Chapter Text
He can’t know what could ever prompt Dream to stock houses full of supplies, all around the country, but it’s in the name: safehouses, and he… he supposes he feels safe here. It’s that, that’s the reason he walks back to the bed, but it’s also the wine, oh it’s definitely the wine, and it’s the fact he feels cold.
His shoulders and his chest remembers Dream’s heavy arms with scary, over-consuming accuracy. His brain remembers the sight of Dream’s naked chest when the duvet had slid off him, like the image had been branded into his eyes. His lungs remember the prickle of something warm and fragile, when he’d allowed himself to relax, allowed himself to accept that there was no catch to this, no malintent, no reason to keep trying to run and say no.
God, he’s tired of running.
The mattress dips under his knee when he crawls onto it, kicks his shoes off, crawls all the way over to Dream, wrangles his shoes off too, throws both pairs onto the floor, doesn’t watch them clatter, and drops to lie down in the same spot he’d left only a few moments ago. It’s still warm. He isn’t though, not enough.
He doesn’t feel tired from the day per se, yes the morning was early, yes the events were… far from pleasant, but on a grander scale, Techno’s always exhausted. Always hoping for an excuse to lie down and sleep, and it rarely feels okay to do so. Here? Dream is practically an invitation penned in gold ink.
Gray eyes slant open to look at him, blearily, and an arm lifts to call him back in. Techno caves: as Dream said, what happens here can stay here, there’s no need to keep images up, and oh god does something in his chest pull so painfully forward, drag him into Dream’s proximity again, and he’s still not warm enough, still running with chills, so he lifts the duvet Dream’s half-wrapped in, yanks it out from under where Dream’s lying on it, and sits up momentarily only to drape it over them. The effect is instant, or maybe it’s only that because Dream grabs onto him almost immediately too, looping his arms back around Techno’s chest and middle.
Techno exhales a long, slow breath, feeling too much of his tension and worry and thoughts leave with it. Dream is like a furnace, and Techno’s careful of the bandages on his arm and the fact he’s shirtless, because if he’s not careful, he might do something dumb, like kiss his shoulder or- god, it’s dangerous, it’s dangerous to engage thoughts about Dream. Like his presence, even thoughts about him, are the kind that change your life and refuse to leave.
He’s facing Dream this time as he’s pulled into the embrace, and the other’s strong and also stubborn, and if he wants to hug Techno to his chest, Techno has absolutely no way – or will – to object.
And- yeah, alright.
Dream pulls him forward, and somehow things happen in a way that leaves Techno with his arm thrown over Dream’s middle, as Dream’s arm rests over his shoulder and along his back. His face is inches from Dream’s chest, and he can feel the heat radiating off it, and it mellows him out, like resting in front of a fireplace, and he swears the heartbeat of that chest is audible.
When he leans forward and rests his forehead against the flat bone of Dream’s ribcage, he can feel that heartbeat too.
It lulls him to sleep, it lulls him to sleep like Techno hadn’t battled insomnia for years, hadn’t developed many a method of forcing himself to fall asleep, like every evening where he doesn’t work himself to the bone and is unable to knock out in exhaustion didn’t happen. Like it’s the easiest thing in the world, to slip into pleasant, fuzzy sleep, knowing he’d shoved a heavy cabinet against the busted front door, knowing there’s no creature in the cellar, knowing Dream’s initiated something Techno had quietly dreamt about for months.
He rests.
He falls asleep gently, and surfaces in a similar way too.
It’s rare for Techno to wake slowly. He’s got a complicated relationship with sleep. It’s the late nights, it’s the ability to sleep for fourteen hours or more once he gets his brain to shut up, it’s the early mornings that tending to horses and a garden require.
It’s never this.
