theoptimuslemon - Tumblr blog

theoptimuslemon · 2 months ago

Text

GOD i wish there was MORE of THIS

AAAAAAAAUAUaAUAUAUAaAAaAAAaaauuauauahaaHGAgghghghhh

Don't Mine At Night (Unless You’re Holding Hands)

Summary:

After the defeat of Malgosha, Steve returns to his pixelated world expecting peace. Instead, he finds his home glitching—walls flicker, torches hum with static, and strange memory loops echo things he never said out loud. With reality breaking down and something unseen stalking the code, Steve reaches out to the only person he trusts to make sense of it: Garrett, the real-world game whiz with a serious grudge against Minecraft and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge just how badly Steve missed him.

Now stuck in Steve’s shelter, side by side with a laptop, some haunted data, and far too many apples, they’ll have to debug a world that’s remembering too much—and maybe confront the feelings they’re both pretending not to have.

(But definitely not holding hands. Yet.)

Wc: 2.5k

Chapter 1: New Beginningd

Garett was counting the till when the lights flickered like they were winking at him. He scowled.

“No. Nope. Not today, Not again.”

The speakers let out a burst of static like a dying fax machine. Then came the pop—like bubble wrap under pressure—and something warped in the air near the back isle.

Then he heard it.

“Heyyyyyy, Garett.”

Garett froze.

No. No way. He refused to turn around. He was imagining it. Hallucination. Stress. Low iron. Something like that.

“I come bearing friendship and mild existential dread,” repeated the voice, far too upbeat.

He turned.

Steve was standing there. Or sort of standing—he flickered slightly, like a video buffering mid-frame. He still had the same smug grin. Same scruffy hair. Same objectively stupid blocky boots.

“You are not real,” Garett said flatly.

Steve gave him finger guns. “Eh, Debatable.”

Garett blinked slowly. “You are not supposed to be here, aren’t you supposed to be, you know… mining?”

“Neither is the glitch eating the biome back home, but here we are.”

“I don’t do this anymore.” Garett pointed a finger at him. “No more magic cubes. No more weird quests. I retired.”

Steve held up his hands. “Whoa there, Mr. Midlife Crisis. I'm just asking for a little help. You were the guy who saved the day last time.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“That.” Garett jabbed a finger at him. “That passive-aggressive cheerleader thing. And—what did you say earlier? Something about being soulmates?”

Steve winced like he’d been caught saying something unruly. “Okay, yeah, maybe that was a stretch.”

“It was weird and unnecessary.”

“Got it.” Steve mimed zipping his lips, though the motion glitched and looped twice.

Silence.

Garett ran a hand through his hair, breathing through his nose.

Behind them, the coffee machine sparked and coughed out a cube of dirt.

“I think I might’ve brought some of the glitches through with me,” Steve said sheepishly.

“Of course you did.”

“So... you coming or not?”

“I’m not holding your hand again.”

“I never asked you to.”

“You tried.”

Steve gave a sheepish shrug. “It was a dark cave, and I have bad night vision.”

Garett glared. “Whatever. Are we gonna do this or not?”

“Most certainly, replied Steve, follow me!” He led Garrett outside the back of his shop, down a dim-lit alley.

Then he saw it, the portal.

It fizzled like a dying neon sign. Steve poked at it with a stick.

"Totally safe," he said brightly. "Well. Eighty percent."

Garett crossed his arms. "I feel like that number keeps going down."

Steve looked up at him with a grin. “I’ve crossed over with way worse odds.”

Garett muttered something unrecognizable and stepped forward.

His foot hit the grass.

But it wasn’t grass. Not really.

It looked like grass but was too smooth, like a game engine forgot to render textures correctly. There was no sound. No ambient birds, no mobs. Just silence and a sky that shimmered like a broken TV screen.

Garett turned in a slow circle.

Everything felt... off. It's like walking into a stage set where all the props are slightly too small.

“I hate this,” he muttered.

“I missed it!” Steve said, hopping up beside him. “Well, most of it. Not the glitch mobs. Or the cave bees. Those are new. And horrifying, listen to me when I tell you, You DO NOT want to get stung.”

Garett gave him a sideways look. “You are taking this way too well.”

“Adapt and thrive baby,” Steve said, slapping him on the back hard enough to nearly knock him into a chunk error. “Or adapt and scream. Both work.”

He strolled ahead, humming some awful, chirpy overworld music like a typical Tuesday. Garett followed, stepping around a floating pig frozen mid-oink, its body flickering in and out like a hologram.

“I’m not staying,” Garett said. “I just want that clear.”

“Absolutely,” Steve said. “You’re here to help me diagnose an interdimensional glitch, fix corrupted biome code, maybe fight a few eldritch horrors, and go home. Super casual.”

Garett stopped walking. “You’re joking.”

Steve turned around slowly, his smile slightly too wide.

“…Sort of.”

They stared at each other.

Somewhere in the distance, sheep baa’d backward.

Garett sighed through his teeth. “I’m going to lose my mind.”

Steve patted his shoulder. “That’s okay. I’ve got extras.”

