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"Techno?"
He fumbled the spatula, tried to catch it, and batted it clear across the kitchen and nearly into the dining area.
Phil looked between him and it from where he sat at the table, nursing a mug of tea. "Jesus, mate, uh… you good?"
"Yup, just uh--" He cleared his throat. "Just thought I saw a bug."
Phil laughed. "Well, I think you got him."
"Yeah, I think so too." The awkward shuffle to retrieve the utensil wasn't helped by the flare of heat slapped across his face.
If anyone asked, he definitely hadn't frozen up when he had glanced over and seen Phil. There was absolutely no correlation between chucking a spatula clear across the room and the man. Because, a minute ago, prior to spectacularly embarrassing himself, the scene that greeted him had been as innocuous as any other morning. Phil perched at the end of the dining table, the man's hair ruffled and sleep tousled, eyes half-lidded and tired, Phil shooting him a smile when he noticed him staring.
The only difference was that his heart had literally stuttered, like he had been punched square in the sternum, and it still felt like the heel of a boot was digging into his gut and knotting it up.
Phil smiled at him all the time. It wasn't-- That wasn't a big deal. Naw…
"Uh… Did you want sunny side up?" He asked, returning to his post by the cast-iron pan.
Phil hummed. "Surprise me."
"It's eggs, how surprising could the outcome be?"
"If you manage to finish them without bustin' out a fuckin' window throwin' spatulas at flies that'd be pretty surprisin'."
He sighed, but the way his lips refused to fall betrayed him. "Really? This is what you're not gonna let me live down? Out of everything?"
"Yep." Phil said, all kinds of smug and he hated every second of the way his heart stumbled over the playful note of it.
He rubbed his knuckles over his sternum. Jesus, did he suddenly have a heart condition? It felt like his chest was on fire, or maybe his stomach, or maybe just his neck. And he had never felt his heart do that thud, skip, thud, skip, quick pitter-patter kind of beat before…
"Hey."
He blinked, glanced to Phil, back to the pan, and then to Phil again. "Uh… hey?"
"No, I wasn't--" Phil huffed out a breath and shook his head. "Why're you actin' so weird, mate?"
"I am quite literally acting the same as usual."
"Naw, there's-- You got that little--" Phil pointed to his own brow. "You don't do that little crease thing unless you're thinkin' real hard 'bout somethin'."
"I'm thinking about how I'm going to cook these eggs," he deadpanned.
Phil didn't seem to buy it, skeptic written across the way he eyed him. "Just do 'em scrambled, mate."
"Can do." He turned back to the pan, didn't grab a single egg from the basket beside the stove, and instead tried not to think about how it felt like there were stones knocking around in his gut.
The scrape of a chair and footsteps betrayed Phil's approach and then; "Alright, there's obviously somethin' that's got you--"
Phil's hand fell on his own and he nearly jumped clear out of his skin, the spatula clattering against the stove on its way down and striking the floor with a wooden clack. He put a pace or two between them, fingers clenching and unclenching, and it felt like every inch of skin that Phil had touched was on fire. As if it was curling and burning and dripping off of him, and his heart had risen clear up to his ears where it beat out of control.
"Uh…" His eyes flicked to Phil's face, down to his own hand, and back.
"Techno?"
He found himself centered in on the way Phil's lips dipped into a frown, the slight flush of frustration on his cheeks, eyes pinched in confusion.
"Uh…"
Phil took a step forward and his chest stuttered. He realized, that while his hand still felt warm, still stung from the brief brush of contact, it wasn't painful, it was mournful, like it missed the touch of calloused fingers, of roughened palms.
Oh, no-- Nope. No.
He shook his head and threw out every single thought, systematically and frantically, tossed it clear until he leveled Phil with the most disinterested look he could muster.
"I think I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
"That's it? That's your explanation? For--" Phil gestured to all of him and he grimaced in return.
"Yeah, I mean, mattress is a bit lumpy on the one side, not good for the ol' back, you know?"
Phil deadpanned and he barely resisted the urge to laugh nervously and give himself away like an idiot.
"C'mon, uh--" He retrieved the spatula for the second time in so many minutes. "Let's just finish breakfast and go check on the turtles."
"As long as you're alright..."
He plucked up an egg, cracked it on the edge of the pan, and seamlessly dumped it's contents to sizzle on the cast iron. The Voices clambered, chittering softly in the background in tune with the pop and snap of cooking, one phrase circling to the front, swinging and pendulum-like where it whispered a simple, succinct; 'Oh, no.'
