Chapter Fifty-three: In Which Jeff Fucking Figures Things Out and Eyeless is a Self-Loathing Idiot

"Jack is an idiot," Jeff said, and for the first time in a couple of months he actually meant it. "Everything he said was absolutely wrong."

"No, it wasn't," Eyeless said.

"How so?"

"I just told you."

"You just told me a bunch of bullshit that wasn't true."

"It is—"

"Absolute bullshit. You aren't stupid, and you aren't a coward, and you aren't selfish—at least, not anymore than you have a goddamn right to be."

Eyeless glared at the wall, and Jeff could see a muscle jumping in his jaw. "Well, obviously I'm doing something wrong or we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I didn't say you hadn't done anything wrong," Jeff said. "In fact, you've done several things wrong, and all of them are pissing me the fuck off. You're taking all the blame for this stupid, fucked-up situation we're in, and you're trying to deal with all of this shit on your own, and you won't talk to me."

"I'm talking to you right now," Eyeless said.

"You are," Jeff said, trying to soften his voice, "and I'm very proud of you for that."

Eyeless's body shuddered under his, and a light went off in Jeff's mind. That was important, wasn't it? For Eyeless to have someone proud of him, to have someone who wasn't jumping at his throat or threatening him or—

Or sending him away.

"That's something you need, right, Eye?" Jeff said, his chest and his stomach all suddenly filled with sappy, gooey affection. His poor Eyeless. "Somebody telling you you're good? Somebody to let you know you're doing things right?"

"No," Eyeless said, scowling—but he was looking at the far wall, refusing to meet Jeff's eyes even though he couldn't see them. "That's fucking childish."

"It's not childish to want to know that people like you, or like what you're doing—or hell, even notice what you're doing."

"I don't—I don't do what I do because I want somebody to pat on the head and throw me a bone. I'm not a dog. I do what I do because I want to, because it's the right thing to do, because I care about doing it."

"I know," Jeff said. "That's one of the things I really admire about you. Wanting to be appreciated doesn't negate any of that stuff, though. It just means that—you know. That you want to be appreciated, which is totally fine."

"It's stupid and needy."

"It is not. It's just something you want. You're allowed to want things, you know. You don't always have to selfless—or responsible, or patient, or nice. It's okay to be angry, or sad, or scared. It doesn't make you any less awesome of a person. It just means you have problems, and sometimes you feel things that aren't the best when you're working through them. As long as you aren't taking it out on anybody—"

"I have been," Eyeless said, his voice tightening with distress. "That's the thing, I have been. I've been mad at you guys—at Slender, at the EMFP, at everybody."

"At yourself."

"And I deserve it, Jeff, you can't say that I don't."

Jeff reached forward, cupping Eyeless's face in his hands. "You do not," he said, emphasizing each word, "deserve to hate yourself, Eyeless. Don't you ever think that."

"That's not what I meant," Eyeless said, squirming uncomfortably. "I meant I—I've been an asshole. If I was happy with being an asshole I would—be even more of an asshole, I guess."

"I don't mean that you have to like every single thing that you do. It's okay to be dissatisfied with some of your choices, or the way you've acted. That's what drives you to be a better person, but this isn't that, Eyeless. If it's making you feel terrible enough to—to make you stop believing in us, to stop believing in yourself—then it's not anything that's going to benefit anybody. Treating yourself like this is not a good thing. Quit defending it, you self-sacrificial fuckhead."

"But there's so much wrong with me," Eyeless argued—like he actually believed that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way he felt, in the wake of everything they were going through. It kind of made Jeff want to punch him. "What am I supposed to do about that? I can't just accept it."

"Eyeless, nothing is wrong with you. Maybe you feel like shit right now, but you're—you're responsible, and hard-working, and you're so damn smart—"

"Shut up," Eyeless said, lips pulling back from the gunmetal-gray daggers packed tightly between his jaws. It was as worthless of a threat display as Jeff had ever seen. Eyeless wouldn't bite him—not after he'd already spent so much time wallowing because he'd broken Jeff's ankle, not when they weren't even really fighting. "That's not true."

"Yes," Jeff said, arching over to smack their foreheads together—he wanted Eyeless to feel him, to know he was there, to be unable to ignore his presence. Since hugging him might have hurt his stomach (and was therefore absolutely off-limits), this would have to do. "It fucking is."

