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The sun has long since retreated past the horizon by the time Z pulls himself out of the lake. He skims over the spot where Ikea had been mere minutes ago, and with a residual shudder, starts trekking back home. Regect pulls this shit on purpose, he swears. Every time he thinks he’s finally getting a chance to breathe, to briefly forget about the various anomalies infesting his world and relax with his feet up on their non-existent coffee table, Regect finds a way to launch him staggering back into chaos.
He should’ve coerced Regect into shopping instead or had the foresight to drag him along, albeit he hadn’t had much of a choice in the first place considering Regect warped them both to the middle of this godforsaken forest, then promptly left him to his own devices. At least he can yell at him through the phone now, which—on that note, why is he wasting time walking home anyway?
“Hello?” Regect answers. He can faintly hear some greeting honks in the background, a soft smile elicited until he remembers who exactly it is he’s speaking to.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Most people, just so you’re aware, start conversations with a hi, hello, how are you? Dick.”
“Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I-I don’t care. You really—you sent me to Ikea knowing I’d get—“
“Hey, I warned you about Ikea! I just did, no one forced you to go in there.”
“I’m—wh-what am I supposed to think if—when you teleport me to a goddamn Ikea?” Z halts near an overgrown bush, sitting down with his useless inventory. Maybe he could use the emeralds he found as bargaining chips for something? Definitely not a coffee table, that jerk can build or buy his own at this point.
“Okay, no, I did not teleport you to Ikea, I told you to, ugh, go—to go buy us furniture! Not my fault you went into an Ikea in the middle of the—middle of the woods, dude.”
“I don’t care! You knew what you were doing.”
“You’re such a—“
“I—j-just pick me up. Just—just shut up and come get me, please.” Z grits out.
“Why would I do that?”
“Why would—you’re the one with the—dude, you have teleportation powers! Pick me up.”
“Z, I don’t know where you—“
“No, you do, you do—you always do.”
“I’m not a stalker, Z, who the fuck—“
“Okay, okay, but you are.”
“Am not.”
“You are.”
“Fuck off.”
“Fuck you,” says Z. A pause. “Are you on the way?”
“No.”
The phone clicks and within the blink of an eye, Regect appears in front of him. If he had an evil eye, Z would be the unwilling recipient.
“Stalker.” Z disguises through a cough as he stands, knocking his shoulder roughly against where he guesses Regect’s is.
“Asshole.” Regect coughs back.
“Hey Moe, sorry I couldn’t uh—sorry I didn’t get your meatballs,” Z apologizes. He barely resists the urge to tack on, “I was busy fighting for my life thanks to my asshole roommate.”
Moe honks happily, apparently having forgotten requesting meatballs in the first place. He sinks down on their uncomfortably stiff couch, eyes lazily tracking the movements of a pig wandering around outside before Regect returns to their joke of a living room.
“Z, what’re we doing?”
“Nothing,” answers Z as Moe honks.
“Yeah, guess we have no furniture to assemble. Thanks a lot,” announces Regect. Z can practically hear the eye roll in his voice.
“It’s not like I ran for my life or anything—“
“Moe might’ve—maybe wanted to—“
“And what was even—“
“When—damn, you were—“
“Wh—“
“I—“
Moe’s frantic honking effectively silences them both. She waves her hands around a few times and spam crouches while Regect regards her with some semblance of a nodding gesture—who knows? The guy doesn’t have a head to track his movements anyway.
“What’s she saying?” Z asks. He’d like to imagine he’s a lot better at deciphering her preferred choice of communication, but Moe’s pretty unpredictable. She keeps him on his toes much more often than the eyesore looming beside him.
“That we should try coke for our next episode.”
Z’s face pales. “What?”
“Mhm, yup.”
“I don’t—? I—“ He looks to Moe for answers but she’s gone M.I.A in the span of a minute. “We’re not doing fucking coke, dude, are you—you finally went insane, didn’t you?”
“…” Regect is silent for an uncomfortably long stretch of time to the point that it’s almost starting to unnerve him.
“Did you hear me? I’m serious.” Z grasps at a flickering arm, ignoring the shiver that courses through his body at how inhuman Regect feels. Latching onto him is akin to trying to hold a shadow. His cheeks darken.
“I didn’t—I didn’t—you thought I was—“ Regect huffs out a mocking laugh. “Was being serious? Idiot.”
