Chapter Text
They’re sparring, before XD and before Techno finds himself in the shambling revolution of Manburg, before all that, before it can all spiral out of hand.
They’re fresh from the exhilaration of a tournament, one hosted locally at a kingdom. And Techno’d arrived by the call of a vast monetary prize. Though why Dream’s here, he doesn’t know. Nor does he know why Dream’s here still, even with the tournament over.
But they’re in the courtyard, occasionally catching glimpses of banners and decoration pieces getting carried off as the stage is deconstructed. A portion of the crowd still mills about, and while a few lazily watch Techno and Dream, most pay them no mind.
“If I win, split the prize with me,” Dream taunts him, breathing heavy with an open, grinning mouth, visible under his half-circle mask. His teeth are human, and that’s always been strangely reassuring.
“Yeah, like I’d ever,” Techno snorts back, grinning and squinting in the sun as he dodges a lazy swing from Dream. They’re in a bit of a lull, having worn each other out with hit after hit after hit. It’s pleasantly cool outside, open blue skies, a good realm, wooden swords. “How about if you win – and that’s a fat if – I let you go free.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Dream swings at him again, similarly half-hearted.
It’d still hurt if Techno wasn’t good at dodging on a long-engrained instinctual level.
“I’m thinking if you lose, I’ll rob you or something.” Techno shrugs, doing a quick fakeout and trying to stab at Dream’s midsection. Dream hops away, still smiling. “Like, I’ll knock you out and just take all your belongings. How’s that sound?”
“Guess I’ll just have to win, instead.” Dream spins the wooden sword around his wrist. They’re armor-less, to compensate for the dull weapon.
“Where was that attitude during the tourn-“ and Techno has to dodge again, sprinting away and then circling back at a slower pace- he’s laughing, breathless with the exertion of earlier pvp and now this, “During the tournament, huh?”
“Maybe I was aiming for second place.” Dream smiles, “You never know. I have things planned.”
“Sure you do.” Techno nods, and breaks into another sprint, this time at Dream.
The tournament was too easy, so they’ve found each other afterwards, still nearly strangers. But you don’t have to know someone to understand them.
They meet swords and Techno’s splinters, going up in a cloud of woodchips.
It upsets their balance – neither used to fighting with weapons that so easily surrender.
They trip, fall, and maybe since then Techno’s never stopped plummeting.
For immortality, it all happens so quickly. It’s easy to forget the connective tissue of weeks and months and years inbetween significant events. So in retrospect, it feels like no time had passed at all, between that lovely courtyard fight, and when he’s dragging Dream’s body off a battlefield.
As misfortune would have it, Dream’s managed to get significantly heavier and harder to maneuver over time, and Techno mutters at chat to quiet down, fireman carrying Dream as he cuts through dense forestry. He doesn’t have much reason to do this, he realizes, slicing away another threatening pine branch, but… yeah no he’s not going to look into it. It feels like he’s slipping down a slope of irrationality, and if he ponders it too long, he’ll start to feel bad about himself.
Dream can survive getting his wounds cleaned with stream water. Techno sits there, and slowly peals Dream’s blood-soaked shirt off him, revealing a whole belt of hidden daggers as well as an array of geometrical tattoos, dotted in places with roman numerals.
“Add that to the wiki,” Techno mutters to chat under his breath, beginning to wipe away blood with a cloth to see the true scope of damages.
A few lacerations, and what worries him most is where Dream’s chest got poked straight through with someone’s sword. Nowhere near his heart, but Techno hopes the lung hasn’t collapsed yet, cause healing potions may close up wounds, but they can’t reinflate an organ.
He wonders if there’s a way to tell, and leans down, snout hovering just a centimeter over the stab wound, giving it a few experimental sniffs.
Smells like blood. A lot of it. Smells like gunpowder and tattoo ink- that’s weird. The shapes along Dream’s ribs seem long healed, no reason for them to smell fresh. When he looks back up Dream’s awake. His masks’ still in place, so Techno doesn’t know how he can tell – and Dream probably doesn’t expect him to notice, but Techno does.
Something about the tense line that creeps onto Dream’s shoulders, bared and not braced for a backstabbing.
Techno sighs, and asks him, “Can you breathe alright?”
Whatever Dream tries to answer is lost in a gargle of blood.
“Yeah okay,” Techno nods like it’s normal and swats Dream’s hands away, when he tries to pick himself up off the cape he’d been deposited him on. Dream scowls at him, teeth bloody, and Techno snorts speaking with little thought: “What? You’re gonna die? That’s kind of awkward. Means I win, too.”
When Dream regains the ability to speak, a good two heal potions later, he asks Techno what he’d meant.
“Eh, you always try to one-up me, and I feel like keeling over this early-on won’t bode well for your reputation.” Techno half-shrugs. They’re walking back to the battlefield which Techno had been loath to leave. Loath to leave, but had done so anything, little idea as to why.
