Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sunlight beats down on the waterlogged fields, partially eclipsed by the deep green moon hanging heavy in the sky. It’s just past midday; there are people milling about in the fields, some already beginning their harvest and some gathering crawdads and crabs from between the thick, reedy stalks of salt rice. 

Technoblade rubs his thumb on the worn leather of his reins. His horse, Carl, canters along at a reasonable place, needing little guidance—this road is well-traveled, and they’ve ridden it a thousand times. More, even. He’s well accustomed to the tang of salt in the air and the sound of ships rumbling through the atmosphere. It’s a comfortable ambiance, especially considering where he grew up—his war-torn home planet, Eris, was about as peaceful as….well, a wartorn planet. (Which is to say, not at all.) Inari, however, is a humble fringe planet with little more than a scattering of farming provinces and small spaceports, populated mostly by humans, human-adjacents, and a smattering of refugees from the core like Techno himself.

Calling Inari ‘home’ came easy. 

Settling into this peaceful lifestyle, a lifestyle he’d always wanted but never quite expected to attain, is another story entirely.

With a gentle tug on the reins, Carl slows to a walk as they approach home; a small but comfortable building hidden by grove willows that flutter gently in the breeze. He can see Phil’s boots at the door, which means he’s home— good . Techno’s still a little shaken up by the incident several weeks ago where Phil took a little too long at the market and came home late, but by the time he got home, Techno had already torn up the place looking for him.

They didn’t really….talk about it. But there’s been some sort of unspoken agreement that Phil will leave a note if he expects to be back late, and otherwise try his utmost to return on time, since Inari has no instant communications network outside of the ports like most core planets do. 

Whatever the case, he’s home on time today, and Techno’s anxiety settles to a low, manageable simmer in his belly as he leads Carl to the stable round the back of the house.

He unloads his things from the saddlebags, then hoists the saddle up onto the sturdy hook on the wall inside the stable. Carl’s got plenty of water left, and Techno replenished his feed before leaving that morning, so once he’s unpacked his things, he gives Carl an affectionate pat on the nose and heads back around to the front of the house. 

Bees dart around the honeyleaf bushes lining the porch, but they pay Techno no mind while he takes off his boots and pushes them into place beside Phil’s and Wilbur’s. 

He can hear the radio inside; a horrible, static-y mess of a signal they’ve somehow managed to pick up all the way out here. Techno’s still unaccustomed to how despairingly low tech this planet is. Best form of transportation is a horse, no instant long-distance communication, absolutely no connection to the solarnet, and houses full of confusingly clashing levels of technology. They’ve got a refrigerator, a gas stovetop and oven, a wood stove for heating the house, and a fully functional air conditioning system, but Phil’s never heard of a washing machine and when Techno asked him if he had charging ports for any of his old devices, Phil had just given him a rather confused look and asked what the hell he was talking about. 

When he pulls open the door, yanking it to the left while he pulls by force of habit (it sticks otherwise), he flattens his ears against his head and wrinkles his snout to brace himself against the noise. As soon as he steps into the house, though—before he can even put on his slippers—the radio switches off and Wilbur pads into the room, one of his toys dancing idly between his hands. 

“Hey, kid,” he says, the tension leaving his shoulders. He bends down to grab his slippers from the cubby by the door and slips them on while Wilbur slings the toy to one hand and clumsily signs a little one-handed greeting. Wilbur’s deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other—and while he can still speak fine if he wanted to, he’s often nonverbal and he finds it easier to sign anyway. It was a bit of a learning curve when he first moved in; Wilbur’s sign is a completely different language than galactic standard sign, which Techno learned a bit of on the refugee ship. But the eight-year-old proved to be a pretty decent teacher, and he’s nice enough to dumb down his signs a bit when talking to Techno.

You can turn the radio back on, he signs. Wilbur likes the vibrations of the static, and the scraps of news from the core that manage to filter through it. Techno’s seen the kid spend hours with his forehead pressed against the metal mesh on the radio, his eyes closed and mouth relaxed into a contented pout. He sees the after-effects of it even more often, in the pale red indentations of the mesh on his forehead.

Wilbur shakes his head. You don’t like it, he replies, still trying to sign with his toy in one hand. Techno gets the gist, though. 

You do, Techno shoots back.

