Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jimmy’s least favorite period of the day is lunch.

For most of the school day, he’s in the special education classroom. He’s learning at an average pace, but the school can’t afford to hire an interpreter for more than two days a week, so he does most of his work by reading the textbooks by himself. It’s not too bad, and the noise of the other children doesn’t bother him at all, so he’s fine sequestering himself in a corner to work quietly all day.

He hates lunch, though, because then he has to go to the cafeteria.

The cafeteria is always confusing. He has to go through the lunch line each time, and they never put signs on the food telling him how many he can take of something or warning for allergies, so he has to use his best judgment to try and figure out if he can have two rolls or if the gumbo has shrimp. He’s been yelled at far too many times by the cook for not obeying unwritten food rules.

Sometimes he feels like he needs a massive sign on his chest that reads, I’M DEAF. PLEASE WRITE THINGS DOWN . That might save him some lectures he can’t hear. Unless there aren’t any written signs around because nobody else can read.

Then he has to go sit somewhere, and of course they’ve decided to give the disabled kids the busiest lunch period. There’s almost never an empty table, so every day he has to squish onto the end of one with kids that he doesn’t know and never will know. Even if they introduce themselves, he can’t hear their names.

Every day, he just hopes he can avoid Sam. Which is difficult, seeing as every other day, Sam shares a lunch period with him.

They used to be table mates, back when they were five or six. They got along fine, as far as Jimmy can remember. Sam got him into trouble once or twice at recess, but Jimmy’s sure he got Sam into trouble as well. They were friends, he supposes, and he isn’t sure when the switch flipped.

After several years of no more acknowledgment than a nod in the hallway, Sam started messing with him when they were twelve. He used to know Jimmy’s locker code, somehow, and he would take his things out and hide them around the school. He throws rocks at him as he walks home from school. He pours salt on Jimmy’s food. He trips him in the hall, he pretends to stab him with scissors (and sometimes accidentally makes contact), he beats on his head with drumsticks.

It kind of sucks, honestly. Jimmy’s not even sure if Sam knows that he’s Deaf or if he just wants to bully him, thanks to Jimmy’s status as a special kid. Unlike some of the others, Jimmy is fully capable of reporting the bullying.

He hasn’t. He’s seen rumors about the things Sam has done, things far worse than tripping him or tearing up his homework assignments. He doesn’t want to aggravate him more than he already has just by existing.

At the table Jimmy finds himself at today (and he’s already exhausted, the lunch lady yelled at him and he has no idea why), he hunches over his tray of food when Sam walks past. He just keeps his eyes down, and Sam passes, distracted by talking with one of his friends, and Jimmy’s pretty sure he’s in the clear when a kid that he’s seen once or twice sets down a tray across from him.

It’s . . . it’s a new kid, a messy-haired boy in a red sweater, who hangs out with Sam and his other friend. Jimmy assumes he’s a freshman, but Sam is a sophomore, so he’s not sure how this kid got mixed up with him so quickly.

The boy says something with a wry quirk of his lips, and Jimmy shrugs. The kid seems to take that as a valid answer, so he sits down, sticks his hand out.

“I’m. . . .”

Yeah, Jimmy’s got no clue what that name was. “Jimmy,” he says, shaking the proffered hand. “Are you friends with Sam?”

The kid grimaces. Then he says something, something that could be I guess you’re a carrot then or I kissed your ugly cat or something like that. Jimmy’s not great at reading lips, and especially not when he’s in a loud room where the only thing he can hear is a distant rumble of undefined noise.

He keeps talking, so Jimmy just kind of nods and hums occasionally, picking at his food. It isn’t very good food. Typical cafeteria lunch—and it’ll just get worse soon enough. Rumor has it that a war is going to break out soon, and Jimmy’s not looking forward to school lunches on rations.

At some point, all the kids around him start getting up, so Jimmy does too, taking his tray back to the tray receptacle. The kid who had sat with him waves, then heads off down a different hallway.

He starts joining Jimmy for lunch every now and then. Jimmy always starts the conversation, confident in that at least, greeting him and asking how he is. Then he lets the kid talk for the entire period. He doesn’t have the heart to tell him he’s Deaf—he’s one of Sam’s friends, after all. He’d probably join in on messing with him if he knew, and Jimmy’s just too tired to deal with that.

So Jimmy enjoys the next couple of weeks with this other boy keeping him company at lunch, and it doesn’t quite feel like friendship but he thinks it might be something close.

Until Sam catches them.

Sam says a lot of things that day, standing over the two of them and glowering. He grabs the boy’s arm and drags him away, says something while looking at Jimmy through the corner of his eye—

The kid’s face twists and he shoves Sam, but goes with him anyway, giving Jimmy an apologetic look. Jimmy shrugs, turns back to his food.

That afternoon, Jimmy’s joined by a familiar face on his walk home.

It’s the kid again, Sam nowhere in sight. He smiles apologetically, says something.

Jimmy shrugs. That apparently isn’t a good answer, though, because the kid stops, grabs Jimmy’s sleeve to stop him, too.

Then he says something that Jimmy knows all too well, because it’s something he gets asked all the time. He can easily read the way his lips move, the question that they form.

“Can you understand me?”

“No,” he says honestly. “Sorry, I’m Deaf.”

Incredulity crosses the kid’s face. He says something that’s probably along the lines of why didn’t you tell me, and Jimmy shrugs again.

“People usually notice.”

He returns to walking, hands stuck in his pockets against the chilly air. After a moment, the kid passes him his communicator.

I feel like such an idiot, I’ve been talking to you for weeks.

Jimmy chuckles. “Yeah, sorry. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t even know your name."

He takes the communicator back, types out a response.

Grian. Do you have hearing aids?

“Nope. I sign, but nobody else does.”

I’ll learn.

“You don’t have to.”

But the next day at lunch, Grian clumsily signs, “How are you?”

And Jimmy smiles. Just a little bit.

Chapter Text

Somehow, Martyn doesn’t know that Jimmy’s deaf.

He’s not sure how he hasn’t noticed it, but Jimmy’s just been kind of . . . going with it. His hair is long enough that it covers his ears and his hearing aids are fairly unobtrusive, so Martyn never sees them. Jimmy always makes sure to have them in when Martyn’s around, and even though they share a bedroom, in the morning he can pretend that he doesn’t hear him because he’s still half asleep while he sneaks his hearing aids out of the drawer beside him.

It isn’t like he meant to hide it initially, but at this point it would be awkward to bring up and. . . .

It’s nice. Kind of. Grian’s always sort of talked down to him, making sure his mouth moves obnoxiously slow, and Netty babies him, so it’s nice to have someone who treats him like anyone else.

