Work Text:
As it never failed to be, HC-9’s single civilization was lively and loud.
Hermits bounced to and fro ten minutes before the broadcast began. Jevin was engulfed by something on his communicator, likely the finalization of the donation goals, while Cub sat beside him going over the games list and when they could plan the breaks. False had a lead around one of the hovering camera accounts, pulling it back and forth, trying to position it just right. Keralis went around the circle making sure everyone was camera ready, while Scar delivered everyone to their 12 A.M. seats. Of course, Bdubs was already devoted to a throne made of redstone components up on the hill, so all Scar could do was wave him off.
It was the final stretch before showtime, and Doc was anxiously ready and raring to go. From his own seat of slime blocks and deepslate, he pushed Grian and the minecart that he was in with his hoof as he fretted over his mic set. It reminded Doc of pushing a kit on a swing, and that comparison felt suddenly ridiculous so he kicked and sent Grian flying around his small circle of track with a shriek.
“Right!” Scar hollered, doing a turnaround in his wheelchair as he adjusted the mic on his headset, staring at something on the communicator strapped to his arm. “Places, everyone! We're live in T-minus 60 seconds!”
Doc sat up straighter. He had half the mind to brush off a deposit of soot and redstone from his coat; Grian continued to spin, idly propelled by a bit of powered track.
He looked up at the collection of people around him. Everyone was piled onto elaborate and increasingly ridiculous seats, each unique in their composition. As said, Doc nestled comfortably in his own seat of slime and deepslate. Around him the Hermits had ones of grindstones, quartz, completely built from glass. The energy in the game district was electric. His systems sizzled.
Across the circle and a little ways to the right, Ren sat in his own throne of beacons and warped wood. His GigaBug hovered in front of him, and Doc watched him glance between the drone and his communicator as he brushed his hair with his fingers to make it swoop in just the right direction. Doc rested his chin on his paw and unabashedly watched him.
He had missed Ren. He would be the first to admit that he missed Ren a lot.
“45 seconds!” Jevin called from the right of Doc.
It was a real surprise to see Ren there that day. No one dared bring it up to him, but there was a slight bristle when he appeared at the mini-game site only a few days after the conclusion to his reign. Even as Ren fixed his hair, contemplating in just a pawful of seconds if he should wear it up or against his shoulders (and the answer of which was a simple low ponytail), there were still streaks of a dark, deepslate grey. When his name was called, his tail tucked against his leg before it began wagging like usual. It felt strange to Doc that Ren was here, about to be on a public broadcast in front of everyone, when he just crawled out of a really draining arc— in both the mental and physical sense. It's not something Ren hasn't gone through before, of course, but..
Doc loved a good mystery, he really did. He loved a challenge that made his brain itch, something that made his gears start turning. And Ren was the perfect puzzle; the best surprise Doc has ever gotten was when he learned that he was truly a dog hybrid several seasons ago, years before he revealed it to everyone else on HC-7 when a short haircut meant he couldn't hide it anymore.
Again, Ren was the perfect puzzle. He confused Doc to no end. Currently, Doc couldn't understand why he wasn't somewhere private, recuperating. Ren needed rest, and Doc didn't know why he was risking being here and not taking it.
“30 seconds! Cleo, wrangle that cam account, it's drifting!”
Doc's blissful gazing was soured far too quickly, in his opinion, when a hand reached out to Ren and brushed his hair behind his ear in just the right way. The GigaBug zipped away in an instant, buzzing off to take its position above the circle. He couldn't make himself look away when Ren's attention was immediately captured by Martyn.
Ah, yes. Hermitcraft's guest of honour for the evening, leaning out of his scaffolding throne.
The only person that made Ren's tail wag in an instant.
“15 seconds! That's 15– 13 seconds!”
He tried to will his own fur to flatten itself, afraid of the Hermit on either side of him smelling gunpowder suddenly.
This was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous, because Ren told him everything about how they were. Doc knew going into this, when Xisuma cleared Martyn for entry just for the event, about what they used to be for each other. He knew all that entailed. Not every detail, of course, but he had enough of the pieces to know the full picture. He didn’t even have to imagine that hard, because he was seeing it now.