"Perfectly fine. Never been better..."
----
He was anything but okay. Okay was yesterday morning, when he woke up and didn't look at his best friend and think 'hey, maybe I actually kind of love this guy'. And the more he thought about it, about the sudden shift, like he'd finally slammed into the rocky bottom of a precipice he hadn't even known he'd teetered on, it wasn't exactly abrupt.
Maybe it had been subtly building, simmering in the backdrop and he had just thought, this must be indigestion, maybe I ate something bad. He hadn't ever considered the notion that maybe it was butterflies in his stomach or whatever the stupid saying was. Like he was stuck in some twisted, messed up romantic comedy where he didn't know he was the main character until the realization hit him like he had stepped on a rake and ate handle.
And turtle care-taking involved a measure of choreography he hadn't realized was possible. There was a good amount of dodging scenarios that landed him in far too close proximity to the man who didn't know his presence was killing him, of trying to wrestle his breathing and his heart and the whole of him under control, and Phil darting concerned glances at him every time he one-two stepped away. Until they were focused on separate tasks, him watching over the new eggs that had been lain and Phil kneeled by the water.
Phil snapped his fingers, pointed at him, and then held out his hand. "Hey, Tech, hand me the, uh--"
He passed over the net, careful to not let their fingers brush at all, and if he kept an awkward amount of space between him and Phil at all times, that was his problem to figure out.
"So…" Phil started.
The man maneuvered the net through the water, presumably to catch any new baby squids from cropping up in the hatchery they had built. Or maybe just to do something with his hands, a sentiment he was quickly latching onto as he stooped down and shifted an egg in its perch despite nothing being off in its placement.
"Uh…"
And yeah… He had made this awkward somehow. Usually their banter came easy, wove like half-jokes and sarcasm, one ranting while the other listened and vice versa. But this was all beats of silence laced through with a tension that neither of them were used to and screamed like blinking neon: This isn't normal.
"Where do you think Ranboo's gone off to?" Phil asked, and thank god one of them knew how to carry conversations.
"Probably, uh... the L'ManHole. Or he's with Tubbo. Either way, not ideal."
"You think he'll get up to somethin' with him?"
"Knowing that kid he's halfway to jumpstarting the industrial revolution from his basement and Ranboo will tag along for the ride."
"He's a bit..."
"Suggestible?"
"Yeah," Phil sighed.
"Uh, the memory thing probably doesn't help."
Phil hummed. "To be fair, we wanted to take advantage of that too."
"Sure, but we were gonna take advantage of it in a way that didn't do irreversible damage."
"You afraid the others will?"
He shrugged. "They take advantage of everything they can. Why not some kid's head too?"
"Maybe we should try and talk to him a bit more..."
He grimaced. "Kid's a bit awkward, it's kinda hard to do that."
"You say that as if you're not awkward."
"I'm not awkward, I'm just, uh, not--" He glanced at Phil out of the corner of his eye. "Personable."
Phil leveled him with an unamused look. "Techno, you literally near jumped out your fuckin' skin this mornin' when I--"
"Hey, look at that, I think one of the turtles is hatching."
He cut Phil off and moved to crouch in front of the egg that had wiggled, the surface cracking, spidering and growing until a flat beak poked through. The sand sifting and the dulled thunk of the net falling onto the man-made beach was followed by Phil crouching beside him, and he nearly shuffled away. Nearly made it obvious by putting space between them, but instead he stayed put, elbows rested on his knees, hands clenching and unclenching. And he wasn't even focused on the egg any longer, he glanced over without turning his head, without making it obvious he was watching Phil grin down at the baby turtle taking its first frippery steps into the world.
He had never understood the way books described someone wreathed in sunlight, as if the sun cared enough to halo any one specific person on the planet, but that was the only way he could think to describe the way the light had decided to frame Phil. Like a crown of exalted gold; holy and sanctimonious.
'Beautiful'.
He shook his head, face scrunched, snout wrinkling, brows drawing together as he mulled over what the Voices had decided to toss his way this time. Glancing at his own hands, he couldn't help but circle in on the reminder that he was anything but. Furred and hoofed and scarred. Beastial, inhuman, twisted out of form and mangled. Unnatural…
A hand fell on his shoulder and he followed it back to Phil's eyes, all elation and joy and endlessly vibrant, and he felt unworthy.
"Whatcha wanna name this lil' one?"
