Chapter Text
Sighing at air, Ze fruitlessly attempted to block out the cacophony of noise erupting from the new, not-so inconspicuously placed doorway at the back corner of the living room. A string of curses from a disembodied voice followed a sudden, particularly loud bang, and Ze contemplated for a minute if he should check on what his half-brained-and-bodied roommate was doing. The plushness of the couch cushions he was currently splayed out on won the fight, however, and he remained abeyant to the racket.
Regect was always building things. Castles, Ferris wheels; anything that captured his attention long enough to have its foundation built out, really. They would rise from thin air in a fraction of a blink; although the structures hardly lasted longer than a day, on account of their strange nature to spontaneously combust or catch fire.
The phenomenon vaguely reminded Ze of a standout character from a childhood show of his, whose eclectic creations always seemed to inexplicably burst into flame before they could see more than twenty minutes of life.
Whatever Regect was preoccupied doing in there, he probably had it under control.
"Ze, Moe," Regect called, "Come check out what I just made."
From his lax position on the couch, Ze let out a long groan.
"I literally just got comfortable. I am not getting up."
"Oh come on, you big baby. It's cool, I promise." The muffle in Regect's voice lessened as he entered room.
Ze tossed his head back against the couch cushion, coming face to not-face with Regect, who was now standing over him. He gave the entity the best bored stare he could, silently willing his roommate to leave him be. Regect was annoyingly persistent, however.
"It'll literally take five minutes, then you can go back to being a fat chud on the couch. C'mon," He reached over the back of the sofa and took hold of Ze's empty hand. He tugged on the limb like an obstinate child who couldn't take no for an answer.
Ze released another string of complaints in response, sinking his weight as much as possible into the cushions, much to Regect's abhorrence. They quickly devolved into an argument after that, bickering over the matter of Ze's current laziness, until an idiosyncratic honk broke their slew of traded insults.
"Moe!" Regect shouted, relieved, "I was just calling you down to show you my newest masterpiece. It's in the back room here." The entity gestured behind him with a free hand.
Another honk followed, ending a pitch higher than how it started. She gave the other two a puzzled at their current position on the couch; Ze looking up at Regect as he hung over him, their faces inches from each other.
The entity scrambled to stand up straight but didn't drop his roommate's hand.
"Ze is being a lazy asshole and won't get off the couch. I'm trying to show him what I built for all of us, but I guess chud-maxxing is more important than my grueling labor," Regect's voice came dramatic and varying in its inflection, loaded with a false hurt at Ze's lack of care.
"Damn right it's more important. This couch dent isn't gonna make itself."
Another round of squabbling nearly started up before the sharp tone of Moe's clown horn cut them both off. The two looked over at her, Ze having the decency to at least give her a slightly apologetic look. Her hard stare shifted between the player and entity, perfectly communicating her words without even needing the help of her horn.
"Yeah, alright. Sorry, Moe," Ze sat up from being engulfed by the plush of the sofa, "I guess we can go see this fuckwad's build—only because you asked, though." The man quickly corrected himself.
The telltale sound of Regect scoffing from behind him cracked a smile on his lips as he pulled himself to his feet. He stretched briefly, arms reaching upwards and lifting the hem of his hoodie above his waist, giving a glimpse of his midriff.
"Alright," He started, letting his arms fall back to their sides. "Let's see this 'masterpiece."
Ze wasn't sure what he had been expecting. Maybe a giant carousel with horses that were actually alive, or a whole other mansion built below the foundation of their current house. Both of those seemed like options that were fairly up Regect's alley.
"Ta-daa~" He shook his hands with a flourish at the large room.
But a swimming pool? It felt just a tad out of character for the dark entity. Honestly, it looked like something out of a five star resort.
Lime-washed walls stretched upwards into ornate crown moulding before arching into a white-painted ceiling. Cushiony lounge chairs were placed sporadically throughout the space, each one having its own towel folded over the headrest. Floor-to-ceiling windows covered the entire right wall with weight-bearing pillars being the only break in the large panes of glass. Coffered lights were set into the ceiling in a large rectangle, illuminating the space with a warm amber light. A few potted plants sat along the far wall, next to a single door—Ze assumed it was a changing room of sorts—that brought color into the space aside from the main contrast of blue and white.
