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“Hey fellas?” Joel is lying on their unnecessarily wide bed with his armor on (like a bad boy). There’s puffy white clouds passing across the early-evening sky in the same steady pace everything in this word seems to move at. There’s a persistent buzz almost, a consistent beat just barely perceptible. If you ask Joel, it’s kind of exhilarating... or disturbing. One of the two.
“Yeah?” Jimmy turns from where he’s hanging out by the fishing pond. He’s taken off his boots to dip his feet in the water- probably to cool off from heat of the crackling fire burning the mansion below them. Joel can see Grian turn from where he's sorting through their chests.
“If this whole building actually burns down I think I might be sad, boys” Jimmy immediately starts giggling at the pun and Grian snorts and sits down on the bad boy 3 chest.
“Oh but Joel you should channel it. We should get mad, boys.” Grian declares, and Joel can’t help but grin- let the puns begin!
“We should call a firefighter- they might even be wearing plaid, boys”
Jimmy laughs “Sounds like they might be a chad, boys” and Grian nearly falls off his chest with the force of his cackling. Joel is laughing now too, all the while racking his brain for other things that rhyme with bad. A, B, C, D- bingo.
“You know, over on empires I have Hermes- I’m a dad, boys.” With that, Grian AGAIN almost falls off his chest and the entire building (if he were to, he’d mlg water bucket. Since they’re bad boys) and their laughter fills the air. Yet, they let the moment go a bit too long and with nothing else coming to mind their laughter dies out. He’s back to hearing the slight beat in his chest, heartbeat seemingly slowed down to match the ticking of the world. How does that even work? How are they alive? Not Joel’s problem to worry about. He’s too much of a bad boy. Soon enough the sky is darkening above him and Jimmy’s removing his feet from the pool, the light splashes drawing Joel’s attention back from pondering how the world works.
“…I’d say our group is pretty rad, boys.” His two teammates turn back to him with smiles re-alighting.
“Hey it’s getting late maybe we’ll see a bat, boys”
“...Jimmy do you think bat rhymes with bad?”
Jimmy splutters while Joel and Grian giggle mercilessly. “Doesn’t it? I mean, well, kinda” but even he cracks a smile at their contagious joy. Just some bed-time prep and ridiculous puns later the three bad boys end up lying in their comically large bed to wait out the night. There's distant light over by entertainment mountain, what might be some distant yelling from Bdubs, and the vast night sky above them. Joel’s between the canary of the coal mine and the controller of it all, and yet the mortality of this world isn’t as all-consuming as it was earlier. The endless ticking of their heartbeats (all in tune), the eerily steady pace of the wind… it’s just not as scary as he thought it’d be. It’s anticlimactic honestly.
“This is a pretty good team- I’m glad, boys” Grian mumbles to them and the stars.
Jimmy hums his agreement and yawns “Goodnight bad boys.”
With the gentle breathing of his two old friends falling asleep beside him, Joel finds it’s easy to ignore where they are. Ignore the death game. For now, it’s just them- and that’s not too bad, boys.