Martyn doesn’t slow down. Martyn runs ahead at full speed, laughing and chatting and not worrying about whether or not Jimmy can understand, and it’s nice. It’s nice to finally feel like he did when he was a kid, like he has a friend who just likes him and isn’t pitying him.

Grian used to be more like that.

Which—Grian’s a good friend, and all, but he’s definitely moved firmly into the group of people who pity him. Martyn is different.

They hadn’t known each other before. Jimmy had gone to school with Netty up until she moved towns when they were thirteen, so it had been nice to reconnect with her, but strange to find that she had a fiance—and now, he and said fiance live in a police station together, and Jimmy considers him one of his closest friends.

Weird, the way the world works.

“We should go . . . today, check on . . . office.”

Jimmy grimaces as Martyn keeps turning away, muffling his voice. He steps a bit forward, keeps the man directly in front of him.

“Say that again? I wasn’t listening.”

“We . . . go to the polls today, check on the election in the mayor’s office,” Martyn repeats himself. “Yeah?”

“Sure. Do you think you’re gonna win?”

“I’d better. We shouldn’t even let Mini run for mayor. Not—it’s because he’s running a mafia,” Martyn clarifies, clearly noticing the uncomfortable feeling that flits through Jimmy’s chest. “Not for any other reason.”

Mini, back on their home world ( this is their home world, now, Evo is all they need), had been a soldier of the opposing army. He’d been friends with Martyn and Netty as teenagers, apparently, but they’d had a falling out before the war began. Martyn hadn’t heard anything of him until Grian mentioned that one of their enemies wanted to escape, too.

They’re friends now. The hatchet has been thoroughly buried, and any sort of genuine war is outright banned from the world.

They didn’t bring any of that with them.

They refused to.

Jimmy won’t let it happen.

When they arrive at the polling box, they find something strange—Mini’s in the lead, but his votes combined with the others cast creates more votes than the amount of people on the server. Jimmy laughs about it, but Martyn seems genuinely angry over the fraud.

“I can’t . . . do . . . like this! If I were . . . down to their . . . of my mind! In . . . to go there, right now, and . . . this election is!”

If Martyn would stop pacing back and forth, Jimmy would be able to get a good look at his lips and figure out what he’s going on about, but he won’t, so he just grimaces and follows Martyn to wherever they’re going.

Which turns out to be the mafia base.

Which they blow up.

Netty and Grian are there, too, but nothing that any of them say (and to be fair, Grian does quite a bit of egging on) stops Martyn from acting.

Jimmy sees it coming. He sees Martyn lay down the tnt (every time he sees that stuff he feels sick to his stomach), and before he can light it, Jimmy pulls out his hearing aids and makes a run for it.

The explosion rocks the cavern that he sprints through, Grian pulling him and him pulling Netty, forming a little chain link with him in the center. Dust shakes from the ceiling above them, so Jimmy tries not to breathe in until they come out in the underground station and climb up the steps, out into the fresh night air of spawn.

There Jimmy breathes, gasping on the air, because as much as he doesn’t want to admit it that quick little run really took it out of him.

Man, he’s a bit out of shape.

Martyn arrives just behind them, almost barreling into Jimmy before throwing himself to the ground, his face and hair smeared with grey from the dust.

Martyn spits on the ground then says something, points toward the police station. Jimmy shakes his head, still panting a bit from the sudden adrenaline.

“Sorry,” he says, letting go of Grian and Netty. “That was loud, give me a second.”

He sticks his hand in his pocket—

Pocket lint is all that meets his fingers.

His hearing aids aren’t there.

He checks his other pocket, then his back pockets, just to be sure, but there’s nothing but a bit of string and a scrunched-up scrap of paper. He always puts his hearing aids in his pocket, why aren’t they in his pocket—?

Jimmy glances around at the ground, double-checks his pockets. He distinctly remembers taking them out as the explosion was about to start, but after that is kind of blurry. Did he drop them while they were still in there?

This can’t be good. He can’t afford a new pair of hearing aids, he didn’t even have insurance on those ones—and nobody here signs, so he wouldn’t be able to understand anything unless they wrote it down—

“I dropped something,” he says, trying not to let his voice tremble as panic floods his system. “I need to go back and look.”

Martyn tries to say something, but Jimmy turns on his heel and runs back to the underground station, the stitch in his side pulsing angrily.

He checks the stairs one by one, eyes sweeping left and right, making sure he didn’t drop them here. Did he put them in his pocket and they fell out, or did he just let go of them? How could he have been so monumentally stupid?

Someone grabs his arm and Jimmy jerks away, looks up. Netty’s in front of him, and she moves her mouth with careful exaggeration.

“What . . . you doing?”

“My hearing aids,” Jimmy confesses. “I think I dropped them.”

Grian comes up behind Netty, face disbelieving. “Why did you . . . ?”

“The explosion was gonna be loud, so I took them out,” he says, hoping he’s right on what Grian said. “I need to find them.”

Grian rolls his eyes, but he starts searching. Netty follows suit, lighting a torch for better light.

He knows he was careless, he knows he was stupid, but he can’t believe any more than Grian can that he’s actually gone and done this. How did he legitimately lose his hearing aids? They’re practically like a second limb to him! What kind of moron just drops their hearing aids?

Jimmy picks his way across the station, trying to retrace his steps exactly. He doesn’t get very far before someone else touches his arm. He spins around to find Martyn, brows furrowed.

He doesn’t catch a single word, Martyn’s voice nothing but a rumble in his ears, but he can guess the last two from watching his mouth. “. . . read lips?”

Oh, geez. One of them told Martyn. “Kind of,” Jimmy shrugs. “Not well. You asked if I could read lips, right?”

Martyn nods.

“Okay, that’s what I thought.”

Jimmy goes back to looking, and after a moment, Martyn joins him, bent double to see the ground better.

Netty finds them after about five minutes of searching. They’re close to the mafia base, lying beside each other on the ground. Jimmy thanks her profusely and fits them in, wincing as his ears stretch a bit to accommodate them, first the left, then the right. He adjusts the volume a little bit, turning his head side to side.

Grian watches him carefully. “They still work?” he asks when Jimmy looks up.

The left one feels a bit weird, but he can hear and understand what Grian said, so he nods. “Yeah. Thanks for helping me look.”

“Sure. Now let’s get out of here before Mini gets back.”

Jimmy follows him out with a glance behind himself at Martyn’s face. His brows are furrowed and his lips curved down; dread pools in Jimmy’s stomach.

Great. Now they’ll have to talk about it.

“How long have you been . . . er, hard of hearing?” Martyn asks, before stripping his shirt off.