"...Stuart."
Phil laughed and he had never wanted to wrap himself up in a sound more. "That's a good name."
---
He wasn't used to this. Whatever this was. Looking at someone and thinking, 'yeah, I'd lay down my weapons forever if they just asked.'. He was used to fighting, to weilding a sword or an axe, to asking less questions, to less wagging tongues and more cutting them out, and he didn't consider himself soft. Not in the traditional ways. Not in the ways you melt to the knees around someone and your spine unfurls, but maybe in the way he let a bee wander over his knuckles or the way he plucked up a turtle from the sand to right it where it had struggled. Soft in sympathy… He didn't know this softness though.
This melted magma that had bubbled up under his sternum and slowly seeped, pulsed to every edge of his limbs like liquid gold, bright and flashy and annoying. Malleable, but only by the hands of another. Hands that he didn't think should ever find their way to his heart in all the ways he wanted them to.
He didn't know how to deal with this. Didn't know if he should. Considered for a long while, once twilight fell and the stars had blinked, sleepy and lazy into the sky, if maybe he should forget about it. Leave it buried, hidden under his skin where it could fester, keep it where the burden didn't have to become anyone else's. It felt nearly parasitic, like something had burrowed into him that he didn't want there.
Or maybe, that was an unfair comparison. More aptly, he didn't want it to end up under Phil's skin, tick-like and draining. Because if Phil knew, if he even suspected, and if he didn't feel the same; Phil would still find a way to make the problem his own.
Phil shouldered things, carried weight and responsibilities he didn't have to. Thought himself a little Atlas where he hoisted the world and didn't bow beneath the weight of killing his son, of sieging a county and sheltering the very people he had made homeless, of helping form a syndicate with him, no questions asked. Just smiles and nods and what do you need?
He sighed, buried his face in his hands where he sat on the steps of the cabin, and wondered for all the world alongside the rising clamberous echo in his head; why him?
The clearing of a throat had him straightening back out, like he had never bowed in the first place, and he glanced over his shoulder to see Phil. The two mugs clutched in the man's hands steamed and wisped into the frosted air.
Phil handed him one as he took a seat beside him. "Bit cold out, thought I'd bring you a cuppa."
He couldn't tear his eyes away from him, fist curling loosely around the warmed ceramic. "Thanks."
Phil smiled up at the stars and the faint dustings of moonlight decorated his brow and his cheeks. "It's easier to see the stars here..."
"Yeah..."
L'Manberg had been inundated with artificial light, Pogtopia had been underground, and the Empire had been flushed with its own scatter of torches and sconces. Here it was quiet. It was dark. Empty, except for the village tucked far away from them. It was just them, the snow, and the stars.
"Uh…" He started, trailing off, glancing down into the mug, hoofed thumb brushing over the rim.
"Hm?"
"Do you ever miss it?"
"The Antarctic?" Phil asked.
He sighed. "All of it."
"I suppose, sometimes, but…" Phil sighed. "This is nicer. I-- There were too many people before, lot more responsibility, lot more gettin' pulled away to do one thing or another. Here it's…" Phil looked over at him. "Simpler."
He huffed out a breath. "Simpler?"
"Yeah. It's just you and me here. No big palace, no titles, no people trying to stand us on trial and demand answers."
"Well--"
"Butcher Army doesn't count," Phil said.
"It felt like it counted."
"That was all bullshit, less because you'd actually done anythin'."
He huffed. "Well, according to some of them I'm the main villain of the SMP."
"Guess that makes us both the villains."
"Partners in crime?" He asked before he could rethink the wording.
Phil laughed. "Somethin' like that."
They lapsed into a comfortable quiet and he finally dared to try the tea Phil had brought him. He huffed when he realized the man had brought him chamomile, the taste strong-- a bit too strong, but the honey added to it helped dull the flavor. He focused on his mug, hands wrapped firmly around it, hooves slipping over the smooth surface and palms nearly awkwardly sized for the cup. He had gotten used to handling things that weren't made for him though, adaptability like a second skin.
He didn't know how to adapt to the matter at hand though. To the man sat beside him, an ordinary scene on any other night, on any other day. But he was all too aware of how Phil's shoulder was millimeters from brushing his, of how the man's knee rested against his, the outside of their thighs one shift from melding against one another. The all too present radiating heat of another living being beside him and he was too chicken shit to lean into it. And it wasn't like they hadn't before.