It’s never his face buried in a warm chest, it’s never an arm growing number where it’s sandwiched between himself and someone else, it’s never slow breaths blowing into his hair, never a hand fisted into the back of his shirt, never legs intertwined with his. He knows what Dream smells like, so even surfacing from sleep with a bad taste in his mouth and a mild headache doesn’t strike him with disorientation: he knows exactly who holds him.
This is far from his worst wine-induced headache. Because what they’d drunk here was barely dark and also pretty bad as far as wine goes. The stuff at Techno’s home cellar could kill an unsuspecting man the next morning with the great dreaded red wine headache.. This one’s ignorable.
Ignorable enough to go back to sleep.
Techno shifts a bit, moves his arm from where it’d lost blood flow. There’s no good place to put it, so he carefully rotates himself, over, over, until he’s got his back to Dream- and isn’t that a novel thing. Techno lies back down, wiggles backwards, and presses his spine against Dream’s chest, far more contact than lying face to face provides.
It feels reminiscent of a time Phil dragged him to a hotspring spa, and lying in warm, florally infused water, had given Techno the feeling of getting cured. From what? Hell knows. Just in general. Warmed to the core and wiped clean of built up stress and tension and worry.
He moves Dream’s arms so they still loop around his middle, slips his legs back over to hook into Dream’s, and settles, sleepy.
Sleepy but not asleep, eyes caught on the wall’s patterns in the wood, swirls and lines. He’s caught in the pattern of Dream’s slow breath, too.
He can’t know how long they’d been asleep, but the thin line of light that sneaks between heavy curtains and cuts into the wall is dim. Perhaps a few hours, enough for the midday’s sun to begin its crawl downwards. The day doesn’t feel real. Awake early enough to see the dark, the adrenaline of a duel, the absolutely illogical, unexpected, and insidiously pleasant turn out of all that.
The hours he spent in the garden, thinking: Dream could be dying upstairs right now. Dream could die. He shouldn’t, but he could. What if he does? Why do I care so, so much. The food. Dream accepting the tentative suggestion Techno slid out there: that about getting dinner. Together. Later. When they’re not bleeding out or cooking with trash ingredients.
Dream leaning his head on one wrist and just watching him, squinting with a smile, and then, unprompted and in the middle of Techno’s sentence, saying very quietly: I love you.
It didn’t really register back then. It barely registers now.
What it does do, is spring strange, prickling tears to Techno’s eyes. God, is that how he handles things like this? That’s awkward. Techno grits his teeth and wills the stinging away, wills all of this away. Too many thoughts. Dream sighs and shifts and holds him just that tiny bit tighter.
It means the world.
He falls asleep again, slower than earlier, but he manages to slip back into the nothingness that this offers. He often enough sleeps with his back to the wall – pressed to it quite literally – or pressed up to a pillow, or occasionally to one of his dogs. And he doesn’t know how he’ll trade this memory of having Dream’s chest there, all-encompassing and safe, for any of that. It’s his last thought, before darkness wins.
The next time he surfaces, it’s from a mundane, eventless dream.
Techno opens his eyes, just enough to see the blurry shape of Dream’s hand, thrown over his middle, tracing the lines of Techno’s open palm. Lightly, almost to the point of tickling. The pad of Dream’s finger follows the crease line from his pointer to his pinkie, then the one that cuts his thumb off from the rest of the hand.
The touch prickles, stings in a pleasant way, and Techno thanks whatever higher power, that human palms are infinitely sensitive, that he’s allowed to feel this in amazing detail.
He wonders how long Dream’s been awake, lying here and absently memorizing the pattern of Techno’s hands. He wonders how long he can pretend to stay asleep, because the last thing he wants, is for this to end.
The sliver of light is gone, there’s crickets outside, crackling the ambience of evening.
Techno lies there like putty and watches Dream’s knuckles, the tendons in his hand, the tan line from his gloves. And remembers a particular evening a month or so ago. The long train ride to a competition, one that Dream had contacted him about sharing a train car for. Techno, infinitely displeased by strangers and too guilt-ridden to rent a whole car out for just himself, had agreed at the speed of light.