Dream, once more energized and peppy, rechecks his weapons, “Maybe I’d win in who’s to die the fastest?”
“I’m not competing in that.” Techno watches Dream count his daggers, “Technoblade never dies and all.”
“Sure-”
“What are you doing. If you think I robbed you while you were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, you’re wrong.”
Dream stops with the weapon-inventorizing and scowls again, still bloody. “You’ve got sticky fingers, wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, there’s barely anything to rob off you anyway,” Techno scoffs as the sound of battle fades back into their periphery. The smell of blood. “It’d be like taking candy from a homeless orphan.”
Dream snorts, hides the rest of his laugh, and steps back into the fray.
And Techno’s still falling, spectacular speeds of damning descent into the void, one he doesn’t want to examine or really understand. Chat’s dismissed, he’s lounging on the inn bed, trying not to analyze anything at all. It’s years later.
There isn’t a knock on his door, but there is a definite presence. He watches a shadow stop and bisect the light crawling in from under the door gap.
He’s tired. He’s so tired. Days of travel and all this self-reflection wears a man down, so Techno reaches for his sword in a sad sort of acceptance. Another altercation, who knows.
The figure doesn’t move. Techno sits up on his bed, then quietly stands, praying that the outside chatter of market crowds will mask the creak of his mattress and floorboards. And now they both wait.
He hopes that, if this is how he goes, Phil at least kicks the ass of whoever this may be. They’re supposed to meet up in two days, when Phil gets here too for the upcoming tournament, and it’d be a real shame if he finds Techno dead.
The shadow shuffles a bit, shifting its weight from one leg onto the other, and Techno rubs a hand down his face. Get on with it, by god, this is awkward. And time-taking. He’d rather go to sleep. He wants to go to sleep so bad. Lie down and sleep and maybe then the shadow will go away.
What’s more likely, is that it’ll break in and attempt to go for his throat, so maybe it’s better to face your problems head-on.
Techno walks over to his door quietly. By now it’s been a good four minutes. Surely if this is a bit, the person on the other side would’ve quit by now. And it’s not like there are people here, which
A) know where Techno’s staying
B) would stoop down to pranking him in such a boring fashion.
Techno slowly and painstakingly lowers himself first onto his knees, then lies down on the floor, and looks under the gap. The carpet smells of stale wooden homes, coarse against his fur. The boots under the door tell him nothing, or at least tell him this isn’t a weirdly early and creepily silent Phil. Thin soles. Techno does a funny little ‘it is what it is’ expression to no one in particular, and stabs his sword out through the door gap.
It hits the inside of a foot, not stabbing in far but drawing good blood – Techno can smell it break into the air, not quite human, not quite that of a mob.
From the other side of the door comes a startled yelp and then an accusatory: “TECHNO. YOU ASSHOLE.”
Oh.
He picks himself back up off the floor, expression dead of any emotion, and opens the door, “Dream.”
Dream’s on the other side, bent down to examine his foot as it leaves bloody smears on the floor, “What is wrong with you.”
“I don’t wanna hear that coming from you.” Techno leans his shoulder on the doorjamb, sword idly at his side, watching Dream’s plight. “Why’re you here.”
“Wish I wasn’t,” Dream grumbles, straightening up, “Do you have healing potions?”
“Yeah.”
They stand in silence, Dream in the hallway, Techno very clearly in the way of accessing his room.
Dream’s dressed down a bit, armor lighter than usual, half-circle mask. He looks unrested, from what Techno can see of him- yeah really unrested actually, something about him looks off.
“And…?” Dream finally breaks.
Techno grins, and he’s about to say something that’ll keep the stalemate running, but. It’s. Look.
Dream looks normal, surface-level normal. As much as this weirdo looks normal ever. He’s standing in the hallway of an inn he’s surely not actually staying at, having somehow tracked down Techno three days before the championship, for whatever reason also in the kingdom early. He’s as close to wearing ‘casual’ as Dream gets. Standing on Techno’s doorstep bleeding, foot back down on the floor almost ignored as it continues to pool red.
His lips look chewed in worry.
“You’ll owe me one,” Techno grunts and steps aside, kicking the carpet corner up so it starts rolling away and revealing dustless wooden floor, “Careful with the blood.”
The joking air seems to drain from the room as Dream sits down on a shitty old chair with what must’ve been an unintentional sigh.
Techno closes the door and stands near it, uncertain of how to proceed and not a huge fan of… really any of this. If a conversation can’t be lighthearted, it shouldn’t happen at all, unless it’s political negotiations. And even then… he’s getting distracted. He doesn’t want to think about Dream. Doesn’t want to look at him when he’s sitting with his back hunched, elbows on his knees, waiting. Or maybe just zoning out, he doesn’t look attentive at all, like Techno could just leave and Dream wouldn’t notice.