“Dude, you—shut up. Shut all the way up. I hate you.”
“Then stop touching me.”
Z glances down, sheepishly withdrawing his hand. “What was she—what, um, what did she actually say?”
“Oh, that we should smoke crack.”
“Oh my god,” Z groans, tilting his head to glare at the ceiling in frustration. “You suck. You literally suck.”
“Not as much as—“
A loud, singular knock on the front door has Z nearly jumping out of his skin. The two comically blink at each other before turning to face the door, then back to each other, then the door again.
“Did you—“ Regect starts, pointing in the intruder’s direction. “Were we—wait, were we—did you invite someone over?”
“Don’t look at me—“ Z scoffs before another inhuman knock sounds, as if the person outside is forcibly breaking in.
Against his better instincts, he finds himself tucking into Regect’s free arm splayed across the backrest of the couch, breathing quieter than an ocelot on the prowl for prey, vision entirely flooded with strangely warm voidblackvoid. It’s embarrassing, really, to wrap himself up in the half-transparent blanket Regect faintly reminds him of, to grip onto the faint fabric tying him to this realm of reality.
It’s really embarrassing.
Z, a bit reluctantly for reasons he is going to lock into some hidden alcove of his brain, removes his head to the insistent scratch of a pickaxe scraping through their sandstone walls. The guy, vaguely human at first glance, sprints directly to the chests that Z begged Regect to move to a more discreet location ages ago, synthetic blue hair falling around his head as he opens a chest like he pays rent here.
“HEY!” Regect yells, ripping his arms away from the cage they’d formed around Z’s shoulders which… huh. Now that the source of warmth is gone, he hadn’t even known it was there. “DUDE, DUDE—HEY, WHAT THE HELL?”
The stranger doesn’t acknowledge either of them, shoving more of their hard-earned—more like instantly-generated crap but still—valuables into his inventory.
“Get the—“ Z smacks the other player (entity?), wincing when his hand chops a solid plate of iron. All right, it appears that this guy is another entity. A robot? Fantastic. Just what Z needs in a newly-created world. “Man, what the fu—can we help you? Jesus Christ.”
The thief says nothing, raiding their base with all the finesse of a player who’s done this a thousand times before.
“You got him, Z, you—“
“I’m not—I’m not afraid to shoot!” Z jabs the barrel of his pistol into the robot-guy’s chest. “Put the ores back and it’s—it’ll be all—“ He flicks his eyes to Regect for the briefest of seconds, grip on his gun faltering when Regect abandons him to answer another knock at their front door.
The robot-entity-whatever-he-is tilts his head down at the gun aimed at him, entirely emotionless. He’s still holding the emeralds Z almost lost his life over. “Give it—put our stuff back, man, what the hell is wrong with you? Do you—can you, like, even talk? And can I get some fucking backup, dude, what are you doing over there?” This last question is directed to Regect, now casually leaning against the chambranle as he speaks to whoever is standing in front of him.
“Okay, I’m gonna level with you, man. There aren’t any Andres here,” says Regect, followed closely behind by an entity Z performs a triple-take at. That thing is horrifying, consisting of hardly anything save for a giant unblinking eyeball in the center of its face and an ink spill of a body. Z is suddenly a bit grateful that Regect is faceless, and well, they do look extremely similar, but at least Regect has that odd golden shoe on his foot. Or maybe it’s jewelry? The thought to ask never occurred to him until now although if he had to take a definite guess, he supposes that Regect’s sporting an ankle monitor. “Seriously—go find, like, why don’t you find someone else to bother?”
The entity Z is holding hostage shoves him hard enough to lose his footing, wind thoroughly knocked out of his lungs as he somehow manages to slam his pistol into his stomach.
“ANDRE!” The floating eyeball screeches as a blue blur zips past him and Regect, escaping with a solid portion of their loot, damn it all to hell—
“ANDRE, GET BACK HERE. YOU CAN’T RUN FROM ME FOREVER, ANDRE.” Eyeball books it like hell is licking at his heels after the thief, knocking the poor front doors off their hinges in his haste while Regect snickers at Z.
“You let him get away?”
“I didn’t—no, I would’ve had him if you weren’t busy letting more—more fucking strangers into our house!”