I don’t need it, Wilbur signs. And it makes you anxious. Anyway, dad’s in the kitchen. He twists his lips and flicks his wrist with an air of finality, then tugs the other side of his toy back into the other hand, stretching the strings taut, and turns on his heel with the toy spinning between his hands. The radio remains silent.

“Techno!” Phil leans through the open doorway leading into the kitchen with a warm smile. “You’re home.”

“Mm,” Techno hums, following Phil back into the kitchen. He pulls his satchel off as Phil returns to chopping root vegetables. “Butcher had some fat and bones for sale. Thought we could make tallow, and use the bones for broth.” He takes the parcels of meat out of his bag first, pushing them ever so subtly toward Phil. 

“Good,” Phil says with a nod, barely glancing up. “I’ve been running low on both of those things.” While he reaches for another tuber (is that a marsh potato? a sugarlump? Inari has too many root vegetables—Techno can’t keep track of them all), he gestures with the tip of his knife to the rickety wooden shelves that make up what Phil calls their ‘open air pantry’. They’re lined with jars, baskets, and other miscellaneous containers—full of everything from salt rice to gelatinous bone broth sealed up in jars to dried flowers and herbs. Phil’s right, though. There’s only a jar or two of broth left and a quarter of a jar of tallow, enough to last a week at best.

As always, Techno will do his best to help Phil restock, but he’s limited to tasks that do not require the use of knives. Not for any particular safety reason; he’s just been anxious about picking up knives ever since he left Eris, and Phil was quick to accommodate his discomfort.

(It’s something he doesn’t know how to thank them both for. They already do so much for him, but changing the way they live, changing the way they’d normally interact with him, just for his little quirks? It’s both frustrating and relieving, and he doesn’t know how to put his gratitude into words. So, instead, he throws his appreciation into doing. )

After scanning his eyes over the shelves, taking a quick, mindless inventory, Techno grunts and turns back around. He reaches into his bag and pulls something else out. A small cloth bag, shut with a drawstring with a tag hanging from it. “I got this for Wilbur,” he says, setting it aside. “His birthday is coming up,” he adds, as an explanation. 

“What is it?” Phil asks, without looking up.

“Candy. I met a woman in town; she had some imported sweets for sale.” 

“He’ll like that,” Phil says with a smile. 

Techno feels his cheeks warm up, inexplicably. His thick, ruddy pink skin, characteristic of his race, does not show his blush—he can feel it, though. He isn’t sure why. All he knows is that he’s glad Phil is happy with him.

He clears his throat. Reaches back into the bag. He spends a few minutes putting away everything he purchased, his chore accompanied by the steady chopping of vegetables and occasional sound of them plopping into a bubbling pot of broth on the stovetop. 

The momentary peace is cut short by a hiss and a clatter. Technoblade whips around and flares his nostrils, immediately being hit by the thick stench of blood. He can hear his thoughts roaring in his mind, screaming with bloodlust, and suddenly he’s back on Eris, crying for his mother on his knees, surrounded by dead bodies and so much thick, viscous Erisian blood that it blankets the ground and coats his skin. The sounds of blades and flesh fill his ears, the sickening stench of blood washes over him, and he feels so very small . 

Years and years and years have passed since he was a little boy on Eris.

Why does it still affect him like this?

He crumples to his knees, muttering under his breath. He can feel a hand on his shoulder, a frantic voice speaking to him, but it’s muffled, all of it. All his senses feel like he’s six feet under the marsh, weighed down by iron shackles and chains.

Suddenly, his mind snaps back to reality, and he coughs, reeling away from the sudden sharpness beneath his snout. He meets resistance, though—there’s a hand wrapped around one of his tusks, keeping him from jerking backwards too quickly. His senses lose the muffled overlay, and he focuses his eyes on Phil, who’s standing before him with concern cut into the lines of his face, a hand on his tusk, and a vial of smelling salts curled between two fingers and pressed gently into to the soft skin of Techno’s snout with his thumb.

“Hey, mate,” Phil murmurs, withdrawing the vial and leaning forward to rest his forehead against Technoblade’s. “Can you hear me?”

Techno nods, his eyes fluttering shut and focusing on the sound of Phil’s heartbeat and the feeling of their foreheads touching. He’s vaguely aware of hands slipping into his own; one wrapped in bandages and the other slightly sticky with vegetable starch. 

“Were you worried? Or was it the smell?” Phil asks without pulling away. He’s crouched on the floor in front of Techno, his wings puffy with anxiety and hands twitching with worry. 

