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You couldn't hear anything from the outside. Not really. Not the faint, stumbling whisper of wind, nor the languid wave of untrimmed grass as it swayed in a breeze. It was like the world had held its breath and used everything it had to never let go.
The greenhouse was quiet and still. And alone.
Reject was bathed in the tender grasp of the moonlight filtered through the glass, sitting upon the time-forsaken bench that barely clung onto chipped and withered clumps of viridescent dry paint. Every once in a while, the leaf to a carrot would rustle silently. It was a negligible movement, and carried not even a sound. The lack of noise was so much louder than the presence of it; it almost felt adjacent to if a lance had been struck straight through his skull, like an arrow, the way that tranquility was intimidating.
He wasn't used to this. Normally he'd be attempting to irritate Z, or maybe blowing something up with Moe, but...nobody was awake. Nobody was present. Nobody was there.
Neither was he.
Reject's hands, calloused and blistered, slipped onto the lime wood of the seat. It was a subconscious movement—barely a movement at all. The heat of his palms oozed into the cracks of the dyed planks; only segments of the surface caught onto the pressure. It seemed to leech his body heat, like a syringe, until his skin turned so cold he could've qualified for hypothermia.
Patches of soil and grass nearby flickered, twisting abnormally for only so little of a moment. They seemed to pixelate, blur, and quickly focus once again in the same fraction of a second. Reject weakly raised a hand, just barely hovering in the air, and with a pinch, he corrected the environmental lag.
He didn't want to be an anomaly. He didn't want to look so grotesque and twist in such morbid curvatures or dips. He just wanted to live. He only did the things he did just for the fun of being an asshole.
Reject wished Z was awake. The sound of his voice, his cold touch, his reluctance to resign from his own arguments—he always made everything feel just a little better. It was a selfish thought that buzzed in the back of his skull, but a thought nevertheless. It wasn't Z's fault that he was an insomniac; he shouldn't subject that to the player. He deserved every good thing he could get.
It was times like these that Reject had these thoughts. They were loud and centered towards himself and his own wants. Desires. Feelings. He forgot what those were, really; as much as he hated to admit it (and he never would), the only thing he wanted was to be able to keep living with Z and Moe. The same world, the same people, never to change.
Who knows what would happen when what Reject really wanted was discovered.
His vision took far too long to focus back onto his reality. Everything was so still—too still—it made him want to dig his claws into his flesh and hope he could tear it all off. His only hope was to escape this stupid body and to find another skin to live in. One that he could be truly loved in. Be accepted in.
You know whenever people say that they're "insane" whenever they feel certain ways? When they say that they see things or feel something that wasn't there or acknowledge something that they shouldn't? This feeling was entirely different. Reject felt too sane—like his brain was picking each and every little segment of the universe apart and dissecting it for no reason other than sheer curiosity and free will. Like he had known way too much, about this place, this life, and that he'd still keep learning more regardless. Like each curve and angle of every sight was precise and entirely calculated in only two seconds. Like every insurmountable problem he'd ever have he'd instantly know the answer to, despite the solution being nearly impossible and backed into countless dead-ends by rationality and logical reasoning.
Everything was too clear. Too clean. He hated it.
Reject could only close his eyes, slouching back and forgetting to withhold the pressure of his weight. He allowed his limbs to slowly fill with lead, for his lungs to empty with will, for his eyes to settle and his lids to close. He—for the first time—voluntarily drowned in his fatigue, and let himself get pulled under the gentle, tantalizing lull of the seldom peacefulness he'd finally earned. He nearly felt himself drift off, his mind traveling elsewhere and daydreaming softer, happier thoughts. The curious hands of his mind released the pressure of the vigilance that comfortably nestled itself into every careful crevice of his head.
Until something snapped.
Something buried deep inside of him—incomprehensible, macabre, yearning—had stopped him from fully letting go. Reject's body jerked forward, and he stumbled from the bench to the floor. The force of the weight caused the dirt beneath him to lag, quivering under the pressure of the entity, before the surface began to cave in. The sinkhole didn't extend past three blocks after Reject's claw caught onto the edge of one of the iron slabs that lined the rows of tilled soil and he hoisted himself up from the decline.
Scrambling to his feet once upon solid ground, Reject made a beeline to the entrance of the greenhouse, barely catching himself on one of the iron columns. His gaze hastily—desperately—darted across the entire landscape—until he spotted it. A flicker of lilac waved in his peripheral.
