Chapter Text
If robots could purr Dug is at least 99.8892% sure that this is how they would do it. And Dug is a fairly smart person, or at least he’d like to think so , so his theory feels fairly true and valid. And even if it is not true and is not valid there is one thing he can say is true above that. It is quantifiably ascertainably adorable and interesting.
Granted, Dug thinks everything mechanical is interesting. Which, by proxy, constitutes Tolv.
Tolv hums when he sleeps. Or powers off, more likely. A low mechanical sound that emanates hot from out of his body, rolling through the air like powerful gusts of air. It's a nice sweet sound, no louder than the rhythmic sound of a grindstone. Dug likes it, likes the white noise and the comforting sense that Tolv is… alive. Or as alive as a thaumatech gets.
They sleep nearly side by side, in low down tents that sway in nightly winds, fluttering and buffering into four pointed twinkle shapes with each strong gust. Gunther is coiled somewhere low, in between spare bed rolls, burrowed like he would in sand. The tent peaks around Nattie's wigstand, and she lies curled with it at her back, Giggy's tiny demonic frame leaned into the slightly satin fabric of her light pink shirt. Dug himself is on his back, flat and centred in the cool grass with Tolv just a bit to his left side, sat halfway to upright, eyes shining and catching the slow drift of mountainous fog in their illumination.
Dug grumbles slightly, sucking in a breath. He smacks his lips at the cottony feeling deep in the back of his mouth, sitting between his back gums, teeth and tongue. He looks around, fiddling after his supply bag but not being able to grab it from where it's tucked under Gunther. Private Parts is probably up by now, walking around ahead of them all, but he can't be sure he's not also catching an early morning shower.
So instead he looks over to Tolv, and gently nudges him, palm against cold skin.
“Tolv?” His voice creaks like a shaky set of stairs. “Are you awake?”
Tolv's mechanics shutter, and the purring engine noise halts. Tolv blinks. His eyelights dim down to a normalish hue, and he looks at Dug, face going fond. “Ah, yes-” His voice is slightly jagged, pitching slightly as he comes into awareness and his functions come to normal.
Dug smiles. “Hey. any idea what time it is?”
Tolv nods once, stiffly. “4 am or so.” His face pinches in slight discomfort. “Whats wrong?”
“Ah- just need - mm. To loosen my arm up. Something is pinched.”
Dug's heart jumps just slightly at the idea of getting to look at Tolv's mechanics. “I can help ! If you want.”
Tolv rubs his neck. Instinctive and human like. “I am very complicated, Dug Boone.”
“Yeah, but I can figure it out!”
The familiar line makes the barbarian submit, and lengthily he shifts onto his knees to army crawl out of the tent, careful not to brush the others. “Alright. It will be good to let uh, nattie have some private time with Giggy anyways.”
Dug nods. He follows Tolv out of the low down tent. He stands and stretches. A powerful working pain lances down the length of his back, violent are sharpened by time. He groans.
“Ow…”
“Sleep strange?” The thaumatech offers.
“Yeah. Nothing too bad, it just hurts between my shoulder blades.”
Tolv nods. “I can help get that crick out if you’d like.”
“Yeah, sure!”
Dug takes over Tolvs spot in their two person line up, walking swiftly into the shrouded heavy forest near by to their temporary camp site. It looks beautiful this early morning, the bright yellow and pink swelling sun kissing down the rolling knolled horizon. Each and every rivet haloed in extravagant light. Tolv takes off his fur lined cloak, slinging it over his arm. His dark green skin and pointed tusks catch light as he sits in a deep focus. He looks so human like this. And he is. But he's also mechanical.
How magical is that? Someone who both is and isn't the standard of humanity? Who can feel and think and emote and resemble a traditional person. It's incredible. Tolv is incredible.
He's also been talking right at Dug, and Dug hasn't been listening so well.
“Dug.. ah.. You're staring an awful lot. Are you alright?”
“Huh? OH, uh, yeah. I'm fine!”
He blinks away the shame and the undoubtable blush on his face before fumbling through his next thought.
“You were purring.”
“...?”
“Y-yeah. Or like, you sounded like it. Cause you know, giggy purrs sorta , like a weird little… demony noise- d.don't tell nattie i said that. But uh- your motors or something they get.. Loud when you sleep- er . power down but not fully. Whats… whats that about?”
Tolv walks into the forest quietly, gently avoiding loud snapping sticks and contemplating on the question. “Well,, in truth I uh… I do not know a lot about my .. biology but… I would believe that my cooling systems turn off when I go into low power mode when you all do ahh,,, the bed time sleepies and that means I heat up and that makes more noise than when i am all systems a-go?”
