Work Text:
The candy factory was cold. That was a fact. Impulse himself had installed the air conditioning a few weeks ago. The candy he wanted to make needed the cooler temperatures, but with fall right around the corner, Impulse was starting to consider making a separate room where the cold air could not reach him.
He huddled under his blanket, his eyes closed, trying his best to relax and let sleep claim him. He was exhausted, Impulse had spent hours raising a wall that day, placing block after block until his fingers had gone stiff and his back hurt from building. It should be easy to fall asleep, to let his mind drift off and rest his tired body.
He couldn’t even atribuit the lack of sleep on the cold, not fully, he had fallen asleep outside in the middle of a snowy field last season. Granted it had been less ‘sleep’ and more ‘passing out from exhaustion’, but the point was, Impulse had slept under worse circumstances than a little cold.
And yet…
He was so tired he could not sleep. High strung with the stress from wanting to finish his factory as quickly as possible. Time was ticking, days were passing by in the blink of an eye, his mind raced with thoughts of what he should build next. Several rooms were missing walls or the ceiling, not to mention the sections of the factory he hadn’t even started building yet.
Impulse opened his eyes and sighed before he sat up on his bed. He pressed his palms over his eyes until they watered. “Is some sleep too much to ask for?” He asked quietly to no one in particular.
After a moment of sitting there doing nothing, Impulse grabbed his communicator and glanced at who was set as ‘online’. It was late, most everyone’s names were grayed out and listed as afk while they slept and Impulse swore he was not jealous, but he did wish he was one of them.
One white name in particular caught his eye. Tango was awake. Doing void knows what at that time. The man was as bad as Impulse himself when he got his mind into finishing something. He probably was not taking care of himself again. He probably needed as much sleep as Impulse himself.
Impulsive was in his name, so before he could talk himself out of it, Impulse got out of bed. He strapped his elytra to himself, grabbed a stack of rockets from a shulker box nearby and set off into the night. He flew away from his base, forgoing using the nether for now, since he didn’t really trust himself to properly navigate the maze-like corridors that was their nether hub while being as tired as he was.
The cool fall air didn’t do any good for him for being cold, but he pushed through as he made his way to the Big Eyed Crew area. The first thing he saw was Tango’s starter house and copper shop. Up ahead was Bdubs’ moon base and Keralis’ large mansion that had gained a beautiful garden since the last time Impulse had seen it.
He landed in front of Tango’s house and made his way inside casually, his eyes searching for the familiar red figure. The storage room was empty, and in fact, it looked like it hadn’t been inhabited for at least a few weeks.
Did Tango move? He did mention something about being too busy moving to hang out, now that he thought about it.
Impulse fired another rocket and flew out of Tango’s building, making a beeline towards the side of the mountain where a giant cave containing a cyclops was located. Seeing Fifi staring down at him was still unnerving, even if he knew the monster was harmless.
He saw movement inside though, near Fifi’s feet, a red dot went around, oblivious to Impulse’s presence. He smiled to himself before he jumped into the cave. No rockets this time, he let his elytra gently glide through the air, taking him towards Tango, as silent as he could be.
Tango had his back to Impulse while he sorted things in his storage room. He still hadn’t noticed him even as Impulse landed a few blocks away and crept closer. Thank the void Tango was incredibly unobservant, he made it so easy to sneak on him.
Still smiling to himself, Impulse let his weight fall on Tango’s back and put his chin over his shoulder as he finally spoke “What are you doing, Tango?”
Tango screamed, so loud it echoed around the cave. Impulse had to back away from him when he saw Tango turning around with his sword in hand, slashing where Impulse had been a second before.
“IMPULSE!” Tango said, eyes wide, his sword held in a shaky grip. Impulse burst out laughing at seeing how spooked he got. “Void, Impulse. You almost gave me a heart attack, what the hell??”
Impulse needed a moment to stop laughing. “I’m sorry!” he said, still snickering. “You were so focused, I couldn’t resist.”
“You’re a jerk!” he slapped Impulse with the flat side of his blade before he put it away “What are you doing here. It’s late.”
Impulse pouted “I know. I couldn’t sleep.”
“You couldn’t sleep? And you came all the way here because of that?” Tango frowned in worry. “Are you ok?”
“I’m fine.” Impulse reassured, but Tango made a face of someone who didn’t believe him “I swear, I’m fine. Just tired. Really tired. But even then I couldn’t fall asleep. So I saw you were awake and… well, I came for a... visit?” In retrospect, maybe that hadn’t been the greatest idea. He felt a little embarrassed as he put the situation into words, it sounded more ridiculous than he thought.
