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“They found your body,” Bdubs tells the ball of white fluff currently posted up on his couch. “Doc’s just prepping everything to get you switcheroo’d back.”
When he takes a seat next to the fluff ball, a little foxy face pops out. As it is, Sidekit’s already a ridiculously adorable animal—but Etho’s mind in Sidekit’s body, looking up at Bdubs with dark, appealing eyes and stretching to sniff Bdubs’s broad hand delicately? Painfully cute. Painfully. Bdubs’s heart almost can’t take it.
He turns his palm up for Etho to get a good whiff and wonders, vaguely, what Etho could possibly be smelling. His hands are pretty clean, and he hasn’t eaten anything in hours. He’s tried not to let anything that smells too strong into the house ever since Etho got body-swapped with his pet fox three days ago. They’d worked out together that the reactivity of Sidekit’s senses was overwhelming rather than helpful.
When the switch happened—a freak lightning bolt that had hit Etho while Sidekit had been standing on his shoulders—both of them had panicked badly. Etho-as-Sidekit had bolted in one direction, Sidekit-as-Etho had shot in the other. Bdubs, not realising what had happened, assumed the human of the two of them could handle himself, and had chased down the fox to make sure he didn’t run away. When it’d all shaken out, and he’d realised exactly what had happened, Sidekit was long gone. A few of the other hermits have spent the last few days trying to track him down. Bdubs has spent most of that time trying to keep Etho from losing it.
“Getting your fill?” he teases, and Etho stops sniffing to look up at him, eyes slitted happily. It’s kinda funny, really, how much of his body language is the same, human to fox. Bdubs grins, and says, “c’mere,” and scoops him up.
Most of his body language, Bdubs should make clear. These last couple of days as a canine, Etho’s been much more liable to sit on Bdubs than he would normally be as a human, to the point where Bdubs doesn’t even wait for him to approach at this point. Just picks Etho up and drops him into his lap.
"Doc said you probably won't remember any of this when you swap back. Something about fox brain and human brain not being all that compatible. Good news for me, right? You won't remember all those times I dropped you or sat on your tail. That's something, huh?” Bdubs sits back against the cushions and waits for Etho to settle. It’s some kind of animal instinct—it must be—to seek out the biggest source of heat nearby and soak it up, and Bdubs has got body heat in spades. By the time Etho’s settled, he’s half laying on Bdubs’s chest, Bdubs’s arm wrapped around his torso to keep him in place, and tucking his little foxy face into Bdubs’s collarbone.
Bdubs sighs, and buries his fingers in soft fur, scratching indulgently. “I'm gonna miss it a bit, though. You being all soft and fuzzy. Even if it means you won't be sticking your wet nose in my face any more.”
At that, Etho wriggles against him and touches his snout lightly to Bdubs’s neck. It’s damp, of course, but Bdubs can’t find it in himself to care. The arm he has around Etho’s little body tightens, just a bit, drawing him closer, and Bdubs settles his chin in the space between Etho’s fluffy ears.
“I don't know what it is,” he mumbles, his breaths mussing fur. “I like—I like you relying on me. That makes me sound like a big-headed freak, doesn't it? But I like it. I like knowing I can look after you when you need me to. And that you want me to.”
Mindlessly, he loops his fingers around one of Etho's delicate ankles and presses his thumb into the pad of his little foot. Etho shifts against him again, but doesn't pull away. Instead, he splays his toes luxuriously, a stretch, and lets out a long, low purr. Bdubs smiles and breathes a laugh. The first time he'd caught Etho purring, they were both completely startled by it—Bdubs had reached down to scratch him at the base of his ears and the noise rolled out of him so suddenly that it'd taken a moment for either of them to realise what'd happened. As soon as they did? Etho had scrabbled away and hidden in extreme embarrassment under a pile of shulker boxes in the corner. Bdubs had to coax him out over the course of an hour. Over the last couple of days, he's managed to get Etho calm enough to purr a handful of times. With every incident, though, Etho seems less surprised by it. More willing to just let it happen. Scritch-motivated, Bdubs had teased him, and got a tail to the face for his trouble.
