"All right, I'm gonna have to ask you to stop doing that."
Maxwell blinked, suddenly yanked out of his reverie. Wilson was side-eyeing him with that inane hostility that was usually spurred by Maxwell doing something he didn't trust. Except, this time Maxwell was sure he was doing absolutely nothing other than lying on his straw roll and waiting for sleep to catch up with him. He spread his arms in dismay.
"What?"
"Staring at me. It's annoying." Wilson turned away and resumed drying his hair, vigorously rubbing a rough cloth on his head. "As if there weren't already enough eyes in the darkness always watching."
"I-" Maxwell stopped. He hadn't- he'd been staring, hadn't he? He bit back a string of imaginative curses, but the silence got Wilson's attention anyway. He peeked at Maxwell again, squinting to an almost comical degree.
"You're still doing it."
"I'm looking at the fire!" He huffed, gesturing wildly. "The only thing worth looking at, since it's the only source of light. You're standing right beside the fire, I can't not see you. Do you think your feeble sanity can withstand such an atrocious ordeal or do I have to gouge my eyes out for you to feel more comfortable?"
"You aren't looking at the fire, you're looking at me. What is it, the scars?" Wilson turned and spread his arms, fully showing his torso. "Fascinating, aren't they? I wonder whose fault it is that I have so many. Look, if you connect these five you get the Libra-"
"Oh knock it off, for heaven's sake." Maxwell turned over with a grunt, granting Wilson his precious privacy and forcibly removing the distracting sight from his field of view.
"You know, I would love to think you were contemplating and maybe regretting the lasting consequences of your trickery on my health and life, but I fear it would be optimistic to the point of idiocy."
Maxwell gritted his teeth, glaring at the complete darkness and shutting his eyes forcefully, as if to scrape the very memory of the image from his retinae.
"Goodnight, Higgsbury."
It was a sad truth of life, that no man was ever aware of how valuable a thing was until it was lost. It took Maxwell mere days of his newly-found freedom to remember exactly how overrated and taxing complete humanity was, with all its annoying mental and physical needs.
The King of the Constant didn't need to eat or sleep, being sustained and maintained purely by dark forces flowing in the throne. It came at the hefty price of self-determination, freedom of movement, loss of a wide spectrum of emotions and unending, excruciating boredom, but it did have its perks compared to the vexing condition of the average survivor. Rediscovering hunger pains had been a mostly unpleasant experience, although life in the camp was organized enough to never let them get too hindering. Pain, in general, was something Maxwell tried to avoid like the plague, including the annoying soreness of tired muscles that came after a long day of gathering and scavenging. Luckily enough, Wilson and his own puppets were often more than capable of dealing with those tasks themselves, while Maxwell pretended to keep himself busy with lighter work around the base. One issue he truly wasn't expecting, however, was how deeply distracting close-quarter coexistence with Wilson could turn out to be, especially when it came to mundane chores like bathing and grooming.
It was nothing new, in truth. Maxwell had spent months observing Wilson's antics from the throne, delighted and thoroughly entertained by his struggles and misadventures. He had seen him countless times in different states of undressing, and his mind hadn't dwelled on the fact even for a second. The King's thoughts and actions, after all, were nothing but an extension of the Shadows' will, whose interests reigned supreme and discreetly steered the hands and eyes of Their most valuable puppet in the desired direction. They harbored no interest for beauty or harmony, it would be against their very nature. But Maxwell... well, he fancied himself a man of taste. Where elegance could be found, in all its possible manifestations, whether in the smart cut of a tailored suit, or in the cunning strategy of a game of chess, or in the red bloom adorning a lady's hair, or in the solid outline of a determined jaw, he would always take a moment to savour it.
Wilson P. Higgsbury had no such qualities. The perpetual state of disarray of his hair and clothing was a testament to his lack of style, his self-proclaimed and questionable "science" was more of a pig-headed trial-and-error approach to any given problem rather than a rigorous method, his inexplicable naivety would net him a row of losses in both chess and poker. It wasn't by accident that Maxwell had observed him more carefully than any other survivor, oh no. It was just too amusing to see in how many different ways this ridiculous little man could fail.
