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tunastime · 1 year ago

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A Gear of the Heart, Starting

just a little something I wrote for somebody's (@shepscapades) birthday back in November :3 after I asked what etho and bdubs would've been like shortly after etho's deviation. this is the few times before last life where bdubs realizes etho might be a good friend, and how their relationship changes. comes right before A Gear of the Heart, Turning! (4653 words)

Etho remembers quite a bit.

He remembers the ricochet of the explosion through his left side. He remembers a dozen errors across his vision, showing every unit damaged by the blast, the fractals of fracturing snaking up his arm, the shattered remains of his central programming lingering like a livewire.

Over and over he can remember the pitch of Bdubs’ voice and had to wonder his own diagnosis at that moment. Bdubs watching his android die in his name—he remembers that, too. Bdubs didn’t even ask for that. It was something Etho gave to him. He’s not sure he could even say why, either.

It remained a bitter flavor he couldn't identify, even as Xisuma assured him he was okay. Something had happened then, sitting on that floor, thirium in hand. Some movement in his chest he couldn’t place. It wasn’t anything physical, but it felt like some gear of his nonexistent heart had started, turned—rotated. And all he could do was ask himself why. What’s he supposed to do with that?

He doesn’t know. Fine.

Etho goes back to work at someone’s request. Not even his own request, either, so he has to wonder if maybe Doc put him up to it. Him being Bdubs. Him being Bdubs who shifted back and forth on his feet at Etho’s door—a facade of a base in the process of being designed. If one could even call it a base, yet.

And even though he was increasingly certain that Bdubs had been told to ask—and Etho asked him if he’d been asked to help, and he was adamant about asking by himself, that’s what he said. He said: “You think I gotta be told to ask people for help? I can’t just be doin’ things on my own?” and it had felt so much like doublespeak that Etho didn’t even fight to differentiate his tone.

But Bdubs had asked if he wanted to help with the horse course. Terraforming—it should be right up his alley, if he’s still into that kind of stuff. Figured he was the expert—or so it goes. Etho had nodded. He wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to do. He supposes he could have easily said no.

But every part of him yearned to say yes.

So he did.

The dust sifts through his fingers.

Etho perches in the grass, partially hunched as he leans over his line of redstone, shrouded by the hill half-built around him. He’d spent most of the week prior carving out the lines of the track, setting posts for buildings, laying out blueprints for Bdubs to finalize. Today, he lays his line meticulously, dust shifting in his hands. They still shake a bit—nothing a human would notice, nothing that disrupted the flow of his lines, but the overworked gears still shifted in protest as he worked. He could see the faded overlay of the project in his vision if he focused. It crackled, slightly blue-yellow, orange glowing indicators where action was needed, where there were mistakes to be corrected.

It isn’t his redstone to fix. The lines under his hands were—freshly laid by his near-expert technique—but the deeper lines, noteblock announcements, droppers, doorgates, the flourish of the house course, weren’t. Etho smooths out the line he was standing near with his thumb.

There was nothing wrong with the laid redstone, really. It’s just. Well. It’s not even. It takes up so much space. It lacks the efficiency and tidiness he practiced to a precision. It radiated Bdubs in an overpowering way, one that might turn a gear of the heart—one he didn’t have, of course. Etho’s lines are neat, rigid, conforming to his perfect mental map.

He lets down his section of dust, drifting over to the dispenser system. He pushes a line further into place, brushing dust back from the side. Further on, where the line crosses, he readjusts it, he smooths them from start to end of line. His hands work where his mind recalculates, looking for errors along the redstone already laid out by Bdubs. Programs bubble up to assist; he dismisses a message, and another as he works. The line straightens from source to sink.

As he passes, searching for another correction, he hears someone above him. In the corner of his vision, another message notification pings: from Bdubs.

They’re all from Bdubs, actually, now that he notices in full. He blinks, mouth twisting into a frown. Whoops.