"No, it's—"

"Shut up for a minute," Jeff said. "As much as I love hearing you talk, and as much as you need to, this conversation seems to be turning into an entirely one-sided 'hate on Eyeless' party. It's pissing me off. Know why?"

"Because you're a grouchy son of a bitch."

"Because you don't fucking deserve it, Eyeless, and I hate hearing you talk about yourself like this. You're—you're amazing, I look up to you so goddamn much, and it just frustrates the hell out of me that you can't see yourself that way. You keep picking at all the bad stuff and ignoring the good and that's not right."

"There isn't anything good to ignore," Eyeless said, his voice quiet and miserable, and Jeff felt his heart break just that little bit more.

"What do you mean?" Jeff said. He knew Eyeless was wrong, but saying that right off of the bat wouldn't get him anywhere. If Eyeless felt like Jeff didn't really understand why he was obviously such a terrible person, then nothing Jeff said would carry any weight.

"I'm not a good person. I'm—maybe sometimes, I mean—I can be responsible, or smart, or—or even like a good leader. None of that is because I am, though. All of that is because of what other people wanted me to be. It's not real. It's just—it's like acting, you know?"

"You think that because you're not naturally good at something it means less?"

Eyeless looked helplessly at him. "I don't know, yeah? I never really wanted to be good at any of that stuff. I just did it so—so Slender would be proud of me, when I was little. And now that he's gone, I just—I realized that that was really stupid, and I'm not sure it even did any good. What am I supposed to do with all the stuff that's supposed to be good if it can't even do what it supposed to in the first place?"

"You think Slender leaving is your fault, too." It wasn't a question. The answer was more than obvious in the guilty hunch of Eyeless's shoulders and the disappointment in his words. "God, Eyeless."

"Sorry," Eyeless murmured. "I told you this was stupid."

"No, that's not—I'm not mad at you, dammit," Jeff said. "I just can't believe you feel the need to take responsibility for all of this shit."

"Like I said," Eyeless said, shrugging, "Stupid."

Jeff bit his tongue against the reply that immediately wanted to come out of his mouth—no you're fucking not—and thought for a minute. "Okay, first of all, I understand that maybe you're not intrinsically good at some things—or even at most things, and that's totally fine. That's normal, actually. But you know what's amazing, Eyeless?"

After a stretched silence that Jeff refused to break, Eyeless grudgingly asked, "What?"

"That in spite of that, you managed to work hard enough to make yourself good at those things. You are a good leader, and you are responsible, and you are smart. Maybe you weren't motivated to become those things for the right reason, but you did become them, and just because some people aren't acknowledging that right now doesn't make it worth any less."

"It's not enough, though," Eyeless said. His hands came up to rest on Jeff's sides, digging blunt fingernails into the spaces between his ribs. "If I really were all of those things, then Slender would have stayed—or he would have trusted us, would have trusted me, enough to take us with him. But he didn't. He took Jack. After everything I've fucking done for him, he picked Jack."

Eyeless's voice cracked, his breath hitching, and Jeff wrapped his arms around his shoulders and squeezed. "Oh, Eyeless, that's not true," he said, pressing his mouth against the warm flesh of Eyeless's temple. He knew, painfully well, what it was like to think that someone else could have been chosen over you—it was the very thing he had feared when Jack had first joined their group, and he had been certain that Eyeless would turn to him instead of Jeff.

He was never going to have to be afraid of that again, was he?

"He took Jack because Jack was better suited for the job at hand," Jeff said, and even as he said it he realized he wasn't just lying to himself—it was a weight off of his shoulders that he hadn't realized had been there. It had been logical to take Jack, instead of one of them. It hadn't been Slender choosing Jack over them. "He's less of a risk to bring to a fight—hell, he's immortal."

"Exactly," Eyeless said. His voice was still wobbling, but frustration was seeping into it. "Jack is better than me, and nothing I do is going to change that. He doesn't even have to work to be better, and that's what really sucks. No matter how much I try, I can't be immortal. I can't teleport, or do freaky magic tricks, or anything special like that. All I can do is eat people."

