Chapter Text
Etho didn’t like touch.
This was understood amongst the Hermits. It was a thing. Just as Joel hated horses and Mumbo hated sitting still, Etho would shrink away from physical contact and stand on the outskirts of social situations. The Hermits understood that you didn’t touch Etho.
However, something being understood was very different to something being practised. The Hermits weren’t malicious, Etho knew that. But what they were was forgetful. And affectionate, impulsive, brazen and basically any combination of traits that made it difficult to keep their hands off others. Including Etho.
But he wanted to be like them so bad. He wanted, more than anything, to find the easy enjoyment in touch that the others seemed to adore. He wanted to be able to show his affection towards his friends because, void-knows, he was bad enough at doing that with words. He wanted to rid himself of the instinct to put space between himself and others, to be constantly searching for escape routes.
He just wanted to be normal.
But no matter what he wanted, Etho couldn’t shake the deeply ingrained feeling of wrongness wrought through his body at the feeling of anyone touching him. It made him want to claw his brain out of his skull, to grab the offending body part and wash it clean until he had scrubbed right down to the bone.
So he coped. If he couldn’t stop the Hermits from touching him, if he couldn’t learn to like affection, he would deal with it in other ways. He layered turtlenecks and jackets until any touch to his body was lessened to a dull ache. He wore gloves and headbands on the off chance someone would try to touch a part of him that couldn’t be padded to the End and back. Etho was coping.
The thought settled; that train of thought had run its course hundreds of times. Especially now, as Etho stared at the seasonal group photo that had been taken at the beginning of the 10th season. A photo he hadn’t worked up the courage to be in until the start of the fifth. He knew Xisuma always displayed the photo at spawn, and he knew logically that many more copies existed inside the Hermit’s bases. Yet he still felt sick.
He stuck out like a sore thumb, his mask and headband pulled as close together as possible, leaving only his eyes peering out. For all that his mask concealed, it certainly managed to make him stand out too.
In some of his earlier years on Hermitcraft, he remembered getting frustrated, sick of the constant curiosity surrounding it. They poked and prodded and wanted to know what he was hiding beneath the mask. All while Etho had to pretend that the cover of his mask wasn't the only thing keeping him together. Keeping him safe.
Etho clenched a gloved fist at the memory, relishing the sound the worn leather gave at the action.
Despite his fellow Hermit’s kindness, he could never shake the instinct to hide his face beneath layers of cloth. Just as his skin had been sensitive for as long as he could remember, so too was his mind. Haunted by memories of being watched, of civilisations of the early universe — when boundaries were just a little more loose, a little less important.
The mask helped. It protected him from the feeling of being truly seen; it helped when suddenly even his own eyes were too horrible a gaze to bear. Etho was content to hide. Because if they couldn’t see him, if they didn’t know him. Then maybe they couldn’t hurt him.
Etho sighed heavily, as if trying to exhale his racing thoughts through his mouth, rid his brain of them and let them float away. What a nice thought, he smiled slightly. With one last shaking breath, he turned away from the photograph proudly presented in the building that surrounded Spawn. He crossed the floor and settled on a roughly carved crimson wood bench, far away from the offending image. Etho wondered impatiently where Tango was. The man had asked to meet him at Spawn via a message on his communicator. He hadn’t elaborated much, just quoting his need for Etho’s ‘redstone expertise’. Etho had no doubt that Tango was perfectly capable of fixing whatever issue he was having on his own, but second opinions were always helpful, he supposed.
Right when Etho was considering jumping through a nearby Nether portal and spending the rest of the day landscaping another river, the unmistakable beating sound of thick, leathery wings echoed towards him. He stood up expectantly as he watched Tango fly downwards, dismounting clumsily with a run to slow his momentum.
Tango approached Etho, panting heavily, and before he could open his mouth to spill so much as a greeting, Etho beat him to it. Without registering Tango’s dishevelled appearance, redstone-stained face and eyes somehow redder than usual, he had rushed to confront him on his methods of communication.
“Since this redstone mishap couldn’t have been for anything other than Hungry Hermits – seriously, when was the last time you left that place?” Etho said, barging ahead despite Tango’s slight wince. “I see no reason why we couldn’t have met at the game district.”
Perhaps a bit ruder than intended, but he had been waiting at Spawn for ages (and if he weren’t at Spawn, he mightn’t have been reminded of the photo).
“There’s a reason dude, I swear. It’s just-” Tango trailed off, his hair was beginning to burn wilder, flames licking down the sides of his face. “I- It’s better if I just show you.” Etho tensed, great – because people always said things like that when everything was fine.
