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“What the fuck happened to our house?! Wh—”
Ze glanced up from where he was sprawled amongst the wreckage of their home.
Or, well, what used to be their home. Regect couldn’t do anything but look at him in equal parts furious bafflement and abject relief. He couldn’t tell what the expression on Ze’s face meant in return.
Whatever Ze was going to say in response was cut off by Moe, who was clearly delighted. She came up to him and crouched by his body, patting his head, and honked questioningly.
“Hey, h-hey Moe. Hi. Hey.”
Regect couldn’t help his next comment. “Dude, you look, uh, fuckin’ terrible.”
Ze laughed. It wasn’t a humorous one. A bead of blood welled from the split skin of his knuckles and splattered on the ground.
After an eternity of inflicting psychological scars, Ze had introduced Regect to the hedonistic delight of physical wounds. There was something intoxicatingly simple to a punch thrown or an injury dealt. People could heal from most wounds, especially in Minecraft. Death wasn’t something permanent.
Regect and Ze had exchanged many blows before. Fists, guns, explosives. One time Ze had pushed him down a flight of stairs and Regect had thrown him through a window in return. They both stopped fighting inside the house after Moe caught Ze chasing Regect with a kitchen fork and honked at them for ten minutes straight. Good times.
But this time — Ze sitting in the wreckage of their living room, knuckles bloody and a dead look in his eyes — was different. Regect couldn’t place the reason why.
“Okay, yeah, good talk.” Regect crouched down next to Moe and reached out for Ze’s arm.
“Wh—what the fuck are you doing.” Ze’s voice was flat.
Regect paused. “Um, we’re gonna clean you up, asshole.”
“You’re going to — what?” Ze looked back and forth between Regect and Moe, quickly. Moe honked. He blinked, apparently recollecting himself. “Uh. Okay? Okay, I guess, yeah. Yeah.”
Ze’s hands weren’t anything special, really. Bony and angular like the rest of him. He did have a lot of fucking splinters, probably from beating the shit out of their floor. Regect kept his grip light, almost absurdly worried about injuring him more.
He started the arduous process of picking out the debris from Ze’s knuckles. His fingers were shaking minutely from how slowly he moved them, trying to wedge the sharp edges of his nails underneath pieces of dirt and pry them out from Ze’s skin.
More like usual, Ze started up a steady stream of complaints as soon as Regect began his task. “Dude you’re actually — you’re fuckin’ doing it wron—ouch!”
“You’re such a crybaby, do you want me to get — to get, um, tweezers—?”
“—um, actually yeah, your nails are fuckin’ gross, when was the last time you even — even cut them or washed your hands actually, fuck—”
“—fuck you, I wash my hands! You’re the one that smells gross—”
“—what the hell, you can’t even smell, with what nose—”
“—which you should get checked out for too, do you want me to take you to the, uh, the clinic? The hospital? The emergency room?”
“Actually yeah, that would be better than whatever this is—”
“WELL, THERE ISN’T ONE! Now shut up and let me do this!”
The sight of Ze’s split knuckles was odd to see when Regect wasn’t the punching bag. In a sick, probably fucked-up way, he liked being able to place the spots on Ze’s body where he had made his mark. These wounds, the ones on Ze’s knuckles, were new to Regect. He picked his way around the split skin with a caution that surprised himself.
Damn, Ze had really beat the shit out of their living room. And walls. And the rest of their house.
He eased a piece of glass from their window out from between Ze’s second and third knuckle and Ze squeaked.
Regect paused. “Um.”
“Shut up! Shut—shut up. I’m fine. Keep going.”
“If you’re whining at this—”
“—I’m not fucking whining, you’re the one that’s—”
Moe honked.
“—you’re gonna hate when we have to clean the wounds—”
“—the awful nurse, wait, clean them—?”
Moe honked again. Regect sprayed antiseptic right on the scraped skin of Ze’s knuckles.
Ze made a sound between a hiss and a shriek, almost wrenching his hand out of Regect’s grasp. His bony wrist pushed against Regect’s fingers, fingers flexing involuntarily. Regect had to boost his strength preemptively to keep him in place. “Dude! What the actual fuck!”
“Next one,” Regect said, and released Ze’s hand unceremoniously.
“You’re a psychopath,” Ze said, glowering, but gave Regect his other hand without more fuss.
This time, he seemed less fidgety, flexing the fingers of his cleaned hand while Regect worked on the other one. He really must’ve been out of it, since he hadn’t seen Regect manifest the antiseptic spray out of thin air.
He wondered who installed a hospital mod. It definitely wasn’t him.
“Regect.” Ze’s voice was so soft Regect thought he misheard at first. When he glanced up from his task, Ze’s eyes were fixed on him, exhausted but alert. “Why are you doing this?”
Regect ignored him and went back to his task of cleaning Ze’s wounds. He wasn’t in the business of answering stupid questions.
“Got any bandages, Moe?”
She honked in affirmation and started pulling a thin strip of cloth out of her pocket. It stretched on and on and on until it started pooling by her feet. Regect and Ze just watched her, both too taken aback to comment.
Ze cleared his throat. “Um. That’s—that’s good, Moe, thanks.”
