#hermitcraft fic

[birrdies]

“when I say you are killing me” (desert duo one-shot, 2.6k)

Every inch of his climb is agony. White-hot and endless, it ricochets through Scar’s body as if it bought an expressway pass through his veins like a highway. Would it have killed Grian to get an apartment on the first floor? Hell, Scar would even take something on the third or fourth-floor if he had to. Anything would be better than dragging himself, slowly and painfully, up twelve flights of rickety metal stairs. In the snow. In the middle of the night. Bleeding.

Scar’s having a bad night.

Blood dribbles between the gaps of his fingers. It’s slower than it had been, but each heave up another flight of stairs blinds him with pain and sends a few more fresh droplets of blood sliding down his middle. His shirt (whatever tatters remain of it anyway) and pants are wet and tacky, sticking to his skin like a perpetually wet bathing suit as he tries to climb the rest of the way up to Grian’s apartment.

The fire escape is an old decrepit fixture of rusting metal mounted to the brick siding with nothing more than a few loose bolts and a dream. It groans beneath his weight, the barest shake of wind causing the metal to ripple and shudder. The metal saps the warmth from his already cold, pale fingertips. He’d had gloves, but had to get rid of them as they were soaked in blood and not all-that conducive for climbing-under-the-influence (of blood loss). Scar’s not afraid of much, least of all heights, but he chooses each step up the fire escape carefully, muscle memory a crutch as he drags himself past open windows with the lights still on. Last thing he needs is another broadcast claiming HotGuy is nothing but a petty creep with a penchant for B&Es.

By the time he reaches the twelfth floor he’s shaking from head-to-to. Each breath sears through him, rivaling the sharp-edged pain of lightning, setting him alight. It burns through him, the aftershocks never ending as he pulls himself upright and grasps onto the edges of Grian’s windowsill. A pained whine catches between his teeth; he refuses to let it out.

Curled up at Grian’s windowsill as he peeks through the drawn curtains at the warm lamplight cascading through the glass, Scar finds the painful climb was well worth each and every second of agony. No better minded than a moth drawn to a flame Scar leans in to rest his forehead against the glass, the warm, golden glow from within Grian’s apartment beckoning him forward. Inside, Grian’s sitting at his desk around a cluster of books and papers strewn around as if a bomb had gone off. His hair is fuzzy and curled at the tips, as it always is whenever Grian lets it air dry after a shower. His shoulders are hunched and the sides of his face are illuminated by the blue glow of his laptop screen. Even through the glass Scar can hear the incessant clacking of his keys as he furiously types away at whatever assignment he’s working on.

It takes Scar more than one try to build up the courage to disturb him. He looks peaceful (or about as peaceful as someone working on a lab report can be), and Scar knows that peace will shatter the second he knocks, the second he barges in, yet again, on Grian’s evening and sweeps him up in his vigilante shenanigans.

Scar’s bloodied hands grasp onto the windowsill, red streaks staining the chipping white paint like a crime scene out of some gruesome horror movie Grian would have him watch. He winces at the sight; it’ll be a nightmare to scrub out. He’ll have to remember to buy Grian dinner one of these days to make it up to him and hope that Grian will have the heart, eventually, to forgive him.

“Grian,” he mumbles, startled to find his voice nothing more than a gravelly rasp. He reaches to knock, but his arms are as stiff as uncooked spaghetti noodles and don’t listen to a word he has to say. With a huff of frustration, Scar pitches his weight forward and thumps his head twice against the glass. The dull ache through his forehead is nothing compared to the feverish burning tearing through his chest and stomach.

Inside, a shadow bolts across the floor. Grian’s cat, Maui. In his chair Grian twists around at the sound. He’s wearing his glasses— Scar’s heart drops low in his stomach at the sight— and squints through the darkness to see Scar sheepishly waving at him through the glass, his breath fogging it up just enough to be seen.

He unfurls himself from his chair and comes to pry the window open. Scar comes face-to-face with his heart-patterned pajama pants, two sizes too big and pooling around his ankles. Wait, are those Scar’s?

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” Grian is asking before Scar manages to start dragging himself in through the open window. It’s only for the briefest millisecond, in Grian’s ignorance, that Scar can be grateful for the starless, moonless night. The dark shields him not only from the prying eyes of neighbors, but from Grian’s scrutiny. In this dark he can’t see the blood, can’t see the tears in his shirt. In the dark, he might just look a little ruffled, no worse for wear than he usually is after a busy night patrolling. In the dark, he and Grian can pretend, albeit for only a second, that everything is normal.

But as the pain and dark corners throbbing in his periphery are keen on reminding him, everything is very much not normal.

“I seemed to have lost my watch,” Scar says as he pulls himself in through the open window. Every movement is measured, half-withheld, ginger— everything that Scar isn’t, and he’d be a fool to think Grian wouldn’t notice. He does immediately, because he’s Grian, and he’s never been truly ignorant when it comes to Scar, despite Scar’s best intentions.

Grian steps back with wide eyes. The color drains from his face as Scar holds his weight against the wall with one blood-slicked hand and struggles to stand at his full height. Every inch he tries to stand taller, the more the swelling edges of the wound start to pull and ache.

“Scar?” Grian’s face, usually so warm and vivid, especially under the light of his desk lamp, pales to a near lifeless color. He staggers toward him, hands held out in front of him as if to catch Scar. “Scar, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Right as rain, G,” Scar says, managing a wry smile. “Honest.”

“Don’t give me that.” Grian rushes forward, grabbing Scar around the shoulders and steering him towards the futon in the middle of the room. The second Grian touches him some of Scar’s pain fades, if not just because he has somewhere else to pitch his weight, to take some of the strain off his bloodied, torn middle.

The pair of them hobble to the futon, Grian whispering mumbled nothings as he lowers Scar onto the edge and forces him to sit back with firm hands on his shoulders. Scar allows himself the smallest mercy of relaxing into the cushions, his arms and legs limp at his sides as his head lulls back to rest against the back of the futon. It’s as if every string tying his marionette up, stringing him along, has been cut all at once. It’s somehow blissful and terrifying all at the same time. He’s not sure he’s ever been this roughed up, this exhausted.

And in front of Grian of all people?

Grian, whose face is drawn tight, whose shoulders and jaw are rigid as if he’s been made out of wood. Grian, who anxiously flutters at Scar’s side for a second before disappearing in a flurry toward the kitchen. Scar’s head is too heavy for him to lift, but he hears Grian rummaging and cursing under his breath before he returns just as quickly as he left. In his arms he balances a handful of small dishtowels, a first-aid kit, and a box of blue rubber gloves.

“I can’t believe this,” he says, to himself more than to Scar, as he sits on his knees on the cushion beside Scar and leans over to assess the wounds.

Gingerly he pulls the tattered shreds of his black shirt away from the wound-bed (as much as he can with some of the fabric stuck to his body with blood like glue) and winces at the gory sight. Scar’s skin is torn in jagged ridges, three gouge marks clawed from just under his ribs and down across his right abdomen. Thankfully, the worst of the bleeding seems to have stopped, dark, thick globules of blood already starting to stitch together like wads of hot glue around the wound, crusting on the skin.

Grian examines it all with a crease between his brow that Scar, after all this time, has come to know means he’s irritated. He’s always looked especially cute when he’s angry (part of the reason it’s just too easy for Scar to give into the temptation to push his buttons whenever possible), but the downturn of his lips, the whites of his eyes, reveals something far more serious. Worry. Grian’s worried about him, and maybe it’s the blood loss starting to get to Scar in earnest, but Scar finds he far prefers this sight. He can’t help but smile back at him, even though he knows it’ll likely earn him a punch when he’s no longer bleeding out on Grian’s couch.

“Scar.” Grian says his name as if he’s been saying it for a while, but Scar’s only just now hearing it. “This is bad. Like, really bad.”

Scar blinks down his nose at him, brow furrowed. “You should see the other guy,” he says with a weak huff of laughter. “Stuck him so full of arrows you could call him a porcupine.”

“Scar, this is serious,” Grian admonishes, snapping on a pair of gloves and brushing his hair from his eyes.

“But you’re gonna fix me right up, ain’t you, Doc?” Sar teases, lifting his head just enough to catch Grian’s scowl as he flicks open the first-aid kit and fishes out a small brown bottle.

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Grian says, and there he goes again— detached, analytical, dawning his ‘I’m calm and collected’ persona. He pulls a pair of scissors out of the first-aid kit and tests the snap of them. “This doesn’t look like it was from some kind of a knife—”

“Ravager,” Scar says, gritting his teeth in anticipation. “Jerk got too close.”

Grian raises an eyebrow. “Sounds more like you got too cocky.”

Again, Scar finds himself fighting (and failing) to conceal a smug little smile. “You’re worried about me, just say it.”

“I’m pissed off is what I am,” Grian snaps. He peels up one edge of Scar’s shirt and begins cutting away as much of the fabric as he can without disturbing the edges of Scar’s wounds. He winces only when the shirt tugs too sharply on the red, puffy edges of the wound. And Grian, to Scar’s surprise, nearly flinches every time he does.

“Sorry, sorry,” Grian whispers each time, sounding so unlike himself. His face is pale, and if Scar isn’t mistaken there’s the faintest tremble to his hand.

“It’s okay,” Scar says, just as hushed, as if the slightest movement or raise in his voice will spook Grian. “Do what you gotta do. I’m tough, I’m strong. I can take it.”

Grian scoffs and peels a foil lid from the bottle’s cap, dumping a bit of it onto a folded dishrag. “Yeah, okay. We’ll see how tough and strong you are once I start cleaning this.”

“Give me your worst, Doc.” Scar lets his head loll back to stare at the ceiling, taking as deep a breath as his tense, wounded chest will allow. The twinge of pain reminds him to stay awake, has his fingers curling into the fabric of the futon beneath him.

Grian doesn’t give Scar a warning, which he appreciates. The anticipation is the worst part. He grits his teeth and bares it as Grian firmly, but not violently, uses the alcohol-soaked rag to wash away the blood from his torn skin. Scar scrunches his eyes shut and breathes through it, the pain an unrelenting impulse racing through his veins like faulty circuitry gone haywire.

And as soon as it starts, it’s over. Grian sits back on his heels and tosses the now blood-soaked rag to the floor. He wipes at the sweat blistering across his forehead with his arm, taking a shaky breath in as he examines his handiwork.

“It’s not too deep,” he says, sounding the slightest bit relieved. He twists to reach for the first-aid kit again. “You’re lucky I swiped this stuff from the lab. Though I won’t begin to guess why you came here instead of a hospital. This needs stitches, probably.”

“Eh, I’m not worried about another scar,” Scar dismisses, ignoring the small beads of sweat starting to gather on his own brow. He can’t handle Grian thinking he’s caused him any more pain; the only thing worse than suffering as he is now is to watch Grian torture himself over things he can’t control. Like Scar. “Besides, I can’t exactly keep up the whole secret identity thing if I go to a hospital half in costume, now can I?”

“Secret identity,” Grian parrots mockingly, unraveling a bundle of bandages and starting to tack them down around Scar’s middle. “You nearly got gutted, and that’s what you’re worried about. Of course.”

He’s angry. Scar would be an idiot to not be able to see it, and maybe it shouldn’t surprise him as much as it does. But it’s not the anger that catches Scar off guard. It’s what lingers beneath it: Grian’s gloved, trembling hands, the way he can’t look Scar in the eye more than a second before having to look away, burying himself in sorting through the first-aid kit for the fourth time as if looking for something to help and, just like every other time, coming up empty-handed.

Grian’s scared.

Scar’s known Grian for years now, and over that time he’s been a lot of things. Angry, judgmental, infectiously funny, bright. But afraid has never been a word Scar has used to describe him.

“Grian…”

“Of course I’m worried,” Grian says, catching Scar off guard. His voice is so quiet, so hushed that Scar wonders if he imagined it. Because something so vulnerable and soft sounding couldn’t come from someone as headstrong and impervious as Grian. It simply isn’t possible. “How could I not be? Have you looked at yourself?”

“Hey.” Scar can’t dream of sitting up, but he manages to leverage himself up just enough to reach for Grian’s wrist. He’ll feel bad about staining Grian’s sleeves with blood later. For now he needs to grab hold of him, pull him in close. To reassure him. “I’m fine. I’m still here, aren’t I? I’m in good hands, yeah?”

“Scar,” Grian says, sounding like he’s about to start crying. He curls his fingers into a weak fist, as if to pull from Scar’s grasp, but he doesn’t try it. He only holds it there, waiting. “I’m not exactly qualified. I’m a bio student, not a—”

“You’re doing fine,” Scar insists, caressing the inner aspect of Grian’s wrist with his thumb. There, he can feel the furious pace Grian’s heart takes on at the touch, like his pulse is ready to leap out from beneath the thin layer of skin. He flashes a smile, just to prove it to Grian. “I’ve bounced back from a lot worse than this. I’m just glad I don’t have to do it alone this time.”

#desert duo #desert duo fic #scarian #<- just in case #hermitcraft #hermitcraft fic #goodtimeswithscar #grian #birdie writes #sometimes I forget I am a writer and forget to post the things I’ve been writing like a madman #blame fishbloc for making me post this one

[mawofthemagnetar]

The door to Doc’s lab squeaked open, and Etho shuffled in lazily. The man himself was standing at a lab bench, fiddling with something- on the bench beside him, a machine the size of a filing cabinet was whirring away noisily. Etho paid it no mind.

“Got the last of ‘em for ya.” He said, holding up a jar of blue slime and giving it a shake, “The last artifake.”

“Perfect,” Doc rumbled, peering in at something through a microscope.

“So, uh, do we have an answer? About the Iskallium eye?”

“Hmm? Yeah, we do. That’s definitely Iskall’s eye. Same materials, same composition, same power supply- matches all the diagrams he gave me when asked. Only difference is, all the artifakes are beat to hell. I don’t know what could possibly have caused these dents, man. Does Tango-?”

“Tango is saying the same thing Tango said yesterday, which is, quote, “they came with the dungeon!” Etho rolled his eyes, leaning up against a workbench that was cluttered with his hard-won artifakes, “So, ah, any luck? I’m risking my life in there for this, you know that, right?”

“You’ll respawn,” Doc muttered, holding a hand out and waggling his fingers. Etho dropped the jar of speedy slime into Doc’s metal palm with a clank, and Doc moved whatever he was examining off the microscope and set about preparing another slide.

