Joel's brows have climbed almost off of his forehead at this point. They've reached their peak and have set their next goal to be Mount Everest. Truly inspiring.
However, Etho's more occupied by the almost defensive set to Joel's face, confusion and irritation playing out across the other's eyes as he seemingly tries to make sense of the (admittedly) vague inquiry, Etho's palms progressively gathering more and more sweat on the lining of his fingerless gloves, Joel continuing to work through whatever train of thought is chugging its way through his brain to little apparent success, all finally culminating in Joel visibly giving up and simply uttering a single bewildered statement that shatters the foundations of Etho's world.
"I'm Vietnamese?"
Oh fuck.
Etho may have fucked up.
==========
It's not every day that you find out the person you were good friends with.
Spent significant time around.
Learned a lot of information about.
Is white passing enough for you to not even realize they're also Asian what the fuck????
Etho's brain skips like a broken record, attempting to connect all of the nonexistent pieces that could have possibly prevented this insane scenario from happening in the first place.
Hypocritically, he wonders why Joel had never brought up any details of his heritage before, literally anything that could have given Etho just the slightest inkling of the truth.
(The part of him who spent 10 years of his life trying to blend into the background and desperately avoiding anything that would make him stand out amongst his peers as marked understands.)
Throughout all of this, Joel remains glued in place, eyes wide as he patiently waits for Etho to return to planet Earth. That, or this conversation has also triggered Joel's freeze instinct and they're both out of commission for the foreseeable future.
It's this apocalyptic vision of the both of them, frozen in place and locked in an eternal staring contest, that prompts Etho to do the thing that he really should stop doing: i.e., open his big fat mouth.
"I thought you were white."
Etho needs someone to immobilize his vocal chords right now, please and thank you.
Joel's eyes widen, frozen facade finally breaking as the incomprehensible air around them warms into a shared sense of confusion.
"You too?" Joel breathes the words out, hushed and heavy.
Huh???
Etho braces himself on the wall, knees almost buckling under the enormity of the implications packed within that latest gut punch.
Joel just keeps talking, unappreciative of the utter ridiculousness of the situation they had found themselves in.
"Grian literally broke my brain the other day when he told me I was white passing. Like I'm half Vietnamese, right, but this entire time, I thought I looked Vietnamese! I thought I looked Asian!"
Joel takes pity on a suffering man and at least acknowledges Etho with his bright gaze, hands beginning to gesture as he talks faster and faster.
"I mean, it's the same feeling you'd probably get if I told you you were white passing!"
Before Etho can even begin to process that, Joel almost immediately flinches back, as if his rhetorical blunder was a physical presence he could backtrack away from.
"Well- uh- shit." Joel nervously taps his fingers up and down his arm, visibly calming his racing mind down.
"What I mean to say is," his fingers slow to a steady pace, "I guess I've always just...thought of myself as Vietnamese.
"I mean, it was never even a question. It was a part of who I was for as long as I could remember."
Etho barely catches the shadowed tailwind of some incomprehensible deep press up against the surface of Joel's eyes before it's gone.
Joel's hand slides to a stop at his side, gaze distant.
"It never occurred to me that other people would see me differently."
And despite the undoubtedly unique circumstances Etho is still trying to wrap his head around, there is a ring of truth resonating deep at the core of Joel's mad ramblings.
What do you do, when the 'you' inside your head doesn't match up with the way the world sees you?
How do you even begin to deal with that?
They both sit with the cooling silence for a long moment, Etho struggling to come up with a reasonable response to anything that's happened today.
Across the room, Joel gives a slight shrug of his shoulders, apparently done talking.
His eyes are still bright.
From what Etho can see, Joel's managed to reach some kind of equilibrium, having fully gone through the process of his remarkably compact panic response and reached the inevitable endpoint best known to all college students as 'fuck it'.
Etho's almost jealous.
"So, yeah." Joel concludes. "Half Vietnamese, half white. All British."
He gives a dramatic little flourish of his hand as he dips into a quick curtsy, as if to introduce himself to a waiting audience.
He definitely learned that from working in Lizzie's theater troupe, Etho idly observes.
He hesitates for a moment, still trying to process the series of life-changing revelations that have taken place this previously unremarkable Tuesday.
Barely a second passes before he dismisses such an endeavor as a lost cause. The moment Etho had entered their room, reality was turned on its head and all its unspoken rules changed beyond recognition.
(And maybe, if Etho's being honest with himself, it went back even further. He'd really been doomed from the moment he'd made his choice to leave home and go to an American university, only to walk into the international dorms and be faced with the absolute shitshow that was Joel's entire friend group helping him move in.