Moe honked again, pleased. She offered the edge of the bandage to Ze, who held it gingerly in his bruised hand. Regect watched him think through the logistics of wrapping the bandage around his own hand before grudgingly arriving at the obvious conclusion.
“Don’t fuck it up,” Ze warned before handing the bandage end to Regect.
“It’s—it’s a fucking bandage, how would I mess it up?” Regect snapped back.
He turned Ze’s hand over in his palm. The first knuckle of Ze’s index finger nudged up right against the soft spot in his wrist, where his pulse beat. He could distantly hear Ze spluttering something in response, agitated and antagonistic. His heartbeat jumped.
“—wash your hands,” he heard.
“You’re not worried about Moe’s pockets, just—just my hands?” Regect had seen Moe stuff an entire snake in them once. Her manipulation of hammerspace was much more refined than Regect’s own. He wasn’t jealous, definitely not.
“They’re gross.” It was a weak retort and both of them knew it.
Regect brushed some dust off the end of the bandage and started wrapping it around Ze’s palm, tucking the end underneath his thumb so that it didn’t unravel.
He glanced around to see if Moe was still around. She wasn’t. Probably sensed that Regect had something he wanted to say. In many ways Moe was the best of the three of them.
Probably all the ways, if he was honest.
Under, over. The bruised skin of Ze’s knuckles was slowly starting to disappear underneath the clean white of the cloth.
“Not too tight, jeez—”
Regect yanked the bandage, just to piss Ze off.
Ze hissed and curled in on himself, hand twitching in Regect’s grasp like he was about to pull away. But he didn’t. Regect felt a pulse of guilty relief.
“Don’t do that again,” he heard himself say. Out of his control. Damn it.
Ze blinked. “What, um — the house?”
“No! Well, actually, yes. The house too. But that’s not important, we can replace that. There’s, like, a million houses. It doesn’t matter.”
“A — a million.” Ze’s voice was flat. “Sure.”
“That’s not what I meant!” Regect snapped. He’d finished wrapping one of Ze’s hands and started on the next one, reaching for it in a way that looked pathetically needy. “Don’t fucking leave, man. Don’t leave us like that again.”
Ze was quiet. Regect shifted his hand in his grasp, bumping up against his knuckles. His heartbeat echoed in his ears.
“Okay,” Ze said finally. His voice was less flat but still slightly toneless. Regect couldn’t tell what he was thinking again. “Yeah. Okay.”
We were looking for you, Regect wanted to say. Day and night. What the hell happened?
The bandage that Moe had given him had run out. Regect tucked the end underneath the wrap, feeling oddly unsettled. He didn’t let go of Ze’s hand.
Ze’s gaze drifted down to where his hand was still resting in Regect’s grasp. His thumb unconsciously was pressing down into Ze’s knuckles, right over his wound. Probably putting too much pressure, like always.
But Ze hadn’t flinched away yet. Maybe he’d missed Regect as much as he’d missed Ze.
“Sorry,” Ze said. His voice was slightly strained, like his throat was tight. “About the house, obviously, no—nothing else.”
“Asshole,” Regect said, probably a little too fondly.
Ze snorted. Then he released a little, shuddering sigh and slumped over, putting his weight on Regect’s shoulder and arm.
The bone of his shoulder was digging into Regect’s forearm. The wispy ends of his hair were tickling Regect’s skin. Regect was still holding onto Ze’s hand, so his wrist was also at an odd angle. It, objectively, was an uncomfortable position.
He didn’t want to move a single muscle.
Regect felt Ze shift as he breathed, the warm line of his body pressed up against Regect’s side. The angle that Ze’s neck was at must’ve been killing him. He also didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to move.
Regect wondered what Ze smelled like. If he had a nose, he probably would be able to tell by now. Smell wasn’t really transferable through a laptop, not like sight and debatably hearing. Touch was even more fickle. He suddenly, foolishly hoped that the pressure of his body against Ze’s was worth having to feel splinters dug out of your skin.
In the distance, he heard Moe honk.
Ze roused, lifting his eyes to peer up at Regect. Regect, despite not having eyes, met his gaze.
And then Ze punched him in the shoulder.
They both yelped, Regect from the blow and Ze from landing a hit with a bruised fist. “What the hell! You idiot, I just spent—”
Ze was already rising to his feet. “Come—come on, let’s help Moe—”
“—like ten minutes wrapping up your stupid hands—”
“—rebuild the house.”
Regect paused. “You, um. You still want to live here?”
“Of course,” Ze said with a sincerity that surprised Regect. Then he seemed to remember himself and added, “Idiot.”
“Okay. Okay.” Regect felt like he could fly. Wait, he could. That was probably helpful. “I’m in charge of the interior, um, design this time. Your vision sucks ass.”
“My—my vision has nothing to — you sent me to IKEA without warning me it was a, uh, fuckin’ pocket dimension—!”
Right, okay, time to fly.
Regect took off to the sound of Ze shouting at him. He dodged the ensuing gunshot and nearly crashed into the flock of birds that was startled by the noise. This was familiar again.
Maybe everything was going to be all right.