"You're right," Jeff said, carding a hand through Eyeless's hair, "you can't be Jack. You can only be you. But fucking hell, Eyeless, you're something great. You can do so much more than eating people, okay?"

"Like what?" Eyeless said, and although it was phrased as a challenge, it finally, finally gave Jeff an opening to tell Eyeless what he needed to hear.

"Like caring about a group of no-good fuckups the way our own families couldn't. Like wrangling a group of crazy-ass kids into doing what you want without slaughtering half of them. Like teaching yourself anything you need to know, just so you can be sure that you're useful to us—and you are. Eyeless, you're the one who holds us all together.

" Slender might be the one giving us a purpose, but you're the one making sure we're fulfilling it without—without killing ourselves, or each other. You're the one who puts us back together if we fuck up, you're the one we all look up to, the one we want to be. You're amazing, Eyeless. Why can't you see that?"

"Because it's not true," Eyeless hissed. "You're just saying that because—because—"

"Because why? Because I'm your friend? Because I care about you? Hey, guess what, Eyeless—I don't give a fucking shit about very many people, so doesn't it say something that I think this highly of you? Doesn't that mean anything?"

"You're just saying it to be nice, so no, it doesn't mean anything."

Jeff curled his hand into the collar of Eyeless's shirt and twisted it—not tightly enough to freak him out, but enough to jostle his thoughts. "I am not a nice person," Jeff said. "I'm saying it because it's true."

"No—"

"Are you calling me a liar, you fuckin' bitch?"

"No, Jeffy," Eyeless said, groaning and grinding the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. "You just think it's true, but it's really not."

"You're being stubborn," Jeff said, leaning down to jab his nose unapologetically against Eyeless's. "Know what we can do about that, though?"

"You could quit arguing with me."

"Or I could sit here and list every single one of the great things about you until you realize that you're a fucking idiot for thinking so little of yourself."

"Well, that'd be a waste of time."

"Fortunately, I disagree with that just as much as I've disagreed with everything that's come out of your mouth since we started this conversation," Jeff said. Rolling off of Eyeless's chest and onto the bed next to him, Jeff snaked his arms around Eyeless's neck and tangled their legs together. "Comfortable?"

"Only if you're okay with me getting my gross eye-goop in your hair."

"It's fine."

"Not gonna lie, it does make you smell better. Like, could you not have taken a shower or something after you got out of the infirmary? Seriously, man. You smell like chemicals."

"You smell like crippling self-esteem."

"Thanks."

Jeff nuzzled into Eyeless's bony shoulder and took a deep breath. He wasn't going to let Eyeless keep talking them in circles—it was time to start breaking the terrible, awful walls he kept around himself. They had already been cracked, but that, evidently, wasn't going to be enough.

Fortunately, Jeff thought he knew what would do the trick—the things Eyeless had been craving since they'd been thrown out of the Mansion all those months ago. The things that Slender, the others, and even Jeff himself had neglected to give him. (And realizing it now, Jeff was so pissed that he didn't see it before—but now wasn't the time for that.)

Affection, acknowledgement, attention—all things that Eyeless would invariably think were petty, unnecessary wants. Maybe, once upon a time, Jeff would have thought that too. He knew better now. Those things were fucking needs, especially for Eyeless. He'd been able to find them in Slender's approval, and in the obedience of the proxies, but with Slender gone and the proxies utterly and entirely unsure—

It left Eyeless floundering. While Jeff would have loved for Eyeless to be confident enough, or to have felt safe enough, to deal with the sudden lack of outward validation—well, he couldn't expect it right away. It was something they were going to have to work on. For now, all Jeff could do was try to give Eyeless what he so desperately needed.

"You're incredible, Eyeless," Jeff said. He felt Eyeless's body tense again, but he pressed on. "You've always been so incredible. Slender must have seen it when you were just a kid. He's trusted in you forever. God, you've been leader for so long. I don't know how you could think you don't deserve to be anymore. Where would we be without you?"

"Better off," Eyeless said.

It was a struggle to clamp down on his argumentative nature, but he did. Instead of locking horns with Eyeless in yet another back-and-forth of how he may or may not have been a piece of shit, Jeff merely continued his absolutely completely truthful monologue. "Everybody has so much faith in you, Eye. They're all totally sure that you're going to get us out of this mess."