“Fasssinating.” dug draws out the ‘s’ and says it like it is the most interesting thing in the world. And who is he kidding, in that moment it very well could be.
“Is there anything else you do that you like- hide from us?”
Tolv shuffles. He points his feet and hands more inwards to his core, embarrassed. “Ah… well.”
“There are a few things.”
“I thought you didn't like keeping secrets.”
“I- i- I don't! You know how hard it was for me to keep- most of who - who I am a secret from you Dug. and the others as well I just- I do not know there are some things that feel.. Personal..”
Dug swallows. He shouldn't push. Even if he really really really wants to. “You don't have to tell me.”
Tolv sighs between his teeth. “No, no. I - I said I am an open book. I should stick by that. Ask me whatever you’d like.” His tone remains as it almost always does, unrelentingly chipper and friendly though there is that cold underside. Dug imagines it in his mind's eye for just a moment, Tolv's voice and demeanor as like that of a ship. Bustled with life and drinks and people shoulder to shoulder on its swaying infinite top but cold and darkened along its bottom as it coasts through a never ending dark black swell of the ocean.
That's what he sounds like, vaguely, when he talks about himself. Dug can imagine when it comes to things, when it comes to Fill, he sounds the same exact way.
“So… other mechanical things you do then?”
“MorseKod. And also binarkod.” Tolv answers to him evenly.
“In the Mortalion they call the first Morse Code- I am not sure how the other translates from my mother Tongue.”
“Morse code! Like dots and dashes, that's cool! So you like, speak morse code!”
“I can, yes.”
“And then uhh. Binarkod… oh, like Binary?”
Tolv nods once more. “Right. I suppose it's how I think.”
“So is it like a conscious thing? To switch from Common to Binary?”
“Ehh.. sort of? It's like. Two different sections of my mind. Like uhh- you do not think about breathing, do you?”
Dug takes in a greedy gulp of air. “Well now that you mention it I do.”
“I mean in general, Dug Boone.”
“Then not really.”
“Well like- my biological things- my eye shutters and my power surges- my.. My rage, and my walking I do not think about. I am so dexterous because my brain is not thinking slower. I am not held back by anything; it's pure instinct, pure code.”
Dug can feel his eyes sparkling. “That's so cool!”
Tolv gives a very big warm cheesy grin. Now that their out of ear shot of the tent he faces dug full on. All tall and broad shouldered and deep in the eyes.
“Well. R-right now. If you had to choose. Is common or morse code easier?”
“Morse code?”
He hesitates. Just a breaths worth. “Y’know… Steeleye thought I was like- Smart when we got to the mortalion. So me and Private parts we went over morse code.”
Tolv tilts his head. “So you understand it.”
“Yeah, I do!”
Tolv gets a cheeky grin. He swivels his head around, one side to the other.
“When we were still at the fort, I used to stalk around a lot. Listen to stories. THere are people back at base- who. Who are Spioner- spies. They go all undercover and secretive, and learn about others. And they have secret codes to communicate with each other.”
“Uhh…huh?”
Tolv grips dug by the shoulders firmly. “Do you understand, Dug? We could be like that! Have a fun little secret language! La la la!” Tolv is filled to the BRIM with children like glee. It makes Dug's heart swell.
“We could do that. Here, here.” Dug grabs one of Tolv's hands, takes it off of his shoulder and slides it down, holding it palm up. “Tell me something.”
“In morse code?”
“In morse code.”
Tolv Beeps. It's a nice beep, a really nice one. Gambots are higher, more piercing, but Tolvs is low like thunder. Persistent. Short and long and short and long. Dug pinches his tongue between his sharpest teeth, thinking hard on each and every different noise Tolv makes.
.... . .-.. .-.. --- / -.. ..- --. -.-.--
Hello/dug
Dug grins. He takes Tolv's open palm and starts to give it rhythmic tappings. Tolv shivers in whatever way a robot can.
.... . -.-- / - .... . .-. . / - --- .-.. ...-
Tolv grins back. “You're good at that.”
“This’ll help me get even better!”
~~~
Tolv likes not having to think so hard.
In general he doesn't think at all. Or- not much. But not needing to focus all his mechanical might on vocalising is relieving. Or maybe just being around Dug gives him relief.
He can't really tell, but he sure thinks it. As much as he can , anyway.
It's easier for him to give what's really on his mind in the form of beeps. Nearly silent little things, like bubbles or fireflies, parting from him at the smallest of mental coordinations. And he thinks that in part it's easier for Dug, too.