—-

The forest shimmered in the low light—sun slipping behind square-edged hills, casting long shadows between the blocky trees. The leaves rustled like static, and the grass flickered between two shades of green every so often, like the texture couldn’t make up its mind.

Garett ducked under a low branch, swatting away a glowing particle with a frown. “Is that... supposed to be floating?”

Steve glanced back. “Define supposed to. Some updates have... personality.”

“Is that your excuse for everything glitchy? ‘It’s just quirky’?”

“Hey,” Steve grinned, “quirky built this world.”

Garett stepped over a flower that dissolved under his boot like smoke. “Yeah? Well, quirky’s trying to kill my sense of depth perception.”

They walked silently for a while, their boots crunching on gravel, interspersed with occasional patches of what Steve mumbled were “just mildly cursed terrain.”

Garett slowed a bit, noticing the sky above them beginning to pixelate at the edges. Clouds jittered like bad buffering.

“You seriously didn’t think this was worth mentioning before?” he asked.

Steve didn’t answer immediately. His jaw was tight, eyes fixed ahead. “I noticed it a couple days ago. Thought maybe I was... seeing things.”

Garett narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess. You were also conveniently running on two hours of sleep and trying to solo-build a Redstone auto-farm simultaneously?”

“…Okay, rude, but yes.”

Garett huffed, adjusting the satchel strap slung over his shoulder. “Unbelievable. You ever think of asking for help?”

Steve shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d want to come back.”

Garett blinked. That stopped him.

Steve didn’t look back when he added, “I mean, I figured once you went home, that was it. Curtain call. Happily ever after, post-epic-quest fade to black.”

“I own at a game store in Chuglass,” Garett deadpanned. “There’s no ‘happily ever after.’ Just a lot of counterfeit game cubes and passive-aggressive receipts.”

That made Steve laugh—just a little. “Fair.”

They passed into a clearing where the light suddenly changed—just a shade off, like the sun was rendered in a lower resolution. Steve slowed, then pointed to a slight rise ahead.

“There. That’s it.”

A structure peeked from the hilltop: part cottage, bunker, cobblestone, and oak with a slightly lopsided chimney. It looked cozy—at first.

But Garett squinted. Something about it didn’t sit right.

“The shadows are wrong,” he muttered.

Steve looked at him. “You see it too?”

“I’m a visual thinker. Sue me.” He pointed. “The torchlight’s bending weird. And there’s something off about the door—it keeps jittering.”

Steve stopped just shy of the porch. “It was fine when I left it. Like... peaceful. Static-free.”

They stood there for a moment in the fading light, the silence between them stretching—not uncomfortable, but thick.

“You still sure you want to go in?” Steve asked, trying to sound casual.

Garett exhaled. “Well, you didn’t bring me here for a sightseeing tour, did you?”

“...I did consider that as a cover story.”

“I hate you.”

“You definitely missed me.”

Steve smirked and opened the door.

Inside, a faint light flickered, and the glitch gave another low, distant crackle somewhere more profound in the house—like electricity arcing in the walls.

Garett muttered, “...Okay. You weren’t exaggerating.”

“See?” Steve said, stepping inside and offering a hand. “Quirky.”

Garett didn’t take the hand. Just walked past him into the darkness.

“Fine,” he muttered. “But if I get glitched into a decorative lamp, I’m suing you.”

Garett’s footsteps echoed in a way throughout the house that didn’t feel like it matched the room size. The interior looked fine—at first glance. Cozy wood-paneled walls, item frames here and there, a crafting table pushed into the corner, a few banners Steve probably made in a phase.

But the light… flickered wrong. Torches didn’t flicker, they looped. Every few seconds, they’d reset, casting the same exact flicker pattern again like a GIF on repeat.

Garett walked toward a chest in the corner.

“Do not open that,” Steve said quickly.

Garett paused, hand hovering. “Why?”

“Last time I did, it played cave noises in reverse and spawned a pig in the ceiling. Don’t ask.”

Garett stared. “And yet you live here voluntarily.”

“I have a strong attachment to the place!” Steve protested, then added, “…And nowhere else to go.”

Garett eyed him sideways but didn’t press it. Instead, he turned to the bookshelf nearby. The journals caught his eye first—sloppy handwriting, dog-eared pages, and one volume in particular with the title written sideways in blocky text:

“///MEMORY.LEAK.SHELTER//: DO NOT READ (Garett, if you’re reading this I’m fine probably)”

He picked it up.

“Hey—” Steve tried to stop him, but Garett had already flipped to the first page.

Nothing but scribbles. Frantic loops, numbers, lines that crossed themselves out violently. There was a sketch of Steve’s face—shaky and slightly warped like whoever drew it didn’t trust the lines to stay in place.

Then the next page.

“The sunset rewinds sometimes. The same skeleton shoots me in the same place every time. I think I’m stuck in a save file.”

Garett slowly looked up. “Okay. I take back the ‘quirky.’ This is full-on existential nightmare fuel.”