Etho looked at Scott organizing the legion of stuffed animals on Joel's bed, Grian arguing with Jimmy over where to put a literal Minecraft grass block (that seemed to be made of paper maché???), and Lizzie pinning up a makeshift collage of musical posters using cork board pins that were definitely leaving holes in the drywall–
And promptly closed the door, all hope of having a good, or even peaceful year dead in the water.
Etho elected, for the sake of his blood pressure, to ignore that entire mess and for once listen to the nagging voice in his head—which sounded more like Tango every day—demanding that he "get some fresh air once in a while, you vampire!"
As he took in the trees and sunlight, feeling none the more relaxed for it, the image of his roommate's overstuffed bed flashed in his mind.
Who even needs that many stuffed animals?
Etho carefully suppressed thoughts of the little creature of cotton and wool his dad had gifted him before he left, "in case you ever get lonely over there!"
He blamed the discomfort gathering along his palms on his fingerless gloves coming up on their weekly wash.
And with that final act of hypocrisy, Etho was officially out of excuses.
He gave one last longing glance to the sky as he mourned any remaining illusion of calm, and finally redirected his wandering path back towards the dorm room.
The relief that sank in his chest when he walked in and saw no trace of the chaos from earlier nearly turned Etho into putty against the doorframe.
Well, he amended, taking a closer look, maybe not no trace of them.
Plastered throughout the walls, spilling over the sides of the bed, and carelessly strewn all across the desk was the physical aftermath of whatever unnatural disaster had previously inhabited this space.
Poster paper that curled along the edges from how thickly it was layered. Knick-knacks with no rhyme or reason, ranging from brightly colored My Little Pony™ poseable figures, to literal rocks that looked like they were picked up right outside the dorm building. A stack of colorful blankets that altogether added nearly half a foot of fabric to the bed's surface.
Everywhere he looked, there was something new drawing the eye.
It was overwhelming to just look at, no matter any attempt from the mind's eye to decipher it.
Regardless, time waited for no man, and Etho was no exception. Opening up his suitcase and casting a critical eye over his (for the time being) new home, Etho got to work.
But the lurking sense of...unease that'd been coloring the edge of his vision for some time didn't abate at this latest progress to his mental checklist.
In fact, the longer he stood and looked at the whole scene, the more intense it got.
Compared to the magpie which had inexplicably taken up residence on the other side of the room, Etho's area looked positively sterile.
Aha!
With a burst of inspiration, he remembered the lone llama plushie kept safe and sound within his backpack, and pulled it out with a dramatic flourish to which he was the only audience.
Etho carefully placed Sandy directly in the center of his bed, and with a bit of fiddling, she was perfect.
Etho took a quick sweep of the room, mentally checking off his task list while determinedly not looking over at the fraying disaster that was his roommate's area.
Clothes, hung up and folded.
Notebooks and pencils, stored away in his desk.
Sandy, comfortably situated with plenty of empty space on his neatly folded sheets.
...
Now what?
The answer to his unspoken prayer arrived on the angelic wings of the default text message sound effect.
In their group chat, Tango and Bdubs excitedly made plans for dinner now that they were all in the same place, filling the air with nonstop chimes as they fed off of each others' exhilaration.
Etho gave in to the grin that was threatening to break out across his face, and texted back a single thumbs up as an affirmative.
A slight wave of relief slid down his spine at the confirmation that he wasn't going to have to spend any more time than necessary here in this empty room. There were things to do, a campus to explore, and a new life to carve out for himself.
Etho let that thread of excitement lighten his steps as he walked out the dorm room door.
Firmly, he pushed away the lingering image of a lone Sandy waiting for his return in a strange and unfamiliar place, unable to understand that home was now a distant memory.
...
It was well into the night by the time Etho returned from dinner with friends, the familiarity of their laughter, coupled with the novelty of their shared new situation, working to ease the tension that felt like it had taken up residence at college alongside Etho's boxes and clothes hangers.
Etho walked smoothly but unhurriedly, reveling in the feeling of complete independence for the first time in his life.
Beneath the stars, beholden to no one, with all the potential in the world.
He almost wanted to stay wandering in that moment forever, before the feeling was inevitably ruined by the realities of life.
Still, he mused as he unlocked the door to his room. It wouldn't hurt to keep up the optimism for a little bit longer.
Etho slipped in, expecting the other occupant to already be in bed at a reasonable hour.
Unfortunately, as Etho was soon to find out, Joel was anything but reasonable.
