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It was honestly terrifying, in retrospect, because Mapicc barely even knew Minute when it happened. Given everything he knew about the world, it was stupid to get attached to someone before getting to know them, especially when their first moves were those of violence. He’d been taught that over and over, advice embedded firmly in the survival guide in his head.
But all of that didn’t appear to matter when it came down to it. He met Minute, and something just — flipped into place.
Netherrack fell and rose all around, the fight raging on amidst the scattering dark, and at first neither Spoke nor Mapicc even realised someone else was fighting alongside them. They’d been on their own this far — why would that change now? Scurrying away from their pursuers, nearly cornered, it had never felt so much as though the world was all against them.
And then, all of a sudden, someone adorned in ink-black armour and some terrible air about them was right there, slashing away with an efficient brutality like Mapicc had never seen. It almost made him stop in his tracks, even with the swarm of enemies around them. Their saviour was dressed in darkness, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off them.
The stranger’s help — and sheer dumb luck — carried Spoke and Mapicc out of the hurried tunnels they’d been fighting in and all the way to the upper reaches of the Nether. It was stifling and hot, and there were still people at their heels, and in all honesty Mapicc felt like he’d been through enough fighting to just fall asleep right here.
Minute appeared to introduce himself before they could even really recollect themselves, thankfully alive but just as menacing as he’d appeared earlier. He was disapproving in his greeting, exasperated in a way that made Mapicc want to impress him, and just precisely the sort of person Mapicc had imagined he might be back in the netherrack tunnels.
Somewhere in there, he’d say, was where it happened. At some point in the fighting, the confusion, or the conversation, he realised he’d just met someone he wanted to know so badly it burned.
Barely an hour after meeting them, Minute flew away with the intent to never let their paths cross again.
Mapicc didn’t even think twice; he was already following right after him.
Everything was chaos for days after, and Mapicc could for a time blame his newfound interest on the pure adrenaline that still hadn’t had the chance to ebb away.
Of course he’d follow a skilled fighter around, he reasoned — they were being chased by packs of unknown enemies, there was a hit out on them, and Spoke was already relying more on Mapicc than the other way around. It was solace to find someone stronger out here. It felt really damn nice to lean on someone else for once. So it was really very ordinary and it would certainly fade away fast, no matter how many feelings had lodged themselves in his chest.
There were rare moments of peace between running and fighting and repeating. In one of these, they built a small camp in the woods they’d been trekking through, complete with makeshift bedding and a small campfire to fight the frigid night. Spoke had tucked his bed right next to where Mapicc was still sitting, the other two too fresh off battle to shut their eyes.
Mapicc leant back on his palms, one of his arms brushing against Spoke’s side, and watched their small fire burn quietly. Across from him, Minute looked pensive as ever, eyes on the clouded sky instead of his companions.
He seemed so alert, Mapicc observed, as if ready to bolt up and keep running at a moment’s notice. It was a constant with him; he was always drawing his eyebrows into a furrow and his shoulders up into tension. Mapicc wondered what he would look like laughing — and then, of course, it struck him that he was staring.
He quickly glanced away, before realising that doing so probably made him look worse than the staring. It was too late now either way, because Minute was casting him a suspicious glance and Mapicc was regretting every action he’d ever made, so. What was done was done.
“Is he asleep?” Minute asked, thankfully acting as if nothing had happened. He sounded exhausted, and Mapicc could very much relate.
“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know how he does it. Not like we have invisible minions after us or anything.”
“They’re not minions,” Minute said shortly.
With that, he lapsed back into silence.
Mapicc internally cursed at himself. Of course he was screwing this up, saying shit that probably offended Minute personally, he just—
He just needed time. When all of this was over, he’d be back to his usual self. He’d feel normal about this.
The rest of the night passed slowly and without words, though it still felt nice to spend it with Minute. Dawn broke to the sound of distant boot-steps, and they were off again as soon as Mapicc had shaken Spoke awake.
The two of them did get closer after that. At least Mapicc liked to think so — he started conversations without as many fumbles, and Minute seemed to open up a little more with some poking and pushing. All that intrigue Mapicc had built around him in his head began to give way to a sort of familiarity, as Minute began to comment more on which dinners he enjoyed more and his preferred way to sleep and how best he liked to decorate his shield. There were patterns in his patterns that formed themself into a shape Mapicc could better understand, and all his feelings about it weren’t at all going away.