And yet, ultimately, this ridiculous little man did not fail. He died, oh he did, over and over again. Starved, frozen to death, mauled by the beasts, stomped by tree guardians, driven insane by his own nightmares, swallowed by the darkness, deadly injured by traps. Yet, he always came back, with a touch stone found by sheer luck, or a meticulously crafted amulet, or a creepy statue of flesh. No matter what Maxwell threw at him, this ridiculous little man kept moving forward, through sheer, blundering, inelegant stubborness, until he was facing his very captor in the throne room. And even after that, even after being seized by the dark powers as their new King, it had taken no more than a month for him to regain his freedom to do what he knew best: stumbling forward, with no clear plan or reason.
It boggled the mind, and having been bested by such an individual did hurt the former King's pride to some extent, there was no point in denying that. But Maxwell wasn't so petty as to dismiss as completely insignificant what had proved to be a decisive trait of Wilson's character, a trait that had left its marks on his body as well. And once Maxwell's mind had been freed from the numbing grasp of the Shadows, he had found that his eyes naturally tended to...linger.
Wilson wasn't an imposing man by any means, almost as thin as Maxwell and much shorter too. But months of hardships had shaped him into a curious specimen of a man, with its own rough but undeniable elegance. He was still very slim, his diet too austere to allow for any real muscle growth, but he was a far cry from the scrawny recluse Maxwell had dragged through the portal. The outline of his muscles under his skin was perfectly visible with each and every movement, every time he bent this or that way or lifted unsuspected weights with little effort. The very shape of his shoulders, the faint furrow along his spine, the small dip of his lower back could drive lesser men to tears, and Maxwell was sure that despite the many small nicks and scars, his skin would feel almost perfectly smooth to the-
"What on earth is your problem?"
Maxwell winced. Damn it, damn Wilson and himself and the damned Shadows that put them together.
"If my presence bothers you so much, why don't you bathe in the eastern pond during the day instead of here at night?"
"Because I'd rather not being attacked by frogs, eels, tentacles and whatever horrors you placed in this God-forsaken land, for example. A stupid white carrot followed and screamed at me for an hour while I went there to fill the buckets this afternoon."
"How unfortunate. A screaming white carrot, you said?"
"Yes, what the hell was it? I've never seen anything like that before. I had to shove it back into the ground to make it stop."
"And where, exactly?"
"Near the second... you're trying to distract me." Wilson glared at Maxwell, slapping the piece of cloth in the bucket with a small splash. "Look, I'm not an idiot-"
"Debatable, but go on."
"Maxwell." Wilson turned to face him fully, his expression suddenly very serious and his tone lower. "Do you really think I haven't noticed?"
Ah, he had finally mustered the gall for a direct approach. This could likely take a very bad turn, but the temptation to meet Wilson's challenge head-on was too strong, consequences be damned. Maxwell closed the Codex, which he had been reading- been trying to read since the scientist had started his usual ablutions. He stood up and went to sit near the fire, on the same log as Wilson, so close that their arms almost touched. He took a long, slow drag on his cigar, savouring it, letting the smoky shadow permeate his lungs, and he looked, blatantly and leisurely.
He looked at the untamable tangle of hair crowning Wilson's head, sticking every which way in a half-dried mess. He considered the sharp angle of his jaw, adorned with that rough stubble just at the right length to suit Maxwell's taste, seeing as he looked like a ridiculous prepubescent altar boy when clean-shaven, and like a veritable caveman when the beard grew bushier. He observed his chest, pleasantly proportionate and without an ounce of fat, peppered with roughly-healed scars that interrupted the even distribution of hair, just as abundant as on his face. His gaze dropped languidly lower, following its soft, dark trail until it disappeared under the hem of Wilson's trousers. Then he finally looked up, straight in the scientist's disconcerted eyes, and exhaled fully, lazily, coils of shadows lapping at Wilson's face.