Dug is nervous and stumbly and uncoordinated at the best of times, Tolv knows this. But his methodical mind does well with this, with articulating letter by letter. He gets to his point, asserts himself, and talks. Really really talks to Tolv in a way that he wasn't really previously able to. And Tolv loves it.
There is something novel about it, a rare bite size piece of joy and feeling that Tolv isn't exactly used to. Something fun and simple. Their conversations usually aren't significant. Nothing too important. Just matters of nothing. How chow was, something Nattie had said that rubbed Tolv the wrong way, anything.
It's… Nice. Especially for Tolv. He isn't used to casual conversation. The pleasantries.
Iron clads ship- its cruelty and its harshness did not leave room for the breeding of casualties. For friendship. He and his siblings had to speak under the covers of night, barely within their own rights of consciousness. No will, no peace, brief painful flickers of memory. Lapsing moments , in between like the clouds of Njorda's own sky, blessed and hancocking moments of understanding.
Moments of gaining, of remembering the cruel nature of Tolv's own hands.
Tolv was jealous of Dug. In a lot of ways. Dug had something he didn't have, and something that he never thought he was able to have.
He could create with those hands of his. Strong and ripped up along the palms chaliced from working towards something greater than himself. He could make things when Tolv had only known violence. And that was something to be envied. To be wanted. And Tolv felt it when they spoke, so casually. He felt how deeply creative Dug's mind was, and something in him envied. Not darkly, but in that light soft way, amused and wanting of him.
Dug is what he isn't, and he supposes that that's what makes Dug so fascinating.
They talk unseriously over a camp side dinner. Not to keep Gunther and Nattie out of the loop, or even to talk about anything important, but just for the sake of it. For the microscopic rush of having something. Just between them two.
Gunther and Nattie talk long and thorough, that deep sort of conversation where if someone were to come across it late there wouldn't be a clue in the world about what it was about.
Tolv and Dug, of course , know what they're talking about.
Children. Sons. Gunther speaks of his own children to Nattie long and fondly, sugary coated words bumbling out from the croak folk. Nattie responds with just the same level of enthusiasm, stroking the slightly scaled back of Giggy's head.
Tolv watches. But he doesn't watch them, he looks at Dug.
The bugbear is illuminated, all purple shadows on his farthest side, and bathed in orange and red hues from his front where he faces the fire. His eyes avert, looking away , focused into nothing in particular. Tolv knows the look. Deep and close and guilted. It's a look that he would understand better than anybody there is.
Dug has stopped communicating for a little while now, hands still. Tolv’s sure if he asked Dug would answer that it was because he was listening. It may very well be true but Tolv trusts his intuition over that. So he doesn't ask.
Instead, he leans. Onto dug, gently placing his form along the Bug bear.
He studies Dug's face then, the subtle redness of his cheeks.
Tolv beeps then, steadily. Speaking to him so quietly that the sound only resonates between metal and fur. He keeps it simple, consist. Or at least he tries.
.- .-. . / -.-- --- ..- / --- -.- .- -.-- ..--..
Are. you. Okay. ?
Dugs face changes with recognition then for a beat.
And then, tapping. Against the side of Tolv's hand.
Rhythmic and heard.
.--- ..- ... - / --- -.- .- -.-- .-.-.-
Just okay.
Tolv doesn't like that.
-.-. .- -. / .. / .... . .-.. .--. ..--..
Tolv asks Dug to help.
Dug obliges, after a moment. The drone of Nattie and Gunther's talk goes long.
Dug speaks quickly. Or, taps to Tolv.
> Do you think when the war is over, you’ll go home?
Tolv replies with soft thought.
< I don't have much of a home, Dug. Home is only where you choose.
> What about your siblings? Elva and them?
< … Im not sure. I didn't think a whole lot about it, you know
< why?
Dug ministries pause. Carefully , he answers.
> sometimes I don't want the war to end
> I don't really have anywhere I can go.
Tolv lets that sit for a long time. Nattie Dug and Gunther have finished eating, done with a shared meal. Tolv didn't- can't really - eat. Not that he minds, it's worth it to be near them.
Nattie grabs the food things, bunches up the trash, Gunther takes the scraps away to bury somewhere where it won't attract animals.
Nattie glances between Dug and Tolv. She hums in that deep motherly way she does when she's thinking about something serious.
“Dug, hon, you look beat. Make sure he gets into bed, Tolv.”
“Uh-huh, yes mam!” Tolv gives her his best smile and salute. She walks off. He turns to Dug, and watches the Bugbear stand and go to shuffle away. He calls, his voice coming out with a filter of anxiousness.
