Chapter Text
“Look, Technoblade,” Tommy hogs Techno’s entire stall at the farmer’s market and leans over the display of various vegetables, lowers his voice, and this is it, whatever he’s about to ask is going to once more ruin Techno’s life.
“Tommy.” Techno stares him down, “You’re going to scare away customers.”
“Technoblade, I need you to do something for me. We’re family, right? The Minecrafts, right? I need you to do something for me as a brother.”
“We’re not related.” Techno deadpans and contemplates just wrapping up his stand for the day and going home.
“That’s not important, I’m a Minecraft, you’re a Minecraft, and I need you to save my life tomorrow. Or Phil’s going to be so sad, you don’t wanna make him sad, do ya?” Tommy picks up a potato and rotates it in his hand, before dropping it back and wiping his hand on his shirt, it leaves dirt, “Please.”
“What’d you get yourself into this time?” Techno eyes him with open distaste.
Tommy straightens and folds his hands together, a rare instance of calm politeness, “A duel.”
It takes a lot of shouting on Tommy’s part to convince Techno he isn’t kidding. Yes a duel. No, not against Wilbur. But yes Wilbur will be there. No, not to help Tommy, that’s why Tommy needs Techno. Wilbur promised to do the countdown. Tommy needs his other brother, with actual common sense, on his side. Yes Techno this is serious. Please. Techno, please, the guy he’s shooting against isn’t messing around.
“Who?” Techno gestures with a hand that was previously massaging the bridge of his nose against a headache. “Who did you upset so bad.”
“Dream.”
Tommy trails him home like an unwanted stray, explaining far too loudly for his own good, how himself and Dream got into some new form of dick measuring contest Techno doesn’t even want to hear about, and how it escalated to this point, and how tomorrow at sunrise, Tommy’s taking a horse out to some middle of nowhere forest, and they’re going to shoot this one out. And how he needs Techno to maybe take Dream out from a distance, with a gun or an arrow, he doesn’t care.
“You’re really going to…” Techno sighs, “get yourself into what should be a competition of honor to settle arguments, and then you’re going to drag an unaffiliated party in so you can cheat?”
“It’s not cheating if it’s in self-preservation,” Tommy answers immediately and with too much self-confidence. "Anyway, I'll see you there tomorrow, don’t tell Phil, I don’t want him killing both Dream and myself over this. Or cheering. That’d be so embarrassing.”
Techno smacks him on the back of the head.
4a.m. next morning he’s dressing Carl. Not the fancy saddle set he has, but the older, leather saddle with no decoration. God forbid Dream thinks he’s trying to flex on purpose. He’s already seen Techno’s fancy horse set last competition. Plus, if Dream’s horse shows up decked out in his atrocious green competition gear, Techno won’t be a hypocrite for clowning it to hell and back this time.
A bow, arrows, his colt, food, water, a book to pass the time, whatever else he always has on him, paper, pen, bandages. Techno sighs, pats Carl, and they ride out into the early morning. Off to a clearing that Techno’s sure is privately owned by neither of the participating parties.
The sun’s just breaking over lush autumn treetops when Techno follows a path onto the designated shooting grounds. He spots Wilbur immediately and shouts at him, spurring Carl back into a trot, “Mind explaining all this?”
“Ah! Technoblade!” Wilbur turns to him, the red light of his pipe dying as he takes it out of his mouth to grin, “So he did get you to show up. How are you doing, brother dear.”
“Badly because you all decided to stir drama at the crack of dawn.” Techno slows Carl to a walk and dismounts right next to Wilbur, who doesn’t flinch or step away, just grins at him like a great, well-fed cat. “Why are you enabling this.”
“Look.” Wilbur regards him with an eyebag-heavy gaze and none of the energy from moments before, “Tommy’s a big man, if he challenges someone to a duel, I’m not going to nannie him and cancel it on his behalf.” The energy returns and he smiles, “But I’ll be present to make sure everything is as fair as possible.”
