Chapter Text
“And then when we killed Pearl, right in front of your house… well… heh, it was good before but nothing was ever the same after that!”
Joel chuckled and Bdubs laughed, even though he wasn’t entirely sure if hadn’t been missing something, perhaps for a while. He did that, when he didn’t feel like making a comedic production out of not knowing what was going on. Sometimes he let it go, sometimes he asked someone like Cleo or Etho what was going on. At the moment, he had no one to ask.
“Ha ha, yeah, teaming with Etho is very fun!”
Joel snickered and took a swig from his bottle.
They’d been celebrating, the four Mounders, after they’d finished sloppily putting together their makeshift “community center”. It was level with the ground, but took inspiration from his own house in having been built with whatever was lying around. They’d claimed it was so they could have a party without trapdoors, but Bdubs had just been happy to have a group project – everything had felt a bit more scattered than with his previous teams. That was fine for now, but when things get tense…
They’d all had a good time, leaving Bdubs feeling more settled about his team – his first without someone he was already close to. Pearl and Mumbo had left after an hour, Mumbo having gotten more “tipsy” than he intended and Pearl volunteering to put him to bed. Joel hadn’t made any move to leave, instead getting another round of beers for the two remaining Mounders.
The evening passed pleasantly into night, Bdubs losing track of both the number of rounds of beers and the hours spent drinking. The last beer seemed to be hitting harder, at least for him – Joel was smaller but might have more of a tolerance. He’d been interested for a while in getting to know Joel a little, but not enough to actually make it happen – everything was so chaotic whenever they were in the same place. For all that ditching out on his story could be seen as rude, it made Bdubs even more interested in hanging out with Joel, and glad he’d joined up. Now here they were, no teammates, no Etho, just the two of them.
After the others had left, they’d continued gossiping, but with less distraction. Who was teaming with who, what tasks people’d had, where some of the solo people might wind up. Joel announced he was done with going solo – which led the conversation to slip back to Bad Boys and Clockers, and then, of course, eventually, the time of soulmates. Bdubs was actually surprised it took so long, but maybe they’d needed a little more booze to get to what might be more sensitive issues.
Joel put down his beer and swung the conversation away from Etho.
“How was being with Impulse? You two always seemed… cozy.”
Bdubs froze for a moment, not sure how much Joel was asking.
“Well, you know we’ve been friends for a long time, so it was easy to get… comfortable!”
Joel raised an eyebrow. “Comfortable, eh?”
What was he asking, was he asking, did that mean…
“Yeah, comfortable, we were married! Very comfortable, yes.”
Joel laughed, not meanly but not lightly.
“Okay Bdubs, you don’t have to say anything about what happened in your marital bed if you don’t want to, I won’t pry.”
“Oh! Okay well yes Joel, if that’s what you are actually asking, yes we had a very good sex life!”
“Right up until the end?”
Bdubs responded without considering the question. “Yup! And we brought, uhh, a little bit of it home, though not the same way. But, um, it’s good!”
Joel smiled and Bdubs realized that this was, as far as he understood, the moment in polite conversation where one inquired about the other person’s experience. By that logic, he should ask Joel if he and Etho had been having sex. A question he’d long wanted the answer, but never taken one of what felt like infinite possibilities to simply ask Etho. A question that was in fact a totally normal thing to inquire about with someone you were sleeping with.
But Bdubs did not ask, he fumbled and said various amounts of “umm” and “uhh”. Joel laughed, stood up from his chair and got himself another beer.
“Want another?” Joel didn’t turn back as he asked.
“Oh, that would be great!”
Joel saved Bdubs by picking up the conversation when he returned, still only telling stories about Etho, being with Etho, and making what Bdubs was pretty sure were a variety of innuendos. Now it felt too awkward to ask, he felt like the moment had passed, but Joel kept going. Often smirking, but not in a way that made Bdubs feel bad, just confused. He focused a lot on being Red with Etho, how he’d always loved being Red (which was not a huge surprise, after watching Joel go through it so many times), how amazing it was to have a partner who was also Red.
How much more exciting their life together was when they were Red.
Bdubs couldn’t come up with anything it could be besides sex, it wasn’t like Joel would be talking about crochet!
Joel offered Bdubs another beer, and he accepted. He could come up with any number of reasons to leave, but he needed to see where this was going. Joel settled, half sprawled on a bed that was up against one of the long walls. It had seemed innocuous enough, somewhere to set spawn, but with Joel looking like that… Bdubs suddenly found it very distracting.
