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Ze wants to make some sort of quip, smooth all the jagged edges over, but he doesn’t have the energy to. For the first time, Regect takes care of everything – the house is a mess, but he clears out a space for their beds, he makes food and puts Moe to sleep, a difficult task even on a normal day. Ze stays in the one spot. Regect comes over once to hand him his food, but then leaves him to it.
Ze doesn’t know what to do – there's an awful lot inside but it feels like there’s a barrier around it. Breaking down the house hadn’t made him feel better, it had taken the anger away but that had just left him with a chasm in its place, an emptiness he couldn’t account for.
He still feels like there’s eyes on him, tracking him, autopsying his movements, so he stays perfectly still. It can’t see him if he doesn’t move, pretends that he’s dead.
“I gave you that to eat,” Regect says, coming up to him.
Ze does nothing.
“Hey, can you hear me, man? You, uh, good?” There’s a softness in his voice Ze’s unaccustomed to, a lack of their usual violence fuelled banter.
Slowly, Ze nods, eyes still glazed over.
“You, uh, don’t look it, really. Can you, uh, try eating something? Just a bit... No? Okay, that’s. Yeah, no, that’s fine – you can, you can eat in the morning. Maybe lets go to bed, now, yeah? Ze?”
He doesn’t remember dreaming in the other place – in the hole – he must have slept, but he doesn’t remember dreaming. Wonders how a dream in a hallucination would work.
“Ze?” Hands – claws, more like it, from the feeling of them – land on his knees and he stares at them, the one he can see, at least. “Hey, dude, you’re kinda worrying me right now. So, uh, maybe don’t?”
It’s that, of all things, that snaps him out of it, at least partially.
He blinks, slowly, trying to remember who he is and in what shape he exists, “Don’t have to worry,” he murmurs, slurring the words.
“See, that’s not, uh, gonna make me worry any less. But – I'm glad you’re talking, that’s, uh, that’s always good. Usually don’t shut up, right?”
He hums, finally noticing the soup in his hand, then his nose twitches as the smell comes to him, “What kind of soup is this?”
Regect jumps, “Uh, mushroom soup? I don’t know, it was in the fridge.”
“Is this – is this the one I made before – before?”
“Oh. You know what, yeah, yeah, it could be. I’ll, uh, take that from you – know you got a weaker stomach than Moe.”
“Fuck you,” he mutters, no heat behind it.
The bowl is taken from him, Regect disappearing – for the moment he’s gone, Ze wonders if this is all true, how can he be sure that this is the real world, how can he be sure that he’s not still in the Hole? - but then Regect returns, butchering some stupid song and all feels right again.
“Okay, we’ll come back to food later. Sleep? Or, uh, do you maybe wanna, like, talk about it?”
Ze bristles, feels his hackles raise instinctively at even the mention of emotion, but he deflates when Regect comes close enough to feel the warmth in his limbs.
“It wasn’t - I didn’t mean to,” comes in faltering, “There was – there's a hole, outside. I don’t - I was in there.”
“For the whole fifteen days?”
He nods, then slouches forwards, head leaning against his hands. Hesitantly, a claw comes up to rest on his head. In a moment of weakness, he leans into it, lets himself chase the comfort he’s been wanting ever since he woke up still in that place.
“Uh, alright, yeah, no, sure. This-”
“Regect?”
“Yeah - yeah, what do you need?”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, I can do that.”
The silence lasts five minutes. Halfway through, the claws start moving through his hair. It hurts slightly – the nails catching in the tangles – but its a nice kind of hurt that keeps him grounded in the moment. With every passing second, Ze leans more into Regect, head slotted into the entity’s shoulder.
“Okay, my legs are starting to hurt.”
Ze groans, “Shut up.”
But Regect is already pulling back, “Okay. We should probably get to bed now.”
Ze gives himself a moment, then draws all the way back. He stands, trudging over to his bed, “Yeah, no, sure. Right. Good night.”
He feels dirty, but the comfort of the bed allures him and he collapses onto it. He’s too tired to pull the covers over him so he resigns himself to freezing for the night for all of a second before something is thrown at him.
“What the fuck!? Regect!?”
The entity just snuggles closer on top of him, and he feels arms – and maybe also a tail? - wrap around him.
“Get the fuck off of me!”
“Nope,” Regect says, sounding way too gleeful, “I need to get my beauty sleep.”
“Do you even sleep, bro!?”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m so comfy now, I don’t want to move.”
Ze wants to protest more, but there’s a sense of safety here, under Regect, warmth seeking in, trapped in their own little place. Moe’s next to them, honk-snoring quietly. It’s quiet – but in the distance he can hear animals, the trees, the soft chime of the wind – but it’s nice.
Ze relaxes, slowly at first, then all at once. Regect droops further into his space, to the point where they’re almost completely intertwined. He can feel how his breaths move Regect – up and down, up and down – a tangible force that he exerts on the world. You’re here, it tells him, you’re real.
“Regect?” Ze asks, voice drowning in drowsiness.
“Yeah?” Comes the whispered reply.
“...Thank you.”
Ze doesn’t hear the answer, but he feels the limbs around him tighten, feels something that could be Regect’s face snuggle in closer. He falls asleep like that, next to the two people he knows best in this world and who – despite how shit he sometimes acted – worried about him. The bed is soft, and the company is warm, and Ze drifts of into an easy sleep for the first time in fifteen days.