"Yeah, well, their faith is poorly placed."

"I'm sure you will, too. Once you get a good night's sleep and relax for a little while you'll be able to figure this out—just like always. Everybody's going to do what you say, and you'll be able to help Slender, and we'll all be okay."

"No. We won't be—you're the boss now. I made you the boss."

"I'm going to do what you say. I can't right now, since you've been acting this way—and don't get me wrong, I appreciate that you acted out. It could have been done in a more constructive way, with less—ah, yelling and killing—but you did what you did to let everyone know you were hurting, and that's okay. We'll work on healthy coping mechanisms later."

"We'll be dead later."

"And you'll be so good at learning how to cope—you're just so good at learning. You put your mind to something, and you work so hard, and it's amazing to watch it pay off. You're amazing, man."

"No, I'm not," Eyeless said, a reedy growl shuddering under his voice. "Shut up."

"You are," Jeff said, hardening his voice. "You're amazing, and you're intelligent, and hard-working, and responsible, and—"

"Shut up."

"—patient and fuckin' kind and diplomatic—"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, I'm not."

"—and you've got some kind of bull-headed freak determination, you little shit, and a fuck-ton of work ethic to boot—"

"Stop saying that, Jeff, it's fucking wrong—"

"I'm so goddamn proud of you—so is Slender, and so are the others. There's so much to be proud of, fuck it—"

"Shut the fuck up." Eyeless's hands came up and his fingers sunk into his hair and tore at his scalp until little, hurting lines drove themselves across the bridge of his nose and the edges of his eye sockets and Jeff hated it.

"Stop it," Jeff snarled, grabbing Eyeless's wrists and flattening them to the bed. Eyeless struggled for all of two seconds before falling limp, his chest heaving and his teeth bared. Lowering his voice into something dangerous and sharp, Jeff said, "Do not ever hurt yourself, Eyeless. I don't care how badly you feel. That is not allowed."

"It should be," Eyeless said. His voice was cracking, his breath hitching against swallowed sobs. "It fuckin' should be. I'm a bad person, I'm bad—"

"You are not." Jeff released Eyeless's wrists, moving his hands up to cup Eyeless's jaw and press their foreheads together. "Don't you fucking say that."

"It's true, it's fucking true—"

"It's a fucking filthy lie. You are good, Eyeless."

And that was it. Eyeless broke. His face crumpled and he knotted his fingers into the front of Jeff's shirt, curling towards him to bury his face into his chest. Sobs racked his body, hunching his thin shoulders towards his ears and seizing his breath in his throat. His whole frame trembled violently, wretched and terrified.

An animal croon rose in Jeff's throat—a sound he was almost certain he had learned from Eyeless comforting him—and he wrapped himself around Eyeless. "Shh, Eyeless, shh-shh-shh. It's okay. It's okay, you're okay. You're good."

"No," Eyeless said, but it was weaker now, choked by crying. "'m not. 'm bad."

Jeff shook his head, resolutely holding Eyeless closer. "You absolutely are not. You're so good, Eyeless, you're such a good boy."

A low, choked growl rattled in Eyeless's throat. "Don't say that."

That didn't sound like Eyeless defending his (lack of) self esteem. He sounded genuinely unnerved by Jeff's words. "Good boy?" Jeff asked.

Eyeless's growl got deeper and yeah, okay, apparently good boy freaked him the fuck out. Jeff didn't know why—he wanted to know why and was terrified to know why in the same breath—but he accepted it.

"Okay," Jeff said. "I'm sorry. I won't say that."

"Stupid," Eyeless muttered, and Jeff didn't have to pause to know he was talking about himself. "Such a stupid coward."

"No," Jeff said, pressing his lips to Eyeless's temple. "Just a scared, confused person. That's alright. That doesn't make you bad."

"I'm bad."

"No. You're good. You're good, and I'm proud of you, and I love you."

Eyeless shuddered and his grip on Jeff grew tighter.

"What? What are you thinking, Eye? Tell me," Jeff said.

Eyeless hesitated, and when he eventually spoke his words were quiet and weak and forced through his teeth. "You won't—you won't love me anymore."

Jeff froze. "What?"

"I mean—I mean, it's not that you're bad, not at all," Eyeless said. "It's just what happens. I—I understand."