But Tango was clearly quite stressed, so whatever this was, it was probably more serious than he had first anticipated. He stood up and sighed what he hoped was an exasperated-yet-slightly-less-mean sigh before grabbing a rocket out of Tango’s hands. He walked past him, into the nearest Nether Portal, offering a sufficient “Let’s go.”
When he stepped out of the Portal into the minigame district, he allowed a moment to let the cool air wash over him. They both stood for a moment, Etho relishing the lack of heat and Tango turning impossibly pale. Just as Etho started walking, Tango put an arm out to stop him. His arm moved slowly and stopped a distance away from his body, yet Etho still tensed, missing the start of Tango’s words. He’s not going to touch you, you fool. Etho berated himself. Evidently, today was going to be rougher than he thought, but he pushed that thought aside and turned back to Tango.
“-so well! They had nearly reached day eight, but something in the point system messed up. And they were so disappointed, Etho.”
Uh oh. Feelings. Etho was summoned for his redstone knowledge, but now, with Tango in front of him, head in his hands and clearly upset with himself, he simply didn’t know what to say. Truthfully, Tango was one of the best redstoners he knew. The man was a genius, practically made to live with redstone beneath his nails. Projects Etho could never conceive of were created by the fiery man in front of him, yet his best quality was his determination. Tango’s brain was clearly being unkind, because when had a simple mistake ever stopped the man before?
Etho supposed that any and all of these things would have been appropriate to say to comfort Tango. What came out, however, was different.
“So where does my redstone expertise factor into this?”
Tango stared. Etho winced. Not great.
And that was exactly one of those times when Etho wished he could just reach out and hug Tango. He held great care for Tango; he knew exactly how he was feeling, but actually expressing those thoughts seemed impossible to do with words. Could it be that easy? To reach out, to hold someone, and manage to fit all of your feelings into one simple touch? He could comfort Tango that way; he could be a better friend.
But then the reality of actually touching Tango encroached. Wrapping his arms around a too-warm body, feeling arms in turn cover his neck, constricting him. Skin touching his skin; warm, and raw, and disgusting. If Etho were normal, it might be fine. If Etho were normal, he could share his admiration without needing to push the words from his mouth. But in his reality, Etho would rather perform a spoken sonnet about all of his fears than hug someone.
The moment passed. Etho’s panic passed too, when Tango nodded, clearly not as upset as Etho feared.
“I tried to look for the problem, the missing piece of redstone that screwed it all up.” Tango began, leading Etho on a snail's pace walk to the familiar restaurant. His fiery hair was diminishing now, glowing just as bright but shrinking away from the air. As if retreating in embarrassment, “But before I could find it, the problem had- uh… gotten worse.”
“Gotten worse? Spread?” Etho guessed, feeling slightly worried. “If it’s a glitch or something that broke your redstone, you need to be talking to Xisuma, not me.”
“I would be worried about a glitch, if it weren’t for the fact that…I broke it.”
“Oh,” Etho said eloquently. He sure hoped he wasn’t about to screw up something else when he began to ask, “What. Uh- what happened?”
“Well, y’know,” Tango said, waving him off. “Anger episode… or whatever.” He half chuckled at the word ‘episode’ and then stopped abruptly as they reached Hungry Hermits. “I don’t really remember all of it. I got mad, threw some stuff around… I just didn’t want you to see the mess before I was there to explain it,” Tango said, walking through the doors.
Etho chose not to say anything, on account of Tango clearly not wanting to go into it. He instead let Tango lift a heavy trapdoor, leading to the complicated, tangling, underbelly of Hungry Hermits. To any non-redstoner, the circuitry looked no different and just as confusing as it always had, but Etho wasn’t that. His eyes buzzed as he shifted around, noting every broken line and demolished piston. Tango shuffled around Etho, awkwardly straightening a repeater as if it would look any less out of place among the pile of redstone dust and shattered glass. Etho’s gaze drifted to the wall above Tango’s shoulder. The stone was stained red and indented heavily — the broken observer lying beneath the scene; clearly the culprit.
Etho’s eyes flicked back and forth, involuntarily scanning for breaks in the circuitry; his mind conjured solution after solution. Despite his racing thoughts, he felt himself relax, his shoulders dropped, and his breath became cooler beneath his mask. This, this, this was something he could fix. He dropped to his knees beside what was once a simple comparator clock and began repairing the area.
He quickly settled into the familiar motions of prepping a comparator. He felt the grit and sharpness of Tango’s finely ground redstone between his fingers. The comfortable movement of working on redstone shook off the nervous energy from whatever wrong side of the bed he’d clearly woken up on. This was good, this was familiar, redstone was a language that Etho knew fluently, and he wasn’t going to waste this chance to actually help his friend.