“He’s seventeen.” Techno sighs and leads Carl into the treeline, pauses, and leads him further in, away from prying eyes, “You know why I’m here though, right?” he squints at Wilbur through the bushes, as he ties Carl to a branch and undoes the reigns so he may rest.
“To shoot Dream from the sidelines, yeah” Wilbur shrugs easily, “How’s the farm?”
They talk about Techno’s sales and then about Wilbur’s poetry that he keeps burning and rewriting, and finally about how Phil’s doing. Eventually Wilbur checks his cracked pocket watch and sends Techno off into the treeline before anyone else arrives.
He gathers his arrows and finds a good fallen tree to sit on, obscured more or less by bushes. It’s on higher ground than the clearing. A good vantage point.
Two more horses appear from the path- no, three, Tommy’s shitty, short steed that he won’t give up for sentimental reasons, and what must be Tubbo and Ranboo on a nice dark brown horse and then a wonky one that’s colored like a cow respectively. Techno watches passively as they dismount and sprint over to Wilbur, shouting so loud he can hear from all the way there.
Techno really cannot care enough, and starts examining whatever bugs live in the fallen tree instead, watching them march across dark bark with infinitely more entertainment value than the gaggle of kids surrounding Wilbur back in the clearing.
When another convoy of horses comes into the clearing with boisterous, loud laughter and conversation, Techno does look up.
He recognizes Dream’s horse immediately, clean white, strong and elegant and very much why Dream won gold last season. From this distance he can see their gear is still custom, but not the fancy performance stuff. Okay. And there’s Dream himself. It’s weird to see him maskless outside of the competitions.
There’s a good three other horses following Dream, his friends probably, that Techno doesn’t have the heart to name. All here to bear witness.
Techno watches them mingle and carefully doesn’t move when he notices Dream scanning the tree-line. If he knows Techno’s here, so be it, he doesn’t particularly care about this duel, even though he’s got no doubt Dream wouldn’t blink shooting a seventeen-year-old dead.
What he does have is some very peculiar knowledge the others don’t:
Dream is a crappy shot.
Like a really crappy one.
The sun is a wonderful artist and paints their surroundings in gold-backlit leaves. It’s finally morning and bright enough to see. Techno shifts, his legs having begun to fall asleep, and picks through the different arrows in his quiver. Gets the one he needs. Takes it out, fixes the end’s red feathers.
The crowd in the clearing is joined by one last figure, a young ginger in a hunter’s foxhat that Techno doesn’t recognize, galloping off the path, clearly late. He dismounts unsteadily, and Techno sees it: he’s got the wooden suitcase with two colts. It’s passed to Wilbur, and soon the crowd splits. Tommy’s side. Dream’s side. Wilbur in the middle.
Techno isn’t emotionally involved, but it gets to him. He’s been in enough duels, both before and after they’d been outlawed, and he’d witnessed a few more – too many on Wilbur’s hotheaded reckless behalf. The inescapable tension of it seeps into his bones, and he finds himself gritting his teeth, feeling the adrenaline of a bystander leak into his bloodstream.
God. He’ll have to move houses again. Make it harder for Tommy to track him down. Or just move to a different city altogether. Keep drama like this to a minimum.
He could be at home, asleep right now.
Instead, Techno swallows, weighs the arrow in his hand, and stands, moving slowly and carefully behind a tree where he can see both Dream and Tommy.
His biggest concern, Techno realizes, is not that Dream is brake-less when it comes to shooting a teenager.
Dream will miss.
His biggest concern is that Tommy, stubborn, conflict-prone Tommy, won’t.
The wooden box with each gun is opened. He can imagine the click of its golden latch from all the way here. There’s words exchanged, Wilbur speaks and presents the box. He watches sun rays wink off the guns and at him as they’re lifted, examined, and lowered by both parties. Techno nocks the arrow, bowstring still relaxed, and waits.