He grits his teeth and goes to get the potion. Dangles it in front of Dream, and it takes a moment to get a response.
So Techno sits down on his bed, sword set aside, and watches.
He’s seen Dream like this a few times before, but far brisker and without the inescapable confines of a hotel room. And every time he’d urged the conversation on, introduced a new joke. It’s easier that way, both in the moment and in the longer run of keeping good acquaintances but few friends.
He considers saying something now, real benign, about the weather, or maybe yanking chat over from the void even though they hate it when he does that without warning. But at least then he wouldn’t be sitting in fucking silence.
Dream finally seems to wake up, uncork the potion, and begin drinking. He’d sat there long enough to leave a substantial puddle.
“Eat a gapple.” Techno tells him, and it comes out a little quieter than he’d intended, a little too genuine. “For the blood loss.”
Dream nods, and takes a gapple out of his own surplus. At least free gapples isn’t something he decides to test Techno with on this fine day.
Biting into it, Dream looks sick, but that doesn’t seem to stop the smile slowly crawling onto his face, “Who even does that?” He gestures at the sword and at Techno and at the door. “You’re- you’re. They gotta lock you up.”
Techno wants to jab something like ‘who stands outside a door silently for seven minutes’ but it feels unfair. Like that wasn’t something Techno was supposed to see. Instead he just shrugs and traces the carpet’s outline along faded floorboards, “Hope it’ll at least take em four days to catch me so I don’t miss the tournament.” And there’s his segue, “You’re in the city early. Thought you were a busy man, especially now.”
There’s been talk, out and about but also within chat. Some grand project in the making. Techno’d go see or himself but he’d never outwardly pry.
Dream’s mouth thins and he stops chewing for a moment, “I am busy. Just got stuff to do here, too.”
“Oh yeah?” Techno feels weird about sitting on the bed and facing Dream so he scoots up to the headboard instead and reaches for his sword, beginning to clean it of blood and of smudges. “Pretty middle of nowhere, I can’t imagine.”
“They’re rich enough to hold a tournament we’re both- that I’m gonna win,” Dream speaks with his mouth full like an asshole, and Techno watches his sword only, because looking at Dream makes this entire conversation too serious, even though they’re talking about nothing at all. “So clearly they’ve got stuff to offer. The money prize looked pretty good.”
“Well I’m rich so I don’t really care,” Techno shrugs, “Clearly unlike some people,” he pointedly looks over at Dream and sees he’d hung his head long ago, chewing while facing the floor.
Techno keeps looking at him. He’s trying to figure out what’s wrong and how to avoid talking about it, like maybe they can both go their separate ways and forget by the next time they run into each other. Like whatever it is, Dream can just stop being a baby about it and stop subjecting Techno to this weird tense atmosphere of topics unspoken.
Techno then realizes, his last jab had gone unhindered.
Dream, as if he hadn’t heard, offers to show Techno the market.
Techno’d been planning to sleep, but something about the way Dream asks it is… Like it’s the closest to a cry for help he’ll ever get from this man, at least for now. It makes denying him that much more appealing, but Techno just grits his teeth and nods. It’s turning evening outside, and they walk in relative silence through busy yet uninteresting streets. Dream hunches just barely, putting himself at Techno’s height, talks here and there.
It takes a good hour of mindless walking for Techno to finally piece it together. He sees Dream’s head nod sharply downwards before straightening back out: he’d almost fallen asleep while walking.
“I’m getting bored,” Techno says nonchalantly. “Let’s wind down.” He can’t read gratefulness off Dream’s armored and masked figure, but exhaustion now becomes painfully apparent.
They walk back to the inn, and Techno doesn’t know how to bring it up: I have not invited you over.
And he usually wouldn’t. Inviting Dream is like setting your own house on fire. He’s loud and he checks all the chests and he’s pushy and just bad to have around, really, and Techno would never willingly let him anywhere, because giving Dream any sort of permission can backfire so fast you don’t know what hit you.
They’re at his door.
Techno stops, bag of market food on his elbow crease, Dream looking at a wall again. Dream’s tiredness is infectious, and Techno’d been planning to sleep even before all this. Doesn’t want to deal with it. But for hours now he’s been talking circles in his own brain, trying to give his anti-Dream thought processes the megaphone while a far quieter yet present ‘just let him in’ had run itself in subtle circles.
He opens the door.
They enter in silence. Techno sets down the food, throws off his cape, hears Dream do the same. And just as he’s about to find something to say, anything, about sharing a bed or about how they should sleep in turns, when he hears the creak of not mattress but rather floorboard.
When he turns to look, Dream’s curled on the floor.
It’s a strange sight for someone his size, but oddly natural.
