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Philza knocked on Technoblade’s door. The Arctic night was chill, and there was a funny quality to the light. The lunar eclipse had turned the moon cherry red, and cut the light it shone onto the snow by half.
“Heh, who is it?” Techno opened the door. “Phil!”
“Hey mate, just wanted to pop by.” He fanned his wings in a shrug. It was easier that directly saying and get help with these. When the Goddess of Death had gifted him these wings, glossy black raven wings that could lift a man into the sky, he’d been aware that there had to be a catch. When the catch turned out to be ‘they are heavy and make your back hurt,’ well, that wasn’t too bad of a price. Even if he would have preferred less mandatory tummy time for grown men because he couldn’t work out how to stand up without it hurting too much.
And then he came here, and he wasn’t so much ‘fallen’ as ‘not in Kristin’s domain anymore,’ but the effects were more or less the same. And while XD wouldn’t interfere too much with another god’s domain, he had opinions about flying.
He’d kept the wings. Just lost the metacarpals at the tip.
And so his back hurt all the time, as did the tips of his wings. It was worse in the cold— not that that would stop him from going to the Arctic— and now there was a pressure system moving over the whole server and it just ached.
So. Help would be good. Even if that help was just distraction.
Technoblade understood the gesture, and waved him in through the door. “Come in, make yourself at home, take the weight off.” Techno gently lifted one of Phil’s wings to fan it out. He ran his fingers along the secondaries, with a mumbled ‘hmm.’ “Maybe a couple grams off at first.”
He held up two long, glossy black feathers.
Techno’s home was always well heated, and Philza’s skin prickled as it warmed. A pressure system, and now this— “Ugh, I’m moulting too?”
“You know, this wasn’t how I was planning to see you naked.”
Phil laughed, and made his way further in. He lay down on a rug next to the fire. Both because the warmth was nice, and also because it was one of the few clear spaces big enough to properly spread his wings.
Technoblade knelt beside him, draping one wing over his lap. And even if the fire was warmer, that direct body heat right under the missing bone soothed the pain like nothing. It was companionable, too. You could be sore, but you couldn’t be upset, when you had Technoblade giving you his warmth.
“Thanks mate.”
“I have literally not done anything.”
Phil hummed.
Technoblade started running his fingers over his wings, straightening out feathers and finding the loose ones.
Phil let his eyes closed. It was ticklish, but not unpleasant. He could do this himself, more or less, but it was nice not to have to turn himself into a pretzel and only hope he had done it right.
He spent several minutes, enjoying Techno fixing up his feathers and generally being a mammal, and pretending he had his eyes closed for no reason and he wasn’t about to fall asleep.
Then there was a slightly alarmed ‘hmm!’ from Techno.
He peeked open one eye as Techno reached behind him. “Everything all right?”
Technoblade pulled blankets off the daybed behind them. “Uh, Kristin was very nice, and gave my god something too.” He held his fingers in front of Phil’s face.
They were bloody. Not a lot, but enough to be a little alarming. “You didn’t get one of my pin feathers, did you?”
Techno put his wing in a sandwich of blankets, and put just a little pressure on, in a way that proved that yes, he had accidentally messed with a pin feather. “I can’t believe you would accuse me of making a mistake.”
It was no worse than what he did when he, say, tried to walk through a door when he still had pin feathers. “Let me guess, I’m bleeding like a stuck pig?”
“Wow, Phil. That’s so offensive. Chat, CALLOUT POST FOR PHILZA MINECRAFT.”
Phil laughed, wings and back and belly shaking. And for a moment, it didn’t hurt.