So they’d piled their suitcases, Dream dressed not yet for the ring, but in the same long sleeves. Techno in clothes that could pass for pajamas. Arguing over crosswords, Dream migrating from sitting across to sitting directly by Techno, to hover over his shoulder and try to backseat drive the newspaper’s word games section. Arguing over tea steeping times. Arguing over horse stats. All that with a smile.
Techno had nodded off eventually, guilty of having slept only three or so hours too many nights in a row.
He’d fallen asleep against Dream’s shoulder, and the other hadn’t woken him, hadn’t moved. Stayed sitting vigilant, and let Techno rest. Embarrassing, really, and very difficult to navigate as a social interaction, but… He thought he’d imagined it, that when he’d woken, he’d felt Dream’s hand freeze over his own, in midst of a light touch.
Perhaps, it wasn’t a figment of hopeful imagination. They’d moved on from that, hadn’t discussed it. It’d burned red embarrassment into Techno’s face, but he’d taken it in stride, and didn’t spend weeks puzzling over: was Dream playing with his hands while he slept? For how long?
And now he puzzles again: will Dream’s hand freeze? Will it leave the second he finds out Techno’s awake?
He can’t… can’t let that happen, can he?
Techno watches for a moment longer, and then reaches up, not too fast as to startle, but not slow enough to let Dream flee, and locks their hands, the sappiest form of interlocked fingers.
Dream’s hand flinches and jerks away instinctually, lightly, his other arm, where Techno’s head rests, flinches too. But he doesn’t pull away, not once he realizes what’s going on. Techno himself isn’t sure what’s going on, but whatever it is, Dream’s hand relaxes again and holds his.
“How long have you been awake,” Techno asks, quietly, voice uneven from disuse. “How’s your arm.”
Dream’s breathing resumes, fanning along Techno’s hair, “Dunno. Arm hurts.”
It gets a huff of a laugh out of Techno for no reason at all, “Suck it up. I’ll rebandage it.”
“Suck it up?” Comes Dream’s indignant, quiet and raspy voice, his thumb starts moving along the back of Techno’s hand, “I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot and- have you ever been shot? Don’t tell me to just stop complaining, you’re so rude.” Techno can hear his smile though.
He smiles too, “I have.”
Dream’s thumb stills, “Wait, huh? Techno what-”
“Long ago, though,” Techno turns his face to the side a bit, further into Dream’s arm. The memory doesn’t hurt, not anymore, and Dream’s almost tangible curiosity is electrifying. The knowledge of someone paying laser-focus attention to him, something akin to hunger, it’s addictive. “I haven’t always been a fresh produce seller or your favorite horse related celebrity.”
This earns him a pinch. Techno snorts.
“I gathered that… You’re a recent addition to the Minecraft family. Which is interesting, considering you and Wilbur do pass for siblings.” Dream is quiet, careful. He knows that, usually, questions like this go unanswered.
“I’ll take that as an insult.” Techno grants, “But yes, funnily enough, I took up the last name Minecraft around the time Wilbur denounced it and started going by his late mother’s. Phil jokes that he tagged me in and passed the torch.” It’s rare he discloses this, even if most of his personal connections kind of know. “I wouldn’t call myself Phil’s son. More like a friend. Originally, the plan was to just let me marry into the family through Phil, it’d be easier on the paperwork.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Techno mulls over it. Many a reason. He settles on the easiest one: “Phil said he didn’t wanna take his ring off every time he went clubbing. Too much work. And too much drama, if he’s spotted getting drinks bought for him by five different strangers while I’m at home shining silverware.”
Dream laughs behind him, a nice, light noise.
Techno thinks, if the summer sun sounded like anything at all, it’d be this. It shakes Dream’s chest and Techno feels it along his spine.
“I’m guessing I shouldn’t ask why you needed a pronto name change and what you used to do before all this.” Dream’s tone is joking. It’s giving Techno a way out.
