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The Sun was no longer young as it hung in the middle of the air that day. The clouds have acquiesced to its command: to move, move, move, further, further, further, as it traipsed across the sky. With the faintest touch brought a scorching ache to beseech the entity to take cover under that of a canopy. When he denied the request, its mark only seemed to burn hotter, wringing beads of sweat from his body and onto his skin.
The untrimmed grass of faraway terrain burned against his calves; he could've sworn he occasionally felt a specter of a touch brush against his second right arm as it dangled, wallowing in its negligence. The lengths of it seemed to fluctuate the further he and Ze walked in the clearing, but it was stupid to fixate on such a meticulous thing. It wasn't like he could dictate the heights of every individual grass blade—he could only manipulate the environment like that if there had been some sort of error in its code.
Regect should probably check for that, actually. It wasn't uncommon that viruses just happened to sprout out in forgotten chunks of Ze's world. Thoughtlessly, he reached his left hand out into the air and flicked his wrist. Every block of grass in sight had been trimmed without any lag. Huh. It must've been just formulating.
"Fuck was that?" Ze sneered, raising his fingers to his left cheek. He mindlessly flicked something the entity couldn't have seen if he tried from his skin and tilted the sunhat atop his head a few degrees right.
"I was removing some—like—some extra assets. I don't think they weren't meant to be there." Regect answered, crossing his one pair of arms and leaving the third one to snake into his front right pocket. Their trek back to the house had been intimidated into silence after his response, trailed by an oddly comfortable aura of things gone unsaid.
Or, things previously gone unsaid. Regect strained his ears to tune into a perplexed Ze's breathless muttering. When his head tilted in the player's direction, it was as if he sensed it, because he'd begun to speak up as his words latched onto Regect's interest. "Your use of your powers is stupid."
Regect didn't really pay any mind to this comment, knowing the jab at a reaction was empty-minded and probably just some intrinsic soliloquy. He only snickered, shaking his head and letting his crossed arms down to release tension. "What? You're stupid. I use my powers fine, excuse you."
"No, you don't." Ze spat back, and the entity could tell that his shoulders and jaw were unusually taut. He seemed to evade eye contact that happened to be visibly impossible to be met as he expanded on his argument. "You forget that you can—you can fly and teleport, and when you remember, you do at the most inconvenient times. You can spawn literally anything you want but you never do it unless you're trying to piss me off—oh, and not to mention that you can access the code to literally—literally everything but you never fix anything but shit that's meaningless."
"Okay, sure, whatever, but I still use my powers," The entity rolled his eyes—even if there was no point, as Ze couldn't see it happen—and nudged the other in the bicep, "it's not like I always use them for bad purposes either. I prevent you from lagging all the time, you're just never there to witness its effect. I'm a hero, I tell you, I'm like your babysitt—"
"—I never commented on you not using your powers, I was criticizing your use of them." Ze drove his elbow into open air, missing Regect's arm by a distance that seemed equivalent to a lightyear. He didn't comment on his misaimed attempt at a physical blow and instead decided to kick at the ankle monitor coiled around the entity's left ankle.
"What the hell—man—what's that about?" Regect scowled, angling himself toward Ze in a futile attempt to parry the hit. The action prompted Ze to follow suit, turning to the entity as he fired an insult at the other. "It's stupid that you need a tracking device on you at all times. Just goes to prove how dumb you are."
Sure, maybe Regect was a little illiterate, but that was beside the point. It wasn't like that did much to taint his record of acts of intelligence, he just... had certain talents, was all. He was also half-certain that the thing stopped working several years ago, but some deity programmed the thing to be untouchable. If he ever tried to take it apart, his head would be blown clean off.
"What do you expect‽ I have a fucking job, dude, I can't slack off—"
"What job‽" Ze blurted out, his eyebrows drawing taut as his expression contorted with his sardonic tease. "You're a fucking reject—you're named after the concept! You can't scare people for shit! You're not even aggressive or anything, you're just plain annoying!"
You can't scare people.