“So,” Doc said, “There is a commonality, across all items.”

“Oh?” Etho echoed, hopping up on a bench and shoving a well-loved pickaxe out of the way, “And what’s that?”

“A dusty...residue...thing. Tastes and smells like spent gunpowder, like a rocket that’s just been fired,” Doc said, dropping a slipcover on top of the slide, “It’s fine, particulate residue.” Doc shrugged, and slid the sample of slime onto his microscope, peering in for a closer look.

“And it’s...EVERY artifake, you said?”

“And every artifact, I’ll bet. Keralis’ slippers were a goldmine- just choked with the stuff. Seriously. I put them into a bag and shook them and a ton of that dust came out.” Doc twiddled the focus knobs, and sighed.

“There's more of it. Man, and it's even, like, mixed into the slime! I’m gonna have to ask Jevin for a sample when he’s around next so I can compare.” Doc nodded, and Etho smiled behind his mask.

“Soooo... that’s it, then? The mystery of where the heck Tango got all these artifacts from is...magic dust, I guess?”

The machine dinged, like an egg timer, and printed something out on a long strip of paper. Doc extracted it, and started to read over his results.

And as his eyes scanned down the page, he went very, very still.

“Doc? What’s happening?”

“Etho. Composition of this dust...it’s rock.” Doc said slowly.

“...Rock dust? And?”

“Roughed edges. This rock has never seen water.”

“...Which means...?”

“This rock hasn’t been oxidized. Predominantly...reduced. No clay, no mica...which means...”

“Doc!” Etho sighed, “What are you trying to say, here?”

“Every single one of these artifakes is covered in moon dust.” Doc said flatly.

Etho swallowed.

“Wherever the dungeon is getting these artifacts-” Doc started, hands trembling.

“-Is someplace we didn’t get lucky last season.” Etho finished, "Ah. O...kay."

Both men stared at the jar of slime in silence.

“...Cool. Well, anyway, have fun with your crisis. I’ve got three more frozen shards left!” Etho said cheerfully, and he skipped out the door.

#magnetar writes #Hermitcraft fic #Decked out #Etho #Docm77 #IDK I got a little bit of energy and answered my own question #this might be a little scuffed #I feel like crap currently

[tunastime]

do androids dream of electric sheep?

I am nothing if not a vessel for self-indulgent docsuma, especially @shepscapades's dbhc self-indulgent docsuma. sometimes you fall asleep in the lab, and sometimes your friend feels compelled to make sure you're okay <3

(3964 words)

Doc sometimes slips into daydream.

It’s not unlike him. He’d been doing it for some time now, some fix halfway between awake and Sleep Mode. Not quite his mind palace, but still wedged into predictive processes, still trying to work to replay memories. In quiet moments, more often than not, he finds that it’s easier to slip away, to tuck himself into his work, drafting, or building, or walking thoughtful circles and let the mechanical parts of his mind slip away into calculation.

In those same dreams, he tries to calculate the probability of events with what he has, blocking out the movements of who he knows best, who he may be able to pinpoint. He works in quiet as his mind runs in the background, wondering how conversations may go, how actions could be perceived. He maps what might happen if someone got hurt, or if someone needed help, or if someone fell asleep in the lab. Someone. Just anyone. He tells himself it could be anyone, but he would be lying if he didn’t know who.

It was hard, right—it felt wrong if he didn’t. Something he was designed to do, put to waste because it felt silly to imagine waking his lab partner, his friend, making sure he was alright, helping him. Was it wrong to want to be helpful? Was it wrong to want anything? It feels—it’s silly. Want was such a human word. He’s not sure he can really want at all. The paper in front of him is getting fuzzy around the edges, though, as he forces himself back into his true waking mode, and focuses on the task in front of him, now a line of text in his eyesight.

Doc leans hard on his hand, cupped around the side of his jaw as he studies the plans in front of him. He’s long since set them to memory, easily recalled with the summon of command, but he works out the fine details of the draft in front of him, still unsatisfied with his new creation. He works quietly, mentally mapping the lists of supplies he might need, the time it may take. If he were to concentrate the slightest bit more on the display in the corner of his vision, he might note how late it had gotten. Without any windows down here, the night sky can’t leak in, which means Doc doesn’t know it’s gotten dark until Xisuma starts to yawn or he manages to peek outside. 

He sets his pad down, eyes skimming the surface. Right, and where was X, anyway? The space, ever growing, up, down, sideways, that he used as his lab had gone still and quiet some time ago. Enough for Doc to take note of. Enough to be a little odd, he would assume, even for him, and the behaviors he knows well from Xisuma. Xisuma didn’t just wander off without a word—he was much too narrative for that. Doc sits up, hand falling to the table. 

“X?” he asks, furrowing his eyebrows. The room stays quiet, aside from the hum of recirculating air and electronics. Doc taps his hand against the table—it was some sort of tic he’d picked up from Ren, a sign of his impatience. He couldn’t shake the habit of mimicking it while he was thinking.

Okay, right. Last time he saw X. He gathers up the recall of the path Xisuma would’ve taken from his side, checking over his work at Doc’s request, and around the lab itself, looping back to a series of benches to work on. Leaning from his spot, he tries to pinpoint the peek of green helmet or shoulder piece. He finds neither in the direct line of sight, though, and slowly, bracing his prosthetic arm on the table, Doc stands. 

It’s a gentle quiet that fills the room, nice and easy and soft to step through as Doc makes his way around the space. Despite having another work bench quite close, Xisuma had a habit of leaving his stuff about, flitting between projects as he saw fit. It was interesting, sometimes, to watch him move around the room—not that Doc had done any of that. He seemed to bounce from point to point, sometimes staying still for hours, unmoving, lost in work. It was in those hours that Doc found himself watching, just for a moment, studying the shallow curve of his nose and the way his hair fell into his face from behind his helmet. 

His office is here, too. Though it’s no different than any other working space in terms of equipment, the space itself is fully outfitted, lined with tools and a large work table, his computer, a desk with a chair. Through the glass, he can see the shape of Xisuma at his desk, likely too caught up in whatever he had been working on to notice Doc’s concern. Doc pauses as he slides open the door, standing in the doorway, announcing himself to the cluttered room.

“Xisuma,” Doc starts. “I know it’s late, if you want to head home, I’m sure I can finish…”

Xisuma is slumped over on  his desk as Doc enters. There’s a brief moment, no more than a second, where Doc’s mind spins a scenario hard and fast, the crumpled shape of Xisuma over his desk. But he can see the slow rise and fall of his shoulders. He registers the slow, steady heartbeat in Xisuma’s chest, and his shoulders sag with relief. He stands in the doorway for a moment. Xisuma looks small, head pillowed on his arms. He’s still running a series of code on the console next to him, which illuminates the back of his head in pale lines of data. His hair falls half loose across his shoulder, like he’d forgotten to finish tying it away from his face, and the slow, deep breaths make it seem like he’d been sleeping here a lot longer than Doc realized. He’s without his helmet, too, which sits beside him on the desk, discarded.

Long enough to get a sore neck and complain about his upper back hurting. Long enough to worry that he might not be getting enough oxygen. Doc sets his shoulders. There’s something in his chest that feels like it skips—regulator, pump, or otherwise. They work in tandem to produce whatever fluttery feeling invades the space where his ribs should be. He presses the heel of his synthetic hand against the depression of his chest, rolling his wrist. The feeling fades for a moment, shuddering through his wrists like it might rest there. He was never going to get used to it, was he?

He steps into the lab proper, sticking his hands into his pockets. He picks his way around the room, trying to walk quietly around it. Xisuma stays asleep, shoulders rising and falling in that even tempo. Doc crouches beside him—Xisuma is properly slumped, back curved forward as he rests. What little Doc can see of his face is soft with sleep, eyelids fluttering just so. When X doesn’t move, he rests his palm over the curve of his shoulder, gentle and slow. He tries not to focus on the fact that so much of his face is exposed to him, aside from just his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He’s seen him before, briefly, every so often, but it was so different watching him now, calm and comfortable. Doc forces himself to focus.

“Xisuma,” he says, voice dipping low and quiet. He runs his hand over the part of his shoulderblade he can reach. He pats the high of his back. “Xisuma, hey…”

X takes a long breath in, making a squeaky sort of sound high in his chest. Doc feels him hum out from under his hand.

“Doc,” he says, voice rumbling in his chest. It was a tired sort of rumble, just on the edge of being rough with sleep, just enough to bring that feeling back to Doc’s internal components, like thirium was sludging too quick too warm through him. He huffs a little breath, a sound caught in his throat.

“You fell asleep at your desk, X,” Doc says, not able to weasel the amusement out of his voice. He runs his hand over his back again, just to see Xisuma’s eyes open tiredly, and shut again. It was so unlike the version of him that he knew in his mind, seeing him savor the brief contact, even from Doc. Especially from Doc. Xisuma was always the one reaching out for him, repairing or correcting or studying. All with purpose. There was no lingering touch between them. And though this had its purpose too, Doc lingered, feeling Xisuma breathe under his hand. 

“Sorry,” X mumbles, finally moving to lift his head, to open his eyes. Doc’s hand slides away as X sits up, over his back and back to Doc’s side. Xisuma blinks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the heel of his hands. A frown comes between his eyes as he tries to focus the world around him a little clearer. Like it were mimicking the score across his cheek and nose, there’s a fine indent pressed into his cheek. Doc smiles at him, scrunching his nose in a way he’s seen X do a hundred times. 

Xisuma jolts, half reaching for the helmet beside him. If Doc were to really look, he might see the pink-red flush over his cheeks and ears.

“Sorry—I didn’t…”

There he lingers, halfway to reaching. Doc looks away from him, purposefully averting his eyes.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “You have to be comfortable too.”

Xisuma hums, smiling a little, hanging his head as he leaves his hand on the table.

“Hah,” he says, ears still pink. “Right. Sorry, sorry, Doc. Didn’t mean to worry you.”

“It’s okay,” he says. “I didn’t know where you had gone off to, so I figured I would come make sure you were okay.”

X nods. Doc watches him twist around, hearing the faint give and pop as his spine adjusts to sitting upright. 

“‘M alright,” he says. Then he laughs a bit—the sound is airy and half in his chest, enough to shake his shoulders but more of a wheeze than anything else. Everything fit so well to the timbre of Xisuma’s voice, it seemed, be it the way he moved about, or the way he laughed, or the way his shoulder sloped or face was shaped. Not that Doc had been looking. Regardless, Xisuma sighs, and smiles back at him.

“Just embarrassed is all,” he manages. “Thanks, Doc. I appreciate you.”

X leans back in his chair. Doc watches him resettle and hum to himself as he gets comfortable against the plush backing. Doc makes a clipped sound, reaches out and moves away again, halfway between shaking him awake and letting him sleep.

“X,” he says. “Would it not be more comfortable if you were sleeping in your spare room?”

Xisuma frowns. 

“Would be,” he says, eyes still closed, mumbling. “It just gets awfully cold in there. ‘N if I’m perfectly comfortable in here, why not stay tha’way?”

It’s almost amusing, the trickle of stubbornness that leaks into the tired slur of Xisuma’s voice. It’s almost endearing. He watches X fold his arms over his chest, armor only partly discarded, watches his face wrinkle as he notices and tries to rearrange himself. Doc smiles, something that he simply can’t help—it feels so right, considering how ridiculous this is. He considers his options and weighs the success rates, the action taking a fraction of a second in time, though the scene plays out in his head in full.

“Because you’ll hurt your back,” Doc says plainly. X frowns, clearly mulling it over. There—that’s one that Doc knows, that face, where X slips into thought and worries the inside of his cheek and works his jaw. Doc raises his eyebrows, as if to question him without saying anything, without Xisuma even looking at him.

“Mhh,” Xisuma huffs. He pulls his knees up. Somehow, he manages to fit himself into his desk chair, curling his tall body over his knees and leaning sideways into the back. Doc hums, makes the approximation of the sound he knows.

“Xisuma,” he says. “I’m not going to let you sleep in that chair, you know. You are being stubborn.”

“M‘kay, okay…” Xisuma wheezes, finally uncurling himself.

It takes him a second. Watching Xisuma stretch and blink awake is like watching him come to life. He stretches up and around, face pulling as he likely unsuccessfully shakes the tension from the line of his spine. As he twists, he freezes, face scrunching all at once as he winces, hand shooting up to cup his neck.

“Ow. Jeez.”

He can see it tight in his shoulders and neck, even as X deflates, looking up at him blearily, still slightly slumped in his chair. His eyes shut again. 

“Xisuma…” Doc says, mouth twisting.

X sighs.

“‘M fine, Doc,” he manages to murmur out. “Just’a sore neck. Mm’exhausted.”

“Sounds like you need a real bed, mm?” Doc replies, setting his hands on his hips. Xisuma peeks at him, one eye opening, and shutting again.

He sees the fraction of a smile lift the corners of X’s mouth.

“Sure, sure…”

Doc looks over Xisuma’s face. With his eyes shut, face softening, hair tumbling over one shoulder, he looks comfortable. It’s as if someone took a brush to his features and smoothed out any hard edge—either that, or the static has leaked back into Doc’s vision. He feels a chug in his chest and his joints as he locks up.

X hasn’t moved. Doc reaches out, tapping his knee. Xisuma huffs, clearly startled from the half-sleep he’d drifted back into.

“Too tired t’stand,” he manages. Doc makes a questioning noise.

“I think you can make it,”

There’s a beat of silence. Xisuma cracks an eye open again, shuts it, furrowing his eyebrows. Doc watches him curiously, mind running through the list of possible scenarios. He’s made it part way when Xisuma says:

“‘M using you t’stand, then.”

And he makes a little, amused heh, before he says:

“That’s fine.”

There’s something he means to say alongside that, but as soon as X’s very warm, very human hand makes contact with the fabric of his lab coat and the cool synthetic of his arm, he loses focus. He should be used to this—the amount of times X has performed his routine maintenance, sweeping his hands over the replaced shoulder joint to check for seams, or made sure the regulator functioned, or backed up personal data, fingers skimming the shallow port at the back of his neck. He should be, but that contact alone sends a prickling-warm jolt up his arm. It feels foreign to let the touch linger. But Xisuma lingers regardless, hand flat against the space where Doc’s left ribs should be. He’s gone from holding, to simply sitting there, arm bent at the elbow, held weakly up. 

“Mrghh…” he complains. Doc taps his elbow, trying to jolt him back awake.