On long nights, when planning for the sieges and the conflicts and the wars to expand their borders, when Phil would try to stay up with him, but eventually fall asleep, and his shoulder became a convenient perch for him to tip his head against and catch a few minutes of shut-eye. In the Antarctic they had nearly melded, one to another, two royal crowns in one, and an empire all their own. Sometimes, he missed that easy familiarity.
"If I asked you to help me conquer it all again, would you?" He asked after a moment.
"To take over the whole SMP?"
"Every single inch..." he breathed, familiar bloodlust on his lips.
"I'd be the one layin' the flags, mate. Jus' say the word."
He chuckled. "That eager for blood?"
Phil didn't answer for a moment and then whispered a small; "Anything..."
"Anything?" He asked, glancing over at Phil.
Phil stared back, unwavering, eyes open, trusting, nearly reverent in their intensity. "If you asked me to… I'd help you tear apart the whole world."
"That's…" He swallowed. "Uh…"
"Shit--" Phil laughed and waved him off like he was batting away the sudden tension. "That came out weird-- Fuck, I meant like, anythin' you need I'm here to help, mate. I've got your back, yeah?"
"Yeah-- Of course. Uh, same..." He cleared his throat, fidgeted with the mug and stared at the tea rather than Phil, the back of his neck hotter than it should be.
Phil gently clapped him on the back after a beat of silence, palm lingering on his shoulder blade before retreating. "Arctic Syndicate, eh?"
He shrugged. "Thought we could have a little call back to our roots, as a treat."
"Hopefully it doesn't end up the same."
"Naw… It'll be different this time."
"Why's that?" Phil asked.
'Everything's different this time.' He looked over at Phil, and not even the starriest sky, the vast, spinning colors of nebulas and the universe could compare to the way Phil looked at him.
"It just will be."
---
Everything was indeed different. Different in the way that there was a gap of time where they had gone separate ways. Where Phil had somehow ended up killing his own son and their inevitable reunion at the fall of L'Manberg had been bathed in as much blood as their beginning.
He remembered when they had found each other in the aftermath; Phil shaking and trembling against him as he tried to hold the man together in all the ways he could. Grief as violent as the act itself. And he knew grief, knew it not so intimately as a man forced to slay his own kin, but in the way Phil had looked at him, face drawn and sallow and eyes empty. Blood still smattering his face and sticky on his hands, sword abandoned for the way his hands tremored.
And it was telling that he knew more about the ways Phil preferred to kill a man; quick and through the gut, blade slid up under the sternum to still the heart, across the neck to silence, or through the lung to make them choke first. He knew far less about whether Phil had ever looked at a bouquet and thought some part of it was nice.
Which landed him in his current predicament. Staring at a collection of purple flowers at the outskirts of the village where the snow wasn't quite as thick and foliage had poked through. Having stumbled upon them after finishing the day's trades and, with all the knowledge of how people courted one another from novels alone, he considered taking them back to the cabin.
He plucked up a few of them before he could reconsider. Placed them in an empty glass on the table once he returned, too embarrassed to ever hand them over in person. Gifts between him and Phil always more armor and knives and dead bodies rather than anything so sentimental or delicate.
"What're those?" Phil asked the moment he stepped into the cabin, snow dusting his shoulders and hair like baby's breath.
"Uh… Just something I found in the village." He shrugged.
"They're pretty."
His ears burned.
Phil leaned over to inspect them, reached out to poke at one of the flowers. "Didn't know anythin' like this grew out here."
"Uh… yeah, me neither."
"'M always surprised what can thrive in places like these. Like these lil' guys."
"Diamond in the rough," he deadpanned.
Phil huffed out a laugh, thumb brushing over a petal. "Yeah… rose among thorns and all that."
He swallowed, tongue musing at the back of his teeth, fingers fidgeting where they rested idly at his sides, tension wound tight under his sternum. The Voices rallied to the forefront in a clambering stumble, nearly screeching in his ears, smothering and incessant where they demanded.
"I can get some more," he blurted before he could stop himself.
Phil blinked and then smiled at him. "That'd be nice."
He smiled back, smaller and far less sure, lips pulled around his tusks. He'd grab the whole goddamn meadow if Phil wanted him to.
---
Ranboo had agreed to trek along with him to the village the next day, under the guise of trading emeralds for more supplies and enchantments. The ender didn't protest when he had them make a pit-stop beside the collection of pasqueflowers sprouting up around the outskirts of the houses. He stooped over, small bundle already in one hand, careful to pluck the next flower up from the base of the stem and not rip or snare the petals or leaves.
