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The problem is that everyone’s being so nice about it that they’re making it pretty hard for Etho to feel sorry for himself. He’d very much like to curl into a ball in a corner somewhere and be miserable about the whole thing, but there must be some server-wide conspiracy going on, because it’s like people are going out of their way to take his mind off it.
Just his luck, right?
Even now he’s escaped the chaos of the south of the server back to Bdubs’s round tower and has folded into himself as small and tight as he can on a heap of red banners on the floor, he can’t get away from it. Bdubs’s running commentary as he deactivates his copper golem is yet another thing making him feel better. Honestly, it’s getting kinda ridiculous.
The last time this had happened—back in season seven, when he’d managed to get himself body-swapped with Sidekit—well, he can’t remember it other than a few hazy sounds and shapes, but he’s been told there was a settling in period. Meaning, he’d worked out, that they’d spent two of the three days he’d been body-swapped trying to stop Etho from jumping at loud noises and hiding under heavy pieces of furniture.
This time… surely this must be better, right? When the server had updated and the bits in Etho’s code had somehow got flipped from player to fox yesterday, Bdubs had grabbed him immediately and whisked him away from the noisy muddle of the south of the server to his own much quieter base. Etho doesn’t know exactly what being put in an inventory slot is like, but he thinks now that it can’t be too much different from being very furry and very small, Bdubs’s rough, broad hands scooping him and holding Etho to his chest.
It is quieter here, Etho has to admit, resting his damp black nose on his fluffy white paws. It’s downright serene.
It’s not really bringing back the memories of last time—those are long gone, along with season seven—but maybe his code remembers, somehow. He hasn’t stumbled on four paws, yet, and the way berries taste isn’t exactly how they do normally, but it’s not totally unfamiliar, either. And this round tower that Bdubs has only just built already smells like Bdubs, and he knows that because his vulpine nose recognised Bdubs before Etho even set eyes on him, when he’d swung by the shopping district for coral and glass.
Just the way his vulpine ears catch the distinctive sound of Bdubs’s footfalls coming up the ladder.
Though maybe that’s cheating. Etho would recognise the sound of Bdubs coming no matter what.
“Hey.” A hand lands in his fur around his scruff and starts stroking. Without even asking, Etho would indignantly protest if he could—but since when has he ever made Bdubs ask? He always badly wants Bdubs to push and push and push, shouldering into whatever space Etho has to be shouldered into. “How’re you feeling?”
Etho peeks out from under his tail, looks up at Bdubs, and sneezes. It’s about as close he can get to a laugh, like this.
Bdubs chuckles back, and sits down on the pile of banners so his hand can wander up Etho’s neck to scratch behind his ears. It’s nice. Bdubs’s short nails and callouses rub in just the right way, and Etho very cunningly leans into it, because if he’s a cute animal right now then he should at least get to take advantage of Bdubs’s weakness for creatures of that variety.
“I called Xisuma. He’s said you should be back to normal soon. Shouldn’t be too much—? Hopefully not too much longer.”
Etho squeaks and stretches and rolls onto his belly, hoping Bdubs will take the hint. For once in his life, he wants to be selfish and just indulge in Bdubs’s undivided attention without the need to think of something to say back. Bdubs touches him all the time, normally, but never for more than a second at a time. Etho wants him to, though. He wishes Bdubs would touch him all over.
There’s a smile in Bdubs’s voice when he murmurs, “I almost forgot what a sweetheart you were, last time. When I wasn’t tripping over your tail, anyway.”
Without warning—not that one was really needed, because Etho feels kinda like a piece of soft clay, the way Bdubs could do anything to him right now without resistance—Bdubs gets a hand under Etho and pulls him into his lap, warm against his soft belly. He strokes down Etho’s tail, then ruffles the fur all the way back up to his ears in a way that Etho squeaking again and a rumble of satisfaction whirring in his chest.
Etho sits up, alarmed. Man, did he really just purr?
Bdubs’s hand falls away. That’s somehow worse than the embarrassment.
“You’re alright,” Bdubs says, voice warm with his smile. “Just a little purr. Startled you last time, too, first time it happened.”