“C’mon, X, you can get up.”

X shakes his head slowly, his hand finding the inner curve of his prosthetic arm, squeezing just once, like he’s remembering it’s there. Then, X leans into him, all at once, slumping into his chest. Doc lets out a wouf in surprise. He holds still, aside from the simulated breath in his chest. After a moment, Xisuma makes a small, tired sound, almost like a laugh.

“Houfh,” he mumbles. “I, mm, don’t…don’t think ‘m gonna make it, Doc.”

“Mhm…” Doc chides. 

Xisuma laughs again, lying still for a moment, voice still heavy with sleep. There’s a moment where he shifts, and there’s a small, painful noise that he makes.

“Ow, mrrgh—ow, okay—” he gripes. Doc’s synthetic hand finds the curve of his shoulder, patting gently.

“Oh, X—just…stay still, mhm?”

“Mm,” Xisuma says tiredly, “Alright.”

As much as he wants to move him, X is still wearing that damn armor.

Doc lets him lean into his chest as he tries to weasel off the bits of armor left over. It’s a struggle, keeping X comfortable and trying not to pull him around awkwardly, while trying to remove his chestplate with one hand. Once the armor pulls away, he resettles him, slowly scoops one hand under his legs. Something about this, about the way Xisuma leaned heavy into him, felt so painfully human he feels it curl up between the wires connecting his regulator to his side fans.

“Ready?” he says, mostly to the top of Xisuma’s head.

“Mmh…” X murmurs.

He hefts him into his arms, settling him against his chest. When Xisuma sighs, it’s profound and heavy and he tucks his face into Doc’s coat. Doc can feel the remnant of heartbeat from where his arm rests behind his back, thudding away behind his ribs. His breathing stays even, though shallow. One of Xisuma’s hands clasps over the back of his neck, keeping him still.

It’s a careful walk to Xisuma’s spare room. Doc is careful not to bump anything, measuring the subtle rise and fall of his chest as he walks. He drifts back to sleep, though, through the lab, through Doc shutting the lights off. He’ll have to come back through to power down their various computers, but for now, the dull white-blue glow illuminates the room. He carries him into the halls and through and to his room. It’s smaller than the room in his base by a sizable margin—just enough for the essentials. X stirs as Doc pauses to flip on the lamp, the light warm and yellow briefly illuminating the room. This can’t be a daydream, now, with the way X sighs and wriggles himself free as Doc pulls back the quilts and lets him down. He sits down with him, and the warm shape that Xisuma makes curls toward him, just a fraction, as he pulls the blankets over him. 

Part of Doc knows that Xisuma won’t remember him carrying him to bed, or making sure he was warm, or keeping the light on so he wasn’t disoriented when he woke. Xisuma sighs, sinking into the pillows, expression relaxed and content. Doc hums.

“That’s better, yeah?” Doc says. He reaches out, instinct, want, desire, something, hammering away in his chest, as he brushes hair from X’s face, tucking it behind his ear. He brushes through the hair close to the base of his neck, across his cheek with his synthetic thumb. His dark hair is fine and soft and it must be a daydream—or it isn’t and he was right, because there have been moments like this in his head. Wondering if Xisuma would let himself succumb to soft comforts. He’s spent his own share of time lying next to him, ignoring the way Xisuma curls up next to him, pretending he himself didn’t move closer when Xisuma lies still. It was this dance that Doc didn’t understand, that he wasn’t sure if he was overthinking. Or overstepping. But Xisuma shifts, pressing his cheek to Doc’s synthetic palm, and Doc suppresses a shudder. It sparks something that could’ve been painful right up his arm and through his chest, bright and warm and staticky. 

Doc hums, smiling to himself. Something like a dull thrum knocks in that space of his pump, pushing itself a little further, a little harder. It was sweet. X trusts him, not only to see him without his armor, but to help him to bed, to help him sleep. But Doc lifts his hand away, feeling that ache, the nervous shudder through his system.

X makes a sound, then, something small, eyes fluttering as Doc pulls away. Doc pauses.

“Mhh,” X manages. Doc swallows—he shouldn’t have to. That’s not something he should have to do, or be able to do, but the action just feels appropriate. It goes right along with sighing and laughing, and as he does it, Xisuma says:

“Thanks,” in a small, soft voice, and, muffled, and slightly slurred with sleep: “Didn’t have’ta stop.”

“You’re supposed to be sleeping, Xisuma,” Doc says. He can feel his temperature tick up several notches, no doubt a blue flush coming to the high of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. He laughs, just a bit. “Did I wake you up?”

X sighs, stretching as he does.

“No,” he manages. “No, y’didn’t…”

“Oh,” Doc says. “Were you awake this whole time?”

Xisuma nods slowly. Ah. Ah. Doc dismisses a temperature notification.

“A little.”

“Mm,” Doc hums. “Silly Xisuma.”

Xisuma laughs. The sound is high and a little fuzzy and a bit caught in his throat. His bright eyes blink up at him and shut again as a smile settles on his face. 

“Doc?” he asks. 

“Mhm?”

Xisuma yawns, smothering it with the back of his hand, just barely. He tucks that hand close to his chest, curling up further still under his thick comforter. 

“Could you…could’you do tha’again? The…” Xisuma lifts his hand, miming a brushing motion as he does. Another temperature warning, higher than the last, blips into Doc’s field of vision. It’s immediately dismissed, but he pulls in a breath, quiet, trying to turn it into a soft laugh.

“I can do that,” Doc says gently. Gingerly, he brushes his fingers through X’s hair, sliding back against his head. He combs through, lifting his hand to go back to his forehead, back to cradle his skull. X’s eyes fall closed again.

Doc can tell the moment that Xisuma truly slips into sleep. He lingers in his space, tracing out the base of his skull with his thumb, taking in the sensation of warmth and contact and stimulation, fingers flickering white up to his wrist. He wishes biting down on his tongue would do anything. He wishes that the hollow of his chest didn’t hold a weight that no diagnostic could fix. He felt too awkward and stilted and not nearly gentle enough. But as Xisuma stays asleep, he draws his hand away. He mumbles his good nights as he stands slowly, shutting out the light and wandering from the room. 

He makes his way back into the lab. He replays the memory of Xisuma’s small smile, the fine line of his scar as he’d pressed his face into the pillow, the way he’d relaxed against Doc’s touch. He replays the memory, again, and again. It has to be a daydream. Has to be. There’s no other logical explanation to all of that.

Maybe that would explain the ache in his chest, far too human to be his own.

Doc goes back to work. He sits down at the lab table, spreading his arms as he braces against the white tabletop. He furrows his eyebrows. Something doesn’t feel right, too warm or out of place. He feels gross. Not gross bad, maybe, gross different? Broken? Not broken, maybe. Weird. Wrong. Out of place. It doesn’t make any sense. Or it has, and he’s refusing the obvious answer. Xisuma didn’t ask for any reason. Xisuma asked because he was tired, and tired people do silly things, and silly people are a handful, and Xisuma is a handful—a lovely one. Doc shuts his eyes. His chest hurts. It’s an awful hurt, actually, less painful than it is just weird. He thinks for a moment he might be better off if he left, maybe the weight of whatever lingered in his memory would be better off if he were to take a break from standing in the same spaces. 

He sends Xisuma a message. From his office, he hears his com ping.

Docm77 whispered to you… Xisuma I’m stepping out, sleep well :-)

#hermitcraft dbh au #dbhc #docsuma #docm77 #xisumavoid #dbhc doc #dbhc xisuma #hermitcraft fic #hermitshipping #mcyt fic #fics #text #i crumple into a pile of ash and dust on the ground #i am blown away by the wind #i'd like to thank theo hitheeprithee and sam artsy book for express shipping this fic #i sat down and edited in like an hour post dinner and iam so so sleepy #but alas i must post. it is required #shepherd if you're out there and you see this i never forgor about the one time i wrote them #oh this is incredibly self-indulgent #and i care them so badly #please let them kiss. please. pl--

[silverskye13]

"P... pesk...y bird," says the monster.

I’ve been trying to draw fanart for this fic ever since it came out. Finally got around to it!

I think one of the coolest things about this fic for me was reading the author’s comment “Do you know what this story is about?” and being completely uncomprehending until, about this exact moment in the chapter when Mumbo drops the helmet and pulls out the stuffed bird. It was staggering to me the implications of the helmet falling? Like there’s this feeling that the helmet keeps Mumbo emotionally stable by merit of distance. He knows the consequences of his actions in the abstract, but there’s always a barrier there, keeping it from being unbearably personal, until the exact moment he has to literally face them. I’m a sucker for a good metaphor and this was,,,, a really really good one.

Anyway not that you need me to tell you twice, but you should go read this is about a stuffed bird. Or reread it, if you’ve read it once before.

#the barking artist #this is about a stuffed bird #stuffed bird fanart #theminecraftbee #grian #mumbo jumbo #hermitcraft fic #fic fanart #more fanfic propoganda

[paradoxlemonade]

Nature of Curiousity

Fandom: Hermitcraft

Characters: Joe & Cleo

words: 1024

Warnings: very mild body horror (Cleo is embroidering on Joe, but he's made of fabric and does not feel pain)

Ao3: Here!

Summary: Joe Hills the puppet wants to make friends with humans. The humans do not want to be made friends with. Cleo puts him back together afterwards. [Abecedarian Prose Poem]

@mcyt-valentines gift for @therizino-ao3! Hope you enjoy :]

...

A sunrise the color of a bitter lemon tea beckons in the fresh morning scent of grass and dreams, soft around the edges and losing their remaining sharpness as sleep turns to wakefulness. Beneath an old willow tree, a corpse as fresh as the day it died rests in the dewy grass and embroiders artful designs into her best friend’s shoulder.

Cleo huffs at him, “You know, it would’ve been nice if you had waited until at least breakfast to go galavanting around and get yourself shot by a humanfolk.”

Dauntlessly undeterred as per usual, Joe merely smiles serenely and says, “But I must watch them, as the rain must fall and snow must melt; it is in my nature, sewn into my skin.”

Even-spaced threads holding his innards on the right side of the felt are the only thing decorating his skin, by Cleo’s own observation.

“Fine as that may be, your ‘nature’ does not make you invincible to arrows.” Generally speaking, being made of cloth made Joe invincible to very little, save for perhaps pain and common sense. He would grow tired of his game eventually, and then he would stop attempting to consort with the humanfolk (at least, Cleo hoped he would tire of it).

“If I am endlessly repairable no matter my condition, is that not a form of invincibility?”

 “Joe, you can only be repaired if I have the pieces to put you back together; if the humanfolk decide it would be more fun to capture you instead of running you off, you would be in more pieces than magic thread could possibly hold together.”

“Killjoys—that being people who deny my innermost whimsy, that being you—” he gestured at her with the arm not being worked on, “should not judge how one chooses to express themself, especially when they are themselves of humanfolk blood.”

Less ever said about one Joe Hills’ innermost whimsy, the more sane one would be, as neither consistency nor thoughts of sound minds are facets of his being.

Minutes flow around them like a gentle brook as Cleo continues her stitchwork and pointedly does not give his comments the dignity of a direct response, at least until she thinks of one worth saying.

“No humanfolk,” she began slowly, “Would consider me possible by their understanding of the world, let alone ‘of their blood’; I have not been theirs for a very long time.” One day was all it took to lose everything that she’d built over the course of her entire life, as one day was all it took for the sickness that ravaged her village like a pack of wolves descending on a flock of sheep to bury her in an early grave that she didn’t stay put in.

“Perhaps that much is fair and you have no love left for them, but I have never been theirs; the humanfolk ways are unlike our own, and I find myself pulled in again and again despite all attempts to the contrary.”

Quickly fleeting curiosity would be too much to ask, she supposed, as temporary passion was also as antithetical to Joe’s nature as he claimed sedation to be.

 “Really, you can’t be all too mad at me for this, because if you were as upset as you pretend to be, you wouldn’t have offered to sew me back up, and you certainly wouldn’t have added these nice yellow flowers without me needing to ask.”

She glances down to her hands as if seeing them for the first time that morning, the hands that gently wove the thread in and out of his fabric skin with a practiced ease and the comfort of a close friend. This conversation—despite its distances—has still grown much too close to an uncomfortable shard of glass nestled deep into her chest, digging and poking into the soft tissue beneath her heart that she could not excise no matter how strong her will. 

“Unfortunately, we still live in a world where I need to sew you back up for reasons other than your own foolishness, and it’s not like I could simply let someone I’ve worked on walk around looking like I did the job carelessly.” 

Vexed enough by her candid response, Joe allows the conversation to wander along to more familiar territory by changing the topic with all the subtlety he could muster—that is, not a whole lot.

 “What type of flowers are these meant to be, anyway?” Joe asks, stretching to see Cleo’s handiwork.

“Xyris flowers, of some kind; they’re all over around here and you seem to like them well enough that I didn’t think you would mind if I put some on your arm.”

Yellow petals of soft thread cascade from the top of his shoulder down midway to his elbow, just shy of of meeting up with the dusky green vines—those were almost ready to come out, but the new stitches would have to stay for a few weeks so the fabric could knit itself back together. Zero weeks have gone in recent memory that did not end with one of Cleo’s friends needing stitches (usually Joe, and usually for silly and-or humanfolk reasons), but she never stopped pulling out her needle and thread before they could even apologize for bothering her.

And as Joe thanks her for the help and the flowers, she leads him back to her house for an early breakfast to cap off an odd morning, all the while dreaming of a world where the humanfolk and the otherfolk didn’t have to live on opposite sides of the veil, and Joe could make strangers into friends.

 Better worlds and broken hearts are playing cards of the same set, but a card for resilience is also shuffled into that same deck. Crisp toast and peppery fried eggs aren’t quite miracle workers, but they’re enough to bring Cleo back up to normal when combined with good company. Dreams weren’t going to come true on their own, but maybe Joe was onto something with his adventures.

 Everything considered, it took him an hour longer than last time to get run off.

#hermitcraft #mcyt #joe hills #zombiecleo #hermitcraft fic #idea writes #fanfic #idea original post

[frozenjokes]

A Little Question About Love (It’s Not Little At All, Though Scar Is A Bit Frustrated It’s Not As Simple As It Is On TV)

“Hey, thanks again for driving me to the zoo all week, G, I really appreciate it. Still can’t believe how stiff my arm is, I mean, yeah, I expected it to hurt for a while, but I’m so sore!”

