Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dying feels like drifting in and out of sleep. It hurts the same way everything does. 

He knows it hurts, but sometimes he forgets. 

It feels like all of eternity, flipping past in a breath. It feels like time doesn't exist at all. 

It feels like Grian doesn't exist at all. 

Sometimes his eyes are open. Sometimes they're shut. There's hardly a difference, everything blending into a foggy mess, like the swirling, cloudy air around him, drowning him. 

Dying used to feel warm. 

His senses are all confused now, feeding him bites of info that his brain is too tired to process. Stinging and tired, raw, cold and hot and spinning, and all of it is going farther and farther away, as distant as the muffled patter of thick flakes hitting the ground. 

Everything is still, and quiet. 

Grian sleeps, and wakes, and he doesn't differentiate. 

Something nudges at him. Something tiny, like a particularly gusty bit of wind, just out of place in the background. He dreams sometimes, disjointed and lucid in the sense that reality has the same pace and flavor. This is probably a dream. 

Grian's eyes are open. 

There's a shape moving over him. A big, dark shape. It looks alive. 

He notices it has eyes, and a face, and after staring for what feels like a long time, Grian's mind pieces together the features and likes them. That's my friend , he thinks hazily, smiling a little. Is he smiling? He can't really feel it. That's a friend. 

Everything is dark again. Grian's eyes are shut. He supposes that's the end of that dream. 

But now there's a new one. He doesn't like it much, there's a lot of jostling and it feels bad. His skin is tingling in a funny way, so there's probably a temperature change. Maybe he's getting colder. It stings quite a lot. 

And then he's asleep. Or awake. The feelings go away. 

_

Grian wakes up dying. 

Not dying like he's used to, something far worse. Something far more painful. 

Everything hurts, burning a thousand times louder than his nerves have been capable of feeling. Agony. Every cell is being stabbed, a billion needles plunging in and out and in and out. 

Grian is dying. He's really dying this time. 

He's burning alive. 

Pained noises escape his raw throat and somehow, Grian finds the strength to move. Something is tangled around him. He fights blindly to escape it, to move away, to find the nice, comfortably numb sting he had before, but his limbs are made of stone, clunky and heavy. 

There are noises over his head and something is touching him, something is tou- 

Something alive. People. People are here. An arm is around him, pulling the tangled fabric to trap him again, squeezing him close. " -ian, Grian don't take it off, okay? You need to stay… -the blankets okay?"

Everything is sandpaper, - acid, to his skin. It's unimaginable pain and Grian can't escape, he can't even pull away. "Hu'rs!" He rasps desperately, pawing at the person pressed against him, at the blankets swallowing his body. 

The air stinks in a dirty, angry way. There's a monster right in front of him, something bright and flickering, giving off waves of this pain he's feeling, sinking into him, and the blanket is trapping them in. Grian is dying. He's dissolving. Burning into nothing. 

His own hoarse sobs are hurting his ears, but he can't stop, Grian is scared in a way he hasn't been since he first came to the mountain. He doesn't want to die. Not like this. 

"Hur's!! Hur's!!! Bad, pl's, pl's, hur's !!!" 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know. You have to warm up. I'm sorry Grian, I really am."

He cries until his voice fades and with it, his inch of stamina. Slumped against the other person, Grian gives up again. Surely the pain will numb eventually, just like last time. 

He just has to wait. 

_

Doc hadn't at all been fond of the idea of going and getting Grian alone. Just from his spawn alone, he'd become very sick of snow, mountains, and altitude, but his biggest source of reluctance was his very biology. 

It feels like he's a fulminate, an unstable bomb walking around looking for a trigger. He hasn't been so dangerous to himself and others in years, and climbing a mountain isn't exactly a tame activity. 

But, fond or no, he'd agreed to it. Ren couldn't do it himself, not with his leg messed up by his fall, and Doc really couldn't make things worse for Grian, even if he blew up and killed them both on the trek back. So up he went, bundled up to his eyes in layers and a cobbled sled strapped to his back, breathing slowly and deep to quiet the explosives in his blood. 

He knew Grian was high, and they'd narrowed down a few mountains from his earlier failed attempts to escape— both feeling ill as they'd discussed the screaming and thuds — but Doc has no idea where the spawnpoint actually is. He squints for some hint of red, cursing his mechanical eye breaking down and the snow and fog. It feels impossible. 

"Grian!" He calls. "Grian! Are you there?!" 

As he wades through the snow measured up past his knees, it occurs to him that Grian might be buried. Looking for him might not be enough. 

He can't just dig up four different mountain peaks. There are extra shovels and picks in his inventory, but they're all stone. They'll fall apart before he gets halfway. 

< Grian > froze to death , their useless chat taunts. The death messages have been spam for weeks, but now, so close, they feel even crueler. 

Or maybe, Doc realizes, they’re not so useless. 

Grian probably respawns on top of the snow. Surely if he was underneath, there would be suffocation in the mix, right? So every time he dies, he'll be visible for the next... however long it takes for the snow to build, maybe ten minutes? Twenty? Which means he needs to hurry and cover this peak. 

It's an hour later, combing the ranges with one short campfire break to try and feel his limbs again that Doc hears it. A nearly silent thud in the snow that lines up with the buzz of his communicator, almost quiet enough to write off as his imagination. 

He bounds in that direction, nearly falling over himself several times in his rush, but he can't be bothered to care. "Grian!!" 

He’s here. He has to be. Doc strains his eye, ignoring the burn of a headache building in his skull from straining it over and over. “G?! Are you there?!” 

There’s no reply. Or, none he can hear. By the way the wind seems to steal the sound out of his mouth, Doc’s tempted to believe Grian can’t hear him either, if not for that thud. 

That happened right? Doc heard it, he’s sure. But was it Grian? Could it have been a coincidence? Something larger perhaps, falling more audibly than a small avian man in fresh snow, at just the right moment? He’s been at this for hours. The likelihood of that very circumstance is, frustratingly, much higher than he’d like to accept. 

The only thing that can fall out here is just more snow, he thinks, giving a lump an angry kick. It sends a frozen chunk surfing down the slope he’s stood on. How long has he been investigating the sound? He didn’t even check the time Grian respawned because of it. His friend might already be a layer under the snow while he wastes his time with his miserable vision

At this rate, it’ll be nightfall soon. Doc can’t even check the time with the sun vanished behind the clouds and fog. The dark will sneak up on him, leaving him stranded up here with some extra wood and a campfire to weather the night.

A hiss startles him. He just about leaps out of his boots spinning around to see-

-nothing, just endless white.

Oh, Doc realizes, heart pounding. 

He’s been breathing hard for hours, hiking through snow and shoveling. That alone should have probably gotten him hissing long before this. Too much oxygen tended to make his blood spark, as he’d discovered. Except, he recalls, the mountain air is thin. It’s the one benefit to this place. 

“This goose chase is making my blood literally boil,” he remarks to himself, rubbing the deep aching in his shoulder where his prosthetic meets skin. It’s almost funny, how ill-suited he is to this. Maybe another break is in order. 

A buzz pulls him from his daze. That’s another death from Grian, probably. Unless it’s Impulse, or Scar, or Xisuma, or-

There’s a thud, closer this time. 

All at once, Doc’s exhaustion and pain vanish. 

“Grian?!!” He shouts, his voice scraping his throat like sandpaper. He hikes over to a part of the range several feet away, the top cupping a dip in the landscape that had been almost invisible from his point of view. There, already powdered in a new dusting of flakes, is the red sweatered form he’s been hunting. 

Without hesitation, he slides down and frantically beats away the flecks, breath catching at the sight of Grian’s dark button eyes just… staring up at the sky. Glassy, blank. His nose, lips, and cheeks look burned, bloody, and blackened. Doc tries to brush away the rest of the snow on his face and pauses, squinting at it. 

That… isn’t snow. He isn’t sure what it is, but it looks attached to Grian’s skin. He shakes his head. Whatever. That’s firmly a later problem. Right now, he has to break the death loop. 

Looping his arms under Grian’s, he winces at the way his wings hang, frozen stiff, dragging through the snow as he pulls him out of the dip. Doc looks around, waving away his breath from his eyes. There isn’t an easy way off this part of the mountain. That should have been obvious from how many times Grian fell. Which means getting Grian and himself down will take a long time, long enough, probably, for Grian to freeze again. So as much as he wants to just rush down to the safety and warmth of Ren’s cabin, Doc has to stop. 

“Just a bit, G-man,” he reassures Grian, although he’s unsure if the man’s still awake. “I’ve gotta… build us a little shack, I think. I’ll put the fire in the middle and we can get warmer, alright?” 

To no one’s surprise, Grian doesn’t argue, so Doc digs out a square in the snow, gritting his teeth at another shovel breaking in his hands. That was his second to last. It’s a good thing he found Grian when he did. 

With some sloppy, wooden walls and a roof up, and Grian moved inside, Doc can finally rest, sighing as he holds his hands over the flames. Needles prance over his skin from the sharp change in heat, nerves and veins relaxing to let blood back into his extremities. It’s always a little unpleasant at first. 

His right thumb is twitching oddly, Doc notices. The weather must be breaking down his last working mechanical parts, then. Maybe Ren has some redstone somewhere that he can use for repairs, although maybe he shouldn’t get his hopes up. They weren’t exactly well equipped when he left, stone tools being proof of that. It sucks, falling apart like this. Hopefully, his arm will hold out getting down the cliffs, he can’t imagine doing the hike one-handed. 

“Alright,” he sighs again, glancing at his companion. “Time to get you better prepared for the weather, now that I have... half my fingers working.”

Grian’s clothes don’t really seem wet, despite laying in the snow. He’s got the fresh respawn and the fire to thank there, although it bothers Doc how severe his frostbite looks. Respawn should have fixed that too. Obviously, it has to a degree, or Grian would be frozen solid, but he should be fully healed. This world just keeps getting freakier and freakier. 

“I hope this doesn’t hurt you,” Doc mutters, pulling gloves over his fingers, so stiff and dead-looking Doc worries they might simply break off, like icicles. “Unless it means you will keep your hands. I’m not sure if the, ah, nerves and muscles still work. We’ll have to watch for decay, probably.” The coat and pants go on easier, although Doc isn’t really sure how to handle the hybrid features. Grian didn’t have a tail before, especially not one like this. It’s connected the dots in Doc’s mind about some of the other changes he’s seeing. The boots, however, encounter a similar problem to the gloves as Doc struggles to coax the leather over the bend in Grian’s ankle without being too rough. 

Hopefully, Grian will keep them. A Grian unable to build or run about causing trouble? Impossible. Unthinkable. He and Ren will simply have to do their best.

On that note, Doc takes out a golden apple. 

It’s their only one, Ren found it apparently in a shipwreck. It’s funny, how ordinary things like this had become during the seasons as they’d all become richer and better at getting the things they needed. Now suddenly immensely valuable all over again with them all on the cusp of survival. 

Ren and he had gone back and forth on bringing it, before deciding it the most logical option. 

“Hey, G?” He shakes Grian, tapping lightly at his face. “You need to eat this, man. I’ve got to get you off of this death trap alive.”

Slowly, Grian’s eyes open back up and Doc hurries to cut off bits of the apple. “Here, man-” Pressing a sliver into his mouth, Doc waits hopefully for Grian to chew or something. It’s a disappointing wait. 

“Do you need it, like, smashed or something?” Doc wonders, trying to crush a slice with the flat of his blade. Golden apples don’t pulverize very well, and he hasn’t got a lot of options here. A health potion would have been way better. 

Pushing the metallic mush between Grian’s lips, Doc holds his breath. “C’mon, please. Make this easy for me.” He even tilts Grian’s head back to move the food to the back of his throat. 

Grian’s throat bobs in a swallow. 

Relief washes over him. “Alright, just a bit more and we’ll head down,” he assures Grian, preparing more golden apple. He watches the sores closing up and some of his skin loses the sickening, grey-blue look. Not everything is healed, unfortunately, when Grian fades out, but it’s enough. It has to be. 

Doc cleans up and ties Grian to the sled, swallowing the sick feeling growing in his gut at the thought of going back out into the cold. Just a little longer. The sooner he’s off this mountain, the sooner he never has to deal with these conditions ever again-- assuming he doesn’t die and have to start all over again. 

The trip down is fraught with almost as much anxiety and stress as he’d had trying to get off his own patch of death in his original spawn, growing stronger as the light fades. Mobs are spawning, he can hear them, moaning and clattering just out of sight as he struggles with the sled getting stuck again. It’s almost been more trouble than it’s worth, especially in parts too steep to pull it. Doc bites back swears as he just picks it up for what must be the tenth time and carries Grian to the next ledge below. His sword burns at his side as he does so, notably not in his hand as he tries to focus on both the stone under him and the noises all around. 

A light in the distance, down below catches his attention, as well as the figure standing there. 

“Ren…” he breathes, legs shaking. The other man hadn’t mentioned he’d meet him at the base of the mountains, it seems he’d gotten worried. “Saving my hide once again, eh?” 

It makes the rest of the way easier, and Doc shoots Ren a grin as he pulls Grian over to where he’s waiting. 

“Thank goodness, I’ve been fending off skeletons for hours dude!” Ren chides. 

“It hasn’t been dark that long,” Doc points out. 

“Well, it feels like hours when you’ve got a bum leg. I thought you’d gotten stuck up there!”

“Just about, I think.” Doc looks up at the sky where the moon sits, silently rebuking him for flying too close to his time limit. “It was a lot harder finding him than I expected.” 

“Well,” Ren says, turning. “Let’s get him home and defrost him. Mission complete, brother.” 

“Yeah. Mission complete.” 

Chapter Text

It isn’t until they’re through the door of the cabin that either of them dares to let go of the apprehension they’d taken with them on the rescue.

They both survived without incident, and Grian is somehow still there, breathing and alive on the sled. 

It tugs a laugh out of Ren. “Y’know, dude, I thought for sure something would go wrong.” They’ve both done a million crazier things than hike up a mountain with bad gear, but with the server’s track record so far? Ren was expecting Doc to get caught in the same death loop somehow, even with his spawn set here, or for one of them to get teleported into the void or something. Like just leaving each other’s sight would inspire new nasty mind games from whatever’s screwed up the world. 

“Don’t jinx it yet! We haven’t even gotten him out of hypothermia,” Doc rounds on him. 

“Right, right! Sorry. Let’s hurry and get the G-man warmed up, then!” 

With coats and winter gear tossed carelessly into the nearest chest, Doc shoves more wood into the fireplace while Ren snaps the ropes around Grian with his claws. Being this close up to him, it’s impossible to miss what he did earlier. 

Ren stills. “Uhh, Doc? What happened to Grian?”

Doc turns from the flames where he’s stretching his fingers. “Ah. That was what I found him like.”

Ren looks over. “You mean, he just had the…?” He gestures to the changes. “That was all just, there?” 

Doc shrugs. “I guess so. I wasn’t there when it happened, man, I don’t know why he’s suddenly got new hybrid features going on.” 

“More server glitchery then.”

“Server’s just freaky, man,” Doc agrees. “It makes no sense.”

Ren sighs. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter now. Nothin’ we can do. Can you help me get him on the bed?”

Together, they lift Grian onto the mattress, Ren slipping in behind him. “ Jeez, he’s freezing!” Ren hisses, wrapping another blanket around both of them. He wrinkles his nose at the smidgeon of a yelp that escapes him, continuing, “Sure you didn’t bring down a chunk of ice that just looked like Grian, Doc? Feels like I’m cuddling a popsicle.” 

“I actually tried to warm him up a bit before we headed down,” Doc says. “He’d just respawned not too long before I found him, too.” 

“And he’s still like this?” A thought comes to him. “Oh! Hey- Doc. I heated up some water on the furnace back there while I was waiting. Dunno if it’s still hot, but it might be worth doin’ something with.” 