Humid air from the temperature-controlled room clung to his cheeks and brought a rosy hue to the surfaceIt didn't completely wipe away the vaguely eerie feeling coating the whole area, however.
"I built us a pool! So we could all swim together and, like, have water balloon fights without destroying the rest of the house's furniture—y'know? It's got a bunch of cool stuff like a heater, crazy ambient lighting.."
Ze found himself unable to focus on Regect's impromptu presentation. His mind, instead, fixated on the unspecified depth of the body of water in the center of the room. He swallowed a hard gulp, the saliva leaving an all-too-chlorine like taste at the back of his throat.
The water sloshed deafeningly against the concrete of the pool's basin, echoing up against the empty walls, and reverberating deep in his skull, shaking his braver side into meekness.
"—even listening? I'm trying to tell you how awesome I am for building this and— ZE!" Regect shouted.
"Wha-huh?" Ze blabbered, eyes struggling for purchase as they were ripped away from the water. They eventually settled on the black chest covering most of his primary field of vision.
Regect was standing right in front of him. His sights moved upwards. The entity's singular eye was narrow in a scrutinizing gaze.
"Woah, hey—personal space much?" Ze grumped, placing a hand on Regect's chest—Jesus this guy was solidly built—to distance the two of them.
"What color did I say?" The entity asked in a deadpan, ignoring Ze's complaint.
"—What color—?"
"—What color did I literally just say we could turn all the lights in the pool to—"
"—I don't know, I didn't catch when you said that—"
"—Because you weren't listening to me, asshole—"
"—Dick, I so totally was—"
"—You were too busy ogling at the pool, you don't even care that I took all day to build, all by myself—"
"—I was not, I was just thinking about how it's gonna smell like wet dog all the time now when you go swimming—"
"—It called pheromone-maxing, and if I'm so smelly, then why don't you just do the honors of taking the first dip—"
"—Wait what—"
Before Ze could move, he was thrown over Regect's shoulder, huffing out an oomf when his ribs met solid shoulder muscle.
"Dick, put me down!"
Regect didn't answer, instead marching directly for the ledge of the pool. Ze's annoyed flails turned frantic as he realized the antagonist's plan.
"Hold on, we can talk about this! Regect, do not throw me in the pool I swear to GOD IF YOU DON'T PUT ME DOWN—!"
When Regect stopped at the pool's ledge, the player's thrashes turned into a deathly grip. No matter how the entity struggled, Ze refused to relinquish his hold and allow himself to be thrown in the water.
From an outside perspective, it probably looked like someone trying to wrangle a cat into a bath—so far, the cat was winning.
The entity made the fatal mistake of loosening his grip, just for a moment, to get a better hold on the player, and Ze took the chance to hoist himself further over Regect's shoulder. The newfound leverage let him land a solid kick to his half-bodied captor's stomach, who grunted and lost his grasp entirely, allowing the player to scramble the rest of the way over his shoulder and out of reach.
Ze landed on the concrete behind the entity with a thud, hissing pain between his teeth from the rough drop.
"Dude, what is your problem?" Regect huffed out in disbelief.
"My problem?" Ze echoed, incredulous, "You're fucking kidding me. You just tried to DROWN ME!"
"The water's not even, like, five feet deep! You could stand in it!"
The player stuttered for a response, "Well-well how was I supposed to know that?"
Regect pinched the bridge of his nose, "Dude, you're actually stupid. You're acting like the pool's gonna boil you alive the second you get in it."
"Well it's pretty tough to tell with you sometimes! For all I know you probably put acid in the water or—or you were gonna throw a toaster in after me!"
Regect looked like he was about to make another defense to his case but paused. His cat-like eye scanned over Ze's frame, noting the slight shake in his muscles and how his eyes kept flicking between himself and the water. The player's fingers were nearly clawed into the concrete as if it too would pick him up and throw him in the pool given the chance. At the angle Regect was looking at him from, it was hard to miss how uncharacteristically small he'd become at the threat of getting soaked.