He’ll take it.
“Let’s just say, there’s a reason I shoot better than you. Or why I didn’t’ raise eyebrows at the thought of someone having a safehouse.”
He feels Dream nod, content with what he’d been given in terms of scant information on Techno’s history. His hand doesn’t let go of Techno’s, and Dream just scoots closer, to fully press along Techno’s back. Dream’s nose knocks into the back of Techno’s neck, head bowed. It’s overwhelming and it's heaven, and he can’t remember the last time he’d been held for so long, on this kind of even ground.
Dream’s words are felt in warm breath on his skin, “Cool, but my arm still fucking hurts. Can you take a look at it.”
Techno laughs again, and sitting up to get the med supplies is a feat more difficult than anything else in the world.
It’s dark outside, the house is quiet and a bit too cold, and Techno returns with water to wash the taste of wine down, along with a weak lantern. Dream waits on the bed, having turned to lie on his back. His eyes are honey-colored in the lantern’s glow.
Techno crawls back over, sits criss-cross by the arm, and changes its dressings, disinfects it, and tells lies about how it’d all gone purple and that Dream’s arm is falling off.
Dream looks up at him, and it strikes him with similarity to the morning. But now Dream’s features are relaxed, he’s half covered by the duvet. His hand taps a rhythm against Techno’s thigh absently. His arm will be alright. He’ll be alright.
“All done,” Techno swallows down what’s threatening to crawl up his throat, some kind of admission, some kind of reckless, suicidal decision to speak sincerely. “You’ll live. Unless you go one-upping Tommy again. I’ll let him kill you next time.”
Dream cringes, looking away, not guilty but not happy about being put on the spot either, “It was necessary.”
“I really don’t think it was. Think about it,” Techno stays sitting there, picking up Dream’s hand as its tapping grows fast and heavy. He holds it and examines it absently, moving Dream’s fingers around, marveling at how easy they give in to touch, “Now you’ve got a crowd of friends to convince about not tattling, both about the duel and the fact you got shot at it. I got a brother to talk down from what he’d no doubt got invested in already, let him down easy and apologize for using him as a diversion. Then you’ve got Tommy to deal with, who I bet isn’t gonna be apologetic at all, but he’s bound to take this one way or another. Might even get more attached to you. That’s a lot of ripples.”
The hand in his grip clings, hooks onto his fingers, and Techno pauses the fiddling, lets Dream just hold on.
“There’s…” Dream bores his eyes into the ceiling just past Techno, “There’s a pretty easy solution to at least one of those.”
Techno watches him, surprised that his heart doesn’t hit with adrenaline at a vague social implication he hadn’t caught up to yet. Dream’s nervous, it’s evident, his hand is tapping again, he’s frowning, he’s beautiful in the lantern’s light, his collarbones are like arrows, sharp and well-defined. He’ll look good with a bullet scar. He already looks good. Techno can’t really stop himself from smiling at nothing at all, “What’d that be?”
Dream looks back to him, sharp and awake, and then Techno’s hand is picked up, and slowly, very, very slowly, and brought to Dream’s mouth. For a confused few seconds, Techno kind of expects him to bite for some reason. It’s far easier to expect, than what Dream actually does.
He kisses it. Barely so, just presses Techno’s knuckles into his lips, but it’s a familiar and clear gesture, one he’d seen done many a time to others.
It’s like getting rewritten, every word wiped form his memory. It’s like getting burned alive. In the best way possible. It spills into his chest and runs across his skin, and calls onto Techno’s face a grin he could never ever win a battle against. It’s his brain’s best response to an amount of affection he’s deeply unused to dealing with. It hurts his cheeks, with how much power that smile has, and Techno does his best to try and drag it off his face.
It’s nice.
“What’s that for?”