Swallowing thickly, Techno squeezes Phil’s hands softly, then pulls back and flips his hands over to inspect them. The bandage is wrapped around his palm to secure it, but it’s more thickly wrapped around his index finger. There’s blood seeping through; not a large stain, but considering the amount of bandages, it must have been a deep cut. 

“The blood,” he finally says, running his thumb over the bandages. He looks up at Phil guiltily. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Phil laughs quietly. “It’s just a cut. It’ll heal.”

“I’m sorry,” Techno says. He huffs and drops his gaze, unable to hold it for more than a few moments before Phil’s searching gaze gets too unbearable. His heart is not a fragile thing, after all he’s been through, but when he’s with Phil it’s as if it’s turned to brittle glass—ready to shatter at any moment from the pressure of worry and care and comfort and love that Phil makes him feel. 

Technoblade isn’t bothered by the fragility. He thinks that maybe, after everything he’s been through, he deserves to feel weak. He deserves to drop his guard, if only for a moment, and feel nothing but him and Phil and nothing else. 

“Oh, mate,” Phil sighs. He looks exasperated, but the corners of his mouth are upturned ever so slightly. “I told you I’ll be fine. I’ve cut myself dozens of times while cooking. It’s nothing new.” 

Still, he feels guilty. His meltdown diverted all the attention away from Phil. Phil, who was injured. And Techno? Haunted by the long-dead ghosts of his past. Why can’t he put all those memories behind him?

“I love you,” Techno suddenly says, the words falling quietly from his mouth with little fanfare. He’s quick to at least make an attempt at recovery, “I mean—I just—”

Phil blinks slowly. For a moment, Techno can feel fear and anxiety and stress and worry and a million other dark, cloudy emotions rear their heads inside his chest. 

But before he can say anything more, Phil presses his lips to the corner of Techno’s mouth, using his head to push Techno’s snout to the side for better access. His hand reaches up and cups Techno’s cheek, stroking his skin, and then he sits back. As his eyes meet Techno’s, hand still on his cheek, he smiles.

Techno leans into the touch and closes his eyes. 

Neither of them need to say anything more. Many things go unspoken between them, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t known.

Chapter Text

Phil has always lived on Inari, but he's always been known as a loner. He's never flown off world, nor does he even fly with his own wings, as one was pinioned at birth like all the Inari to prevent a fatal condition that the species became predisposed to—it progresses with flight and lower air pressure, due to a genetic deformity in the second heart and lung tissue of the Inari that makes them unable to support prolonged flight. They were once able to fly, but the genetic deformity was caused by solar radiation that spread rapid mutations among the Inari of the past and resulted in the long-lasting organ failure issues caused by flight—so they began pinioning the wings of all infants (with far better medical care than birds get for the procedure here on earth, of course—so it's just considered a necessary procedure to prevent the possibility of organ failure).

He lived in solitude up until one day he was approached by a young woman in a spaceport with a young child, barely one year of age. The woman was barely more than a child herself, characteristically blue-blooded and grey-skinned as people from a core planet called Ankherae. The woman begged Phil to care for her child after he bought her a meal, and he accepted. She didn't have the means to raise the child, who she'd become pregnant with after being assaulted by a human officer when her home planet was being pillaged during the war, and she gave birth on a refugee ship. After a year of doing her best to care for the boy, she earned the goodwill of an elderly couple who'd just seen their youngest child off to work in the Epione Fleet (a war recovery organization that helps rescue civilians during wartime across the galaxy), and rode with them to Inari, where they were visiting family. They told her they'd be happy to bring her and her son back to the core, but knowing how dangerous the kid's life would be, she opted to find someone to care for him on Inari, which is a protected planet with no military or political presence other than lottery-selected committee seats running each province that are replaced yearly and focused on community health and safety, and minor dealings with organizations such as the Epione Fleet and refugee ships to house endangered civilians from the core until they are rehabilitated and relocated. She found Phil, who decided to take the child in.

This child was Wilbur, son of Asha—a half human, half ankhera boy. He was deafened from chronic ear infections before Phil took him in, at which point Phil took him to a medic and got the boy proper medical care to prevent his ears from being damaged further. Phil also began learning sign language from a woman that lived nearby, who he'd initially taken Wilbur to for advice on raising a child.