“What do you mean, don’t talk about it directly?” Vio questioned. He poked the Wall experimentally, feeling it flex and wiggle like a chu chu under his gentle prods. “It doesn’t appear to be very… sturdy in the first place. Not that I’m implying you’re not doing your job well!” he added hastily, hands waving in an attempt to preemptively placate the repairman “It’s just that I don’t know how well just hypothesizing about the Other Side will work. How would one even do that anyways?”
“You don’t have a name? That’s… a little bit sad.” Green frowned. “Do you have a nickname maybe? I mean, we could just keep calling you ‘sir’, I guess, but nearly everyone I’ve ever talked to found that awkward at some point.”
The Repairman reflexively tried to swat Vio’s hands away. Of course, it didn’t work; Vio was a ghost, after all.
He stared at Vio for a moment before sighing.
“Yeah,” he said, in a voice that tried to be casual. “You’re right; it’s not stable.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “you just…”
He gestured vaguely.
“…don’t look directly there, don’t talk over there, basically pretend that there isn’t here.”
“Oh, it’s not an issue,” he said to Green. “I’ve been called everything from ‘Mr. Repairman’ to ‘blob man’ to ‘Tinker.’ Call me what you like.”
He silently wondered why this was a sticking point for some. It wasn’t like a name did much for him. “Fourth Wall Repairman” pretty much said it all.
Siblings-a-Fixin' 