His new roommate startled up from the artificial glowing square in his hand, intent eyes quickly latching on to their new task of following Etho's every move.
Back then, they hadn't even exchanged a single word yet. Still, Etho noted the unsettling frigidity of his silence, completely at odds with the bright cacophony he had walked in on only half a day earlier.
His good mood took a rapid downturn.
But despite the bad impression his roommate's friends had left on Etho, he shivered at the thought of Joel himself forming a bad opinion of him.
Desperate not to disturb the silence, he swiftly got ready for bed, internally wincing at every impact of his body against the far-too cramped room.
As he nursed his injured pride and forehead from the multiple times he forgot to duck underneath the door frame, he finally crawled into bed–
Before he realized that Sandy had apparently been cloned in his absence??
Sat beside his own llama plush was an entirely different horse plushie.
Etho rubbed his eyes.
The horse was still there. In fact, as he looked closer, he noticed a small tag attached to the side of its plushie saddle decreeing it to be The Last Horse.
The first stirrings of intrigue at this latest mystery were almost immediately crushed when Etho remembered the only possible suspect for the horse's appearance.
And he was in this very room.
With this realization came the obligatory cringe at the thought of engaging in the same type of social interaction Etho had spent the entire day almost managing to avoid.
In the end, his anxiety around the idea of somehow being caught as a plushie thief and having his good name besmirched for eternity was enough to spur him into action.
He took one last look at his warm, comfortable bed, then meekly poked his head over to look at the room's other inhabitant.
"Hey, um..." Etho trailed off, abruptly aware of the fact that he didn't know his roommate's name.
"Joel."
A single baleful eye glared up at him from the creature wrapped inside its blanket cocoon.
"Uh huh, Joel." Etho shoved down a nervous chuckle that threatened to escape.
"So, I think that one of your stuffed animals may have gotten onto my bed?"
The cocooned creature looked at Etho.
Looked at the bed.
Looked at Etho.
Then finally, seemingly frustrated that whatever unconventional communication technique he had been engaging in (telepathy, perhaps? Should Etho have been on the lookout for morse code?) didn't work, muttered out an answer.
"She looked lonely."
That was the only explanation Joel offered, delivered in a deadpan tone that left Etho uncertain as to whether he was joking or not.
Silence reigned supreme once again, stretching so far into awkward territory that any and all potential maps would be useless pieces of blank paper.
Etho opened his mouth, then thought better of it and closed his mouth again.
Instead, he gave single thumbs up and prayed that it would be enough to convey his totally real sense of understanding.
And before that could risk getting any more awkward than it already was, he pivoted in a smooth about-face and with an all-consuming relief, embraced the sanctum of his bed.
In that moment, different as the two of them were, they had been united by a single shared thought.
What a weird guy.
Try as Etho had, though. That one action upgraded Joel from Random Annoying Roommate in his head, to an unknown factor.
Etho had imagined both worst case scenarios and best case scenarios. He'd planned for either instant chemistry or a complete nightmare situation that might even require secret sabotage in order to maintain his peace of mind.
Etho had the RA's number in his contacts, he had his friends on speed dial, he'd even prepared conversation starters to minimize awkwardness.
Not once had he prepared for Joel.
Joel, who was the type of person to feel bad for an abandoned stuffed animal and offer up his time, energy, even possessions just to ease that discomfort.
Something about that one choice of his, incomprehensible as it was at the time.
(She looked lonely.)
Somehow it had slipped its way into the softness of Etho's heart and made its home there to stay.
It'd only gone downhill from there.
To Etho, Joel was a lock without a key, and he was determined to become a master lockpick. He was someone whose thoughts he couldn't truly read, someone whose actions didn't make any sense.
Someone with secrets.
Yet at some point Joel had stopped being a strange obsession, and had just become Joel.
(Well. Maybe there were still traces of that early obsession, but Etho was cool about it now, okay?)
An annoyance. A roommate. A peer in the art of midnight fast food runs.
A friend.
Someone Etho could understand, and who, quite possibly, understood Etho right back.)
Learning about Joel's heritage, which was apparently a secret only to Etho??, is definitely a few steps below uncovering his roommate's mysterious backstory, but it was close enough.
Etho gives in to the urge to share a piece of himself in turn.
"I'm uh. Half Japanese, half Chinese."
He looks to the side as he shares this, mentally adding Joel to the very short list of people who have heard this information willingly come out of Etho's own mouth.
"...and all Canadian!"
The grin spreading across Joel's face could be called endearing if you had a few screws loose. Unfortunately, Etho's internal machinery has been given a thorough beating today and he goes straight into thinking Joel's pleased little smile is cute.