Tango settled next to Etho, scraping up spilled redstone dust and leaving a comfortable distance between them. He lifted his head when Etho began to rewire a second comparator and gently questioned, “Uh, buddy, are you sure that’s the right signal strength? It looks pretty weak.”
Etho continued working, “I’m sure, Tango,” he said. Before Tango could further protest, Etho simply lifted a leather-clad finger to his left eye and tapped twice. Tango opened his mouth like a fish and tilted his head. When it became clear that he was just going to continue staring, Etho focused as much of his mind on the redstone before him as he began to explain.
“Well, it’s pretty obviously not a normal eye.” Tango's mouth had closed, and he had finished pretending to work, now giving his full attention to Etho. “It was a while ago now, probably before you. Redstone wasn’t very respected.”
“We’re like the same age!” Tango interrupted, before muttering something that sounded quite like ‘just because you have the sensibilities of an old man’ under his breath.
“Then you’ll remember, no one cared about redstone safety,” Etho said, letting some of Tango’s own redstone powder run between his fingers in demonstration. “I don’t even think we knew redstone was caustic. Boy, did we let it get everywhere.”
“Etho buddy, what are you implying here?” Tango said, eyes dangerous.
Etho’s face felt warm under his mask; there were very few answers to Tango’s question that wouldn’t plummet the mood to bedrock. “They don’t call me the pioneer of redstone for nothin’.” Tango didn’t even protest Etho’s use of the title. He must have been really worried. “Zero safety concern. I must’ve spent weeks straight with redstone right in my face.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie, he figured. He could indeed distinctly recall the smell of the red dust inches from his face, the way it floated to his eye, burning on contact. He just chose to leave out the reason why it was there in the first place. He didn’t need to mention the hands shoving the powder towards his face. The hands that stretched his mouth open and pressed the red compound against his tongue, where it turned to paste between his teeth. Specks coating and drowning every crevice, his ears, his nostrils, his eye.
The memory was so vivid and so suddenly unwanted that he was at complete mercy of the full-body flinch that nearly launched him into the now rewired comparator. Tango moved toward Etho at the motion, and Etho was glad for the mess of wires that slowed Tango’s movement enough to allow him to straighten up. He composed himself before Tango could reach him, before he could touch him.
Etho stuttered through the rest of his explanation, hoping it would be enough to satiate Tango, hoping it would be enough to make Tango give it up.
“It wasn’t that big of a deal, I mean- Doc fixed it right up when we met. And it has its uses.”
“Its uses?” Tango’s eyes narrowed, his voice high, edging on nervous. Etho really thought this was common knowledge amongst the Hermits. Clearly, it wasn’t. Tango was still staring at him, and Etho felt the conversation derailing quickly.
“y’know, I can still… feel it. When I get close to a source, buzzing around in there.”
“What- Buzzing? Etho!” Tango’s voice had gotten higher, in that way of his that usually would’ve sent Etho into a fit of quiet giggles. Instead, he winced as he prepared to say what he had hoped Tango wasn’t dense enough to tread around.
“The Redstone?” Etho answered flatly. He was sure he had made it pretty obvious.
Tango exhaled shakily, in some sort of silent laugh, but the deepening flames on his head betrayed his lighthearted expression. “So this whole time? You had, you- in your- gauh I'm gonna be sick.” He finished, gesturing wildly at Etho’s face by way of explanation. “I thought it was just a visual thing? Like my eyes or-” Tango cut his own speech off with another thought. “I can’t believe I didn’t know. Who else does? How can I help? Void, you have redstone in your eye, Etho!” He sounded downright hysterical, voice shaky and high. Etho really should stop him from breaking any more redstone.
Instead, he swallowed, “Well, yeah. My eye didn’t exactly go anywhere; it’s still the same one. Just a few Doc modifications.” He would really like Tango to stop staring at him. Especially with that expression, the one that made him feel flattened under the draw of another's gaze. Etho stepped tentatively toward a broken observer and placed down a shulker box to rummage for a replacement. Face now hidden from Tango behind the lid.
Tango clearly sensed Etho’s avoidance. He scraped a hand across his face and breathed in heavily. It must have worked to calm him, because his flames evened out to a light orange colour. “So you’ve gotten used to the way different strengths of redstone feel in your eye, and that’s how you measure signal strength?” Tango calls out. “Etho, that's- that’s really freaking cool, man.”
Etho was prepared for more confusion, perhaps some pity. But this? He could deal with this, so he called back, “Really?” Wanting, against all odds, to hear the rest of what Tango has to say.
