It cannot be undone

Chapter 3

By the following afternoon, you're home. The morning had consisted of making a pretty solid breakfast for Ethan as a thank you before the two of you parted ways, Ethan heading off to Mark's to keep filming, and you heading back to your apartment. The drive home is short, you do a face mask and have a shower, and graze on some snacks in favour of an actual lunch before you decide to message Corpse. No matter how much time you spend questioning what in the world had possessed you to reach out, you can never quite figure out the answer beyond some indescribable, masochistic yearning.

[how's your cold]
[persistent and irritating]
[you up for playing something?]
[i'm not up for streaming anything, kinda just wanna lay low for a few more days]
[yeah understandable]
[still, you wanna hang out and play something?]
[noone else has to know]

It comes off far sketchier than you'd intended, but unfortunately the message is sent by the time you realize this. At least he's quick to answer, to agree, with no comments about your final message, thank God.

When the call connects, he's yawning down the line, giving a quick apology after he clears his throat, voice lower, rougher and sleepier than you think you've ever heard it.

"Farm work?" He sounds tired, and you shrug before realizing he can't see it, quickly filling in that you don't mind, happy to play whatever. Honestly if he'd just rather watch something and have company you'd be cool with that too. You hadn't considered how much you'd missed hearing his voice until he's humming with consideration, though even the thought is enough to trigger a coughing fit in you, muting your mic so he doesn't hear most of it.

"Sweets, you okay?" He asks, all kinds of concern in his voice, and you mutter to yourself about how he's probably going to be the death of you before unmuting.

"I'm about as okay as can be expected," you say, far more candid than he's probably used to you being, but he takes it in stride.

"Yeah, I feel that," and it's his turn to mute himself and cough for a few minutes. In the meantime, you open up a new browser tab to look through what shows and movies seem interesting on Netflix.

"Hey, actually, I'm kinda working on this song and I'm just in the middle of editing it-" he comes back, sounding actually a little sheepish.

"Oh," your stomach sinks but you hope he can't hear it in your voice, "if you wanna go and do that instead-"

"No, I mean, it's just the minutiae at this stage, little edits, I can do them while you're on the line that's not an issue, just if you wanted to do something else, but keep hanging out, honestly I could use the company," he admits, and you can feel your heart swell in your chest as you agree, asking if he'd be okay with you cleaning up the farm and starting to set things up without him, "you're the expert," you can hear his smile - and you're coughing up petals again. It's relentless. If he could stop making your heart race from the simplest kind words, that would be great.

He's humming as he works, the same few seconds over and over again you're pretty sure, concentrating, and it's nice background noise for you to be planting crops too. You're not quite sure how long the call's been going on for, but it's not a short amount of time, when you finally work up the courage to ask what it's about. He is very hesitant to answer.

"I've been working on it for a while now with a friend of mine, Savage Gasp, but like, the s in Gasp is like a dollar sign," he's explaining as a way to put off actually telling you about the song. You keep quiet, giving him time to work up to telling you about the song itself, "I can send some through to you to listen to if you want, just a bit, it's not done yet."