The creeper man goes over and pours some out of the pot, checking the temperature. “Yep, still pretty hot, I’d say. I don’t know if we have anything for, ah, heated water bottles, but I guess he can probably drink some. -I see you found some iron, by the way,” Doc comments, bringing the water over. 

“ Yeah , not as much as I’d hoped, but- y’know, it’s something!”

“Better than stone,” Doc agrees, filling a cup and passing it over. 

With Grian as limp as a bag of flour all flopped against him, getting him set up to try the world’s least interesting tea with one hand quickly proves to be awkward at best. “Uh, Doc-?” 

“I got you.” He helps shift Grian and angle his head right while Ren coaxes the water into his mouth. To Ren’s delight, Grian doesn’t just choke it up as he’d expected, throat moving weakly on some unconscious instinct. 

“Oh baby! I kinda didn’t think it would work, if I’m bein’ honest!” Ren laughs. “Did he eat the gapple, by the way?”

“Ah... a little bit?” Doc says. “He wasn’t very awake then, but it helped. He had all these sores on him, like on his face and hands? They closed up after.” 

“Well, that’s one less thing to worry about.” He starts in to coax some more warm water into Grian when the man’s pale face twitches, then slowly twists like he’s in pain. 

Ren’s stomach flips. 

Focus now sharply turned up, Ren notices Grian’s breathing picking up, along with his weak, shivery heartbeat-- why does it sound like that?  

"G?" Doc says hesitantly, carefully letting go of his face. 

Ren's ears go rigid at the little pained sounds that they pick up. With barely a glance, he sets the water down on the chest beside the bed and feels the left of Grian's chest. 

Just as his ears told him, Grian's heart is beating out of tune under his fingers. 

"Doc, gapple," he orders. "Do you have any gapple left?"

"I-" the pot slushes water on the floor in Doc's haste to put it down. "Yes? I think. What is going on?" 

"We need a gapple! Or some kind of healing- stat !!" 

The apple appears in Doc's hand, luster faded from the magic leaving through the cut in it. "He can't chew it, I had to crush it up," he rushes to say, moving to the kitchen for a knife. "Ren, what's going on?" 

"His heart is being weird! I dunno man! I'm not a doctor!!" 

Ren waits, jittering, while Doc struggles to pulverize it into an acceptable amount of mush— Grian’s fretful heartbeat and small winces and jerks playing under his hands— before his creeper friend runs back over. 

"-here!"

Ren grabs the bowl and spoon— the very same he'd carved hours ago trying to pass the wait— and takes a scoop. "Alright G, gonna give you bedazzled applesauce, can't get fancier than that, so you better cooperate man!" 

Breathlessly, he presses it between Grian’s teeth, trying to dump the gapple far enough in his mouth to trigger that swallow reflex. It sticks to the spoon in a frustrating way that Ren can’t do much about besides scoop up more and tap it gently against Grian’s teeth. Doc reaches in and tilts his head better, letting gravity do the work.

“-C’mon. C’mon. You’re fine, we saved you, dude. Come on, just eat the freakin’ thing. You’ll be fine,” Ren notices himself mutter. 

Grian gives an ounce of a groan, which sends him into coughing, face screwing up more. 

The faint pulse Ren can still feel through his back, pressed up against Ren’s chest, starts dancing more in tune, remembering its thu-thump thu-thump pattern, and reluctantly Ren’s nerves fall back to earth. 

There’s another cough from Grian like he’s starting to choke. 

“Ren?” Doc asks, voice piercing Ren’s concentration. “Is it helping?” 

“... his heart’s calming down I think. I don’t know what that was.” 

“Arrhythmia maybe?” Doc suggests. 

Ren pats Grian on the back, still distracted by his coughs. “I guess?” He can’t make himself treat the other man any rougher than glass right now. It isn’t a condition he knows much about, honestly, beyond that it messes with the heart. Doc might be able to identify it better-- the man’s an engineer first, but he had to know a thing or two about the body to build his prosthetics.

Grian must finally get the applesauce down because his coughing fades, but the pain in his face doesn’t. He seems to stir, tossing faintly against Ren. A whine floats out of him. 

Doc gestures to the dark, burned-looking places on Grian’s face. “He’s probably in pain from the frostbite.”

“Yeah, I’d put money on that, now that you mention it. Those are lookin’ real nasty. Do you know if he’s got it anywhere else?” 

“Uh… hands. Feet. I don’t know, I didn’t check when I found him. I… guess we should do that now, although I’m not sure what we can do for those areas beyond first aid. Ehhh… maybe we could get him a warm bath?” Doc suggests hesitantly. 

“Not sure that G-man wants either of us strippin’ him, but it might thaw him out better than what we’ve got going on right now. I mean, it’s sort of life or death, y’know?” 

Ren flinches as Grian jerks his head back with a gasp, nearly hitting his chin, eyes flickering. “Jeez!” 

“G? You awake?” Doc asks, nearly hovering off his chair.

Brittle, choked noises that neither of them is used to hearing from the man are all the response he gets. Grian twists, batting at the blankets and Ren with all the strength of a kitten.

Then, Grian opens his eyes. 

Instead of the shade Ren’s used to, he finds himself frozen, staring at striking amber irises that don’t seem to even see him back. They’re glassy, hazed with fatigue or delirium, sliding around the room like its entire existence is an assault. 

Ren feels the blanket slide off of the two of them.

It snaps him out of the moment and he pulls Grian close despite his protests, swooping the sheet back over them like wings. “Grian, pal, don’t take it off, okay, man? You gotta stay under the blanket, okay?” 

If anything, it just aggravates him worse. “... hu’rs !” Grian slurs, twisting and crying out. When the tears start up, Ren feels it wrenching his heart. 

He looks at Doc, who by his face, isn’t enjoying this any more than he is, but the other man shakes his head. “He has to get warm.” 

It only gets worse from there. Grian wails and begs like they’re killing him, no matter how much Ren tries to reassure him, until he sags, golden eyes slipping shut.

When the room is silent again, aside from the crackling fireplace beside the bed, Ren mutters to Doc, “... You wanna get that bath started while I get him ready?”

Doc looks at him for a moment, green-faced. “I can do that.” 

Chapter Text

The realization that he isn't on the mountain anymore comes slowly, in bits and pieces, like melting snow into his awareness. 

This is despite laying on a bed in front of a fireplace, being spoon-fed soup and boiled water and held close to warm bodies under blankets for a week straight by Doc and Ren. 

To be fair, he isn't really conscious for most of it, and the other half of the time tends to move like pudding, reality too viscous and strange to really trust. But his dreams and hallucinations on the mountain never had this much continuity, so hesitantly Grian accepts that the feeling of thick, warm wool around him, the gentle hands maneuvering his body, the woodgrain in the walls and floors that he finds himself staring at while his mind drifts, are all real. 

How? He wonders, his eyes drifting around at the chests and furnaces and the torches on the walls. It’s the only word he can find to describe the confusion he feels. 

And then, belatedly, he remembers, I can ask. 

"...mm...Doc?" His voice cracks. 

The creeper man swerves to look at him, his dark eye going wide. "G?" He shuts the chest he'd been going through and stands over the bed. "How are you feeling?" 

Grian runs his tongue over his lips, dry and cracked, like desert mountains and crevices. "'m I 'live?" He wonders. It feels like it, but it just seems impossible. 

"Yeah, me and Ren carried you off the mountain. Your spawn is in here now, you’re safe." Doc sits down next to him. "Any pain going on?" 

Blinking slowly up at Doc, Grian says, "yeah. Bit." 

"I'm sorry. We haven't got any health or regen potions here, unfortunately, and food regen has been kind of funky. I think we'll need them; your frostbite isn't getting better." 

"Mm," Grian hums noncommittally, fighting his drooping eyes. Even now that he isn't freezing to death, that drifting in and out of sleep hasn't stopped. 

"I'm sorry… we didn't get to you sooner," Doc says softly. 

Grian hums again, struggling to think of a response. It's hard to say how he feels about it. He's free now, isn't he? And he may have stopped looking at the chat, but he wasn't the only one dying. But he'd been there for so long. 

It just hurts his head right now. 

"Werr… wher'd you tage me?" Grian asks instead, glancing around the cabin. It's absolutely stone age compared to their normal work, but right now? It's cozy and sturdy, with everything he can imagine ever wanting. No mansion or castle, megabase or no, could ever compare to it. 

"It's Ren's cabin. He got injured in the ravine nearby trying to get to 0,0, so he built this instead. It is not too far from where you and I spawned," Doc explains, sitting down next to him. 

Grian frowns. It's a struggle to parse out the meaning of the words he's hearing, like his mind is lagging. It's been doing that a lot. He hopes it isn't permanent. Doc's accent, normally easy to listen to, doesn't help either. 

"... "You n' I," did we… we didn' spawn tog'ther, di' we?" Grian doesn't remember Doc being there. He wasn't, right? It's hard to be sure, though. 

"Not the same spawn, but we were close compared to everyone else. I was in the same mountains, just at a lower elevation. I couldn't come for you until I'd saved myself." The hybrid touches a hand to Grian's forehead and cheeks, checking his temperature. 

Is he sick? Is that why he feels so... so far away and painful? That's good if that's the reason, he can get better from a cold. 

"Your fever is still high." Doc pulls away. "I'd like to cool you down, but you have been so sensitive to cold." 

A shiver runs through Grian. His body isn’t as confused as it was on the mountain anymore, and he feels every hint of chill that sneaks under his blankets and sweater now. That much he can remember from the last week. Even positioned next to the cabin’s fireplace, or curled up against one of them, he can feel ice in his bones lingering. "Don' want… cold." He scrubs his eyes. 

"Understandable. But I do not want you to cook instead." The other man cups his chin, brows low with concentration.

While he thinks, Grian fights his drooping eyelids before deciding that he doesn’t really feel up to talking more, and then the world fades into sleep. 

_

Ren about collapses when he comes back in, dragging himself across the doorway and against the wall into the nearest chair. 

“You good man…?” Doc asks unnecessarily, wincing in sympathy. 

“This will blow your mind, Doc, but as it turns out, trying to mine half a mile underground isn’t kind on leg injuries. Found that one out myself.” 

He must be in a lot of pain because Ren’s voice lacks most of its normal pep. 

“You should stay off that, man. Did you break it?” He hadn’t asked the first time, Doc realizes. He’d just assumed that whatever it had been was healing now, but now that he thinks about it, Ren doesn’t spend nearly enough time sitting down. The cabin had been built with the intention for that, but then he’d discovered Doc was nearby and things hadn’t really slowed down. 

“Y’know? I’m not a hundred percent certain dude. I can move it, I can put weight on it now- that isn’t something I could do at first. Not sure if the bruises are getting better or just becoming flashier colors.” He tries to stretch it out, groaning. 

“Then it’s a good thing I made this-” Doc says, holding out the cane he’s been working on. It’s not perfect, carving isn’t much his forte, but he’d needed something to do while trying to fix Grian’s temperature. “I wasn’t sure if you made one already, but it uh, looked like you could use it.” 

Ren’s eyes go wide and he eagerly reaches to take it. “Bless your face, dude! I shoulda made a new one ages ago! Thanks!”

“Yeah, no problem. Just- promise me you’ll rest your leg. There’s no urgent stuff left on the to-do list and I feel like you’re going to mess it up worse,” Doc says, glancing at the ginger way Ren rests it. 

“I know, I just wanted to find a bit of redstone and other materials first since we’re settlin’ in for the long haul, I guess. No chance of me or Grian making the trek back to 0,0 anytime soon. I guess you could if you wanted to, though?” 

“Nah, man. I’m in this with you guys.” Doc straightens and Ren’s ears flick up in attention. “Look, either we all go , or none of us goes. How’s that?” 

Ren grins tiredly. “I’m down for it. We can watch each other’s backs that way.”

“Yeah, it seems like the safest option to me.” 

“So how is the G-meister, by the way?” Ren asks, tipping his head to look at where their friend is curled up under 90% of the cabin’s blankets, a damp rag stuck against his forehead. 

“Oh! He actually talked to me earlier. I’m not sure how lucid he was, but he seemed more awake than usual?” 

“Oh yeah?” 

Doc nods. “He asked where he was and such. I don’t know if he’ll remember next time, but maybe he’s starting to heal?” 

“That’s awesome man! Can’t wait to have him back with us!” Ren says, his tail giving a little thump. “Y’know, I realized the other hermits have to know Grian’s safe now, since they aren’t- ahem, seeing him in the chat anymore. Right?” 

“Yeah, I hope so man. Unless they think he perma-died or something?” 

Ren’s mouth kinks. “Yeah… there is that possibility as well… We’ll get the news to them somehow, but now they don’t have to worry about him anymore. So now who’s left? Impulse, TFC…?” 

“I think those are the worst ones.” Doc takes out his com grimly and turns it back on. It had to stay off most of the time, for his own sake. “Wells is still in the nether, but Keralis... might not be? Iskall and Xb seem to be doing better, I haven’t seen them in a while… uh, Xisuma’s deaths have slowed down. I’m not sure if he’s still with Jevin? I don’t see Cleo. Maybe she’s out of the village. Scar isn’t showing up anymore. I want to think that’s good, but he was on some kind of end island, I think. I don’t see how he could have gotten away from there.”

Ren gives a bit of feedback while he speaks, nodding and agreeing. He tacks onto the last update, “Not sure about that one. I hope he’s okay, but… y’know. Not much you can do out there.” 

“Yeah, that has me worried. Maybe he’s just staying put with some chorus fruit...?”

Ren shrugs. “Stranger things have happened on this server.” He lets the air clear before gently adding, "On that note… how are things with you? Mob-wise, I mean. I know you're still keeping your distance, and I accept that, but- just, how are you doing?" 

Doc doesn't look up from his communicator. He's already shut it off with the confirmation that actual messages haven't been fixed yet, and there's no point in watching death longer than he needs to. "... You saw that yesterday, I went off again?" 

"No…" Ren says, eyes going wide. "Again?" 

"Yeah. A skeleton was hiding under the trees."

Ren winces. "Ohh-"

"That didn't do it though."

"Oh?" He sounds afraid of the answer.

Doc feels like squirming, just thinking about admitting it. The event had simmered hot and uncomfortable in his stomach since yesterday. But Ren gets him. And… he needs to be made aware. 

"It fired at me, and I just… lost control, man. I like, forgot myself, and ran right up to it, and…" he holds up a fist, and violently flicks his fingers out like an explosion. 

He'd triggered the self-destruct voluntarily. Yes, it was instinctual, not purposefully, but every time before this had been by accident, his own stress or injuries setting him off before Doc could realize what was happening. He'd never reacted this creeper-like. 

The ugliest scenarios had already begun their work in his mind. Ren or one of the other hermits accidentally nicking or bumping him, and his mind locking on them, hunting them down before they even realized. It's the sort of thing that going to 0,0 would not only not fix, but would probably make him more dangerous. 

It would be wiser, safer, for Doc to be alone, honestly. As isolated as possible. He knew that even before coming here, but it’s only growing more apparent the longer his instincts go unchecked without Xisuma’s safeguards on. 

“That freaks you out, doesn’t it?” Ren says knowingly. 

Doc taps a claw against the communicator. “...Yeah.”

“You know, regardless of what happens, you’re still gonna be you, right?”

“Yeah… but I’m more dangerous now, Ren.” 

“And you’re more careful to back it up. The only time I see you on this side of the cabin is when you’re checkin’ on G. It’s not like any skeletons are spawning in here, dude. -And! I just got a whole stack of coal so we can light up the backyard, y’know? No unexpected guests sitting outside our door in the morning, okay?” 

“Mm, Okay,” Doc relents, still unsatisfied. There’s more he could say to press the severity of his concerns, but in the short run, it won’t matter. Ren and Grian are still depending on him, and he’s already taking precautions. There isn’t much more to be done for it. “You got coal? Anything else?”