"Noticed what, if I may ask?"
Wilson's reaction was priceless. He jumped on his feet as if he had been bitten by a snake, eyes fixed on Maxwell as his hand fumbled around blindly for his shirt. He hastily put it on, his face red and scrunched in upset.
"Is there a single shred of morality in you that isn't irredeemably twisted?"
"I'm afraid not." Old habits died hard, and poking at Wilson's flimsy mental balance was just as entertaining as ever, no matter the circumstances. Maxwell smiled amicably, supporting his chin on his fist. "I take that the notion distresses you."
"You- you...!" Wilson's fists were clenched against his sides, his face a mask of sheer rage. He was a temperamental man, after all. As soon as he had learnt of Maxwell's betrayal, he had immediately flung himself at his shadow projection, uselessly trying tackle him to the ground. He had tried to attack him in the throne room, too, nearly getting himself incinerated along with his weapon by the protective spells. There had been nothing to protect Maxwell from his next outburst, when they had casually met in the Constant later on, and he could still remember the remarkable bruise Wilson's knuckles had left on his cheekbone for the following days. He wasn't looking forward to another scuffle, but he'd be damned before he let himself get intimidated by Wilson.
"Cat got your tongue?" He kept smiling, unperturbed. "I hadn't figured you for such a prude, you know."
"You- It's not- This is enough!" Wilson burst out, abruptly pacing in front of the fire, arms flailing about like a lunatic. "This is enough! There is only so much I can tolerate, and I'm already well past my limit."
He fetched his backpack, emptied it, and started shoving random materials in it. Flint, logs, stones, a handful of carrots, some charcoal. He then threw it at Maxwell, who barely dodged the sharp stick that flew toward his forehead afterwards.
"Here are some supplies and a torch. Take them and get out of my sight. You aren't welcome in this camp anymore."
Maxwell blinked, then looked at the backpack. He blinked again, then looked again at Wilson. He seemed positively murderous, his words were as stern as they could be, and this was a very tense and delicate moment, but Maxwell just couldn't do it. He tried to remain serious and answer with equal poignancy, maybe even putting up some pretense of rightful disdain, but he just couldn't. He snorted and covered his face, but he couldn't hold back the roaring laughter that erupted from his belly and shook his whole body.
"Really, pal? You're willing to cooperate and gloss over the fact that I trapped you here, unleashed hellish horrors upon you countless times, and ultimately confined you to the clutches of the throne in exchange for my own freedom, but this is the dealbreaker? The worst and most unforgivable sin, peeping at a man having a bath one foot away from me?" He snorted again and wiped a small tear from his eye, genuinely out of breath from the laughter. "How very anticlimactic."
"It's not about this, trust me. This is just the last straw in the largest hay pile of history!" Wilson went on, glaring daggers at him. "You have no notion of decency or respect! I welcome you in my camp, I share my supplies, I deal with the heaviest tasks, I bear with your complete lack of remorse and your unsufferable jabs, and you don't even care! You keep acting as if you're doing me a favor by staying here! I genuinely can't tell if you actually think you'd have no trouble surviving on your own, or if you just enjoy torturing me in any conceivable way. Well, I am done with this. I am done with you. If you can't even bother to respect my privacy and insist on treating me like a- a plaything to satisfy your every sick whim, then I can't be bothered to care about your wellbeing. Grab your things and leave, Maxwell."
That was genuinely impressive, he had to admit it. It wasn't like Maxwell had expected their shaky, reluctant alliance to last more than few months in the first place, but he hadn't foreseen such a peculiar conclusion.
"I've gotta hand it to you, pal, you really-"
"Shut up." Wilson cut him off abruptly. His eyes had grown tired, but steely. "I said enough. Get lost and don't show your face around here again."
"...Very well."
Apparently playtime was over. Maxwell dispelled the shadow cigar, stood up, shook off some dust from his suit and grabbed Wilson's generous handout. He graced his former partner with a single glance, waiving mockingly at him.
"So long, Higgsbury."
He lit his torch and ventured into the darkness.