“Best Decision I’ve Ever Made” -Etho

People REALLY liked my Scottho post, which I thought might get maybe 17 notes if even that, so, uh, here’s a dabble based on literally one line towards the end of Etho’s 5th episode of Wild Life.

—————

“Best Decision I’ve Ever Made” -Etho

The rain lashed against the cobblestone roof above Scott’s head. For the sake of privacy and as a defense mechanism against Impulse and Cleo’s snoring, Pearl and Scott had put up cherry wood walls between the four color coordinated beds in the small base. Scott had thought about putting a window by his bed, but he figured it was best to keep his enemies from being able to see into his base in a death game. The blankets were heavy, and Scott was lying on his stomach, completely limp. His cerulean eyes drooped. Grian’s games were fun, but they were also exhausting. If he was being honest, his favorite part came after the games, when he was curling up in his bed with his cat and sleeping for hours and hours after a whole pot of pasta.

There was a knock on the door.

Scott’s shoulders had just settled into the mattress, but he shoved himself up from the bed. His chest was heaving just from pulling himself onto his knees on his bed, and he took a moment to decompress from that effort alone. Nobody else was going to answer the door. Scott is nothing if not selfless. He puts his weight onto his left hand, feeling it sink into the sheets, and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.

The teal haired man stumbled his way to the door of his room and leaned against the frame, running his hands through his bed head. If he was going to answer the door in the middle of the night, he may as well look the best he can manage to represent his team. Scott’s feet dragged themselves to the front of their base, shoulders sagging. Impulse’s snores were faint, but they were audible. Scott pulled his head up to look through the small window in the door. A black eye and a red eye looked back at him. The blue haired man shot upright.

“Etho?” Scott swung the door open towards himself. The poor man’s white hair dripped and sagged over his headband, covering it completely. Etho’s eyes were as sunken in as Scott’s, and they were almost hidden in the dark of the night. Water rushed down his skin, dappled with sun and age. The torches covering the base were like a bonfire outlining Etho’s lean frame. Scott was starting to think he had overdone it with the mob spawn-proofing.

“I know this-” Etho couldn’t finish his sentence, before Scott was dragging him inside by his dripping vest. Scott was too tired to notice how Etho’s eyes dropped to look at his lips, momentarily confused as to the blue boy’s intentions.

“What are you doing out here?” Scott slammed the door shut behind them and practically threw himself into his team’s storage. He fished out the thickest wool blankets they had. Cleo had prepared them for the team during the early days of the game, before they had walls and a roof over their heads to keep out the wind. They didn’t need such heavy blankets now that they were in a safe little abode, but Scott was a hoarder. This was exactly why. He wrapped them securely around Etho’s shoulders, and his hands brushed Etho’s neck. The white haired man was ice cold, but he wasn’t shaking. Scott knew cold like nobody else. Etho should be freezing. His teeth should be chattering, and his nose should be running. Maybe Scott would never understand how Etho had managed to reach such a point in his life that such conditions were normal to him.

“Bdubs stole my bed,” Etho shrugged, hugging the blankets closer to him, digging his fingers into the fabric. “You have- uh. Thank you,” Scott would not have been surprised if Etho was about to admit that he hadn’t seen a blanket in weeks. “I know that I was the one who said that we- uh, that we would keep it, keep this alliance on the downlow, but…”

Scott blew on his hands several times and pressed them against Etho’s masked jaw. It was tense. That must be why his teeth weren’t chattering. Etho stared at Scott. The tension in his shoulders, even under the thick wool, visibly relaxed, and his head dropped into Scott’s palms, which felt like a fireplace on Etho’s face. The stiffened joints in Etho’s neck audibly cracked, and Scott could practically feel the knots in Etho’s shoulders and upper back unraveling.

“You don’t have to apologize for wanting to be warm,” Scott murmured. Thumbs rubbed Etho’s cheekbones, which seemed to jut from his face. The blue haired boy made a mental note to feed this lanky man.

Part of Scott wanted to pull Etho’s head into his neck and cradle his shoulders, letting the man put all his, admittedly very minimal for such a tall survivalist of a man, weight on him. He pulled away instead. Scott pulled a towel out from the chest monster and draped it over Etho’s head. A surprised little “oh!” squeaked out of Etho’s throat, as Scott dug his hands into the towel and mussed Etho’s soaked hair, doing his best to dry it. Trying his best to keep his head still, Etho squeezed his eyes closed, as Scott bunched the towel in his hands on Etho’s scalp. The redstoner’s hair was pretty short. Scott didn’t have to try too hard to get it dry enough.

“Uh, do you have an extra, an extra bed?” Etho shuffled in place and rolled his shoulders. Scott did not have an extra bed, nor did he have the resources to make one. The G’s had yet to move their livestock, so shearing sheep would require a fifteen minute run to and from the island far from the rest of the bases in the rain and darkness.

“Yeah. It’s in that room,” Scott handed Etho a water bottle and nodded to his own room, pulling the blanket off of Etho. “You go ahead. I should set up a hook in here to dry this.”

Reluctantly, Etho pulled his mask down. Scott turned away respectfully, but he could hear Etho drinking. He sounded like he hadn’t had fresh water in a year, before he made his way to the ‘spare’ room. He stood in the doorway for a moment and looked back at Scott. The dry man did his best to ignore it, pretending everything was normal. Scott wrung the water out of the blanket in his hands and draped it over his shoulder, opening the chests to look for the materials for a tripwire hook. Etho’s eyes softened, and he crossed his arms, leaning against the wall.

“This is your room,” Etho stated. Scott huffed and half-heartedly picked through a chest for string.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Scott tried.

“I’m tired, Scott. I’m not clueless. The whole room is blue,” Etho argued. Scott threw the blanket onto the chests.

“We don’t have a fifth bed,” Scott mumbled, defeated, and looked up at the taller man. Etho shrugged nonchalantly. He hadn’t pulled his wet mask up. His lips had a scar running through them. It looked like it might have been from the same attack that scarred over his eye. Scott ignored that he was looking at Etho’s lips.

“So I’ll sleep on the blanket.”

“Absolutely not.” The blue haired boy sped over to Etho and practically tossed him onto the teal sheets. Scott closed the bedroom door behind him. “You’re not a stray fighting for scraps on the street anymore, sir. You’re my teammate, and no less.”

Scott tugged the blankets from under Etho and tossed them onto his frozen form. The warmth from when Scott was still under the sheets not too long ago seeped into Etho’s muscles. The older man had little time to react before Scott climbed in next to him, wrapping his arms around Etho’s neck and tucking Etho’s damp head under his chin. Etho didn’t know what to do with his cold hands. It seemed rude to press them against Scott’s warm shoulder blades. Scott’s neck felt scorching against Etho’s frozen nose. He doesn’t know when he had begun to let his body shiver.

“...If you insist,” Etho whispered. Scott’s hands ran through his damp hair. They felt like a mug of hot chocolate after a day in the snow. He felt like he was melting. “This is, like, the best decision I’ve ever made, I think.”

—————

Thanks for reading my little drabble!!🩵