Jimmy fiddles with his left hearing aid, setting it more comfortably in his ear. “I got really sick when I was ten,” he answers, flopping down on his bed. “Lost, like, the majority of my hearing.”

“And they . . . you?”

“Say that again?”

Martyn turns to face him. “And they drafted you?”

Jimmy snorts. “They drafted Tom even though he was sick. They drafted Grian even though he’s an idiot. Of course they drafted me. They even got me military-grade hearing aids.”

That’s what his hearing aids are. They’re the first pair he’s ever owned, the only pair he’s ever owned, and he’s just hopeful that they hold out until he has enough money to get a new pair.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

That’s not an easy question to answer. Well, it is, but the answer isn’t easy to admit.

Jimmy looks away. “Uh, it just never came up? And . . . and you never treated me different, and I liked that.”

“Treated you different?”

“Well, you know. Sometimes people ignore me, sometimes they kind of treat me like a kid. You just treated me normal.”

Martyn’s quiet for a long time after that (at least, Jimmy assumes he’s quiet). Eventually, Jimmy reaches for the candle on his bedside table, withholding a yawn.

“Before . . . take out . . . hearing aids,” Martyn starts, but Jimmy cuts him off.

“Sorry, could you face me?”

Martyn sits up in his own bed, across the room from Jimmy. “Yeah. Better?”

“Yep, thanks.”

“Makes sense, honestly. Every time I talk . . . at night, I assume you’re already asleep ‘cuz you never respond. Anyways. I’ll try not to treat you differently, but let me know if you need me to change anything.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, a bit touched. “Thanks. Good night.”

“Night.”

Martyn lies back down and Jimmy waits a moment more, then clicks off his hearing aids and takes them out, setting them gently on the bedside table.

He feels . . . okay. Not as devastated, nor as guilty, as he had imagined he would. Martyn’s a good friend, after all.

Jimmy smiles. Then he blows out the candle and rolls over, eyes already closed.

Chapter Text

Jimmy wakes up in bed, gasping for stolen breath.

He’s still shaking from that death, his heart beating too fast. How had that—he’d thought it would be safe to touch, he hadn’t thought—

He checks his communicator.

Ren and Skizz down, too.

How much of an idiot—?

Jimmy messages an apology into chat, tries to shake off the feeling of exploding. It’s one of his least favorite ways to die, getting blown into bits all over the place. Even on worlds like these, where they respawn. He hates tnt.

Jimmy sits on his bed for too long, probably, just trying to catch his breath after such an intense end. He didn’t like that. Holy moly, he didn’t like that at all.

Get up , he tells himself. Come on, get up, go do something .

He doesn’t.

It’s too overwhelming, is all. He’s fine, he’s fine, he just needs a minute to sort himself out before he can bear to leave this room. He needs a minute to gather his thoughts, blown apart by the explosion just like his body—

A minute grows into two, into three, into. . . .

He isn’t sure how long he sits there, but soon enough, his door opens, and Scott, Grian, and Scar file in.

Jimmy straightens, trying to look like he hadn’t just been staring into space, limbs trembling and mind flashing through with memories. They don’t seem to notice, judging by the lack of anything but gleeful pity on their faces. Good.

Grian’s mouth moves, his voice muffled and near-silent. Jimmy frowns—he hadn’t even realized his hearing aids weren’t on. He clicks on the power on the left piece, then the right—but the right one pops painfully and he hisses, turning it back off.

He takes it out, turns it this way and that. It looks okay—he turns it on in his hand and it sparks once, but otherwise seems fine.

Jimmy carefully fits the hearing aid back in his ear, then looks up. All three of his friends are watching him, and Grian raises his eyebrows.

“All good?” he asks, but Jimmy doesn’t hear it.

He clicks off the left one again, panic sprouting in his chest. They can’t be broken. They can’t, they just can’t, he can’t afford another pair—

Turning the left one back on doesn’t do anything, though. Turning off and on the right one doesn’t do anything but make it spark again.

“My hearing aids are broken,” he manages, his throat tightening. “I—I don’t have spares. The explosion—”

This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening! He’s been exploded loads of times, why did this one break his hearing aids?

Grian’s shoulders slump; Scott won’t stop staring at his ears. Grian takes his communicator out of his pocket, types out a message. A moment later, Jimmy’s own communicator vibrates on his hip.

Sorry, I don’t remember any sign. Do you need to drop out of the game?

“I can keep playing,” he says, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “I’ve been deaf for a long time, I—I know how to deal with it. I just . . . being able to hear is helpful.”

Grian fixes him with a sympathetic expression. Scar wheels himself over, squeezes Jimmy’s hand.

“You’ve got this,” he says. “All you . . . okay?”

“I missed most of that.”

Scar just squeezes his hand again.

When Grian and Scar leave, Grian with promises to help pay for a new pair, Scott comes over to Jimmy’s bed and sits beside him, typing out a message on his communicator.

I didn’t know that you’re deaf.

“I don’t really hide it,” says Jimmy. “I don’t go around shouting about it, but it isn’t a secret.”

Why didn’t you tell me?

Absentmindedly, to help gather his thoughts in a quiet world, Jimmy starts to sign as he speaks. “Never came up, I guess. I just assume people already know—but now that I think about it—”

He considers it for a moment.

“Um, now you know,” he counts off his fingers. “Grian, Scar, Martyn, BigB. I think that’s it, though.”

Had he really told so few people?

It isn’t quite the truth, really, that it never came up. There were plenty of opportunities over the past weeks to talk about his hearing loss, to explain why sometimes he asked Scott to repeat himself multiple times, or why he usually didn’t hear calls of his name.

He avoided it, though, even if he didn’t have a real reason to. Did he need a reason to not give others a weakness to exploit? Did he need a reason to let others know this truly vulnerable part of himself?

It explains your lisp .

“I have a lisp?” Jimmy exclaims. Grian had always told him he was perfectly understandable, and Martyn didn’t say anything, and nobody else has ever seemed to realize that he was deaf.

It’s not bad, you just kind of over-do the s sound.

He never even knew. That’s so—that’s so weird! He’s had a lisp, apparently, and no one told him.

“That’s so weird,” he says, fidgeting a bit with the torn hem of his shirt. “But—erm, I’ll probably be a pretty useless ally, now. Sorry, you’re on your own.”

He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to be alone in this, when he can’t hear a thing in a world full of hearing people. It’s lonely, so dreadfully lonely, and it always has been. He doesn’t want to go back to that. He never wanted to.

He refuses to drag Scott down any more than he already has, though.

“You can use my house as storage, or something,” Jimmy says, though he still can’t quite find it within himself to get up. “I’ll be out of here by the end of the day.”