Dream and Tommy spin around, back to back. Techno’s stationed where it’ll put him in the easiest range to shoot Dream. Which also means that Dream is facing his direction now – at an angle, but still. When the countdown starts and they walk, Dream will have ten seconds, ten steps, during which he might spot Techno, before he’ll have to whip around and fire.
Techno’s counting on that.
Wilbur raises a hand above his head. The present audience turns quiet.
And there it goes:
Ten.
Dream takes his first step, everyone else in the crowd is looking at the duel that’s about to happen, no one’s looking at the treeline.
Nine.
Techno frees one hand and waves, taking a step out from behind the tree, once, twice, huge motions bound to trigger something in Dream’s periphery.
On six it works-
Dream sees him.
Five.
Techno, hand in the shape of a gun, points up to the sky: shoot up – and without waiting for confirmation, lifts the bow and aims, in a grand motion, at Tommy: because I’ll cover you.
Four.
He’s watching Tommy’s back, he’s still walking, Techno holds aim. He’s good with a bow, better than with a gun, almost as good as Wilbur.
Three.
The arrow’s dull and light, tip wrapped in soft fabric and weighed with grain instead of metal, its feathers slow it down. If it hits, it’ll leave a nasty bruise, maybe a broken bone, but won’t pierce skin.
Two.
He breathes in and holds it. The bow strains against him, his aim is steady, tunnel vision takes him to Tommy’s hand, everything else in the world falls away.
Of course Tommy spins too early. Always in a rush, always impatient.
It all happens very quickly, Techno fires on one, and the whiz of his arrow past his ear is followed with the dual echo of two guns.
The arrow hits Tommy’s arm just a second before he fires- Techno immediately steps behind the tree in case of a stray bullet- Tommy doesn’t fall, he’s fine, he stumbles, staring at his hand in disbelief, begins screaming whatever obscenities, the crowd breaks into movement- Techno steps back out from behind the tree, bow in one hand, and sees a few faces studying the foliage in his direction, trying to track the arrow’s direction. But not everyone’s looking for the arrow’s source. Far too many people are-
Techno looks to where Dream’s lying sprawled on the grass. There’s blood.
No.
Techno, bow still in hand, quiver abandoned, breaks into a dead sprint, the bag across his chest bouncing behind him wildly. Tearing through bushes and vines and undergrowth, he launches into the clearing, steps heavy and fast, covering ground so quick he doesn’t have time to breathe. Someone else reaches Dream first, but Techno’s coming in close from the other direction, and he’s close, he’s close, he drops to his knees without slowing down and takes the last meter and a half of distance sliding on his knees along morning-dew wet grass.
He almost knocks into Dream with the speed of it, some blonde kid he doesn’t recognize already hanging over the body-
Techno barks out something, maybe just Dream’s name, grabbing onto Dream’s arm-
Grey eyes snap open from a wince and look over at him.
“Oh thank fucking god.” Techno exhales as he traces the blood’s source: nothing vital, just Dream’s arm.
Grey eyes wince in pain and mirth, “Aw, you swore.”
Something hits the ground a few meters away from Techno and makes him rip his gaze off Dream’s sweat beaded face to look-
A bullet.
Dream’s bullet.
He’d indeed shot at the sky.
And then it’s commotion, because Tommy and his half of the field run up, shouting, “Did I get him? Did I get him?” and “Technoblade you asshole,” and “Does this mean I win?” and “You could’ve killed me with that arrow, man!” all courtesy of Tommy, cradling his swollen arm and looking, even at six foot something, like the world’s angriest lap dog.
The white haired kid with a gold chain starts bandaging Dream’s arm, over the clothes, and Techno winces. Someone hasn’t grown up winning money in rink fights and then patching up two commonly scraped up adoptive brothers. There’s a lot of noise going on, people all around them, and Techno, feeling terribly out of place and somehow in the wrong, tries his best to shut it all out and bat the blonde’s hands away, “Lemme, you’re doing it wrong.”