"Uhm--"
He turned to Ranboo, brow raised. "What?"
The ender fidgeted with his own small collection of flowers. "So, are you and Phil like, uh…?"
The kid twined his fingers, crossed them like he was making a promise he intended to break and not insinuating that he and Phil--
He coughed, thumped a fist against his chest and worked to get his breathing under control. "What, uh... What are you implying, kid?"
"Oh--" Ranboo stared at him, mouth dropped into a small 'o'. "Oh my bad. I just though, uhm, well I mean, uh…"
"Wait, wait, you thought--" He gestured between him and the non-existent Phil beside him. "You thought we were--"
"I see that I've made a bit of an assumption. That's on me."
He shook his head, laughed straight from the gut. "Man, uh… Yeah, no, we're just--"
He trailed off when he saw the flower in his palm. Thought about how he was gathering enough to spill over the brim of a glass, enough to cheerily fill a shadow blighted corner of a room, enough that he'd get to see Phil smile like that again.
"We're just friends…"
"You sound unsure about that." Ranboo stated, flatly.
His brows furrowed. "What about that sounded unsure?"
Ranboo raised his hands, shoulders hiking. "Nothing, nothing-- Just, you seem a bit, uhm--"
"Spit it out, kid."
"Sad."
"Sad?" He wrinkled his snout. "I don't sound sad."
"Okay."
"Don't say it like that."
Ranboo tilted his head. "Like what?"
He grit his teeth, tusks grinding against one another. "I'm not sad about anything."
"I am totally and utterly convinced of that fact," Ranboo stated, nearly deadpanned, and his eye twitched.
"Alright… You obviously have something to say, might as well say it."
"Promise not to stab me?"
He grunted. "I'm not gonna stab you."
Ranboo huffed out a breath. "Okay, good, because for a second there I thought--"
"Just get on with what you were gonna say."
"Right, right. Uhm…" Ranboo wrung his hands. "You and Phil are friends."
"That is a fact, yes. Are we just gonna state the obvious here, 'cause I got better things I could be doing and--"
"But you're sad about that, right?"
His jaw snapped shut so fast he worried he nearly cracked a tooth. He didn't say anything, just stared, fists curling carefully around the flowers in his palms.
"I've seen the way you watch him, when he isn't looking. You do this thing--" Ranboo pointed between his brows. "When you're worried about something or thinking a lot."
"You some kinda shrink? Gonna pick me apart? You know everything that's going on up here then?" He asked, shoulders drawn up like hackles, taking a step forward before he could stop himself.
Ranboo stepped back, laughing nervously, hands held up, the universal gesture for 'woah there' between them. "No, no, nope, I'm just-- Just observing stuff."
"I thought you had issues with memory, why's that detail sticking around out of everything?"
"I mean, I do write everything down."
He backed down, eyes darting down and then up. "Uh… How much about us is written in there?"
"Uhm..." Ranboo's hand reflexively shot up to cover his chest, over the inner pocket where the journal slipped home whenever he finished with it. "...enough?"
"You ever considered the fact that's a bit of a security breach if that thing falls into the wrong hands?"
"Sometimes."
He sighed. "Why are you even writing about me and Phil in there anyway?"
"Uhm… I thought it was interesting."
"Interesting?"
"Like you're whole--" Ranboo gestured at him. "Dynamic."
"Our dynamic?"
"Yeah."
"Alright..." He turned to the rest of the sparse meadow, glanced between his collection and Ranboo's. "I think we're done here."
"Done here?" Ranboo asked, far too nervously, as if he was going to run the kid through in the next second.
"Done with this." He held up the flowers and Ranboo visibly untensed.
"Oh--" Ranboo huffed out a breath. "Right, yup."
The walk home was dead quiet and he could practically hear Ranboo nervously vibrating next to him, like some stretched out, monochrome greyhound in a crown. Back at the cabin, the kid suggested setting the flowers on the sill of the window so the sun could catch the petals at sunset, and he begrudgingly had to admit the idea was a good one as he placed the glass upon it. The door creaking open drew his attention back to the entrance to the cabin, to Phil trodding through, dusting off his shoulders and shaking out his hair before looking up and smiling right at him.
"Oh--" Phil blinked, noticing the new collection. "You actually got more."
Phil immediately bee-lined for them and leaned over to inspect them, musing one of the purple petals gently between his fingers.
