Work Text:
It started with a meltdown.
Purple would be loathe to admit this ever, but her real friendship with Blue started with a meltdown.
That day, she'd entered the PC with hands already shaking, no matter how tightly she folded them, and her smile was twitching and forced. Not fake, not quite, but nervous. Which didn't make sense, and still didn't, because she'd known everyone as a whole — as their friend — for a good few months by then. Nothing seemed to be wrong. Nothing should have been wrong.
But still, she was shaking. Still, she was scared.
Blue was alone in his garden at the time, on the other end of the screen. As always, the sound of the Nether portal caught his attention. He'd turned to her, and smiled, and said hi, and she had taken far too long to return it with a hello of her own.
Long enough that Blue tilted their head at her. Their face had drifted to stay upright, and Purple's breath had caught. Somehow, someway, that was one of the things to make her lose composure. Her shoulders had tensed even more.
Blue had gotten up. There was no brushing off of the dirt on her gloves. Purple found herself staring at them, already dreading the gritty touch when she had been doing so well keeping the grime of her own homelessness off herself. And, as usual, she patted Purple on the shoulder, and she stopped breathing.
She couldn't hear the things Blue was saying— every nerve in her body was focused on the dirt on her shoulder. It wasn't even touching her skin, it was on her sleeve, but-
Her eyes blurred. Her lip trembled.
Blue's other hand moved to her face, careful like she was one of Red's animals, and she flinched.
Just like that, the witch was gone. He wasn't touching her anymore. He'd backed up, hands raised in surrender, and Purple couldn't figure out when she was supposed to say when her cheek tingled with the contact that had never been made.
Her shoulder was dirty. Her face was dirty. Blue was dirty, but-
But any reasoning didn't matter when they were prying off their gardening gloves and removing their apron.
"Y-" Purple started, barely able to make her voice work. "You don't have to…"
"No, no, I was done anyway." Blue tucked the equipment into her inventory. Then she looked at her, concerned and confused in a way Purple had never once deserved in her life. "Are you okay, honey?"
"Yeah!" She answered automatically, even waving her hand like the question was something physical. But it was still unsteady. She hid it behind her back again.
Blue frowned. Clearly, her lie had not been as seamless as it usually was.
He stepped forward again. "Do you want a hug?"
Oh, a hug (without all the dirt) sounded really nice, actually. "I- I mean, I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable," she mumbled.
They rolled their eyes. It took her a moment to realize it was meant as an affectionate gesture, and not an annoyed one. "I'm offering, Purp. C'mere."
And she was scooped into her arms, less than a second given between the end of Blue's statement and Purple being on her chest, and oh dang she freaking DWARFS her.
Logically, she knew Blue was the largest of the Prism gang, but it only just hit her how thin and short she was in comparison. It made her feel small.
Her breath hitched. She hadn't felt small enough to be engulfed by a hug in years.
How sad was that? 14 years old and still yearning for the touch of her mother.
Blue squeezed her, and let go. Purple stumbled. There was no way her shaking could be missed now. As if on instinct, he reached out and steadied her.
"What's wrong?" And how did they know she could never say no to that voice, that smile?
She swallowed.
"I… I don't know," Purple finally admitted, meek and tiny. "I'm just… I'm really nervous, I guess-?" She tried to laugh. Despite all her years of practice, it came out broken. Blue smiled like nothing was wrong at all. Like she wasn't broken.
"That's okay. It happens to all of us." With a hand still on her shoulder, she led Purple over to the couch. Purple was too frazzled to do anything but follow. "Orange gets it when he's been worrying about us too much. I get it when our injuries have been acting up too much. Yellow does when things go too wrong." Blue looked at her. "How about you?"
"… I don't know," Purple mumbled again, in a bit of a daze. How could he just say all that? How could he just pinpoint a problem and compare it to things the Prism did, like it didn't make them all broken? "I just… everything-?" Blue told her a bunch of stuff just now, so (assuming all that was true) she should try and do the same, right? Facts for facts?
(When had things ever worked like that in her world?)
They smiled like they understood, and their face drifted to the side as they sat down, and still she could do nothing but mimic them, sitting only pixels away even though there was a whole couch because they were still holding her shoulder and clearly they wanted her here for some reason she couldn't understand.
Blue's hand squeezed and her thumb rubbed Purple's skin through her shirt, and her own hand was halfway up before she could stop it.
She folded them both in her lap, though. What was she doing? Had she been about to hold his hand? Like a child?