The commotion going on over where he’s crouching, looking insistently at Dream, grates deep into his bones, manifests in his voice as the gruff command. He probably sounds angry and scary, because the foreign hands leave in a hurry.
He shakes his head like it’ll help with the pressing noise and movement, and grabs fists of Dream’s once-pristine white sleeve, now overrun with red, and yanks, easily ripping the thin fabric.
A warm palm lands on his leg where he’s still kneeling on Dream’s good side in the grass. It’s a barely perceptible motion, but Techno darts his eyes up, and Dream’s watching him, having shut out the bespectacled blue-donned British man screaming questions into his face.
Techno pauses. They hold eye contact for a second, Dream’s breathing pretty fast, he’s sweating, but he’s calm. When he speaks, rather quietly, Techno’s close enough to hear, “Focus on me, yeah?” And then those grey eyes slip off him, back to the crowd around them, and he answers some question like nothing’s the matter, and Techno exhales. The hand stays on his leg. Warm. He shoulders his bag over and pulls a flask out, not antiseptic, but alcohol will do better than nothing.
There’s an exit wound, the bullet had gone through the muscle and fat on the very outside of Dream’s arm. When he pours it over the red, Dream makes no sound, but his fingers dig into Techno’s pants painfully and stay there.
He dries the wound, wraps Dream’s arm as tightly as he can without cutting his hand’s bloodflow off, and collects Dream’s bloodied sleeve off the ground, rumples it, and hands it to the man, nothing better left to do. The crowd’s cleared up a bit, and Techno stands, eyes on the ground, and then on the forest, and walks back into the woods to grab his arrows, feeling the tacky taste of adrenaline follow him all the way, head ringing.
He’s retracting his trail of destruction through the bushes when there’s the sound of someone catching up behind him, and god if it’s Tommy-
“Techno!” Dream calls, immediately after turning to shout behind himself, “Give me a second, I’m fine, really, what if he gets lost? Leave me alone.”
Techno just stands there and waits with mild amusement. When Dream finally turns back around to him and walks the last few meters unsteadily, Techno lifts his eyebrows, “Gets lost? Human map you’re speaking to here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Dream waves him off, “Needed to get them off my back, god it’s fucking loud, giving me a headache,” he sighs and stops in front of Techno, “Man, what the hell?”
Techno snorts, “You’re the one resorting to guns when it comes to some argument with a kid.”
“That kid shot me, and also almost scared off all my investors.” Dream runs his unharmed hand down his face, he looks paler than usual, “God, he was gonna fucking kill me- He..” another sigh, and Techno decides he needs his quiver more than he needs whatever this is. Dream just follows him and keeps talking, “He talked me into this, I’ve never been part of a duel before, and then he said if I didn’t go, I was a puny man.”
“And you fell for it.”
“Look.” Dream grumbles, “It wasn’t that easy. Whatever. God, I thought I was gonna die, man.”
“You’re gonna go back to your group and talk big game about how this was all planned, though, huh?” Techno finally finds the fallen tree where he’d left his arrows and shoulders the bag, “Gonna act like a tough guy about the bullet wound too.”
He turns, and Dream’s just standing there, waiting for him, “Of course.”
He snorts and approaches, “And why tell me here now then, that, y’know.” It feels wrong saying you were scared, feels impolite, “Not very smart to flash all your cards.”
Dream doesn’t step aside to let Techno back down the broken-in path to the clearing. Just stands there, “I’m tired, Techno. You saved my life.” He shrugs with one shoulder, “Ok, maybe I’m also seeing double, I’m probably not thinking very well.” He’s swaying a bit and Techno zones back in and realizes that Dream does not look very well.
“Man, lets get you back to the people…” he hisses through his teeth in sympathy, and puts his hand on Dream’s unharmed shoulder to turn him around.