The pieces fell together by themselves, and startled recognition flashed Regect like a beacon. He looked behind him, back over his handiwork, now seeing it in a state much less biased by pride than before.
"Wait, Ze. Are you scared of—?"
But the player was already gone by the time he turned back around.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
The door to Ze's room was slammed open, the player not even bothering to close it before flopping face first on his bed. He blindly fumbled for a pillow on his bed, squishing his face into the first one he grabbed and letting out a long, disconcerted groan.
Stupid Regect, stupid water, stupid him. Why did he have to be so afraid? And why did Regect have to keep pushing him? He could've just put Ze down when he asked him to and none of this would have happened.
A small sniffle came from his nose, drowned out by how closely he was clutching the pillow. He forced a deep breath into his lungs, slowing his heart rate from its earlier panic.
He was such a baby, crying over an idiot childhood fear.
Being so absorbed in his own self-loathing, Ze failed to notice the tall figure now standing in his doorframe.
Of course Moe would come to check on him; she was a sweetheart like that.
"I'm fine, Moe. Just—just pissed at Regect, that's all," He reassured her, cringing at the uneven tone in his voice.
Her pitch dropped at the end, eyebrows knitting in scrutiny.
"No—no, it's not that," He backtracked, sitting up on his bed. "I just—look. If I tell you something, will you promise to keep it just between us?"
An affirmative squeak came as response.
"Okay.." Ze sighed, getting into a cross-legged position to properly talk with the clown. He patted the open spot on his bed, gesturing her to sit next to him. She hopped over and plopped down on the plush surface.
He started slowly, searching for the words. "I've got—uhm, a thing with water. I never really learned how to swim properly; my dad never bothered to teach me beyond throwing me head-first into the deep-end of our community pool."
Moe's gaze turned soft, almost pitying. Ze pointedly avoided it.
"It, uh, didn't get much better when I was—when my dad sent me to boot camp. Some of the guys found out I wasn't a huge fan of water and gave me a hard time for it." He shuttered, thinking back on all the mornings he was woken up by a cold bucket of water being dumped on him.
Moe put a hand on Ze's shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"Yeah, thanks, Moe." Ze said, mumbling to himself, "Who knows, one of these days maybe I'll actually learn how to swim."
"Him? Moe, he'd never let me live it down if I came to him about that." Ze whined, "He already invents new crap for me to be insecure about almost weekly. Regect would laugh his shit off if I asked him for swimming lessons."
Ze couldn't help the way his tone soured at the end of his words. He wanted to be able to ask Regect for help—truly, he did, but he just couldn't bring himself to fully trust the entity with such a vulnerable part of himself like that. An odd poke in his chest came with the admittance that being so impuissant around Regect would only end in more ridicule.
In the past few months, something in his relationship with the entity had changed. They could talk more openly with each other, simple touches seemed to last longer and hold more meaning—even their arguments were less likely to end in violence now. Ze even found himself sneaking glances at Regect when the antagonist wasn't paying attention. It was hard to deny he didn't have a nice frame, for a seven foot being, that is.
Yet the gap between trusting Regect, and trusting him with something like this was a canyon's wide maw, threatening to swallow up any of the progress their friendship had made should Ze's pessimistic ruminations be proven true.
That gap had only grown wider today.
Something about that statement messed with Ze more than he'd like to admit.
"I—I'll think about it, 'kay?"
The single, satisfied honk eased his nerves on the conversation. Moe stood to leave, but hung in the doorframe once more to give Ze another reassuring honk. The player flashed a smile to the girl, and finally, she left Ze to his own devices. The moment she was out of sight, he collapsed against his bed once more, another weary sigh escaping his lips.
There was absolutely no way he was ever bringing any of that conversation up to Regect.
The last thing he needed was another reminder of his failures.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
Another handful of hours was spent wallowing in his own misery until Ze felt he wouldn't strangle Regect on site. Leaving his room and meandering down the staircase into the living room, the player found it to be barren of any life it had sported earlier that morning. Moe's hallmark honks were absent from the audio-scape of the area, and Regect was nowhere to be found—not that Ze minded at that moment. He grabbed a stray remote from the couch, flopping down on the cushions and turning on some cancelled reality TV show. Mind-numbing cable was exactly what he needed right now.