“Look alive, Hermits, we've got 10! 9! 8!”
Ren and Martyn leaned away from each other, laughing without having to exchange a single word.
Doc stood. The slime blocks gave away a little beneath his hooves. Grian has slowed down.
“7,” Scar continued to count down as he wheeled into his copper seat, watching the timer on his communicator intently. “6, 5, 4...”
With one hand, he held up three fingers, then two, then one.
---
Martyn was charming. God fucking damn it, Martyn was charming. He had a boisterous laugh and made himself comfortable in new spaces and commanded the attention in a crowd. He had a voice for radio and a face for television, and it drove Doc mad.
He stayed quiet for most of it, as did Doc. He only really chimed in with occasional quips to rumble a laugh from the group, and do his gig of quickly listing off donors with skill. Total Chaos went by more or less without a hitch— that is, until Doc had to keel over for a little while to catch his breath and let his internal cooling fans run. Ren had come over at some point to pat him on the shoulder, and Doc urged himself to stand up a little straighter at that. He wished Martyn got at least a little lost, but in these Nether tunnels, Doc wouldn't wish that upon his worst enemy. After all, Grian already knew how the milestone system worked.
Dunk Tank was... less of an ache than he'd thought it'd be, really. He dreaded it at first when Martyn stuck around with his team instead of going to the Horse Course, but he kept to the other side of the game, which thankfully meant that Zedaph wouldn't've started sneezing from any whiff of sulphur in the air. By whatever miracle Grian and Bdubs had manifested, he and Zed lost in the end, even after they all broke the game. Martyn's commentary, albeit minimal and reserved to announcing the start of each round, was actually rather enjoyable. Doc had glimpses back to HC-7, in a wrestling ring and the need to help out a desperate man, but only for a moment. In the next, fireworks knocked someone's lights out.
They were called back to the circle of 12 A.M. chairs soon enough. Doc returned to his slime and deepslate seat and Martyn returned to his corner. But, since False in a banana suit had taken the scaffolding, he climbed to sit behind Ren and pulled up the donation list on his communicator.
Ren leaned against him, listening. Doc watched, trying not to think too hard about it.
For the past many months, they haven't been close. Doc can't even attempt to lie and say that they tried to be, because they didn't. Doc didn't attend his coronation; Ren didn't even have the energy to battle him on his declaration of independent state.
He hadn't stopped buying Giga Pies, though. He fell in love with them one morning, what felt like a lifetime ago now, sugary smooth with that perfect hint of cinnamon, when Ren brought him one of his first batches to see if it would kill anybody. And he chose Doc, waking him up to the smell of fresh pie before Ren even got through the door downstairs. They ate it in bed. Doc fell back asleep after, but that time with Ren in his arms.
Even when Ren moved out of the pie factory basement, up onto that cold hill into the Crastle, he kept buying pies. Even when their quality dropped and they didn't taste the same, he kept buying pies. And just so he didn't have to dread the moment where he had to look Ren in the eyes for the first time in months if they ran into each other at the counter, Doc bought them through Cub.
...Did Ren and Martyn have pumpkin pies? It didn't have to be pumpkin, nor did it have to be a pie at all. Did they have something that tasted, smelt, felt just like home?
Incentives were being drawn. Hermits gathered around the campfire. Martyn stood beside Ren, and Doc noticed their paws intertwined.
Long, long ago, in a cramped camper van, in a tiny pink-sheet bed, Ren would tell him everything. Spruce wood and cobblestone, leather and paper, the fire of torchlight and the sweltering heat of a kiln. Campfires, banners, and bandages. Lilac bushes were planted by the doors, and Ren's blood quenched their thirst.
Doc's chest hurt. He looked away. He hoped they had pumpkin pies.
---
An intermission came around soon enough. Some Hermits bailed for the free ten minutes back to base, a few checking in on their games to see what has been destroyed within the past hour and a bit, but most hung around the circle. The camera accounts were wrangled into better positions, water bottles were passed around, and Doc gestured to Ren to join him behind one of the larger chairs.