He hears someone—Bdubs, he realizes, as he notes the fall of his feet, and the sigh he hops down from his horse, the shuffle of said horse, hooves on grass—clear their throat. Bdubs shuffles around as Etho moves back over to his finished redstone, dusting his hands on the sides of his pants. He lifts the small bag of dust, twisting the tie shut around his fingers as he travels back up the line to recheck the connections.

“Etho?” Bdubs calls. Etho straightens, just on instinct alone, glancing up at the stretch of sky he can see. It’s bright blue, barely dotted with clouds, and the grass looks warm with sun. He fixes where the dust starts as he sections off the end, tossing the rest of the redstone over to his sling bag.

“Under the hill!”

Bdubs leans over the edge, tilting his head at Etho as he peers into the dark. It takes him a moment to find Etho’s face, partially obscured by black fabric and the fluff of wool around his collar. Etho tilts his head, raising his eyebrows.

“Did you need something?” he asks, arm hanging loosely by his side. Bdubs frowns, too, watching Etho’s expression. As his eyes seem to adjust to the dark, his gaze falls on the lines of redstone. He pauses there for a long moment. In that moment, Etho feels something in his chest grind, almost to a noticeable ache. If he could pull in a breath to settle it, he might have, but the sensation and minute sound passes as soon as he moves his hand to press flat against his regulator. Bdubs is gone when he looks up, reappearing only as he drops into the cavern, catching himself on the wall. He readjusts his cloak around his shoulders, shuffling into the low-light.

“Etho,” he says, still frowning. Etho looks him over. He watches Bdubs set his hands on his hips, but his heart rate stays even and his temperature level. The only thing that changes is the tone of his voice, fluctuating with a pattern Etho recognizes as forcing something. Bdubs takes a long breath in and lets it out. Etho’s eyes find the twitch of his fingers as he folds his arms, rather than the sharp curve of his mouth.

“Yes?” Etho asks. He feels his pump work a little harder. It kind of hurts still, whatever’s stopped working in his chest. He flicks his eyes, recalling a diagnostic, setting it to run in the background as he closes out of the overlays and the world returns to yellowish-grey. Bdubs is still frowning.

“You mind tellin’ me what’s wrong with this redstone?”

Etho blinks. The diagnostic comes up clear.

“What do you mean?” he says, his expression shifting into something copying amusement. He’s trying. He’s at least trying to mimic the emotions he sees. Soon enough it’ll feel natural, he’s certain. “What’s wrong with it?”

Bdubs snorts, which turns into a laugh, which turns into Etho smiling a bit wider, a bit more confusion lingering in his expression as he leans around Bdubs to check his meticulously placed line. Bdubs turns away from him, facing the system, the clock that linked the start gates to the timer below.

“What’s—” Bdubs scoffs, shaking his head. “What’s wrong with it? Etho—” he holds out his hand, waving Etho over. Etho lingers at his shoulder as he steps forward, peering over the curve of it and the moss and small leaves and flowers draped over his neck. “It’s too perfect.”

Etho makes a sound like a scoff now, a caught sound in his vocal unit, a stuttering start to his sentence that doesn’t form right away. He’s trying for surprise, the pitch of his voice rising unexpectedly.

“It’s too perfect?” he asks.

Bdubs nods. After a moment, Etho thinks he sees his expression shift, the high of his cheek rising. When Bdubs turns his head to look at him, just for a second, Bdubs is smiling.

“Bdubs,” Etho says, sighing, turning away from him, to his bag on the far side of the room. He shakes his head. That something-nothing in his chest flutters and fades and disappears all at once, instead replaced with the urge to smile back. Bdubs laughs, and Etho can imagine him tipping his head back, mouth curved up as he giggles to himself. Etho shakes his head. As he starts to pull away from Bdubs, he feels him catch his sleeve, holding fast to his elbow.

“Etho, wait—” Bdubs giggles. “It looks really good.”

Etho raises his eyebrows. Caught in Bdubs grasp, all he can do is look at him, head tilted, trying not to let the amusement show on his face. Bdubs giggles, face breaking again as he does.