Ren frowns, checking his inventory. “No diamond, if you were wondering. A little iron, a little redstone. Three gold. So, not a total waste, but definitely could have been better.”

“I dunno, you said you didn’t mine very far.”

“Ok, yeah. Could have been worse as well, that’s true.”

“Maybe I’ll handle the digging while you rest, then?” Doc suggests with a slight smile. 

Ren groans like he’s wounded anyway. “Right, okay! Fine! I’ll let the leg heal, I get it.” 

 “I’m just lookin’ out for you, man.” 

“I know, I appreciate it.” 

Chapter Text

He can admit Doc is right about the whole “needing to rest his leg” thing, and maybe he promised the guy he’d actually rest as Doc left, but it doesn’t mean Ren has to like it. 

It hurts a lot, pretty much constantly. He’s not too proud to admit there’s been some tearing up and ugly words under his breath, but there’s a reason Ren’s been up and about besides saving Doc and Grian’s hides. As long as he’s busy, he isn’t thinking, and there’s an awful lot he’s trying not to think about. 

Like right now he’s realizing that Doc taking over mining may have been at least partially a plot to avoid them. It’s driving him freakin’ crazy watching Doc constantly leaving space between him and them, putting his bed on the opposite side of the cabin, and freezing up every time he has to get closer to Grian. Ren is so close to just dragging him over, but not only would it not help, he can understand Doc’s position. Doc’s working with new limits, he needs to feel things out before he’s comfortable letting down his guard. They've also got Grian to worry about. He can't afford any accidents. 

Ren flips open a nearby chest with his cane and scoots over to riffle through it. Seeds, raw meat, feathers, cobble, wood, random tools… nothing particularly entertaining. At least, not while he’s resting . Planting a wheat farm or adding an expansion to the house probably don’t count as letting the leg heal, huh?

He can’t resist a short growl. Maybe sorting things will tide him over. They haven’t really got the space to do it well, but really anything’s better than the case of early-season disorganization their chests have caught, even if they’re… 

How long have they been here anyway? Ren’s lost track of the days, and he doesn’t really want to flip on his com just to see if stats work. It has to be at least a month, probably closer to two or three. Plenty of time for them all to have starter bases in a normal world. Megabases and crazy automated farms should be shooting up now. 

He pauses, taking out a raw chicken. Grian’s going to need more soup, isn’t he? They’d just finished off the last batch. 

There’s another sitting-down activity. Kind of. It’s not like he has a lot to throw in besides chicken, so that cuts down on how much he has to move around the kitchen for ingredients. It feels more helpful than moving stuff around as well, so he abandons the chests. Void knows he can always do with feeling helpful. Somehow he’d managed to screw up being one of the only Hermits with a safe spawn. He should have been on that mountain helping Doc track down Grian, he has the senses for it after all. Maybe they would have found Grian faster. 

He should be gathering resources, finding a new source of healing for Grian, getting them prepared to head to spawn. He should be finding other hermits. 

Instead, Ren is sulking over a pot of chicken with a leg that’s refusing to heal. 

Squandered opportunities. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose, wrinkling his face. Ren’s trying hard to be cool about it, but it’s hard when it keeps coming back to bite him. 

He takes a bowl of soup over to Grian’s bedside, leaving his cane against the chest beside it, and gently shakes the other man. 

“G? Up and at ‘em, man. I got you food!” 

It takes some coaxing, but eventually, he wakes up, squinting at the bowl. Ren helps him sit up, chattering as he does, “I know you’re probably sick of this stuff by now, believe me, I am too and I’m just the guy cooking it! What’s a guy gotta do for some salt or something? Maybe a potato? Y’know, it’s probably not too healthy just feeding you meat. Don’t birds eat seeds or something? I mean, I’m not a carnivore myself, but I know we hybrids have, uh, dietary inclinations, and I doubt the parrot in you is psyched about all this. Although… maybe that’s not totally true anymore?” He eyes Grian’s nose and ears thoughtfully. “Doc and I have been tossing around theories on that, actually-”

“Ren?” Grian interrupts.

“Mm-hm?” Ren says, startled. 

He stares at Ren with an exhausted expression. “You’re talking too much.” 

Ren coughs, surprised, then laughs. “All right dude, you’re right, you’re right. I can shut up.” Doc was right about him being more awake. He’s never been more delighted to see Grian grumpy. 

That seems to be most of the fire in him, although he eats more soup than usual. Ren’s just helping him lay back down again when he hears it. 

It almost dances with the sound of the wind outside, just as melodic as an instrument, that drawn-out wooooooooooo, ruh wooooooooo.

There’s a wolf pack nearby. 

He’d discovered it when he first settled here, turning his wood from spawn into a shelter that he built mostly on his hands and knees. That song seemed to go straight to his bones, his blood lashing restlessly at the sound. 

It would be a lie to say he hadn’t been tempted-- all alone, cold and hurt and afraid-- to look for them. Ren had been desperate, and the call felt like a warm welcome home, ringing through his mind in a way he wasn’t used to. 

It still does. 

The only thing stopping him had been his leg at that moment, red-hot with pain streaking up and down every time he so much as shifted it. There’d been some kind of dreadful knowing in the back of his skull that if they accepted him, he might forget what he was trying to do and slip into their habits. Maybe, he’d even forget Ren-diggity-dog himself. 

He’s lost in the pull again, now in the present, when he feels something touch his hand. 

Grian is looking at him with a sleepy frown. 

“Don’t worry about it dude,” Ren says, shooting him a smile. “They’re miles away. We’re fine. Who cares what a smelly wolf pack is doing, huh?” 

_

Doc braces a hand on the wall, sighing as his body aches. 

He had to admit, it felt good to be mining again. Finally, something normal in all of this. Not even the death messages surely stacking up on his communicator had crossed his mind, despite them setting up a permanent residence in the back of it, thanks to his habit of blocking out the chat while working. 

It wasn’t all perfect, of course. The sounds of hostile mobs through the stone and around corners seemed to pick at his instincts like a scab, either triggering a rush of wariness or tugging at him to come closer in the case of other creepers, and the smell was becoming a problem. 

To put it simply why, gunpowder was a combination of three things: charcoal, sulfur, and saltpetre. Where there are bats, there are bat droppings. Where there are bat droppings, there is saltpetre. It’s part of why creepers leave their preferred, high vegetation environments to wander caves, looking for the supplement they crave. 

The urge to lick cave walls isn’t normally an issue Doc has to deal with. Before hermitcraft, he’d used artificially made saltpetre, and during the seasons Xisuma would edit his code to take care of unusual dietary requirements. He has neither right now, nor has he found any plants that produce it to use as a substitute, so the cravings won’t go away. 

Frustrating as it is, it’s fine. Instead of lingering on the feeling, he’s been fighting it by planning on how to use the resources he pries out of the stone; best not to waste time now that he can be productive. The iron, for instance, will naturally be put to use as tools and armor, however, Doc has another idea for where some could go. 

He hasn’t been able to get Ren’s leg injury out of his head. The fact that he hasn’t actually seen it has gnawed on him since he left the cabin, especially because Ren himself has no idea how bad it is. It’s probably not a full break. If it were, Doc’s certain that Ren would be in more extreme pain, but the fact that it’s still not healed worries him. Whatever it is might benefit from some kind of a brace if Doc can manage one. It won’t be his best work, but as long as it helps it may be worth something. 

With his inventory full, he begins heading up. Nothing attacks him on the way home, although his heart rate stays just a little too fast for the duration. His mood is lifted slightly when he opens the door and sees Ren sitting by Grian’s bed looking bored. 

“Finally!” Ren complains. “I was just about ready to start naming trees just have someone to talk to!” 

“Grian hasn’t woken up?” Doc asks. 

Ren rolls his eyes. “He has a couple of times, but not for very long! Dude, I was counting the floorboards .” 

“Sounds like fun...?” 

“Not really, no.” With a pout, he adds, “There are 89, in case you were wondering.” 

Deciding to let him get it out of his system, Doc turns to the chests, searching for space. “I got some stuff. Six diamonds.” 

He hears Ren sit up straight. “Ooh! Baby! Finally some bling!” 

And just like that, the grumpiness is gone. “Yep,” Doc chuckles. “I see the chests are looking better, by the way?” 

“Yeah. One of the only things I could do on my butt. We need a fish or something in here, Grian’s gonna go mad when he’s a little stronger if I’m already losin’ it!” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” Doc promises. A little one-by-one puddle in the floor isn’t his favorite idea, but maybe he’ll find something else if just to prevent Ren’s moaning. “I’ll need to get more wood next after I rest, though.” 

“We do need wood, don’t we? And lots of it! There’s the chests, the house needs a few extra feet if just for some room for our supplies, there are the torches we’ve gotta put down- my dude, we need a list! We even need wood for the list!”

“That is true, we’ll need it for animal farms as well,” Doc agrees. 

“Y’know, if I wasn’t in time-out, I probably would have already stocked us up,” Ren points out.

Doc grins shark-like at the reminder and Ren has the good sense to look rueful. “That’s right, I was wanting to take a look at that leg!”

“O-oh, it’s uh, pretty late Doc, and you were just out for two days, you sure-?” 

“Pants off.” 

“You could buy me dinner first. Geez.” Still, he does it, and Doc’s humor vanishes.

For starters, it seems Ren neglected to mention they were actually both injured, although one is clearly more severe. His left is just bruised and scuffed. The right one is swollen and completely painted in black, blue, red, and green from his foot to his knee. 

“H-holy-!! Dude!!!” Doc gapes. “You didn’t say it was like this !!” 

Ren doesn’t look at him. His expression is uncomfortable, ears low. “I think it’s… not as bad as it looks?” 

“You’ve been just walking around on this thing?!” 

“Well, I mean it hurts!! Don’t get me wrong there! I-” 

“Just- rruegh , just hold still, okay? I want to feel if bone is sticking out or anything.” 

“What?! No! Dude-!! Don’t go pokin’ around at my bruises, come on!!” 

Doc fixes a glare at him. “Have you checked? What if it’s been broken this whole time and with you walking on it, the pieces have gone out of alignment? Do you want it to heal like that?!” 

There’s a bit of fear showing through the offense in Ren’s face. “Well… what if you make it worse?” 

As little as Doc wants to admit it, he isn’t confident that he won’t. He’s not a medical doctor, whatever he does to try to help could be the wrong thing. But if Ren’s leg heals mangled, it could carry through respawn, or even for the rest of his life. “...I’ll be careful,” Doc says. 

Ren clenches his teeth together, tail curling closer to him as he looks around the room as if trying to find another solution. “Dude, I know I’ve been walking on it, but it hurts a heck of a lot more when something touches it.” 

“I think that’s mostly tissue damage. I won’t be touching very long,” Doc assures him. 

Ren still looks reluctant, but at last says, “You know what? Let’s just… get it over with.”

The tibia will be easiest to start with since it’s in the front. It’s also where the most damage is. Trying to be gentle, yet firm, Doc palpates down the bone. Ren’s breath hisses between his teeth as he does, his claws clicking tensely against the floor and chair. 

It seems okay, and although he knows not every break displaces the pieces, Doc feels a little more sure about it healing properly. He moves onto the fibula with a muttered apology. The thinner bone is buried under calf muscle and he, unfortunately, has to dig his fingers in deeper just to find it. 

Doc pretends not to notice Ren biting the back of the chair. Quick as he tries to be, it takes too long to decide neither bone will need to be set. He makes Ren bend his knee and ankle to see if either joint is hindered for good measure. 

“I’m done,” He says, scooting away from Ren. The other man pulls his leg away like Doc might change his mind and unlatches his teeth from the chair wood. 

“Freakin’ sucked man.” 

“I can get you ice. It’s probably good to keep it raised as well to speed up the healing,” Doc says, standing and dragging the other chair over. 

“Feel like this was part of your plot to make sure I don’t stand up,” Ren suggests light-heartedly, wincing. 

Doc chuckles. “Nah, man, you know I wouldn’t.” 

Chapter Text

It takes longer than he cares to admit for Grian to notice there is more that’s odd about his body besides the effects of extreme and repeated hypothermia. That, he can at least blame on his new life as a blanket creature, because he doesn't really see his body all that much. 

As he’s stretched the periods of awareness from a few scattered minutes to an hour, then more than one hour, blinking away the snow lingering in the corners of his vision, the pieces start coming together. 

For instance, Grian is sure his vision is a little different now. He isn’t sure how to describe it, but everything looks... off . Maybe the colors are a little strange, a little flatter, and the lighting looks funny, almost fake. He thought the effect would wear off as the numb, dreamy feeling cushioning his dying faded away, but even grounded to reality, everything looks strange. 

He’s got new feathers as well. He’s seen them poking out of the cuffs of his sweater, short, fluffy, and white. They don’t match his plumage, but they’re the contour type. Those are mostly down anyway, so he doesn’t really think about it beyond how odd it is that they’re growing in at all. Aside from his wings and back, Grian had always been pretty sparse in the feather department, which was fine by him. There tended to be some variation between avian hybrids.

Why would a deathloop change that? 

They aren’t just there either. If the furry itchiness around his neck is anything to go off of, he’s got some growing under his collar as well. 

Grian slowly, stiffly, pulls his arms out from under the blankets and uncurls his blackened, dead-looking fingers like flowers spreading their petals for the sun. He's surprised they still move. There isn't much sensation left. It's as if he's wearing the world's thickest gloves every time he tries to use them. 

His nails have gotten really dark, which might just be more frostbite. However, Grian’s starting to wonder if they may be more in line with his sudden feather growth. 

Neither of his new housemates is in the cabin right now, so he can’t ask them about the damage. It’s probably best this way. It means he can take it in parts, and if it’s hard to swallow, there’s no one to see him. Unfortunately, that also limits what he can see. Ren left him sat up at his request, but he can’t do it himself. The blankets feel about 50 pounds heavier than they really are, so getting at his legs may be off the table. There’s nothing reflective nearby either. So, the easiest thing to start with is the age-old question: What is up his sleeve?  

He’s expecting more gross-looking skin, truthfully, as he slowly bunches the red knitting up higher on his arm. The flaking he’d experienced through the last week had put to shame every sunburn he’s ever had, which is saying something. What he isn’t expecting, however, is to find them covered in down. 

--Or something. 

That isn’t down , he realizes the longer he stares. It’s more like… fur. 

It’s thin, soft and white, going all the way to where he’s pulled up his sleeve, a little heavier on the front of his arm. Those strange white feathers freckle through it.

He remembers the itching on his neck and digs his fingers under the collar, anxiously trying to feel what’s under there despite his numb fingers before switching to grabbing, tugging at anything that might be there.

There’s a sharp pain, and Grian holds up in front of his eyes more feathers and a clump of fur. 

Unease spins webs through his chest as he stares, trying to understand what’s growing on his body. He’s a parrot hybrid. Parrots don’t have fur, and now that he’s seen evidence of it being an epidemic, the white feathers feel like a symptom of something larger, something scarier. His hands shake as he holds his arms out. If it’s on his arms, and on his neck, is it everywhere? Is his whole body covered in patches of whatever this stuff is?

“It’s hair. It isn’t alive and can’t hurt you,” Grian tells himself firmly, trying to squash the antsy feeling under his skin. How long has all of this been there? This can’t be from the death loop, there must be somethin-

 The moment is broken by Ren stomping back in, slamming the door against the wind, and grinding the snow off his boots. 

"You wouldn't happen to have a mirror around here, would you?" Grian asks, keeping his voice level. 

"Uhh… well, I have a fresh iron sword? If that would work?" 

"I'll work with it." Grian makes grabby hands— or, tries to. His hands won't open and close very easily, finger joints sticking and tendons freezing, and his arms ache just by lifting them. The sword doesn't stand a chance, flopping into his lap when he tries to take it. 