Maybe Scar and Grian will take him in? To use as bait, if nothing else. Grian knows how to be a good friend, anyhow—he’s been in circles where people just have no clue how to treat a Deaf person and just end up ignoring them. Grian’s heard Jimmy rant about far too many times to let it happen. Otherwise, he’d prefer being on his own.

Scott taps him on the arm, and Jimmy pulls himself out of his thoughts of the desert and isolation to look at his communicator, held in front of his face.

What are you talking about?

Jimmy doesn’t have an answer for that. He thought it was pretty clear.

He shrugs. Scott types something else out.

You’re staying. You’re my flower husband, I’m not just going to leave you.

Oh.

Jimmy doesn’t expect help. He doesn’t expect that everyone should be forced to work to make things easier for him, when it’s already fine for everybody else. They shouldn’t have to make exceptions just for him.

But Scott . . . Scott doesn’t care?

Scott’s already sitting beside Jimmy, but now he wraps his arm around him, presses gently on his shoulder until Jimmy lets his head fall onto Scott’s chest. It’s—it’s—

It’s warm, is what it is. Warm, and a little bit gritty with dirt but soft, and Scott smells like sweat and gunpowder and flowers, and his chest is vibrating under Jimmy’s temple as he speaks, and Jimmy. . . .

It’s really nice after the shellshock of the explosion, is all. Jimmy doesn’t think he can be blamed when a tear slips from the corner of his eye.

Scott lets him sit there as long as he likes, and it’s just really nice. He finds stability, he thinks, so that his weakest parts can stitch themselves together again after the disaster of today.

Geez, he can’t believe he died twice. . . .

“Guess we’d better get to work,” Jimmy finally says, after what is definitely way too much time of hugging Scott. “Erm, I can lip read all right? But I need you right in front of me and talking loudly. Otherwise, you can just message me.”

Scott lets Jimmy sit up, then helps him to stand, taking his hands in his own. Looking Jimmy square in the face, he speaks, loud enough that Jimmy can match some of the quiet sounds to the movements of his mouth.

“We’ve got this.”

Jimmy tries (and fails) to suppress his smile. “Yeah, we do,” he agrees. “We’ve got this.”

Chapter Text

“Jimmy?”

Jimmy looks up from where he’s re-hemming his sleeve, the threads having all pulled out. He looks up at Tango, smiles. “Yeah?”

“Oh, you know. Just wondering how your day’s been!”

Ah, Tango can probably feel his muscle aches. Jimmy sets down his needle and stretches, reaching his arms up toward the ceiling. He groans, restrains a yawn. “Good, good. Tended to the goats, bothered Grian, yelled at Joel. The usual. How was your day?”

Tango is making dinner for the two of them, baking potatoes in the furnace while some sort of milky cheese sauce boils on the stove. He stops stirring for a moment to glance at Jimmy, brows furrowed contemplatively.

“Good,” he says. “Yeah, my day was good.”

There’s something not quite right in the way he looks at Jimmy, something almost . . . confused. Does Tango think he was lying? Why would he lie about something so simple?

Maybe he thinks it’s a Grian situation. It isn’t the server’s best-kept secret that Grian’s trying to create a Secret Soulmate bond with BigB, ignoring his own soulbound to do so.

Does Tango think he’s lying about what he did today because he suspects that he’s trying to team up with someone else? He would never betray him that way, not in this game! Not when everything is built around the two of them sticking it out together, no matter what people like Grian and Scott and Cleo might say.

Scott and his stupid Relationship Ranch. Jimmy would bet his horn that half of Scott’s purpose is breaking up soulmate bonds.

It would be useful to have someone like that on their side.

Jimmy opens his mouth to suggest it, but just as quickly closes it. If Tango thinks he’s cheating on him, to suggest they have Scott and Cleo over for dinner would be tantamount to admitting his guilt. Not that he’s actually guilty—he isn’t! But it would make it appear so, and he can’t risk the suspicion that it would cast on him.

Tango’s turned back to the stove, continuing to stir the sauce. “I was thinking, we . . . bacon. Does that sound good?”

“Er, yeah,” Jimmy says. Why do people never look directly at him when asking questions? Does Tango want bacon now, or a different night? And does he need Jimmy to do anything about it? They should have some bacon in the icebox from that pig that Cleo butchered, but why is he bringing it up?

Tango waits, then turns an inquisitive eyebrow on him.

“Wait, like, right now?”

“Uh, that . . . said,” Tango laughs, looking back to the sauce the second he starts talking.

Not again.

“Sorry, you’re turned away from me,” Jimmy says awkwardly. “Could you say that again?”

Tango looks at him, that weird, confused look on his face again. “Um, I said that that’s what I said? If we want a bit of bacon in the sauce, we need it now.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, right,” nods Jimmy. “I’ll—I’ll go grab it, yeah?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

His cheeks burning, Jimmy sets his sewing down and pulls on his shoes, then hurries outside without lacing them up. They keep their icebox in the cave under the ranch, which makes it a bit of a trip every time they need to grab something, but he doesn’t mind. It’s nice out once the sun is down, a bit of a warm breeze ruffling his hair.

When Jimmy returns, lump of bacon in hand, Tango takes it without saying anything, immediately tearing off a strip and chopping it up into bits. He chops about three strips, then gives Jimmy the rest of it to return to the icebox.

On his way back from the second trip, Jimmy pauses to look up at the sky.

He’s always loved the stars. He used to lie on the grass of his front lawn and gaze up at them until his parents sent him to bed; when he was in the army, he would frequently volunteer for night shifts until his superiors figured out that the night sky distracted him from his job.

He sighs, slowly, wills himself to not get dizzy as he cranes his neck even further back, looking for familiar constellations. Every world has different formations, but sometimes he can find new spots for old favorites.

But dinner is on the stove, and Tango is waiting for him, so Jimmy heads back to the house, smiling at Tango when he checks over his shoulder.

“The stars are beautiful, tonight,” he tells him, and Tango chuckles, turns back to the sauce.

“It’s so funny . . . you . . . stars, every time.”

“Come again?” Jimmy asks, crossing to the side of Tango so that he can see his lips.

Tango doesn’t answer, though. Instead, he takes the pan off the stove and sets down his roughly-carved wooden spoon, turning to properly face Jimmy.

“Jimmy,” he says, “are you feeling okay?”

Jimmy blinks. “Uh, yeah?” he says. Oh, no, is this when Tango brings up any little inconsistencies and uses it against him somehow, even though Jimmy’s been doing his best to prove his loyalty this whole time.

“I just—my ears are hurting,” Tango says. “And, like, I didn’t do anything, I think—the Warden didn’t scream at me or anything. Did you hurt your ears?”

What?

The confusion, even suspicion, that Jimmy thought he’d seen on Tango’s face is clearly concern, now, and Jimmy frowns, touches his ears.

