#... you might also get fitfic later but my finger is blistering oops

[factorialsotherfandoms]

It's 4am when Pac wakes up, covered in sweat and heart in his throat from somethine he barely remembers. The green and yellow chairs remain blatantly empty, and he cannot convince himself that Mike is simply asleep in his room at the lab.

Pac built them a home to escape the loneliness of the Chume Labs, but it has chased him and tracked him down even so.

Slowly the panic fades, and other sensations filter in. Pac is getting too old for sleeping in chairs, no matter how comfortable this one looks; his neck and back and legs all sieze in protest as he tries to move them, and it takes a moment to tease himself onto his feet.

A warm drink might help. He doesn't have a set up in the warehouse, but he does have a brewing stand just downstairs.

Half asleep he just about remembers to rinse it before reaching out his hand to take the milk from-

To go get the milk and hot chocolate powder; there is nobody else here.

On habit he adds ingredients for two cups, before remembering Richarlyson and adding a third, and then remembering he is alone and snatching it away. The green mug is already too close to done to save the ingredients, but the yellow is still close enough to cold milk to shove back in the fridge.

He tosses the contents of the green mug into a flower pot, and starts washing it out. Mike will be sad if he comes home to a rotten mug. Pac's hands shake as he cleans it. He does not trust himself to not drop it, so he leaves it on the side to put away when its daylight.

By now his own mug is ready. He does not care for his things like he cares for Richarlyson and Mike's; he takes the boiling hot chocolate mug one shaking hand, and scrambles back up the ladder.

He sits, and he drinks, and he stares at the empty spot before him. Mike has been gone for so long now; Pac was never kidnapped for this long. If their places were reversed, Mike would have saved him already, would have beaten down the doors of hell to get him back.

But here is Pac, just sitting here, with a missing friend and a missing son and all he can do is drink hot chocolate.

Cry into hot chocolate.

Is there really any difference any more?

… Mike would not want Pac to think like this, he would want Pac to stay safe and leave him to figure it out himself, but Mike is not here, and Pac is alone, and how can he do anything but spiral when everything is falling apart?

He wants to throw himself into the hole and drown himself in the inch of water Mike vanished into.

He wants to sleep forever.

He wants the Cucurucho pills back.

It is that though that spurs him to action. The mug is placed, half empty, on the small table, and Pac drags up his communicator's map. Cellbit had said any time - even if he were asleep wake him up - but Cellbit and Roier are in their bedroom together, and, for all they are both family, Pac wants no part in that.

Who else… Fit must have removed himself from the display before sleeping, Forever might be a bad plan if he's craving the drugs… Felps is, to Pac's surprise, awake. Moving slowly around his square.

It does not take Pac more than a second to grab his warpstone and drag himself there.

It is only when he lays eyes on Felps, and Felps on him, that he realises the sight he must make - tearstained, in Mike's pyjamas, nothing but his warpstone in hand.

He sees Felps go to say something, pause, and start again.

"Rough night?" Felps asks, instead of whatever he had meant to say.

Pac does his best to smile back, "rough month." Felps nods knowingly, looking tired himself, and tosses him a pickaxe, "either pull up a chair or get digging."

Pac considers a moment, then plunges the pick into the stone. Once, twice, again.

There is no room to think as his body moves, tension being plunhed into the rock and away from his soul. Again, again, again, call the rock Cucurucho, hiss at it for taking his friends, shatter everything that keeps tearing his family apart…

Have family beside him, who was gone and is back, just as Mike is gone and will be back.

The stress fades into tears and then into nothing at all. Just the plink, plink, plink of diamond on stone.

They mine in silence for a while longer, until the diamond pick in Pac's hands grows brittle, and Felps leans back to wipe the sweat off his brow.

"It helps, doesn't it?" Felps' voice is very quiet, yet very loud in the silence, something distant in his expression.

It is now 6am, and it is beginning to dawn. Felps, Pac can see now, looks haunted too.

Pac does not answer; he takes Felps' hand and leans against his head against his shoulder.

Felps squeezes the hand.

Pac squeezes back.

"We should sleep," Pac whispers.

"Can you?"

"… Not alone."

Felps' head shifts to rest on Pac's, "come shower before heading home?"

Pac understands the meaning clear as day, for his own soul sings the same song - don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me.

"Okay," he closes his eyes for a moment. "Okay."

"We're okay."

#qsmp fanfic #qsmp felps #qsmp tazercraft #Felps also had trauma dreams because I need more Felps content in my life but also haven't had enough to write him good #hurt/comfort #hot chocolate #why does pac keep reaching for it in my fic I guess its because its the only non-tea comfort warm drink in my brain #... you might also get fitfic later but my finger is blistering oops