Grian chuckled in the driver’s seat, but kept his eyes on the road as he turned onto the street where the employee parking lot was located. Given how massive Scar’s zoo was, it took quite a while to navigate the surrounding area, so he needed to maintain some focus. “So sore you can’t bring your other one up to the wheel either? That sounds pretty bad, Scar, maybe I should turn this car back around and take you home. You might even need to go back to the hospital!”

“No! No no, that won’t be necessary. I just can’t drive, Grian, see, the seatbelt pushes real hard on my arm and shoulder and when I lift it like that it’s so much worse! Blame the seatbelt, blame the seatbelt.”

“And your other arm?”

“Have you heard of phantom pain?”

“Pretty sure we already discussed that’s not how phantom pain works, but sure Scar, go on.”

“Agony, Grian, agony. Can’t lift my arms,” Scar caught Grian’s eye, throwing him a wink, “Only in the car though. A very specific problem, nothing any doctor could address without wasting hours of our time.”

“Our time?”

“Well, duh, you’re my driver!” Scar laughed, and Grian joined him, unable to help himself. Scar could never accept an injury as it was and let himself rest when he needed it. Always moving, always working; that was the Scar way. An idle Scar was a miserable one; it didn’t matter what he was doing as long as he was moving, though he always did prefer to have someone to talk to. It’s why he hated to be at home for too long, or worse, the hospital he frequented as a result of his recklessness. Grian had a theory it’s why he hated driving as well. Sure, it wasn’t quite idle, but sitting still and focusing was not Scar’s forte. Of course, Grian didn’t mind.

He was content with the small silence as he pulled into the parking lot, but Scar would never let that stand.

“I’ve been thinking about something you said recently. I'm just curious, I guess.”

Grian tensed, glancing in Scar’s direction. He looked thoughtful, but in an impossibly neutral way, difficult to read. “Scar, that could mean anything, buddy. Gonna need you to be a lot more specific.”

“Oh!” Scar looked surprised, as if he hadn’t just said something deeply terrifying, “Sorry! Just thinking. It was with Mumbo, after he got upset and bit me, y’know. When I wanted to go after him, I mean. You were really worried and it kinda made me think and stuff.”

Grian deflated, his shoulders sinking a little closer to his chest, “Scar, I really don’t want to talk about that. You know it makes me upset.”

“No- it’s not about you getting upset, I know why you were and I really am sorry. That’s another thing that’s been in my mind but not the thing,” Scar began to ramble and Grian let himself fall back against the seat, resigned to the fact that this was happening. He didn’t want to have this conversation again. He just didn’t want Scar to get himself killed; a high order apparently.

Scar continued regardless, “It was more about.. I dunno, I mean, I’d say we’re pretty close. We’re close, right?” Scar didn’t give Grian any time to answer, “And you said that I mean a lot to you, and you mean a lot to me too, but I don’t know what that means to me, and then you said that I’ve got a lot of people who love me, but it kinda sounded like you were saying you loved me, and that’s great, I also have feelings that are like that, but I also also don’t know what that means really, to love someone. And I was just thinking about it. I love you, of course I do, but what does that mean? Does it mean anything? When you told me you loved me, what did that mean to you?”

Grian gaped. What the fuck else could he do. What the fuck was even happening here???

“Scar. Are you. What are you asking here. What are you saying.”

“I love you.”

“Okay.” Grian gripped the wheel so hard he was sure his nails would leave indents. He didn’t even bother trying to park; halfway between the lines of two spots would have to do. “You love me. What does that mean.”

“I don’t know. That’s why I asked you.” Scar was infuriatingly relaxed, like this was just a normal conversation with zero implications at all.

“I can’t tell you how you feel, Scar!”

“Well you said you loved me first, so I was asking you what that meant.”

“I didn’t- I said people love you, Scar, like your friends and family! That people would be very upset if you died doing something dumb- it- it wasn’t meant to be some kind of confession?”

“Oh, I didn’t think so!” Scar threw up his hands in defense, like that was at all obvious.

“Then what did you think?”

“I thought that you loved me.”

“Of course I love you- obviously I love you. What is happening here? Why are you so stuck on this?”

“I just don’t know what it means. I don’t know how to tell the difference and I thought that if you loved me you might be able to tell me. I feel like I love everyone the same, and that’s all sorts of confusing. I mean, maybe besides family love, but that’s more complicated, there’s like- layers.”

Grian had to fight to keep himself from gaping. This was not the conversation he thought he’d be having today. “Well,” he forced his voice back into a more even tone, something a little nicer, “For me, yeah, kinda. There’s a lot that goes into love, layers, like you said. There’s the kinda unconditional respect I have for most everyone, and it builds from there? Friendship of course, elements of physical attraction can further things sometimes. Attraction in general makes a big difference, and not just physical, it’s an emotional thing too. Personality. Mannerisms. It’s a slow thing for me most of the time. That’s not always the case though, some people fall fast. For me it’s like.. a slow infatuation with the wholeness of someone. Not necessarily loving every trait, but kinda respecting it, y’know?”

“Like friends.”

“Like- no, not like friends, like being in love. Romantically.”

“That’s friends though.”

“It’s not- Scar how many of your friends do you feel all those ways about- how many of your friends are you physically attracted to?”

“A few. Close friends, Grian, obviously. And come on, like all of our shared friends are hot, physical attraction can not be the deciding factor here, that does not make any sense.”

Grian shrugged. “We do have many hot friends.”

“I know! I think you’re attractive.”

If Grian had been drinking anything he would have spit it all over the dashboard, “You- Scar!” Scar didn’t seem to notice his words had any effect though, rambling on.

“I mean, seriously, what the hell is supposed to be the difference here! Platonic, romantic, I’m half convinced everyone has just been lying to me. I keep waiting for all these rainbows and sparkles to light up in my brain and go yup! There it is! That’s romance, that’s love, and it’s like- yeah love as in my friends who I love dearly, who I’d happily spend the rest of my life with if I got the chance-“

“-Scar-“

“-Yeah, I mean obviously when I tell you I love you I mean very explicitly every single one of those things you mentioned. Every! One! I don’t hand out ‘I love yous’ for free, I mean it. That’s not the same for everyone though, and that doesn’t bother me or anything, but doesn’t it feel a little confusing sometimes? So that wasn’t what you meant when you said that, right?” Scar looked at him so genuinely, so innocently, like that was the easiest question to answer in the world.

“Uhm. Yeah, I. Love. I love you, Scar.”

“Great!” Scar preened, apparently fully, completely, entirely satisfied with what just happened here, “This is great. Glad we’re on the same page.” And then he gathered his things and just left. Opened the car door, personal items in hand, and walked away with a goddamn smile on his face before Grian could even hope to yell out the window, WE ARE NOT ON THE SAME PAGE.

Instead, he buried his head in his hands, screamed a little, punched the passenger seat, let his face hit the car horn, then drove home, feeling overall very normal about that little conversation.

read the rest of the fic here

#and also he’s aromantic or smth like that #my dream is people who don’t know about the mermaids seeing this #and being deeply confused about the mumbo comment #as god intended #hermitcraft #hermitshipping #grian #gtws #goodtimeswithscar #scarian #desert duo #hermitcraft fic

[zedif-y]

When Zedaph arrives, Tango and Impulse are bickering. Now- truth be told, this is nothing new. But as he gets closer he notices how they're angled all weird, like they're literally attached at the hip. He blinks, eyebrows raised at the scene in front of him.

Ah.

"So... How did this happen?"

They turn to him, like kids caught in the cookie jar. "Hey, Zed!" Tango chirps. "We're stuck."

He shakes their intertwined- er. Knotted is probably a better word- tails. Impulse looks like he's mentally aged a century.

Zedaph gets closer, assessing the situation. That's- yep. That's bad, alright.

"That doesn't answer my question."

Impulse groans, "Tango happened."

"I didn't notice!"

"Hold on," Zedaph furrows his brow. With careful hands he starts trying to untangle them, gentle as he works, "Did he do the tail thing?"

The tail thing is when Tango wraps his tail around the nearest person when he's distracted- an adorable, honestly endearing habit of his. He doesn't even realize when he does it.

...It's probably less endearing for Impulse right now though.

"Yep," Impulse nods, popping the p. Tango sputters.

"I- shut up!" The tip of his tail glows into embers, making Zedaph jolt. "Whoops, sorry."

"Stop wrigglin'!" Zedaph huffs, pulling back. "You're making this harder than it has to be!"

"I'm staying still!" Impulse protests.

Zedaph scowls, "Not you!" He rolls up his sleeves, hands hovering over the knotted tails. "I- okay, well. Stop moving, Tango, I'm trying to see-"

"Easier said than done!"

"What, does your tail have a mind of its own then? Tail brain, is that what you're saying?" Tango opens his mouth to retort, but shuts up at the look on Zed's face.

Zedaph sighs, "I could just leave you two like this." Tango pouts.

"You wouldn't."

"He really would," Impulse says dryly. "Can't I just kill you to get out of this?"

Zedaph beams, "That'd be way easier-!"

"No, no!" Tango scrambles away- and then nearly tumbles over, leaving Impulse grasping for balance. "Sorry- But you can't just kill me in my face! I've got stuff!"

Impulse raises an eyebrow, "We'll pick them up."

"My bed is far away!"

Zedaph hums, "Feels more like a you-problem to me, if I'm honest."

"This entire thing is a me-problem!"

"How about," Impulse says. "We call an Admin."

Then, he pauses. "Wait."

That's when it clicks.

He gapes at Tango, "Aren't you an Admin-"

Zedaph bursts into laughter. Tango opens his mouth, closes it again. A red blush creeps up his face.

"...Yes?"

Zedaph cackles, keeling over, "We are so stupid!"

"Shut up, I forgot!"

#ryan's writing #impulsesv #zedaphplays #zedaph plays #tangotek #tango tek #team zit #hermitcraft #hermitblr #mcyt #hermitcraft fic #polyzit #i guess #anyway. have a silly

[hermitcraftguesstheauthorevent]

Welcome to the Inaugural Hermitcraft Guess The Author Event! This post should get you up to speed on the rules and how this is going to work. We will NOT be creating a discord for this event, sorry.

Guess the Author is exactly as it sounds: you, the author, write a new Hermitcraft fic (Or dust off an old unposted WIP, we won’t judge) and add it to our collection! The collection is both unrevealed and anonymous. You will have until THE DEADLINE to add your fic to the collection!

THE DEADLINE is July 9th, 2023 at midnight EDT.

On THE DEADLINE, we will close submissions and reveal the collection- but not the authors! We will make a list of every author in the collection, and post it in the collection description, so the readers aren’t just throwing darts in the dark.

From there, the Readers will have ONE WEEK to try and guess who wrote what! Your prize is nothing but new fic and fun!

ONE WEEK will last from July 9th to July 16th, 2023, terminating at midnight EDT. 

After ONE WEEK has elapsed, we will reveal who wrote what. Great Success!

Do you want to join? There’s a few additional notes under the cut!

The deadline will not be moved for any reason, at all.  If you make the deadline, awesome! Add your work to the collection.

If you don't make the deadline, that's okay! You still wrote a fic, and you should totally post it. The deadline will not be moveable to avoid throwing everything out of whack. This is about getting everyone writing, not some silly deadline!

That said, THERE WILL BE ABSOLUTELY NO EXTENSIONS TO THE DEADLINE.

The collection itself IS NOW LIVE! I had an unexpected injection of free time, so you guys get the collection early! You can add your fics to it right now!

Here's some instructions to help you with that!

And remember: You can add your fic to the collection at any point between now and THE DEADLINE!

Writers are strongly encouraged to write hermits they don't usually write for, to write less-popular hermits, to obfuscate their tracks, or to just play around in sandboxes they wouldn't normally touch. Go outside your comfort zone! Usually a horror writer? Maybe try a coffee shop AU! Or, alternatively, stick exactly to your comfort zone and try and get everyone with the ol' reverse psychology. Works every time.

The point of this is secrecy, though! It’s a game! Let’s have some fun!

Lie while liveblogging the writing process. Compose an ode to Vintagebeef on tumblr and then drop the hottest Wels fic of 2023. The possibilities are (almost) endless!

Once you've submitted a work, you'll send us an ask with your AO3 username, and we'll add you to the list. Once the collection goes live on the deadline, the list will be part of the collection description!

There will be no giftees. There will be no pinch hitters. There will be no signups. If you wanna show up, drop a fic in the collection! If you don't, that's cool too. Write whatever you want! Drop in, or don’t! It’s all for fun!

Now, that said, we do have a few rules:

-Your work MUST be Hermit-centric. This is a Hermitcraft challenge, we’re Hermitcraft fans. Nothing personal. Feel free to have cameos and background characters from any other series you like!

-No smut. Sorry guys. Imply it, cut to black around it, whatever you wanna do. Just no full-on smut.

-No causing us to break TOS. Or like, the law.

-Wordcount should be more than 50.

-The mods reserve the right to remove fics from the collection if you break these rules. (It almost certainly won’t come to that, though!)

And that’s it! That’s all the rules. Throw whatever you want in the collection- but remember, it’s a game and your job is to make it hard on the readers. Or make it easy! It’s entirely up to you.

As a reminder: the deadline for submissions will be July 9th, 2023, at midnight Eastern Daylight Time.

WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY EXTENSIONS.

With that…Ready, set, WRITE!

Have fun everyone!

Once again: the collection is LIVE, and you can add your work to it anytime!

Sincerely,

The Mods

#Hermitcraft Guess The Author Event #Hermitcraft fic

[tinykittentrash]

YEAYY FINISHHH🙌🏻😌😌Now let me disappear for months again🤭Btw the top one is a remake

#grian #grian fanart #pearlescentmoon #pearlescentmoon fanart #goodtimeswithscar #goodtimewithscar fanart #mumbo jumbo #mumbo fanart #impulsesv #impulse fanart #hermit archives #the hermit archives #hermitcraft fic #hermitcraft au

[stalarys]

the final chapter of 'a rolling stone gathers no moss'.

uh . thank you all for reading?

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft fic #bdubs

[zabo-writes]

Mumbo is a God (He thinks everyone else is also a god, but that they’ve just been really good at pretending to be human)

Mumbo was beginning to suspect he was on the receiving end of a remarkably complex prank.

This put him in a predicament. Should he go along with it? He knew it was more fun if he did. If Mumbo Jumbo knew one thing, it was how to commit to a joke.