Purple bit her cheek and forced her eyes downwards. Blue continued, their thumb moving back and forth like the smooth rhythm of a windshield wiper.
"What do you need, honey?" she asked softly, so softly. What did she need. How was she supposed to answer that? What was the right thing to say?
"What do you have?" Purple said faintly, almost hesitantly. Getting a list of what would be okay to ask for would give her constraints, options. Something she could think about without mentally curling up into a ball and screaming.
"Anything," Blue answered, and Purple was about to do that anyway when he continued. "Food, water. A blanket? A pet, something to hold? Or I could just stay here with you until you're better."
Okay. She could work with that.
Food. She didn't think she could swallow anything right now. Water. Same deal, plus if she spilled it then it would soak into everything, and the thought was almost too much to bear.
A blanket. That would make her warm. But the PC was already warm, and if she got too warm then she would panic. A pet, something to hold.
She knew what she wanted to hold.
Or I could just… "Stay," she whispered, oh so pathetically. She was practically hugging herself, and she refused to look at Blue again, because she wasn't even brave enough to look someone in the eye when she was making a request.
But they still responded, "Of course, honey," with so much more kindness than she deserved. Where the hell had they gotten the balls to be this nice to her…?
Blue scooted closer, lifting his hand from her shoulder, but apparently it was visible when she stiffened at the loss of contact, because a second later it was back again. She still didn't see his face. All she saw were her own hands, gripping her sleeves tight enough to rip. They were shaking. They were weak. She felt as though her nerves had been shot— if not by the staff beam, then by everything else.
Then Blue slid their hand across her back, and hovered it above her other shoulder. Their arm was around her. Their arm was around her.
"Is this okay?" she asked, as if it could be anything but, as if Purple wasn't fighting the urge to cry just from her being that close to her. No one had been this close, this willingly, in years.
She managed a nod. Her "yeah" (that was meant to be a "yes") came out as the tiniest little breath. She could barely think-
And then Blue's hand settled into a place and pulled her close to him. And she couldn't breathe, she didn't dare blink, just in case all this was fake and he was about to laugh at her or shove her down or do something else awful. But… he didn't. He held her against his side, still rubbing her shoulder, still looking down at her because she was so small in his arms and he could do anything to her but he didn't.
Purple tried to breathe. It hitched. She tried to blink. Tears spilled over.
She tried to move, and that was easy. It was slow, but it was possible, and she was still almost running on autopilot when she grabbed onto their shirt and slumped over, burying her face in it.
Blue had made a sound, then, and Purple hadn't been able to get herself to move by the time she had shifted to lay down a little more, now holding her in both arms, because she was just so nice, why was she so nice? What was wrong with her?
Purple took a little longer just to breathe. She was doing that annoying wheezing thing where the air wouldn't come in right, and Blue would surely make her leave if she kept that up. She had somehow managed to convince him that she deserved this, needed this, and she couldn't let him realize he was wrong. Tricking him after he thought they were friends again? He'd be disgusted.
"'M sorry," she mumbled as soon as she had her voice back. The tears wouldn't stop, and they soaked into Blue's shirt, and it was exactly what she'd feared with the water earlier.
And still, they pressed patterns into her back, tracing spiral shapes into her muscles and bones. "Don't be," they murmured. She didn't have the strength to fight anymore.
Blue was warm with exertion and damp with sweat, and under any other conditions she would have been reluctant to touch her at all. But now, with their arms around each other and sating a hunger Purple had never known she had…
Blue ran his fingers down her scalp and she shuddered. He backed off almost immediately, but-
She jerked back towards their hand. "No." What was she doing. "Stay." What the hell was this?
Her hand slid back into her hair. Purple melted back into her chest, sighing in what was almost relief. Before she knew it, her eyes had closed.
"I'm here, Purple," Blue said, his voice humming low against her ear. "I'll be here."
Her breath hitched again. Damn it. They started drawing lines down her head once more, and- cursors, she crumbled. Pathetic. When had she gotten so weak?
… Well, at least no one else was here to see her sob.
I'm sorry, she wanted to say again, but Blue had told her not to be. It would make her mad if she apologized again. Still, though— she needed a way to make this up to her. This would not happen again.
It happened again. It happened again, and again, and again, and again. And somehow, Blue was always okay with it. She repaid him, of course, in items and favors and chores, but at some point she found herself just going to him.
It became less and less of a necessity, when her head wouldn't shut up, and more a quiet moment between them. Something they could just… have. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes, they just sat. One day, Purple came to the realization that… she trusted them.
And she didn't mind it.