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Vitalasy breathes deliberately slowly as he joins Lifesteal, trying to calm his nerves. He’s not sure it’ll ever stop being a little scary. He’s smiling, though. For all the pain he’s felt on this server, he missed it. He doesn’t think that’ll ever stop either.
Subz and Zam are already at Vitalasy’s house, just like Vitalasy asked. He wants to talk to 4C later, and Jumper, but this—this is for the three of them. Subz is shifting his weight from foot to foot; Zam clearly was pacing, but she stops in her tracks like a deer in the headlights when Vitalasy joins, looking straight at him with comically wide eyes.
Vitalasy’s the first to break the silence. “Hello,” he says.
“Um. Hi,” Zam says.
Vitalasy’s grin deepens. “So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately—” Zam flinches a little—not obvious, but there if you’re looking for it—and Vitalasy immediately regrets his opener. Subz groans on cue at least, comfortably overdramatic. “And I realized, y’know, we’ve got the hammock here, right, and the candles, but the two of you don’t have rooms here?”
“It’s your house,” Zam points out.
Subz looks a little to the left, not quite meeting Vitalasy’s eyes. “We don’t actually live here when you’re not online, you know.”
Which is true, and which Vitalasy knew. It still hurts a little to hear Subz say, but mostly because: “That’s not the point.” He punches Subz’s shoulder; it’s almost surprising how easy it is to fall back into the rhythms of friendship. “The point is, I don’t think we ever actually decided who has the funnest room. Soooo I’m hosting a rematch.”
Identical looks of dawning horror and comprehension appear on the faces of two of Vitalasy’s closest friends. Vitalasy’s cheeks have already started to hurt a little from how hard he’s smiling. He spins a few times, arms flung out in the air. He missed them.
-
“Do a flip—” Zam cracks up. It’s hard for him to get his next sentence out, he’s laughing so hard. “Jaron, say ‘do a flip’!”
-
“I’m, uh, not really a builder anymore, you know that, right?” Subz says.
“I guess none of us are who we used to be,” Vitalasy says. He’s laying it on a little thick, but that’s alright; in Vitalasy’s peripheral vision, Zam relaxes. Maybe someday she’ll be relaxed around them all the time. Then again, maybe not; she never quite got there the first time. There’s fewer secrets now but more history, the sort of history that doesn’t ever fully go away no matter how many serious conversations the three of them have apologizing and making up and promising no hard feelings. Either way, Vitalasy will be here for her. And then, to relax Subz, Vitalasy throws in a half-joke: “You do remember what the old rooms looked like, right? I don’t think any of them qualified us for the builder title either.”
It works; Subz doesn’t quite laugh, but his mouth tugs up at the corner. “Speak for yourself, bro. —I, uh, don’t actually have any materials.”
Zam perks up at that, a full-body excitement as she puts an ender chest down and starts taking out and placing down shulkers. “You can have whatever you need, I’ve got way more back at my base, it’s—just take whatever, um, this is more important anyway.” She looks up at Subz like she did when she first joined Eclipse: lovestruck, desperate, like Subz hung the stars.
Subz looks—a little uncomfortable, honestly, and Vitalasy prepares to step in, but he opens a shulker and half-laughs. “Sure, thanks.”
“Of course,” Zam says, devastatingly earnest, and something in Subz’s expression softens.
Subz puts on a funny voice, exaggerating his words a little: “So, slime blocks, huh?” He takes them out of the shulker box, moves them from hand to hand, holding them like he doesn’t quite know what to do with them.
“Whatever you need,” Zam says, and looks away from Subz, expression suddenly shy. “—I thought your room was the funnest, you know. Um. When. Yeah. I don’t know if I said?”
“I don’t think so,” Subz says slowly, trying to remember, and then: “We were busy. So, I’m defending my title? I can work with that.”
-
“I don’t—belong here.” Subz puts his sword on the ground, the handle facing Vitalasy. A clear, unspoken request. “I want you to kill me.”