Dream still holds his hand, and when he answers, the words are felt along the skin of Techno’s knuckles, “Well, mostly- I-” his eyes tear away from Techno again, back to the ceiling, “Well. In answer to your... Your question.” And then they snap back with inexplicably gained confidence. Dream smiles, and Techno feels it before he sees it, “Wanted to do it for a while now, but mostly in answer to your question about Wilbur. There’s an easy solution to-”
“OH.” Techno almost shouts, shock thundering through his body like ice water- oh you goddamn idiot. He’s hitting on you, he’s saying you can make the diversion letter to Wilbur truthful.
It freezes him up with the clarity of how he’d just completely missed every single cue coming his way- oh yeah let me spoon with this guy I’ve had a complicated fondness of for too long now and make absolutely nothing of it oh god he’s- that’s so awkward-
Dream lets go of his hand with hurried fear, “Shit, did I misunderstand- sorry?”
He looks alert and like he’d just died inside a bit, and Techno’s sitting there very frozen, hand hovering in the air.
Did he misunderstand?
Difficult question.
Does he want Dream to kiss his hand again? That’s easier. Start with that. Does he want to kiss Dream’s hand? Also easy. Scarily so, he realizes, very scarily so. His words aren’t really working, so he grabs Dream’s hand, and a bit too jaggedly, pulls it to his own mouth. Slows down. Breathes in and kisses the back of it.
Dream’s previous frantic movement to sit up stops. His face drops the wince into a blank wonder.
“Bro I am so sorry,” Techno says into the soft skin on the back of Dream’s hand.
“I don’t know how anyone could reject this kind of apology…” Dream says, he’s watching Techno’s mouth on his hand, still half sat up, the previous mellow atmosphere still in shambles.
Techno kisses the top of his hand again. Dream goes to say something else and Techno goes and bites the side of his hand, unable to fight the impulse to cause problems.
Dream yelps, a noise that quickly transforms into laughter, “Techno. You’re horrible! Let go-” he yanks his hand away and then pushes Techno. Techno doesn’t object and cackles choppy, loud laughter, falling backwards and landing with a bounce onto his back. Dream swats at his shoulder, sat up now, looking down at him with grinning anger, bathed in shadows.
Hair backlit like a halo.
Techno’s never been religious, and atheism has never been this difficult.
There’s a pause, their giggling subsides. Techno picks up Dream’s hand again and just holds it. The fuzzy warmth that he dreads to call ‘happiness’ mixes well with the adrenaline of whatever is to come.
Dream watches him with that same hungry attention, and with what yet unsaid revelations just transpired, it only makes Techno burn hotter. He’s at a loss for words, more so than usual. A rant about horses or potatoes or whatever else wouldn’t save him now. He doesn’t think he’d be able to speak well enough anyway.
Dream’s gaze breaks off for a second to look at the bandages on his shoulder with a delayed hiss, “We gotta put wrestling off to a later date, though.”
On his terrible, impulsive whim, Techno props himself up on an elbow and leans over to kiss the bandages. It smells like blood, not wholly unwelcome. He leans away but stays propped on an elbow, very close to Dream. Dream’s watching him, then his mouth, then him again. It took Techno forever to catch up, it seems, but he’s nothing if not good at making up for lost time.
He pointedly looks at Dream’s mouth, then back to him, and smiles, maybe uncertainly, maybe with a bit of that awkward social fear, but Dream’s shoulders lose some of their tension. The effect is instantaneous.
He says, pretty quietly, “Go ahead.” It’s as much invitation as he’s capable of voicing without spontaneous combustion.
Dream’s always been fast on the uptake.
He leans forward and down, Techno watches Dream’s eyes fall closed, lashes blonde and pretty, and remembers to close his own.
Dream kisses him, makes some kind of squeak in the back of his throat when he leans on his arm wrong, and Techno huffs out a light laugh, but he’s quickly drowning, in the softness of Dream’s lips, the self-conscious awareness of how chapped his own are, the electricity that it sends down his nerve endings, into the tips of his fingers, into his diaphragm, into the back of his head that fizzles with adoration and pleasure.