“You should take your armour off more,” Mapicc suggested, once he finally felt they were close enough he could make that suggestion. “If you wear it too much it’ll leave imprints on your skin. And it feels good to not be weighed down all the time.”
It wasn’t the wrong time to say it — they were all healing up their armour with XP and, where Mapicc and Spoke had taken theirs off to clean up as well, Minute seemed to be doing everything while keeping his armour on. Which did look awkward, all things considered, so in fact Mapicc was kind of doing him a favour.
Still, Minute gave him a strange look. “What? No, I don’t want to get killed.”
“It’s only for about a minute. What are the chances someone jumps you in that time?”
“This is why you guys keep getting in trouble,” Minute said. He turned around to get another stack of XP, and Mapicc exchanged a glance with Spoke. “You should be more careful.”
“I dunno if that’s fully why we’re being chased down,” argued Spoke, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, we do a lot of dumb shit,” Mapicc agreed. “This is probably on the safer end of things we could do right now.”
“I’m definitely not taking advice from you two, then.” With that, Minute turned back to face them again, and to Mapicc’s relief he looked amused rather than irritated.
“One day you will,” he replied. He sat back and kicked his netherite boots off. “Trust me. We do have some wisdom between us.”
“Lots of wisdom between us,” Spoke corrected.
“Uh huh,” Minute said, tone dry.
At that, Spoke pretended to take up issue with what he was implying, kicking up a fuss about how clearly Minute didn’t know them well enough yet, and with that the conversation fell back into its usual patterns.
Even when they’d fixed up their armour and were ready to fly off and find somewhere to keep safe for the night, the chatter was ongoing, though it got sparser and quieter as they took off. Mapicc fell back slightly to watch the ground below, the wind a little less strong and the sound of the others’ voices louder from back here.
He’d be the first to admit he was speaking up less than he used to. Whether it was just a natural change from adding someone to their group, or the attention he was paying to the way Minute adjusted his wings to stream smoothly through the air, or the faint but awful impression that Ash was still watching them all somehow — or whether it was all three at once — he had noticed himself dropping to the background of conversations more and more lately. It gave him more time to think and watch; he wasn’t upset about it. It was just sort of odd.
Spoke didn’t seem to have noticed that he’d moved to the tail of the formation, though Minute did glance back to check on him briefly. It was only when they landed and Spoke went about poking around the cave they’d found that he brought it up.
“Are you tired?” He looked unsure asking the question at all. “Just because you were, uh, really quiet.”
Mapicc shrugged. “Nah, I was just listening.”
“Alright.” Minute turned his head to watch Spoke, who was now triumphantly throwing down a few beds in a cranny he’d found. “Just checking.”
A part of Mapicc very much wanted him to keep talking, to keep checking, but Minute did seem to be done with the interaction. In something of a frantic internal scramble, he carried on:
“Are you tired, actually? I don’t think I’ve seen you sleep too much yet.” Which Mapicc then immediately realised was wrong because he very much had seen Minute sleep just last night, so— “I mean, you have slept, just not that much compared to us, you know?”
“I slept plenty yesterday,” Minute replied slowly.
“Well, yeah, but like — altogether it’s less, right?”
Minute was regarding him a really weird expression now. Fantastic! Mapicc had to get out here as fast as possible.
With a hurried apology, Mapicc fled after Spoke and headed right to the beds. He was not getting any more tangled in awkward conversation; he was perfectly content curling up in bed and shutting his eyes to the fading day.
What was probably a testament to their growing friendship was the fact that Minute rolled into the bed next to his anyway, putting himself in the unusual place of not immediately volunteering for watch duty. Mapicc didn’t fully realise who was lying behind him until he heard Spoke complain as he went to keep watch at the entrance instead.
Their beds were separate, so Mapicc couldn’t feel his mattress dip with the presence of another person, but if he listened hard he was sure he could hear the barely perceptible breathing of the other man.
Metal scraped against metal as Minute moved in place, slow and grating. It seemed at first as though Minute was just trying to find a comfortable position, though it kept on going for long enough that curiosity finally won out and Mapicc turned over.
Minute froze, hands positioned over his chestplate, and looked up.