-
The actual building goes slowly, quietly, all of them in their separate rooms but Vitalasy makes sure they all take a break for dinner, because he knows that Subz and Zam will both work for 12 hours straight and forget to eat unless they run out of other things to do. They may have changed, but they haven’t changed that much.
Zam’s anxious. Well, she always is, but even more so than usual. She’s pacing again. Subz watches with a raised eyebrow, gaze occasionally flicking to Vitalasy. Vitalasy just watches, amused, waiting for Zam to spit it out. He’ll ask if it takes her too long, but he figures she’ll get there.
He’s right. It doesn’t even take very long. “You know the server’s ending soon, right? None of these rooms will be here for long. This house, this everything—”
“I know,” Vitalasy says, smiling gently. Nothing on Lifesteal lasts. This will probably be his last time visiting this season. The memories being built are more important than the rooms. “I mean, it’s summer, right?”
“I guess,” Zam says.
“Who’s doing it this time?” Vitalasy asks. He’s genuinely curious.
“Uhhhh I dunno! A few people looked like they might try.” She leans forward, confiding, almost conspiratorial. “I hope it’s Spoke. Last season I tried—well, my team more than me, really—but, uh, Spoke was better at it than we were. By a lot.” She laughs. She doesn’t say you were better at it than we were but it hangs in the air, a peace offering.
“No offense, Zam, but that really doesn’t surprise me,” Subz says.
Zam smiles at him. A nervous smile, but Vitalasy still counts it as progress. “None taken.”
After dinner they show off. The rooms themselves are, in fact, fun, all bright colors and moving parts and ugly as sin, but all Vitalasy can think of when he unveils his room is at least this one doesn’t have any hidden passageways. He doesn’t say that out loud; he’s not sure it would be taken right. By either of them, really. He doesn’t regret his last one, not when it led them all here, but he likes the new one better. It’s got possibly the worst cat bed anyone has ever seen; his cat concurs, and leaps onto a ledge to curl up instead. All three of them laugh at that, and the sound is better than any collection of blocks.
-
“I hate to say it,” Vitalasy says, “you’re like a fucking disease.”
The air hangs heavy with the words. There’s silence, for a moment.
Zam’s voice, when he speaks, is quiet. “I know.”
-
The three of them trying to all fit in the hammock is exactly as difficult and uncomfortable as it was two years ago.
“We have our own rooms now,” Subz grumbles without any heat, “can’t we use those?”
“Um—” Zam freezes up a little; Vitalasy squeezes her arm. “I—uh—”
“Absolutely not,” Vitalasy interrupts cheerfully. His snout is pressed into Subz’s shoulder; the hammock sways. “You can sleep wherever you want when I’m not here. Tonight we’re sleeping together.”
“Alright,” Subz says, and this time there’s no grumble behind the words, just an acceptance: I would follow you anywhere, do anything you asked. There’s a twinge in Vitalasy’s heart to hear it that he can’t quite name. Subz shifts a few more times, trying to get comfortable, and eventually settles down once in a position that Vitalasy thinks looks vaguely like a torture method and cannot possibly be any more comfortable than the previous ones. He doesn’t look unhappy, though, and when his hand slowly sneaks under Vitalasy’s arm to reach for Zam, there aren’t any covers to hide it. Zam startles a little—tries to look back at Vitalasy and fails, because none of them can actually turn around without putting the hammock at risk of tipping over entirely—takes Subz’s hand in hers. Vitalasy’s cheekbones are aching from smiling all day but he couldn’t stop now if he wanted to.
There’s quiet for a while, just the three of them breathing, skin and fur pressed up against each other, entangled in each other’s limbs. It’s too hot, especially with Vitalasy’s fur and long sleeves, and his right arm is starting to fall asleep, but he can’t imagine anywhere else he’d rather be. Just as his eyes have started to drift closed, Zam speaks up: “We, um. We didn’t actually choose a winner?”
“Guess not,” Vitalasy says, and leans over as best as he can to kiss the top of Zam’s head. “Guess we’ll just have to do this again next season.”