Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Luke feels like he’s going insane.

It starts with an encounter on a particularly rough day for the winged admin, with him hiding in his cabin for most of his time outside of the rounds. He misses home, he misses what he used to have, and, most importantly, he misses the two people he wishes he could spend forever with. The two that showed him love and care and taught him about the world in a way he’d never seen before, and looking at the other admins having their second half hurt when he was missing two thirds of himself. But then they’re teleported to a round, and Luke feels the familiar rush of adrenaline as he sprints to a generator. He ignores the way his hands are shaking and his lips are trembling, the tears he’d been holding back all day, and buries his attention instead into the wires in front of him because he can’t afford to mess up right now.

He’s so engrossed in fixing the machine, in fact, that he doesn’t hear the chitter and glitch of the machine, doesn’t notice the purple tint of the world around him, the way it all starts to look a little to the left.

He finishes the generator, noting the timer going down by 5 minutes, but just as he’s about to start running he catches a glimpse of cyan from the corner of his eye. It takes Luke a second, thinking he might be imagining it or that it might just be part of the map, but he sees it again and can’t help but do a double take.

And he feels like his heart is being squeezed in his chest and his breath is caught in his throat, because that’s Dued in the distance. Dued, who shouldn’t be here in this hell they can’t escape from. His sweet, caring, loving boyfriend, who did nothing to deserve being here. But he looks unharmed and seems happy, signature wide grin plastered on his face and exactly how Luke remembers him.

“Dued?”, he murmurs, his voice barely a whisper. The other smiles even wider at the sight of him, waving happily, and Luke feels estatic as all his worries disappear for a moment. Maybe it’s selfish, being this happy that one of his boyfriends are stuck in an eternal killing game full of pain and misery, but he can’t bring himself to care. For the first time in SFOTH knows how long, he isn’t alone. For the first time in SFOTH knows how long, there’s someone who can hold him, who can tell him that they’ll be okay eventually, who can run their hands through his feathers and let him melt into the touch. Luke shouts the man’s name again, euphoria lacing his voice as he rushes forward to embrace him. He throws his arms around Dued, and his wings flutter as Dued eagerly (and silently, though that detail goes unnoticed in Luke’s glee that he finally isn’t alone, that there’s finally one person he can trust and be open to and that he doesn’t have to go back into the shell that suffocated him when he was younger and knew nothing outside the walls of HQ) returns the embrace. Luke melts into the touch, nearly nuzzling into it, and despite the questions he has for his love he stays silent, soaking up the moment. He squeezes as tight as he can, chanting Dued’s name under his breath, as if a prayer to hold him close and never let go.

And then the pain hits. Hard. It feels like his body is burning from the inside out, like his very viscera are being scorned by a fire, and Luke can’t hold back the scream that tears from his throat as he goes slack and falls to the ground. The world loses its purple tint, and the image of Dued glitches, corrupts, fades in and out before dissolving in front of his eyes. Luke screams for him to wait, the force of it tearing his throat, to come back, to save him don’t leave him alone again, but Dued is gone, as if he was never there at all. He reaches a shaky arm out to the spot he swore he saw his lover, hand outstretched as his other arm grips at his chest, right at his core as if to contain the heartache that threatens to tear him to shreds as fuel for the fire in his body. Between the pain that’s eating him alive and the grief of being so close to one of his lovers, Luke can’t bring himself to get up from the floor.

He sits there on his knees and his hands, wings limp behind him and antlers digging into the ground as his head lulls down, and he sobs. He sobs and he screams and he swears, and he doesn’t have the strength to fight back as he feels Noli ram into his side. He doesn’t have the will to struggle as he feels hands on his neck before nothing at all. He doesn’t have the energy to stand up and walk from the spot he’s respawned at in the cabin, instead crumpling to the floor and weakly covering his face with his wings as he yearns for what almost was. Luke hates how easy it was to believe it was real. He hates how he wishes he fell for it longer. He hates how he wishes for it to happen again, if only for a glimpse of one of his lovers, to preserve the sight and not just the memory, to memorize the feeling of being held by gentle hands and warm breath on his neck as they embraced each other.

Nobody has the heart to move him from that spot.

Even after they’ve all sat for dinner, after Builderman gently nudges him to come eat with them, Luke stays in that spot mourning what could’ve been. What shouldn’t be, because he doesn’t know what he’d do if either Dued or Harlem actually showed up here and had to suffer, too, but by 2x2, he needs someone. He misses them so, so much. He needs to see them again, even if it’s just a hallucination pulled from his memory.

Luke feels shaky on the floor, and distantly, as he lays there, he can’t help but feel like he’s going to die, and his boyfriends won’t have anything to bury but the skeleton in the closet.