“Hey dude!” Ren beamed when he scampered over, tail wagging. “How's it going? Jeez, isn’t this stuff incredible, man?”
Doc was smiling in an instant. “It's good man, it's good. Yeah, I just wanted to ask, you know, just wanted to check in. You doing alright?”
His ears perked forward, looking genuinely surprised past his sunglasses and eye bags. “Er, yeah, why? What's up?”
“Come on, man. You got out of being king, like, yesterday. You're not looking too good. Don't you think you should be at base taking it easy or anything?”
“Listen, y'know Doc, I appreciate it,” said Ren, turning his head down to pick at one of the metal plates in his arm. Doc poked him before he chipped any paint. “But there ain't no way I was gonna miss Martyn coming into orbit.”
He took a gambled step towards Ren, holding him by the shoulder. “I get that, but Ren, if you were to go quiet or crash or something, this is the worst place to risk that happening—”
Ren stepped back out of his reach.
“I know that, man!”
As quick as he snapped, he shrunk; Ren's ears pressed back and his tail went between his legs, and it was almost like he flinched away from himself more than Doc. It was a reaction he hadn't seen in a long while. Doc's hand hovered in the space between them. Ren stared at it, stared at him, before looking away.
Ren muttered an apology, and retreated around the corner of the seat, back into the circle.
Doc was left in the bitter, stagnant aftermath, and finally let his hand fall. He sighed, before covering his face and groaning instead.
“I'm guessing I'm not s'posed to ask what that was about.” Martyn came around the other side of the seat, making Doc jump and turn around, fur on end. He put his hands up with a scoffed laugh. “Woah, guess not. Sorry for sneaking up on ya there.”
“Nah, nah, sorry,” Doc sighed, smoothing down his pelt. “Just... worried.”
“'Bout Ren?”
He squinted with the one eye that was capable of it. Martyn leaned against the back of the throne. “Yeah, actually. Yeah.”
“Oh come on, don't look at me like that. I've probably been noticing the same stuff you have. I offered to braid his hair earlier like I used to and saw he's gone way greyer than usual. Was he trapped in a cave or something? He's gone pale.”
“Eh—? Uh, not really, I don't think... if he was, it was probably voluntary, y'know? It sort of..” Doc shoved his paws in his pockets. “Sort of happens with him.”
“Don't gotta tell me twice,” agreed Martyn, kicking a chunk of grass with a laugh. “He's been chewing on his paws, by the way.”
Doc stared at him for a long moment. “What?”
“I went to hold his hand earlier and noticed he's been chewing on his nails. I did wanna ask you about something, though. Doc, was it?” His ear twitched. “I wanted to ask how that whole king business went for you,” Martyn continued. “I got all the gossip from Grian ages ago.”
He bristled.
This was a trap, there was no way that it wasn't.
Since he was a kit, Doc hasn't had the ability to ignite under threat like natural creepers do. However, as a defense mechanism, he could still produce gunpowder, and plenty of it until the stench permeated his dense fur pelt and made any threats hightail it out of his way. And he knew that Martyn was smelling it by the way his nose wrinkled.
“Hey,” Martyn said, putting a hand between them, “dude, listen, if there's anyone that won't hold it over you, it's me. I'm just... curious, 'cause I know that you and Ren are pretty close from a good first hand account.” Martyn jutted his chin at the corner of the chair Ren disappeared around. He twitched his head a little and Doc's fur eased. “He's not a good king, I get that.”
“You don't gotta tell me twice,” snipped Doc. “I don't know how it even happened man, and it's not like he's really eager to tell me anything. I come out of a tunneling project, and— and suddenly he's a king instead of a baker, and I have to request an audience with my own partner? He was ridiculous, man, and he lit me on fire in a labyrinth on top of Hell.” Martyn blinked. Doc shrugged. “It felt like... It felt like I woke up and he left me behind, man, and the plate of pumpkin pie was still unfinished on our nightstand.”
