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Etho is facedown on the couch when Joel walks right in.
“Etho, you here? I was wondering — AHH! Oh shit, gods, I’m sorry —”
Etho pops their head up and squints at Joel, who has skittered back several feet, frazzled.
“Sorry!” Joel puts his hands up. “Sorry, were you napping? Just saw your prosthetic eye on the table and it scared the pants off me. I’ve never seen it just laying around before.”
Etho rubs his face around his orbital, with his headband haphazardly pulled down to protect his empty eye socket from the elements. “Yeah, it was bothering me, so I took it out.” They tell Joel. Etho tilts his head with a slight grin. “Didn’t know I had such a good prank opportunity there.”
Joel goes red and points at Etho accusingly. “No, no, now listen here, if you start leaving eyeballs around for me to find, I’m gonna — I’ll — I’ll lose it on you, Etho, I swear!”
Etho just laughs, tail flicking, and rests his chin on his arms while Joel fumes.
Eventually, Joel sits down on the floor, leaning back on the couch cushions, peering back at Etho. “You said your eye was bothering you? Like, migraine aura stuff, or...?”
Joel asks a little awkwardly, like he’s not quite sure if it’s alright to ask.
Etho shrugs dispassionately. “I don’t think so. But it’s kinda hard to tell sometimes. Could just be something itchy, could be update allergy, could just be phantom pain. Impossible to say, unfortunately.”
“Is there anything you can really do?”
“Take it easy and put my money on the placebo effect.” Etho responds.
Joel frowns a little at him. “That sucks.”
As Etho studies Joel, he can’t help but cast his thoughts back to Double Life. Etho hadn’t realized shared pain would mean migraines, too, until Joel had asked Etho if they were alright, and Etho had taken a minute to place that Joel was referring to the early headache pains that Etho had been blocking out.
That was the night when Etho faced just how much he trusted Joel, against all other instincts, because Joel had hushed every apology Etho had given while they had suffered through Etho’s migraine together. Before then, Joel had been a friend of a friend, a stranger, and being tied together without say or permission did not equate trust to Etho, someone as flighty and deeply untrusting as him.
That had changed. That had changed, and then their bond had died in fire, and --
“--ything I can do to help?” Joel ventures, snapping Etho out of memories.
Etho blinks at Joel, taking in the hesitation on Joel’s face and in his voice. It makes Etho’s insides twist, because it’s not as if Joel is the person who has any apologies to give, as if Joel was the person who turned away, as if -- as if Joel is the one intruding, when Etho, really, is the one asking too much.
“Well, I’m sure you have stuff to do.” Etho says noncommittally, getting his eye off Joel’s face as quickly as possible. “I’m fine, it’s just uncomfortable. Probably just take a nap about it.”
Unfortunately, based on Joel’s expression, Etho isn’t under any impression that they’re being convincing. Joel merely stretches, the picture of in no rush. “Nah, I don’t have anywhere to be. I don’t mind hanging with you.”
“Who’s obsessed with who?” Etho teases.
“Shut up!” Joel goes as it to smack Etho, but Etho grabs Joel’s wrist, halting the motion.
“If you’re going to stay, you can be useful and get snacks or something.” Etho chides.
“Yes, yes, your highness,” Joel pretends to be offended as he pulls his arm back and stands so he can go into the kitchen.
While Joel rustles around, Etho rises, tugging his headband up so he can wander to the bathroom mirror and squint at his face. He wets a washcloth and presses it to his face as a warm compress, elbows balanced on the corners of the sink. His scar having torn his eyelid makes it sit strangely without the prosthetic behind it, and Etho’s definitely thinking that this is phantom pain now, since removing his prosthetic has only seen the pain change form to focus on the length of his scar.
It’s hard to say if “phantom pain” is quite the right term for it -- it’s chronic ‘phantom’ pain from having a Code cut, which is to say ... there’s nothing physically wrong with Etho’s body. It’s scarification in his Code, remembering the injury, remembering its exposure to the elements of the world, remembering everything it opened Etho’s mind to that conscious Playerkind wasn’t meant for.
Reminded that he shouldn’t leave his prosthetic out lest he forgets where it is, Etho keeps the washcloth pressed to his face and goes to fetch the thing. It’s funny to look at it like this, inanimate acrylic, and see how well the detailed painting actually matches his real eye. It’s the perfect shade of dark brown when Etho holds it, something that Etho forgets, given the unearthly red colour it gains once it’s settled in place in Etho’s socket.