Dream leans into him more, and Techno falls back onto the bed, the kiss breaks momentarily and he opens his eyes.
Dream’s above him, holding himself up on one arm only, face blank but so devoted to Techno that it’s impossible to wish for any kind of expression on his features, features Techno wants to learn by press of lips alone. God. No point any longer, in shoving down what he’d marked as ‘unnecessary thoughts’ about Dream’s everything.
It seems that that everything is being offered to him with open arms.
He lifts a hand, gets it on the back of Dream’s neck, and pulls him down. Dream comes back alive with fervor, with hunger, and this time the kiss isn’t chaste, Dream leans into him, licks, bites, and Techno’s hands, without much permission from his shutting-down brain are running fingers through Dream’s hair, over his chest, down his back.
Dream whines into his mouth, and Techno, for a moment, worries it’s about the arm again. Except it seems that dragging his nails over Dream’s shoulders calls the sound up again: it’s very much not about the arm.
It gets him to make a weird, squeaky little noise too, gets his skin burning with a blush, and it’s really dumb that Dream’s the one hanging over him, considering he’s one arm down.
He waits until they break again, because Techno would rather eat his own tongue before he willingly stopped sucking on Dream’s.
“Problem solving,” Dream breathes out in a hurried whisper when they break, “This is the best case of problem solving I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience. The Wilbur problem.” He’s breathless, he’s no longer pale with death.
Techno kisses him again, once, but far from light. “Lie down, your arms are busy this way.”
“Oh?” Dream doesn’t object, slipping back until he’s lain out on his back, “You have issues with that?”
“Yeah,” Techno quickly straddles him, “You can’t touch me that way.”
Dream staggers in a hitching inhale, “I can work with that.”
“Cool,” Techno feels hands come to rest on his thighs and leans down to take up the mantle of kissing someone into the mattress.
He cups Dream’s face with both palms, kisses him slowly at first, then bites his lip, kisses him deeper, feels Dream’s unharmed hand crawl up to his stomach and under his shirt, dragging its hem up as it slides further, to his chest. He sucks Dream’s bottom lip into his mouth, and then kisses his jaw, his cheekbone, the side of his jaw, down to his neck. The skin there is burning-hot and criminally soft. Dream’s breath is unsteady and stops altogether when Techno bites down on the muscle between his neck and shoulder.
Dream whines, then exhales with great force, and Techno sucks the skin into his mouth, dragging his tongue over the spot. When he lets go, it’s pleasantly red, and hopefully soon to turn damning purple. Dream wears high-collared things anyway, he’ll be fine.
He kisses lower and hopes Dream both regrets and treasures the fact he’d decided to go shirtless hours ago.
He kisses, bites, licks, down to a pec, and then back up to Dream’s neck- by this point Dream’s exhaling with voice to it, not quite moans, but far from quiet, and when he speaks, he sounds wonderfully wound up, “Techno, you are unbelievably evil.”
Techno starts to chuckle against Dream’s skin, but oh, he’s not the only bastard here, Dream’s previously peaceful hand on his chest finds and pinches a nipple. He could’ve kept quiet through it, but it catches him mid laugh and punches a startled moan out of his gut. The fingers move away to trace down his stomach instead and kickstart his breathing back into an inhale, “Dream, you are equally terrible.”
“Flattery suits you, sweetheart,” Dream slips the hand out from Techno’s shirt and moves it up to cup his face instead, both gentle and infuriatingly smug. The pet name’s meant to annoy, but Techno can’t help what it does to his lungs.
He turns his face and kisses Dream’s palm. Dream gulps and drops the fake smugness. Quickly regains composure, and presses his thumb to Techno’s lips.
Not one to be bested, Techno quickly makes eye contact and sucks the thumb into his mouth.