“Etho…” he tries again, fighting back a smile. Etho tilts his head the other way, as if to prompt him further, looking for anything. He stays silent. Bdubs hand lowers slowly, that smile faltering just a fraction. Maybe he thinks Etho’s upset with him. There’s a flicker of recognition in his eyes. “You gonna say anythin’? Or you just gonna stand there?”

Etho smiles, finally. He shrugs a little, glancing over at the fixed lines of redstone.

“I fixed your redstone,” he says cooly, sticking his free hand in his pocket. Bdubs blinks. He jerks away as Etho’s smile grows, shoving him hard in his shoulder. Etho wobbles for a moment, smiling to himself, scrunching up his face as Bdubs’ expression morphs. He does laugh, after a beat, poking Etho in the shoulder as he does. Etho hopes he can see the smile in his eyes. He saves, logs, keeps this moment. He’s sure in the low light that his LED spins yellow for a moment. It feels right. If there’s any feeling to catalog.

Bdubs huffs. Etho thinks he hears him say something under his breath. It sounds a lot like thank you.

It’s out of habit, rather than obligation, that Etho finds himself back at the horse course. Of course he ends up here, his feet moving him about as if his brain-not-brain had no thoughts of its own. Man. Some days, it really felt human.

He wanders across the plain, eyes lingering on fully-built buildings, knowing the schematics and plans, watching as those plans-now-buildings stretched higher above his head, where they nearly threatened to pop the sky wide open.

Bdubs had sat down with him earlier that week, papers spread out between them. He’d stopped by, actually—worked his way up the mountain to the base Etho had finally finished, papers in hand, looking like he was on the verge of collapse. He’d dropped the blueprints on the largest table Etho had managed to clear, spreading out the designs for huge, complex buildings. Etho watched him explain, listened for the inflection of when to offer suggestions, heard the way Bdubs’ voice grew quieter, almost conspiratorial, as he explained his palette. There was something methodical in the way Bdubs spoke, not only in the approach to his colors, but to his style. As much as it seemed eclectic and strange, he watched the pieces fall together as Bdubs spoke of his gradients. There was something deeper there, a precision that Etho, all of a sudden, in that room, craved to emulate. To write to disk. To save. To do more than just copy.

He’d built the horse stable first—all to his own specifications. It was Bdubs later who came in to detail, tilling up the dirt around to plant grass and flowers, sectioning off parts of the empty stable. It was almost difficult to compartmentalize that Bdubs was finished with it now. That they’d worked each line of the redstone and Etho had supervised the first steps of building, and now he could look up and see the very top, or almost, if he were to strain, of the spikes above the buildings.

And in just a few weeks, Bdubs was onto another project. Etho smiles to himself. He can’t help it. There was something rather comforting about that. Something about Bdubs dragging him along to help, pointing him toward the thing he was good at, and asking for help. Bdubs showing up at his door with plans. Bdubs cracking jokes with him, and looking for a laugh Etho couldn’t replicate yet. It’s like something clicked. Or was just on the breach of it. And Etho liked it.

Etho clears his field of view, taking in, instead, the stretch of sky where it met the ocean, along the line of hills and grass and flowers, and further still, to the smudge that looked like Bdubs. He blends in too well—the green of his coat barely noticeable against the field of grass that splayed out from the side of his build. There were still materials strewn about—chests half opened, shulkers stacked waist high.

Bdubs stands to the side of a dark grey and white horse, one hand placed on its nose, the other digging through his bag. Etho watches for a moment. Bdubs fishes around for that entire second that he lingers, searching for something, until he pulls out an apple. Another falls to the ground, rolling away from him. He holds out the fruit for the horse as Etho clears his throat.

“Hiya, Bdubs—” he says as Bdubs startles, twisting around to see him. He huffs, an immediate frown coming to his face. Bdubs turns to fetch the dropped apple, holding it high above his head as the grey horse nudges its nose into his empty hand. He pats it instead.