"What the fuck are you talking about? You think I won't love you after this? After I've seen you being vulnerable? Shit, Eyeless, no. If it were even fucking possible I'd love you more."

"No, not this—well, mostly. It's just," Eyeless said, biting his lip, "now that you're w-with Jack, you can't love me anymore."

Jeff stared.

"I mean you can," Eyeless hurried to add, "only not as much."

Jeff stared some more.

Eyeless, apparently taking his silence as anger, quailed. It hurt Jeff's heart to see him acting so fucking scared. "I'm sorry," Eyeless said. "I know it's my fault. If I'd—if I'd been normal I would have been able to—to make it not end up this way."

"What the fuck."

"I think that when the—when the scientists made me, they fucked something up. Or maybe they wanted me to be this way, to—to make me more of a monster. I don't know, but I—I can't help but think that maybe, if I were normal—"

"Normal?"

"Yeah, you know. If I—liked sex, and romance, and stuff. If I liked all of that, then maybe—maybe I could have had you instead of Jack."

Cue more staring.

"I've tried before. I've tried—falling in love, and fucking people, and I just can't—I can't—it's just not me. It makes me miserable, it makes whoever I'm with miserable, I just can't. Something's wrong with me. I can't love people like—like that. And I mean, even I could, it doesn't matter, right? Jack is better. I don't begrudge you for choosing him, but I'm so selfish, Jeff. I wish you hadn't chosen anybody. I wish things could stay the same."

"You think," Jeff said, very slowly, "that I chose Jack because he's better than you—because you don't like romance and sex?"

"Because of a lot of reasons, but that too, yeah."

"You think that I'm going to love you less because I'll start loving Jack?"

Eyeless shrugged, hunching further into Jeff's chest. "I guess? It makes sense. You can't love me like you love Jack."

"No," Jeff said, "I can't love you like I love Jack."

Eyeless flinched, and Jeff gently carded his hands through his hair.

"Know why? Because you and Jack are two totally different people. Loving you both the exact same way would be wronging both of you—and I don't just mean romantically or sexually, okay? I love you one way, and BEN one way, and Masky another way—I love you all differently, because you're different people. You don't just stop loving other people if you get a boyfriend or whatever, you know."

"I know," Eyeless said, "but you can't love other people as much. You're supposed to love your romantic partner more than everybody else."

"Who the fuck told you that?"

Eyeless shrugged. "Nobody. It's just—that's what happens in movies and books and stuff. I just assumed it was true, 'cause hey—I can't do romance. What do I know?"

"You know a goddamn lot," Jeff said, anger rising in his chest, "but that's not what happens when you fall in love with somebody. You don't stop loving other people. You love them all equally and uniquely. I am going to love all of you just as much as I ever have, and if Jack expects me to do any differently than maybe I don't want to be with him in the first place."

"How can you be sure?" Eyeless said.

"Of what?"

"How can you be sure that you're not going to forget to love us?"

Jeff swallowed hard, forcing the tears that want to spring to his eyes back. "Oh, Eyeless. I could never forget something as important as that."

"Okay," Eyeless said, squeezing Jeff tighter. "Okay. I trust you."

Unwilling to speak around the lump in his throat, Jeff pressed his lips to the top of Eyeless's head and just—breathed, for a minute. He thought that maybe, finally, they were done. Then he heard a tiny sniffle from Eyeless and he pulled back to look at his face.

"Hey, it's alright. What's that matter?" Jeff asked, swiping his thumbs over Eyeless's cheeks and smearing the black goop there.

Eyeless made a hitching, half-sob, half-laugh sound, ducking his head. "It's stupid."

"If it's making you feel something, it can't be stupid," Jeff said, nudging Eyeless's face back up. "Maybe it's incorrect, but it won't be stupid."

"I'm happy."

"That is neither incorrect nor stupid." Jeff smiled, and god-fucking-dammit it felt like there wasn't room in his heart for all the giddy warmth that suddenly bloomed there. "I'm glad."

"I'm happy that I was miserable," Eyeless said. "I'm happy that I made you waste your time talking to me. That's stupid."

"It was not a waste of time," Jeff said. "It will never be a waste of time. You're happy because we finally figured this out, even if you had to lash out to get someone to pay attention. That's okay—that's good. You should be happy that you got to express all of this."