The next time it happens, it’s almost worse. Because this time, Luke is aware of the world around him going violet, sees dispensers in the corner that he knows aren’t real because Builderman isn’t even in the round, and yet. Yet, he sees a glimpse of bright white and night-sky blue against the dusty sand of the battlefield, and he can’t stop himself from bolting across the map, from shrieking a name that’s been stuck in his throat for SFOTH knows how long. “Harlem!”, he cries, nearly tackling the other and melting into the embrace as he feels those familiar, loving, strong arms wrap around him and pull him close. He knows this isn’t real, the purple filter feels like it’s taunting him and laughing at his misery, but Luke can’t bring himself to care. He lets himself delude that, for a moment, this is real. That he’s being held again, that he has a hand to hold. He lets himself believe that the sudden light comes from Harlem’s stars that are speckled all over his body and the star-like tail swaying behind him, and that it doesn’t come from the incoming void star that’s been thrown at him.

It’s so easy to pretend that the laughter he hears is a fond and affectionate chuckle from Harlem whenever he thinks Luke did something “cute”, and that it’s not the mocking cackles of the killer behind him. He feels a hand grabbing him before slamming him into the ground, and he pretends that it’s another one of Harlem’s failed attempts at pinning him against the floor to kiss him as Dued wheezes behind them, that the pain that explodes throughout his body comes from being jumped by his two partners after coming home from a long day at HQ and not from the fact that he’s dying.

He respawns back at the cabin, but rather than mourning what could’ve been again, Luke finds himself stuck in a dream. In the back of his head, he’s aware that he’s alone, that he should probably grab something to eat from whatever leftovers Elliot has left out and go to bed, but instead he sinks to the ground in a daze. He can’t find the strength to break out of his fantasy, the one where everything is perfect because he’s back at home with the people he cares the most about. Luke can feel Shedletsky shaking him, vaguely aware of the worried voices around him, but it’s like listening to it all underwater. He hears a whisper of Dusekkar’s voice, something about “dissociation”, but it goes in and out of Luke’s ear and he doesn’t care enough to ask to repeat it.

It starts to happen more, after that.

Luke knows he’ll see them, either one or sometimes both, anytime Noli is the killer. And every time, he purposefully falls for the hallucinations. Every time, he’ll run to his boys with his arms outstretched and euphoria in his voice, because even if he knows they aren’t real it’s better than nothing and he needs to see them so bad. The sight of them is like a drug and he’s addicted to it, he craves their touch like a dying plant the sun because he’ll go insane without it (but is this any better? is it?). The survivors try to pull him out of it, try to tell him that whatever he’s seeing isn’t real and he needs to snap out of it, that they aren’t real and he’ll break doing this. But Luke can’t find himself caring about any of that, because even if they aren’t real, the sight of them is, the feeling of their touch is (even if it’s always followed by scorching, white-hot pain). Their faces of love and adoration watching Luke run to them is real, so why not pretend the rest is, too?

Maybe this is the meaning of lovesick, to be so desperate for the love of his partners that he lets himself die over and over just to feel their embrace again.

Luke can see the others growing more and more concerned for him, when they’re in the cabin and he finally manages to pick himself up from the floor. He can see it in their eyes, the way they hesitantly tell him that he’s dying doing this, that Dued and Harlem wouldn’t want him to kill himself for them, that there’s no point deluding himself if they’ll have to carry his body to his soulmates when they escape. Luke always brushes it off, because what do they know? This is all he has. Without the scraps of those two he sees in lilac-tinted lenses, he has nothing. He cannot escape from this hell because he is weak and he does not deserve their love, not anymore, so he’ll pretend the love he gets from them here is real and that the pain that always follows is simply retribution for their lies. Without the pain he chases through his desperation to see his lovers again, he is alone. Luke would rather die than be alone again.

So he does. He dies over and over in the comforting embrace, collapsing to the floor every time and watching the other leave, knowing he’ll see them again in the next round with the wielder of the void star. He stops dying in pain, starts smiling as he feels himself be teleported to the cabin, and crumples to the wooden floor as he thinks about the day that’ll never come, where he can hold his partners in his arms and never have to let go. He starts begging (and isn’t that a sight to see? An admin, one that had always been so composed, so reserved until he met his partners, reduced to nothing but a dying dog begging to be put down) for Noli to use their voice as he dies. He needs to hear them again, put a voice to their touch, anything to live in this illusion a little bit longer.

Noli laughs at him for it, mocks him for being so pathetic that he seeks so much comfort and solace in his own death to beg for it, but Luke doesn’t care. He’d do anything for his partners, anything to see them again and be graced with their whispers.

And if Luke withers while doing so?

He doesn’t mind, if it means that his last breath is in their presence.