“Dug?”
“Y.. Yeah, Tolv?”
“You are welcome to join me and my siblings. Wherever we end up.”
~~~
Tolv has dreams like Dug wouldn’t have believed months earlier.
It's not that he didn't think Tolv was passionate , or that he was boring. It just wasn't something that he had expected out of the thaumatech. Having such specific dreams.
Tolv had told him what they were in no uncertain terms. What he dreamt of. Love and…
Theatre.
It felt strange when Tolv had admitted it to him. It was after a fight, an exceptionally violent one. There were still traces of it all over his skin, beads of blood against the crook of Tolv's nose, his skin hot with all systems engaging in tandem.
And then, quietly, he spoke. Beeped in to Dug about a dream he had to have been holding onto for a long time.
Dug could see Tolv as an actor. He's dramatic, and super funny, and he could handle a lot of pressure. Tolv is anxious when it comes to some things, but Dug doesn't think that’d come to being on a stage.
Dug himself couldn't imagine being an actor. He’d start to sweat just sitting with the concept. But Tolv is incredible. He's strong and buff and funny and social even when his charisma isn't all too good. He's fascinating and a good friend and if that's his dream, Dug is going to support him in any way he can.
…
He’d wanted to invent something for Tolv , but he couldn't.
Dug had the ideas. A lot of them, actually. Things that he thought might help Tolv get on with his dreams. But he couldn't act on it. Not with the mistakes he's made in the past. It's deeply unendingly embarrassing. What kind of artificer can't invent when it's for someone they love?
Someone they care about. Somebody Dug cares about.
Dug doesn't love Tolv. He loves Gunther. He loves Nattie. He loves Fill. LIke you love family.
He doesn't love Tolv.
He just happens to admire him.
And to like his company.
And to find everything about him cool.
Normal things.
Normal . Very normal. Nothing at all like rosemary.
“Dug Boone?” Speak of the giant hulking automaton devil.
“Yeah, Tolv?” Dug acknowledges how his voice sounds, rumbled from some mixture of lack of sleep, lack of water, and the frustration of having an idea and not being able to use it.
Tolv reads this off of him well, sitting down besides Dug, his scrap metal and his frustration. He offers out his waterskin. Dug takes it, and rolls the cap off between his fingers. He pulls a sip up to his lips. It tastes stale.
“Ack-. have you uh- when was the last time you changed out this water?”
“... I do not think I ever have.”
“Aah.. okay. Thank you Tolv.”
“Sure, sure!” Tolv distractedly looks at the collection of items around Dug.
“Are you preparing gambot?”
Dug shakes his head no without thinking. He hopes momentarily that Tolv won't ask anything more because he really doesn't have a lie in mind.
“What are you doing then?” Dangit.
“,,,, It isn't anything important. Just uh.. You know. Ideaing.”
“Well don't you normally do that in your uhh little blue diary? Do you have an idea of what time that is?”
“It's a notebook, not a diary.”
“Oh, sorry.”
Dug goes soft. “No. Don't be. It's.. It's okay. I'm just. Mad.”
“I can tell.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Not really.”
Tolv hums. “Well alright then. I think I'm going to take a nap.”
That worries Dug a little. Tolv doesn't really go to low power unless strictly necessary.
“Are you hurt? Not feeling well?”
Tolv rubs his neck. “Just a little.. Glitch in my wrist.”
Dug jumps up like his boots are possessed. “I can fix it!” He grabs Tolv by the arm and yanks him forward as fast as he can. “Please!”
A beat. “Let me take a look.”
“... alright, sure.”
Tolv sits back down, closer this time. He crosses his legs, draws them unnaturally close to his body. It's something Dug would never have noticed if he hadn’t known that Tolv wasn't human- the difference in his mechanical limbs and how they function.
It's really, really cool.
Tolv offers his wrist, with the synthetics pulled back to show fancy wiring and dark shimmering sheets of gray toned metal. A trained mechanical mind sees the issue right away. Component fatigue, in the MCP centre of rotation.
“Looks like you need a new part, Tolv.”
“Oh. Okay. Is that something you can do?”
Dug does this best to puff out his chest and look prideful. “You- you bet it is!”
Dug settles into work, unscrewing and uncapping and taking apart pieces of Tolv. He knows by now that being out of control makes Tolv anxious , and that he doesn't like being disassembled so he tries to make it quick. Tolv seems fairly calm now, though, talking to Dug in steady morse code.