Etho stands and tries to resettle on the big pile of red fabric, facing away from Bdubs. He wishes he had his mask. At least he doesn’t have the ability to blush.
Bdubs chuckles. “Hey, it’s really alright. Means I’m doing a good job.”
Etho harrumphs.
The honey rumble of Bdubs’s laugh again, and his hand returns, stroking long and slow down Etho’s back. “You should really give me a raise,” he teases. “Chauffeur services getting you over here, now petting services? I’ll tell ya, loving you ain’t easy. It’s all work, work, work.”
Etho lifts his head and looks around at Bdubs. Loving him?
Bdubs’s eyes are dark and warm and—and lovely, and looking at him like it’s all for him. His voice lowers to a low, conspiratorial whisper, then. “Hey, don’t tell the boss, but I’d do it for free. Weekends too, if he’d let me.”
Blinking, Etho tries to make heads or tails of it. Loving him is what Bdubs had said, right? But that can’t mean—surely it can’t—
Frustrated, Etho turns his face into Bdubs’s hand and licks into the cup of his palm. It’s half-instinct, half he-doesn’t-know-what. Bdubs’s palm tastes like salt and pinecones. Of all the moments to not be able to ask follow-up questions.
A low huff of a laugh works its way out of Bdubs, and he stands. “I’m gonna go fix dinner. I’ll yell if X has any updates, alright?”
With that, he’s gone back down the ladder down to the basement. And Etho’s—okay, not exactly stuck, because he could probably leap down the ladder hole if he needed to. But that doesn’t mean he’s not stranded.
What could Bdubs have meant by that? Surely nothing, right? He said it so casually, like it wasn’t meant to mean anything at all. Except for the fact that Bdubs doesn’t talk like that. Not around him, anyway. And for that matter, when’s the last time Bdubs called him a sweetheart? All that stuff dropped out of his vocabulary a decade ago. Etho would know, because that was right around the time he convinced himself that nothing was ever, ever going to happen between them.
He buries his face in his hands, and then realises that he has hands. And that quickly cascades into a checklist of his faculties: nose that can’t smell the whole stupid world, fingers and toes that articulate, skin that’s not covered with fur, blunt teeth, colour vision restored. Check-check-check-check-check.
When he gets down to the kitchen, he finds Bdubs leaning over a pan, wincing and shaking his fingers as he picks something red out of the sauté.
“You know the ingredients are supposed to be going into the pan, right?” Etho says.
Bdubs jumps out of his skin. “WHA-GHA-HAA? WAUGH—ETHO! Hooh, scare me to death like that, you animal!”
Etho grins.
“So you want me to loop you in why you’re over here?” Bdubs says.
He shrugs. “I remember. Fox, it being quieter here, work-work-work.”
“You remember—everything this time?” Bdubs looks… stricken. “Oh.”
Shrugging again, Etho steps nearer and leans around Bdubs to peer into the pan. “Is that nether wart?”
“It was an accident,” Bdubs says testily. “Yeah, I know, teach me to keep the potion ingredients in the same chest as the mushrooms.”
For two seconds, Bdubs’s shoulder makes contact with Etho’s chest. For two whole, indulgent seconds, Etho lets it. Then, man, sure of this as he is of anything in the universe, he spins Bdubs around and kisses him.
Bdubs doesn’t take a moment to kiss back, not that Etho thought he would; everything clicks together with them, every rivalry and bickering conversation and laughing argument, and now this. It seems ridiculous that Etho could’ve ever doubted it.
Bdubs pulls away and breathes in deeply. “You’re making me burn the wart.”
Drawing back, Etho snickers. “Well if the wart is so important.”
Once the wart is dealt with and dinner is cooked and eaten and the dishes are washed and the crumbs have been thoroughly swept off the table onto the floor, Bdubs pulls Etho into another kiss. Old jokes recycled, old fights restarted, Bdubs looking after Etho as a fox twice in one lifetime, and this. Because Bdubs’s mouth against his is just another iteration of the same thing they’ve been doing since forever, Etho thinks, and that they’ll do forever again.