However, this had been going on for years now. Mumbo was starting to get one of those feelings in his gut that was the kind of gut feeling people describe when they say they have a “gut feeling” about something.

And being that Mumbo did not have a gut, or any human body parts for that matter, one could see why this was distressing to him.

Mumbo Jumbo was a god. Specifically, the god of redstone. All of the other hermits were gods as well. The crux of the issue here was that all of the other hermits had been pretending to be humans for about 10 years now. And by pretending, Mumbo meant seriously, seriously roleplaying. He’d tested it! There’d been multiple instances where he had tried to convince another hermit to break character and do something godly. And they never cracked!

Truly, Mumbo was impressed. He himself was not quite as unshakeable. There’d been a few moments where his facade had cracked: the time he accidentally made a perfectly circular pumpkin (big problem in a world made of squares), the time where he put too power into the redstone AI for grumbot and gave it an existential crisis, the incident where he may have slightly consumed Grian’s soul…

All that was to say, Mumbo wasn’t the best at pretending to be a human, but he was giving it his best effort. And it seemed like the other hermits, in some sort of years-long prank, were keeping up the joke until Mumbo got it right.

Well if that was the case, he’d finally caught on! Haha! Take that, other hermits! Mumbo finally figured out the prank where everyone else pretended for a very long time that they weren’t actually—

Gods.

Wait.

They were gods, right?

Scar with his magnificent terraining skills, Cleo with her armor stands…

And surely Grian was some sort of trickster god. Right?

All of his friends were so talented, he had simply assumed it was related to some sort of godly domain.

Come to think of it, did he have any confirmation that they ever were gods in the first place?

No, no, no… surely…

Mumbo paused his task of mindlessly mining out a very large area under his base. He blinked. The netherite pickaxe clattered as it hit the floor.

Oh, he was an absolute spoon.

———

Grian grumbled as he shuffled through every chest and shulker he owned for what felt like the billionth time. He could’ve sworn he left the materials to make a beacon somewhere around here. Did it “lag” into someone’s inventory again? He pulled out his communicator to put a message in the chat.

“Grian! Incoming!”

Grian looked up just in time to see Mumbo collide with his face, sending them both sprawling across the floor.

“Ah! Hello Mumbo, fancy seeing you here! Do you happen to know where my beacon is?” Grian laughed as he dusted himself off.

“This is not the time! Grian! Grian I’m having a crisis.” Mumbo lamented,

“Yes, so am I! My beacon is gone!”

Mumbo continued, undeterred, “Grian, I have a very important question for you, and I need you to be completely honest with me.”

“Okay?”

“What does your true form look like?”

“My what?”

“Alright, alright. So you know how I’m a god?”

Grian stated incredulously at the mustachioed man before him. “WHAT?”

Mumbo groaned and put his head in his hands. “No, I really need you to be honest. I’m a god, you’re a god, bdubs is a god… we all are, right?”

Grian was not sure how to respond to this. He was, to his knowledge, as human as they come. “I think this is a sitting down conversation.”

After a long, long chat inside of Grian’s bedroom, Grian felt he was finally understanding the situation. He was taking it pretty well! As well as one can take your best friend explaining to you in the same breath that he is a deity, and oh— by the way, he thought this whole time that you were as well.

“Okay, okay. Let me get this straight. You’ve been pretending to be human this whole time because you thought you had to?”

“I thought it was a game!” Mumbo exclaimed, burying his face in the pillows on Grian’s bed. “I thought it was a game, like an ‘I’m not going to kill anything for a season’ type of game!”

“Right, but in this case the game was ‘pretending to be human for multiple years without mentioning the fact that you’re a god’?”

“…. Yes.”

Grian cackled “Well, Mumbo, I can assure you, if that ever was a game, you’ve certainly won! I would never have suspected you.”

Mumbo nodded sagely. “Yes, it’s the mustache. A classic human disguise.”

“You don’t really have a mustache?!”

Mumbo cocked his head. “Grian, you’ve seen my real form! Or, a depiction of it, I suppose. The redstone god? From the buildswap we did?”

“That was ages ago! And wait, did you just make a self portrait for that prompt, then?!”

“Yes! That’s why I thought you knew!”

“Somehow that feels like cheating. I should go get Pearl and have her re-evaluate the results of that build swap with this new information”

A look of concern crossed Mumbo’s face. “Oh, I didn’t even think that. I’m going to have to explain this to everyone, aren’t I?”

Grian shrugged, “I’m sure it’s fine. Say, could I see your ‘god’ form, O great and powerful Mumbo Jumbo? Now you have me curious.”

“Well I could, but I might destroy your ceiling.” Mumbo looked up at the rafters sheepishly.

“Back outside we go then”

Safely on the grass behind Grian’s base, Mumbo transformed into his full form for the first time in what felt like ages.

The form was that of a large humanoid figure, as tall as Grian’s house, made of red terracotta and loose redstone dust that fell and scattered like sand with every movement Mumbo made. His eyes were two glowing redstone lamps that flickered with emotion, reminiscent of a certain robot they had built before.

It occurred to Mumbo at that moment that if his friends were truly human, this form might be quite scary to them. He knelt down to look at Grian, bracing himself to handle whatever fear was in his friend's eyes.

Instead, Grian was grinning like a madman.

“Oh, we are SO pranking Scar with this.”

#hermitcraft fic #hermitcraft fanfic #grian #grian and mumbo #mumbo jumbo #god mumbo au #buildswap references??!! #zabo writes

[hermit-lover]

Hey hey!! Ur hermits x raccoon reader was so good ^^ could u do a Tango x raccoon reader who brings him shiny things and little trinkets they think hed like and Tango has a full shulker box in his ender chest filled with things given by the reader

Love ur work stay hydrated <33

Trinkets!

------------------

Character: Tango x Raccoon!Reader

Type: Blurb (~1.3k)

Theme: Fluff, Romantic

Summary: Decked out's secretes are ever alluring, combined with the irresistible game master, you cant help but want to slink around.

TW: Brief panic.

A/N: Glad you liked it! I'm always down for some good ol raccoon shenanigans. Kinda strayed from the prompt, but I had fun, sorry!

Its been a small while since you've joined Hermitcraft, and despite your original apprehension as to how well you'll get along, you've fit in perfectly.

The group welcomed your absentminded chaoticness, and eagerly joined in shenanigans.

Yet, above all shone one hermit- who was quite literally a hermit this season. His shiny glowing eyes and welcoming personality, combined with apt for the strange and wonderful, made him so alluring. And that wasn't even touching on his project!

Yes, his project- the sprawling grounds of complex spaghetti redstone and brilliantly decorated caves that wove intricately through the large hole.

Decked out.

It wasn't finished yet- but that wouldn't stop you from trying to explore it! The cold breeze that emanated from the space ruffles your ears and tail, chilling them in the familiar way. You tuck your pickaxe away, sending it into your inventory with a flash of pixels. It was exhilarating breaking in- the pounding of your heart combined with the shaky excited sparks through your limbs only served to drive you further. Maybe this time you'll be able to fully explore the card sorter!

Skittering along a wool line of redstone, you dodge and weave around frankly unsafe contraptions. The glittering messes draw you in, with the promise of secrets and treasures. Whispers of grand prizes and knowledge no ones has keeps you moving. Once at the end of this line, you can see the card sorter, the splay of observers and hoppers making your tail twitch in excitement. Making redstone was fun, but exploring someone else's? especially when not allowed? that was the best.

Eyeing your route down, you begin to slink. Off of the white wool, and down onto a yellow line, then onto an observer, which leads you to a blue line- then you can just put your foot on this extended piston-

CLUNK

Your foot meets nothing but air.

With a screech you plummet- open air surrounds you- your heartbeat fills your head- Eyes screwed shut.

You prepare for respawn.

"OOF- gotcha!"

....You're not dead?

At that realization you open your eyes, ears still pinned back in fear.

A grinning face greets you. Pointed teeth gleaming in the shadowed lighting, dimly glowing blue eyes squinting from the effort. Above that- flickering blue flames leech of his head, calm, content. His presence instantly calms you. Tango.

Going boneless in his arms- he briefly struggles to maintain grip- you sigh.

"I thought I was about to litter my items all over decked out!" You laugh, adrenaline wearing off.

"pft I cant have that! All deathifications must be done inside the dungeon- When the game is actually finished." His tone isn't lost on you, while it was obvious he isn't actually upset, he's scolded you plenty of times for your premature interest in his death game. You crack a guilty smile, trying your best puppy dog eyes.

"Oh i'm sorry- I had no idea! I was just mining and then-"

"Mhm, toootttally." He interrupts, rolling his pupilless eyes. You gasp in offense.

"Hey!- At least let me finish my excuse!"

"I can do whatever I want- I caught you after all." His logic is....sound. He did keep you from losing your levels and well- your head. You sigh, crossing your arms and pouting.

"Fine."

He grins again, starting to walk back towards his storage system- and the exit. Panic fills you, you just got here! you didnt want to leave already, an excuse, you need an- AHA!

"Tannggoooo~" You drawl, leaning further into him, the strange chill that poured from his chest soothing to your warm face. Tango raises an eyebrow in suspicion.

"Yea?"

"Did I mention that I had something for you?"

He squints, debating whether or not it was a ploy.

"No...Is it something I should be concerned about?"

Now its your turn to grin.

"Maaayyybbeeee- do you want it?" You always had a gift for Tango, it was as though every shiny thing you saw reminded you of him, and called to be in his possession. You'd almost say your incessant gift giving was why he kept you around- but he clearly was fond of you too.

Tango huffed, depositing you into one of the plush chairs you pestered him to add into the storage room. It certainly did make it cozier, and he deserves somewhere nice to rest. You pop up, tilting your head. "Is that a no?-"

"I didnt say that-" Tango points an accusing finger at you, "But I still haven't forgotten!" You sigh, flopping over the back of the chair exaggeratedly.

"You give a guy someone else's robotic arm one time!-"

"Doc nearly skinned me!"

"You would make a good rug." You defend. Tango blinks at you a couple times, then sighs, smiling growing.

"Okay fine, i'll bite. What did you get me?"

You grin, wiggling your fingers to summon the blue shulker box you had shoved it into. Painstakingly, you place it down, and slooooowwwly reach for lid-

"Close your eyes~"

Tangos brows furrow in worry, but he obliges, glowing blue pools hidden behind his eyelids. You peel the top of the shulker off and grin inside- your best catch yet. Picking it up delicately, you stand, stepping towards Tango and reaching forwards.

"Open your hands."

He obeys, fingers splayed in curious confusion.

You take half a second to admire the treasure. Shining green surface so smooth and perfect, sturdy and rare. Then, you delicately place it in his hands, and skitter quickly backwards.

His eyes flutter open, brows still furrowed as he takes in the object. Then his face flashes in alarm.

"Oh no- You'll take this back to him this instant!" He thrusts it towards you, and you dodge out of the way. Plucking up the shulker.

"What you don't like it?" You pout, tilting your head and scuttling as he approaches.

"No!" Tango laughs, "Xisuma's glove isn't something you can gift!"

"But he didn't notice! and its shiny and cool!" You protest, unable to hold down the pleased grin splitting your features.

"He will notice! And he'll go looking for it!" Tango insists, trying to corner you, arms held out, flicking the green glove towards you. You weave backwards, matching his every step.

"Nuh uh!" You insist, childishly.

"Yea huh!" Tango replies, giggling. His pure laughter rings in your ears and clenches your heart. Heat rushes to your face- focus, you remind yourself.

Your back meets the wall, and you begin sliding along it, still avoiding taking back the glove. You continue the standoff for a couple seconds- then Tango lunges towards you.

His arms pin either side of you- halting you in your tracks. Pressed against the wall.

"Ha!" He gloats, grinning down at you, "gotcha."

Heat burns your face, your throat closes up, and your knees nearly buckle.

He is gorgeous.

Half lidded blue eyes focused on you, lips parted revealing his pointed fangs while he pants into your space. He seems unaffected, lucky bastard.

Then, a horrible idea.

Slowly, you lean forwards.

"Yep, you got me-" You begin, voice low.

He tenses slightly, breath hitching. For a split second you worry hes uncomfortable, but the sudden addition of deep blue on his face makes your heart soar. "But I haven't even given you the entire gift."

"You...haven't?" He's slightly breathless but manages to keep some suspicion. You nod slowly, now completely in his personal space. Your nose brushes his.

"Nope." You confirm, tilting your head slightly. "Would you like it?"

Theres a beat and you worry he's going to say no- but he nods once. You fight down your grin.

You close the gap- but miss his mouth and press a kiss to the side, just barely brushing lips.

Then, while hes recovering, you duck- weaving out of his arms and sprinting for the bubble elevator up.

"Bye Tango! Enjoy your gift!-" You call, cheeky grin ever present. He sputters.

"You!-" He rushes to the elevator, narrowly missing you as you step in. "I'll have my revenge!" He calls after you.

That's exactly what you were planning on.

#hermitcraft #hermitcraft x reader #hermitcraft fandom #hermitblr #atlas writes #hermitcraft fic #tangotek #tangotek x reader #xisumavoid

[mawofthemagnetar]

“So, tell me, Hypno,” Gem said, leaning against the wall of her starter house, “’Cause I didn’t get a chance to ask last season. What’s with the bandana? Do you ever take that thing off?”

Hypno raised an eyebrow, and shrugged.

“Yeah, I take it off sometimes. I’ll take it off right now, watch.” And he pulled it off, revealing a mop of sweaty brown hair.

And, of course, a strange headband made of polished silver circles, stuck to both of his temples.

Gem tilted her head, the flowers in her antlers leaning.

“Uh,” She said, “what’s- what’s with the-?”

“Hm? Oh, that. Psychic dampener.” Hypno said mildly, slipping his bandanna back on and starting to tie it up.

“…Forrrrr…?”

“Y’know. Keeping me from- I can read minds, y’know? Anyway, yeah, so, the mindreading thing? Doesn’t really turn off.”

Gem’s eyes went wide as the horror dawned.

“So…you wear that…”

“To turn it off, yeah. Don’t worry, it’s pretty comfy.” Hypno said with a smile.

“…So, wait, if you take that thing off…wouldn’t that be fun sometimes, though? Like, you could TOTALLY cheat at poker with that!”

“Oh, yeah. I could. But let me ask you this, Gem: Would you want to spend a minute of your life inside of Keralis’ head?”

All the blood drained out of Gem’s face.

