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They were in the mines when it happened.
A chirp of their comms was the only warning they had before the prickling awareness of something other crashed down on them. Grian had told them all what he could, whispering as he glanced about for any sign of their invisible captors, but even he didn't know much more than the name.
The Boogeyman.
A demon, a curse, no one knew for sure what it was, but everyone felt it searching. One by one the creeping dread washed over them, a cresting wave threatening to drag them into the depths, and then just as quickly washing away. All over the server people let go of held breaths, smiled, declared their innocence. It wouldn't last, but the burgeoning suspicion of ally and enemy alike was waylaid by a moment of pure relief that it had passed them by. For just a moment, everyone was safe.
Everyone but Bdubs.
He felt the dread of the curse searching, searching, prowling around him like a beast hunting for prey.
And then he felt it choose.
Darkness flooded into him, consuming him from the inside out. It was like a sudden pit yawned open beneath him, an emptiness screaming to be filled. There was agony there, a burning torturous madness, but it was muffled, distant, a pool of lava far below. He stood on a tiny ledge above it, a faltering ledge made of nothing but gravel; every moment that passed it shifted and crumbled beneath his feet, wearing away. Soon enough there would be nothing left to stand on, and he would fall.
But there is a way out of the pit, Bdubs.
The lava had to burn, the emptiness had to consume, but it didn't have to be him that fell.
A pure soul, the Boogeyman whispered, an unblooded life.
Feed me, or I shall feast upon you.
The moment passed, and Bdubs took a shaky breath. His skin prickled with goosebumps, hypersensitive of the chill now running in his veins. He glanced up at Etho with vision that was suddenly crystal clear.
"I'm not the Boogeyman," Etho said.
For a moment he wanted to say something, wanted to tell Etho the truth, but he could feel the sharp threat of the Boogeyman like a knife against his throat. "It's not me either," he said instead, swallowing hard.
"So…" Etho trailed off, geturing at the rough stone walls. "Mining?"
Bdubs blinked, shaking his head. "Right, yeah. Let's keep going."
Etho raised an eyebrow but hefted a pickaxe anyways, digging into a vein of coal.
Facing the other way, his back turned so trustingly.
A soul, a soul, feed me a soul, the Boogeyman whispered, and it wasn't until torchlight glinted off the blade that Bdubs realized he had drawn a knife. It was one of his nicer ones; ivy patterns carved into the handle, rippling damascus honed to a razor's edge. The knife he never went anywhere without, the knife Etho had made for him on their first anniversary.
Etho. The man he loved.
The man he was about to quite literally stab in the back.
Feed me.
Heart pounding, Bdubs quickly sheathed his knife and drew his pickaxe instead, turning to dig into the stone. He tried to focus on gathering cobble and ore, on crafting a furnace, on sorting through his meager supplies; anything that wasn't the Boogeyman whispering violence and bloodthirst.
Anything that wasn't the thought of killing his husband.
He turned around to see Etho right behind him, holding a sword.
A threat, an excuse, strike him now!
The urge to attack was so strong, a sudden desperation to do anything to save himself from his fate. What little of Etho's face that was uncovered was thrown into stark relief by the furnace flames, and Bdubs would swear he could see the flushing of blood beneath skin, hear the thumping of a heartbeat not his own.
A life, a soul, the Boogeyman echoed in his mind, a cresting wave that threatened to crash down and take what remained of his sanity, that which I will take from you if you do not take it first!
Bdubs screamed.
He jumped back, and for a heart-stopping moment wasn't sure if he was running away or making room so he could draw a weapon. He clenched his fists as love and bloodthirst warred in his head, the Boogeyman whispering all the while.
Love won, but by a far thinner margin than he wanted.
"There was a bat," Etho said, all false innocence and teasing in his voice. "I was just looking out for you, Bdubs."
"A bat, oh yeah, right!" He backed up further, praying that distance would make a difference. "No other reason!"
"It's not like I'm the Boogeyman or anything, calm down."
"It's not you," he said, the heavy truth making his voice waver despite his certainty, "you just wanna pretend so you can freak me out!"
"Maybe," Etho grinned, "you never know." But he did know, far too intimately; he could see there was no unholy darkness in mismatched eyes, no tremor of hands that itched for a weapon, no evil whispering in his mind begging to be fed.
A soul, the Boogeyman whispered.
No, Bdubs thought back.
Feed me.
Never, he wanted to scream, but he could feel his precarious resistance begin to crumble. It terrified him that he was considering it, terrified him that he might end up with his husband's blood on his hands.
He didn't know how much longer he could hold himself back.
There had to be another way.
And then he heard Grian's voice, calling from the surface. Whatever he said, whatever Etho called in response, Bdubs couldn't hear over the rushing in his ears. He wouldn't kill Etho, not even to save himself, but Grian wasn't Etho.
Things seemed suddenly clear, and the Boogeyman fell silent as it sensed his change of heart. He smiled at Etho and made his way up to the surface, up to Grian.
He had some hunting to do.