"Hey—hey WAIT!"
Reject lunged himself forward and caught himself on a wave of the wind, speeding towards the position of the lavender spot he saw. He grazed his body too close to the floor during flight, and tumbled onto the grass. The rough grasp of the conglomerate made up of gravel and dry dirt burned and rubbed across his skin as he skidded across the ground, staining himself in harsh grooves and markings from the Earth itself. By the time he stopped moving, the light was gone.
It couldn't have been a hallucination—not again, right? Certainly it...it really wasn't...
There... there really wasn't a point in entertaining himself, was there?
Reject lay there, uselessly, plastered against the earthen ground without an attempt to struggle. He had a hunger for something—what, attention, pity?—that he couldn't quite keep within his grasp. Regardless of how tenacious his grip could be, it all fell through his fingers regardless with a fluidity adjacent to that of sand.
Attention. That sounded nice.
He was so infatuated with the idea of reclaiming his past and keeping to himself that he'd forgotten that was his main goal—his center motivation. Just to be paid attention to. Withering in a world's code for the rest of what felt like eternity wasn't fun;
He'd tried it before.
Muttering a grunt, Reject rose to his knees with a wobble. As he attempted to step forward, his left ankle lagged and twisted unnaturally, forcing his once-recovering gait into a stagger. It was odd, really, how he could cure the environment and terrain of lag spikes yet he couldn't quite repair himself. He doubted he could even fix people, entity and player alike.
Oh, wait—right; he could just teleport.
Reject pictured the very block he stood at, and the things he could see across his vision. Two blocks from the front door, a small, sturdy oak house, a concrete porch, an overhang (that happened to be Z's balcony) that was stabilized by four wooden columns, a—
The world bent and shifted around him, freakily—messily—manipulating itself as Reject teleported himself to the front door.
Staggering forward, he forced the front door open and barely made an effort to fully close it behind him. Reject's eyes scanned the first floor to find nothing, unfortunately, which would mean that he needed to manage to climb up seventeen stairs with a mangled ankle. It was fine, really; Reject just needed to take his time.
His first step was tentative at first, like he was testing waters he'd never entered before. Gripping onto the handrail with one hand, his right, Reject climbed the second stair. Soon came the third, and...not so soon, came the fourth. He just needed to keep hauling himself upward—to keep the y-axis above sixty—and he'd be there before he knew it. Sure; it was much more arduous than it really looked, but the effort would be worth it—certainly.
However, one misstep could change everything. And it did.
Reject had made an attempt at moving with more haste—more urgency—as he'd stepped onto his left foot. As his luck made it, his grasp on the iron railing failed as he collapsed from the staircase and knocked himself directly in the chin as he went flying.
However, what he didn't notice was that the disturbance he had caused was a lot more significant, because apparently Z had fallen asleep on the couch—not in his room—which made the entire reason for Reject risking the stairs cave in uselessly. He'd been startled awake by the sickening crack of bone meeting wood, seeing that he jolted upward at the sound. Reject sucked in a breath with a hiss as he refused to make a sound regardless of whether or not he was there to hear.
Z really was a light sleeper.
"What the fuck?!" He cried, and lunged for the tangle of exposed bone and jagged limbs that composed Reject. "What the fuck did you do?!"
"I didn't do anything; I just fell down the fucking stairs!" Reject bristled, his serrated fingers desperately clawing at Z's nearest arm. "I thought you were up there, so I tried to get up there, and-and I just coincidentally ended up almost snapping my spine in half!"
"Why the hell would you assume that?! I practically glow in the fucking dark!"
"Oh I don't know—it's the asscrack of night right now, I can't see shit!"
"You're so reckless, dude, ugh—why did I even choose to let you freeload me?!"
"You cannot be talking about me being reckless; do you even ever recall the amount of people you've fucking clocked in the head with a bullet for no reason whatsoever?!"
"Hold on, no, those were all for a reason!"
"Yeah, yeah, likely story, you fucking—"
"Dude, what happened to your ankle?"
Z blurted out, hushing every one of Reject's next comments.
He was silent, if only for a few seconds, before he replied.
"I tripped and it lagged or something, man. It'll probably fix itself tomorrow, but it's still annoying."
"You can't fix it?"
"No; I can only fix terrain that lags. I don't have any correction beyond that."