"Uh…" He glanced to Ranboo who stared back and he had half a mind to throw something at the kid for making everything so obvious. "Yeah, I mean, figured I might as well since we passed by them and all."
Ranboo gestured from behind Phil's shoulder, either a shooing motion or a 'get on with it'. He grimaced at him, waved him off and pointed to the ladder. The kid just stared blankly, like he didn't understand what the hell get out meant. He was halfway to picking up the wooden spoon hanging on the stove rack and chucking it at Ranboo when Phil turned to him again.
The grin on his face wasn't something he had seen often. It wasn't wide, wasn't ear splitting, wasn't all teeth and crinkled eyes and amused. It was small, it was reserved, eyes pinched and lips drawn up subtle at the corners.
"How many more are there?" Phil asked and he couldn't place the tight note to his voice.
"Uh… lots."
"You think you can get more?"
For you the world, Phil.
"Yes..." he breathed.
And for a moment he forgot Ranboo was still standing there. It was just him and Phil and years of an unspoken everything between them. He would bring Phil the whole world if it meant the other would ever look at him like this again. With a flower twirled between his thumb and fingers, eyes half-lidded, lashes dusted in sunlight, dapples of gold decorating his features in liquid sunset, grooved in the valleys of scars and laughter lines and over stubble; Phil looked like he belonged upon the mountain of deities and less mortal. And he couldn't help but feel the way Death probably gazed upon Life and thought; you're everything that makes me.
"Thanks, Techno," Phil said, soft enough he nearly missed it.
"Yup. Anytime..." And he locked everything else he wanted to say-- everything that pushed at the back of his teeth, that tapped incessantly against his tongue-- up behind the idea that Phil could never look at him and see anything more than what he was.
He ignored the way Ranboo frowned at him from over Phil's shoulder.
---
"You could just tell him."
The axe split through the wood with the biting crunch of steel thunking into wood and he wriggled the blade back and forth, the log pieces falling to either side of the stump.
"Now why would I do that?" He asked, side-eyeing the ender who passed over another log.
He set it up on the stump, lined up the blow, drew back for the swing, and--
"Because you love him."
The handle nearly slipped from his fingers as he swung down and missed entirely, the axe glancing off the side of the chopped tree trunk and nearly into his shin. He blinked, stupidly, dumbfoundedly, ears impossibly warm and neck hot.
"Uh… what?"
"You love him, don't you?"
He hoisted up the axe, rested it on his shoulder and glared at Ranboo. "Bruh. Stop saying it."
Ranboo raised his hands. "Sorry, I mean, it's true though, isn't it?"
He didn't confirm or deny it, just stared at this scrappy kid, too tall and too perceptive for his age, and wondered why the hell he was cursed like this.
"And if it is?" He asked, lip curling.
"Then-- I don't know, maybe you should tell him."
He snorted. "What would that even accomplish?"
"Maybe he loves you back."
He froze.
"Don't you want to… I mean wouldn't you want to know if he does?" Ranboo asked, slowly.
"He doesn't," he said, snatching a new piece of wood up from the freshly cut stack and placing it on the chopping stump. "Not the same way at least."
"You don't know that though."
"And you do?" He asked, gesturing back towards the cabin with the axe. "You an expert on this or something?"
"No, but I mean-- I mean the worst that happens is he says he doesn't."
He leveled Ranboo with a flat look. "Yeah, exactly."
"Well, I mean, best case scenario though-- He shares the same feelings you do and you know--"
He snapped the wood in half with the axe, effectively cutting Ranboo off. "What? We're gonna suddenly march off into the sunset, elope, get married or something?"
"No. I-- Unless you want that?"
He shook his head. "I want my best friend to not think I'm some kind of messed up."
He didn't want Phil to look at him and see some kind of monster, some kind of freak, some kind of beast who had decided to hunt after him, hound after him and want-- Demand more than the friendship Phil had granted him.
"What… What do you mean messed up?" Ranboo asked, brow furrowed.
"I-- Look, I'm-- It's just that--" He sighed, hands flexing around the axe handle. "We got a good thing going here-- Heck, I'd even say a great thing. He doesn't need me messing that all up 'cause I can't--" Control myself.
"... Techno?"
He grunted, a sharp huff of air from his nose.
"Do you… Do you think he can't love you?" Ranboo asked.