Joel took another swig of his beer and smiled. “What about you, Bdubs, did you enjoy being Red with Impulse? Good for your marriage?”
Bdubs struggled to not spit out his beer.
Right up until the end?
“Uh, well, I didn’t think about it like that–maybe it was a bit more, uh.” Bdubs did not normally have trouble talking about sex, and here he was blushing. With Joel.
Joel laughed and stretched. “It’s okay Bdubs, we don’t have to talk about sex, ever again if you want. Don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
That was very much not what Bdubs wanted, he realized to his surprise.
“No! Well, I mean, it’s fine with me if you want, it’s just… I feel like you’ve been implying a lot and… if we’re going to talk we should just darn do it then.”
Joel sat up and looked at Bdubs with the kind of intensity he’d only seen from him when fighting, or wanting to fight, or maybe building. He really didn’t know Joel that well.
“Then what do you want to talk about, BdoubleO?”
That was weird to hear.
“Um, whatever you want!”
Again, Joel waited till Bdubs was drinking, the little gremlin.
“Want to compare notes about Etho fucking?”
This time Bdubs couldn’t repress spitting his drink out, though Joel was of course sitting out of the way.
Joel turned away as Bdubs coughed and pulled himself together. His voice changed, quieter and… resigned?
“Didn’t mention me, then.”
Aww shoot. This was why Bdubs was afraid to talk to either of them about each other, it felt like trying to dance through a field of TNT.
“No, uh, blame that on me, he probably wanted to but I think I was, uh, being weird? Didn’t ask, didn’t act like I wanted to know.”
The second part was true, though Bdubs couldn’t actually put a “probably” to Etho’s wants.
“Yeah?”
Joel was still looking out a window, and his voice was now – damn it Joel’d gone from so confident and comfortable to sounding small, and it was Bdubs’ fault, Joel had given him an opportunity to not go down this route, and he shouldn’t have.
“Yeah, and he’s not always the most, uh, forthcoming guy?”
Joel snorted.
“That’s for sure.” He sounded a little less sad.
“Really, who knows what’s going on there sometimes, amiright?” Bdubs was trying to be as cheerful, almost silly, as he could.
“Yeah, for sure. Then he says the weirdest stuff like… owning hearts.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course Joel would be feeling weird after that… whatever that was.
“Okay, most annoying parts of teaming with Etho, let’s go. He’s so messy, right?”
Joel turned back to face Bdubs and looked much more like his normal self.
“Right, almost tripping over his boots all the time! And always ‘forgets’ about things he promises to do!”
Bdubs wasn’t trying to turn Joel against Etho, just to drag his mood up some. Bdubs was well aware it could be hard for other people to get Etho’s attention – or at least feel paid attention to long term. Joel hadn’t asked to be Etho’s soulmate, and Bdubs knew how hard it was to avoid winding up in bed with Etho – and not know what would happen next.
They had more beers, now an impressive number of beers, and the Etho conversation did eventually come around to sex with Etho. Joel seemed stable enough, though he’d been putting his beers back at an impressive rate. Bdubs tried to only have Joel bring things up first, in fear he might mention something he’d done with Etho that Joel hadn’t. It worked well – Bdubs wondered if Joel hadn’t ever talked to anyone about Etho. He wasn’t about to ask, or about anyone else Joel might have slept with, though he was with the majority who believed the Bad Boys must have been all over each other – or at minimum Joel and Jimmy.
The big, and perhaps inevitable, swerve in the conversation came when the topic of threesomes came up. Joel, who at this point was talking in fairly explicit details, shared that he and Etho had talked about threesomes (and more than that) during sex, but never carried through – would have been complicated. Joel asked Bdubs if he’d ever had a threesome with Etho. Bdubs had, plenty of them, but he decided it would be safest to just talk about one, hoping to limit jealousy. He felt reasonably confident he could make it work – but he really hadn’t paid enough attention to what Joel hadn’t mentioned.
Bdubs answered carefully, but not carefully enough.
“Oh, uh, yeah. With Cleo, I don’t know – you probably wouldn't know – they’ve got so many sexy things, like straps, Joel, you wouldn’t believe how many.”
Joel smiled. “You have a favorite? Maybe one that night?”
Bdubs smiled back, genuinely pleased how comfortable they’d become talking in so much detail. It was freeing not holding back – or not holding back talking about sex in general, just Etho.
“Oh, no, I didn’t actually, Cleo didn’t – not then.”
“You didn’t… Cleo didn’t fuck you? With one of their straps?”
“Nah, that was for Etho.”