“Are you taking that off?” Mapicc whispered, a little incredulous at the sight.
“Maybe,” Minute said. He fiddled with one of the chestplate straps, averting his eyes. “If someone murders me in my sleep, it’s on you.”
And while Mapicc didn’t consider himself the smartest in their group, he also wasn’t dumb. He could see this for what it was.
“Nobody will,” he promised.
That seemed to be enough for Minute, because he pushed himself up to a sitting position and shucked off the chestplate properly, tossing it next to where his helmet was already propped. As he moved his attention to his boots and leggings, Mapicc took the moment to take in what he looked like underneath.
Minute was smaller without armour, certainly. He looked more real and less like something conjured right out of Mapicc’s dreams, with shoulders held a little too tight and maybe less prominent muscles than Mapicc had been fantasising about. Although — well. His arms still looked strong. And even though his intimidation factor had dropped just slightly, the lack of a helmet now revealed that his hair had been ruffled into a shape beyond messy. Mapicc really wanted to run his fingers through it.
What he needed was to not be staring. With more inner strength than he thought he was capable of, Mapicc forced himself to bring his eyes over to the pile of armour at the foot of the bed instead.
“Are you moving that to the floor?”
“I’m keeping it nearby so I can pull it back on immediately if I need to,” Minute replied.
“Not a lot of faith in Spoke, I see,” Mapicc said.
Minute snorted, finally pulling the covers back on. “He’ll get distracted the moment he sees something suspicious. You and I are doomed.”
“At least we’ll get murdered together.”
“That’s not as good of a deal as you think it is.”
Halfway through opening his mouth to reply, Mapicc paused. Minute raised a brow, literally barely two feet away and completely armourless.
“What?” he asked.
Mapicc couldn’t stop looking. This close, he could see the lines where Minute’s helmet had been sitting this whole time. He could see the shape of his ears, the ways his eyebrows looked unframed by armour. A part of his mind told him to memorise it all, even though the rest of him was yelling to stop staring and say something.
“You’ve got—” He cut himself off, took a breath, and lifted a hand up to just before Minute’s face. “I told you you’d have imprints. How long have you had that on?”
For a moment, Minute just stared back, eyes wide. “My helmet?”
“Yeah.”
Mapicc let his fingers land on the surface of Minute’s face, rough against the pitch black of his skin. It was colder than he’d expected.
Emboldened by the fact Minute wasn’t moving away, he traced his fingers up and around to the edges of his face, feeling for the small imprints there. They were hard to see as it was, but this close it wasn’t easier to spot them and easier still to find them by hand. Minute’s breath fanned against his wrist, quiet and all too soft.
He curved his touch upwards, past Minute’s temple and over his forehead, following the lines all the way to the other end of his eyes, where he paused before his own hand could break their connected gazes.
“It’s been a few weeks,” Minute finally replied. Mapicc could see him swallow, could sense the slight tilt of his head as he shifted towards Mapicc’s hand. “About my helmet, I mean.”
Now that he was here, Mapicc had forgotten what he wanted to say. And he was too afraid to do what he wanted to do.
He shook his head and retracted his hand, already regretting the step back more than he feared the leap forwards. “Right. Uh — we should sleep, I think.”
“Sure,” Minute said. He hesitated, then turned to face the opposite wall. Heart racing way too fast in his chest, Mapicc rolled over as well.
Lucky for both of them, neither of them did get attacked during the night. Despite that, Mapicc could barely calm down enough to rest.
For a short while, Mapicc and Spoke travelled about as a pair again. They were still in danger, invisible mafia hot on their heels, but their dynamic felt like it had rebalanced into place again for the first time in weeks. Then again, there were a few sets of coordinates tucked in their pockets, courtesy of Minute, and it was difficult for Mapicc to not just go right for them and see if any of them might have the man himself.
It wasn’t his fault. He was maybe a little bit infatuated, but it was such a terrible time on all fronts that he wouldn’t exactly be doing anything about it. Even so, the truth was damn undeniable.
Who was he going to talk about it with, anyway? Spoke?
In the end, they burnt through the list of coordinates all too fast, their pursuers always right behind them even as they raced through the sky and tried to gather allies and somehow, somehow, still managed to evade—
Mapicc lay on his bunk and stared at the ceiling of the cave above him, the slate grey and pockmarked and low above him. By all measures, he figured he was lucky to be here. He didn’t want to sound ungrateful. But hiding amongst the ranks of the enemy was never exactly a great place to be — Mapicc wasn’t made for this spy shit.