He puts the prosthetic away in its proper container and comes back to the couch, where Joel has an array of snacks and drinks and is working on ‘casting some show onto the bigger screen.
“I hope you like The Great British Bake Off because I have episodes to catch up on.” Joel tells them as Etho sits next to him, tucking their feet up. Joel pauses, taking in Etho’s state, and asks, “How’s it feeling?”
“A little bit like I got punched, but like, by someone who doesn’t punch great, and a few hours ago,” Etho lies, because it’s the best way they can possibly explain the level of pain. He doesn’t usually throw around discomforting descriptions of the soul-deep stabbing, of the blade catching his face over and over, carving a space into Etho’s very being.
“If we’re putting it on a scale of 1-10…” Joel ventures.
“Four.” Etho answers. “Well, four and a half? It’s probably going to get worse before it gets better.” They admit.
“No potions?” Joel checks.
“Won’t help.”
“Warm compress is good, though?”
“It’s a lot better than nothing.”
They waste away the time that way, with snacks and shows, but the pain in Etho’s skull only grows until he’s curled up in a tight ball on the couch, pressing his face into the cushions like he can hide from this.
It’s raking through Etho, a voice he cannot hear and a Cut that takes his soul apart. It’s a pain all too familiar, and it whispers, whispers the shape of truths that burn even over this distance.
“Etho,” Joel says, and Etho tunes in to the aching worry in Joel’s voice. Their red string flaked away into ash, and yet here Joel is, looking down at Etho with his eyes wide, the shadows of his empathetic pain deep.
Joel must have closed the curtains, smothered the light, Etho thinks in the back of his mind as he peers between the useless cage of his arms around his head and his hair in his face to look back at Joel.
“Can I…”
Joel has always asked to touch Etho, never tried before gaining permission after their first meeting, where Joel had gone to pat Etho’s shoulder and Etho had ducked away as quick as any feral might. Joel had blinked, taken in Etho’s fluffed up tail and ears pressed to his head, and — apologized, and not tried again until the night Etho had that fateful migraine.
Etho takes Joel’s wrists now without hesitation, and pulls Joel’s hands to their face. Joel’s palms rest against Etho’s cheeks, fingers poking beneath the top edge of Etho’s mask.
“Oh—”comes Joel’s breathless, surprised sound, and he almost goes to instinctively pull away, if not for Etho holding him there. Only once Etho is confident that Joel won’t pull away does Etho release him. Like Etho is something precious and fragile, Joel’s thumbs travel across Etho’s cheekbones, his left thumb specifically careful over the sharp edges of Etho’s scar.
ᔑリ⊣ᒷꖎ, crackles on the edge of Etho’s awareness, and their vision wavers as they watch Joel’s face; Joel, rapt to Etho, tracing the scar all the way up to where it creeps into Etho’s hairline in a slow, steady path, like Joel means to memorize it with the pads of his fingers.
Joel begins back down the other way again, gentler than ever when he comes to where the scar slices apart Etho’s eyebrow.
Etho’s awareness has narrowed down to only Joel, as if they could only possibly exist under Joel’s touch. Joel shifts, and his thumb touches Etho’s eyelid, just barely ghosting along it to follow, his other fingers fanning out against Etho’s orbital bone for stability.
When Joel leans in, Etho’s good eye is mostly closed, and he feels Joel’s eyelashes against his skin before Joel presses a kiss to the space between Etho’s eye and nose, then to the opposite corner of his empty eye. His fingers keep on down Etho’s scoured cheek, lips chasing after, all the way to where the scar pulls the corner of Etho’s own lips, tearing through too and bottom. The kiss Joel leaves there is long and sweet, tantalizing and hot. Etho is stock-still, possessed mind and body, and Joel taunts them this way for what feels as if drags on for hours — before Etho grabs him, a hand on his shoulder and a hand in his hair, and kisses him full on the lips, desperate, with the starlight still in his head, blotting out all the words: ꖎ𝙹⍊ᒷ ||𝙹⚍ ʖᒷᓵᔑ⚍ᓭᒷ ∴ᒷ ᔑ∷ᒷ ꖎ𝙹⍊ᒷ.
When they seperate, they don’t go far, holding each other, and Joel touches their foreheads together.
“Who’s obsessed with who?” Joel says quietly, and Etho bursts out laughing, tugging Joel down to the couch with him until they’re a mess of limbs and warmth, a welcome distraction until the pain leaves again.