“Etho,” he says, tone thin. He sighs, shaking his head. “Scared the life outta me, you know that? You gotta make some noise when you’re walkin’ around.”

Etho smiles, a nice and easy reaction to the annoyance in Bdubs’ voice. It’s getting easier. At least a bit. The smiling part, that is. The inflection that comes with being happy.

“I’ll try next time,” he says, shrugging his shoulders. His hands find his pockets as he looks around, eyes following the path around the buildings. He’s sure the pollen and moss will be stuck to his clothes for days before he gets them out.

“Mm,” Bdubs hums, unconvinced. “I’m sure you will. Now, what’re you doin’ here? You don’t have anything better to do?”

“That’s a good question,” Etho says.

Bdubs turns back to him for a second, just a glance over his shoulder as he cocks his head to the side. He raises his eyebrows before he turns back to the horse, who’s started to nose at his bag. He drags his hand down its nose.

“You’re tellin’ me you don’t have an objective right now?”

“I never have an objective, Bdubs.”

Bdubs snorts again . Etho steps over, slow, minding the horse. It sniffs as Etho holds out his hand, nosing his gloved palm. He pats the horse's nose, somewhat stilted, smoothing over the soft bridge of his nose.

“Right,” Bdubs hums. When Etho glances over to him, Bdubs glances away, as if he’d lingered as Etho stepped over. He’s not moved from Etho’s side, which. Makes something fit into Etho’s chest in a way he isn’t expecting. He rests his hand on the horse's head, looking over at Bdubs in full.

“I can’t come see how the horse course is looking, now that you’re done?” he asks. Bdubs makes an embarrassed sounding noise, watching the rise of the buildings to their left. The horse sniffs, and Etho lifts his hand away, letting it fall to his side.

“I—I got excited about it,” Bdubs mutters. If Etho leans enough, he can see the beginnings of a flush creep over his cheeks, up the shell of his ear. Something about that, too. Etho looks beyond him, though, studying the rise of the buildings as Bdubs does. He nods to himself.

“I can tell,” he says, amusement slipping into his voice, almost naturally. Immediately, Bdubs whips around again, face twisted in offense.

“Hey!” he snaps. “You makin’ fun of me?”

Etho shakes his head, spreading his hands out in front of him as he does.

“No, no. Not at all,” he says, hoping the smile he’s giving is reaching his eyes. “I’m saying we make a pretty good team.”

Bdubs makes a little huff of a sound, but his posture and expression softens. Etho studies it from the moment it appears, trying to place the emotion behind it. He seems upset—but not from anything Etho said. He almost looks guilty.

“We’ve always made a good team,” Bdubs mumbles. Etho blinks.

“Since when have we been a team?”

“Since—s…” Bdubs blurts, then backtracks, folding his arms over his chest. “Well we’re a team now!”

Etho raises his eyebrows, stepping away from the horse and more around Bdubs’ side. He leans in a bit as he stands by his side, bumping their shoulders together. Bdubs doesn’t recoil. Instead, he pushes back, just for a moment, and they jostle. Bdubs hums, sighing through his nose.

“Are we?” Etho asks. Bdubs nods, short and firm.

“Mhm! ‘Cause I said so.”

Etho nods with him. There’s that thing again, a turning, jostling, in some part of his chest that really shouldn’t turn or jostle. He can feel his temperature tick up just a few degrees, a fan kicking on to settle the temperature, thirium sludging warm to cold through his limbs. A team, huh? He couldn’t beat Bdubs’ conviction, that’s for sure. Maybe it was a bit of guilt, then. Maybe something in Bdubs had realized Etho was much more of a help than a hindrance. Maybe Bdubs wanted a friend. Maybe he just felt bad and the feeling bad got to a point where he had to just do something about it. Etho didn’t know. He didn’t live inside Bdubs’ brain. And picking at Bdubs’ every emotion was a task enough to drive his processor into the ground. He could already feel another spike in temperature, LED glowing yellow-blue. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. Etho sticks his hands in his pockets.