“I-“

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

#magnetar writes #hermitcraft fic #got home. am tired. wrote this. #hypnotizd #Geminitay

[tunastime]

A Gear of the Heart, Turning

so I'm back on an ethubs kick after so very long of not writing them (spacer really changes a man), and decided to take a quick peek back into the DBHC au by @shepscapades beloved. thanks for making me insane! ahhaha <33 etho... anyways enjoy them! <3

(2847 words) (check out DBHC here!)

When Etho comes back from exploring, Bdubs is lying in the grass.

It’s a crisp, cold, clear day. The sun is bright blue, bright enough to stare into and imagine what the burning feeling could be, the cold brightness, the way the sun carries no warmth but a fraction of what it could in the summer. Etho knows exactly what time of year it is, he’s never stopped keeping track, he’s never paused counting the days in his own personal, mental calendar. Fall. Getting colder every day. Nights growing in length, days getting shorter and shorter. In the corner of his eye, if he were to focus on it, he could see the date. For now, though, the sides of his vision held other data—temperature, his own lives, a list of players, his personal chances of success. He’s not here to cause problems, that’s not his job. He’s got another objective, something self-made. Survive. He’s supposed to be surviving. He is surviving, in fact.

If Etho could breathe, he would’ve taken in a lungful of that sharp, cold air, would know the way it hit the back of his throat. Instead, he feels the sun, and the air, and knows them in absolutes, and picks his way around the base and over to Bdubs in the grass. He’s not asleep yet—his heart beats a steady drum, calm and even. Etho notes the slow rise and fall of his chest, the way he sees his eyebrows twitch when Etho stands in the patch of sun he rests in. He pillows his head on his coat, his arms spread out. His eyes don’t open, but his hand reaches out, smacking the side of Etho’s ankle.

“Etho,” Bdubs says tiredly. 

“How did you know it was me?” Etho asks, a note of curiosity entering his tone. He tilts his head, a bit unnecessarily. He knows Bdubs can’t see. It just feels right. He’s been doing a lot of that, lately—doing things because they feel right, rather than because he has to. That’s human, isn’t it?

“Who else is gonna come stormin’ into our base and stand in front of me?” Bdubs says. Finally, he cracks open an eye, squinting up at Etho, brows furrowed. His hand messes with the lace of Etho’s boot, twisting it in his fingers. Etho notes it down—he doesn’t want to trip.

“I was quiet as a mouse, Bdubs!” Etho says. He smiles—just enough for it to be seen in his eyes. Bdubs can’t see behind the black mask on his face. 

Bdubs snorts. After a moment, he shuts his eyes again. His hand falls still, over his chest. He sighs out a profound thing, face softening as he relaxes again.

“Sure you were, Etho,” he says. Etho hums a little. He likes the sound of Bdubs’ tone when he says that—something about it feels so much softer than normal. Maybe unintentionally tired. Maybe he was asleep before Etho got here. “Get outta my sun, will you?”

Step out of the sun, Etho thinks. It lingers for a moment. Will you? The added request. He considers it for a moment longer before he does. He rounds around Bdubs’ head, drops down to occupy the space right at his right shoulder. The sun shines on both of them.

Etho takes a moment to shrug off the warm coat around him. It ends up on the grass beside him and so does his mask and he leans back on his hands. He soaks in the sun, wondering what that warmth could feel like if it were just a bit stronger, if the bite of cold around them weren’t so prevalent. He wonders how much Bdubs feels of both, if it’s more than him, if it’s less. Bdubs heart stays steady, his breathing even. He still isn’t sleeping.

“That better?” Etho asks, lowering his voice. Bdubs makes a noise, half-startled. Etho looks down at him, watching the way his face changes ever so as he recognizes Etho’s question. He gets the urge, just for a moment, to reach out, to run his hand through Bdubs’ hair, despite how greasy it must be at this point. He wonders if it would tangle. He wonders if it feels any certain way. 

“That’s much better,” Bdubs sighs. “Thank you, Etho.”

“Mhm.”

There’s a beat of quiet where they sit together. Etho’s hand sits behind Bdubs’ head. He considers that urge with full merit, listening to Bdubs sigh again, comfortable and content even in the midst of a death game. To be fair, Etho knows he isn’t. This is just a facade for a brief moment—or perhaps it’s Etho himself making him this calm. He can’t tell. Part of him hopes it’s the latter, rather than the former.

Bdubs tilts his head back, craning his neck to get a look at Etho behind him. He smiles a bit, furrowing his eyebrows questioningly. Etho tilts his head again, that questioning gesture, finally letting his hand rest at the crown of Bdubs’ head. Bdubs smile only grows, just a bit, just the smallest fraction. Etho doesn’t move his hand—he just rests it there. Just for a moment. 

“What’re you doin’?” Bdubs asks.

“Sitting here,” Etho says plainly. “Is that a problem?”

“You’re lookin’ pretty comfortable.”

“I am,” Etho says. He hums a little, to add to the effect. “You look comfortable yourself.”

“Oh,” Bdubs says, shutting his eyes. “Very much so.”

Etho hums again. He lets his thumb drag over the top of Bdubs’ head, muzzing up his hair, allowing just a moment of self indulgence. Bdubs doesn’t stop him. It’s nice. 

Bdubs watches him with a soft, partially confused, partially content look. After a moment, he shuts his eyes, leans his head back down so that Etho’s hand cups the top of his head. He sighs out and clambors up. Etho’s hand falls away after that, and something resembling a pang of longing makes his thirium pump stutter. 

Bdubs turns toward him, shifting forward until their knees meet. He blocks part of the sun over Etho, to which Etho nearly makes a comment about it, but it gets lost somewhere as Bdubs squints at him. Late afternoon, Etho thinks. The sun wasn’t high enough in the sky to last much longer. He’ll have to haul himself up and start a fire, soon enough, but Bdubs pins him with that look and Etho can’t move. Bdubs hasn’t even given him a request. It feels self-inflicted. 

“You’re staring,” Etho says, a bit obviously.

“You were looking at me funny,” Bdubs says. His mouth curves into a frown. Etho hopes it doesn’t look like he’s watching. Instead, Etho laughs.

“I wasn’t,” he says. Bdubs snorts, shaking his head. He reaches out, patting Etho’s unmarred cheek. The impression his hand leaves is warm—warm enough to almost be hot. Etho’s brain pings the sensation, the impression, the linger of touch, records, stores, repeats. If he had something to swallow he’s sure he would've done it, like he’s seen Bdubs do. 

Instead, he raises his eyebrows, and doesn’t say anything, and Bdubs laughs, and Etho doesn’t think another sound could be that good. Bdubs pulls himself up after that, pushing himself forward on his hands and knees, wincing at he twists to stretch, and sighs.

“Tango’ll be back soon to check up on us,” he says. “You wanna get started on a fire?”

Etho looks up at him, nodding slowly. He’s still lingering on that remnant of a touch, the weight of it all. He agrees to what Bdubs says regardless, and as Bdubs nods his thanks and walks away, still complaining about the ache in his back, Etho scoops himself off the ground. Above him, the sun has started to sink in the sky, and the shadows grow.

Etho makes a fire.

Tango comes and goes. He’s not much for sleep, which is typical for him as of late. He laughs as he talks to the two of them, as they bounce around stories about the day passed. Nothing happened—not really, nothing of note. It was slow, full of collection, of waiting, of planning. Tango talks of resource gathering as Bdubs drinks soup from a wooden bowl. It’s a nice slice of quiet, and Etho watches the expression on Tango’s face with a careful contemplation. His red eyes flick to Etho when he talks about their team, and Etho feels that bit of warmth, sharing that eye. Everywhere he goes, he carries a bit of Tango with him. Their odds look better with him here, but he can’t deny the sliver of human error that chips away at that success rate. He doesn’t know how much longer Tango’ll stick around. Surely, he can see it too.

The fire is still going when Tango picks himself up and dusts his pants off and says he’ll be back later. Etho believes him, reaches out to pat his shoulder as he stands with him. Tango jostles, smiles like he means that, too. Etho watches him go before he drops down beside Bdubs again. Bdubs stares into the flames, eyes far away, expression soft. Etho moves to sit next to him, their shoulders almost brushing. It’s Bdubs that closes the gap, pressing to his side, cheek against his shoulder. Etho stays still, stiffening, pretending not to care when Bdubs takes his hand. He can feel the uptick of stress as he sits still, feeling his pump thump in his chest.

Bdubs runs his thumb over the back of his hand, over the valleys of his knuckles. He traces them out with the pad of his finger, and the spark of sensation travels up Etho’s arm, like it could tickle the back of his neck, raise the hair there. It registers, again and again, dull and present but not unpleasant. He leans back into Bdubs. Bdubs laughs a little, just a huff of air.

“You better not be sleepin’ on me, Etho,” Bdubs says, the undertone of sleep coming to his voice. Etho makes a noise of disagreement.

“Never, Bdubs!”

“Mm,” Bdubs sighs. “Good.”

Bdubs lets go after a moment, peeling away from him for just a beat, before they’re sitting side by side again, Bdubs still pressed as close as he can be to his shoulder. Etho notes the way Bdubs shivers, imperceptible. Etho’s the warmest thing besides the fire, here, all moving mechanical parts and expelling heat to keep cool. Not as much as Tango might, but enough to matter. Enough to be a little bit warmer than Bdubs, right now.

Bdubs sighs again, shutting his eyes. Facing Etho, now, Etho can watch his expression change as he starts to warm up, softening, sinking. Bdubs doesn’t open his eyes for a long moment, but his hand comes up, his right hand, left hand replacing the one holding Etho’s wrist hostage. He reaches up to cup Etho’s face in his palm. His warm hand slides up to cradle the scarred side of Etho’s face, and Etho can’t help the immediate reaction of simulated skin fading to white, sliding away where Bdubs’ warm, calloused hand makes contact. Bdubs runs his thumb over a particular crack near his jaw, just a simple, slow motion. Etho wishes he could sigh. It would be the proper response. More than just leaning into the touch and shutting his eyes, more than not knowing why it was nice, and just knowing that it was. It sends sensation after sensation after sensation, the tingling feeling running over his skin and up his cheek and neck. Does Bdubs know? Can he see what it’s doing? Surely he can’t hear the stutter, the way his pump works faster, any of that. If he were to open his eyes, would Bdubs be looking at him? What would that expression look like?

He opens his eyes anyway. He lets them slide open, ignoring the very human response to shut them again, to soak in the touch, the feeling of being held. The feeling he was realizing he would like if he could tie the two together. Bdubs is looking at him, but his expression is soft, almost concerned. Hesitant, maybe. He pauses the drag of his thumb over Etho’s cheek as Etho meets his eye, even as Etho’s expression is low-lidded and unfocused.

“‘S that nice?” Bdubs asks softly, voice going hoarse as it hits the low register. 

Etho blinks, slow. The edges of his vision fuzz out, like his optical unit is failing. He opens his mouth, realizing he’s failed to preemptively form a sentence. He makes a sound instead, then tries again, stuttering.

“I don’t know.”

Bdubs frowns a little. Etho leans hard into his palm. Not like that. He doesn’t mean it like that.

“It’s nice, but I don’t know what nice means,” Etho manages. He’s not making any sense. “You don’t have to stop.”

Bdubs’ frown fades, turning soft, warm, into a smile. He laughs a little, a sound Etho registers as a laugh. Good enough to be a laugh. 

“I hear you, sweetheart,” Bdubs says gently.

Etho smiles, laughs a little. As much as he’s learned to mimic, so far, something that’s started to morph into his own little sound. 

“You getting soft on me, Bdubs?” he asks. He can’t help it—the amused tease comes too natural to kick. He feels Bdubs pinch his cheek and recoils, face scrunching.

“I am not,” Bdubs barks. His voice is flooded with amusement though, and Etho laughs with him. He can’t help it. Bdubs laughs, and he does too, and whatever thing he’s experiencing feels incredibly fond and sweet and he hopes he’ll soon be able to actually pin it to something. What was all that? Who was that, squeezing itself into Bdubs’ body, to touch Etho’s face in a way that he’d never really done before? To admire? Was he admiring? Looking at him? Memorizing like Etho was? Etho watches Bdubs turn away, searching for something to snuff the fire. He pretends not to notice the flush on Bdubs’ cheeks.

Bdubs is such an odd person. 

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get a proper grasp of human emotion. Maybe that’s the whole point.

Bdubs snuffs the fire. When he does, he turns to Etho. The mask finds Etho’s face again, and Etho registers the falter in Bdubs’ face when he looks at him.

“Gotta protect that face of yours, don’t’cha?” Bdubs says, swallowing down something. Maybe there’s a hint of emotion Etho is missing. He can’t really tell. His vision sharpens back into clarity as Etho rises to a stand. The sky is just starting to get dark, the air cold, and Bdubs looks over to the wooden structure they’re calling home���more than just the fort. A warmer space than just the fort.

“You know it,” Etho says playfully. That alone cracks the facade of Bdubs’ discomfort. He smiles, shaking his head, rolling his eyes in the good-natured way that Etho always recognized as good-natured and not malicious. 

“You comin’ to bed?” Bdubs asks. He jerks his head over to the wooden structure, body halfway turned to it. He doesn’t say anything else, lingering on Etho’s unsaid answer. Etho shrugs, sticking his hands in his pockets as his shoulders rise. 

“Maybe. Probably not tonight.”

“Mm,” Bdubs says. “Right. Forget you don’t need to sleep half the time.” Then he laughs, and at the last second, adds:

“You weirdo.”

Etho barks out a laugh—something wholly his own, surprised, startled by Bdubs’ comment. He watches Bdubs turn away from him, still chuckling, still smiling to himself. After a beat, he calls back to him, and Bdubs turns. Etho shrugs off his coat, holding it out to him with one hand, the other still in the pocket of his pants. Bdubs tilts his head, frowning a little.

“You’re not gonna get cold?” he asks. Etho shakes his head.

“I’ll be alright,” he says, smiling. It feels nice to smile. It feels nice that it meets his eyes.

“Okay, Etho,” Bdubs says, taking the coat. He pauses for a moment, draping it over his arm. It feels good. Maybe that’s what Bdubs means by things feeling nice. Feeling. Maybe. “Have a good night, alright?”

“I’ll try, Bdubs,” Etho says, letting his tone be as affectionate as is appropriate. Bdubs nods his head. That smile doesn’t leave his face for as long as Etho can see him.

