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When Forever doesn't respond to his messages, Phil starts to get nervous.
He's far out at the phantom farm, sitting on the sandstone with his photos spread out all over the ground while he reorganizes his albums, and Forever isn't responding to his messages asking if he wants to chat about his time in the Nether. If he's changed his mind, that's fine, Phil doesn't need to know, per say—but the lack of response is worrying, to say the least.
He looks up at his crows, who have congregated around his photographs and in the stone archways of the colosseum. "Should I go after him?" he asks out loud, not really seeking their response, but keeping an eye on how some of the older crows shush the younger ones, as if they know something he doesn't.
"Right," Phil says, putting some pieces together. "So, he's in trouble."
The crows who know better just look back at him with black black eyes. Their rustling feathers fall still, leaving the air around Phil deathly quiet. That's all the silent encouragement needs for Phil to pull up his map and start scouring for names. "Where are you, mate..."
He's not near spawn, and he's not near his base. Phil starts to think that Forever might have his location turned off, which would be a whole new issue, when he suddenly spots it. By the train tracks that border the Favela, there's Forever's name, flickering into view.
Phil wastes no time scooping up his photos and tossing them into his backpack, not bothered in the least by how it ruins the organizing he had just been trying to complete. The instant he stands, he turns on his heel and touches the waystone, warping over to Tallulah's Botanical Garden so he could take off from there.
The ground under his feet shifted from sandstone to grass, and Phil was off in a dead sprint, puffing air through his cheeks as he vaulted hedges and ran through rivers. He kept a close eye on Forever's name all the while, watching for any red marks that would signal mobs approaching his location.
It hasn't escaped Phil's attention that it's stayed night the entire time he's been awake today. He's not sure what to make of it, and doesn't pay much attention to it beyond recognizing the increased chance of mob spawning. There's more important things to deal with right now, anyways.
Sure enough, right by the train tracks, Phil spotted him. Blond hair, torn clothes, crumpled in the grass. His brown eyes were open and glassy like lacquered oak, staring at the sky with an empty expression, and Phil could only just make out the rise and fall of his chest.
"Forever!" Phil yelps, crashing to his knees beside the fallen man. At the sound, Forever groans, curling in on himself briefly before his eyes find Phil's and a smile starts to blossom from his chapped lips.
"Phil?" he rasps, and his voice still sounds as bad as it did when Phil had first seen him today, clearly damaged from the persistent heat of the Nether. Phil knows his voice doesn't sound all that great right now either, but that was because he'd been voluntarily throwing himself into explosions and bonfires all day. "What are you doing here?" Forever asks quizzically, tilting his head so the ragged ends of his hair brush against Phil's knee.
"You didn't answer my messages, mate, I got worried," Phil says, breaking a healing potion over Forever's chest. The pink liquid soaks into his shirt, but only seems to stain the shirt further. "Shit, why isn't it working?"
Forever bats his hand away, but the movement has all the strength of a songbird's wing. "I'm fine, Philza, I'm just a little tired, you know? Hard to... hard to keep my eyes open."
Phil snorts, but acquiesces and puts away the health potions. "I can only imagine. You were gone a month, and it's not like you can use a bed in the Nether, right?"
"Mhm," Forever hums. The bandanna, which was already doing a terrible job of keeping his hair out of his face, starts to slip down his forehead. "I didn't get much sleep out there, you know. It's hard to sleep without being able to use a bed... I miss sleeping in a bed, Phil."
"Right, well, then let's get you back to one. Can you use a warp? Where d'you want to go, your place or mine?"
Forever's eyes, which had slid shut, crack open as the smile on his face grows. "You know, Phil, there was a time where I could only dream of you saying such a thing to me... your place or mine... hah."
Rolling his eyes, Phil motions with the warpstone in his hand. "My god, Forever, it's going to be like that?"
"Of course!" Forever obligingly reached for his warpstone, too. "I'm always going to love you, Philza, I don't think that's ever going to change... and we can go to mine. You remember the warp in my storage room? The one I let you have access to before I left?"
Phil doesn't allow himself to take a moment to process that genuinely vulnerable statement, choosing to interpret that as a slip of tongue in Forever's delirium. "Shit, uh... yes. Yeah, I've got that one. You go first, alright? I'll be right behind you."
Forever disappears in a pop of purple particles, and just as he says, Phil is right behind him. They both appear standing in the storage room, and Forever's body is not prepared to keep him standing. He crumples immediately with a cry, and Phil is there to catch him this time.
"I've got you," Phil says, wrapping his arms around Forever's waist to pull him back upright. Immediately, at this proximity, he notices how warm Forever's skin is, even underneath the dirty shirt and pants. "Gods, mate, you're burning up. We need to get you to a bed. Have you had water?"
There's more to it than just a fever. Phil's an idiot, but he's not so unobservant as to miss the black splotches on Forever's cheek and his left hand. It's identical to the tendrils of void that have been appearing and crawling all over the island in the month he's been gone. Phil hopes that, when he's feeling better, he's got an explanation for that shit if nothing else.
But he doesn't bring that up now. Forever shakes his head in response, clearly out of words, so Phil loops Forever's arm around his back and starts the process of shuffling forward, out of this storage room.
It takes some time and effort, but with a little direction from Forever, the two of them manage to make it into Forever's private office. It's not the same as a bedroom, but Phil would be a hypocrite on insisting they get to a proper bedroom when he falls asleep in a chair most nights. He's at least able to lay a bed out for Forever here, which Forever immediately collapses upon as soon as Phil releases him.