Dream’s eyes go wide, it’s so funny Techno has to actively focus on sucking Dream’s finger and dragging his teeth across the skin to not break into cackles.
“Alright you win this one.” Dream speaks with awe, face tomato red, “We should slow down.”
Techno bites the knuckle with his molars and lets the fingers go, beginning to grin, feeling the dopamine of a victory join whatever other chemical effects Dream has on his body, “We should also go back to civilization, because I have a farm to run in the morning, and I’m not spending the entire night here.”
Alright, it’s impossible to just watch Dream lying there and do nothing about it. Techno leans down to kiss him again. Dream sighs into it, and then very pointedly wipes his finger dry on Techno’s shirt.
When they part, Dream’s eyes are calm but dilated to the point they seem to devour any light in the room, “What if I still have that headache?”
I’d also love to stay here- strikes Techno. I’d also like to stay in this place that doesn’t feel real, with you.
But tomorrows come whether you welcome them or not. He smiles with a bit too much sincerity for his own liking, and leans down again, kisses him, slower. And then, “If you fix the door here and stock up on better food, I wouldn’t mind, um,” okay this is distracting, he kisses Dream’s jaw again, “Wouldn’t mind coming here sometimes with you. The garden needs some serious work.” Another kiss. Dream’s watching him like he hung the moon. It makes him feel things, “Otherwise, I’m sure you know where I live-”
“I don’t. Tommy wouldn’t tell me.” Dream breathes out, “Otherwise you wouldn’t see the end of me.”
Techno, caught off guard, snorts so hard it hurts something in the back of his throat, “Oh god, you-” it’s a bit weird but oddly flattering, “I’ll tell you. Or show you. And I- You can uphold that last part, like a promise.”
Dream grins, languid and lovely, tracing his hand along Techno’s leg again, “You’ll get tired of seeing me around. I’ll be there so often you’ll wanna kick me out.”
“You can certainly try.” Techno once more cannot fight a smile in return. He hides it in another kiss. “But c’mon, this place sucks, let’s go. I wanna get some more sleep. At home.”
“Anything you say,” Dream mumbles, catches him in a kiss again. They’re never getting anywhere like this if Techno doesn’t put a foot down and stand up. It’s very difficult to.
But perhaps, for once, it’s a good sign that Techno doesn’t want to leave.
----------------------------------------------
Dream commits it all to memory in scrupulous, loving detail. Techno, Techno’s hands and lips and eyes and the warm weight of him, the scorching traces the pads of his fingers leave down Dream’s skin. Commits every second they spend cleaning the house up, commits the squabble about Carl’s reins still being fancy as all hell, even after Techno went modest with the saddle.
Commits the ride back to memory too. And when the city lights turn visible, it’s silent goodbye to a strange evening that Dream drinks in and enjoys and lets go of, bottoms up for a bright future.
He turns his head sideways and mouths Techno’s neck whenever Carl’s walking, and asks: take me to your house, take me to your house, and Techno chuckles in a way that betrays far more than he’d probably like.
In the end, he drops Dream off at Punz’s for better medical care, but by then, Dream’s got Techno’s address memorized. And while he’s never been patient, he’ll wait on terrorizing Techno’s home with his presence, if Techno insists his arm get checked out by a real doctor first.
They part. Dream will be busy tomorrow. Techno will too.
It’s difficult falling asleep around the haunting echoes of Techno’s touch. He can’t remember the last time someone’s ghost followed him this far, into the next morning, through all of the day.
He has a meeting with Wilbur – a professional, business meeting, where they will not discuss anything untoward. And he’s managed to get his brain back under control by then. But as Fundy finishes his nervous but clear and well-written presentation, Wilbur kicks Dream under the table – and kicks him hard, heavy boot connecting spot-on with Dream’s shin.
And when Dream whips around to glare him daggers, all Wilbur does is slowly raise his eyebrows, watching Dream over his steepled hands and small, red-lensed glasses. They say nothing, but Wilbur begins to smile, the second Dream shows any kind of blush or wince.