“I’d like that,” he says, finally pushing out the words as his programming jumps into gear, “What’s our next project then?”

Bdubs goes back to jostling him before he turns away, moving from Etho’s side to collect his horse. Gathering the horse's reins in his hands, Bdubs pauses.

“Ooh…” he says, frowning a little. Etho watches the little furrow of his eyebrows—thinking. Bdubs is turning the idea over in his head. Bdubs steps back over with the horse in tow, already walking in the direction of the horse stable. Etho jolts forward, taking several big steps to match Bdubs’ pace. “Well why don’t you come back to the clock and we can talk about it, huh?”

“That sounds nice.”

Bdubs makes an affirmative sound, leading the horse around and into the stable. Etho watches him unlatch the gate, ushering the horse into the pen.

“I can put the kettle on and everything,” Bdubs says. He lifts the bridle out of the horse’s mouth, running his hand along the length of the horse’s nose. Etho doesn’t mean to watch him as he does, but the action is so purposeful. There’s a moment where Bdubs’ expression is unreadable—unreadable as in Etho simply can’t place anything on it. Unreadable in the amount it changes—something softer than he’s seen, something far away. Bdubs’ whole demeanor seems to shift as he stands still for a moment. Etho isn’t sure what to do with himself. He’s just standing in straw and dirt and stones, all of which he can feel under his shoes. He shuffles a bit, back and forth, to make his presence known, before he says:

“You know I can’t drink anything, Bdubs.”

And Bdubs rolls his eyes, squinting over at him, stepping away from the horse to hop the gate.

“Well you can at least fake it,” he grumbles. He folds his arms again, wrinkling his nose at Bdubs as Bdubs leads him out of the pen and into the open field around the horse course. The shadow of the buildings above them hasn’t changed, yet. The sun is still high and warm in the sky.

Etho laughs. At least, he makes a sound that he thinks passes as a laugh. Bdubs laughs too, though, so it must sound pretty convincing. He nods, the smile on his face feeling much more natural than he ever could have expected.

“I could fake it,” he laughs. “Sure.”

Bdubs grins at him. It’s nice. It makes the walk back to his base a little more bearable.

By the time Etho gets his invitation to the life game, he’s grown accustomed to being at Bdubs’ side again. He wanders around Bdubs’ base like he knows it, makes it a spot he chooses to map, to memorize. Bdubs checks in on him when he isn’t around as much—asks him how his builds are going, wonders if he needs help. Bdubs lingers in his spaces too, like a plant trying to root, gives himself reasons to stand in doorways just a bit longer, just enough to extend their goodbyes. It feels right—in a way that almost gives reason to Etho’s deviation. Maybe, deep down, from their first introduction, Etho had decided to glue himself to Bdubs’ side and not become unstuck. Maybe he’d simply put that decision, his first ever decision, into motion that day. It didn’t matter much as to why anymore.

When Etho gets his letter, he doesn’t open it. He holds it between two fingers, turning it over and over. He doesn’t need to read it to know what it says. There’s a dark red seal on the back, shaped like a heart. He makes a little sound, some sort of click in the back of his mouth, before he stuffs the letter in his pocket, half-folded.

He finds Bdubs exactly where he expects. Bdubs is sitting cross-legged in his garden, hands in the dirt, when Etho arrives at the crescent moon base. If he looks closely enough, Etho can still tell that Bdubs’ own letter sits on his window sill in the kitchen, unopened. But he’s really squinting to notice, so he writes it off for now as a flaw in his own sight.

Bdubs turns to him as he walks up. His hair is pushed back away from his face with his bandana, and his hands are covered in dirt, and he’s got a streak of black soil across his forehead that Etho tries not to look at for too long. Bdubs shoots him a toothy grin, going back to his bright orange tulips. If Etho looks long enough, he could probably guess the soil mixture, and tell him if it's good enough to be planting orange tulips in, but he doesn’t. Instead, he comes to stand behind him and Bdubs hums in greeting.