The rest of the day carried on quietly. No more mentions of the pool were had, and the sun slowly fell to the horizon, casting golden streaks through the branches of the tall conifer trees surrounding the house.
The three of them took their places at the dinner table with the usual fanfare—Regect pushing past Ze and claiming dibs on the largest serving and Ze following after the antagonist, spewing a string of curses.
"Ass-wipe! Moe literally makes extra every night for your chuddy ass," Ze bit at the dark entity.
"Yeah, and then your fat self hogs it all!" Regect countered.
Ze didn't need the entity to see the middle finger he was holding up for the message to get across.
Their dinner afterwards contained much less bickering, although that was mostly in part due to Regect's sullen quietness throughout it. The entity even excused himself from the table early, citing a headache as a reason to go to bed early. It was odd of him, but Ze brushed aside the asocial behavior simply as still being salty for when the player had snapped at him earlier.
He had begun to feel slightly bad about that, to be honest with himself. How was Regect supposed to know he had a fear no, an aversion to water? It's not like the opportunity to swim ever came up for their group, and that time where he shot up Captain Dice's whole crew could hardly count. The entire time he had stayed firmly on the decks, far away from the all-too-low railings of the ship.
That didn't mean Regect wasn't an ass, of course. The fuck-wad had gone straight to drowning attempts the second he found out the Ze wasn't giving him attention. Talk about a man-baby.
Whatever, business would be back to usual by the next morning; it always was.
At that thought, Ze rose from his seat at the table, a yawn accompanying his movements.
"I think I'm gonna go get ready for bed. Have a g'night, Moe."
Two curt honks in place of a vocal farewell followed him as he turned and left the kitchen, heading up the stairs to his room.
As he reached the door, Ze's eyes caught onto a small, white something taped to it. A note, no doubt written by Regect if the shoddy penmanship was anything to go by. He pulled the letter from the door, attempting to make sense of the scrawled and barely legible letters. It read:
"Meet me at the pool, 10PM. I promise I won't try to throw you in (again)."
Below the text, what looked like a kindergartner's interpretation of a fancy cursive 'R' was scrupulously placed. The garnish ignited a short chuckle from the player he quickly covered with a cough into his elbow. Ze would never let that Picasso-pieced dick know that his antics were sometimes—on a rare, rare occasion—just stupid enough to get him to smile. Maybe. He looked back down at the note with a false grimace.
What could Regect want with him at the pool, anyway? The chud couldn't just put that in the note?
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞
"Regect, why the hell did you want to meet me here so fucking late-?" Ze fell silent as his eyes landed on the entity's floating figure in the pool, faced down and unmoving.
"OH MY GOD," he skittered to the edge of the pool in a panicked move, "DID YOU ACTUALLY JUST FUCKING DROWN?"
The dark body continued to float limply, drifting around the surface of the water like a lone Cheerio left in a bowl of milk.
"Holy shit—okay, okay, I'm—I'm coming to get you. Keep floati—just, stay there."
He moved a hand to the guardrail of the stairs next to him. The metal was cold in comparison to the balmy humidity surrounding the rest of the room. A shaky foot extended down into the water; Ze froze when it finally made contact with the first step—much deeper in the water than he had originally prepared himself for. His whole foot had been submerged up to the top of his ankle.
How much deeper would the other steps put him? How soon would it be until he couldn't touch the bottom? Ze couldn't do this. He couldn't conquer his fear of getting in the water. He couldn't save Regect—
Wide eyes darted to the far end of the pool where the body remained adrift, still eerily inert against the reflective surface. Regect: helpless, stuck, possibly hurt or worse.
Ze would never forgive himself if he got out of the pool right now. He took a deep, trembling breath, steeling his nerves and forcing back all the thoughts clouding his mind darker than the unlit tincture of the water.
One step at a time, he slid into the water, sucking in a breath as it passed his waist. Not painfully cold, but certainly a few degrees chillier than the rest of the poolroom.