He hadn’t been counting the days he was stuck in that prison, half because he couldn’t even figure out the passage of time and half because he knew it would just make him feel hopeless. Like, he absolutely did want to believe that Spoke would try to get him back, but things had been weird lately with Ash and the mafia and he wasn’t sure — he wasn’t thinking about it now. This was the worst time possible to think about it.
If he paid too much attention to the ceiling, it felt like it was clamping down on him from above; he shut his eyes instead, trying to picture just about anything else.
Of course Minute came to mind immediately. This whole affair was so, so stupid. Everything was fucked, and he was somehow still in love.
Spoke hadn’t told him where Minute had gone, just hovering around the words like Mapicc would change the subject for him. With them sneaking around the enemy base, he could get away with it, though Mapicc could see clearly through his pretense.
It was strange being the one asking questions, for once not being the partner-in-crime helping him cover up whatever had gone wrong. Mapicc didn’t want to get used to it, so he’d given up asking.
Still, if he’d managed to get rescued from prison despite everything, holding onto hope that Minute would be back to help out wasn’t all that difficult. Especially when there was a version of him that lingered in Mapicc’s head like an echo, more open and affectionate and eager to reach out than Mapicc reasonably knew he was. That Minute would help them, however much of a silly fantasy he was.
It was a comforting dream to fall asleep to; Mapicc curled up close to it and tried not to think of tomorrow just yet.
Minute burst back into their lives with what felt like a flash of bewildered exhilaration, the world bending itself around to give way to relief.
There was some great revelation happening between his allies and Ash, some back and forth and a fight that he really should have been paying closer attention to, but Mapicc couldn’t keep the grin off his face the whole time. His mind felt as though it was doing a damn tango — he was back, and that was already incredible.
They were still at large, and the mafia was growing more and more powerful, and Spoke had a hunch to his shoulders that wasn’t there before, but things somehow felt a little more manageable. Though they still struggled with finding more allies in their cause, the target on their backs felt less imminent, their flight from the mafia now more of a movement towards their goal.
God damn, Mapicc hadn’t been appreciating how good it felt to stretch out his arms when flying, how springy grass was under his feet, how enchantment sparks skittered into tiny glimmers when he sanded his sword after a fight. Being out in the open felt like a new freedom every time. There was a lot to feel optimistic about.
Besides, he had his two closest friends by his side. What else did he need?
So despite Spoke’s insistence that every empire was collapsing and that they were running out of time and had to hurry, despite the past and the present and the future looming ahead, he was happier than he’d probably ever been.
Spoke was spending more time alone, leaving Minute to hang out near Mapicc much more often. Actually, Minute had been paying more attention to him these days in general, squinting at him in what Mapicc could only guess was some kind of analysis. As long as he was happy enough with what he saw, Mapicc didn’t really mind.
“You seem… optimistic,” Minute told Mapicc one night, a little out of the blue.
He’d been staring at him with that same analytical expression for a good few minutes while Mapicc cooked up the fish they’d gathered that day; given that, the conclusion he’d come to was much less revolutionary than Mapicc had expected.
Mapicc didn’t pause what he was doing — he couldn’t, not if he wanted this fish to be edible — but he did dart a glance up at the other. “What do you mean?”
“When you were in the mafia prison, you kind of looked like you wanted to die. But now you’re all—” Minute gestured vaguely. “I dunno. You keep smiling at everything.”
“Can’t I be happy to be out of there?” Mapicc challenged.
“Yeah, of course, I just… I don’t know. I thought you’d want to talk about it, or that you might need help or something.”
That was a confusing response. Mapicc turned over the fish on its spit and the words in his head. “What, you thought you’d be my knight in shining armour? Give me a pep talk and make everything better?”
“No, no, not like that,” Minute said quickly, though something still flushed on his face. That certainly caught Mapicc’s attention.
“Or,” he suggested, “maybe you were planning to kiss it better.”
He was being more reckless than he’d expected when he opened his mouth. From the look on Minute’s face, it was either the absolute worst thing he could possibly have said or the best.