“Bro, I thought y-you, you know—“ Regect snickers some more, “—you had it under control.”
“You know that guy or something? Were you—“ He sits up, narrowing his eyes at Regect and his dumb, smug smirk he knows is present. “Did you—why would—you planned this?”
“What?! No—“
“Oh my god, you did.”
“I did not—“
“You were straight up talking to that other guy like you—like—like you knew him already!”
“Was not—“
“So, like, so that was the plan? Let’s see if Z loses his shit over a home invasion because it’ll, heh, that’ll be so funny?”
“… That would’ve been pretty funny if I had thought of it.”
Z has half a mind to ready his pistol.
“Anyway, uh, yeah, no—he came by one day when you were gone looking for Andre.”
“Andre? Who’s Andre? Wait—the guy who just robbed us?”
“I guess.”
“Are you lying to me right now?”
“Um, usually when we do this bit, I am, yeah, but this time I’m telling the truth.”
Z has no idea what to think or do besides bury his head in his hands with a world-weary sigh. “All right,” he mumbles.
“What?”
“All right.” He scans the transparent rip splintering Regect’s chest, absently worrying his bottom lip. “We’re gonna have to, uh, restock. Probably.”
“Ugh,” groans Regect. He extends an arm toward Z, who accepts it after a moment of suspicion. “Or we can track them down. Do some vigilante justice.”
“I’m pretty sure if I shot Andre, the bullet would, uh, bounce off—what word was I thinking of?—his… circuitry? Chestplate?”
“Yeah, that’s because you suck in a fight.”
“I—your ragebait sucks and I hate you.”
“You keep saying that, but you can’t keep your hands off me dude, I’m sooo irresistible—“
Why the hell does Z keep letting himself get so close to him? “You touched me first!”
“I helped you up because I’m super nice like that, so—“
“Oh, that’s nice, die in a hole.”
“You wanna kiss me so bad it makes you look stupid.”
“Shut up!” Z snaps, face flushed. “I’m—I hate you so much—I’m leaving.”
“Oh, oh, what’s that? Is that the sound of you not denying it?”
Z stomps through the hole in the wall. His shirt gets caught on the jagged edge of a slab of sandstone, and with a groan of frustration, he rips it away.
“Wait—Z c’mon man, wait up—“
God. The embarrassed heat in his chest threatens to swallow him whole as he ducks behind a tree, totally not sulking in shame. There is something innately wrong with him.
He brings his knees to his chest, thinking faintly of the rough outlines of opaque skin against clear skin. If he stuck his hand through the gap, would it be stopped by a tangible body? Why is he even thinking about that? He should check himself into a mental hospital. Running his hands down his face, he mutes his insistently buzzing phone and prays for the earth to swallow him whole.
“Wait I’m—what if I—“ Z drums out a beat on his thigh as they venture slowly—incredibly slowly—toward the burnt pile of wood that miserable old wretch of a wizard calls a house, who had, mind him, indulged in dinner and cake at their Thanksgiving (Friendsgiving? Antagonistsgiving? Z has yet to decide on a proper name) dinner and ruined the vibe for the evening by accusing Z of something he didn’t do. He’s used to it, sure, the constant gaslighting and the supernatural creatures that insist on causing a scene in his and Regect’s… and Moe’s world existing as the cumbersome neighbors they tend to be, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be downright irritated about always being the person to turn the other cheek. “Okay, give me a good beat.”
“A what? There—we didn’t bring any bowls or—“
“No—I mean like, I meant like—a music beat. Just—just give me a beat. The, you know, man, the music kind. Something. You—you have a mouth somewhere, come on.”
“Oh cool, cool, you’re gonna jump to insulting me right now or—“
“No! Oh my god, okay just, I just—how… how hard is this?”
Regect, surprisingly, launches into a deep-voiced imitation of a rap beat Z has no reference of, but he smiles, veers a little closer to him. “I did mano y mano, in Spanish that’s hand and hand.”
“BILINGUAL!” adlibs Regect.
“She texts me: what are you doing? But then I ghost her, call it Dandadan.”
“DISRESPECT!” yells the entity again. Z snorts, narrowly missing colliding with a tree as they approach that asshole wizard’s house even slower.
“Boutta suck me with no hands, she got me like uh… she gonna… shit.”
“What just happened?”
“I kinda—nah, I completely lost the plot.”