Bdubs stretched his arms, waiting for Joel to speak. When he looked back, he couldn’t read Joel’s face, but it was… not good.
“Hey, uh, Joel…”
“For Etho. Cleo fucked Etho. Did you?”
Bdubs felt both like he had to tread very carefully, and like it was already too late to make a difference.
“Umm… sometimes?”
Joel’s voice sounded blank and distant. “Etho bottoms.”
Oh shit.
After a few terrible minutes of awkward silence, Joel ignoring Bdubs’ faltering attempts at checking in, Joel seemed to practically teleport to pacing around the entire room, engaging in what could only be called “ranting”. Vehement, intense, repetitive, angry – it was a lot. Bdubs contributed occasional affirmative words, or just sounds, but he couldn’t tell if Joel even noticed.
Cleo wasn’t answering their communicator, and there wasn’t anyone else who he could explain everything to. Joel didn’t seem like he’d respond to talking, ignored the beer Bdubs tried to offer him (which he then kept for himself), and leaving would be unbearably cruel – and feel terrible.
So Bdubs sat and waited and listened, and tried his best to understand, piecing the new information together with everything he’d heard in a more normal fashion. After his initial rounds of letting out frustration, Joel explained what seemed like all the key points. It didn’t seem that complicated, just an utter lack of communication.
They’d started fairly early, Joel spending several days experimenting, flirting with Etho and watching his reactions. One night he escalated, acting with the thinnest layer of plausible deniability. Etho had thrown him up against a wall, lifting him up to have Joel’s legs around his waist, and kissed him till he was very much Etho’s to do with as he pleased. (It sounded entirely plausible to Bdubs, though perhaps a bit more detail than was necessary – but he wasn’t complaining.)
They had fun, right until the very end. Joel blew Etho, Etho fucked him, always making sure Joel got off one way or another, sometimes from his mouth. Even with kink, they negotiated the bare minimum, mostly just Etho asking Joel if he wanted to try something new, and Joel saying yes. Even during the times when the sex wasn’t very kinky, Etho was always in charge.
No one ever talked about what could be different.
Joel, who was very flexible – “but mostly topped, just ask the Bad Boys” – assumed Etho was a hard top – and he certainly acted like it. Bdubs could only imagine Etho had assumed Joel was only a submissive bottom – and he certainly acted like it, regardless of stories he told about other relationships.
While neither of them had said anything, and they could have talked outside of bed, so one could consider them both “to blame”... Etho was the one leading everything, controlling it all, and Bdubs couldn’t blame Joel.
He knew what Etho could be like.
It was clear Joel had a wonderful time with Etho, possibly every night, especially after they turned Red (which Joel didn’t cover in much detail, and Bdubs genuinely wasn’t sure if he wanted to know more or less about). However, he was insanely frustrated that he hadn’t even known fucking Etho was a possibility. His face was red and he was sometimes pulling at his hair and Bdubs didn’t know… well, Bdubs had to admit, on the rare occasions the stars aligned, he really enjoyed fucking Etho, especially when they had time to spare and Etho wasn’t in a particularly dommy mood. (Etho had no issues topping from the bottom.) The times when Bdubs could slowly take him apart and watch him open up, melt away another layer or two of the remaining masks he still had up, even with Bdubs. To watch – and feel – him squirm, balling his hands up in the sheets, panting our Bdubs’ name.
Okay, he could understand Joel’s frustration.
Bdubs had no idea how long Joel paced and ranted, besides that it took Bdubs two beers. He was once again fairly drunk, even with his tolerance, which seemed like the best way to cope with his situation. He sat down on the bed, because it seemed much easier to avoid falling off the bed than the chair. He was still listening, actively and everything, but lying down and closing his eyes seemed like the best path forward.
He definitely wasn’t asleep when Joel threw himself on the bed next to him.
“Yes, yes, exactly, I agree!”
Joel sighed.
“Sorry, Bdubs, that was, um, must have been a lot. Thanks for not leaving… during my boring story.”
It was phrased like a joke, but there was no humor in his voice.
“Oh sure, Joel, this has all been a little confusing but I definitely made, uh, an error in judgment. Said things that… complicated… things.”
Yeah real eloquent there.
“No, you just… told the truth. Which I didn’t like. Which is… it’s fine, Bdubs. It’s no one’s fault what the truth is. It’s just the truth.”
Bdubs silently handed him his half drunk beer, which Joel, equally silently, finished in two pulls.
“Joel, it’s… it’s okay to not like what the truth is? Or, what it sounds like…?”
He gave Bdubs an inquiring look. “What do you mean?”
