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Etho presses his back against the cold bars, getting as far as he possibly can from the door of the cage and the horrible cold hands that come from there. He's hunched low in what is functionally a kennel, ears flat against his head and shoulders still bumping against the wire top. His arms don't even need to be extended all the way to reach either side, fingers clenching the bars with knuckles white from how tightly Etho holds on.
Etho hisses and gekkers and screams wildly, no words spoken, anything to keep them back. Some days he hardly wants to be touched by the people who love him, the people he trusts. There's a reason Etho covers so much bare skin, particularly in face, and especially in public, because touch can be a burn.
When the cage opens next, Etho is prepared to fight, but the terror of the hands, hands, hands keeps them from considering lunging forward, trying to dart out for freedom. That's a joke in itself, freedom, and Etho knows it. Those hands do not make freedom. Freedom is Hermitcraft's endless horizon, and a blue sky a million clicks away. That's a best guess, anyways.
But though Etho won't come to them, it seems they came prepared. A long pole with a wire loop on the end is pushed inside, roving and wobbling in the air like a blind creature, searching. Etho snarls at it and it only draws closer as if it has ears. When it pushes into Etho's space he swings at it, but it only bobs back up towards him. Outside the cage is a rumble of laughter, words that Etho tries not to listen to. It's nothing helpful, nothing he wants to hear. He figured that out pretty quickly.
The pole jabs at him again, and Etho barely bats it back from catching him in the throat. Instead, redirected, it gets him in the stomach hard, making Etho cough and choke on his hair, doubling over even further.
That was what the hands were waiting for, it turns out, because as Etho bows his head in pain and tries to breathe again the wire loop of the catch pole gets him around the neck and yanks forward, cinching tight.
Etho grabs for his throat, instinctively trying to free his airway while he's hauled forward on his front, kicking wildly. His thrashings rattle the cage, sending metallic screeches through the room. The laughter of the hands only intensifies. Etho has no way to scream, can only writhe on the tile floor and weaken as he loses air.
Etho's whole awareness becomes the hands, cold and latex-sticky, pulling his head back and clamping a muzzle around his face. He bit three of them the first time they touched him; they've been wary since. Etho has spilled a lot of blood. His shoulders scream as they painfully jack his arms behind them, tying them together locked from wrist to elbow. The catch pole is loosened enough that Etho won't suffocate, but isn't taken away, and God, how can he breath, hands on his face and arms and neck and in his guts and in his lungs leaving no space for anything else —
Ice, pushed directly into his carotid, and Etho is nothing but an empty body compressed onto a flat table as cold as the hands themselves, face down with the hands in his hair down to the roots and making the metal-on-metal scream where the muzzle meets the exam table. It never goes black; Etho doesn't get that luxury. Even when they bother blindfolding his good eye after they flip him over and secure him to the table, every flicker against his nerves a cacophony of sensation that Etho cannot stop being fucking aware of. It may not be sight, but God, Etho can't pass out, they never let him, no matter how much it hurts.
More hands, hands, and Etho fights in the binds even if it all it leads to is more bruises. His pale skin is mottled with them from head to toe, from yellow to purple to black. Glove-sticky hands shove sticky nodes all over, ripping at hair and fur to make space for their hold, wires curling and crossing and swallowing Etho up in their web.
They adjust the muzzle only long enough to shove a sickly-tasting piece of plastic between his teeth. Can't have him biting off his own tongue, might bleed too much. Annoying to clean up.
The electrical signals eventually begin, and Etho seizes in the hold of the wires and straps and hands, instruments wired to him scribbling wild readings up and down. What they want to find are things beyond both their understanding and Etho's. The poetry of the university resists being written out in charts and thesis notes and the attempts to do so rip circuits to shred and explode bulbs and make accidents at a strange statistical frequency that ensures it will all burn down eventually. But it's not fast enough, not for Etho, who in moments between lucidity and delusional begs for it to finally be over. The universe loves him and he knows it, so why does the suffering never stop? Etho knows better than most that things you love can hurt you, in the end.
