You're Not Dead Yet

They both stumbled as they dropped down, this time, Ethan clutching his head as he let out a small scream and fell to the ground.

"Ow! Holy shit- fuck- my head!" 

X crouched down next to the boy, quickly putting their hands over his. Ethan relaxed as the pain was quickly taken from his body. "Hey kid, don't worry, I got you. Feeling better now?"

Ethan hummed, blinking a couple times before standing on shaky legs. "Yeah, I am. Thanks for that." 

"Of course, it's really me that needs to get better at teleportation, you're fine. Ready to watch a shit ton of videos?"

"Uh… sure? Whatever you've got for me, I'm ready. Not sure anything can top what we just went through, though."

X chuckled, turning to dig through this bag again. "Touche. These should cheer you up, though. And give you a bit of a break until the next thing. Which won't be a jump, by the way! We're already where it's gonna be, I'll just need to restart time when you're ready." 

Nodding, the boy took a look around the room they were both in. It appeared to be the first bedroom of a house, but whose Ethan couldn't tell. It had minimal decorations, but was still pretty spacious. Not waiting for X to follow him, he walked over and sat on the bed. 

X finally found what they were apparently looking for and tossed it over to Ethan. He caught it with ease, looking to see that it was a nice phone, already open to YouTube. 

He turned it over a couple more times, inspecting it. "This is… sleek."

"This is 2019 kid, everything's sleek. Especially iPhones."

Nodding, Ethan turned it over again so the screen faced him. While YouTube was open, it wasn't open to any particular channel or video, which confused him just a bit. "What do I watch?"

"Whatever you want to. Look something up, look yourself up, hell, look Mark up, I don't care. Try to keep to the theme, though, we've kinda got a theme going."

"Which is?" He raised an eyebrow.

"Watching you become happy, of course." X reached over and grabbed the phone. "I'll get you started." They typed "Markiplier" into the search bar, tapping in the channel once it popped up before quickly scrolling through the playlist section. 

"What are you looking for?"

X finally found what they were looking for, scrolling down again and clicking on a video near the end of the playlist. "This! Here."

Ethan took the phone, looking down to see it paused at the very beginning of a video titled "Markiplier Makes: TIE DYE (blindfolded)". He pushed play. 

It started with whoever was holding the camera, Ethan assumed it was Mark based on his voice, joking about how terrible the water hose was. Tyler was in the foreground, using it to rinse off a table, and then the camera turned to another guy that was standing further back as he cracked a joke. 

Ethan paused the video, focusing on that guy. "Wait, is that me?"

"Yep!" X grinned.

"But I'm… muscular! And wearing short sleeves!" 

"Confidence really works wonders on the presentation of the human body, I've gotta say." 

Ethan squinted at himself, pressing play again to watch him in action. He finished the joke, smiling wide as everyone around him laughed. The way he held himself screamed confidence and comfort, as if this was exactly where he was meant to be, making dumb jokes with his friends for videos.