Ren hovers close. "I… take it you've noticed something… off , then?" He sounds like he isn’t looking forward to the answer. 

Grian doesn't respond. For a minute, he doesn't recognize himself. 

Staring back at him is some sort of yellow-eyed creature. The same fluff he’s just plucked from his neck is trailing up the sides of his face, framing his eyes, vanishing into his hairline, and fading down his nose. While most of the lower half of his face is spared, it restarts on his throat, crawling beneath his jumper. What really grabs Grian’s attention, however, are his ears. They look befitting an animal--tented the way cats’ or dogs’ ears are, coming to stubby, rounded points with tufts of feathers accentuating the shape. 

"What… what on earth happened to me?" Falls out of his mouth the way broken plate pieces ring against each other as they’re being cleaned up. “What is this?” 

“... Well-” 

His eyes are drawn to the dark, textured skin around his nostrils and the long canines among his teeth as he slowly lifts a hand to touch and poke. 

“There are a lot of unanswered questions on this server, dude,” Ren tries. “This is one of them, I guess. Doc found you already like this at your spawn.” 

Grian peels himself away from his reflection to look at Ren. "But- but I'm not even a parrot anymore!!" With that thought, he looks over his shoulder, struggling to unfold his wings from his back. Their status had been a mystery he’d left alone, folded tight and out of the way. 

There must be some red left. Some hint of blue or yellow. All he can see is white, dabbed with dark brown flecks among new bald patches. "What am I?!"

“Could it be, like, your winter coat or something?” Ren suggests dubiously. 

"That's not how parrots work !!" 

His head is spinning. 

Hands squeeze his shoulders and suddenly he's looking over tipped, cracked sunglasses into Ren's blue eyes. "G, you need to breathe.”

With the reminder, Grian sucks in a short breath.

“You're getting too worked up and I don't think you've got the strength to spare at the moment, right?" Ren continues seriously. 

He's right. Grian hates to admit it, but just below the adrenaline is a shakiness that's fast becoming his worst enemy. "I don't understand what's happening!" 

“I know, but Doc and I have your back, right?” Ren presses. “We’re gonna take care of you through- whatever weirdness happens, dude, and then once X gets things under control, we can get him on this, alright?”

Grian forces himself to take another breath before saying, "Ren. I don't think Xisuma is going to fix this. It's been... so long .”

Ren winces in sympathy. “I know, dude.” 

“Do you know if there’s even been any progress at all?!” He presses. 

“Etho says X’s working on it, but he’s not exactly in the best position, so things are movin’ slow. There’s not really a precedent for a server trying to murder its players like this, and he can’t get help off-world, so any sort of solution has to come straight from his brain,” Ren explains. “There’s nothing we can do except survive until then.”

Nothing we can do . The words claw at him, but Grian knows they’re true. It’s just-

He’s so tired. He’s done the waiting, he’s trusted Xisuma and done his best to survive on nothing but powdered snow and a communicator streaming constant death. Grian’s hit this wall again and again with every attempt he made to get off that mountain by himself before it sunk in that he wasn’t going anywhere. He watched his hands and feet stop coming back to full health and his feathers snap off. And now this moment feels like a parody, an encore that doesn’t have quite the same impact but still hurts the same way.

The difference is, now there’s no snow to lay down in. No drifting in and out as his mind shuts down, no giving up and letting it all go away for a bit. 

Things are better. Grian knows that. 

It just doesn’t feel that way and for a moment he misses dying. 

Ren must see something on his face because the intentness falls away from his expression. "Come on, my man, bring it in." 

Grian lets himself get pulled into a hug, focusing on the way Ren smells a lot like wet dog right now over the drowning feeling in his heart. 

_

Ren doesn’t let go, and Grian doesn't feel like pulling away, so the hug stretches on for what feels like hours. His heartbeat slows down with his breathing, following along with Ren’s, and he finds he feels slightly better, if at least calmer. 

Being so close to him, Grian starts to pick out individual smells clinging to Ren besides wet fur, like spruce, mud, and wheat among other, subtler hints Grian can’t identify. It strikes him as unusual. Probably part of his new mob genetics. 

The lines between person and world have always been thin thanks to the prevalence of magic everywhere. He knows this. Sentience could sprout from anywhere, and humanity can vanish overnight. Grian had not always had parrot features. They were something he had to grow into and accept. Still, every time that line gets tampered with, one has to ask themselves what they're becoming, and whether they'll still be themselves after. It's easier with an admin who can check your code and reassure you that you're still a person. 

Grian hasn't got that now. The sight of some kind of creature violently expressing itself all over his body without any warning feels like he's losing something important, some vital root to himself slipping away, but with luck, it’s already progressed as far as it’s going to.

He can cope with this. It’ll just be unpleasant. And as Ren already said, he won’t be doing it alone. Even if he were to lose player status, Ren’s promise ensures they’ll still try to save him. 

He's okay. 

Reluctantly, Grian loosens himself from around Ren's soft flannel shirt and Ren lets him, setting him gently back against the pillows. 

"Everything good now, G?" Ren asks anxiously. "If you need a few more minutes…"

"I'm okay for now," Grian says. "I think I'm still just… processing." He runs his knuckles over the feathers under his eye, trying to adjust his mental picture of himself. It would have been easier if Grian had been aware when the changes started like he was the first time. 

“Yeah?” Ren says, resting his chin on his palm. 

Grian pauses. “What were you doing outside, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be taking it easy?” 

“Uhh- don’t tell Doc,” Ren blurts. 

Grian feels a bit of a smirk curl on his face. “Oh, that doesn’t sound like resting.”

“The good doctor is a worrywart , I’m well on the road to recovery, dude.” 

“Yeah? Mind telling me what you were doing up two nights ago?” Grian pokes. “Looked like you were in a lot of pain then.” 

“... You were awake for that.” Ren looks disgruntled. 

“Uh-huh.” Grian starts to brush aside his fringe and flinches, remembering the fur. His cheekiness fades and hesitantly he touches his ears. Something about this feels gross. Warped. These aren’t meant to be a part of his body. 

His wings had felt sort of creepy in the beginning as well, but Grian had liked the idea of them. They were welcome. These are not. 

“-Alright, you win! I was working on a wheat farm.” 

Grian startles. His conversation with Ren had left his mind. 

“You know Doc’s gonna see that? It won’t matter what I tell him,” Grian points out. He could have guessed that was what Ren was doing though. He smelled it. 

That’s… 

“I think that depends on how wrapped up Doc is in his new project,” Ren points out reasonably. 

Grian smiles a little. “Project or no, he’s going to notice eventually and I will have no sympathy for you.” 

Ren shakes his head, playfully offended. “Wow. Heartless G. I’m just trying to bring home bread to our poor, starving family and you’re leaving me to Doc’s fury?” 

“He told you to stay off that leg. -I thought we already had a farm too?” Grian points out. 

“We had, like, a few patches of wheat around a puddle. I think you can agree that improvements needed to be made,” Ren insists. 

Grian lifts an eyebrow. “Improvements can be made to our cabin as well, but you don’t see me out of bed.” 

Ren scoffs. “The second you can physically do that, I’m holding this convo over your head, dude. You just remember that when you’re so bored out of your skull you’re crawling across the floor to steal the door or something.” 

Grian laughs. “But there’s nothing to doooo !” 

“Exactly. Don’t complain about my wheat farm.” 

Something moves under the blankets. Grian freezes.

“Ren,” He says. “What was that?” 

The other man winces, teeth clenched. “G, my brother, you gotta promise you won’t freak out.” 

“Tell me that’s a cat or something? Ren ?!” Grian squeaks. 

“...So you know how you have the ears?” Ren starts, voice taught like he already regrets saying anything. “You... maybe have a tail as well?”

I have a tail. 

"...Grian?"

I have a tail. I have a tail I have a tail On top of everything else I have a

He feels lightheaded again. The room is much too small and his skin feels like wet clothes, sticky and itchy. 

Grian almost moves to drop his face into his hands before remembering the fur and the ears he'll be touching if he does that. Instead, he half rolls over and buries his face into the pillow. 

He screams. 

Chapter Text

“Yep, just let it out.” Ren awkwardly pats him on the back. 

The door opens. “ Ren -” Doc starts, sounding frustrated. 

“Kinda dealing with a crisis here, Doc!” Ren snaps, jerking his head toward Grian. When he looks back at the man screaming into his pillow, Ren startles and grabs Grian’s hands as they rip at the fluff on his neck. “Let’s not pull that out, shall we? That just looks painful and not good to do at all !” 

He hears Doc move closer, asking apologetically, “Is he alright?” 

“Not really,” Ren grunts. 

Grian finally comes up for air, panting and flushed. “This is fine . I’m fine,” Grian manages. 

“You sound too much like you got kicked in the nether bits to be fine ,” Ren argues. 

“It’s not fine,” Grian agrees, shaking his head. “ None of this is fine .” There’s a number of things he looks like he wants to express, but it all comes out in a jumble of noise. “This-! Aaauueegh !! This is too much for one day!!!”

“Yeah, I know man.” Ren gives him another pat on the shoulder. “We didn’t know how to drop the news, but I guess we should have probably eased you into it, huh?” 

“This about-?” Doc circles a finger around his face. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Ah!” Doc nods. “Yeah, I can see how that’s a nasty shock.” 

“I just got done with dying,” Grian says stiffly, one hand hovering over his face. “I’m already dealing with what may be permanent frostbite damage. I can’t get out of bed. The server is still a mess. I did not need this as well!” 

"I know dude. I'm sorry." 

“Do either of you have any idea of what I’m turning into at least?!” Grian pushes. His eyes flick between them, wide and even more intensely golden with his pupils constricted. 

“We have a… few theories,” Ren says, glancing back at the creeper. Or at least, one of them does.  “Doc?” 

“Uhm, it’s going to be something arctic, probably,” Doc says. “I was thinking this is a case of player adaption since you were stuck in that loop for so long. It’s hard to say because, at first glance, it looks like it’s something in the… cat or dog family? Something mammal.” He scratches his chin. “But… then it’s also affecting your feathers. That could just be, um, the pigment from the fur affecting how your feathers grow, I guess? Not sure about that. But I’m starting to think it may actually be two different animal genes showing up.” 

“You think it’s two?” Ren prods. “I know we mentioned that as, like, a possibility, but is there more evidence?” 

Doc nods. “Yeah, man. See-” He moves around Ren to kneel by the bed. “Do you mind stretching out your wings for a second, G?” 

Ren sees Grian struggle to push them out from against the pillows and leans him forward. Next to him, Doc fiddles with the goggle piece attached to his mechanical eye and turns Grian’s wings to display what he’s pointing out. “There’s an actual pattern going on with these. The dark spots here don’t show up in any of the fur I’ve seen, so whatever is causing the fur doesn’t actually have a pattern, while whatever new bird genes you got, does.” 

“It looks like Hedwig,” Grian says quietly. 

“It does look kind of like that, doesn’t it?” Ren agrees. “Maybe you’re part barn owl!”

“Snowy owl,” Grian corrects. 

That’s a good sign, right? Ren wants to hope it is. “Yeah, that.” If Grian has any attachment with his hybrid roots, it may be an easier pill to swallow. 

After a few moments, Grian frowns. "Hey, Doc? Would you mind helping me unfold it all the way?" 

Doc blinks. “Uh, I can do that, yeah.” He stands up and walks a few feet away, carefully straightening the joints as he does. It shivers under its own weight even with Doc’s support, and the soft whssh of feather over feather fills the silence like a gasp. 

The sight hits Ren like a punch to the face. 

He’d known they were damaged, that much was visible even while they were folded, but the true extent leaves him cold. 

There are massive bare patches just barely sprouting the owl feathers over thin, wrinkled skin, riddled with the broken stems of Grian’s former coat scabbed a dead-looking color as if they’re waiting to fall out. The soft parts on the surviving few are mangled and stripped so badly they resemble long, needle-thin bones that stick out from the limbs in a sickening way. 

They’re ruined. 

He feels the rise and fall of Grian’s chest go choppy against him. Grian’s head slumps over against his shoulder. 

“Grian?!” Ren calls, suddenly afraid. 

“Just- … Just ‘sec,” Grian croaks and gasps. “Shoul-... n’t have. Knew- ...upset me.” 

“You okay?!” 

“Jus’... need to… breathe.” 

Ren listens anxiously as Grian paces himself, sucking in air and letting it out in a practiced way over and over. With every dip in Grian's mood, the smell of stress has gotten worse, and now the air reeks of it. Ren wants to stand up and pace. An itch burns in his joints and crawls up his throat behind his teeth that he can barely contain.

What’s wrong with him? He’s been around upset people plenty of times in the past, and while he may be a little sensitive to it, it doesn’t usually get under his skin this deeply.  

Ren rubs light circles on Grian's back, keeping well away from his wings, and matches his breathing to Grian’s pace as if somehow it will help. Out of the side of his eye, he sees Doc slowly fold the wing back against Grian’s spine.

When he’s finally recovered enough to speak, Grian says hoarsely, “They’ll recover. M-my wings, they’ll… yeah.” 

"... Really?" Ren says, glancing back at the limb. He doesn’t mean to sound doubtful, not when Grian’s obviously the expert in wings here, but they seem too far gone. 

Grian nods, swallowing. “It’s feathers. Nothing’s broken. It's just. Too much right now, and I knew that. I shouldn't have checked them, but I wanted to know. At least it's over with now, and I know the damage. I'll molt all the bad feathers, and they'll grow back. Even if they're… different." His voice breaks at the end.

“Well, that’s-! That’s alright,” Ren says, nervously optimistic. “It could be worse, I mean?” 

Grian shuts his eyes, nodding. “It could be worse. Hard to believe, but it could be worse.” He sounds wrung out. 

“Maybe you should rest,” Doc says a second before Ren opens his mouth. 

Grian sighs. “Alright.”

Gently, he lays Grian back down, making sure he’s comfortable, before limping to the other side of the cabin and sitting down with a sigh. At least Ren knows Grian will be out again quickly if his sleeping pattern from the last few weeks holds up.

He’d been too focused on Grian from the moment he got back inside, but Ren hadn’t actually finished the farm. The pain had gotten to be too much to push through, even with periodic breaks. His plan to sit down the second he was back in hadn’t exactly panned out, and it feels like fire is traveling up his leg with a vengeful streak. 

Ren drops his face in his hands. 

They knew Grian would be freaked out by his new features, but Ren hadn't anticipated it going that badly. No one really batted an eye when someone changed on the hermitcraft server, not even in drastic ways, and Ren hadn’t stopped to think about why this was different. Weeks of taking care of the guy and not once did it occur to Ren to say something to try and brace him for it. 

It’s stupid in hindsight. He’s been focused on their injuries’ tauntingly slow recovery-- as if there’s not a shred of regen magic in the food they eat-- and Doc coming back exhausted and jumpy instead, ignoring the issue literally looking him in the face every day. I’ve got to do better, he resolves silently. 

He hears Doc stop in front of him and wearily looks up. “What’s happenin’ Doc?” 

Doc tilts his head. “You alright, man?” 

Ren straightens. “Yeah. Peachy.” 

The other man sits down next to him, which surprises Ren. “... Why do you keep walking around on that leg?” Doc asks. There’s more curiosity than accusation in his voice, and Ren can’t find it in him to dodge the question like normal. 

“There’s so much that needs doing, dude. You’re trying to do the work of three people when I know you’ve got your own stuff goin’ on, and… the farther we get from how we started the better, y’know? I want to be done with all of that nightmare.”

“But you’re setting back your healing, Ren. That will put us back more, you realize that?” Doc says slowly. 

Ren scowls. “Believe me, Doc, I’m well aware, but I can survive a little pain and some extra time resting later.”