The water climbed higher as he waded in further. When it reached the base of his chest, he froze. His body reacted before his mind as his breathing quickened, lungs expanding and deflating in a panicked, uneven cadence. He made the mistake of looking down at the deep blue surrounding him. In the low light, he could hardly see lower than his stomach. There was no telling where the pool dropped of into abyss, no way to know what could be hiding below the ripples of liquid.
Oh fuck, he was in deep now. Both figuratively, and literally.
A few more steadying breaths, and screwing his eyes shut as if they were going to pop out of his head, gave Ze the clarity necessary on unsteady feet to the nearest wall. His knees nearly buckled underneath him when his fingers finally grasped the concrete ledge. Agonizingly slowly, he inched along the side of the pool and further into the deep water it held. Every two or so shuffles, he would glance behind him, just to check that Regect hadn't floated off to another part of the pool. To his own relief, the entity seemed unaffected by him disturbing the water, and remained buoyant some four feet from the wall.
It was another six shuffles until Ze was directly in line with Regect's body, the entity floating just out of reach from where Ze had his feet planted against the wall.
"It's just water.. just—stupid water.." Ze mumbled the reassurance to himself as he released one hand from its hold on the ledge. His eyes squeezed shut as he did so; the less water his senses had to experience, the better.
Now blind to the world around him, and with an even greater hesitation, Ze's legs cautiously kicked out into the open water. His heart pounded in his throat as he adjusted to a sudden lack of leverage. A short, panicked whine escaped his throat when his shoulders dipped underwater and getting his chin wet in the action. His free arm flailed in the water briefly, splashing blindly in hopes it would catch on a stray limb from where he knew Regect should have been in the deep end.
Desperate fingers merely splashed open water.
Where was Regect?
He retreated his outstretched arm back to the safety of the wall and cracked his eyes open. Regect's body was gone. Like he had never been in the pool at all. Not even a ripple on the water's surface gave any alibi that Ze hadn't been imagining his friend's body floating lifeless in the otherwise empty pool.
Empty, save for him. He was the idiot sitting in the deep end of an empty pool at god knows what hour of the evening, adrenaline ebbing away into exhaustion, which then flowed freely into a cruel sort of relief. Regect had never drowned. He had never been in the pool in the first place. Ze's fear must have gotten the better of him and conjured the image of his friend as some sadistic, self-loathing joke.
The entity was probably cozied up in bed by now, all none the wiser to the embarrassing display Ze had just put himself through. The player allowed his head to drop down, pressing against the cold stone of the ledge. It was clarifying, grounding.
Regect was far from dead.
After all, dead men can't talk.
"Late-night dip?"
His head shot up at a speed that could make even Usain Bolt turn green as he let out a shriek. Right next to him on the wall and dripping water onto the poolside, was Regect. A wry smirk and narrowed, teasing eyes were the only visible features on the antagonist's face. Forget Regect drowning, Ze could have strangled him on the spot for that face. If he didn't died from the shock of the moment first, of course.
He tried to think back to grounding methods he'd read about to slow his nearly-palpitating heartbeat, but all of them required some kind of connection to solid ground—his legs begrudgingly kicked through the water surrounding them, foreign weightlessness preventing any sort of mindfulness from coming into practice.
"Dude, what—what the fuck? I thought you drowned—like, actually fucking drowned!" He shouted in bafflement.
To his cornucopia of concern and ire, Regect only offered a sly, toothy grin, tailed by another smug remark:
"Did you really think I actually drowned? Oh my god, dude, I was pranking you—don't tell me you're that scared of water—"
The air of fear dispersed around Ze immediately, replaced by the physicality of his hands gripping at Regect's throat, primed to squeeze the life out of the damned entity.
A few choked gasps of shock broke from Regect's mostly constricted airway as Ze shouted insults of varying originality, accompanied by his own take on what a sailor's daily maximum of swearing would be. The entity's legs flailed out in the water beneath them to keep both individuals afloat while his hands tugged at the player's ironclad grip.
"Mother—fuckin'..busted ravioli lookin' fuck—"
Maybe there wasn't any guarantee strangling Regect would even accomplish anything; did the guy even have a trachea to crush? Man, though, did it feel good to give the antagonist a taste of his own medicine.