“You did one verse.”
“Yeah? Why don’t you—I’d like to see you try.”
“Hm, let me think about that—NO!”
“Jeez, no need to yell!”
“Titties, ass, thighs I need an ampersand,” raps Regect a few moments later, entirely off of self-imposed beat.
“That—gross dude, that was an awful bar.” Z whacks him where his chest is split in two—he does have a solid body there. Even though he’s translucent in the sunlight. Huh.
“What’re you doing?”
Z blinks, startled. His hand doesn’t move. “Do you have a face?” he blurts out before he registers that yeah, that’s probably a weird question to ask the person who’s supposed to be his enemy.
“Uh—?” Regect stops walking as well, an arm awkwardly hovering over Z’s for a second before it returns to his side. “What do you care?”
“I don’t,” Z responds, knowing that’s a lie before it exits his mouth, but if there exists one characteristic he and Regect share, it’s that they tend not to think at all before speaking.
“You do.”
“I do, yeah,” says Z. “So, what’s the deal? You can—can you control how see-through you are?”
“What is this, fucking twenty questions?”
“I’ve asked—“ Z counts off his fingers, “—three questions, asshole.”
“Look—look who learned how to count.”
“You know what.” Z doesn’t give Regect a chance to reply as he moves his hand up, vaguely guessing where his neck is supposed to be. There’s a solid mass up there too, invisible to the human eye, so he starts attempting to map out any identifying features such as the slope of a nose or the curve of an upper lip.
Regect lets him. Something curdles low in Z’s gut, a sort of deeply shameful desire to touchfeelcrave. He steps back, unwilling to meet the other’s questioning gaze.
The wizard isn’t home when they finally arrive, plagued by awkward silence punctuated only by the clearing of a throat every so often. He swivels on his feet, about to aimlessly wander in a different direction when he hears the distinct sound of flint and steel striking wood behind him. Z smells the smoke before he sees any fire.
“Seriously, dude?!” he screams at Regect sprinting around the rubble of the house with a gas can in tow—they ventured all the way here to apologize, not destroy more property.
… Fuck it. Z doesn’t like that guy anyway. He takes a bundle of sticks out of his inventory, throwing them haphazardly as Regect remembers that he can fly and zips around the roof, cackling with glee.
He has a nice laugh—throaty and deep like the rumble of a car engine. Not that Z would ever tell Regect that; his ego’s huge enough.
It’s concerning that he doesn’t mind this line of thinking very much, but it’s not like Z is going to do anything regarding his conflicting feelings surrounding the entity. Regect hates him; he tells him so every day. Z hates him too, possibly so much that it looped back around to liking him.
It’s late. The moon hangs high above, a tiny sliver of yellow undercutting the Stygian river of a sky. Z should have logged off ages ago, but he remains seated a few feet away from the hole in their house that Regect has neglected to repair.
He frowns at a particularly bright star, tracing circles in pixelated grass.
A set of heavy footsteps—he already knows its owner—sounds behind him before Regect crouches next to him, a block too close for comfort.
“Thought you—I thought you logged off already.”
Z doesn’t dignify him with a response—he’s likely looking to pick a fight and he simply doesn’t have the energy for that right now.
“You ever notice that there are no mob sounds at night?”
“You probably scare them all off when I’m not looking.”
“No. Just an observation,” says Regect. “You good, man?” There’s a slight tremble in his voice that Z’s frown deepens at, knee bouncing up and down before Regect lays a coldhotburning palm on it.
“I just—yeah. Yeah. I am,” says Z. He pretends not to flinch when the other’s hand moves up further. Regect pretends not to notice.
“Okay.”
“You can stay.” Z rushes out too quickly when Regect stands, seemingly to leave him alone, which Z sort of wanted. Until he didn’t. “If you’re not gonna be, like, super annoying.”
Whatever snarky remark Z’s sure Regect is itching to utter dies on his tongue. “You should log off soon,” he says instead after a few moments of awkward hesitation.
“That eager to get rid of me?”
“Totally,” says Regect, looping a careful arm around Z’s shoulders. “Always counting down the seconds.”
“I guess that’s why you can’t keep your hands off me, then. Because I’m sooo irresistible.”
To that, Regect laughs, a rare, genuine one that warms Z’s chest. “Now you get it.”