Eyeless huffed, but a tiny half-smile was forming on his face.

"Is that what I think it is, Eyeless?" Jeff said, unable to wipe his own grin from his face. "Is that a smile?"

Eyeless shoved his face into Jeff's shoulder. "No."

"I think it was," Jeff said, gleefully petting Eyeless's hair. "I think you were smiling."

"No I wasn't," Eyeless said. His voice was muffled by Jeff's shirt, but there was the littlest hint of a giggle in it. "Smiling is for chumps."

"Hey," Jeff said, acting offended. "I'll have you know that I smile all the time, and I bet I know how to make you smile."

"Does it involve a knife?"

"Not for you," Jeff said, leaning back and running his fingers lightly over Eyeless's ribs.

Eyeless immediately burst into a fit of giggles and attempted to squirm away, pushing ineffectively at Jeff's hands. "Nooo, Jeffy—that's cheating."

"Oh, the benefits of hypersensitivity," Jeff said in a sing-song voice. "Aren't they just the greatest? Hey, and what's that? I think it's a fucking smile."

Eyeless kneed him in the groin.

When Jeff and Eyeless were done groaning and giggling, respectively, Jeff sat up. Eyeless tensed, so he gently touched the side of his face and said, "I'll be right back. I'm gonna go piss and grab some water and pajamas, 'kay?"

"Don't we need to plan, though?" Eyeless said, and when Jeff turned to look at him his face was filled with a familiar, steely sort of determination. Good.

"We can plan better on a full night's sleep," Jeff said. "The others will understand."

"You said we were short on time."

"We are, but not so short that we can't even sleep after all those icky emotions, okay?"

Eyeless paused, and Jeff attempted to make himself look as stubborn as possible—he hadn't officially given back Eyeless's leadership, and he was going to throw his weight around until at least 5:00 AM tomorrow. Apparently, whatever Eyeless saw in Jeff's face convinced him, because he nodded and slouched back into the pillows.

Jeff grabbed his crutches, slipped out of Eyeless's room and moved towards his own, finally allowing his shoulders to sag. Goddamn, but that had been a talk and a half. He was exhausted, and he could only imagine how Eyeless felt. It wasn't a bad kind of tired, though. It was actually kind of pleasant. He felt lighter, and calmer, and maybe just a little bit safer, even though they still had a million problems to solve in the morning.

Jeff grabbed his phone charger from his room and, after a glance at his empty closet, moved to the storage room. He rifled through the many unpacked boxes stored there until he found what clothing of his Slender had packed from the Mansion to bring here.

Grabbing his ratty black sleeping shirt and his old (childishly) star-speckled pajama pants, he flung them over his shoulder and then looked for Eyeless's box. He dug out Eyeless's sleeping shirt—a long-sleeved blue disaster with a fucking puppy on the lower right side—and a pair of matching pants. He couldn't find either of their sleeping masks or Eyeless's weighted blanket, which sucked, but he supposed was to be expected. Slender couldn't have grabbed everything from the Mansion before he came to get them.

"Jeff? 's that you?"

Jeff jumped, guiltily clutching Eyeless's clothes to his chest and whirling around. A familiar figure stood in the doorway, featureless save for the unhappy red face pasted crudely onto his mask. "Hoodie?"

"Who else?" Hoodie moved into the room, glancing curiously at Jeff's things. "I take it your talk with Eyeless didn't go too horribly?"

"It could have been worse," Jeff said—although he dreaded to imagine if it had been. "I think he'll be okay. We're going to hold off on planning anything until tomorrow morning, though."

"That's probably for the best," Hoodie said. "You must both be tired."

"Ugh, yeah. I could sleep for a week—but if we're not up by nine tomorrow, you have my permission to send the cavalry in."

"Got it," Hoodie said. "I guess you're gonna stay with Eyeless tonight?"

Jeff nodded. "That's the plan."

"Do you guys need anything? Food, water, dignity?"

"Oh, shut up." Jeff snorted and shouldered past Hoodie, moving towards the kitchen. "Like you have room to talk, lover-boy."

Hoodie snickered and fell into step with him. "I do have something else that might help—I mean, it works when Masky and I get to talking."

"And what's that?"