Bdubs wanders off to their room, quiet. Etho finds that place in the grass again. He’ll check in on him in a bit, spend the rest of the night planning, working, and spend some time resting when he knows he’s able to tomorrow. For now, though, Etho drops himself into the soft grass still present around the base, in the snow, feeling it cold but not yet damp, waning from the evening light. Feeling. Feeling. Feeling. Maybe he can get used to feeling. Maybe he’ll understand feeling on his own. He looks up, into the sky, and tries to see if there are any stars he recognizes.

They wink their way in from the gold-blue sky, and Etho watches. 

#dbhc #ethubs #ethoslab #bdoubleo100 #tangotek #hermitcraft #hermitcraft dbh au #hermitcraft fic #mcyt #mcyt fic #text #fics #HI SHEPHERD THANK YOU FOR LETTING ME DO THIS #YALL i am so CRAZY about them #there's another fic too where they kiss #blows myself up RAGHRGAHRAHRRBGHRBGHR #AHEM im fine #im okay now <33 #anyway ethubs weeeeee!!

[silverskye13]

Being the universe's smartest super computer still made for a derpy, non-functional person. It was really easy for people to get caught up in the Cool Sci-Fi Shenanigans of cyborgs and robots and forget how awesome and powerful organic, sentient life was.

For example: Xisuma has a perfect memory. If someone gave him a date and a time, he could scan back through his memory logs, replay recorded data and footage, and tell you the exact recipe he used for those vegan cookies that one time six years ago. He knows the ambient temperature of a froglight that's been submerged underwater for six hours, three minutes and twenty-nine seconds. He can rewind a recorded memory, pause the time lapse, and watch in slow motion as Grian breaks a stone block at spawn with his bare hands because he was bored during their intro-season speech.

However, recorded data takes up a massive amount of memory on a standard hard drive when you record everything you see as a passive function, and all of it has to be purged by hand, regularly, just so Xisuma can maintain the memory needed for daily functions. He's tried writing algorithms to do it for him, but even the best pattern recognition software can't account for his momentary preferences. What differentiates his favorite sunrise from any other? If he were human, he could program some kind of learning software using data from tables tied to the output of different brain chemicals and electrical pulses that most frequently line up with a formative memory -- but if he were human he wouldn't be making a program like that in the first place, now would he?

It's one of those long, long days of trawling through recorded data. It would be shorter if he would just parse through the most recent memories, but he likes keeping long-term memory storage at exactly thirty percent of his total data storage, and he's been resting at thirty-four percent for the past month. Putting off the inevitable. It's just, there's been a lot of stuff to remember the past few weeks, and it's hard to choose what to get rid of sometimes. He's started deep-diving through old data, walking down memory lane. He has to be careful, some of this data is important, tied intricately with the complex spider algorithm that forms his memory data access system.

Click! Click! Click!

"What are you thinking, X?"

The screen that makes up the lion's share of X's face organizes itself into a smile, lights flickering on in the nanoseconds it takes him to process the memory he's watching and attribute happiness to it. Yes, this is a good one.

The playback jolts as he looks down at Tango. Not pictured is a redstone project they are picking away at. Xisuma knows this because this particular memory has a transcript, full of branching tags and keywords that pull up a wealth of information alongside it.

That's another thing about memory that organic life never appreciates. Memory isn't just the memory itself. It's a web of associations built on prior, learned knowledge. A tree isn't just a tree. It's color and texture and symbol and "when was the first time I drew a tree?" and "apples" and "saplings" and a thousand other tiny associations they just arbitrarily have. Xisuma has to synthesize that web. A memory doesn't exist in a vacuum. Unlike the organic mind, however, Xisuma can pull up as much accurate information as he has the processing power for. This memory brings him two more closely associated recordings, associated memories he's kept for context, the transcripts of six more deleted memories, the definition of redstone, a playback of isolated sound he deemed important.

The playback continues.

Click! Click! Click!

"What are you thinking, X?"

"Oh, I'm sorry Tango, I didn't know you'd walked up! I was doing research."

"Yeah? What kind?"

"Oh well, you know the new update. Redstone's always a little finicky after."

"Right, yeah, totally. I've been putting mine off, honestly. I don't feel like fixing broken stuff right now -- oh but, I guess you can't wait, huh?"

Xisuma parses through the data brought up with the memory. He knows the date this was recorded, the recent change to redstone mechanics brought on by the server update. He'd had three farms break. There was a linked document to a transcript of Doc's rant on redstone as it relates to radiation. There was a script note document typed the day after this recording was created: Clicking Good. There was a preliminary version of what he'd nicknamed "The Tick Script.Exe".

"Yeah, I've got a lot of bugs to fix."

"Are you going to get rid of the clicking?"

"Clicking?"

The clicking was an ambient noise made when Xisuma's system was a bit bulkier, his algorithms and scripts that handled memory and data access crude and unperfected. It caused a disc in a driver somewhere to click when he did searches. At the time, the clicking had been the closest thing to an annoying habit Xisuma could manage.

Computers don't have habits. Habits are repetitive motions that become subliminal, that take effort to break, and are oftentimes formed subconsciously. Xisuma doesn't have a discernable difference between conscious thought and subconscious. He has background processes, he has backburnered data, and he has executive commands.

Xisuma queries the memory, pulling up related tags and searches, letting the algorithm reach. This memory had been the start of a, for lack of a better term, humanification process for him. There was his observation table on organic ticks, habits, and movements. It had taken a lot of uncomfortable staring, but back then, staring was all he'd known how to do. One of the first entries on the table was blinking. Organic things blinked, clearing away dust and debris from lenses and membranes. Xisuma didn't have eyes, didn't blink. But the screen that managed his facial expression animations could be programmed to blink.

Xisuma queries blinking. He pulls up a transcript of an interaction with Stressmonster, where she mentioned he blinked every thirty seconds. She knew this because when she first noticed him blinking, she'd noticed it's regularity. That was when Xisuma learned that, to convincingly blink, time variation was necessary.

Coding randomization into redstone circuitry had always been difficult.

Xisuma returns to the Tango memory recording, replays the question about the clicking, the unintentional habit. Xisuma still clicked when he thought. The others probably still thought it had to do with bulky drivers. In reality, it had been a test in trial and error.

How many clicks was acceptable for a thinking pattern? The three dot ellipses was common in writing, and a two dot pattern was too reminiscent of a heartbeat. When he'd temporarily switched to a four dot pattern, he'd noticed people getting impatient, or worrying if his mechanics were stalling. (Stalling and slow loading does sometimes happen, but it manifests in freezes and long pauses, not in repeating clicks). He invented a three click pattern, tested a variety of click sounds, settled on something similar to a rotary phone click when a number is dialed. It was a good sound. Heavy and sharp. It sounded like something falling into place with intention. Click! Click! Click!

Xisuma doesn't actually need a sound to think. But it's a clever replacement for harder to code things, like remembering to two a surface or fidget.

Click! Click! Click!

Shifting weight had been a harder thing to code. Standing stationary, legs an equal width apart, was the most steady way to stand. It also made him look like a statue, made his unblinking stares eerie and uncomfortable. Organic things read it as unnatural, borderline on predatory. Large predators often froze and stared right before pouncing.

Looking back through old memories, Xisuma could tell if they were from before or after his algorithmic programming because of how still they were. Made for clearer visuals, and he knows in high-stress situations that focus on accuracy, he can cycle them off, but they're comfortable for people to watch.

Xisuma rocks back on his heels away from the screen he's watching. If someone else were in the room, it would be a sign of thoughtfulness. For him, it's the execution from a random table of acceptable fidgets while standing still. He should turn it off. He's alone right now. But sometimes the movements still catch him off-guard and the longer they run, the more he gets used to them.

Xisuma queries: rocking on heals

He gets a handful of save recording bits. Doc rocks onto his back legs and stretches his forelegs. Gem rocks back and forth on the balls of her feet, her arms crossed behind her back, mischievous and excited. Scar rocks back on his heels and crosses his arms, thoughtfully examining some terraforming. Xisuma isolates the last recording and mimics it, feeling how the weight of his crossed arms counterbalances the lean back.

Xisuma queries his habits table and adds the motion to the list.

He never quite figured out how to program what to do with his hands. They spent a lot of time at his sides, or in pockets. Objectively he knew that was bad. Hiding the hands was often a sign of hiding something, and he liked being transparent.

Xisuma queries: Hands

Xisuma blinks at the long list of results.

Xisuma queries: Hands behind back

He gets several animations of Gem, Grian, and Scar, all with some variation of hands behind their backs and mischievous grins. Most of them are snippets made for studying purposes. Two are attached to longer videos, catalogued memories he's kept. His query returns almost four hundred memory transcripts.

Xisuma likes making transcripts. He feels it's similar to the hazy, distant memories people have when time and distance transform them. When someone else remembers something falteringly, he remembers the way he described it to himself. The older transcripts were rougher. He's gotten better at writing them over the years. His learning and pattern recognition softwares are still pretty good, even if they aren't perfect enough to manage the full range of expression on their own.

Xisuma queries: Do my friends know how hard it is to look organic?

This returns no direct results. He receives a directory of the people he's flagged as "friends" over the years, an article on the recent organics additions to the world in the latest update, and a handful of unrelated memory documents where he'd asked this question before and similarly pulled up no response.

Xisuma queries: Do I care?

This pulls up more entries. Xisuma glances across them and clears them.

Xisuma queries: Do I care today?

This pulls up only slightly fewer entries. He smiles. Asking subjective questions to a computer never gleans intended results. Computers aren't subjective. Or, well, they're not supposed to be. Of course, if he were merely a computer, he wouldn't be doing this, would he? If he were merely a computer, he would be sitting on a shelf, or a desk, running prewritten programs and searches for someone else, letting someone else build his code, rules by the guidances and intentions of someone who ultimately viewed him as a tool, if nothing else.

Xisuma queries: Who's flying this thing, if not me?

He pulls up a list of song lyrics and chords, a clip from a movie he'd watched once, an IMDB rating off some database somewhere.

Xisuma clears the data. He pulls up the last memory he was watching, rocks back on his heels and crosses his arms thoughtfully. He presses play.

Click! Click! Click!

"Are you going to get rid of the clicking?"

"Clicking? Oh, I guess I am clicking, aren't I? It's just an inefficiency. I'll fix it at some point, I guess."

Tango smirked at him. One of his hands plucked at his sleeve. Xisuma clips the motion, tags it with hands, nervous, thoughtful, fidget.

"You sure it needs fixed? I kinda like it."

Click! Click! Click!

#the barking writer #xisuma #hermitcraft fic #robot!xisuma #android!xisuma #woe! my headcanons be upon ye! #ive been reading a lot of scifi lately #like... A LOT of scifi #like almost 200hrs of audiobooks in the past 3 weeks #long post #longpost

[watcheraurora]

Siren Song

Had a dream the other night that I got turned into a mermaid. And as a gal who's loved merfolk since I was a kid, I couldn't resist 4.3k words

—

Grian grinned to himself. From his fishing dock, he could hear Gem on her little fishing boat belting sea shanties. She sounded like she was having fun, swinging around her rigging with a sword on her belt. She wasn't the only one who lived on their boat, but she was the only one who took such audible joy in it.

Grian let his feet dangle in the water, his overalls rolled up past his knees, and watched the sea as his lure bobbed. Early morning was one of his favorite times to fish. The quiet—apart from Gem's shanties—the sunrise on the clouds, the watery color of the sky. The calmness of the ocean. It was peaceful, like this. There was nothing else he needed to do but sit and fish. This early in the season, the ocean water was frigid against his bare skin. He didn't care.

"Morning Grian!" Gem called as she spun around a line of the rigging as though it was the hand of a dance partner. She waved from her boat's deck anchored a little farther out in the bay, not attached to a dock or wharf.

"Morning Gem!" Grian replied, raising a hand in response.

Gem beamed and went back to whatever it was she was up to. Grian suspected she was trying to do chores and just decided to have fun instead. She was anchored far enough out that they couldn't easily talk. They had to shout. He tried not to shout this early though. It scared the fish.

The water, near the hull of Gem's ship, moved strangely. A movement Grian was familiar with. Something large not quite breaking the surface tension, sliding just underneath. Large and shimmery.

Grian perked up. That was either the largest cod he'd ever seen—or something else was near.

He pulled his feet out of the water and stood up. Snatching his binoculars from his pack of stuff, he held them up and peered toward where the shape moved.

The murk of the early-morning ocean prevented him from seeing what was under the surface.

"Shoot," he muttered. "What was that? Big fish don't come this shallow often..." He moved the binoculars up and down, looking through them and sweeping his gaze in the same area without the magnification. "Geeem?" he called, as loud as he dared to not scare the fish. "Is your sonar on?"

Gem stopped where she was dramatically stomping on the deck with a mop in hand while chanting her shanty. "No. I'm cleaning," she called back.

"Mind turning it on? There's something big here!"

"Grian, you don't have the equipment for deep sea fishing."

"Humor me," Grian said.

Gem made a face that was unimpressed—even from Grian's distance. "Fiiine," she said, vanishing into the cabin of her boat.

—

Pearl grabbed Scar's wrist as a noise traveled through the water. A sonar that was revving up, but not yet active.

"Hold on," she said. Scar twisted his arm and grabbed her arm in return. They snagged each other's other arms. Pearl built up some momentum with her tail and they shot toward deeper water. Scar's torn caudal fin trailed limply behind him as Pearl sped them both away. The pearlescent white tail for which she got her name glimmered in the weak, pale sunlight that hadn't yet broken over the horizon.

Pearl swam them both for several long moments—until they were most likely out of range of the sonar. Then slowed down. Scar's green eyes were wide. The scar over the bridge of his nose shimmered. "Did we just get caught?"

"Maybe," Pearl said, looking over her shoulder. Her long hair drifted in a cloud around her head. She brushed it aside to look behind her. "I don't think the sonar got turned on quick enough. But I can't say for sure."

Scar looked down at his tail. The base of his caudal fin was bent awkwardly and the fin itself was torn in such a way to render it useless. He couldn't swim. "I'm sorry, Pearl. I didn't mean—"

"Don't apologize, Scar. It's not your fault."

"Bu-bu-bu-bu-but..." Scar put on his pathetic voice that was overdramatic for the sake of comedy. "But I'm the one who got too close to the humans."