Chapter Text

Luke’s recovery is slow-going, at first. It hurts Harlem and Dued, sitting by his hospital bed and seeing him flinch every time he looks at them, as if he’s bracing for some sort of impact. Neither of them know what happened while he was gone, not really, because everything is still so fresh and none of the no-longer-missing people want to open that wound when it’s finally been given the chance to close. Dued has heard tidbits from Elliot, though, as shaken and vague as they were, which he shared to Harlem with approval from the blonde. He might not know much, but he knows that they were stuck in some sort of realm they couldn’t escape, not even with the help of the missing admins, and they were stuck in some sort of… simulation? Game? Rounds, of sort, where they were forced to survive or be killed (Elliot never went further than that. He’d break any time he tried, and Dued refused to be the reason Elliot shattered a second time. Once was already too much).

It hurts them worse, when they try to touch Luke in any way, and he flinches away from it exactly after a few seconds every time. Luke always apologizes, says that he’s okay with it despite the grimace on his face or the way his body is so tense, but Harlem and Dued don’t push. It stings, because Luke is able to touch others just fine, they’ve seen him embracing Elliot with no problem or barely batting an eye when the nurses come for a bloodwork, it’s just them that he has a problem with. But Luke never talks about why, and the two of them don’t ask, because they’ve never seen their boyfriend so fragile and don’t want to be the reason he cracks.

So, naturally, the best way to fix this is with exposure. Easy, right?

It’s hard to come up with a plan when Dued and Harlem are already so tense with each other. They’ve spent too long apart, what with Dued throwing himself into the search and Harlem trying to move on. They’ve been at odds for too long in Luke’s absence, arguments being more common than “I love you”s, but they’d both be damned if they let that stop them from loving their boyfriend whose finally come home. They’ll fix themselves, if only for him. So they suck it up and start talking outside Luke’s hospital room for the first time in SFOTH knows how long. It’s mainly minor things, or mostly about Luke, but it’s a start. They’re both still hurt from each other, they both know that things won’t go back to how they used to be, but nothing could remove the love they have for each other, the love they have for Luke. They just have to relearn how to show that affection, and with it, how to show that affection to their partner on the hospital bed.

Needless to say, Dued and Harlem decide to ditch the half-baked plan entirely. Loving Luke is as easy as breathing, neither of them doubt that they can pivot on the spot.

They start small, while Luke is still in the hospital. The three will be talking before Harlem moves to sit on the bed next to his legs, and Dued will keep Luke distracted until Harlem pipes in again. The first time it happens, Luke ends up scooting his legs a bit out of reach, but he doesn’t move to stop it from happening. He keeps glancing back at Harlem, though, like he’ll disappear or jump out at him. Those glances start to ebb away with time, though, and the two can’t help but smile the first time Luke doesn’t even shift when Harlem sits down.

Dued occasionally brings a blanket to the hospital while he’s visiting. It’s one that neither Luke nor Harlem have seen before, but it looks worn and well-loved, the type that you’d see from something that grew up with you. Despite the years, though, the blanket was still soft to the touch, and Luke was delighted to wrap it around his shoulders whenever Dued brought it over. Eventually, he started letting the other wrap him in it when he was too sore to do so, and Dued nearly teared up the first time Luke asked for help.

Harlem asked where it was from, once. “No offense, but it kinda look like it went to war,” he said, drawing out the syllables in the word as he spoke. “Was it Elliot’s?”

Dued laughed as he gingerly helped Luke cover his torso with the blanket without aggravating his injuries. He still twitched whenever Dued assisted, but it was far less than the full-body flinches from the beginning. “It was mine, actually,” he says fondly, tucking a corner of the blanket behind Luke. “It used to be a comfort thing of mine, growing up. I, ah—“, he paused, chuckling a little. “I used to cocoon myself in it when I was younger and pretend I was hiding from the world. Don’t really use it much anymore, but I like to think it still has that home-y feel to it.”

It was silent for a moment, the only sound in the room coming from the beeping of the heart monitor beside the hospital bed and the shuffling of fabric as Luke shuffled into the blanket. It’s then, that Harlem looked at Dued for the first time since Luke came home. Not just the glances or eye contact they’ve been making, but really looked. Looked at the eyebags under his eyes that have slowly brightened from the permanent bruises they used to be since getting his family back, broken as they were. Took in the way his eyes themselves seemed to have more life in them since Elliot and Luke went missing, the way his hair was no longer matted to his scalp from a lack of self care and the way the curve of Dued’s lips carve dimples on his face from smiling. The way that, even when that smile narrows, it turns into something softer, something genuine, fond, and real. It feels like it’s been no longer than a small, few months, but the Dued in front of him helping Luke get situated to sleep is so different from the Dued that he watched slowly rot away within the walls of Roblox HQ, desperately looking for hints as to where his little brother and lover could have gone. This is his Dued. After so long of yearning, of wishing, of watching him fade away, his Dued is finally back, and Harlem can’t stop the warm smile that grows on his face. His two lovers, the two people he’d hang the stars for, finally about to be in his arms—