“Didn’t we already go over there being no urgent tasks, man?” 

“Yeah, funny thing about that is you’re working like we are on a deadline. Why don’t you tell me about that?” Ren lifts an eyebrow pointedly. 

Something in Doc’s face hardens. “I’m just working like normal.” 

“You’re working like you aren’t blind in one eye. You don’t take breaks either man, you just go go go and come back and crash, then you’re out again as soon as possible. That’s not normal.” 

“I’m getting things done.”

“But it’s not urgent, right?” Ren asks. “Or is it?”

Doc scowls. “Ren.” 

“Just say you’re avoiding us!!” Ren snaps, throwing his arms up. “I know you need space, but you can at least have the decency of saying it to my face so I’m not sitting here like a, a, a housewife waiting for her husband to get back from another “ business trip ” with his hot coworker!!”

Doc sputters. “ What? ”

“I’m worried about you, my dude!!” Ren emphasizes. “You’re running yourself into the ground, and being alone for hours is seriously messin’ with my brain! So if you want me to stop working, I need you to be here more. We’re okay right now, aren’t we?” 

The other man sighs, looking away. “I… I don’t enjoy seeing you and Grian hurt,” he grits. “And me being around isn’t helpful. One wrong move while I’m too close to either of you guys’ beds and everything we’ve got falls apart. So… I was thinking I could kill two birds with one stone and get us to the point where we have a brewing stand, y’know? Some way to get actual regen.”

That’s actually really sweet. Frustrating, but sweet. “Love your face man, and I love the idea, but I feel like trying to grind that out fast is gonna cost us more than it’s gonna help. You’d have to go through the nether alone, and I hate to repeat it, but you are half-blind right now and we have one piece of diamond armor. It isn’t going to end well,” Ren argues. Hesitantly, he adds, “Also, you can tell me I’m wrong here, but I think that you going out all the time may be pushin’ your stress levels higher dude. Might be makin’ your creeper instincts antsier.”

Doc’s face goes sour. 

“I’m just sayin’! Don’t shoot the messenger, man!” Ren waves his hands over his chest. 

“Don’t you want to heal Grian?” Doc asks, agitation in his voice. 

“I’d freakin’ love to. But you can’t tell me to stay down if that’s what we’re aiming for!” 

“Can one of you just tell the other to sleep on the couch please?” Grian’s voice startles them. “You are less than twenty feet away, and I was under the impression I was meant to be resting.” 

Ren’s ears fold sheepishly. “Sorry about that G. We can do this later-” 

“Grian, would you rather we work on getting potions as quickly as possible, or should we take our time?” Doc asks. 

Grian blinks blearily at him. “I… I think we should steer away from unnecessarily risky things. I don’t want either of you glitching in respawn and not coming back.”

“I think respawn is working fine. Every time I’ve died since I reset my spawn, I’ve come back to my bed. It was just the original spawn that broke,” Doc says.

Grian still looks unsettled by the idea. “How close are we to making a potion? Do we have any of the ingredients?”

“N-no… Not yet.” 

Ren scrubs his face. “Dude-” 

“This is why I want to work towards it!” Doc says. “Having no way to heal quickly is dangerous, especially when both of you are already hurt. It’s just a matter of time before something happens. What if we’re all out of commission at the same time?”

“Look, I get your point man, but you’re much more likely to get hurt in the nether, or while you’re out caving or something! What happens if you’re injured and you can’t get back to us and we can’t get to you?” Ren asks. “You can’t even guarantee that you’ll be in a state to force a respawn, Doc!”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea either,” Grian agrees. “There are too many unknowns and I just feel in my gut that something’s going to go wrong.” 

Doc sweeps a hand through his hair in an agitated way. “You don’t get it!”

“What are we not getting?!” Ren asks. 

The goggle piece is off right now and Ren can faintly see the square pupil in Doc’s dark eye go narrow. Doc’s nose wrinkles and he holds his prosthetic arm close to his chest. 

“We’re running out of time,” he says finally. 

Ren frowns. “I’m… confused.” 

“My arm. It’s breaking down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to fix it or not.”

Chapter Text

The chilled air stings his face and digs through his layers, but Ren pays it no mind. 

Doc shuts the door quietly as he can behind him. 

“What do you mean, your arm is breaking down, dude? You don’t just drop something like that out of nowhere!” Ren demands. 

“It wasn’t that bad for a while! I thought it was just minor glitches; they only started getting worse a few days ago,” Doc admits. 

Ren squeezes the bridge of his nose. 

“I didn’t want to worry you for no reason,” Doc adds quieter. 

Ren looks up sharply at him. “Well, that sure as freak didn’t work out, huh?” 

“Look, it’s still manageable-” 

“What’s been happening? What are the glitches, Doc?” 

Reluctantly, Doc slips part of his jacket off, holding out his mechanical arm. “You see the fingers twitching?” 

“Yeah?” 

“That started the day I got Grian back,” Doc tells him. “They were, ah, sporadic at first. Now they’re almost constant. That’s the smaller problem.” 

Ren takes his wrist. “And the bigger problem?” 

“I've lost most of the sensation in it, so there's a problem with the connection to my nerves. Sometimes it doesn't respond, or it has a delayed response. That could be an issue with the sensors?” Doc suggests, slowly opening and closing his hand as if testing it. “I can probably take it apart, but I don’t know what sort of repairs I can do with our stuff.”

With a sigh that picks up gravel in his throat, Ren complains, “And you keep going on about me making my leg worse. You’re just as bad!” 

“My arm isn’t going to heal. There’s a good chance it will just keep deteriorating until I can’t use it at all, Ren,” Doc says firmly. “I want to get all the use that I can out of it.” 

“Is there nothing we can do? What do we need?” 

“I won’t know until I see the damage, but a prosthetic is a lot more… ah, sophisticated and delicate than most redstone tends to be,” Doc says. “They aren’t generally built or repaired in vanilla survival worlds.”

Ren stares at him. “So is that it? You’re just going to lose your arm? Why are you so freakin’ calm about this, dude?!”

Doc shrugs. “Ehh, I’ve got experience working with just one. It’s not ideal, but I think I can manage.” 

“You think you can manage?” Ren echoes in disbelief. 

The creeper nods and Ren feels the stress in his body rise. 

He trusts the guy blindly with anything Doc’s shown his skill in. The man’s a genius. He’ll normally step back if Doc shows enough conviction in something turning out right even outside of that realm because Ren has a lot of faith in him. But right now, it feels like Doc isn’t getting the point . The world outside is rife with opportunities for an accident, even for a completely healthy, able-bodied individual. Ren himself is proof of that. It would be one thing if Doc was handling himself fine despite all his mechanical parts breaking down, but he isn’t. Ren can see he isn’t in the way he flinches and swings his head to keep the source of noises in his limited vision, or in how often he respawns still high strung and smelling like gunpowder. He’s getting worse.

“No.” Ren startles himself with how adamant he sounds. “No, Doc. Screw the stupid potions, screw going through the nether- Dude, enough!!”

“Ren-”

“No!!” He snarls and Doc flinches. A low rumbling escaping his chest gets his attention and Ren forces himself to take a step back, breathing hard. He’s a reasonable guy. Not an animal. He can make his point with words.

Doc watches him carefully, the fur on his neck and arms slightly raised. When he seems satisfied that Ren’s in control of himself, he takes the pause. “I’m thinking about the future.”

“Doc,” Ren stresses. “I’m gonna need you to shut up for a sec, here. I get that the potions are important, but that’s really high risk for not enough payoff, m’kay? We aren’t going to be able to brew very much even if we get our hands on everything we need. If we have to find some type of regen, I’d much rather we go for apples and gold, because as soon as we find one oak sapling, we’ll be able to get more apples relatively safely. The gold will be difficult, but we can both manage a little mining and I like our odds better in a strip mine than around a bunch of ghasts and blazes, y’know what I’m saying?” 

The other man still frowns, but he relents with an, “I guess. It won’t do the job as well, but it’s something.” 

“Now, more pressingly on my mind , is how you’re handling things,” Ren says. “I know you hate talking about it, but we’re all hybrids here, we can have a freakin’ conversation.” 

Doc’s lip curls. “... alright?”

“You need space, you need to work, great, fine. But you just running from us all the time isn’t dealing with the problem, dude! Like it or not, managing your own mental health is part of keeping us safe! You’ve got all the safety precautions covered, what we need is legitimately for you to freakin’ chill !!” Ren emphasis with his hands. “ If you spending hours gettin’ resources, building things, and fighting mobs is winding you up the way I’ve seen you for the last week, you’ve got to change what you’re doing. Take a break, bring me along, find another method-- I don’t care. Just-...”

“Alright, alright,” Doc scowls. “I… I get it. Maybe I got too wrapped up. But if I’m going to listen to you, I need you to listen to me so you can actually heal.” 

“Right. Fine, I’ll stay off the leg!”

“I mean it , man! You said that last time!!” Doc points out reproachfully. 

“I- I did. That’s true.” He claps his hands together and presses them pensively to his lips. “I can’t really avoid it when I’m taking care of the G-man. Like, I still have to move around the cabin.”

Doc glares. “There’s a difference between that and building a wheat farm.” 

Ren sighs, his breath visible in the air. “ Yeah , I know. No more stupid projects like that, I think we can both agree to that. It would help though if I had more productive things to do than sort chests and watch Grian sleep like a creep.” His leg protests loudly and he finds himself regretting moving the conversation out here. It would have been worse if he hadn’t grabbed his cane on the way out. Ren wonders how Grian is doing. He’d looked pretty bad, pale and overwrought before they’d walked out, which was precisely why Ren wanted to do this away from him. 

“Hmm… I’ll have to think on it,” Doc says, scratching his chin. “I guess I’ll have time to come up with something since I’ll be around for the next few days to take apart my arm…” 

“Oh?”

Doc grunts affirmatively. “May as well if I’m… taking a break .” 

Ren smiles. “Seriously, thank you, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah. It might be good to be around anyway now that Grian’s actually awake. Not sure if I’ll be any help, but…” he shrugs. 

Ren shifts, opening his mouth to reply, and staggers for a moment when his leg doesn’t hold up as well as he expected. Doc starts forward but Ren waves him off. “Fine. I’m fine. Let’s just… call this done for now and go back in, alright?”

He can feel Doc’s frown as he limps past, pulling open the door to a rush of warmth. 

To his surprise, Grian turns to look at them as they walk in, still fighting to stay awake in spite of everything that’s happened in the last 30-ish minutes. Ren changes course, flopping next to him with a groan. 

It looks like he has something to say, and from his light shivering, the constant in and out between he and Doc has let in too much cold. Ren doesn’t plan to get back up, but given how much time he’s spent in Grian’s bed while he was recovering, he doesn’t think the other will mind too much. They’ve officially passed the “cuddle your bros” stage of friendship.

“Sup my dude?” Ren prods. 

“Is everything okay?” Grian asks. 

Ren nods, tipping his sunglasses to better meet Grian’s eyes. “Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

“But Doc’s arm…?” 

“It’s fine. Well, probably not actually, but we’ll manage. Doc’s good like that.”

Grian searches his face before relaxing, his eyes drooping tiredly. “Okay.” 

Ren pulls the blankets over himself and drops an arm around Grian’s shoulders, feeling his body still. His tail drifts over Grian’s waist. 

The smell he associated with Grian before is different now. Moving the sheets released it into the air better and Ren puzzles over it. It’s mustier, and a little bit floral. He swears it’s familiar, but he just can’t put his finger on where he’s smelt it before. Maybe if he could, he’d be able to figure out the last animal that Grian’s taking after. 

Exhausted as he is, Ren’s mind is still too wired to sleep so he takes out his communicator and flips it on, scanning the messages. There’s a lot less death going on now. Impulse, TFC, and Etho are still dying regularly, Etho typically voluntarily to take advantage of his randomized spawn, but it seems like even their messages are slowing down. 

“Looks like Etho’s coming back around,” Ren comments, counting the notifications from Etho drowned whilst trying to escape Guardian . “Maybe he can help with your arm?” 

Doc shrugs. “I think it’s going to be beyond even him, but… hm, an extra hand couldn’t hurt. Who knows? Maybe he’ll have a workaround I haven’t thought of.” 

“If anyone can beat the limitations of a glitchy vanilla world, it’ll be you and Etho. I believe that wholeheartedly man.” 

Doc gives an amused heh and starts looking through their chests, right arm still held awkwardly. 

Ren keeps scrolling and slowly something begins to catch his attention. Something odd. 

Impulse’s death messages have slowed down, and a lot of them are about guardians. 

All of them are about guardians. 

Not drowning. 

He starts to jerk upright before remembering Grian next to him. “Doc?”

Doc turns sharply. “Hm?” 

Ren runs his eyes over the chat again to make sure. “Uhhh. Impulse. Something is up with him. Possibly.”

“What does that mean?” 

“Well… what does it mean when a person just stops drowning?” 

At the silence Doc gives him, Ren assures him, “He’s still in the ocean monument I believe. He just… isn’t drowning.” 

“What?” Doc starts over and hesitates. Ren stretches his comm out for Doc to take. “Huh… well, the monuments can’t generate with any natural air pockets, so it isn’t as if he found a place to breathe. I guess he must have created a space somehow.”

“I… guess? But even then he should probably still be running of air if he swims too far away from it, right? It just seems weird that there isn’t a single drowning notification that I can find,” Ren says. 

Doc shrugs. “We can only make theories, man. We won’t know what’s happening until the Etho Express does.”

Ren takes back his communicator. “ Yeah , I know. Imagine if none of us had ended up with a spawn like Etho’s. None of us with any idea what’s going on, no one telling us where the other hermits are or giving us updates. Just a total mystery.” 

“Ohh, that would be an even bigger nightmare,” Doc agrees. He turns back to the chest and pulls out some iron. “I think I’d wonder if the server was rigged, like a trap or something. I’d be a lot more worried about Xisuma too. Like, ‘why is he not fixing this? Is he even conscious? Did his comm get stolen?’ That sort of thing.” He rifles around some more. “Speaking of Etho, we forgot to ask him about where the rest of the hermits are last time. You think he’s found all of them by now?” 

“I hope so. I’m not sure if he would have figured out where I was if I hadn’t ended up so close to you and Grian. I did start traveling pretty quickly. Sounds like some other peeps had the same idea.” 

He keeps scrolling, but Ren isn’t really paying attention to the chat anymore. Doc keeps collecting what looks like redstone supplies out of the chests, humming and muttering to himself as he does, and eventually, Ren’s brain catches up to his body. He shuts off the communicator and closes his eyes.  

Chapter Text

He hears prey. 

Without any conscious command, his ears perk and his talons twitch– fur and feathers prickling. He sniffs but doesn’t catch anything that smells of food. Instead, something bad is in the air that wrinkles his nose and sets him on edge, shaking off the sleep fogging his mind. 

Grian hears the sound again and realizes it's an animal whine, not the squeak of… something else as he’d unconsciously interpreted. 

He blinks slowly. 

The room is dark and it’s still clearly night, with no light from the fenced gap by the door serving as a window, yet Grian’s eyes adjust easily. It’s still unnerving, even more so now that he knows why. Ren is sat up, hunched over next to him. The blankets have been shoved off on his side.

“Ren?” 

The other man swerves to look at him. His glasses are off and without them in the way, Grian notices the bags and wrinkles etched into his face by exhaustion, highlighted by the soft flickers of light from the fireplace. 

"What the heck are you doing up, my dude?!" Ren hisses softly. 

Grian scrubs his eyes. "I heard something that sounded like a dying dog and it woke me. Is your leg bothering you again?" It's impossible to see from his angle, still flat on his back. 

"I'll be quieter," Ren promises. 

" That - that's not what the issue is!!" Grian huffs. "Tell me what's going on. Is it worse?" 