“I don’t think so?” he says. “You said they hurt?”

“Yeah, like, sore. You don’t feel it?”

Sometimes his ears itch, but they rarely hurt. He’s constantly aware of whether or not his ears hurt, knowing that if they get even a simple infection, he’s at risk of losing the rest of his hearing.

So Jimmy’s fairly certain he isn’t feeling any pain in his ears, which brings up the question: why do Tango’s ears hurt?

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I haven’t felt anything.”

Tango hums. “Well, the potatoes are probably done. How about we have dinner and figure it out in the morning?”

If Tango’s ears hurt, then Jimmy’s should be hurting. That’s the way the bond is meant to work, no matter who the pain is coming from. But Jimmy just shrugs it off—it can’t be that serious if Tango thinks they can wait until morning.

He picks up his shirt that he was hemming, frowning when he can’t find the needle. Did he stick it back in the sleeve? He can’t remember. Probably not. This happens every time, will he never learn?

Oh, well. He tosses the shirt onto his bed and drags his chair back over to the table, overly conscious of the scraping sound it makes against their rough wooden floor. He ought to put some wool on the feet of the chairs, make sure they don’t make any sort of sound. Or he could just take his hearing aids out—he’s been wearing them a lot more than he should, and his ears are definitely tired.

Jimmy adjusts one, rotating it just the slightest bit to see if the new position gives his ear a bit of a break. It’s marginally better, so—

Wait.

“Tango,” Jimmy says slowly, “can you feel my hearing aids?”

“What?”

“That might be why your ears hurt,” says Jimmy. He touches the left hearing aid—and now that he’s thinking about it, his ears are definitely a bit sore from how long he’s been wearing the hearing aids. He hadn’t noticed, accustomed to it as he was. “I’ve been wearing my hearing aids for too long. It can definitely be a bit uncomfortable. Here, let me take one out.”

He takes out the left one, sighs a little bit as his ear relaxes. Tango reaches up to rub his own left ear, mouth half-open.

“I—yeah, that fixed it,” he says, and Jimmy puts it back in, twisting it to fit it in just right. “Sorry—you wear hearing aids? Are you Deaf?”

“Did—did you not know?”

“No, I didn’t know! When did that happen?”

“Way before you ever met me,” Jimmy says. “How did you not know? They broke during Third Life and I couldn’t hear for the last few weeks, remember?”

Tango shakes his head, utter surprise painting his face. “I don’t remember that at all.”

To be fair, they didn’t really see much of each other back then. Even though Jimmy spent those last weeks in a near-silent world, cutting his communication to those necessary, he had just kind of assumed that everyone knew what had happened. Apparently, Grian and Scott hadn’t gone around telling everyone about it.

He doesn’t know whether or not to be grateful for that.

“Well, I’ve been Deaf since I was a kid,” says Jimmy, with a bit of a shrug. “I guess I’m just surprised you can’t tell—everyone always says I talk too loud.”

“I just thought you were a loud guy!” Tango says. He turns away for a moment, pulls the potatoes out of the furnace, then turns back, tossing down the towel he’d used to grab the pan. “So, like, what do I sound like to you?”

Jimmy wrinkles his nose. “I dunno, like . . . everyone else? It’s hard to figure out whose voice is whose if they aren’t looking at me, and it’s hard to understand at all without watching their lips—it’s kinda garbled. My hearing aids mostly just amplify, they don’t help a lot with distinguishing.”

“How much can you hear without your hearing aids?”

“Not much,” Jimmy says. “Like, if I’m in a crowded room, I can hear this . . . buzz of noise? Sometimes if someone shouts, I can kind of hear it. Everything sounds like a really muffled TV on the lowest volume setting.”

Tango shakes his head, as if in astonishment. “Man. I never woulda guessed.”

It’s strange just how often in his life Jimmy accidentally hides it. He never really intends to. It just sort of . . . happens.

Why are these conversations always so uncomfortable? Teenage Jim was right about that sign pinned on his shirt thing. That would preemptively end every conversation about people not knowing he’s deaf.

“Well, now you know,” Jimmy shrugs again, awkwardly. “I’ll try to take them out more. Um, should we fry the bacon?”

“Right, right!” Tango hops over to their shabby kitchen chest, digging through for the frying pan. Before he can find it, though, he turns back toward Jimmy.

“I’ve got your back,” he says seriously. “Let me know if you need help with anything, yeah?”

Jimmy doesn’t know quite how to respond to that. “You too,” he settles on eventually. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t ever end up asking Tango for help.

He doesn’t need it. Not really.

Chapter Text

The Bad Boys become, and that is really, really nice.

It’s early yet in the game. They share one bed on the roof of the woodland mansion, though they each tend to roll out at some point during the night, the space as limited as their lives.

They don’t even need a blanket, despite the chill of the nights. They’re so close that they’re practically wrapped around each other. Usually Jimmy’s on the right side (also the side closest to the edge), and Joel squishes himself onto the left side and grumbles at him all the while, his legs entwined with Jimmy’s and his arm over his chest, and Grian just sort of flops on top of both of them, his elbows jabbing into Jimmy’s stomach and his head shoved between theirs where there isn’t room.

It’s sweaty and suffocating and uncomfortable, and Jimmy wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The only problem with such close and exposed quarters is that Jimmy doesn’t really feel safe with putting his hearing aids anywhere. They’re liable to get crushed in the cuddle pile, but he doesn’t want to put them on the mansion roof in case it gets windy or rains or something and they break.

These are only temporary conditions, thankfully, so soon enough he’ll have a bedside table or any surface at all and he can put them there. Until then?

Well, until then he just isn’t taking them out.

That’s not the best idea ever. For the most part, wearing his hearing aids for an entire day will leave them kind of sore, let alone several days and nights in a row. But other than the soreness, it’s actually kind of convenient—he usually forgets to turn them off, and Joel and Grian like to randomly say stuff as they’re trying to fall asleep, so Jimmy isn’t left out, which is nice.

And then when Grian starts to snore, the right window-rattler that he is, Jimmy can turn them off and imagine that the vibration of his snores is a cat purring.

Sure, his ears hurt. Every so often when he’s alone and collecting resources or something, he’ll turn them off and put them in his pocket to give his ears a break, but he’s rarely alone without getting paranoid that someone might come up on him without him noticing. The last thing he wants is to be caught by a boogeyman without his ears on.

Which brings him to tonight.

Jimmy’s ears hurt .

This should be their last night in the shared bed. They’ve been living on the mansion roof for over half a week now, but they’re sending Jimmy out tomorrow to steal wool from someone (probably Scott, seeing as he always has his life together) so that they can have actual individual beds.