“I mean, yeah, of course. Don’t get me wrong dude, I’m still furious you never told me, and I still kinda can’t get past the fact that you’ve had redstone in your eye the whole time I’ve known you.” Another half-hysterical chuckle slipped past his lips. “But yeah. ‘Etho Slab: The man that can sense redstone signal strength with his eye,’ it fits.” He finished with a sharp grin.
Etho grinned back — still avoiding eye contact, but no longer out of fear. “Yeah, okay. Good. It’s…good,” he replied vaguely, pushing the remnants of those thoughts from his mind. Finding no more need (and even less desire) to continue talking, Etho shuffled over to a wall, allowing space for Tango.
Tango took the offer happily, if a little hesitantly. And although Etho had offered the proximity, it didn’t stop the blinding panic as Tango approached. Etho was locked in place as Tango settled in and reached for the now shared shulker box, beginning to work. Once Tango was securely in his place, once Etho was sure he was safe, only then did his body grant him the mercy to move. If Tango had noticed the way Etho’s body had stiffened and breathing had become shallow, he didn’t show it.
Only minutes had passed, but Etho found his body more fluid and his breathing more consistent. A redstone task like this required very little concentration and allowed Etho to focus on his simple movements. The monotony of it all was soothing. And if all else, Etho was glad that this day, no matter how horrible, was one during which the presence of someone in his peripheral was comforting, rather than unnerving.
Tango’s voice soon broke the steady silence that had since filled the room.
“Etho, can you uh- can you check the strength of these lines here?” Etho hesitated. Did Tango not believe him? Was he going to make him answer more questions? But Tango just sat in front of him, expectant, but not pressuring. So Etho shuffled over to the comparator in front of him and focused his gaze. The two inputs were similar in length and barely lit up; it was no wonder Tango was having a hard time telling the difference. He focused on the familiar feeling behind his eyes, with no other way to describe it than as an energy. It felt like the redstone was a part of him. He supposed that in a way, it was.
He could feel Tango’s eyes on his back, slowly becoming uncomfortable once more as he leaned over the red lines. If Tango wasn’t doubting him before, he definitely was now. He couldn’t focus on the difference in energy; his optic nerve only supplied him with a dull buzz as he looked between the two inputs. The only thing clear in his mind was the smell of redstone in his lungs. It was a smell he was used to, but now it only served to remind him of the hands that grabbed, and held, and forced. It seemed the earlier memory was sticking with him more than he cared to admit.
Focus Etho. You’re not there, they’re not here. But Tango is, Tango is waiting for you.
And then he felt it. The minuscule change in energy, the feeling that separated the redstone signals from each other. He turned to Tango slightly triumphantly.
“This one here, the main input. It’s weaker than the other.”
“Huh. Yeah, thanks dude!” Tango said, brushing away a few centimetres of dust from the main input. He sounded genuinely appreciative. Dust filled the air, and Tango adjusted his arm to fully clear the extraneous redstone dust from the line.
It wasn’t until Tango’s arm was blocking his vision that he realised how close he was to the circuit still. He began to move away, but not before Tango’s eyes locked with his, and the red-clad man froze.
Still staring at Etho, Tango must have seen the last wisps of blood-red glow dissipate from his friend's eye. After processing the sight for approximately four seconds, a look of panic strayed across his face. His eyes widened alongside a rise in his eyebrows. His hair started burning fast, like it often did when he was thinking hard. After the initial panic faded, Etho could clearly see the look of intrigue on Tango’s face. He knew the man well and knew his academic inclinations just as much, so Etho found the sudden intrigue worrisome; his eye wasn’t something he wanted studied or scrutinised.
Tango was but a slave to his curiosity, and he really didn’t mean any harm. But the next thing he did was reach forward towards Etho’s face.
Etho wished he could say that the moment happened in slow motion — It would have given him more time to prepare. Instead, Tango looked at him with wonder and horror, Etho blinked, and then Tango was touching him. His finger pressed into the bone below Etho’s red eye, while his other hand cupped his face, fingernails grazing against the edge of his mask. Etho was going to be sick. All he could focus on was the mantra of heat, heavy, hot, boiling, playing on loop in his head.
Etho remembered a time when he’d ventured into the Nether alone, inevitably falling from a fortress. He remembered how badly the lava had burnt his skin, the deathly heat of the stuff making a home in his brain, rendering his whole world pain. He remembered how even after he’d respawned, he still believed himself to be burning alive, the phantom heat so unbearable.
This was ten times worse.