"Oh, shit."
The corners of Z's lips downturned into a small frown, and he stood from the floor. Wordlessly, he offered a hand to Reject, which was met with his own. When Reject came close to falling back over as he adjusted to the weight his legs needed to carry, Z hastily hooked an arm under his to stabilize him.
Z was warm. The kind of warmth that the Sun emitted in the summer that burnt but felt too nice to move out from. The kind of warmth that only came in intimate gestures and reserved, reverent touches. It was nice.
Reject liked that.
"Did you want to try going upstairs again, or..."
"Nah—I'd rather not."
With his disapproval, Z directed Reject to the couch in slow, thoughtful motions. He would correct every misstep he took, and, occasionally, instinctually wrap both of his arms around him in an effort to support his balance in any way he could. The touch was supportive and...and...nice. It was nice. More than nice.
Z ensured that Reject had actually sat down before he did, silently, then took a seat himself. Both of them seemed to have forgotten every word; in the tense silence, no sound was made. Until Z spoke again.
His voice wasn't demanding nor loud, just barely above a whisper, as he asked:
"Shouldn't you have been up there beforehand, though? When did you leave—why?"
Reject didn't know how to answer without telling him the full story. God, did he really need to lie? It was so nice right then, he'd just...he'd ruin it, were he to lie.
With a sigh, he caved in. "Can I be real with you, man? Just dead-ass?"
Z silently nodded, averted his gaze, and moved a little closer as Reject began to explain.
"I have trouble sleeping, right, so I, um... I was out in the greenhouse, just waiting, 'cause I was wondering if something would show up today. I must've hallucinated or something, because when I flew to what I saw, it was gone. At that point I had already tripped and ruined my ankle, so I teleported in-front of the door, then tried to walk up the stairs."
Reject waited with bated breath for Z's reply. What he didn't expect, however, was a nudge to the elbow and gentle talking.
"What were you hoping to see?"
That was what he was afraid of explaining. But... he was in too far deep now to go back, wasn't he?
"I'd lost someone a while ago; I can't really remember when," Reject muttered, turning his gaze away from the player. "Sometimes something, like some...some remnant of them appears. I wanted to see if it'd visit today."
Z didn't respond. Reject felt inclined to keep speaking.
"I miss them—a lot, actually. They were like a little brother to me, or...the closest I could have to one. I hadn't known them long, but they were just a kid. They didn't deserve it."
Z had stilled, only patiently listening.
"Sometimes, I hallucinate you as them because you guys look too similar. You're just...taller, and... more mature, I guess." Remembering who he was, and whom he was talking to, Reject quickly cut it off while it was short. "But, um...yeah. That's just it, really. I don't..."
Z didn't reply. He just sat still, seemingly contemplating the weight behind his words. Tentatively, Z had enveloped Reject in a hug. It wasn't harsh or strong, but...it was there. It held pressure. Reject melted in the touch, falling apart at the seams. He hesitantly—awkwardly—strung an arm around Z's back in return.
"...sorry." Z murmured, pressing himself closer to the entity. He didn't push him away, nor did he reply. He didn't make a sound in return. He just nuzzled himself closer.
They were both in such close proximity that Reject could feel his own breath being redirected into his face. It was warm, secure—nothing less he could've asked for. He almost felt guilty, soaking in the attention, despite how much he wanted it.
"I don't want to be alone."
Z only nodded in reply, and let out a breath he'd (apparently) been holding.
"I know."
...
"Can I sleep with you tonight?"
Reject regret asking that the moment he did, but at that point, the words had just...slipped, he supposed. He'd never felt like this before. Never so lazy or so comfortable or...or so willing to let go of himself.
"...yeah. Yeah you can."
A small smile formed on his face, for one of the first times in a while, and he could only feel... happier.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
Z pulled back, just far enough to meet his eyes. He had a warm smile spread over his face, and despite his red eyes, they were still so charming. He'd leaned in just a little bit closer, licking his lips and pressing his forehead against Reject's.
"Are you gonna be okay?" He murmured, the breath barely escaping from his throat.
"...yeah. Yeah I will be."
With a surprising lack of hesitance, Z had closed the gap between their faces and pressed a soft, gentle kiss to his mouth. It lingered, for only a few seconds, but it said so little and carried so much regardless. Reject almost wanted to try for one more, yet thought against it.
"Okay. I will be too, then."