Secretly, Jimmy hopes they’ll push the beds together anyhow.

That’s tomorrow, though, and right now his ears hurt worse than they have in years—which isn’t too bad, sure. He isn’t screaming in pain, or even making any noise, and it isn’t like it’s the only thing he can think about, but it is bad enough that he can’t get himself to close his eyes, afraid that it’ll leave him with nothing to distract him.

They’ve kind of been hurting the whole time, but it really started to ramp up last night, and it’s been getting worse all day today. He wants to go to sleep, but it feels impossible.

Jimmy’s usually the kind of guy to sleep on his side, but he hasn’t been doing that with his hearing aids in, so he’s been on his back most nights. Tonight is no different; he’s staring up at the starry night sky, Joel’s ankle hooked over his legs and his head on his shoulder, Grian starfished atop the both of them with his head resting on the inside of Jimmy’s right arm.

He’s pretty sure they’re both asleep, but Grian’s a fairly light sleeper, so Jimmy moves with the utmost care.

He shifts—just slightly—to tilt his head to the side, his nose buried in Joel’s hair. For a moment, the position feels better, but soon enough, the burning ache in his ears grows, stronger now in the left ear.

Jimmy bites his lip as a wave of pain washes through his head, waits it out, then shifts again, turning his head to the other side.

The same sensation—momentary relief, followed by worsened pain in the right ear.

He wants to get up—but then again, he really doesn’t want to get up. He doesn’t want to leave his Bad Boys.

Jimmy’s been basking in the casual touch of his two close friends all week. He gets hugs from other friends, sure, and the occasional handshake, but between these games there aren’t a lot of opportunities for prolonged contact. In fact, this is the first time it’s been this intense: sure, he and Scott spent a lot of time together, and there was that one sleepover pile in the Southlands, and Tango isn’t shy about lifting him up and spinning him around, but there hasn’t been anything quite like this before.

This week, Jimmy’s discovered that he really likes cuddling. This week, Jimmy’s discovered that he would rather suffer in silence than disrupt their cuddle pile. There’s no way of knowing how long this will last. Maybe next week, they’ll build separate bases. Maybe tomorrow, Grian and Joel will each claim rooms in the mansion and he’ll be on his own again. 

So can anyone really blame him if he just ignores the pain in exchange for this one last night?

He moves again, slower than slow, carefully twisting his body to the side but leaving his head staring straight up. This position has been his favorite, letting him sort of sleep on his side while maintaining the cuddling, but he already rolled to his back tonight when the pain got to be too much and he doesn’t have high hopes that—

Someone not-so-gently pats his head. Less of a pat, really, more of a pat-pat-pat, like a cat smacking a toy. Jimmy opens his eyes (he’d closed them, trying to trick himself into sleep) to find that Grian has lifted his head, leveling a sleepy glare at him.

With a bit of maneuvering to get his right hand free, Jimmy clicks on a hearing aid, wincing as the moment of feedback feels even spikier than normal. What? he mouths.

“Stop moving,” Grian whispers. “You’re gonna throw me off the bed.”

“Sorry,” Jimmy whispers back. Grian rests his head again.

Then Jimmy tries to stop moving.

And promptly forgets about it, because a gust of wind feels and sounds way too loud with his hearing aid now on and he shifts, trying to press his head closer to Joel and use what little bit of the pillow he can to block his ear.

“Dude, stop.”

“I’m trying,” whispers Jimmy. “I can’t sleep.”

“Close your eyes and stop moving. That’s the first step.”

“I already tried that. Didn’t work.”

Grian lifts his head again. Even in the dark, it’s clear that he’s scrutinizing Jimmy’s face. “Are you all right?” he asks.

Jimmy grimaces. “I’m fine,” he whispers. “My ears are sore, is all.”

Grian’s brow furrows. “Wait, you’re wearing your hearing aids,” he says slowly, as if he’s just realizing it. “Aren’t you supposed to take those off at night?”

Jimmy shrugs. “Don’t have anywhere to put them.”

“ Dude .”

Grian rolls off of him and out of bed, dusting his knees off. Joel snorts awake, eyes squinted shut.

“Oi, Grian, you kicked me,” he grumbles. “Is somethin’ happenin’? Do we need weapons?”

“Jimmy’s an idiot, is all,” Grian says. “Sit up, Tim.”

Jimmy clicks on his other hearing aid and obeys, biting the inside of his cheek when his ears throb. Joel sits up as well, then stumbles to his feet on the other side of the bed, scratching his side and yawning.

“Joel, get me a torch, would you?” Grian asks absently. He takes Jimmy’s head between his warm hands and tilts it to the side, brushing his hair out of the way.

“What’s happening?” Joel pops open their chest and pulls out a torch, then a flint and steel to light it. He stumps over to the bed, the torch spilling flickering yellow light over their bed.

“Closer.”

“I’m fine,” Jimmy tries to say, then flinches away when Grian touches his ear. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but he definitely doesn’t want anyone touching it.

“Take out your hearing aids,” Grian commands, his left hand held out.

That seems unnecessary, and Jimmy folds his arms. “I’m fine,” he says again. He really doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it on their last night sharing a bed, especially since there wasn’t another option.

Joel comes around to Jimmy’s front, frowning. “What?”

Grian’s still waiting, one hand on Jimmy’s head, the other outstretched.

After a moment’s standoff, Jimmy acquiesces—he always does. With a roll of his eyes, he turns off his left hearing aid and eases it out of his ear, gasping as it feels like his very eardrum pulses in pain. He doesn’t hand it to Grian, though, just keeps it clutched in his closed fist.

Grian motions Joel to come around to Jimmy’s left side. “Hold the torch—not quite—there, yeah. All right, let’s . . . look. . . .”

Jimmy tries not to move as Grian tugs at his ear, holding it as open as possible, but it hurts. It really hurts, enough that he bites his lip to keep from making some embarrassing noise.

There’s a couple of muffled sentences said at his side, then Grian lets go and moves to the right side, Joel following. Reluctantly, Jimmy removes that hearing aid too.

They spend longer on that side. Jimmy watches out across the world, trying to think about anything but the pounding pain in his ears.

When Grian comes back to his front, it’s with a grim expression on his face. Jimmy moves to put his hearing aids back in, but Grian stops him with a hand on his wrist and a shake of his head.

He stands there for a moment, typing out a message on his communicator, which he then turns around and shows Jimmy.

Ear infections.

Jimmy’s heart sinks .

Right. That’s why he wasn’t supposed to sleep with his hearing aids in.

He’s got to be the biggest idiot on the server. Of course leaving his hearing aids in 24/7 would lead to ear infections, why wouldn’t he think of that?