"Uhh…" Ren shifts something and makes a face. "Maybe. It's hard to tell. It's definitely more swollen than usual?" 

The pins and needles in Grian’s hands ache sympathetically. “Should we wake Doc up and get him to help?”

“No!” Ren flinches at his own volume, glancing over at Doc’s side of the cabin. Grian can hear blankets shift, then quiet. “...no,” Ren rasps. “That is definitely not necessary. I’ll be good in like 10, 20 minutes. It always chills out eventually.” 

“Ren, it sounds really bad. You know Doc won’t mind checking it.” 

“Doc needs to sleep,” Ren whispers before his face twitches and crumples. He rocks slowly, grunting in pain.

“...Are you planning on staying up all night in pain, then?" Grian asks when Ren's heavy breathing starts to calm. 

"Dude, there isn't anything Doc can do for it- besides, y'know, more ice." Tenderly, he rubs part of the leg, gritting his teeth. 

Grian watches him wince and shudder, worrying his lip with his teeth. It feels alien with the new longer canines jabbing in ways he isn’t expecting, reminding him again that he’s different now, but Ren’s pain and how to help keep his attention. When it comes down to it, there’s little more that Grian can do besides talk at the moment. “Do you want me to try distracting you?”

“I’d prefer if you went back to sleep,” Ren whispers. 

“You understand why that’s not gonna happen right?” Grian says. “Would you go back to bed when one of your friends is just about in tears from pain?”

“... That is a fair point. Ok, just- don’t wake up Doc.” 

We’ll see about that, Grian thinks, glancing back at the man in question. He may be willing to keep his voice down, but it would be a lie to claim he doesn’t feel the urge to poke a sleeping creeper. “So. Uh, do you like cats?” 

Ren huffs a short laugh. “I’m… really more of a dog person .” 

Grian muffles a chuckle. “Right, duh. Silly question.” 

“Kind of, but actually I do have a dog back on my home server,” Ren says. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, he’s a real little guy. Doesn’t like loud noises, which I can-” 

Ren cuts off with a sharp wheeze of pain, hunching again.

“Ren?!” 

“- just… just moved, accidentally…” Another whine rises out of him involuntarily. 

Grian fights against his shaky muscles to try and at least sit up. “I’m waking Doc,” he decides. A shiver comes over him at the sensation of someone close.

“I’m already up,” Doc says. His voice is lower and growlier from sleep, Grian notices absently, lost immediately to the swish of something against his legs startling him. That’s the… tail. Right. He hadn’t forgotten that bit, he’s just addressing it at a better moment. Such as, not 4 in the morning. Doc moves around to Ren’s side while he’s distracted. 

“Let me see.” 

Blankets are moved, letting in some of the chill in the room. 

Ren looks up at Doc. “It wasn’t like this earlier. I swear I wouldn’t have pushed it this badly if I noticed, man.”

Doc’s eyes go over the injury.

“...Dude?” Ren prompts hesitantly. 

“We already talked about it. I’m just… mm, trying to figure out what to do.” He gives a glance to Grian clumsily squirming over the pillow and pulls him upright. 

“Thank you,” Grian tells him, leaning to see the leg. Doc mutters about grabbing something and walks back to his side of the cabin. 

It is more swollen, as Ren admitted, and still splotchy with fading bruising that’s speckled with red. It’s also flushed pinker than the rest of him. 

Doc comes back clicking his goggle piece over his eye, kneeling down with a click in his knees. 

“Don’t touch it!” Ren hurries to say. “Please. It's like, really really tender right now, dude, and I will probably cry.” 

“What does that… goggle thing do?” Grian asks, tapping by his eye. He’d wondered earlier while they were doing his wing inspection. 

Doc twists some parts of it. “I’m not doing anything yet, man, calm down! And-” he adds with a glance to Grian. “I’m far-sighted. Normally this is all automatic with my mechanical eye, so I’m glad I bothered with putting  manual adjustments on it.”

He gives the leg a second look-over. “I think you have probably undone most of the healing from the last couple of weeks. I warned you about that.” 

Ren nods. “Yeah, you did, and I did it anyway.”

“I hope you don’t end up with a permanent limp or something,” Doc sighs. “How does it feel?” 

“Like my bone’s on fire!” Ren says through his teeth. 

“Am I right to assume you can’t move it?”

“I did-” He breathes out sharply. “- a little. At first. It made it worse.” 

Doc nods thoughtfully, scratching his chin. “Grian, are you moving around very much? Like, tossing and turning when you sleep?” 

“I don’t think I could if I wanted to. It makes me tired just turning on my side,” Grian says. 

“Ok. That’s actually- good right now. Ren needs to avoid jostling it at all, the inflammation is really bad. I’ll bring over your pillow so we can raise it up.” 

Ren looks dejected by the idea, ears folded low against his head. “... can I get some ice?” 

“Yeah, I can grab some from outside,” Doc says, turning to the door. “It won’t be nice waking up all the way from the cold, but I don’t think I’ll be going back to sleep soon anyway.” 

“Sorry man,” Ren says with a wince. 

“No, no. It’s fine! I would have suggested it myself.” 

As the door swings shut behind him, Grian stiffens. 

Ice, from outside. 

That’s where they get ice, after all, and they are still in a cold region. Grian just hadn't thought of it like the ice outside, which is silly considering how long he just spent around ice and snow.

Doc’s bringing that in here and giving it to Ren, who is currently within elbow’s reach.

It just… doesn’t feel very benign anymore the way ice used to. He knows, after all, just how ruthless ice can be, killing slowly just by proximity, as inescapable as poison. The thick wooden walls, blankets and fireplace have lulled him into a sense of security, trapping the cold out where it can’t get him. 

It’s dangerous. What if it touches him by accident? Grian imagines the stabbing cold that makes blood hurt and bones ache coming back and his body gives a violent shiver. 

“Ah! Are you getting cold G?” Ren worries. “Sorry, we’ve been moving the blankets and letting the wind in, of course you’re cold! Even the fire’s dying! I’m failin’ my cuddle buddy duties!” 

Grian shakes his head with a stern frown. “Ren, your leg is in immense amounts of pain- why are you worried about me being cold !? I’m not going to catch my death under three blankets !”

Ren laughs. “I guess you’re right. If you’re sure, man.” 

The door cuts off their bickering with Doc walking in with a bucket. 

Grian can’t possibly feel it from the other side of the cabin, but he shivers again anyway. A whole bucket of cold, inside the base. 

It will melt away quickly , he tells himself. In an hour or two it’ll just be a puddle. He’s being ridiculous; Grian’s had enough reexposure to the weather from his basemates passing in and out of the cabin. Ren’s hopped in his bed plenty of times with freezing hands and feet, so a snowball’s worth of slush shouldn’t be a bother. 

He keeps quiet as Doc wraps Ren’s leg, then folds in the ice around the first layer with a second, tucking the ends of the fabric in. 

“I think it won’t make too much mess like that,” Doc decides, stepping away from his handiwork. 

“Is it helping?” Grian asks. 

Ren sighs as he lays back down. “I think I’m going numb down there at least.” His jaws part with a yawn, snapping closed with an audible thock. “Thanks for… stayin’ up with me, my dudes.” 

“Sleep is for the weak anyway,” Doc says, a smirk curling at the side of his mouth. 

Ren gives a disapproving grunt before closing his eyes. His face is still pale and pinched, but maybe it will be enough to let him rest. 

_

With Ren no longer awake to notice, Doc glances down and frowns at something at his feet. He bends, then straightens holding Ren’s cane. When Grian catches his eye, Doc motions to a few areas with a claw. 

There are knicks trailing down from the top to the center that Grian first mistakes as superficial scuffing before recognizing the crescent pattern. They’re teeth marks.

It’s a bit odd to see on Ren’s cane, Grian will agree. A hybrid with a chewing urge isn’t remarkable, Grian himself has ruined a few pens when he got too distracted. However, this looks… unchecked? It’s a lot worse than “distracted chewing”, and Grian hasn’t seen him redirect it anywhere better than the thing helping him walk. 

It seems a little not good, at least. Doc quietly sets it down and starts drifting around the cabin instead of going back to bed the way Grian assumed he would. 

“Doc? Are you alright?” Grian checks in a whisper. 

Doc glances away from the window. “Yeah, I’m fine. Hm, just making sure things are okay out there and whatnot. This world has me uneasy, I keep thinking about monsters getting too close to the base, even though we lit things up.”

“I’m surprised,” Grian says. “You don’t seem bothered at all.”

“I am, I just don’t care as much about injuries I guess. Like, I’m already half metal, man. If I have to go replacing more bits, that’s fine.” Doc shrugs, glancing back through the fencing. “I know how to adjust to that. But this world was supposed to be vanilla, right? Safe for anyone to come to and build up because it follows, ah, common rules. But clearly, it doesn’t . It has its own rules. I just don’t know how much is different.”

Grian wiggles back into laying down with a sigh. Laying on his back probably isn’t doing much to help with his wings healing. “Well, you’ll figure them out, right? You’re an expert in breaking the world’s laws.”

“Rules are hard to break if you don’t understand them first. Dangerous too.” One clawed hand comes up to curl around his chin as Doc scowls at something outside. “Go back to sleep, I’m fine!” 

_

Frozen breath pours from his mouth, floating away to join the rest of the fog around him. 

Grian wraps his arms around himself, searching for the warm blankets, but all he finds are handfuls of the thin, icy jumper he’s wearing. 

The cold feels like needles burrowing under his skin in droves. His teeth chatter as he looks around, but there’s nothing. Not even a cliff edge. Just pure white in every direction. 

“No…” He says, spinning around, eyes wide. “No, no- you have to be-...” 

Grian swallows. 

The cold gets worse the longer he stands there, ferociously cutting through his body. His hands and feet are already numb and it crawls up his limbs with an unnatural speed. 

Grian starts walking, snow crunching under his shoes, then hopping as the snow climbs higher, faster. I have to get out. I have to get away, he thinks. He’s done it before, it’s possible, he just has to hurry. 

He tries to let go of his jumper and tuck his hands under his armpits, just to save them a little longer, but when he pulls away with one hand, there’s a sickening snap. 

Still curled in the knitting is a finger, grey-black, frozen stuck in place. 

He stares. 

His vision swims, spinning and blurring. 

GET IT OFF. GET IT OFF !!

Frenzied, he beats at the front of his jumper, uncoordinated as he swings and claws. 

He has to. He has to. 

He’s missing a finger-

Grian stumbles forward blindly, nearly falling over. It’s getting him, he has to get away.  

He feels that snap happen in his shoe and his throat closes up. Grian can’t breathe. There’s a toe rattling around in his shoe. He has to get away. It’s stealing him, piece by piece. 

He can’t move his hands. He can’t move his hands or they’ll break . 

Grian stumbles again and swings his arm out. His wrist cracks and something falls in the snow. 

A scream crawls out of his throat against his will. He pants and pushes one leg at a time. Don’t look. Don’t look or it’ll be real, and Grian can’t handle it being real. He has to get away.

“B-breat-the, ju-... brea, breathe, ” he hisses to himself. “Please. Just. I h-have… please-” 

He can’t feel his face. His lips are senseless as they fumble against each other, muddling his words. His body aches and burns. The snow is getting so heavy to fight through. 

Grian feels the next one before it happens, slamming his foot down wrong and twisting it to try and stay up. It shatters like glass. 

“ Nooo !” he moans, gasping. The fingers on his other hand chip off as he blindly fights to pull himself together. 

Grian’s running out of body parts. It’s a sickening realization, knowing in his gut that the frostbite will keep climbing, snapping bits off. Snapping his arms and legs off. 

Maybe his nose and lips will come off too. 

He reaches up to check for his ears. Where are his ears? 

Where are his EARS?!

The next gasp for air hits his chest like a bullet. 

Grian’s hot. He’s cold. He’s shaking. The walls are brown, brown, and not white. Wood. 

There are chests and furnaces and the fire crackles from Ren’s side of the bed. Ren. Cabin. He’s in the cabin. 

He’s in the cabin. 

Grian shudders, nails digging through the blankets without mercy. The sweat cooling on his body is blistering, itchy, and freezing. He’s safe. He has fingers. 

A nightmare. 

A retch twists his stomach but Grian claws it back. The last thing he needs right now is to choke on his own vomit. Instead, he breathes in through his nose, savoring the overwhelming smells around him. Spruce, charcoal, wool, dog, all chokingly strong compared to the smell of wind and ice. He flails to turn himself over and worm his way against Ren’s warm shoulder, sighing. 

Breathe in. 

Breathe out. 

Chapter Text

Doc’s eyes burn when he blinks. 

The world is cast in grey as the light slowly filters back into the darkness, not yet blooming with the colors of dawn over the snow, but it won’t be much longer. The view is soured by the recognition that Doc has stood here, locked on the window, for hours longer than he meant to.

I’ll just make sure everything is quiet outside, he remembers telling himself after waving off Grian’s concern. But no matter how long he’d gazed through the trees, the itch in his gut that something isn’t right hadn’t faded. Now there aren’t many hours left for sleep. 

He isn’t unfamiliar with hints of paranoia or a bit of gnawing defensiveness over what he considers his, and perhaps he’s fallen victim to those feelings in the past. There’s a reason he has a reputation for slightly overblown retribution, even if it seemed justified at the time. But this simmers constantly inside, and every time he looks out at the trees and sees a shadow or a wandering figure pass close enough to the torches, he feels the glottis under his tongue tense up, readying a hiss. 

Doc is tired. But still, he stands, frozen, surveying, with his fur ruffled. 

It’ll be morning soon enough, and although that seems like the perfect excuse to stay here and make sure all the monsters at their boundaries burn up, if Ren or Grian catch him he’s sure to get an earful. Not to mention, being at least somewhat coherent is recommended for prosthetic work. Doc did promise Ren, even if he never specified when. 

So. So he really should go to bed. 

He wants to. Watching zombies hobbling around aimlessly isn't his idea of entertainment on any day of the week. It would be mind-numbingly boring if it didn't bother him so deeply. Still, his body refuses to peel away from the window. 

It's as if looking away means inviting something horrible to happen. 

Doc crosses his arms– his mechanical one stalls part way there and he shoves it impatiently into the crook of his elbow. He taps on the metal with a claw gently to not disturb his roommates, hoping to release some of the antsy feelings inside. 

The monsters aren’t behaving abnormally. That’s the problem because, if their patterns are the same as he’s always known, he shouldn’t feel like they’re closing in. Doc should be indifferent or irked that they’re once again making problems of themselves in their yard. If they are normal, then Doc is abnormal and there has been more than enough of that already. 

The torches will do their job keeping the boundary and any mob that crosses will be foiled by walls, a roof, and a door. The only thing that would attract them is Doc’s staring, so really his anxiety will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if he continues. 

Reluctantly, he inches away, sitting back down on his bed. He’s still tense like a coiled spring, waiting for something to go wrong, but the stillness and quiet of the night stretch on until his nerves burn themselves out and exhaustion soaks through. The night’s almost over. There’s an ax sitting in his inventory. Surely, if something happens, he’ll be able to handle it. 

When his face hits the pillow, Doc’s mind is already full of cotton.

_

Despite waking up hours later than he normally does, Doc is still the only one awake the next morning. Grian, of course, is still sleeping a lot to recover, although he’s been waking up at odd times. His body has probably lost track of when day is. Doc assumes Ren is just paying for his decisions harder than usual, especially given last night.

A glance outside tells him everything is clear; the sun did its job and cleaned up the nocturnal mobs. 

There are things he needs to do. Sheep to feed, wheat to harvest – he has justified reasons to go out, he tells himself as he opens the door. “Look, if you want to argue I can go back inside,” he scolds one of the judgmental animals as he passes by their pen. It baas at him and pointedly snuffles through the frost to pull up grass. He sighs, rubbing his head. Ren has one point about his habits; the headache that started a few days ago hasn’t really gone away since and at the moment it's especially punishing. 