The universe is silent when it is over, if only to give Etho peace. It does not need to sing for its love to be known. The research burns, and so does the lab.
Etho is nearly comatose for the better part of two weeks and when he wakes up it takes two more before he can remember who he is, where he is, and what's going on for longer than a few hours at a time, and he spends most of that time huddled in various corners, beneath the bed, in a bathtub, wrapped in a sheet and shaking and screaming wordlessly at anyone who even thinks about touching him. Cleo is the person who can understand his signing the best, trembling so hard it's nigh impossible for anyone else to get.
"No touching." Cleo agrees as Etho signs it over and over and over. "No touching. We get it."
What she means is no touching when we can help it, because there are things they can't help. They can't help that Etho is dehydrated and malnourished and the first time they have to force him to let the IV be changed they put him under. He climbs out the window after he wakes up and Beef and Joel track him six miles before they can convince him to come back to rest. After that, it doesn't get easier, but Etho is awake. They tell him what's going to happen. He nods. He screams and fights while the hands are on him and he has to be alone afterwards but he doesn't run again.
Every touch feels cold to him, no matter how much Etho rationally knows it isn't true. Cleo is the only one who's naturally cold, and she's cold dead, not cold — not cold hands, hands, hands. It doesn't help things. Etho is sitting in the bathtub one night — the water started hot but it's getting colder the longer he sits, but he feels trapped where he is. His hair is plastered to his face as he sits in the cooling water with his arms wrapped around his knees and eventually starts to shiver.
Beef came to sit down at some point, several feet away in the open doorway. He's not looking at Etho, just reading a book, being present but not pressuring. Etho stares at Beef, opens his mouth, but he hasn't had a voice for words in months.
Etho lifts a shaky hand out of the water and smacks the side of the tub several times. Beef lifts his head. Etho smacks the porcelain again, struggling to form what his mind is slowly working toward.
"Yeah?" Beef ask softly, closing his book and setting it aside.
Etho gestures come here.
Beef shifts forward, levering himself first onto his knees and then onto his feet, stepping over the threshold fully and into the bathroom. "Do you want me to pass you your towel?"
Etho shakes his head. He can't chicken out now, he has to — he has to … come here, Etho signs again.
Beef tilts his head, clearly unsure, but comes closer until he's at the side of the tub. "What's up?"
Etho swallows, then extends both his arms up to Beef.
For a long moment, both of them are still, quiet, looking at each other like they haven't known each other for years, enough to have the pattern of each other's Lifemarks virtually burned into their brains.
Beef reaches to take one of Etho's hands, slowly, carefully, and for the first time in so long Etho feels that Beef is warm. Etho blinks rapidly, trying to convince himself that his face is wet from the bath, not from anything else. Beef kneels down at the tub's edge, bringing Etho's hand closer and closer, laying it again his cheek. Etho could sob; Beef is warm and he is real and Etho is alive. He grasps at Beef's shoulder and pushes himself onto his heels, splashing cold water over the edge of the tub as he throws himself against Beef.
"I've got you, I've got you," Beef murmurs as he hugs Etho back, sweeping up a towel within arm's reach to drape over Etho's back. Etho chokes a little bit on his breath and buries his face into Beef's warm, warm shoulder, smells his familiar scent.
Beef walks slowly, his steps rocking back and forth soothingly as he goes, never putting even an inch of space between himself and Etho. He brings them to bed and never lays Etho down, holding him effortlessly as he lays them down and pulls the quilts over them, keeping in their skin-to-skin warmth.
"I've got you, kit." Beef whispers, and Etho nods furiously against Beef's shoulder so Beef knows this is good, good, good. Good and warm and familiar and safe. "Bite me if you need me to let go."
A laugh breaks out of Etho's chest, a sound he'd almost forgotten he could make. He curls closer to Beef, if such a thing is possible, and there is no way to see where one of them ends and the other begins.