Dug doesn't really realise he's talking to him until he's way deep into the conversation. And by then it's too late to go back on what he's said. And dug has been dorking out over one of the many project ideas he’d had FOR Tolv , to Tolv, like an idiot.
“I feel really stupid right now.” Dug manages to pinch out in a breath, so startled as he remembers exactly what he was talking about that he switches back to speaking in common. Tolv has a rather sheepish grin on his face.
“I would rather you not feel stupid when you're taking me apart, Dug.” he speaks in his normal happy go lucky sort of tone but with that rushed edge of trying to push out a joke when you're not sure if it’ll land.
It sinks.
“I- I don't mean that way, i just- i didn't mean to-”
“Calm down , Dug.” Tolv puts up a placating hand. “It is alright. I do not need gifts anyways”
“But I want you to! I - I want to! You want gifts. I want you to want things! You… Tolv-” His voice breaks. “You're really cool. And you’ve had a really hard time- with IronClad and - and Bjorn . You haven't really got to want things and you want to - have this stuff you want to be artsy and do theatre and I want to help you! I- I'm not a baby just because I'm a little nervous, I can do things for people! I'm not going to fail, I can do this for you so let me! I want you to want stuff i want you to want-”
He growls in frustration and drops his tool to the ground.
Tolv stares. Wide eyed and computing, following Dug's words with a face of shock.
He stills.
“You.. get funny when you focus.”
“... I do?”
“When you hone in on a task… you forget about everything else. I admit I'm jealous over it, sometimes. You stop being nervous, or worrying about what other people think. You just do what you know you're good at. Nothing slows you down because you trust yourself. I-.. I do not trust myself. I almost never know if I am doing the right thing or if I'm doing well. But when you are sure of yourself, you're really sure. And when you're sure of me,.. It makes me feel like I am .. I am doing a good job. It's something I really like about you, Dug.”
Dug meets Tolv's eyes, watching as the thaumatech shifts with artificial breath.
“But sometimes… you forget things when you focus. Like to drink water or to say hi to your friends or that you were trying to keep a surprise secret.”
“..yeah. I mean- I guess that's true.”
“You forgot something else.”
Dug blinks. “I did?? What?”
“You're right. I did tell you about a dream of mine. And that i wanted to be more performance minded but there was another dream I told you about. I told you that I wanted to find love, didn’t I?”
Dug swallows.
“Yeah. you did.”
“You're very anxious, Dug Boone. And I think you are awesome but you aren't super well versed in .. charismatic things. I do not really think you can help me with my acting dreams. But- you want to help me, and I think you could. Just not with that dream. Do-... do you understand what I am saying?”
“...Yeah… I can figure it out.”
~~.. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-~~
“Nattie.” Gunther leans backwards, touching his back to the steaming hot flat of a leaning rock, staring at the horizon line and at his compatriots. He turns slightly, just enough to face the southern woman as she straightens out her hair and the strings of her autoharp.
“Yeah Gunther?”
“... Do you think that. . . mm.. Maybe there is… something going on in the heart of the smack of the dab of our group?”
“What do you mean?”
Gunther raises a hand and gestures over to one of the fort's tall stone walls. Tolv has his arm wrapped around Dug, squeezing him and ruffling his hair up, shouting excitedly about a good attack in the last encounter. Dug's face is flushed a darkened hue, hair on end from the small zaps of electricity flowing through both of them as they tousle around like animals might in nature.
“Do you see what I see?”
Nattie puts her hands on her hips. “So you caught on to that too? Well I think you're keen on it. These boys are smitten.”
Gunther grins. “I think I am seeing sparks!”
“Aw, now don't go and make me laugh at that kind of terrible joke, sugar.”
“Fine, fine.” Gunther sighs.
“It reminds me of meeting Punya. In the lake in fly flats. New love is a wonderful thing.”
“Sure is. I still get butterflies every time I get banged up. Seeing my wife is just the best thing since sliced bread.”
“Im glad we get to see them.”
Nattie grins. “You wanna mess with them?”
Gunther gives an approving nod. Nattie draws her hands to her face and calls out to the two of them.
“Hey!”
Tolv's hands swing back, going into a defensive position right at his hip like he's reaching for a weapon that isn't there. Dug seems to shrink impossibly small for a bugbear so large.
Nattie puts on her best nosy mom voice, head held high.
“You two have been acting aww-fulll-y close lately. Is there anything you need to tell me and gunther here?”
Both men stumble, fumbling their works, almost nonmetaphorically blue screening at the question.
They look between each other, and then back, and almost in unison proudly announce.
“I HAVE A CRUSH ON BUNLAP!”