“Last time I got an ear infection, I lost most of my hearing,” Jimmy tries to joke, sure that it falls flat.

The other two don’t respond. Well, Grian might, he’s moved around to be behind him. Jimmy just can’t hear it.

Joel’s staring at him, utter confusion written across his face. Jimmy checks behind himself—Grian is digging through the chest—and returns his hearing aids to their proper place in his ears.

It really does hurt way more than just some soreness. How did he not notice that something was wrong? He’s usually so careful about any kind of sickness.

“I didn’t know you were Deaf,” Joel says incredulously.

Jimmy blinks.

Okay, he deliberately didn’t tell Martyn. And Scott was just chance. Tango was weird, sure, but not impossible.

But Joel?

How does Joel not know?

“We’ve been friends for years,” Jimmy says, just as incredulous. “How did you not know?”

“I—you never told me!” Joel accuses. “How am I supposed to know things about you if you don’t tell me? Like, I’ve never told you about the mole on my right shoulder—wouldn’t it be absolutely ridiculous to expect you to know about it?”

Jimmy stares back, increasingly bewildered. “I do know about it. I saw it when we went swimming together. Actually, I took my hearing aids out to swim. I asked Gem to put them with my stuff. You were there. ”

“Gem knew before me?!”

“Jimmy, hearing aids out,” Grian admonishes, moving to stand in front of him again, tossing Jimmy’s shoes onto the bed. “I’m calling a pause and taking you to get antibiotics. Come on, let’s go.”

“I want to come, too,” Joel says loudly. “Our conversation isn’t over. Did everyone know about Jimmy being Deaf except me?”

“You’ll have to have it over text, then. Get your shoes on, let’s go.”

An ear infection is pretty scary, but after hours at a hospital, the doctor doesn’t seem concerned that Jimmy will lose more of his hearing. He’s prescribed a ten-day round of antibiotics and he isn’t allowed to wear his hearing aids until day seven, and even then only in incremental stages. Joel is awkward about the whole thing, clearly not entirely sure how to interact with a Deaf person.

But when they fall into bed the following night, Joel holds him even tighter than before.

The stars above are bright and beautiful. Some nights they take him far away, to smokey battlefields and achy nights in trenches, but tonight they don’t.

Tonight he feels safer than he ever has, Joel and Grian wrapped so firmly around him.

Tonight he looks up at the stars and smiles.

Chapter Text

“I’m so excited I’m so excited I’m so excited!” Jimmy squeals, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “Last time I was here, it was Christmas!”
“Last time I was here, it was never,” Martyn quips, pulling him forward. “Come on, then.”

They’re here on Hermitcraft to play Decked Out, Tango’s pride and joy, a game that he’s spent forever working on.

Well, that’s what the other three are here for. Jimmy’s probably just going to watch.

Tango explained the whole concept to him over Christmas, when everyone from Empires was building their snowy village on Hermitcraft. A game of trying to escape a dungeon without getting killed by a ravager, while collecting the most valuable treasure possible.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, most of the game is based on sound effects. There are certain phrases and heartbeat sounds that are projected throughout, and listening for the incoming ravagers are the easiest way to detect them early, not to mention the emphasis on avoiding making too much noise when he doesn’t exactly have an idea of how much noise he’s making at any given time. . . .

He really doesn’t mind, though. He’ll get to hang out with his friends, watch the run-throughs, and probably enjoy some good food. What else could he ask for?

Grian’s been telling him all about the game and how much fun it is, and he’s also told him all about the waiting room that’s been designed and the more accessible games they play there. Jimmy’s more excited for that than he is for anything else. 

Martyn heads straight in to the keep, but Jimmy takes a moment to admire it from outside. The brickwork is genuinely incredible, something that he would expect from Joel or Grian. He still can’t believe that Tango tried to claim he couldn’t build—this is worlds beyond anything Jimmy can do.

It is a little bit foreboding, to tell the truth. The keep looms over him, so tall he can’t even see the top of it, its dark entrance gaped in a growl, ready to swallow all who enter. Cold air oozes out, raising goosebumps on Jimmy’s arms. He rolls down his sleeves, tugs on the cuffs a bit to try and cover his palms.

He trails his fingers along the blackstone as he enters, the texture rough against his fingertips. How much blackstone is this? How much time did Tango spend on this thing?

“Jimmy!”

Jimmy looks up; Tango is ahead, all blue and icey instead of his usual fire motif. His long robes sweep across the floor as he sprints over to Jimmy, wrapping him right up into a hug.

Jimmy laughs. “Hey, Rancher! I’m not last, am I?”

“Out of the guests? Indeed you are. Don’t worry, though, barely any Hermits are here yet.”

“Jimmy, my dude!” another voice says, and Jimmy looks away from Tango’s lips to see Ren bounding over. “How’ve you been?”

“Good, good,” Jimmy hugs Ren as well, then waves at Bdubs behind him. True to Tango’s word, only a handful of Hermits are here yet.

Ren says something that Jimmy doesn’t quite catch; he turns to face him completely. “Sorry, what was that?”

“Oh, I just said that Grian said he’d be here in just a few minutes. Are you excited to play, dude?”

Not . . . really? Jimmy isn’t planning on playing, after all. The accommodations necessary would probably just ruin the game, whether it be having someone walk through the map with him or the removal of the ravagers or taking out a bunch of the redstone. A sound-based game can’t really be rewritten to work without sound, it would just be a different game. Even if they do try to make some sort of contrived aid, it’ll just lower the game quality. Why go to that effort when Jimmy is genuinely okay with not playing?

“More excited to see you guys—and Tango’s work,” Jimmy adds, glancing around to see if Tango’s still within earshot. The man has moved to talk to HBomb, but Jimmy really isn’t sure if he’s too far away to hear him.

“You’re gonna love it,” Ren says enthusiastically. “Come on, let’s go get you ready!”

Eh, Jimmy doesn’t bother to try and explain to Ren the impossibility of him playing. With his luck, Ren doesn’t even know he’s Deaf and he’d have to explain it all again, like he has six million times before.

He manages to redirect Ren toward Etho while he meets up with Lizzie, Joel, and HBomb. They’re discussing possible strategies, Joel poring over the guidebook (which Lizzie keeps trying to snatch from him).

“They’re cheating,” H says, pointing at them. Jimmy hasn’t actually seen any of the guidebooks or rules—all he knows is what Tango told him.

“Is there a place where we can watch everybody else’s runs?” asks Jimmy, peeking at the book. H shrugs.

“I’m just as . . . anybody else.”

Right, he’s probably better off asking a Hermit.

Conveniently, that’s when Grian shows up, skipping down a staircase. “Guys, come on! You need to pick a mentor, we’ve all lined up for you.”