“Well, do you want to talk about, um, talk about. Y’know. That? More?”
“Talk about Etho? I don’t know how long it’s going to be until I can stop thinking about him, or at least less, so might as well.”
“So, when you two were… and not talking about things… and you thought you knew what he liked?”
“Uh huh.”
“Maybe he assumed it wasn’t relevant, to tell you he might do other things, if he – wrongfully, I might add – he assumed there was no way you might be interested in, uh, partaking?”
Joel didn’t respond immediately, but his silence didn’t seem angry. When he spoke, he was looking at his hands.
“You think he might have thought, because he was always super dominant – which, I might add, I encouraged –” Bdubs smiled and started to have a little hope. “ –that I was one hundred percent submissive.”
Bdubs shrugged, realized that was inaudible, and turned to see Joel watching him, their faces now closer together than they’d ever been.
Oh, so this is what Etho saw.
Nope, entirely irrelevant!
“Huh.” Joel turned to look at the ceiling.
Joel let out a long sigh. “I still think it’s his fault. More his fault.”
“Oh one hundred percent. Not one hundred percent his fault, but more his than yours. Absolutely.”
Bdubs considered trying to let it go, but Joel clearly wasn’t done. Might as well get through it, might as well get through it while he was this drunk – he didn’t know if he could manage another beer.
“Joel, have you and–have you and Etho, uh, ever talked…?”
He snorted. “About fucking, since we stopped? Not even a little.”
“Would you have?”
“What, talked? Or fucked more?”
“Uh, either?”
Joel turned to look at the door, or near it.
“Yeah. But seemed like that was then, and this is now. We have our own lives, and clearly he has plenty of sex without me—” Bdubs winced. “—and I’m fine without him. Absolutely fine.”
Joel suddenly let out a cry of frustration and finally turned back to look at Bdubs, his face somehow angry and vulnerable at the same time.
“But I really wish I’d gotten to fuck him!”
For a wild moment, Bdubs thought about kissing Joel, about asking Joel to fuck him – begging if he wanted – hoping it would smooth this over and no one could be upset with anyone. Joel seemed liked the kind of guy who could fuck his anger away – and be hot doing it. He’d even let him complain about Etho, which seemed very weird to be okay with, but he was.
It wasn’t that he’d wouldn't–Bdubs was sure he’d enjoy it, but he tried to imagine what Cleo would say, which he often did in times like these.
“Bdubs, NO.”
He then pondered attempting to calm and distract Joel in some way that didn’t involve his mouth or his ass, or if he should swing big and possibly make a terrible mistake.
This time the Cleo in his head had nothing to offer.
Joel sighed and closed his eyes, and for a few moments Bdubs hoped he would fall asleep. That would be perfect, Joel could sleep and surely he’d be calmer after a rest. Maybe in the morning they could pretend none of this had ever happened!
Maybe Joel was trying to sleep, or just calm down, but after a few minutes he was once again making non-verbal annoyed noises.
Bdubs spoke hesitantly, desperately wishing anyone, literally anyone, else was in the room with them.
“Joel, is there… anything I can do?” Bdubs fought off a belch, too much beer. “I feel really bad I got you upset.”
Joel sighed, reached to the side and pulled a pillow over his face. His voice was muffled, but Bdubs was able to make out something like “Tell me more about Eefo”.
“Uh, okay. What kinds of things?”
“Anything.”
‘Anything’ was great for Bdubs, because it meant he could talk about anything except sex.
“Well… you ever hear he actually moved into my basement? Without even telling me?”
Talking about Etho was easy – Bdubs loved talking about Etho. He was, after all, Bdubs’ favorite person, and pretty amazing, in his not so humble opinion. Joel was mostly quiet, though he answered the prompts Bdubs worked in, mostly with ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘maybe’. Eventually he sat up, and resumed drinking, at a more rapid pace than either of them had – and from a flask, not the beers. He silently handed it to Bdubs, and they passed it back and forth.
After what must have been close to half an hour, as Bdubs finished a story about some of his shady shenanigans, Joel fell back on the bed again.
“I’ll never know… I’ll never know him half–I’ll never know him five percent as well as you do.”
Joel’s voice was full of longing and Bdubs felt terrible. Terrible and drunk. The truth was he had no real idea how Etho felt about Joel. He didn’t think he’d had a miserable time when he was soulmates with Joel, but would Etho mention that, or keep it to himself? Etho talked about Joel pleasantly enough when the occasion arose, but he’d never mentioned the sex – the quite a lot of sex – and that did feel slightly weird.