Steve scratched the back of his neck. “Yeah, I wrote that on day… uh, glitch-hundred? It’s all kind of blurry.”

Garett flipped to the next page—and this time, something hissed.

Like static in the walls.

The writing shifted. The words rearranged themselves on the page. Garett watched, stunned, as the letters twisted into a binary line.

Then a voice played.

Soft. Croaky. It came from nowhere and everywhere, like a broken record caught in a loop.

“Garett… come back… Garett…”

Garett slowly closed the journal and set it down like it might bite.

“...Did you record yourself being haunted?”

“That’s not me,” Steve said, voice tight. “I don’t know what that is.”

The room went quiet again. Garett turned, slowly taking in the house’s layout with new eyes.

The mismatched shadows.

The low glitch-crack coming from the empty furnace.

The way Steve’s reflection in the window blinked a half-second too slowly.

“…Okay,” Garett muttered. “This is definitely above my pay grade.”

Steve exhaled, finally slumping down into a chair. “Welcome back to Minecraft.”

Garett crossed his arms. “Yeah. Thanks. Thrilled to be here.”

Then, softer: “We’re gonna fix this.”

Steve looked up. “We?”

Garett glanced at him. “Well, I’m not letting you get turned into corrupted furniture or whatever. Besides, I never got to finish that absurd tower build.”

Steve smiled faintly. “The one shaped like a llama?”

“It was an architectural masterpiece, and you know it.”

Something clicked in the walls again. But softer this time. Like the house was… listening. Like it was waiting.

Steve’s eyes darted to the corner where a mirror used to be.

“It’s getting worse,” he said. “Faster.”

Garett adjusted his satchel, already pulling out a notebook and a USB drive that definitely wasn’t standard Minecraft issue.

“Then we better get to work.”

“Let’s see if I can connect to a metaphysical codebase that may not even exist.”

Steve leaned over the back of the couch. “You say that like it’s hard.”

Garrett shot him a look. “You get sugar from skeletons now, Steve. I don’t trust this world’s logic.”

The screen booted up with a faint ding, and he typed something rapid-fire. A small blinking interface appeared, overlaying blocky coordinates with jittery noise maps and a long list of corrupted chunk names that read more like a horror story than a debug log.

VOID_141-NOISE-MIRROR

SUNSET_REDO_03

SHELTER_ECHO

Steve peered at it, brows furrowing. “That one’s my house. Right?”

Garett nodded. “That’s the part that worries me.”

The room had dimmed considerably. The torches flickered out of sync, creating an almost strobe-like effect across the walls. Steve lit a lantern and set it between them, casting a warm, flickering glow across Garett’s concentrated face.

For a while, the only sound was clicking keys and the occasional sigh.

“...So what are you looking for?” Steve finally asked, half-curled on the couch like a large, anxious golden retriever.

“Anomalies. Patterns. Weird energy pulses. Anything that screams ‘the code is unraveling.’”

Steve watched him work for a moment, lips twitching like he wanted to say something but didn’t.

Then: “You always work like this?”

Garett raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

“Frowny. Intense. A little... feral.”

Garett blinked. “Excuse you—this is my focus face, and you should have seen my face in 1998.”

“It’s also your ‘I haven’t eaten in ten hours’ face.”

“...Okay, fair.”

Steve got up and rummaged in a chest. After some light cursing, he returned with two apples and what might’ve once been a suspicious stew but was now just suspicious.

Garett stared. “Is that steaming in reverse?”

“I’m not gonna feed it to you,” Steve said and tossed him an apple.

They settled into an almost-comfortable rhythm: Garett typing, Steve occasionally poking at command blocks or muttering about chunk borders, both of them trying very hard not to look like they were glancing at each other more often than necessary.

A line of code blinked across Garett’s screen.

>> ECHO DETECTED: USER_ID_STEVE // REPEATING MEMORY LOOP INITIATED

Garettvfroze.

Steve leaned in. “What’s that?”

“...You tell me,” Garett said, voice low. “You have a memory loop running.”

Steve’s face paled slightly. “I—I don’t know what that means.”

Garett clicked into the log. A crude video file opened, pixelated at the edges.

It was Steve—standing outside the shelter and talking to no one. His voice warped, repeating the exact phrase.

“You can go home if you want. I get it. I’d leave me too.”

Then it skipped. Back to the start.

“You can go home if you want…”

Steve looked like he’d been hit.

“I never said that out loud,” he muttered. “I thought it. But I never—”

“You’re glitching your memories.” Garett looked up at him. “Steve, this place isn’t just falling apart—it’s remembering things you never said. And it’s replaying them.”

The lantern light flickered again. A little brighter. A little closer than it had been before.

They both stared at it.

“…Okay,” Garett muttered. “That’s new.”

Steve sat down beside him, closer than before. “If this place is reacting to me…”

Garett slowly closed the laptop. “Then we need to be careful what you think about.”

Steve’s eyes met his for a second too long. “That’s… going to be a problem.”

#steve x garret #minecraft movie #fanfic #minecraft fanfiction #slow burn #slight angst

9 notes · View notes