"We have an electric blanket. You can borrow it, if you want."

"Sure, that'd be great," Jeff said. "Eyeless would probably like it. He's always cold."

Hoodie ducked out of the kitchen and Jeff turned to the fridge, pulling out a couple bottles of water. He wolfed down a piece of toast and some peanut butter while he waited on Hoodie's return, drumming his fingers on the countertop.

"Here." Hoodie greeted him with a blanket to the face. "Don't break it."

"How the fuck would I break a blanket?"

"You'd find a way."

"Fair enough," Jeff said. "I'll get it back to you tomorrow."

"Cool. I'm gonna go pass out now, so I'll see you in the morning." Hoodie turned and ambled placidly towards the door, pausing once to add, "Oh, and Jeff?"

"Hm?"

"Thanks."

Jeff watched him disappear down the hallway, a bundle of confusing motivations and intentions wrapped in orange cloth—but a nice confusing bundle, he supposed. "Yeah," he said to the empty kitchen. "No problem."

He made his way back to Eyeless's room, padding quietly through empty halls and unfamiliar rooms. It was disturbing to have no idea where to find anyone else, if he wanted to. He wasn't sure where any of his friends' rooms were, and the idea made him anxious. What if he needed to get to them quickly?

Jeff shoved the thought out of his head. Not tonight. Tonight was for relaxing, not worrying. Tomorrow they could worry about everything—would worry about everything, so they could afford a few more hours' peace. If he started smelling anxious, it would be sure to rile Eyeless back up, and that was the last thing he wanted.

Slipping back into the room, Jeff found Eyeless dutifully rearranging the blankets and pillows on the bed into an arrangement endearingly similar to that of a nest. His mask rested on the bedside table, and if the gentle whirr that Jeff could hear was any indication, the heater had also been turned on. It was making for a cozy start.

"Here's your clothes," Jeff said, tossing Eyeless his pajamas. "Hoodie gave me an electric blanket, too. Do you want to use it?"

"Yeah." Eyeless made grabby hands at him and Jeff threw him the blanket, too. "Thanks."

As Eyeless incorporated the electric blanket into his little mound, Jeff tugged on his pajamas and sipped at his water bottle. Once Eyeless deemed the bed satisfactory, he did the same. "What time is it?" Eyeless asked, chewing noisily on the lid of his water bottle.

"A little after eleven," Jeff said. "Hoodie's gonna wake up us in the morning."

Eyeless nodded and ran his fingers across the sequin puppy on his shirt. "Okay. Do you want to sleep now?"

"I will whenever you will."

"Okay." Eyeless set his water on the table and flopped onto the bed, squirming into his blankets and patting down a spot for Jeff. "Come on. I made it comfy."

Jeff turned off the lights and clambered in next to Eyeless, who latched onto him almost immediately. It was pleasantly warm, and the blankets were soft—they weren't as smooth as he was accustomed to Eyeless's being, but they would do. The mattress was far from luxurious, but the warmth of Eyeless's breath at his throat distracted him from that.

"Night, Eye," Jeff said, a smile tugging at his mouth. He reached up to scratch around Eyeless's ears and felt the thin body tangled with his shudder limply. "I love you."

"I love you too," Eyeless said, and there was something painfully like awe in his tone. Beneath his voice there was a slow, gentle thrum that Jeff had never before—or, if he had, he had been too consumed with his own fear or confusion to notice it.

"Are you...purring?"

The sound cut off abruptly. "No."

Jeff laughed and placed his hand on Eyeless's chest. "Do it again."

Eyeless huffed at him. "Shut up."

"No, seriously. It sounded cute."

Jeff couldn't see Eyeless's face in the dark, but he was almost certain it would be turning red. "Whatever," Eyeless said, but the tiniest little rumble started in his chest again.

"That's fucking adorable," Jeff said, running his hand over Eyeless's chest to feel the vibrations there. "It means you're happy, right?"

"Not always," Eyeless said, nudging his head under Jeff's chin and sighing. "But I'm happy now. Thanks, Jeff."

"What are friends for?" Jeff murmured, hiding his eyes in Eyeless's hair. "You're welcome, Eyeless."

He fell asleep to the gentle swell of Eyeless's purr and his soft breathing, buried under warm blankets and, for the moment, peace.