“You are just so laden with metaphors,” Martyn said, with little grasp on what metaphors actually are, but also the need to make a comment about that anyways. Doc rumbled.
“Maybe, whatever. I don't know. He just left me behind, man, it felt like he gave me no choice.”
Martyn was quiet for a long moment, looking out at the Battle Bane arena, studying it in his silence. Drawbridges, castles, and flags. “Well, it's not like you followed him, so...”
Doc scoffed. “Sure, man.”
His head snapped to him, brows furrowed. The way he leaned casually against the back of the chair stiffened. “Nah, listen man, you didn't see it like I did.”
“That— That's different.”
A finger jabbed in his direction, inches from Doc's chest but it felt like Martyn plunged right through him. His fur was rising. If Martyn had the genes for it, Doc's sure he would've started reeking of sulphur, too. “I don't think it is! You didn't see it how I did, you didn't see him how I did. The lot of you saw him from the outside, from the other side of some battlefield, other end of some podium. You—”
Martyn's finger withdrew, pulled into a fist wound so tight that his knuckles popped. His mouth snapped shut, teeth clenched. Doc in this moment took the slightest of steps back, shifting one hoof subtly. Martyn didn’t care enough to notice.
Someone hollered from inside the circle, sending a ping through the units on their arms. They had 90 seconds to gather back at the games district. The silence between them trembled, and Doc was about to find his seat until Martyn sighed.
“It... changes you, Doc,” he began slowly. “Changed him. Crowns do something to him, man, I don’t get it. But I don't doubt that he's still reeling.”
“That's why I don't want him here,” whispered Doc. “Not for anything cruel, but because he's genuinely unwell, man. I don't want him freaking out or shutting down somewhere public, on camera no less. Yet he insists on clinging to you like he's some lost puppy again.”
Martyn breathed. Looking away from Doc, he glanced back out into the circle of seats, to where Ren was reaching for one of the hovering camera accounts to reposition it at a better angle. When he turned his head, he noticed that Doc was looking too, and Martyn in that moment realized something about the both of them.
“Listen, I know I'm the reason,” Martyn said, “that he's all but hurting himself letting his battery drain like this. But I think...” Doc looked at him with a frown heavily set on his muzzle. He pursed his lips. “I think he's back in that place, you know? Where I was the only person who he could turn to. And I have to go after this, so let's.. Let's let him cling, I think it'll be good for him. Then he's all yours, yeah?”
The iris of Doc's redstone eye oscillated quizzically. Martyn realized that he was mechanically narrowing his eye at him while the rest of his face was stone cold. He was stared at for a long, long while as the noise of the Hermits and broadcast buzzed from beyond the chair they hid behind. Martyn's hand twitched at his side when Doc made a noise suddenly: an exhausted, laboured sigh.
“Yeah,” Doc said, bringing his thoughts back down to Hermitcraft. “Yeah.”
---
After Battle Bane concluded and everyone wrapped their knuckles, there was another wall of donations to be read. Martyn bounced on top of a spruce throne to pull up his list, which kept them sailing for thirty more minutes. Still in his warped wood and beacon seat, Ren sat and listened. He kept his eyes low to the ground, but his ears strained to wherever Martyn fidgeted as he fired off name after name, eventually moving back to his usual chair. The one time that Ren looked up, it was at Doc, who caught his eye near immediately. They were still across the circle, but Doc took his right paw in a fist and traced a clockwise circle on his torso.
“Sorry,” Doc signed from so far away.
Ren's heart ached. The Hermits chittered around him. Pressing his fingertips to his chin with a flat hand, he pulled it away. “Thank you,” he signed. After a long moment he added, “I love you.” Doc signed it back.
“I think it's, uh... time that we call it,” Jev said, calling people's attention and flicking a speck of blue slime that hovered over his shoulder, “and let's go wrap up with our single audiences and meet back up in a bit.”
The GigaBug finished its last lap of staring down at the circle of people before zipping to Ren. It landed in his open paws and disengaged, and he turned to Martyn. His communicator was projecting a glowing green grid, filled in each box with numbers and letters and as Ren watched him, Martyn was smiling. He missed it. More than anything.