Sure, maybe he lacked in the intimidation aspect, but he could still scare people. Especially Ze, of all people. The dude just kept going on and on about how shit Regect was at his job but Ze didn't even have any experience in it. It's a choice that Regect makes, whether to try or not. Every day. It was that much more of a pleasant surprise when Ze shrieked as Regect lunged for him, pouncing directly onto his chest and knocking whatever breath he'd taken in directly out of his lungs.
The entity kept his grip on the other tenacious as they were flung a few blocks and were rolling out into the dirt, across terrain they'd already walked. He could barely hear Ze's scream over the wind as they went rolling off of a steep slope a few chunks behind where they had once stood, with the player taking the brunt of the impact. The tangle of their shared limbs skidded across the grass, their skins almost burning, the friction of the dry dirt not helping the situation.
It took a surprisingly long time for them to reach a standstill. Ze was still heaving, greedily taking in breaths as he was rolled onto his back one final time. Regect, however, wasn't having it, and he wasted no time in flipping over to rush Ze once more. His jagged fingers snaked around Ze's throat, and his third hand had placed its use in pinning one of the player's wrists to the floor as he fully adjusted his straddle to lean the most uncomfortable weight it could onto Ze.
"Hey, wh—what—" He choked, the sound of his voice breathless, somehow directly meeting Regect's gaze. His right eye had squinted against the glare of sunlight as he angled his head and neck to the left to evade contact fruitlessly. His expression twisted into that of a snarl, and his hands wrapped around Regect's wrists in an attempt to pry them off. You could see the unmistakable struggle in Ze's counterattack, beads of sweat running off of his forehead and onto the earthen floor.
Regect hadn't noticed that his face had been faintly tinted red until then. He looked so pretty when he was hurting, tears threatening his eyes. Distress looked good on his gorgeous face. It brought a smile to Regect's own.
The entity hadn't been so up close to him before. Not up until this moment. His eyes were of interest... so was his mouth. For the amount of shit he talked, his lips were clean. Almost a little tantalizing, paired alongside the sight of him so sweaty and worked up. He was probably kissable.
God, Regect really shouldn't be thinking about kissing his roommate right now... but it was really tempting. He could've just done it right then and there, it'd be over with quick. Probably. Actually, he was surprised Ze had gone so long without passing out of air deprivation. He... um... could probably seal his fate a little quicker that way.
In a swift motion (swift, so he could think less about how much he'd regret it later), Regect slipped his fingers from Ze's neck to the back of his head and drove a rough kiss to his lips. The player hadn't been unresponsive for long, noting how he had tried to sit up—Regect, forgetting the purpose of pinning him down in the first place, let him—and began to press back with just as much fervor. At that, the entity's second right hand had found its spot on Ze's hip, and Ze's found Regect's neck.
The sound of their mouths leaving one another's then remolding kind of made him feel a little drunk on passion.
Regect had forgotten the purpose of the amount of being so rough with the kiss. When Ze forced distance between them and fell onto his back again, the entity didn't put any effort into protesting. They only silently stared at each-other, despite the awkward positioning they were in.
His lips were still parted, his eyes dazed, the bandana finally not in the way. Strands of hair stuck to his flushed cheeks.
Ze was awfully beautiful in this light. Or... he was in general. He never really failed in the looks department. Maybe emotional management or self care. That was... okay. Regect didn't mind. It wasn't like he was any better.
Wordlessly, their faces met again, this time with a lot more patience than before, and Regect couldn't smother the smile from his lips.
When Ze finally croaked out a few words, they were a contribution to a thoughtless insult that came through bruised lips and a glazed-over mindset. "This is stupid."
With only a smile to offer, Regect couldn't restrain himself from replying back. "You started this over my powers, by the way."
"You still use them wrong."
"At least I have some."
"...touché."
There were a few moments of voluntary silence as they took a second to catch their breaths. Regect had a dumb thought as he was.
"You regret starting anything?"
"No. No, not really."
And with that, they joined in an innocently pleasant close-mouthed waltz on the dirt, sharing breathing space and sweat and merging together their nerves. It was a pleasant conglomerate, even in the midst of sweltering thermal inertia, directly underneath the Sun's gaze. The afternoon sucked if you were looking for good weather.
That was their relationship was, though. Rough, hot, uncomfortable, but perseverant nonetheless—and, honestly, he wouldn't have it any other way.