“What would that even mean?” Minute asked weakly, after a few moments of fumbling. “I don’t think I could — I mean, it’s more of an abstract concept than, uh…”
He trailed off, and their eyes met over the fire.
Time suspended, lost somewhere in the space between them. Heat turned the air into mirage, the fire crackling quietly as a log collapsed in on itself. Not too far off, a small animal snuffled its way through the undergrowth.
“Oh,” Minute said, eventually, and the spell broke. “You were joking.”
Mapicc wasn’t selfless enough to be honest. “Yeah. Of course.”
There was a faint smell of burning and he swung his gaze down to where he’d left the fish too long on the spit. As he rushed forward to rotate it, he felt Minute’s gaze on him, leaving the back of his neck prickling and his heart pounding even long after their dinner was finished.
In light of the upcoming, inevitable battle, Minute had taken to running through a few fighting techniques he’d learnt from his time in the mafia. It was better to know thine enemy than not, or whatever he’d said — and either way, they weren’t exactly bad practices to learn about. Out of himself and Spoke, Mapicc had always been the better fighter, but he’d also never been trained; hearing there was actually more than one stance to attack in was almost bizarre.
He cited that to Spoke as the reason he stayed in their makeshift lessons for longer, though he was pretty sure his actual motivations were crystal clear. If Spoke was paying enough attention, it wouldn’t be hard to figure out that it was simply an excellent excuse to spend more time with Minute, the other correcting his stance with careful hands and directing him in how to move.
It was still kind of impossible to know if Minute had picked up what he was putting down yet. Sure, Minute would linger a little more when adjusting his grip on an axe, but it could really mean a whole host of things. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was sick of having to fix the same mistakes over and over. Maybe he was trying to feel for Mapicc’s heartbeat, loud and thumping close under his skin.
Whatever it was, Mapicc wouldn’t pass up a chance to press a little closer, to feel his breath pick up, to run through a hundred silent confessions in his head while Minute told him about when and where he’d recommend using a specific foot sweep.
Even if this whole being-in-love thing didn’t go anywhere, it was still nice. He was still glad for what he had with Minute, whatever it was.
One night, Spoke turned in early enough that Mapicc went after him to check that everything was alright. The thing was, Spoke was less approachable these days, and when Mapicc tried to speak with him he just waved him off. Mapicc wondered, briefly, if getting closer to one friend was pushing away the other; it was an awful sort of thought, so he set it aside and returned to Minute.
This time, once Mapicc had agreed to another round of sparring, Minute paused before he was fully in position, head tilting slightly in consideration. Mapicc bounced on his toes, too much energy running through him not to.
“All good?” he asked.
Minute blinked. “Yeah. Sorry. Let’s get started.”
He slipped right back into it, making the first move and almost catching Mapicc entirely off guard. The thought that he might be planning something slipped out of Mapicc’s mind like water through cupped palms.
They were much more evenly matched than they had been when they’d first met, helped in equal parts by Mapicc’s eagerness to learn and attention to exactly how Minute held himself. Still, Minute was noticeably better from his own years of practice, and after a few minutes Mapicc could feel the usual frustration and fatigue creeping in.
The world spun onto its head as Minute sent him flying to the ground, just about gracefully enough to not look like a complete idiot. He recovered quickly, getting ready to pull the classic and dirty move of dragging Minute down with him, when suddenly the other was maneuvering himself on top of him instead.
“Got you,” Minute said with a rare grin, breathing hard. “Try wriggling your way out of this one, huh.”
His hands were firm on his biceps, holding him down with an expected yet arresting strength. There was a sly spark in his eyes that Mapicc had never seen before.
Holy shit. His brain was short-circuiting.
Instead of answering, he just stared back up at the other and tried to gather himself. The moment stretched out into several, and a frown line appeared faintly on Minute’s brow.
He opened his mouth to speak, and Mapicc’s eyes flicked down to his lips. “Should I—?”
This was impossible, Mapicc realised in the tiny space between one word and the next. This was impossible, he had to do something about this.
And with that thought, he twisted an arm free and finally dragged Minute down into a kiss.
He left their group not all too long later.
Mapicc couldn’t really blame him. Spoke was getting to be impossible and, while Mapicc might follow him to the ends of the world, he knew that Minute couldn’t do the same. In so many ways, Spoke seemed to be operating on another plane entirely; he kept talking like he was in the right, like Mapicc was there because he agreed with him instead of because he cared.