An honest weight off Techno’s chest, because the bed is small and also it’d be weird.
He steps around Dream, almost certain his ankle will get grabbed- and notices Dream’s already asleep.
If chat was here, it’d be easier, it’d be easier because he’d talk to them and make some joke and keep the atmosphere light, except chat is not and it’s all just so fucking difficult and confusing and Techno’s good at following social formulas, except Dream wrenches them broken.
Techno sits on his bed, unties the guards around his hooves, and lies down.
Alright. The ceiling runs with a near invisible spiderweb. The smell of the room reminds him of summers in Hypixel, when he’d been first starting out there, soil in his fur and bones tired with garden work. He listens to Dream breathe. Slow and quiet, and thinks about getting back up, draping a cape over him or something- but that’d be too kind, and Techno doesn’t do kind.
It doesn’t take long to drift off. He’s worn out by the city and by the travel that preluded it, and a bit by having to deal with Dream’s antics, especially the type that leave him struggling for purchase.
He’ll learn later, that before the inn, Dream hadn’t slept for five days.
Dream wakes up first, but that’s not surprising. And by the time Techno comes back to, he slants open his eyes, lying on his side, and watches Dream.
The room’s dim, window dark, lantern turned on low. The mattress is old and broken in, soft to the extent of being uncomfortable, and Techno feels almost swallowed by it, face half-obscured by the covers he’d fallen asleep on top of, still dressed.
Dream is on the other side of the room, and the first thing Techno notices is his lack of armor.
He’s in a t-shirt and pants, looking away, slowly chewing on plain bread they’d gotten from the market, staring somewhere unknown. Techno watches him for a long time.
At least there’s safety in this: neither will go around talking about it. A strange mutual jeopardy of public image that leaves each other as good company to fall apart a little.
“We also bought salami,” Techno says quietly from the bed, “Maybe add that and it’ll fix you.”
Dream smiles, still chewing, “There’s gonna be a fireworks show in an hour.”
It’s oddly calm. It’s not like they’re constantly trying to destroy each other, conversation and combat alike, but it sure feels like that. It feels like there’s always some kind of competition there.
Techno feels like all this – he’s not winning. There’s no prize, no dare.
He sighs and closes his eyes again, “Wake me up when it’s time to go.”
Dream does. They putter around in silence, and then Dream’s standing there, looking at his pile of armor... Techno kneads the knuckles of one hand with his other in a painful indecisive tell he’s been unable to quit. Watches the cogs in Dream’s brain weigh the armor, and thinks he can guess what Dream’s thinking. Something about how putting it on will be telling of paranoia, how leaving it off will be telling of something else entirely.
Techno wants to hear the latter. So he says quietly, “Let’s go.” All the excuse Dream needs, to let himself ditch the armor.
They’ll avoid everyone, Techno thinks, avoid those who might bear witness to whatever’s going on.
Nothing is.
They open Techno’s window. Dream goes first, sitting on the windowsill with his torso outside, hooking his arms somewhere out of view and pulling himself up, boots momentarily stepping onto the sill until he disappears. Techno follows suit, dragging the bag of food and drink, and as he leans out of the window, Dream’s already on the roof, staring down.
“Hurry,” is all he says.
Techno sighs, latches onto the outside paneling, and makes his way up.
It’s colder in the night. They walk over to a flat portion of the roof, by the chimney, and Techno stands there, waiting for Dream to lay out the duvet he brought with. Old and well-worn, burgundy, with an intricate pattern of crochet flowers. Gaudy, too, and most of all fucking huge. The thing’d been folded in half to fit on the inn bed, and now Dream has to fold it more to fit on the small space provided.
Techno realizes they’ve both been quiet. In the same quiet, they sit, side by side, and watch the still dark night sky.
It smells of smoke and old rainwater, and of fresh bread as Dream pulls out a loaf. Then a thing of milk, two pears, and the sliced salami he hadn’t touched after all.
“If you’re waiting for me to ask,” Techno finally says, looking over. “’What’s wrong’ or something along those lines, I won’t. I’m not free therapy.”
It seems to piss Dream off. He bristles a bit, scowling for a second. “If I wanted to talk about something serious, I’d go to literally anyone else. I know you.”
Techno watches him in mild surprise, but mostly relief. Relief and a strange, unnamed disappointment.
“Cool.” He says, and then jabs Dream’s naked arm with a finger, “Should’ve brought a jacket.”
Dream frowns again, but it’s not too serious. “Maybe I’ll go run laps to warm up.”
“Do you get paid for being pretentious?” Techno mocks him, and then reaches over to tear himself a handful of bread from the loaf, “Just use the duvet.”
They end up awkwardly maneuvering its folded side back up, draping it over themselves, and watching the sky as it finally prickles with distant reds and yellows.
Dream wins the tournament. They don’t talk about anything.