Grey eyes, “If I pass out, don’t let them take me to a hospital, gotta keep this out of the papers, actually, I own a house nearby, make sure they take me there, please?”
Techno winces, “You’re fine, let’s go-”
Dream collapses.
Techno scrambles to catch him, gets him under the armpits well enough before he hits the ground, pauses, glaring holes into Dream’s head of hair, and then sighs. “You are really… going to owe me for this one,” he grumbles and maneuvers Dream to hoist him over his shoulder, “Stay still.”
There’s actually a response, “This is fucking uncomfortable.”
“The unconscious don’t complain,” Techno straightens back out and begins heading through the bushes.
“Carry me a different way.”
“I’ll make you walk.”
“I’m a dying man, fulfill my dying wishes.”
He sighs, “You keep this up, I’ll bury you in this forest.”
Dream lets out a shaky, prolonged ‘Nooooo’, and then, “Dude, okay, actually though, I might throw up.”
“Oh, don’t you dare-” Techno snaps, and immediately pauses, sliding Dream off his shoulder and holding him up. He’s conscious but very out of it, lightheaded probably. Techno sighs and scoops him up bridal carry, hates the term ‘bridal carry’ and the fact Dream’s a bit too tall and heavy for this, and walks the rest of the way dreading stepping into view of the group.
It starts as simple dislike for the upcoming, inevitable interactions, and then, oh boy, there it goes, pooling lead into Techno’s lungs, sending numb tingles through his fingertips. It freezes him a few paces until where the bushes would end and reveal them.
“What’s wrong?” Dream, very unfortunately conscious, pipes up.
Techno stares straight ahead, “It’d be terribly awkward to have to talk to people.” It’s a very simple way to put a debilitating situation.
“I don’t wanna go back out either, my head fucking hurts,” Dream sighs into his shirt, then groans in pain and frustration, “Fuck it, don’t you have Carl somewhere in the forest too. Let’s just leave. Fuck it. Let’s just leave. Techno.”
Techno frowns and looks down at Dream. “Bro, what?” He’d like to say they’re getting terribly friendly for being almost strangers, but that’d be a lie. He’d been holding onto some notion that they’re just passerbies at tournaments for a long time, and while that might’ve been the case a long while ago, somewhere along the line, they started eating between events at competitions, simply by virtue of hating everyone else there, and hating each other only a little bit less. And then training a few times together, the only people really capable of working at the same level. And then competing for fun, outside of official events, first specifically on horseback, and then- knife throwing for some reason, bow and arrow, shooting bottles off a bench with guns: exactly where he’d learned that Dream was a terrible shot.
They’re not friends, are they?
Techno sighs with his whole chest.
His lungs hurt with the aftertaste of adrenaline and the new pang of something like longing.
He takes a few steps back into the bushes, pivots, and heads to where he’d got Carl tied to a tree just outside the clearing’s bounds. Dream’s heavy but at least he’s compact and not ragdolling. Small mercies.
He glimpses everyone gathered on the other side of the clearing, furthest away from the horses and path, milling about, shouting at each other in both good humor and genuine dislike. God, that’s a lot of people, and a lot of people he doesn’t know too. The thought that he’s got a sudden easy escape from all this quickens his step. It’s far more about his own aversion of crowds than whatever headache Dream may or may not be experiencing. Ah, and the bullet wound of course.
Carl comes into view and Techno steps through the last few meters of bushes, hiking his knees up to try and keep the sharp branches in as little as contact with his legs as he can. Wilbur’s horse is nearby, and so is another Techno doesn’t recognize.
“I’m setting you down,” he tells Dream, and lowers his legs without waiting for confirmation. Hands grab at his shirt for balance and out of surprise, but Dream grumbles very little protest, and does let Techno leave him standing by a tree he quickly leans on.
“What are you doing?” Comes Dream’s forever curious but very tired voice.