It didn’t matter either way. He’d come this far, and he wasn’t leaving Spoke alone for dumb things like dangerous enemies or unbeatable armies or being reasonable or something. Whatever. If he thought too hard about it he’d just get upset in ways he couldn’t fix, so he wasn’t going to think about it at all.
Spoke would lead him right into the middle of chaos, and he’d follow, and he was pretty sure it wouldn’t make a difference either way.
In the end, it did make a difference. More importantly, Spoke was safe, which was kind of all Mapicc cared about.
He popped back into existence right on the bedrock layer where Mapicc was waiting, looking exhausted but alive, and Mapicc scooped him up and hugged him as close as he could without merging them into one.
“That’s the last time I let you fly around the void alone,” he mumbled into his hair, after the initial spike of adrenaline had worn off and Spoke was shaking a little bit less in his arms.
Spoke giggled. “Well, hopefully that’s the last time it happens ever anyway.”
“Yeah, that too,” Mapicc agreed, then finally released him.
They made their way up from the bottom of the world, and as they did Mapicc felt his communicator buzz in his pocket. It could be anything, he knew — a player death, a stray complaint — though he had his hopes up for a certain reply to a panicked message he’d sent an ally a few minutes ago.
Distracted as he was with the sheer relief that they’d both survived and achieved what they wanted, Mapicc had practically forgotten about the message by the time it came to fruition. There was a lot going on; he’d forgive himself for this one.
Not far behind Mapicc, there was the thump of someone landing from flight, the flutter of an elytra closing, and the soft clank of armour. Spoke’s mouth fell open and Mapicc was already turning around — though before he’d even made it all the way around, he heard a familiar voice with an unfamiliar smile in their tone and Minute was right here.
Just for a moment, he could set aside saving the world and defeating the invisible mafia and Spoke’s plans aside.
He burst across the room and into Minute’s arms — not open but opening — and engulfed himself in a long-awaited solace.
“You won’t stay with us forever.”
Minute glanced up from his work. He’d been carving trims into their respective armour, taking the break from constant battle and chase as a chance to do some handiwork, and the other two had been trying to encourage it where they could. A hobby was a hobby, even if neither of them were sure it’d ever end up useful.
“What do you mean?” Minute asked, and Mapicc’s train of thoughts switched back to the correct track.
“Like, with me and Spoke, for whatever we do next.” He shrugged. “You probably won’t want to do it with us.”
An eyebrow raise. “Are you two planning something I should be worried about?”
“No, no, I don’t know what we’ll be up to,” Mapicc clarified, shaking his head quickly, “but I just reckon I shouldn’t be expecting you to stick with us for all of it, y’know?” Minute opened his mouth, clearly ready to disagree, and Mapicc added, “I’m just setting out expectations. So we’re on the same page. Be honest here.”
Minute frowned first at Mapicc, and then down at the chestplate sitting in his lap. “I don’t know yet.”
“Okay,” said Mapicc, and set his gaze on the chestplate as well.
He thought it’d be harder than this, that he’d fight to keep Minute here. Now it was coming down to it, though, keeping him any longer than he might want felt like the last thing he wanted to do. When Minute would inevitably ask to leave, he knew he wouldn’t say no.
It was sort of terrifying to think about how many exceptions he’d make for him. Even if he knew he was wanted in return, it was another thing to grapple with how much he cared. He was supposed to put himself first; Minute was making it more impossible than ever.
Instead of entertaining those thoughts too much further, he shuffled a little closer to Minute, pressing their sides together. “Let’s operate under the assumption that you’re not, then. Take advantage of the time we have now.”
Setting down his handiwork, Minute gave Mapicc a sidelong glance. Spoke wasn’t here yet — really, Mapicc wasn’t sure what he was even up to at this exact moment — which meant that the two of them really did have some time to themselves.
“I can work with that,” Minute replied, the corner of his mouth ticking up.
“Good.” Mapicc grinned, and reached up to direct the other closer by his collar. “Come on, then. We only have so long before Spoke gets back.”
With a small laugh, Minute pressed first a short kiss to his lips and then a longer one, and then Mapicc decided to stop keeping track.