Matthew scrambled forwards in a vain attempt to catch the falling body of his friend. He winced as his head hit the floor with a resounding thud, immediately kneeling beside him to check for injuries. Fortunately the side of his head only sported a new bump. At this Matthew turned his attention to Thomas' face, slack in unconsciousness.
His brow furrowed, noticing the gray pallor of his skin and the darker shades right below the edge of his visor. Careful not to jostle anything, Matthew slowly removed it, frown deepening as it revealed deep, dark rings under his sockets.
"Where's Patryk when you need him?" he muttered absently, shifting the unconscious body in his arms in order to lift him properly.
Tom and Matt were staring, unreadable and concerned respectively, but Edd had already moved out into the hallway and was knocking on the door of the first room after finding it locked.
"Edward, open up. We kinda need that bed, er, mattress."
Miraculously, the door did open by the time Matthew turned the corner with Thomas in his arms. Edward, looking as haggard as ever (and if there was a new redness to his eyes no one commented), took a look at them from the open door, carefully avoiding any sort of eye-contact with Matthew.
"What the hell happened to him?"
Matthew himself suddenly found the fabric of Thomas' vest exceedingly interesting. "He collapsed. I'm guessing he hasn't slept at all lately. Can I...?" the request went unsaid but understood and Edward shifted aside in the doorway.
This mellow, meek atmosphere between them was new and uncomfortable, nothing like their previous hostility. Suddenly, neither of them knew how they stood with each other, and that left them both flat-footed.
Thus it was that Matthew found himself asking permission and quietly entering the room (even though it was technically assigned to all three of them) in order to deposit the unconscious Thomas on the mattress. He placed the visor right beside him, knowing that he would freak out otherwise and after a moment of inner debate, started unbuttoning his vest, prompting a choked off sound from somewhere behind him. His response was automatic and not entirely by conscious effort, his focus taken up by very finicky buttons (how the hell did he put this on and off every day?!).
"Relax, I'm just trying to make him a bit more comfortable. So he can at least breathe properly while passed out. Or something."
Once the vest was open and somehow maneuvered out from underneath the sleeping manand the tie slipped away from his neck thereafter, he moved on to the belt. He rolled his eyes at yet another strained noise behind him. Really, it wasn't like he was stripping the man.
Vest, tie and belt and, of course, shoes in place beside the mattress, he turned around just in time to see Matt shoving Edward out of the room.
"Shower! You need a shower! The bathroom is free, go take one now!"
The sight of the tall ginger pushing around the smaller, scruffy and undeniably older man while simultaneously looking like he did not want to be anywhere near him was absolutely ridiculous, especially when coupled with Edward's mildly annoyed yet entirely bewildered expression.
Matthew couldn't help it, and he could only barely suppress the laughter building up in his belly, although the occasional snort escaped him. Edd seemed rather amused as well, although the spark of mirth in his eyes was dampened by something he couldn't quite identify. Tom just looked tired and quite ready to get drunk. At 10 in the morning.
Matthew decided to follow his younger counterpart and his (enemy? ex-lover? former friend?) through the hallway, where Matt firmly shut the bathroom door in Edward's baffled face, prompting Matthew to release a giggle, which he immediately clamped down on.
There was a complaint from the other side of the door which he couldn't quite make out but Matt apparently understood perfectly, as he readily responded.
"I'm going to barricade this door if I don't hear the shower going, Edward!"
There was a grin on his face, he just knew it, and it probably looked ghastly with his metal jaw and the whole situation was probably only so funny because he was slightly hysterical, but damn he just couldn't stop grinning.
After a few grumbles and some unidentifiable sounds, the shower did turn on. However Matt didn't leave until he could hear the heavier streams sliding off a body under the spray, at which point he turned to Matthew, doing a one-eighty in mood, expression back to an excited grin.
"Mask time!" he cheered, holding up the green tube he'd apparently held onto after exiting the room. He grabbed Matthew's wrist and practically dragged him back to his room.
Matthew simply let it happen. Maybe all three of them needed to get dragged and shoved around a bit.
And if that led to chocolate facemasks and glittery painted nails then so be it.
In the bathroom, Edward found himself taking a much longer shower than he'd intended. The dirt, grime and sweat had been scrubbed off thoroughly, but the feeling of hot water hammering on his back that he'd grown so unused to was way too nice to give up just yet, no matter how red his skin was becoming.
Finally turning it off, he realized he hadn't brought a towel with him. When he opened the curtain, however, his dilemma seemed solved. Lying innocently on the toilet lid was a fresh, folded up towel. What wasn't lying around were his clothes. Instead he found some sweatpants, socks and a vaguely familiar Smeg Head shirt under the towel.