Tango’s eyes softened though, and he smiled. “Oh. Well. I don’t really have the bedroom of a king, or a bedroom at all, but make yourself at home.” He gestured around him, Tango often made a bedroom out of his storage room so it was not surprising to hear that was where he slept now. “I finished the storage room for weeks now, but I’m still trying to sort all the items. I’m almost done, these are the last shulker boxes.”
“Do you want help?” Impulse may be too tired to build anything, but sorting items was something mindless and easy, he could do that, especially while in Tango’s good company.
Tango pushed a shulker box closer to Impulse with his foot “Help yourself, man. The chests are already more or less labeled, you know how I sort things.”
They worked in silence for the most part, with Impulse yawning every so often and making Tango yawn as well. He had to ask sometimes where one or other item went, but it was overall pretty simple to figure out. Wood went into the wood chest, wool went into the wool chest. Mob drops were sorted each into their own chest. Little by little the pile of items diminished, Impulse’s head was pleasantly blank with only the thought of what went where crossing his mind.
And before either of them really noticed, the Shulker boxes were empty and everything was sorted. Tango stretched his arms, smiling in satisfaction “I didn’t think I was going to finish this tonight. Thanks for the help.”
Impulse smiled, he felt a lot more relaxed than when he got there, his eyes felt heavy and he yawned again “No problem, man. This was nice, actually.”
“Look at you. Only you would find work relaxing. You look like you’re about to pass out.” Tango laughed. He grabbed some wool from the wool chest and quickly crafted a bed “Time for bed. No arguments. We’re going to sleep.”
“What? No. I can go back to my base now. I’m fine, Tango.” Impulse protested. He had already invaded Tango’s base in the middle of the night with no warning, it didn’t feel right to also sleep there.
“What did I just say about arguing?” He placed the bed beside the one he presumably used himself. It was tucked into a corner right beside the wall of chests. Secluded, but not really what one would call a bedroom.
It looked cosy though.
Tango grabbed Impulse’s arm and pulled him along towards the beds. Impulse barely resisted after Tango’s insistence, not when he was so tired and the beds looked so inviting. He let himself be pushed down into the matress, only taking the time to pull off his shoes before he laid down with a sigh, his eyes closed.
The bed dipped on his left, there was some shuffling, the sound of something falling on the floor and soon enough, he felt Tango had laid down beside him before he tried to pull Impulse close, so Impulse slipped his arms around Tango and draped him over his chest. Tango more or less laid on top of him like a blanket and he seemed pretty content to stay like that.
Tango was warm, his body ran hotter than the average person, so even with the cave being as chilly as Impulse’s factory, he didn’t feel the cold while they held each other like that. Impulse felt his mind drifting, little by little, Tango’s fingers idly made random patterns on his arm and he felt his warm breath against his cheek.
Tango broke the pleasant silence, his voice no louder than a whisper “Do you wanna talk about why you needed to leave your base in the middle of the night or is that a conversation for tomorrow?”
Impulse hummed while he considered what to say. Either they talked right now or they talked in the morning. Tango wouldn’t let it rest until he got his answer.
“Some kind of anxiety” he said softly, like a secret only they were allowed to hear. “Feels like I’m too slow of a builder. That I’ll never finish the factory. There’s so much that needs to be done. Kept thinking about it and couldn’t turn my brain off.”
Tango chuckled, and Impulse could feel the gust of air on his ear. “Tell me about it. Dunno how to fix that, to be honest. But if it helps, I kinda feel the same way.”
“Yeah?”
Tango hummed his agreement. “You saw the cave. It’s just stone and dirt. It’s far from done.”
“Feels like we’re going to run out of time” Impulse said quietly, his hand running down Tango’s spine slowly.
He felt Tango nod and they both were silent for a while. Impulse thought Tango might have fallen asleep and he was about to do the same.
But then Tango spoke again, still soft, barely more than a whisper. “We probably won’t. We have months ahead of us. No one is even half done. We’ll be fine.”
“Probably” Impulse agreed, and he let himself believe it. It was easy, right then and there, when his mind was too tired to argue and Tango’s voice carried the confidence both of them needed.
He sighed happily and let his mind drift off to sleep. If Tango said anything else after that, he didn’t really hear anything. All he knew was the warmth, the comfort and how pleasant it felt to fall asleep like that.