And after the meeting, he catches Dream by the elbow – the one right bellow his freshly bandaged bullet wound – and Dream’s about to complain, hiss at him in midst the rush of other office works and clientele, cig smoke heavy in the air, but all Wilbur tells him is the name of some street, tells him to be there tomorrow.
Dream puzzles over it almost as much as he weighs if it’s worth it, forfeiting his worktime and papers to go show up at Techno’s door. It’d be clingy. God does he want it though. George has to snap his fingers in front of Dream’s face, and only then can they get back to work. He’ll wait. He’s waited for months, what’s a few more days.
The next day, Dream does his buttons up to the neck, hides the obscene bruise Techno’s left, and heads to whatever address Wilbur’s provided. It’s a nice walk, not far from his house strangely enough. But once he managed enough money from winning competitions, to move out of his family’s old farm and into the city, he’d barely spent time exploring the few blocks around his residence, aside from the occasional bar.
And when he turns into a street barely ten minutes from his home, only to find the first two stalls in a long, long row of many more, does he realize why he’d been smelling baked goods and vegetables two streets away:
He’s walked into a market.
His heart rate picks up almost comically. You really never do know what to expect from Wilbur, Dream was almost prepared to get jumped in an alley and given the shovel talk on Techno’s behalf.
But no, he’s stood stalk still in the middle of a shifting, chattering crowd, people moving past him with bags of produce, kids skipping along with caramel lollies, and dozens of stalls stretching out before him. All he needs to do is find the right one.
He passes by baked goods, jars of honey, knit clothes, displays of sharp, beautiful knives, the crowd is alive around him and Dream feels it play off his own step, making it faster, more energetic, his heart in his throat. He scans so many faces, it makes him feel sick. He’s almost running.
The second Dream sees him, it’s impossible to quit smiling.
Talking to a customer, fully immersed in arguing his potatoes’ prices, is Technoblade. Professional and well-combed, wearing a heavy brown apron with too many things crammed into the front pocket. Dream swallows the adrenaline trying to clog up his throat and manages to tear himself off the spot he’d frozen in the second he spotted Techno.
The last few steps are both torture and the easiest thing he’s ever done.
“Yes, these were picked yesterday,” Techno’s arguing, and Dream’s strangely happy to watch him barter with the customer, simply waiting off to the side. He should’ve brought something, god, maybe even gotten Techno coffee from a few stalls over- he could still leave-
And it’s too late.
The customer pays, leaves, and Techno notices him. It’s his blank but open customer service stare, then, surprise, the kind that reanimates Techno, makes him stand a bit straighter, eyebrows crawling into his hairline.
And then it morphs into a lopsided, sort of awkward, but painfully sincere smile. Techno rings his hands, shifts on his feet a bit, and then asks, attempting to put some of his professional composure back on, “Wilbur or Tommy?”
“Wilbur,” Dream shrugs and approaches the front of the stall, surveying the available goods.
“Looking to get something?” Techno mirrors his movement on the other side of the display, looking terribly embarrassed, perhaps by having Dream over in his work environment. Too bad.
Dream looks up and grins, “Maybe a minute of your time?”
His smile seems to do things to Techno, making him grin back, “Well- Well, you have my undivided attention, that is, until an actual paying customer comes along.” He chuckles, looking away for a second to correct the pyramid of tomatoes, “But, hm,” then back to Dream, “I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”
“That’s good,” Dream’s smile hurts his face, the morning sun hurts his eyes. And simply the sight of Techno hurts his heart. In the best way possible. “I can go get you coffee?”
“Tea would be nice,” Techno nods, “If you have nowhere to be, there’s an extra chair and, always enough space for another shopkeep.”
Dream absolutely has places to be. But he nods back and pivots to go buy Techno a drink, because where he’d rather be, is very much here.