He hadn't even noticed anyone enter the room. Had his guard fallen so far in the last few days? After a moment of thought he decided he didn't actually care and took the towel before he caught a cold.
Once dressed and with a towel on his hair with the promise of imminent scrubbing, he finally exited the bathroom, only to come face to face with Edd, who was leaning on the opposite wall, obviously waiting. They stared at each other for a moment before Edd spoke.
"Can I talk to you?"
Edward kept staring for a moment longer, but then sighed. "Sure, lead the way."
Edd nodded and headed to his room, the one place in this house Edward had both longed and dreaded to see the most (the lab being a close second). He braced himself and went inside.
It looked exactly like he remembered and yet at the same time nothing like it. Of course it didn't, this was years before the last time he'd seen the place. That stack of sketchbooks beside his bed had eventually moved to the far corner once it had become large enough for him to trip over every time he got out of bed. The beanbags near his desk had been replaced with an actual loveseat, and he'd actually gotten around to organizing his absolute mess of a workplace after the cursed attic fiasco.
Of course, none of that had happened here, seeing as he was in the past, and so he instead immersed himself in an even older version of an already old memory.
"Um." the sound broke him out of his reverie and he tried to play off his little space-out moment with a cough, though the slight flush of embarrassment on his cheeks have him away well enough. Edd smiled slightly but didn't comment, sitting down on his bed and motioning for him to sit as well. Edward did so gingerly, feeling like a foreign element in a familiar environment, and looked at the younger man expectantly.
Edd fidgeted a bit under the attention, looking for the right words. "I, uh, I know you originally came back to kill me and all," Edward winced and Edd relaxed just a tad with a chuckle, "but I'd like to think we're on better terms now, a bit." he looked up as if looking for confirmation and Edward gave a careful nod after a moment of consideration. Edd nodded to himself and took a breath, expression shifting into something more severe.
"So why didn't you tell us about Tord?"
Edward gave a full-body flinch at the name, and Edd almost felt bad for bringing it up.
"How... when...?"
Edd looked off to the side, "Thomas slipped up last night and Tom caught it. I was just close enough to overhear."
Edward seemed conflicted, brow furrowed in consternation, before sighing again, "...I didn't want to ruin it all for you just yet. He was... he's your friend, you care about him and he's probably years away from becoming a real threat."
"Yeah, alright, it's kind of... upsetting, to know."
Edward leaned against the wall and snorted, "That's one way to put it."
"Is he already..." Dangerous?
Edward stared into the air, contemplating his response. "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. He never really gave me any details on his 'rise to power'." he rolled his eyes, "And judging by the fact that To- Thomas has been looking for him literally non-stop since we came here, he never told him either."
"...why do you keep that coat?"
Edward went rigid, hands tightening into fists before he consciously loosened them. "...I guess it's a reminder."
"Of what?"
Edward didn't answer.
A strange kind of silence fell over the duo, not uncomfortable but not entirely trusting either. It was a fragile thing, held together by compromise and unasked questions. The beat of their hearts seemed louder, their breaths slowed and synchronized. It was a silence of two parts that were never meant to be separate, never meant to meet.
And yet here they were.
The universe sure had a strange sense of humor.
A breath, another.
The silence shattered.
"What do you want to do about him, now that you know?"
Edd gave no sign that he'd even heard the question. There was thought, contemplation and feeling in his eyes, and then there was an answer on his lips.
"I think I want to talk to him."
Edward turned to look at him, taking in the hopeful shine of amber eyes so much like his own. Determination and a spine of steel that rarely saw the light of day during this time of their lives. He looked back ahead, into nothing.
"Then you better hope you get to him before the next five years pass. By then he'll be a full-on megalomaniac."
"Noted."
AN:
wow amazing, i talk about needing comments so i dont lose moemntum, you guys give me a bunch of awesome comments and the i stop posting for several days. great, aint i? sorry tho, i literally spent the whole weekend slaving away at my desk with optional food and bathroom breaks trying to get a uni project finished. my wrist hates me, as does my thumb. "lets illustrate a children's book!" we said, "itll be fun!" we said.
welp, back to the fic at hand, just need matt to shove thomas under the shower and we'll have a nice complete set of clean future bois. my plan of getting them cleaned up and it comfy clothes unfolds! mwahahaha! (seriously tho, all these shower scenes)
that last scene may or may not lead to later plot, who even knows i sure dont