But maybe it wasn’t weird to not mention. Maybe Etho was having sex with a lot of people Bdubs didn’t know about – it wasn’t like they had any agreement about sharing things like that.
And at the last games… Etho had been pretty busy with his team and his not-quite-team and all the back and forth. But in the end Bdubs really had no idea, and it wasn’t like he could go and ask, not now, he wouldn’t do that to Joel. And of course he couldn’t imagine Etho seeking Joel out to ask him…
Oh.
That might simplify things. Or complicate things, Bdubs was drunk.
“Hey, Joel…” Bdubs tried to plan out exactly how to phrase things but quickly gave up. “Etho and I… Etho and I have known each other basically forever, I’m probably – I’m sure I’m the person who knows him best, absolutely the best. Yeah.” The little Cleo voice in his head cried out in protest, but he continued on. “And I, well, I get to see him way more than you! So it’s not your fault.”
Joel let out an angry sigh – the first time he was directing it at Bdubs.
“Don’t be a bloody idiot, I don’t feel guilty that I don’t know Etho, I’m bloody sad... drunk and sad, whining about my old soulmate, about Etho, after all this time.”
Joel went to stand up but fell back on the bed instead, staring up at the ceiling, though Bdubs didn’t know if he was off balance or just changed his mind. When he spoke again, his voice was less angry and more… Bdubs thought it was something like resigned, or despondent.
“It’s never going to bloody happen, and I don’t know why I’m here telling you all this, and finding out things I never wanted to know, find out he never even told you–” Joel looked at Bdubs briefly “—you, the person who knows him best, about me. That I was that unimportant–” Joel’s voice dropped and quivered “—or he was embarrassed to tell anyone. Regretted fucking me cause I was… I was there, and pushy, and… easy.”
Bdubs froze. For all Joel’s pacing and ranting, it had never been like this. It was only about what Joel wanted – apparently only some of what he wanted – and complaints about Etho. He hadn’t given Bdubs, trusted him with, this level of vulnerability, of doubt and… fear. People weren’t usually vulnerable with Bdubs, and if they were it was someone he already had a close relationship with. He knew he had to be careful… but not how.
At least he knew he couldn’t sit there and act like Joel hadn’t said anything. He stared at Joel’s shoulder, wondering if he should pat it, deciding it was too likely Joel would find that condescending.
“Joel, I–I don’t think Etho would be ashamed of you! He’s never ever said or implied anything negative about you… not from when you were soulmates. You did kill his cow.”
Bdubs hoped for a laugh but only got a huff of breath. It would have to do.
“Etho, you see… Etho doesn’t talk a lot about some things. For all I know, there’s half a dozen hermits he’s sleeping with that I don’t know about. If you ask him directly, sure, he’ll usually answer, but I… I’ve never gone and asked.”
Joel made a vaguely affirmative noise.
Bdubs had been debating if he should just say it or keep his mouth shut. “Kinda drunk and pretty tired” won out for the side of “say it already”.
“And Etho with sex… clearly he enjoys it…”
Joel finally spoke.
“Certainly hope so, or he’s a bloody good actor.”
Bdubs laughed, which felt very nice. He paused, needing Joel to prompt him to continue down this wild path.
“Well, what about Etho and sex?”
“Well, he enjoys it, but as far as I know, he doesn’t ever, literally ever, seek it out. Always other people looking to get a piece of Etho, if you know what I mean.” He tried to make it funny, but got no response. “Etho likes it, but doesn’t ever ask.”
Joel sounded on the edge of annoyance. “Okay…”
“It’s kind of like he forgets unless he gets asked or, like, it’s the morning after, or you have recently? Still on his mind?”
Joel narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything.
“Joel, uh. I probably know the answer to this, I mean, I do, I asked you, but to make sure… you’ve never asked Etho if he wanted to have sex again, have you?”
Joel sounded fully annoyed again. “What? No, why would I when he’s the… But if he wanted to… He…”
Bdubs nodded, but Joel’s eyes were shut.
“Yeah, obviously I have no idea if Etho wants to have sex with you again, but there’s no way to know without…”
“Without asking?” Joel’s anxious voice cracked, which he probably hated.
“I’m not saying you should, but I’m saying, if you want to know, with Etho, you can’t assume anything.”
Joel sat up quickly, looked Bdubs in the eyes and grabbed his right forearm, almost tight enough to hurt.
“Bdubs, please, bloody hell I don’t know how we got here, this is absurd, but I–but please, can you please help me try to fuck Etho?”