The only outward acknowledgement he gives, however, is an exasperated roll of his eyes.
"Sure," Etho stifles a smile. "All Canadian."
Slowly, though, the instinctive excitement fades from Joel's face, making way for a thoughtful frown to pass over. He gives a considering tilt of his head.
Eyes sharpened with a kind of understanding that cuts to the heart pin Etho into place, one of the notable times where Joel's own uncanny brand of intelligence is impossible to ignore.
"That must be hard."
Etho sucks in a single breath, helplessly caught in the sudden pull of his sympathetic warmth.
"Yeah," he barely manages to get out. "It kinda is."
At that faint admission, something softens in Joel's stare. The watchful heat Etho felt so caught in dies down to a temperature that could be called soothing, rather than feverish.
He gives a final smile and a nod.
"I'm here if you ever want to talk about it, man."
Then turns away, snapping the thread between them and releasing Etho from his strings.
Joel transfers his attention back to the lanterns waiting patiently on his desk, and like always, leaves Etho to work through his own thoughts without outside interference.
Oddly enough, that small kindness makes him feel even more vulnerable than before.
There is a sense of wrongness in Joel, the person who has made himself inextricable from Etho's entire college life, now turning away from this.
Turning away from him.
(Back when they all thought Scott was going to be a Psych major and not a day went by without him ambushing and psychoanalyzing someone, one of the many phrases he'd bandied about had stuck with Etho.
Cᴏɢɴɪᴛɪᴠᴇ Dɪssᴏɴᴀɴᴄᴇ. (Nᴏᴜɴ) [Psʏᴄʜᴏʟᴏɢʏ]
ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴇʀᴄᴇᴘᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏғ ᴄᴏɴᴛʀᴀᴅɪᴄᴛᴏʀʏ ɪɴғᴏʀᴍᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ʙᴇᴛᴡᴇᴇɴ ᴏɴᴇ's ᴛʜᴏᴜɢʜᴛs, ʙᴇʟɪᴇғs, ᴏʀ ᴀᴛᴛɪᴛᴜᴅᴇs, ᴀɴᴅ ᴏɴᴇ's ʙᴇʜᴀᴠɪᴏʀ; ᴄʜᴀʀᴀᴄᴛᴇʀɪᴢᴇᴅ ʙʏ ᴀ ɴᴏᴛᴀʙʟᴇ ᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ᴛᴏʟʟ.)
All Etho has ever wanted was to be normal. Playing Minecraft with his friends, failing his driver's license test, studying in the library, dorming at college–for all intents and purposes, he is normal.
So why on earth is he finding Joel so affecting?
Throughout his life, there have always been several different realities which Etho has had to contend with in order to navigate his own.
There is the world in which the information he's just learned changes nothing. Joel is Asian, or maybe more accurately Wasian, or most accurately irrelevant.
It's not like Etho's ethnicity ever was a crucial part of their relationship, or any relationship for that matter, before the big reveal. It doesn't have to mean anything now.
They can just go through the typical motions of a typical day. Etho will work on his soul-crushingly heavy course load, Joel can go back to decorating his side of the room, and they'll never speak of what took place here again.
And then there is the reality in which it does mean something.
...
Etho doesn't know what to do in this one.
He looks back at Joel, absorbed in a world of his own creation. It occurs to him, that this new angle could very well hold answers towards his original investigation.
Another way that Joel is difficult to understand, in his eyes, is just another reason to study him closer.
So why is Etho holding back?
...
He doesn't know what he should do.
But maybe, he thinks, turning it over so many times in his head it barely has time to sit, it's not about what's 'right'.
Maybe there is no right answer, and what really matters is what he wants to do.
Maybe he's getting tired of running away from his own thoughts. Maybe he just wants to understand, once and for all.
Besides, when have you ever avoided the pursuit of what interests you?
"Joel." He hears his voice come out, more sure than he's ever felt before.
Joel looks up at him. Bright eyes waiting on Etho and Etho alone.
"Tonight, do you think we can...talk about all this?"
His fingers pause in the air at the inquiry, frozen above the screen of his phone. Still avoiding Etho's attentive gaze, he gives only a short nod, then looks back down.
Etho almost regrets asking.
Almost.
But looking at the barely there curve of Joel's lips and the flicker in his gaze, he realizes that he's not the only vulnerable one in this moment.
And as he turns to leave, he feels Joel pass him a paper slip-thin answer that refuses to leave his head for the entire rest of the evening.
"I'd love to."