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At the end of the week - well to be more precise, five and a half days, Bdubs and Etho head back from Gem and Joel's base to regroup with Tango and figure out where they are going to go from here. Except Bdubs can't focus on a single thing to do with the "Tuff Guys" because his brain cannot for the life of him stop thinking about the singular fact that Etho is part of "The Family". He has no idea how this happened and even more importantly, he has no idea how he just now found out about this fact.
The thing was, it didn't even seem like some kind of big secret. Gem mentioned it offhandedly and Etho hardly reacted to it being said aloud. The entire way home and throughout the entire group recap of the latest wildcard, Bdubs didn't take his eyes off of Etho but despite his best efforts he couldn't see his best friend as the betrayer that this new information was making them out to be.
Maybe he should have seen it coming, it is a team of Joel and Gem, two people Etho has been all over (in their own way) for the last year or so but calling themselves part of their family? Bdubs has known Etho for over a decade and the closest to a definitive family label the two of them had ever gotten was a deadbeat dad and desperate son.
Does Bdubs even have Etho in his corner at all anymore? He knows their team is supposed to be just a collective of people looking out for themselves living near each other but he also thought that Etho knew that when it came down to it, that sentiment means absolutely nothing. He guesses that maybe that was only obvious to him, maybe Tango also has his own little family somewhere. But that thought exhausts him more than he can handle and just grabs Tango's hand and drags him into Etho's unfinished copper house and demands they all have a little sleepover here tonight. This will solve nothing but more than anything Bdubs is tired and if the night will stay and his friends will leave at least he can have this one night.