He sneered, laughed, and it was cruel, mirthless, venomous, poison where it dripped and stuck acidic and wrong in his ears. "Look at me. It's-- I'm not exactly-- No one's gonna be looking at me and thinking yeah that's romance material. I'm not exactly the lead of a novel, kid. I'm like the thing the main characters spend hunting down and skinning in the background of the plot."
Ranboo grimaced.
He grit his teeth. "Phil deserves better anyway..."
"Techno…"
"I don't need your sympathy..." He waved him off and held out his palm. "Hand me the next piece."
---
The dead of twilight unfolded in the cupped hands of Asteria spilling out the stars, and he found himself back at the frozen meadow, gathering more of the flowers while the world slept. The villagers' homes dark, candles snuffed out in the sills and curtains drawn. Any reasonable person would be dead to the world at this hour, but him, an idiot, was picking more pasqueflowers.
And he didn't want to scour and raze the whole field, thought it a bit rude if he left the villagers nothing when they had let him take what he wanted the other times before. But he bundled up enough that they overflowed, settled in his palm in a ruffled bouquet of purple. And yeah, it was stupid. Phil probably wasn't even serious about him bringing back more…
The way Phil had asked though, the way he had looked at him, the way he had smiled, the way his voice had sounded the exact same though. It had echoed the way Phil had asked if he would kill him after everything with Wilbur. When Phil had shakily pressed a blade into his palm, curled his fingers around it, and pressed the end to his sternum and when he refused, had told him that wasn't something Phil could ever ask of him; Phil had regarded him the same exact way.
And he didn't know what that meant. A part of him tensed away from it, poised and ready to flee, the other leaned towards it, shaking and vulnerable.
He sighed, crouched in the field until flowers brushed his ankles, until he ended up kneeled among them, hands in his lap, the bouquet fallen to spill over his legs and tumble down his thighs. This was stupid. The endeavor was pointless and childish and-- He would never let any ounce of what was hidden under his ribs slip from his lips anyway. Flowers wouldn't fix that. A bunch of stupid plants couldn't fix this...
"Hey."
He stiffened, eyes darting up from the flowers to Phil. Somehow here and not back at the cabin where he should be, and his brow furrowed when the man kneeled down in front of him. Surrounded by the flowers and the patches of frost, he looked ethereal, inhuman in all the little imperfections. In the scars and the hair half-pulled back, lazy and unkempt, in the unshaven stubble and the slight press of crow's feet at the corner of his eyes as he smiled. And it was them; two unkillable idiots kneeled in a snow-laden meadow and the sky the only witness.
Phil glanced around, eyes scouring slowly over the flowers in a languid pass that he found himself following. The grin on Phil's face turned down, melted more into a thinned line that only quirked up at the very edges as Phil breathed out and in like for all the world he had found peace here.
"It's beautiful..." Phil said after a moment, eyes darting to him as the man reached for one of the flowers he had picked and cupped it in his hands.
He couldn't speak, couldn't unstick his tongue from his jaw as he stared at Phil, wreathed in starlight and draped in the moon and--
"You don't have to take them. Next time--" Phil cleared his throat. "Uh, next time we can just visit together, yeah?"
He nodded; dumbly, stupidly, lost for words.
Phil sighed. "Techno..."
"What?"
"For the past few days you've been-- Well, I'd say you've been pretty shit of it. Actin' a bit, uh, weird and all."
"Have I?"
Phil leveled him with a flat look. "Mate… I'm not fuckin' blind."
He stiffened, chest stuttering.
"Obviously somethin's been up with you. And I-- If you want to tell me in your own time, that's fine, but… We're in this together and anythin' you need, I'll be there to help. Jus' gotta let me know."
The laugh left him before he could stop it. "That's the problem."
"What?"
"You can't-- This isn't exactly fixable. It's not even-- It's…"
A hand grabbed his own, a thumb brushing over his knuckles and the casualness of it, the familiarity of it; he wanted to keep this, preserve it how it was.
"It's what?"
He sighed. "...I messed up."
"Messed up what, Techno?"
"Everything."
"What'dya mean 'everythin''?"
"All of it. Every single part of it. I…" He paused, swallowing thickly and retracted his hand from Phil's grip to gesture between them. "Uh, this."
"This?" Phil frowned. "Mate, you're bein' a bit fuckin' cryptic."
"Uh…"
He couldn't tell him. He couldn't. He couldn't. If he did-- If he did and all he saw was Phil's nose wrinkle, eyes pinch, teeth bare in a malice-tinged laugh, he would crumple up and never rise. He looked at his own hands, glared at them so hard he thought finally maybe he would burst into flames and be done with this.