Martyn pried his attention from the grid briefly, glancing up, and did a double take to glance down at Ren. He smiled brighter, and with his other hand, reached down. Ren's chin found itself in his palm.
“How long you got, Martyn?” He asked, despite the fact he didn't really want an answer.
“Couple'a minutes,” was the reply. The hand moved to scratch behind an ear. “My comm's been pinging for the past hour, I can't stay long.”
“Not even for a little bit of after party? It's over at Spawntown, we can show you around.”
“Nah, I'm sorry. I feel like I've already overstayed my welcome anyways.”
“Nonsense.”
Martyn leaned out of his scaffolding seat, and as if it was an instinct just like how his tail wagged or how he panted when it got too hot, Ren drew closer. Martyn's lips graced his forehead, and in an instant, Ren felt every bit of composure he had decay. His ears flattened, and he climbed onto the armrest just so Martyn could kiss his cheek. Ren was the one to kiss him on the lips. He pressed his face against Martyn's, rumbling deeply, rubbing their heads together. He'd gotten a little too used to Doc again.
“..I love you. I'll see you again soon though, yeah?” He asked, surprised by how fragile he sounded.
“Duh,” laughed Martyn. “No way you're getting rid of me that easily.” Martyn sprung away from him, not before kissing him again. “I've gotta take a fly around, scope out my exit.”
“Need a guide?”
“I'll be alright. Love you too, Ren.”
“See you around, Martyn.”
Ren sat back. With a click of his tongue, Martyn winked, and bounded out of his chair, parkouring over the arm rests of the crimson wood seat beside him, and making off towards the Nether portal. He rested his paws in his lap. The seat beside him felt cold already. Sighing, he stood, stretched, and padded down to the grass.
The electric buzz in the air had died with the cameras. Hermits were exhausted after nearly four hours straight of broadcast, and they seemed to make leisurely pace following Martyn's suit. Pearl caught up to Impulse and Tango as they were about to climb into the Nether portal. People were shaking off various costumes used for incentive, like False wiggling out of her banana costume and Cub taking off his massive grey beard.
There was an after-party planned on the Spirit of the Hermissippi , back at Spawntown. It was drinks and snacks to refuel after the event, to share as they laugh and recount the day, but Ren found that he didn't have much of an appetite. Even casual conversation seemed to be a dial too loud. He just felt tired.
Doc was right, maybe. Maybe he should have gone home at intermission. But at this point Ren felt like it was a necessary consequence to his actions-- to wring himself dry, drag himself through the day in some masochistic repayment to Hermitcraft. Martyn made him feel good, but it was hard to keep it up when his bright smile was gone and the room Ren had locked himself in was suddenly dark.
He trotted after the rest of the lot that moved towards the portal, and at his side, Doc found a comfortable spot.
“Martyn already leave?” Doc asked with a tilt of the head, bowing slightly to be level with Ren.
“Yeah,” was the most Ren could muster.
“Headed to the party?”
“I don't know, man, not really feeling it anymore.“
Doc straightened. Cautiously, he hovered an arm around Ren, touching his shoulder with his paw. Ren flinched, just barely, before relaxing and allowing Doc to wrap his arm around him. Immediately, he found a familiar place on Doc's side.
“Want me to take you back to the Dog House?” Ren only shook his head. “No? I mean, it'll be nice and quiet there, but I guess the boat's right there..”
Ren's ear twitched, and impossibly, he pressed closer against him. Doc rubbed up and down his arm as he pondered, “Well, there's my room back at the Perimeter. It's not the fanciest, yeah, you know, but.. It'll be dark and private, and we've got the Ender chest if you want the pink blanket. No one'll bother you; I'll be right there.”
Doc felt him take a deep breath, heard it escape in a sigh. Ren nodded, and he struggled to say above a whisper, “That'd be great.”
“You've been biting your good paw again.”
“Ah, the claws, yeah... Bad habit. Been doing it since I was seven.”
“Want me to heat up some pie or something?”
“Just a campfire would be fine.”