Etho shot away from Tango, his body following his head and pitching backward. When he hit the ground, his head spun, and for a terrifying moment, there were two Tangos reaching toward him in concern. As he crawled backwards, palms and torso spreading dust across the stone, the two Tangos coalesced into one. Etho stopped moving, not out of courage, but because his back had suddenly pressed against a wall. The recognisable shclipp of slime told Etho that he had pressed against a sticky piston. Weirdly, it was that realisation that brought Etho back to his own mind, along with a thought of Aww man, that’s never coming out of my jacket.
Chest rising and falling deeply, Etho focused on that movement instead of Tango’s stare. The other man had thankfully drawn his hand back, looking at Etho with an apologetic expression. Etho felt hot, although whether that was from the touch still ghosting his skin or the fire raging on Tango’s head, he didn’t know. He scraped his hands across his eyes and cheeks as if he could remove the residual heat. At the action, he was disheartened to learn that even his own touch sent shocks of panic through his heart.
It looked like it was going to be one of those days
One of those days where anything grazing against his skin felt like a pass from a lightning rod. One of those days where any presence, player or not, kept him on the verge of a breakdown. One of those days where any sensory input was overwhelming. The input was too much, and Etho was going to short out
“-shit, uh. I’m sorry, Etho. I forgot you had your- uh, thing.” Tango stuttered around a shocked expression
Etho wondered if there was anything to forget, considering it never really felt like any of them committed it to memory in the first place.
Tango’s arms were stiff by his side, unsure how to move forward without physical touch. “It’s just… your eye. I mean, it literally glows in there, dude. Did you know that?”
Tango didn’t mean harm. It was just who he was, curious to a fault. Etho knew if he saw one of his friends’ eyes glowing, he wouldn’t be calm about it either. It wasn’t Tango's fault he reacted like this; he was the one who overreacted, the one who couldn’t answer a few personal questions, the one who couldn’t stand so much as a hand on his face
But despite his better judgment, there was a part of him that felt betrayed. He had felt so calm under Tango’s presence that he had almost shaken off whatever bad morning he had been having. Tango had been moving slowly around Etho; he had backed up inches while gesturing, had allowed space to exist between them. Etho had thought for a moment that a Hermit had learnt to deal with his weird propensity against touch.
Etho had felt safe.
It was a stupid thought, especially considering that that statement hadn’t changed; Tango wasn’t going to hurt him. But as Etho’s breath continued to heave, he found he couldn’t distinguish Tango’s guilty face from the racing in his brain telling him to move. Move before he hurts you.
The fear of having to endure that heat again was enough to push him up from the ground and towards the rickety wooden ladder. He reached the base and looked backwards, slowly meeting the eyes of a man whose expression had morphed into one of pity. Etho kicked into gear, no longer thinking about Tango, or his redstone, or his stupid pity. He just ran.
It wasn’t until the ground became spongy under his feet and the jungle swarmed into view that he slowed his pace and finally, finally had a chance to reflect on what had just happened. The gates in Etho’s mind that were desperately holding his emotions in check flew open, letting every ounce of betrayal, fear, and disgust flood his consciousness. His fingers clawed in the air just above his face, wanting desperately to splay his hands against the offending areas but knowing that touch was the very thing that started this mess in the first place.
Forcing his arms to straighten was a process not unlike twisting a rusty tap. Every joint protested being moved away from his face; the knowledge that he could scratch his nails into his face and distract himself with pain was a comfort he wasn’t ready to lose. But one hand at a time, one finger after the other, his arms rested awkwardly by his side. More scratches on his face would just mean more attention, more worry, more touch. Etho shivered despite his layers and robotically walked through the door of his house.
Only when he collapsed atop his bed, not a single layer removed, and his muscles practically sank into the downy mattress, did he understand why. His aching body wasn’t just from the onslaught of panic, but a side effect of his escape. He had run through the overworld, all the way from the gaming district to his house. And looking out the window, sun still confidently positioned in the sky, he had run fast.
Without bothering to block the light from his windows, Etho squeezed his eyes shut. His body felt like a live redstone wire, buzzing with energy and tension. The phantom pressure where Tango had touched him was constant. But above all that —Etho’s face turned a grimace— he had abandoned his friend.
He was such an idiot. Tango had asked him for help, called especially for Etho. And how was he repaid? By Etho running off like a child because he was touched. Void, he was such a horrible friend.
His posture curled further inwards, shielding him from the events of the day. When sleep finally came for him, it was fitful. Tango’s disheartened face persisted in his mind, even in unconsciousness. Eventually, he was carried through to the morning with the thought that tomorrow would be different.
It had to be.