“‘Smells like you… Th’ blanket,” Luke sleepily murmurs, and it’s so sudden in the nearly silent room that both Dued and Harlem start cackling. “No, really?”, Harlem snickers, and Luke bats him with a wing. Harlem yelps, and Dued doubles over with laughter at that. (Harlem’s heart sings at the contact, because Luke just touched him, willingly, for fun, and it’s the first time he and Dued have seen Luke touch them without any signs of discomfort at all. He looks up, and his own smile widens at the way it looks like Dued has stars in his eyes. Those small steps were worth it. Oh, they were so worth it. SFOTH, he loves them both so, so much. Harlem swears right there, as Dued giggles in between inhaling for breath and Luke pouts under the blanket he’s swaddled in, that he’s never letting go of this. Never, ever again. He was a fool to have given up on them so soon, before. But they’re together again, now, and he swears that he’ll keep them close forever. Even after death, he’ll never let go of them. He loves them too much for that.)

Luke’s eyes start to shut, and it’s hard to not notice how it starts to take longer to open them, so the two start to go through the routine they’ve started to pick up since visiting Luke. Dued goes to turn off the lights and gently, as if handling glass, moves Luke’s head to rest against the pillow of the hospital bed. Harlem moves to pick up their bags from the floor and focuses on keeping his stars extra bright so Dued doesn’t trip on his way to the door.

They’re about to head out, Dued’s hand on the handle, when Luke’s voice stops them. “Sleep with me?”, he asks, and his voice is so thick with sleep it’s a miracle he’s even awake. Both of them turn to look at the other on the bed, and see him weakly sitting up and rubbing at his eyes under the soft glow of Harlem’s stars. “They’ll have to redo your stitches if you sit like that, Luke,” Dued says, but his voice lacks any sort of anger and he sounds far too fond, maybe even shocked, to even consider him being upset. Dued is already halfway across the room when he turns to look at Harlem, whose still frozen by the door. This is the most comfortable Luke has ever been with their touch since he’s returned, and Harlem’s heart swells with so much love and pride at the progress his lover has made.

“Well?”, Dued says softly, and that breaks the star being out of his stupor. He drops their bags by the door walking to the other side of the bed and, near-carelessly, removes and drops his jacket (Dued’s jacket, really, but it might as well be his with how often he wears it instead of the man who actually owns it) on the floor.

(Dued snickers at how eager Harlem is, and he throws the other a look in response. Dued sticks his tongue out in retaliation, and Luke fondly, and drowsily, watches their antics from the bed in the dim lighting. His boyfriends, in all their real, living glory. It’s still hard, sometimes, to remember that they’re truly here. That they aren’t something pulled from his head, and that they’re genuinely here with him. But, it’s easier to get used to it all again when the two of them are bickering over his head with authentic laughter filling his ears. Honest, warm laughter, so unlike the one from the realm.)

Harlem removes his bucket helmet and places it on top of his jacket while Dued takes off his zip-up, and Luke scoots to the middle of the bed to make room for his lovers. The two of them cautiously climb into the bed, mindful of Luke’s injuries, and the three of them settle on the bed together as Luke delicately wraps them in his wings. It’s a tight fit, and they’re both on the edge of the bed, but neither Dued nor Harlem dare to complain as they soak in the full-body feel of Luke for the first time since he went missing. And for a moment, it’s almost like they’re back home, cuddling after a long day tucked against each other. As if all their worries faded in the comfort of love, as if nothing mattered in the hold of their beloveds.

Unsurprisingly, given how he was already fighting to keep his eyes open before the two even left, Luke is the first one asleep. Dued and Harlem soak in the silence, save for the rustling of Luke’s feathers. For the first time in months, the silence isn’t tense with unspoken faults and apologies. Instead, the silence is comfortable, filled with warmth and affection. “Goodnight, Harlem,” Dued whispers into the night, and Harlem smiles into the side of Luke’s torso he’s tucked his head into. “Goodnight, love,” he whispers back, and the other huffs a breathy laugh at the cheesy nickname. Harlem waits for Dued’s rebuttal, but it’s only moments later before he hears the other’s soft snoring. He can’t help snickering a little, and his stars sing with affection. He finally has his boys back, and he sleeps peacefully, for the first time in so long, with a full heart and a smile on his face.

Maybe they won’t be what they used to be, and maybe there’ll still be days where Luke will flinch at touch, where Dued’s eyebags are just a little more purple or where Harlem is a little more dim than usual. But they’re healing, and they’re healing together. And what they have now is good, too. Not the same, not as soft. It’s rougher around the edges, but it’s stronger. The cracks will heal, with time and patience. They’ve already started to close, after all.