“Leaving a note, you’re in no state to ride a horse, so we’ll have to ride the same one which will slow us down, and if they decide to give chase, it’s over for your safehouse plans.” Techno pulls paper and a pen out of the satchel on Carl and starts jotting down a strongly worded letter to Wilbur.
“They’re stubborn, I don’t know,” Dream answers.
Techno huffs, “That’s why I’m telling Wilbur to lead them the wrong way.”
“He’ll listen?”
Techno pens down: Trust me on this one, you’re always invested in wingmanning me, well, count your diversion as an act of exactly that, “I’m lying about how there’s romantic drama involved, he won’t tell but it’ll get him to do anything I ask for, other people’s relationships are like catnip for him.”
He hears a strangled noise from Dream and then coughing, when he turns around, Dream’s got a fist to his mouth and a bright red blush battling the previous sickly pale of a wound.
Techno squints and caps the pen, “I’ll tell him later it was a lie. You have a problem with it?”
Dream looks to him, “You don’t?”
“Look,” he sighs and shoves the folded paper into Wilbur’s horse’s saddle, “You wanna get out of here, I wanna get out of here, he already thinks we have ‘unresolved tension’, he’ll buy it, that’s all I care about. Can you walk? If so, come here.” He prepares Carl for a quick escape and waits for Dream to approach.
“He thinks what?” Dream squawks, walking far brisker than Techno’s seen him since the shot.
Techno doesn’t reply much, swings onto Carl and holds out a hand, “You’re riding in the front because I don’t trust you to not faint and fall off the horse at gallop.”
He’s sure the Wilbur thing won’t go unremarked on forever, but he can just not elaborate, when it comes to that. Dream uses his good hand to grab Techno’s and gets pulled up onto Carl with a wince and a groan.
It’s far from the easiest position to ride in, having to look over someone’s shoulder, but Techno’s been in worse conditions, this is nothing. Plus Dream’s warm. Warm is always nice. He maneuvers Carl, to point the correct direction, curses this forest for being too overgrown to comfortably ride a horse through it instead of taking the clearing in full view of the crowd, and spurs the horse into a fast trot, and then, finally, an easy slow gallop.
They ride into the clearing, immediately blinded by the sun and it takes about half the distance, as Techno lets Carl run faster and faster, for someone to notice and start shouting- but they’re far away, it’ll take them time to run to their horses, and then Wilbur will, hopefully, take the bait. Techno doesn’t tear his eyes away from the other side of the clearing, but he can tell Dream’s turned his head, looking at the commotion, and then Techno can feel him inhale where Dream’s back is to his chest, inhale, inhale, and he shouts: “Don’t worry about me, I’m okay!”
And then they’re gone- back into the shade of the forest, Dream’s voice still ringing in his ears.
Techno turns off the main path the second he can, so that their pursuers won’t see them as easily, and prays that Wilbur not only leads the others astray but tries to delay the chase as much as possible. He’s good like that, even if always with the wrong intentions.
Dream points out directions, and then rattles the remaining ones out- and then slumps again. It ruins the gallops rhythm and Techno quickly pulls Carl into a trot, careful but urgent, transferring the reins to one hand and quickly looping the other arm around Dream’s chest, to try and keep him upright, even as his head lolls and hands flop to smack against Techno’s knees.
“God, Dream I hate you,” Techno mutters but works on reciting the final directions in his head so they don’t slip into the abyss and leave him doing useless circles on his horse around the area with a limp body.
Eventually, he sees the roof of a two story, rather small house, surrounded by forest and a clearly untended garden. The place looks… not necessarily abandoned, but clearly not somewhere people live often enough to make it feel welcoming.
Techno brings Carl to a walk, slowly approaching the gate and wondering if this is indeed it, or he’d taken the wrong turn somewhere.
There’s an equestrian plaque on the metal bars of the gate. Okay this is definitely Dream’s property.