Right. This is probably the best opportunity he’ll get to explain that he isn’t playing—and best say it to Grian, rather than anyone else. Grian’s known him the longest and is most familiar with how Jimmy’s Deafness affects him. He was the first person to try to learn Sign (even if he didn’t stick with it) and knew that he would get an ear infection when he left his hearing aids in overnight. He’ll understand when Jimmy tells him that this sort of game just isn’t possible.

Also, Grian’s super charismatic. He’ll be able to smooth things over with a wave of his hand when the other Hermits are confused by his refusal to play. He’ll be able to make it inconspicuous, which has never been one of Jimmy’s strengths.

“Grian, can we—?”

But before he can ask, Grian’s already disappeared back up the stairs.

There’s a good crowd of Hermits up these stairs. Did Tango lie to him about nobody being here yet? He tries to shoot Tango a raised eyebrow, but the man is cracking jokes with Skizz, the pair of them laughing their heads off.

“Right, now we’re all here,” Grian says, joining the end of a line of six Hermits—Etho, Cub, Pearl, Scar, Impulse, and now Grian. “You guys will be using our decks to play, all right? We’re your mentors. Lizzie, you want to pick someone?”

Lizzie picks Pearl, and Martyn picks Cub. Skizz, somehow, picks Bdubs, who had not even been an option, but Bdubs seems excited about it.

There just isn’t an opening for Jimmy to bring up his issue, so he lets it lie. Maybe he can just break it to whoever is his mentor—and, when Grian calls his name next, Jimmy makes a beeline toward him.

Grian groans. “No, no, don’t you want Etho? His deck is way bigger than mine!”

“Dude, I—” Jimmy glances around, steps in close and lowers his voice. “I’m not playing, you’re all right.”

Grian doesn’t seem to pick up on what he means, because he just waves Jimmy off.

Tango sidles up to them, a sneaky look on his face. “You should definitely go for Etho, you know. Like, seriously.” 

“I—Tango, dude, I—” Jimmy bites his lip. He doesn’t want to disappoint him, but there just isn’t a way this game’s mechanics will work for him. “I don’t think I can play.”

Jimmy doesn’t hear, per se, that room has gone quiet. What he notices first is the feeling of eyes on him, which follows by the realization that the low hum of background speaking has cut off, and he looks up to see every person in the room . . . not staring at him, not really, but . . . waiting. Waiting for something.

Tango, for his part, smiles, his blue eyes crinkling. “Of course you can!”

This feels embarrassing, now. Now that everyone and their dog is paying attention to their conversation. “I. . . .” he starts, then shrugs helplessly with a vague motion toward one of his ears. “I won’t be able to hear any of it. The ravagers, the clanks or whatever, all of it. It’s cool, I’m fine just watching.”

Tango doesn’t stop smiling. “That’s why we made you this.” He clears his throat at Doc, who steps forward, handing him something that looks like a communicator.

Tango holds it out to Jimmy. The majority of the piece of tech is a screen, solid black with white writing: ready to play? It doesn’t have any sort of keyboard, distinguishing it from a proper communicator.

“It’ll pick up if there’s a ravager within earshot and point toward its direction,” Tango explains. “It’ll pop up with little arrows. And it’ll flash red when your clank goes up, and over here it’ll have the Dungeon Master announcements, and basically everything! It isn’t perfect, but Doc and I tried our best!”

Jimmy stares at it for a very long moment.

A disability aid. They hand-designed a custom disability aid for deaf people, specifically Jimmy, just so he could play this game with everyone else.

“It will strap onto your wrist,” Doc instructs, gesturing to the straps on the device’s underside. “Just like a normal communicator. It also vibrates with most alerts.”

Are there tears in Jimmy’s eyes? There might be tears in his eyes.

He sniffles, a sudden lump in his throat as he tries desperately to find any words in his brain. Doc doesn’t even know him, and he did all this? This is so much!

“You guys didn’t have to,” he croaks. Tango, still smiling so softly, pulls him into another hug.

“Why wouldn’t we?” Doc asks over Tango’s shoulder (and he’s quite clearly positioned himself to be in Jimmy’s line of sight, which is a whole other wave of emotions that Jimmy can’t quite define), a confused frown on his face. “Accessibility accommodations are an important piece of . . . well, anything.”

“And we want you to have fun,” Tango adds, leaning back. “And you’ve gotta play Decked Out, after all the stuff I’ve told you about it!”

Scanning the crowd of Hermits, Jimmy sees that a couple of them are sniffling, too, eyes shiny. Jimmy feels a little less self-conscious about the tear dripping down his cheek, but he rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands anyway, choking out a watery laugh.

No one’s ever done something like this for him.

No one.

He’s always been so afraid to ask people just to repeat themselves, yet the Hermits are willing to create an entire redstone device just to make a silly game accessible for him?

What did he do to deserve such awesome people?

“You really didn’t—” he starts to say again, but Grian cuts him off.

“We wanted to,” Grian says firmly. “It does mean I told, like, everyone, though. About you being Deaf. Sorry.”

“It’s not like I’m coming out,” Jimmy tries to joke. “It isn’t a secret.”

“I just found out you were Deaf this year,” Joel protests loudly. “Pretty sure it was a secret.”

“So, wanna play?” Tango asks, ignoring Joel.

He hadn’t expected to play.

That’s the silly thing, really. He hadn’t expected to play at all, hadn’t thought it was anywhere within the realm of possibility. It hadn’t even been something he’d considered.

But they had thought it ridiculous that he would sit out. He’s sat out for as long as he can remember.

Now, though, here they are. A room full of people who not only want him around, but make it accessible for him to be around. Waiting with hopeful smiles (except for Joel, arms crossed impatiently).

Jimmy can’t hold back the grin that bursts onto his face. “Yeah. Yeah, okay,” he says, another tear spilling out.

“Awesome! In which case—” Tango leans close, as if sharing a secret— “Etho’s the way to go. He was the test subject with this thingamajig, he’ll show you the ropes.” With that, he shoves the beautiful device into Jimmy’s arms (which he holds almost reverently, he really really can’t drop this) and drags him over to Etho.

Etho offers him a thumbs-up as the other guests pick their mentors. “I’ve been running Decked Out with noise-canceling headphones for weeks,” he whispers. “We’ve got a bit of an advantage.”

Is this what it’s supposed to be like?

Jimmy can’t say anything more, almost trembling with the force it takes to hold back a full-on sob. He sniffles again, nods gratefully.

Etho slings an arm around his shoulders. Grian keeps calling names. The Hermits bicker and laugh and get ready for the game to come.

This is everything, Jimmy thinks. Everything that he never had, never realized he could have.

They are everything.