Forever cracks an eye open as Phil starts to roll up his sleeve, and groans. "Can't I sleep?" he begs.
Phil shakes his head, already resolute on this path. "Not until you get those wounds taken care of, mate. I'll do as much as I can from here while you're lying down on something soft, though, alright?"
There are burns on Forever's right arm, which Phil treats with some of the magma cream he had gotten from that dungeon he fought in with Pac and Fit after that strange vision...
Phil shakes his head, and finishes wrapping the ointment up with a bandage. He reaches across Forever's body for his other hand next, bringing it across Forever's chest to touch the black stain there. "Want to tell me what this is, mate?" he asks gently, turning Forever's hand over in his own.
He's not surprised when Forever shakes his head. "I... I don't think I can, Philza. I know I said that I would tell you everything, but there are still some things that I don't understand yet. Can you... leave it be, for now? It's not hurting me, I think it's fine."
Heaving a sigh, Phil releases Forever's hand. He applies the last of the magma cream to Forever's forehead, allowing the ointment to sink into his skin to hopefully break some of that burning fever. "That's almost more worrying than saying it hurts, you realize that," he points out. "But alright. I won't ask any more questions. How do you feel about getting out of those gross clothes?"
In another unsurprising reaction, Forever looks up at him and wiggles his eyebrows slightly. "First he wants to take me back to his place, now he wants me to strip, Philza, if you wanted to make love you could have just asked."
"Forever!" Phil yelps, scandalized, but even as his face burns red Phil can't keep from laughing. Shaking his head, Phil pointedly turns his back as Forever sits up and starts to undress. "It's good to know that you're still the same old Forever, even after all the shit you went through."
It doesn't bother him to see Forever in just a pair of shorts—gods know Phil saw enough of that in the first weeks on the island. Now that his clothes are gone, though, the grime on his face and in his burned hair is much more apparent. Tilting his head, Phil thinks for a minute before retrieving a bucket of water and an empty cauldron from his inventory, filling the iron cask up at the head of Forever's bed.
"Alright, let's get that hair of yours clean now," he says, moving his chair over so the cauldron sits between him and Forever. He places a bar of soap in the cauldron, letting the water get sudsy before helping Forever lay back to get his hair wet. After making a few cloths with the wool in his backpack, Phil unties the dirty bandanna from around Forever's forehead—the flag is barely more than rags at this point, but Phil still folds it and sets it aside on Forever's desk, just in case he wants it later— and starts to work his way through Forever's hair. He gently works through each soot-stained section with soapy water, attempting to clean it as much as he can.
"You know, there are showers on this island," Forever comments toward the ceiling. "Why are you using a cauldron?"
Phil shrugs. The answer is a simple one to him. "You know me, Forever, I'm old school. I forget showers exist half the time. Beside, this way you don't have to get out of bed."
"Are you saying that you don't shower, Phil?" Forever teases.
"I do so shower! I just forget you can make showers here, is what I meant," Phil says defensively. "When I built Chayanne's beach house, it took me months to realize that I could build a fridge with something other than two block of iron and an iron door."
Forever laughs so hard he gets soap in his eyes. Phil thinks he probably deserves that for the comments he made, at least a little.
When the hair is as clean as it's going to get, Phil takes the cloth and moves onto his face. With great care, Phil wipes soap across Forever's cheeks, his forehead, his chin—spends a little extra time on the black splotch at his chin, but it doesn't budge—and finally cleans his neck, stopping just above his chest.
He takes the washcloth away, and Forever whines. "Why'd you have to do that, man?" he asks. "That was feeling so good..."
Phil deliberates for a second, but ultimately decides that the teasing he would get from Forever wouldn't be worth it. "When you're feeling better, you can take a proper shower, how about that?" he says, pulling the soapy cloth back from Forever's skin. He scoops out the dirty water in the cauldron with his empty bucket and replaces it with a fresh bucket of water, using that to wipe Forever's face and neck clean with a new cloth before tipping his head back to rinse out his hair one last time.
"There, how's that feel?" he asks when all is said and done, carefully squeezing the water from Forever's hair with a third towel. He can't keep the frown off his face as he runs his fingers through the much shorter strands, privately mourning the loss of Forever's beautiful hair. He knows all too well what it's like to lose long hair to peril like this, and he doesn't need to compound his own grief on top of what Forever must surely be feeling.
"Really good, Philza. Thank you," Forever murmurs, sounding like he's two seconds from sleep. "Philza, you're too good to me, man. This is why I am going to tell you... I will tell you..."
"When you wake up, mate," Phil says. He places a hand on the back of Forever's head, and is relieved to feel the fever receding slightly already. "Get some sleep first, alright? I'll be here when you wake up."
If he passes out now, that's alright. He's in a safe place, and Phil already plans to watch over him the rest of the night to ensure that there won't be any strange nightmares brought on by the void that's stained his skin.
Besides, some small part of Phil can't help but feel convinced that if he takes his eyes off Forever, the man will disappear. So he stays, contentedly perched on a shelf in front of Forever's aquarium, ensuring that there will be no chance of that happening, either.
Forever swears at him when he wakes up, because apparently Phil staring over him was far creepier than the rest of his dreams that night, but Phil only laughs at that. If that's the only consequence to this sleepless night, then it's one he'll take on gladly.