His fingers twitched, curled, hoofed and animal and nothing like Phil's own; all warm tinted and human and worn down by swords and weathered. Fingernail beds aged and beaten down by labor and time, the press of battles sunk into each line worried into the man's palms. And it would be easy to trace them, to run his fingers over Phil's hands and memorize every single line of them, every single vein like the gold ley lines of cracked pottery.
He swallowed, and he tried not to think about the way he was covered in fur, matted and bloodied during battles and coarse and bristly even brushed clean and dry. That his tusks never quite let the sides of his lips close, teeth poking through, smiles always feeling and looking awkward around them. That his eyes were red, muddied crimson, like dried blood and rust and Phil's were blue, endless, vast, like skies and heavens and not death and ruin. That he was more pig than human, more boar than person, that he had a snout and a tail and legs that twisted compared to Phil's, that he was bulky and didn't always slip into spaces meant for humans easily. That he had a temperament that rivaled the wilder counterparts he shared parts of himself with, that he enjoyed the taste of blood, that he could smell a drop of it from miles away like a shark stalked through dark waters.
That he felt, on most days, far more monster than person.
"Techno…"
Hands cupped his face and he stilled, breath catching under his ribs, eyes flicking up to Phil's. But the man's own were focused on where he reached up to pluck the crown off his brow and he watched every moment of Phil setting it in his own lap. The golden circlet of jewel encrusted metal somehow natural in its placement, like it belonged just as much in Phil's grasp as his own. The palms returned, warm and soft, drew his head down gently, until his chin dipped towards his sternum and his head bowed like he was before a king. He didn't expect the fleeting press of lips to the bare crown of his forehead.
He went rigid, breath stuttering, brow furrowing as Phil drew back and regarded him with heavy-lidded eyes and a small smile; hands still holding firm and steady and full of life to either side of his face.
"Have I told you I love these?" Phil's thumbs moved to smooth over his ears, across the rough velvet and down the flopping slope of them.
He breathed slowly, eyes watching Phil's as they roved down the features of his face, the man's hands following the motion. Palms rested along his jaw, thumbs caressing the sides of his snout before settling on the tusks that jutted from his lip and delicately pressed against them.
"And these?" Phil asked, lips quirked into a half-smile.
He shook his head, minutely, slowly, brow pinching, eyes feverish, chest the roaring billow of a well-bellowed forge.
"What about this?"
A hand roamed down and along the back of his neck to card through the tufted mane of fur that ran along his spine and shoulders. Warm fingers tangled themselves in it, combed it out in languid passes, and he shivered. Chest rising and falling flighty, hummingbird quick, he couldn't tear his eyes away from the way Phil looked decorated in moonlight.
Phil gathered his hands in his own, held them, ran his fingertips along the flat slopes of his palms and the coarse valleys of them, over the curve of the hooves and he felt like he might rattle apart at the seams at each passing caress. He trembled when Phil wove a trail between his knuckles, drew shapes on the back of his hand, twined his fingers, soft and malleable and flushed, with his. It was a more awkward handhold than if his hand matched Phil's own, but it worked somehow, it felt right, their hands slotted together like the final pieces of a puzzle they hadn't realized they were completing.
"Uh…" Less articulate that he was hoping for, admittedly, but he couldn't even process much beyond the hands in his or the way Phil looked at him like he had hung the moon alongside the stars.
Phil laughed, smile splitting across his face, and he had a word for it now, the thing he couldn't place before; Fondness. Somehow, he had missed it, seen the little signs and let them slip through his fingers. Like the casual press of a hand between his shoulder blades when Phil leaned over his shoulder to inspect the book in his hands, the way he always brought him something warm to drink in the hours he couldn't sleep, laid a blanket over his shoulders when he ended up falling asleep in the armchair by the fireplace...
In all the little ways Phil had learned to exist around him. In the memorized steps of a waltz they had been toeing through since the Empire and he hadn't noticed how easily they had spun into it, hand in hand, foot to foot; always together.
"You're the biggest fuckin' idiot I know," Phil muttered.
He huffed. "Wow, thanks."
"I mean, I knew you were dense, but you're more thick-headed than I expected."
"Alright, you're laying it on a little thick now..."
Phil brushed his knuckles against his cheek. "You're my dumb idiot though."
He couldn't help the way he grinned at that.