It might be from relying on one eye for so long. That might be necessary around Ren and Grian, but outside, without the chance of either coming out, Doc can use the little trick he discovered. Parting his mouth, Doc flehmens. 

Between heavy camouflage and near-constant silence, a creeper can’t use sight or sound to find its griefmates. Scent is far more reliable, although exploring how well that aspect was passed to him has never really been a priority of Doc’s. The sense teases at his instincts. It also seems geared toward the chemical signals of other creepers and their predators, including players, so it wasn’t generally useful to him. 

Now, though, Doc needs a second eye out for hostile mobs. 

The scents of musty sheep wool and wheat are the first things he catches, no surprise there. Next to hit is an older whiff of player that wrinkles his nose and tightens his throat. He knows, reasonably, that it’s just Ren. The smell of wolf with it makes that clear, even if Doc isn’t used to relying on his vomeronasal organ. Still, it prods at some snarling thing in his head until Doc moves farther from the cabin. Zombies, skeletons, even curious phantoms– whether they were attracted by himself or Ren is hard to say. Fresh, but not ripe with proximity. The scents of other creepers came with more information; adolescent and solitary, male. Another up in years, female, with two mates but no children. One of her mates was traveling with her, keeping their distance for blast range. All had moved on, leaving Doc alone among the iced pines. 

“Baaa!”

Doc snorts, closing his mouth. “Alright! Calm down! There’s fresh hay right here!”

When the sheep are content and munching quietly, Doc rolls extra wheat seeds around in his hands. Putting together a bonemeal farm and a tree farm to grind apples should be his next step. The gold is another question. He’s been putting off enchantments until he finds another cow to build up bookshelves and despite searching, there isn’t a village close enough that Ren and Grian wouldn’t have to fend for themselves for a few days. Which is to say, none of his tools are enchanted. If Doc set foot through a nether portal, he half believes Ren would come hopping through on one foot to drag him out so he doesn’t burn off the other side of his face, or something like that. 

No natural regen really limits the risks they can take without consequences. Injuries stack up quickly, as he’s learned. Death is their best cure at the moment, but Doc supposes even that’s limited if he considers Grian’s condition. It still bothers him that respawn fixed so little. Maybe he ought to tempt fate less. What happens if his next respawn from a creeper leaves his chest cavity exposed and bloody?

He shakes his head with a smirk. Nah, more likely he’d come back with broken ribs. Nothing that extreme, although even just that could hinder the amount he could do. The last thing Ren needs is an excuse to get up. Doc will tie him to the bed if that happens. 

At least he’s finally learning his lesson. 

Doc straightens from off the fence post. He has a moment of alarm, sensing the blood draining towards his feet before the world spins and fuzzes over. His arm swings out for the post and he collapses over the top, wood digging into his sternum, eyes squeezed shut until the dizziness subsides, leaving him without any hint it even happened besides the worsened throbbing in his brain. 

“What the…” He mutters, kneading his head with the meat of his palm. The seeds are gone, forgotten in the snow somewhere. “Very weird.”

It’s probably nothing. He’s getting old, bodies aren’t so reliable as you age. Doc isn’t young enough to sleep as little as he did last night. Taking the sign, he heads back inside. 

_

“Docm77, welcome back,” Ren says. 

Doc raises a brow, amused. “I was just outside man.” He shuts the door and walks over, stalling a few feet from the bed. “Is your leg any better?”

“Still hurts like the blazes, but it’s bearable now.” Ren shrugs. “You should have slept in, dude.” 

Doc hums noncommittally. 

“I think I need to build some kind of… like, ironwork shed? There is an English word, right? Schmied… hm, smith?” He says, checking their wood chest.

“Blacksmith?” Ren suggests.

“That’s it.” They’re a little short on logs. Hopefully, it’ll be enough. 

“Oh, that’s neat,” Ren says, nodding. “Is that how you’re going to work on your arm?”

Doc straightens and stretches, grunting when his back pops. “Ow. Eventually. I have to try and make tools that will work for that sort of thing, and tools to make those tools and so on.”

“I see. I’ve actually never made tools from scratch, like, without a crafting bench,” Ren says curiously. “That sounds really interesting. You’ll need an anvil, right? And a hammer? -Or, no, do you melt the iron down? I don’t actually know.” 

Doc nods. “Yes, anvil, hammer, furnaces, um.” He pauses and frowns thoughtfully. “Maybe I could use a stone cutter to cut through or, ah, sand the metal down? I’m not sure if that will work, but it’s worth a try. Might need a cauldron as well for quenching it while it’s hot. Hmm.”

 “Dang! That’s a lot of metal, dude,” Ren says. “We’ve got a fair bit, but that might be pushing it.”

“Hm,” Doc agrees. He opens the iron chest, running estimates in his head. “Don’t want to go mining while the two of you are on bedrest. You might starve to death. I’ll just have to be sparing.”

“Do you want more snow on your leg?” He adds. 

Ren perks. “Oh- yeah. I threw the blanket down in front of the fireplace.” He waves his hand where the fabric is clumsily sprawled. “I was trying to dry it, but I couldn’t really reach anywhere to hang it, so. It’s a rug now, I guess.” 

“Whatever works, man,” Doc shrugs. He grabs the bucket, a few remaining inches of water sloshing at the bottom, and heads out. 

_

Doc sets up the shed several yards away from the base out of consideration for canine ears. It isn’t much to look at, he swapped to cobble after considering stray sparks and the flammability of pine, but no one will be judging it. It’s evening before he finishes decking out the inside, so he goes back to the cabin, walking perhaps a little too briskly. 

Ren’s focused on dragging things on the floor towards the bed with his stick when Doc walks in; it looks like some sort of game. The noise from the door makes Grian jerk, face scrunching.

“Yo, G! Did you sleep well?” Ren asks, glancing over. 

Grian grunts, mussing his hair with a sleepy grimace. “What time is it?”

“Mm, nighttime,” Doc says with a short glance outside. Nothing followed him.

“Slept the whole day away,” Grian complains. 

“That’s my fault, I think,” Ren says. He helps Grian sit up and shuffles stray feathers off the bed, who then tries to stretch, flexing his hands and wincing as they freeze up.

“Yeah, about that wheat farm then?” Grian nudges.

“Ruthless, the both of you.” He watches Grian’s movements and adds, “Oh, Grian. You probably need some kind of physical therapy, my dude. Gotta keep the blood flowing, wake them muscles up!”

“Yeah, not really many physical therapists around at the moment,” Grian points out. 

Ren looks hardly put off. “Hm, yeah. I may not be qualified for anything, but just doin’ some stretching might help I think. Right?”

Grian nods. “Alright. I have one question though. Will I have to turn around and close my eyes while you change and come back with a new name?”

“... I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ren says. “But considering I can’t stand, any potential costumeage is on hold. I’m not sure what a physical therapist would wear anyway.” 

Grian smirks. 

“Oh, it would be good to stretch the joints,” Doc adds. “Um, the damage healing might stiffen them, and the skin as it’s regrowing will, hm, tighten up? Or, just make moving hard, so, yeah.” 

Ren nods. “Okay. So it’s actually a good idea! Awesome!” 

Doc watches him shove the blankets out of the way, Ren grunting as he stretches over his bad leg. He sees Grian glance at the fluffy length by his legs with alarm before flicking it off the edge of the bed, looking ill, and concern twists in his stomach. It isn’t always easy or neat accepting new features, but with how common it is, there’s a lot of support out there for spontaneous hybridization– not that they can get it here, but Doc is sure Grian’s familiar with some of the material. It’ll take time. It’s just… sometimes these things go wrong. Some players can’t handle it, especially if it happens around something traumatic. 

Ren rubs his hands together with a slight frown as he looks over Grian. “Now. How to start. Gimme a minute here. Ummm… Oh- can you move your feet?” 

Grian’s feet give a short twitch, then slowly shift. “Not much. I’d bet they look like my hands do.” 

“Yeah. Ok. So, you’re gonna, like, point them. Then relax. And you’re gonna do that ten times if we can manage it,” Ren decides. 

Grian makes a noise like he’s tasted something vile, but he tries anyway. They move awkwardly at first, slow and janky, but it gets smoother with repetition. 

“They’re sore,” Grian says as he finishes the rep. 

Ren nods, chewing his lip with a glance at Doc. “Yeah? How bad?” 

“Annoying, but I can put up with it if it helps.” 

“Okay.” Ren gives him a few more leg stretches, which Grian reluctantly completes, before switching gear. “Alright! Now for the upper bits!” As Ren reaches for them, Grian’s hands jerk away. They huddle just in front of his chest, stiff.  

Ren’s face falls. “You, uh…?”

“I. Um.” Grian glances away awkwardly. “Sorry, they just– y’know, hurt. Just. Be gentle please.” 

“Oh! Yeah, man! Yeah, yeah! Of course!” Ren assures him. “Here- what if I hold your arms instead?” His hands hover below Grian’s wrists. “Is that fine?” 

“Yeah.”

Ren helps him lean forward, Grian gasping at the way his skin pulls around his middle. They stretch his arms, flexing and folding until Grian nearly collapses on Ren when he tries to support himself. 

“I’m sooo weak!” Grian moans in disgust. 

“Hey, no, that was pretty good!” Doc insists, grinning. He starts forward to pat Grian on the shoulder or something of that sort before catching himself, going stiff. He keeps smiling, hoping to play it off, but Grian glances his way with some confusion. 

Thankfully, Ren grabbing his arm pulls away the attention. “Yeah, dude. This was your first session of physical therapy with the Ren-diggity-dog, you gotta give it some time to work its magic!”

“Yeah, okay…” Grian mumbles. 

Ren flicks away some of the feathers discarded on the mattress during the stretching. “You’re shedding somethin’ fierce, my dude,” Ren says, batting them off the side. “That’s good, right?” 

“Yeah, I’ve gotta clear out the old ones still hanging on. I should probably give them a preen… but I’m not looking forward to that,” Grian says, grimacing. 

“If you need any help– I mean, I dunno how private wing care is?” 

“Somewhere between washing your back and combing your hair. Most of the time, I’m not really taking volunteers, know what I mean? But we haven’t exactly got ordinary circumstances sooo…” Grian shrugs. “I’ll think about it.” 

A sharp pulse runs through Doc’s shoulder that makes him bite back a noise. Nerve connections are having issues again. If that keeps happening, he’ll have to shut that part down. 

Chapter Text

Even if he’s technically only on a light grind, Doc has to admit Ren’s brace comes with all the challenges of an ilMango idea. The thing about vanilla worlds is that they rely heavily on a standard crafting bench’s limited runes and a user’s ability to modify the outcome as they need. Although this world doesn’t qualify as vanilla in Doc’s opinion, the benches are still standard, which in this case is not enough. 

“ Yeuaaaagh !!”

Melted iron hits the floor, sparks bursting from it like fireworks.

“ Ouch !!” Doc snarls, shaking his hand as the pain settles in. The offending failure of a hammer oozes and cools over the cobble floor, and Doc can’t share the space with it a moment longer. The skin under his mouth is taut, glottis hissing over the noise in his head and around the space, and he’s wise enough to consider that the burnt stench in the air might not all be from the furnace. 

Slamming the door behind him, Doc steps out in the snow, still breathing hard. The chill slipping through his fur is a balm to his overheated body, and for once, he’s grateful to live in this climate. 

With a sigh, he admits, “That could have been close.” 

The snowflakes drift to the ground like dandelion fluff, and the sight feels too gentle to hold onto his anger for long around. Doc’s getting better at catching himself before he ignites, but it still sours his mood to treat every space he’s in like it’s been rigged with tnt. 

“Well,” He starts. “That’s another vote in favor of getting rid of the nerve connection in my other arm. If I could have held the thing better…hm.” Then again, the heat would have probably damaged his fingers. “What I do need, are cows. Sheep are all well and good, but I could use some thick gloves for this project.” He curls and uncurls his hands, imagining them, and hisses when his burned skin stretches. “A pair of boots that don’t smell like zombie would be nice as well. Would probably help me secure the brace to Ren’s leg too. Man, where are the cows out here?” 

He could take another hike around the area in case one found its way over. It would help him cool down. The idea of wandering around looking for something he hasn’t been able to find here, however, seems too fruitless to bother with. Especially while his mind itches to finish that hammer. 

If he could just leave Grian and Ren to take care of themselves, Doc could travel out to the village and find more resources and livestock. It burns inside to throw himself into real progress– not this noob stuff– to break from his tether to the cabin like an animal on a lead so he can do and see more. 

He sighs, short and harsh. 

It isn’t that Doc resents taking care of his little team he has here, honestly, he’s very happy to have them– much better than being alone with goats at his spawn. Even Ren pushing himself onto bedrest so that Doc has to take care of him too doesn’t leave him bitter– although he will be holding this over his head for a long time. Playfully of course. 

What bothers him is that there is no room for improvement to their situation at the moment. Doc goes through his chores, farming, chopping, mining for three. Ren and Grian can only do so much, but he’s seen them going through their exercises. His arm loses range. His pinky won’t move at all. The snow still falls. The food is dead, no regen in anything they’ve tried and Doc doesn’t expect the pattern to break. He goes to bed early and tries to ignore the animal in his head, certain that the things outside are closing in. 

For all he tries to frame it a challenge to himself, Doc hates this place. 

It’s wishful thinking anyway. If Ren leapt up like the grandfather in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, crowing “It’s a miracle, dudes!!” Doc would still be searching for days, probably, and this is assuming the journey back will be safe enough that he wouldn’t just blow up over a pack of hostile mobs or a trip into one of the underground caves.

“Forget it,” Doc groans, turning back to the shed. “I’d rather deal with the hammer mess than my brain right now.” 

_

“I think I’ve, uh, ruined your hair,” Grian admits. “‘S’all gonna be knotted up from the mess I’ve made.”

“Really? That bad?” Ren says, patting blindly at the failed braid. “Yeah, that is pretty bad, but I think I can fix it. There’s a fairly good chance that I won’t have to cut it all off and, like, wear a bag over my head to hide my shame.”

Grian smiles. “Maybe you should give it a go anyway.”

“Are you callin’ my face ugly, G?”

“ I dunno , but if that’s what you took from it?” He sucks in a breath with a look. “Maybe that’s, that’s what your head is saying. I didn’t say it.”

“Are we onto the “playing mind games” part of cabin fever?”

“Is that a thing?”

“I dunno!” Ren says cheerfully. “Maybe there’s research on it out there. Somewhere. But I’ll not be wearing a bag just yet, so you and Doc will have to bear my face.”

“And you’ll have to bear another miserable braiding fail until I can do anything else,” Grian agrees, watching sheepishly as Ren plucks at another knot. 

“That’s fine,” Ren says, nodding. “I asked you to.”

“I don’t think you asked me to mangle your hair though,” Grian points out, flexing his buzzing hands. The nerves have been all weird.

Ren pauses. “Well. Consider it part of your physical therapy then.”

The door opens for a lightly frosted Doc who gives himself a little shake, like a dog. 

“Hey man! How goes it?” Ren asks. 

“Annoying. You know if we have sand?” Doc asks. His arm stalls as he lifts it to brush off more snow, but he ignores it so Ren says nothing as well. 

“Sand… Uhm… Oh!” He spins to face the chests by the left of Grian’s bed, grunting when his leg has to move. Doc stiffens in the corner of his eye, which he pays no mind. The leg isn’t actually hurting so much now– void forbid it leave the pillow for a second. Besides, it isn’t as if Doc’s gonna walk over here. If he hates being near Grian’s bed, he hates being sandwiched between it and half their stuff even more. “I grabbed a few blocks while I was traveling and never tossed em. They should be… here!” 