“Etho,” he says, looking up again, wiping the dirt from his forehead. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, nothin’,” Etho says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He forgets who he picked the gesture up from, but it’s become part of his natural body language patterns now, so he won’t be stopping it anytime soon. “I just came to see how you were doing.”

“How I was doin’, huh?” Bdubs asks, amusement trickling into his voice. Etho smiles, feeling his face pull.

“Mhm,” he says. “That’s right. I can’t come and check up on a friend?”

Bdubs laughs, sticking his spade in the dirt.

“Oh, we’re friends now?” he says, still giggling as he turns around. “I thought we were just a team.”

Etho watches him lean back on his hands, legs coming out from under him. He tries to read Bdubs’ expression and voice for any note of insincerity, or play, or teasing, but doesn’t find anything he normally associates with Bdubs. This just feels true.

“I mean, I figured with how much we’ve been working together…” Etho starts, to which Bdubs startles, waving his hands.

“No, no!” Bdubs yelps. “Etho, I thought the same thing! I just wasn’t expectin’ it from you.”

Etho blinks. It feels owlish, small, almost a wrong reaction to hearing Bdubs say something like that. But it’s what immediately happens, before he tries to open his mouth, and no sound comes out. He waits for a moment. He assumes his LED spins, maybe even red, as Bdubs watches him, face paling.

“Oh,” Etho says quietly.

“We’re friends,” Bdubs says, voice much smaller than Etho’s ever heard it. “‘S that alright with you?”

Etho feels like the proper response would be to laugh, if he could really feel anything at all besides every gear in his chest halting and restarting themselves. He makes a noise that sounds almost like a cough.

“Mhm,” he says. He watches Bdubs’ shoulders relax and finds that his own posture sinks with it.

“Good,” Bdubs says, nodding along. “Was there anything else you wanted to scare me with?”

Etho knows this tone—playful. Teasing. He works up a smile and fishes the letter from his pocket, slightly bent. Bdubs’ eyes flick right to it, right to the red seal pressed into the paper. Immediately, he scrambles up, reaching for the note in Etho’s hands. Etho lets him grab it in his dirt-covered fingers, even as Bdubs tries frantically to dust off his hands as he notices. Bdubs turns it over itself, glancing up at Etho.

“It’s for you?”

Etho nods.

“It was on my doorstep this morning,” he says. “I can see you’ve got one in your window?”

Bdubs snorts, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I haven’t opened the damn thing. I’m excited up until the point I’m not, ‘cause I know I’m gonna lose again.”

Etho hums. As Bdubs hands him back the letter, Etho rests his hand on his shoulder, giving it a hesitant, light squeeze. Bdubs looks quickly down at it, before he’s back to staring at Etho’s face.

“Don’t worry, Bdubs,” he says, hoping his voice is full of amusement and affection like he feels like it is. “You’ll have me there this time!”

And Bdubs laughs, full and warm in his chest, and Etho jostles him around as he does, until Bdubs is smacking his shoulder and wiggling free. He picks up his fallen hat and his tools, and Etho follows him around the side of the house as he puts things away. As he shuts one of the chest, Bdubs says:

“You mean that, though? You wanna be on a team?”

Etho smiles, feeling his eyes squint, forces every ounce of new feeling into his words when he says:

“I don’t think I wanna team with anyone else, Bdubs.”

And Bdubs’ grin in excitement is more than enough to convince him he’s made the right choice.

It’ll be a long two weeks until the death game starts. When he returns home later that night, Bdubs’ plans for success turning over in his brain, recording for later, Etho reads over the letter enough to commit the page to memory. He keeps it safe internally as the letter finds its way to his bookshelf, half-sealed. Through him, like it’s just under the skin, runs an emotion he’s not yet familiar with. He hopes it's a good one, at the very least. He hopes so, as much as an android, a machine, someone just now familiar with the idea of free will, can hope.

It feels good, though. And something makes him think that everything will turn out just fine.

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