“Wish you'd let me do this when you're human-shaped again,” he finds himself murmuring. Because it doesn't matter, he realises. For once, he can be as honest as he likes. “Wish you’d come find me when you want someone to scratch your ears. Hold on for a bit. Always feel like I’m bothering you when I track you down while you’re working.” He closes his eyes, and cards his fingers through Etho’s fluff. “Wouldn’t mind if it was you hunting down me every once in a while.”
Thing is, it’s not even that hard to imagine: Etho swinging by Bdubs’s place at the end of a long day, flopping down next to him on the couch and letting Bdubs play with his hair or knead the tension out of his hands. Even just sitting with Bdubs’s hand on his shoulder for an hour. Just that, and nothing else.
A damp nose bumps against his neck again, followed by a couple of licks against his collarbone—rough but warm. “Etho,” he says, and Etho laps at him again, purring deeply. Bdubs just scratches the base of his ears, right where they swivel, and tells him, “I love you like crazy. You know that, right? I do. I love you like a wild thing.”
The words fall out of him easily, so easily he’s caught off guard by his own admission. If it’s that easy to say, how come he’s never managed it before?
Etho moves in his arms, but Bdubs’s attention is snagged by a figure in the doorway.
“We’re ready for him,” Doc says, looking at Bdubs before his gaze slides down to Etho. “If you are ready, I should say.”
Etho doesn’t acknowledge him. If anything, he seems to bury himself further into Bdubs.
“Come on,” Bdubs says, and untangles his arms from around Etho’s furry body. Etho looks up at him, forlorn. “I bet Sidekit’s been having just as rough a time as you, gangling around being you-shape. Let’s go put everything right again.”
—
Once Doc’s performed the old switcheroo, Etho stands up, human again, takes two steps, and collapses. Doc carries him back to the couch and prescribes a couple of hours of sleep before heading out. Etho takes no encouragement at all—he’s out like a light before Doc’s even out the room.
Bdubs takes the opportunity to swing by the shopping district and pick up some building materials, a couple of bits for dinner, some this-and-that. When he gets back, early evening, he finds Etho just coming out the front door.
Bdubs puts on a wide grin. “Back to normal, huh?”
“Normal as I get,” Etho says. He’s got his mask on, but Bdubs can tell Etho’s matching his smile. “I don’t remember much of anything, though. I know Doc said it was three days, but, it’s kinda like, you know when you’re trying to remember a dream? It’s there, and then—poof. All gone.”
“Yep. Yep,” Bdubs says, nodding. “Hey, probably for the best, right? You were pretty panicked, most of it.”
“Yeah,” Etho says, and huffs a short laugh. “Another weird week on Hermitcraft.”
A chuckle tumbles out of Bdubs, and he claps Etho on the shoulder. “Aren’t all of them weird?” he says, and Etho laughs again.
Etho passes him on the front path, then, clearly headed back home. “Thanks for looking out for me, B-double-o,” he says.
Bdubs scoffs. “C’mon, now. It’s what I’m here for.”
Nodding, Etho seems happy to leave it at that. Bdubs is too. Dumping down the shulker under his arm, he fiddles with the ender chest by the door.
“Bdubs?”
Bdubs looks back around. “Yeah?”
At the end of the path, Etho’s got his head cocked. Looking at him curiously. “Were you trying to talk to me about something? Earlier, right before I switched back.”
The breath catches in Bdubs’s throat. He opens his mouth to speak, and the only thing that comes out is, “nah. Nothing important.”
Etho shrugs, and turns to go, grabbing his elytra out of his inventory as he walks. His hair looks kinda fluffy, where it brushes the back of his neck. In the twilight, Bdubs watches him go, and doesn’t say anything more.