The accomplishment last for an all too short breath of about ten seconds, before Ze suddenly found himself floating in the middle of the deep end, hands having switched from throttling the life out of his roommate, to clutching onto his neck for dear life, the sounds of water splashing around them a siren's haunting call.
Locking narrowed eyes with the widened ones of his unwilling passenger, Regect took his chance to gloat:
"Not so tough now, huh—"
"—Regect bring me back—"
"—Nuh uh, not 'till you apologize for strangling me—"
"—The water's too deep here, I can't—"
"—Still waiting—"
"—Regect, I can't—"
"—Not what I'm waiting to hear—"
"—Regect please."
Hands had tightened around the nape of the entity's neck—this time desperate instead of suffocating. Ze had his face buried so deep under Regect's chin, he was sure the player would crawl under his skin given the chance.
Or maybe onto his head, if that meant not being in the water.
Right, the water.
Ze was scared of water.
And Regect had just dragged him right into the deep end of a pool he had never swam in after properly scaring the shit out of him. That might just be why the man hanging onto his neck like a lifeline was shaking so viscerally, and why the glimpses Regect got of his eyes looked mere seconds away from absolutely bawling.
Was this too far?
One honest look at the man completely helpless to his merciless intentions decided it was.
"Right, you can't—you're genuinely scared—," Regect fumbled briefly for his words, "I'll get you back, I got you."
"Thnk yw," Was the muffled response that tickled the damp skin of his neck.
Slowly, the entity swam on his back—Ze using his half-visible, bare chest as a makeshift raft—towards the shallow end of the pool. The entire trip took less than thirty seconds, but with the now awkward tension between them, it felt more like hours until Regect's digitigrade feet made contact with the pool liner.
He tried to speak, but found his voice failing him against the wall of noiselessness that had developed. He tried again, this time clearing his throat, "Hey, we're in the shallows, now."
Regect rubbed his hand up and down the other man's back, fingers dragging across the wet fabric of his thin T-shirt. "You can stand here, you're not gonna drown or anything."
When Ze pulled his face from the crook of Regect's neck, the entity could've started crying himself right then and there. The player's pupil were blown into dark dinner plates, glossy from fighting back tears. The whites off his eyes were tainted by thin red veins, threatening to betray the full extent of the terror he'd been experiencing. Thin lips pointed downwards at the corner, trembling just so slightly. From the cool air of the pool or the sobs that were susceptible to spill, Regect wasn't sure.
In this light, Ze looked surprisingly like a newborn bunny, all soft and small and nothing less than traumatized. How could he have terrified such a sweet face like that? Been the reason it had been pulled taught with such discomfort by something so avoidable as swimming? He would have to make this up to Ze, somehow, some way.
Slowly, the entity's grip loosened as Ze's weight lifted out of his arms, the player planting his feet at the bottom of the pool. When both were standing, still connected by their arms dangling loosely on each other, they found it easier to look anywhere but the other's face.
Ze opted for zoning off at a lounge chair by the changing room door, eyes still dilated twice larger than usual. Regect's guilty gaze settled on Ze's body—taking each glance to make sure the player hadn't sustained any injuries previously undiscovered—and paused around the man's midriff. The pool's depth came up just above his waistline, shirt sticking to his skin where the water lapped up against it. The faint definition of muscles show through the sinewy fabric.
Ze always took care of himself so well, Regect eventually found himself admiring the player's hard work. His hands were still on Ze's waist, steadying him in the gentle current of the water being circulated through the filtration system. Ze arms hadn't yet fully fallen from where they were still draped around his shoulders like a fine fabric, fingers splaying gently against the entity's broad shoulders.
This moment felt strangely intimate. Maybe it was just the chlorine getting to his senses, or maybe Ze felt it, too.
"Uhm, you can let go of my hips now."
Or maybe it was just the chlorine.
"Right, uh—yeah, sorry." He removed his grip, putting his palms up by where his head would be in a placating gesture.
"You're—it's fine."
Regect didn't miss how Ze's eyes hadn't met his own since he'd dragged him into the open water. So much for getting him to conquer his fear. Now the player probably just outright hated him.
He wouldn't blame Ze if he did.