He stops Carl. The gate’s locked. Dream’s still unconscious. The fence is cobble and not that tall, coming up a bit higher than where Carl’s saddle is. Still a hassle to get over with what amounts to a dead body.
Dream’s still warm and breathing, but when Techno pokes him and jabs him and tries to shake him awake, there’s nothing.
Alright.
He moves Carl, lines him up to be parallel with the fence’s wall, and painstakingly maneuvers Dream to sit facing one way, before picking him up, swinging his own leg over to the fence’s side. If he falls, he’s one hundred percent using Dream as a cushion. This isn’t worth breaking an arm for.
He swings both legs up and over the cobble and shimmies until he’s sitting on the cobble’s edge before sliding off and into the garden.
It’s difficult landing with the weight of another body, and the fact Dream’s now limp doesn’t help at all, but Techno’s fine. He’s been hauling a sleeping Tommy and Wilbur around for years to help Phil. This is nothing. Really. Even if Dream’s his height and elegantly muscled- okay, elegantly is a weird word, Techno frowns, but what else do you call him. Lean? He could probably pick Techno up if he wanted to as well. He hasn’t thought about that a lot. He wishes he hadn’t thought about that in the first place.
As he cuts through the overgrown garden of vines and miscellaneous weeds, he knows it is very out of place to start considering the fact that perhaps the person his brother shot is capable of lifting him and carrying him around.
That’s for later. Really. Techno pauses in front of the door. Sighs, takes one step back, and then kicks it in with, as it turns out, far more force than he’d need to have shattered the lock out of its wood frame.
It swings open to a dark, mildly dusty, but thankfully dry house. There’s no smell of mold or any plants trying to grow inside, and wow is Techno glad this place isn’t going to give him pneumonia or something.
On one hand, Dream being dead to the world is technically bad, but in Techno’s very correct and infallible worldview, this is the best possible outcome, because it cuts any unnecessary complaining out of the situation and gives him a break from having to interact with people.
He finds a room with a bed, drags the covers off it with his foot, sets Dream down onto the dustless sheets, and goes to leave, get shit done, whatever. Find the medkit. Dream said there was one in the kitchen.
But he pauses.
Dream’s lying on his back, sweat beading his relaxed forehead, shirt missing one sleeve and the bandages having grown over with red. It’s also the first time he’s seeing Dream’s arm naked. Which is a weird thing to say, ‘arm, naked’, really, his standards are low and boy does it sound very oh the fair maiden has shown off her ankle! but c’mon. He’s only ever seen Dream in gloves, long sleeves, pants, soft shin guards, and then more often than not a helmet to boot. And a mask, for competitions.
So Techno pauses and looks.
Dream’s got some really weird tan lines. Two, to be exact, one at the wrist from gloves and one higher up, somewhere around his elbow. There’s also a faint and shallow scar along his forearm- Techno remembers the competition two years ago – before he’d met Dream – when a horse Dream was on got spooked by someone in the audience popping confetti and bucked before going into gallop, effectively knocking Dream off and dragging him behind it a few meters.
It hadn’t hit the main news, but people in horse racing circles talked about it forever, considering Dream had been a young out of nowhere star, winning show after show without a single trivia fact to his name, a faceless, name-less racer who’d vanish after winning and avoid crowds like a magician. Techno had been in those circle for five years or more by then, and going from hearing gossip on Dream at every stable to having the man himself stealing bites of Techno’s food at lunch was quite the whiplash.
And now he’d been entrusted with evacuating Dream from headache-inducing friends. And they’re in the middle of woods somewhere. Dream has nice arms.
He gets the medkit, sits on the bed and unwraps the wound, cleans it, re-wraps it, this time far better. The kitchen is void of food, nothing perishable, and barely any utensils. Everything is organized in a way that screams: no one’s ever actually cooked, much less lived in this house.
Dream’s still out-cold upstairs but no longer sweating or running a fever.
Techno could leave.