He stretches as Doc leans in, like the floor between them is lava. The fact that Grian hasn’t said anything about Doc’s aversion yet is impressive, Ren’s expecting questions any day now. “What do you need sand for?” 

“Casting the hammer. First attempt is stuck to the floor in a sad lump. I couldn’t even pry it off, man, it’s just lost.”

“Oogh, sorry dude. That’s awful.” Ren tries to untangle his hair again. 

“I’m opening a salon,” Grian says, nodding at Ren. 

Doc grins. “Oh no.”

“I’ll get you too, just you wait.” 

“I want to see you do yourself first,” Doc says, waving at Grian. 

“Ah, but my hair’s already perfect,” Grian insists. “Wouldn’t want to mess with that.” 

Tilting his head, Doc asks, “Wait… Are your roots changing color?” 

Grian’s smile drops. “ What ?”

Ren turns to look closer. “Nah! That’s just more fluff. I think you’ve got it mixed in, it’s just easier to see there.” 

Self consciously, Grian pokes at his hairline, brushing his bangs to hide it better. “I was happy with my former amount of feathers. What’s the point of it growing there ?” 

“Anyway, I should go, em, try the hammer again. I have a better plan for how to do it.” 

“Hey, dude?” Ren asks. “When you’re goin’ between the base and your little… shed… thing? -Can you bring back some wool from the sheeples? I’m trying not to be a lump here, so I’m thinkin’ about doing some sew-age.”

“Oh, yeah. That sounds good, yeah,” Doc nods. 

“Sweet.” He grabs Grian’s hand and lowers it, smiling as Doc walks back out. When he’s gone, Ren picks the down from Grian’s fingers. “My dude, the plucking thing is really starting to freak me out.”

“They itch,” Grian insists. 

“You didn’t even notice till Doc said something.” 

Grian scowls. “It’s just feathers! It’s not like humans don’t pluck their hair!” 

“Dude-...” Ren sighs. “What’s your deal with it anyways? Like, I get that new bits are weird. Yanking ‘em out is overkill.” 

Grian scratches the dead-looking skin on his hand, cringing at his dark nails. “This isn’t like a little cosmetic code tweak, Ren. This happened on that mountain while it was killing me. I can’t even stand up right now– I can barely pull myself up with your help! All of me is different, everything feels weird, and I hate it! I just want things to be how they were!”

“I’m sorry man. That sounds freaking awful. I know doin’ nothing is driving me bananas too, can’t imagine dealing with all of that too,” Ren says sympathetically. “But you still can’t do this kind of stuff. Your body’s trying to put itself back together and you’re giving it more stuff to heal. Like, you see why that’s bad, dude?”

“It’s hardly anything!!” Grian’s arms give a short toss. “Why do you care? I’m not respawning from pulling some feathers!” 

Ren cringes. “It’s not just feathers, man!” He grabs Grian’s hand again and Grian yanks it away. “You’re doing it to all your new bits!” 

“They itch !!” 

“You can’t make them go away, G!” Ren’s heart sinks at Grian’s face going dark. Honestly, Ren had hoped he’s been reading into it too much. Yeah, Grian’s had a rough start with them, but he’d get over it. He’s a tough guy and he’s been through this sort of thing before. His wings, after all, had really come in during season seven. 

It’s foolish in hindsight. Being tough doesn’t stop one from developing dysmorphia. 

“I’m sorry,” Ren says uselessly. 

“...I think I’m done talking about this,” Grian decides, voice the sharp, brittle edge of a cracked brick. He pushes himself off the pillow and yanks the blankets over himself. Ren knows he took them all to be a jerk, but he just feels bad. 

“Ok man…” 

_

Doc grins, lifting the tool above his head. “Hammer time. Aww yeah!”

Finally, it’s complete. With this, he can begin shaping the spine and ribs of the brace. There’s still trial and error ahead of him, but now Doc has his foot in the door to a finished product. 

He switches the hammer between his hands, feeling the weight and the swing of it. It’s nothing professional, but it has some nice heft. “All right, time for the big test,” he says to himself, pulling out another ingot. It goes into the furnace until it’s hot, but not yet melted, then on top of the anvil. The first swing sprays sparks and heated flecks of metal. Doc flinches. The heat flooding off the blazing gold of the block fills the shed and for a moment Doc just breathes, trying to reorient himself. He’s hot, yes, but there’s no smell of gunpowder, no sting through his body as his veins alight. 

He swings again, and again. The iron squashes like thick clay, stubborn but shapeable. He breathes deep as he works, ignoring the sting and sizzle hitting his chest, arms, and face in favor of the drive to see this through. Later, he’ll have to do something about it, but just this once, he takes the pain. He has to see what he can make.

When he stops, a long strip about the length of his forearm sits on the anvil, slowly cooling into a warm red. 

“Hah…” He breathes, setting down the hammer. “The Goat strikes again.”  

Chapter Text

Silence is a bothersome thing. It’s alright at first, but the longer one sits in it, the more tangible it becomes. It’s an itchy weight across his skin, a faint pressure on his eardrums, and the longer he pretends to sleep, the more claustrophobic it becomes. 

That’s a good word for Grian’s feelings as of late. 

Things aren’t completely silent, in any case, but they may as well be. The air is stagnant– tense and quiet– between them without any way to get or give space to each other. Grian can hear him at his back despite Ren’s effort to keep it down. Sheets shifting, a knife gliding over wood, the occasional creak of a chest. It grates almost as much as true silence would. 

He wants to be alone. That’s hardly happened while he’s been awake between the pair of mums he’s been living with. Neighbors are lovely and Grian’s always thrived off company, but he still depends on the time he takes for himself, being an introvert and all that, so spending every day with no privacy was already leaving him a tinsy bit cranky even before the spat with Ren. 

Now it’s unbearable. 

Is it not too much to ask for even just a separate bed from the guy who won’t stop talking about all the things Grian doesn’t want to hear? Of course it’s not like either of them can get up and go to Ren’s just a few feet away without the ability to walk , but Grian reserves the right to be bitter about it. 

Every inch of him itches and prickles. It feels like he’s on the verge of shedding his skin, like a lizard. Unfortunately, he is not a lizard, and the skin he’s wearing isn’t going to come off so that he can escape it.

 Maybe it’s more accurate to call his body a corpse. Most of him seems to be half dead. He can imagine the nerves and muscles under his skin as rotted and dried out perfectly well just from how they behave. His hands are still dark and burnt looking. Doc says they should have either started rotting or healing, but they seem content doing neither, and while Grian is grateful to have them, not knowing how or why he still does is unsettling. His wings are disgusting, nearly naked withered chicken skin bare to the world. 

And then there’s the white . It grows over him like a fungus– invasive, unwanted. A sick final word to the end of that chapter. He’s escaped the white, hasn’t he? Miles and miles of white all around, white freezing skin, white fog, white ice chunks in his hair and frost on his clothes. He’s safe now, right? 

The silence tells him he isn’t. There’s nothing to cover the vacuum of sound outside, only broken by wind whipping the snow around or the thunk of too much of it slipping out of sagging tree branches. 

It’s still surrounding him, waiting just outside the walls of the cabin. 

Grian’s heart beats in his throat, bruising the the walls and catching his breath on the way to his lungs. 

Kicking and twisting his way up his pillow to sit up, Grian focuses on the wool blanket over his lap and breathes– in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4. Ruminating on what’s out of his control has always been a nasty habit of his, although he can’t exactly blame himself when the things sending him spiraling like a top are: the weather, and his own reflection. 

“Hey man,” Ren says beside him. He sounds subdued, and when Grian looks, his ears are shifted apart. He plucks his cracked sunglasses off his nose and fiddles with the leg. “If you’re still mad, it’s… fine, dude. I… wasn’t very delicate in my phrasing and like, I think I pushed things too far? Even though I was worried, I…”

“If you really want to help me right now, Ren,” Grian tells him. “You can distract me. My brain’s not a happy place at the moment.” As dramatic as Ren is, he’s always careful about the feelings of others. Loathe as he is to admit it, Ren technically hasn’t done anything wrong, really. It’s more an unfortunate situation than anything, so Grian ought to at least throw him a bone. 

“O-oh.” Ren pats around before twisting and scooping something off the floor. “I’ve been doing more carv-age, look.” There’s a line of rough looking needles in his hand. Grian wonders how many turned out right. “Gotta get ready when Doc brings back the wool, gonna hit the ground running, my man.”

“Right, the sewing. What is your plan with that, anyways?”

Ren straightens. “Okay, soo… you know how we’re kind of stuck with our spawn clothes, what with us being trapped on this server and all? Comms broken, yadda yadda.” 

“Yeah. I can say I’m very familiar with that,” Grian says, displeased. It would have been nice to change into something warmer. There’s something good to be said about carting a sweater everywhere you go. 

“Yeah! So- I was thinking, y’know, armor only warms you up so much, and we don’t get that nice little temp reset effect from regen magic– the thing with the body’s homeostasis or however that works– right, so… cloaks!” He vibrates with excitement. 

“Cloaks?”

“Cloaks!! It’s genius!!” Ren insists, grinning. “I mean, if I knew how to make a coat or something, I would, but this is like, so much cooler! You have to agree with me dude.” 

Grian slowly nods along. “Yeeaah, I can see it. ‘S like a blanket, but you wear it. I’ve basically adopted blankets as my new habitat, so I’m down for it.” 

Ren sniggers. The needles roll back and forth under his palms. “Dude, you’re gonna have to tell me what color you want, otherwise I’m picking something weird.” 

“Where on earth are you planning on finding dyes out here?” Grian scoffs. 

“I’ll figure it out!” Ren says cheerfully. “That’s a later problem anyway. By the time I dye this thing, I’ll probably be back on my feet, baby! I just wanna know what I’m looking for.” 

“Okay,” Grian agrees. “Well, we can keep this simple. Red, like my jumper.” 

“Consider it done.”

_

When the hiss of metal quenching dies out, Doc fishes out his experiment, clicking his goggle piece to magnify it. “Yeah… that looks pretty good,” he mutters to himself. Taking both parts in either hand, he breathes in and tries to force them apart at the seam he’s made. “Hhhup- hhhnnng !”

In spite of his effort, the two parts stay welded together. “Yeah, man. That’s solid,” He decides, sweeping back stray hairs from his ponytail. It’s exactly what he’d been hoping for. Like this, he can join together strips of metal into a skeleton form, then with some cushion and straps, it should keep Ren’s leg safe. He’ll need some measurements to make sure it fits right first, but the image is so clear now in Doc’s mind, it almost feels real. 

He sets the stitched metal down to admire, pacing as he thinks. Crutches would be a smart addition as well; the walking stick was meant for something much less serious than what Doc’s been witnessing. That way, even when Ren becomes mobile again, Doc won’t have to worry about him over-doing things. 

It’ll also be good practice for anything he decides to make for Grian. Grian may be far from standing, but as soon as he gets there, Doc will be ready to support him. He’s missed the pesky bird’s mischief. 

Without any fuel, the furnace cools as he plans and Doc realizes with a start how dark it’s gotten. 

“No, no,” He yelps, snatching his coat. He shoves the door open against the new snow fall and freezes. 

It’s well into the night, moon frowning at him from the sky. 

For a moment, he considers staying in the shed all night, however, it isn’t well insulated, nor is there anywhere comfortable enough to sleep. It would be a rough night, filled with burning more fuel than he wants to waste just to avoid freezing, and he also has Ren and Grian to consider. Doc never came back for lunch, and while he’s taken to keeping some food in the chest by their bed, it feels bad to leave them to fend for the night. 

The cabin isn’t too far, and the area between is mostly lit up. Staying makes no sense. 

Gritting his teeth, Doc steps out. His ear pricks as he looks around, searching for hints of invaders. The click and scrape of bones moving isn’t subtle, but its far. No skeleton should even see him. He opens his mouth and tastes the air. 

The scenting catches what his sight missed. 

From several yards away, beyond the torch light, a pair of dark eyes meet his one. Doc goes stock still. The creeper as well has stopped in place, one foot hanging above ground. As blank as it’s animal face seems, Doc knows it’s calculating. They’re a fair distance apart, and Doc hasn’t picked up the cut-grass scent of territory being claimed. This creeper is alone, either scouting or solitary. It– he, a whiff says, doesn’t need to go after him. Depending on how aggressive he is, though, the creeper just might anyway. 

There’s a part of Doc that wants him to. If he’s close enough to see Doc, he’s too close to the base. This could end quickly if Doc just moved closer and-

- His hand drops to his side. And used his sword , he corrects himself.

The creeper’s mouth parts, flehming back. Doc isn’t sure if he imagines the perturbed wrinkle to his face, but the air spices with hostility. Doc steps back. 

They watch each other for several more minutes before something else catches the creeper’s attention. He tilts his head and, when Doc doesn’t react, slowly walks away. 

When Doc finally shuts the cabin door behind him, his fur is still bristled and damp with sweat. 

“Docm77!! Welcome back my dude!” Ren crows. “How is my battle armor coming along?” 

The jovial greeting pushes away some of his tension. “It’s coming along,” Doc says, mustering a smile. 

Ren snickers, humored. “Great! Dang- you were out there for a long time man, I was gettin’ worried.” 

“ Yeah, ” Doc sighs, pulling off his boots. Wistfully, he thinks for a moment about his crocs tucked under his bed. Still much too cold for them to be worn. “I lost track of the time. Sorry for that, are you and G hungry?” 

“I could go for something,” Ren agrees. “G’s conked out. I’m thinkin’ we just let him sleep?” 

“M’kay.” 

With mutton in the furnace, Doc sits down, rubbing his thigh. “Think I was standing weird while I was working,” he tells Ren. “My leg’s cramping up.” 

“Jeez. Remember to take it easy dude– learn from my mistake, this bed’s not big enough for all three of us , ” Ren razzes lightly. “Not that I’m opposed to cuddling with you, brother.”

“Hm.” They both know, even if Doc got himself stuck in bed healing from something, it wouldn’t be Grian’s. Ren doesn’t push much, but saying things like that makes Doc wonder how seriously he takes the danger. Maybe he just doesn’t think of Doc as dangerous. Hard to when they’ve become such good friends, Doc isn’t sure how he’d do if the situation was reversed. Still, it gnaws at him in a quiet way. 

He gets Ren fed, Grian barely stirring at the scent of food, then heads to the bathroom. He’d changed the pipes Ren set up to give them heated water. It wasn’t refined, but there wasn’t a need for that yet. With his jeans chucked off and his metal arm detached and set on top of them– while normally waterproof, it’s too unfaithful to risk right now– Doc settles into the tub, grunting as his thigh slowly releases. 

He basks in the feeling for a while, his mind drifting, and the creeper he encountered comes back to him. Doc’s lip curls instinctively, nearly flehming with the memory of it’s smell, but he catches himself. The mob inside him is still pawing restlessly. Territorial, is what he’s begun to call the feeling. The last thing he needs is to smell his friends when he nearly set himself off again.

Doc sighs and straightens, grabbing some soap and scrubbing the sweat and oil out of his fur. As always he gives special care to the places that get the greasiest– his face, neck, hands and feet, and the area around his stubby tail– when he pauses. 

“Smell is important…” he mutters to himself aloud. Distractedly, he cards his claws through the fur over his throat. Creepers have never hesitated to attack him, and Doc has never cared about that. He is, after all, a player. It’s never occurred to him to ask why. 

He sets the soap down, rinsing off the suds, and goes back to running his hand through his fur. Maybe the answer has been grooming all along. 

It seems almost silly. Doc is in his 40’s. If there was a way to keep his mob kin from walking up behind him and exploding, surely he would know. Still… doesn’t hurt to try. He might be a little smellier than usual, but he won’t be the only one. Neither of his basemates have visited the tub since Ren lost walking privileges. 

The thought of one less threat, as well as his curiosity, is too much to resist.