"Yeah, and got closer in the hopes that they'd help fix you. We know that human of Jimmy's knows about us and would help. But everyone else? That man on the dock could have very well hooked your tail if you got any closer. We don't know who we can trust."

"How... how do we get Jimmy's human to help fix my tail? We just don't have the materials to splint it underwater."

Pearl made a face. "Well, it was pretty stupid of you to come this close to shore on your own when you can barely swim. You're lucky I got here when I did to get you out before they thought a shark got close to shore."

Scar pouted, sticking his lower lip out.

"Look. I know your tail needs fixing. And Jimmy and Lizzie's humans will help. But we need Jimmy or Lizzie to contact them. How those two both managed to snag humans is beyond me."

"Must be ocean royalty twin charm or something," Scar said sarcastically.

Pearl smirked and bounced her eyebrows. "Must be. C'mon. Let's go ask Jimmy and Lizzie if one of them can ask their human for help."

Scar thought for a moment, then nodded.

—

Grian stood on the end of his dock at the end of the day. The sun had set behind him and the last few rays were starting to filter out.

Soft footsteps approached down the dock. "Whatcha doin'?" Gem asked. Her rowboat bobbed in the water just in front of them both. She had on her light, soft boat shoes.

"Looking to see if that fish came back with the sunset," Grian said, binoculars in hand.

Gem yawned and stretched. "Okay," she said through her yawn. "I'm heading back to the boat. Holler if you need anything."

"Yeah, yeah. Cheers," Grian said.

She hopped nimbly down into her rowboat, untied it, and started to row back to her boat. Grian watched her go, making sure she was safe. They'd both moved to this small fishing town within a year of one another. Gem's grandparents had given her their fishing boat when they passed away and she'd chosen to live on it, and Grian... well. He was running. Always running. A restless soul with people in his past that he needed to be far away from for his own sanity.

He told the good people in his past that he'd found the sea. But it was more like the sea found him. Called him. Beckoned. So here he stayed. In a small flat over a shop—a workshop, to be specific. Three mechanics ran it. And he fished before and after work.

His eyes tracked Gem to where she tied her rowboat to the ladder on the hull of her boat and climbed the rest of the way up before she disappeared inside. Grian was older than Gem by only a few years, and felt a brotherly protectiveness of her. The two who came to the small, sleepy town from the outside.

There was no sign of that large fish he'd seen earlier. The last rays of sunlight were snuffed out by the dark night sky. The orangey glow of streetlamps buzzed to life.

Grian sighed with disappointment. Maybe tomorrow morning...

He turned and moved to stomp back up the dock to go back to his flat—

Before freezing.

A song floated across the surface of the water. The voice a warm baritone. Resonant enough that Grian felt his bones vibrate with the timbre of it, despite the obvious distance it was traveling. He found himself unable to move. Transfixed by the music. Entranced.

Slowly, he pivoted to face the sea again. The rocks that made up the outside barrier that sheltered the marina were dark. Except one spot that had a silvery glow on the far side. Not from moonlight.

Curiosity broke whatever spell he was under. He rushed to make his way around the perimeter of the marina. Toward the glow being cast on the rocks. Stumbling over rough terrain in the darkness.

—

A few tail-lengths down the rocky shore, Tango was crouched, elbows resting on his knees, as he smiled down at Jimmy. Who was on his stomach with his sky-blue tail bent up into the air. Caudal fin drifting up and down. He kept himself upright with his elbows on the ground, resting his chin on his hands as he talked to Tango.

A stone's throw away from those two, Lizzie and Joel were much closer. Joel sitting on the ground with Lizzie fully in his lap, her purplish-blue tail wrapped around him and his fingers lazily playing with her long pink hair.

Pearl and Scar rested as far away as possible. Pearl looked ready to drag him back into the sea at a moment's notice. Jittery and wound up. Scar, for his part, was trying to look relaxed. He was singing to keep himself calm. Tango's good friend and coworker, Etho, was helping splint Scar's tail and stitch his caudal fin back together. He had an intense sort of look to him, but his callused hands were remarkably gentle. Pearl was using what little magic she had to cast enough light for Etho to see and work by. Silvery moonlight from her palm dancing over the rocks where it reflected off the waves.

"You should probably go help Etho," Jimmy remarked to Tango.

"Probably," Tango agreed with a small nod and an unfocused look in his eyes. He didn't move. Didn't stand. Just stayed where he was crouched.

"Thank you for this, by the way," Jimmy said. "I know you would have done it yourself for him but—"

"It's fine. My hands are steady but Etho's are better," Tango remarked. "And he actually knows how to stitch up a wound and make a flexible splint. Or he's creative enough to figure it out. I'm not that creative."

"Sure you are!" Jimmy protested quietly. "You're very creative!"

"I mean, yeah, but not like this. I can make up a game for someone to play, but I can't invent a splint for a merperson's sprained tail. Those are different kinds of creativity and inventiveness." His eyes quickly flicked to the way Jimmy's scales glinted in Pearl's moonlight where scale met skin below his navel and back to Jimmy's eyes. "You're welcome, by the way. It's no problem. Happy to help where we can. For you or people you're close to." Impulsively, he reached out and tugged on the point of Jimmy's caudal fin, causing him to yelp—and dissolve into giggles.

"That tickles!" he protested, his fin sliding out of Tango's grip easily as it lashed back on instinct, clapping against the waves. Tango chuckled. He liked the way Jimmy screwed his eyes shut when he laughed. He liked Jimmy's broad smile. He liked Jimmy's easy personality and warm hazel-brown eyes. He wasn't sure yet what they were—and he hadn't talked to Jimmy about it either—but he wasn't worried. They shared space and conversation easily. He didn't care what they were.

Joel and Lizzie, for their part, didn't even look over at the splash of Jimmy's caudal fin striking the water.

Etho, Scar, and Pearl did. Only briefly.

Had they looked over for a little longer, they might have noticed a dark shadow moving closer, recklessly trampling over loose rocks. But they didn't.

—

Grian peered over the ridge of the rocks. And went stock still.

Etho, Tango, and Joel he recognized. Etho and Tango ran the shop below him with Impulse. Joel ran the small tree nursery up the road and taught painting in the evenings occasionally.

It was the other figures that made Grian freeze where he stood.

The woman in Joel's lap had long pink hair and a fish tail. The blond, athletically-built man staring at Tango like a golden retriever also had a tail. The two by Etho had fish tails as well. The male one, apparently, the source of the song that had drawn Grian around the marina. The female seemed to be the source of the light on the rocks. Etho had flexible metal instruments and some sort of straps that he was using to make some sort of brace at the end of the male's long, green tail flecked with yellows and oranges. There was a long row of stitches down the male's fin.

Grian stared, wide-eyed, his jaw slack. For a long time.

Merpeople?!

Gem was going to freak out, he decided.

A harsh wind blew off the sea. Grian took a step back to maintain his balance.

His heel caught on a loose stone. He careened, his arms pinwheeling.

Splash!

—

Seven heads snapped in the direction of the sound immediately. Pearl curled closer to Scar and bared her teeth in threat. Etho half-stood from his sitting position, looking around. Scar had grabbed Pearl's wrist and just held her there. He'd stopped singing.

Lizzie disappeared off Joel's lap and vanished into the water without so much as a sound.

Jimmy twisted and followed his twin sister into the surf. But instead of lurking in the murky darkness of the ocean at night, he swam around the ridge of the rocks to the back side, where the sound had come from. Tango bolted to his feet, standing upright.

Jimmy saw the human man—young, smaller than Tango somehow (Jimmy was unaware that adult human males could be so small)—appeared to be shocked by the cold of the surf. After a moment, the human began to thrash, fighting to swim back to the surface, obviously struggling with his shoes—as Tango had called them—still on his feet.

Jimmy grabbed the human under his arms and hauled him upwards, breaking the surface and dragging the human onto the rocky shore.

The human coughed as Tango scrambled over the loose, uneven ground to get over to them.

"Holy smokes," Tango said, sliding down the ridge. "Are you okay?" His gaze flicked between Jimmy and the human. Who was facedown but keeping himself up on his elbows as he coughed.

The unknown human coughed again and looked up. His hair was wavy and light brown. His eyebrows scrunched. "Tango?"

Tango gasped and took a step back, nearly losing his balance himself. "Grian?! What are you doing here?"

"You two know each other?" Jimmy asked softly.

"He lives in the apartment above me and Etho's workshop," Tango explained. "He's a friend." Tango dropped to his knees in front of this Grian. "Hey. You okay, G?"

Grian coughed more seawater out of his lungs, but managed a nod. "Fine. Lost my footing." He cleared his throat—hard. "So. Who's going to explain to me what's going on?" He pushed himself to his feet. Drenched and shivering. Tango slid out of his thick bomber jacket and held it out. Grian accepted it and slung it on, shivering. "Tango—"

"Grian, we can explain—" Joel said, scrambling over the top of the ridge.

"I really hope you can," Grian retorted. "Because you were cuddling a mermaid."

Jimmy bristled a little, glowering at the stranger. "Don't talk about my sister like that," he growled.

Grian looked down at where Jimmy was still propped up on the shore. "Uh... sorry?"

"Jimmy," Tango said softly. Almost a warning.

Lizzie's head slid out of the surface, watching with wide eyes.

"Okay... so..." Tango began. "Merfolk exist?"

"Oh, no, really?!" Grian retorted sarcastically. "I hadn't noticed!"

"Listen, Grian. You can't tell anyone," Joel put in. "It's not our secret to share."

"Who would believe me even if I wanted to?" Grian shot back.

"Fair enough," Tango muttered, smirking down at Jimmy, who had not yet relaxed.

"Scar—Scar hold still!" Etho's quiet voice ordered from the other side of the ridge.

"But I wanna seeeeee!" Scar's voice put in.

"Scar," Pearl warned.

Grian peered between Tango and Joel's heads. "That's the voice I heard singing," he said, a touch of wistfulness laced through his voice.

"Oh shrimp," Pearl exclaimed. "Really, Scar? You had to use your siren magic?"

"I didn't mean to!" Scar protested. "I was just trying to distract myself! It's not my fault I'm this handsome and alluring."

The sound of damp skin striking damp skin and Scar yelping in surprise meant Pearl had probably whacked him in the arm. "Not the time to sound arrogant, mate!" she snapped.

Grian slid between Tango and Joel and approached the ridge to peer over it.

Scar shrunk back against Pearl's protective hug as the human got closer. Pearl bared her teeth. The soft moonlight coming from her hand turning from a small orb of light into a sharp-edged dagger. Grian didn't get any closer when he saw it morph.

Etho patted Scar's tail where a human's knee would be. "Go ahead and give that a try. Let me know if it's flexible enough to swim."

Scar looked between Etho, Grian, Tango, and Pearl. Pearl took his hand. The two scooted back into the water and disappeared under the surf.

"Scar!" Pearl said when they were safely deep enough that the others wouldn't hear them. "You can't go using siren magic when we're this close to a human town! You know your songs can be heard farther away than someone else's singing at the same volume. You have to be more careful!"

"I know, I know," Scar replied, looking defeated. "I didn't think anyone would hear."

Pearl sighed. "It's fine. It was just one. You will have to explain to Jimmy and Lizzie's mum what happened, but at least he's friends with the humans who already know." Pearl sunk lower and inspected the brace Etho made. "How's the splint working?"

Scar tested it out, swimming slowly.

—

"Okay," Grian said once the green-tailed male and the white-tailed female had vanished underwater. "So merfolk exist and apparently no one has figured that out yet?" He gave Etho, Tango, and Joel a look.

"We keep ourselves discreet," the pink-haired mermaid who'd been cuddling with Joel said from where she was a few meters out into the water. "Our cities hide from human technology with magic. And that's all you need to know." She spoke with a weight and gravitas to her voice that showed she was used to being obeyed and listened to.

"A few of us find connection with humans, but not many," the broad-shouldered blond merman who'd been making doe eyes at Tango added. "We're not supposed to, but it happens anyway. And you can't tell anyone."

Grian shook his head. "This is a lot to take in. So, wait. Was it one of you I saw earlier today? Near the hull of my friend's boat. I saw a large fish almost break the surface, but not quite."

The blond merman and his pink-haired sister met one another's eyes. "What color did you see?"

"I can't be sure. The sea was murky. Could have been blue, could have been green?"

The pink-haired mermaid sighed. "Scar's being reckless, Jimmy," she said softly to her brother. "He's getting too close."

"You know him, Lizzie. He's curious," the brother said.

"Look," Grian interrupted. "I'm not going to tell anyone. I'm just... startled, I guess? I don't know—"

He was cut off by the green-tailed merman who'd disappeared with the white-tailed mermaid bursting out of the water and doing a flip. "Woohoo!" the man cried as he splashed back in before resurfacing and throwing his hair out of his face.

"Scar!" the white-tailed mermaid protested, her head breaking through the surface. "You have to be quiet!"

"But I can swim on my own again, Pearl! It worked!" He beamed at Etho. In the faint light from the town's streetlights, Grian could see a scar across the bridge of the merman's nose. "Thank you, man!"

Etho shrugged. "Just a little creativity. No big deal."

The white-tailed mermaid raised a brow. "Etho, I don't think you understand how dangerous a sprained tail is," she said. "Without your help, he could have been hunted. We really appreciate it." She pulled herself out of the water and back onto shore. Her eyes were noticeably bright blue and suspicious when they turned on Grian. "You're the one who always has the hooks in the water."

"I just like to fish for the cod."

"Well you've nearly torn Scar's tail! You're lucky he got it caught on something else that wasn't your hook because if that injury had been your fault, no one would have ever found you at the bottom of the sea."

"How is that my fault?!" Grian snapped back. Jimmy and Tango glanced at each other before looking back to Grian—who didn't have time to wonder why they looked so surprised that he was arguing. "If he can't stay away from a fish hook, that's on him. He appears to be a full grown adult and you all have human intelligence so that's not on me!"

The white-tailed mermaid growled.

The pink-haired one muttered, "He's got a point."

"Hey!" the green-tailed merman protested. "It had a shiny thing on the end of it! I wanted to see!"

"That's a lure you tadpole!" Jimmy said with a heavy sigh.

"Don't act like you're the one holding the braincell here, Jim," Joel teased. "Between you and Scar it's a wonder neither of you are in a human zoo."

"Oi!" Jimmy protested at the same time Scar said, "Hey!"

Etho chuckled.

Grian threw his hands up into the air. "I give up! Have a good night. I won't tell anyone. Goodbye. I'm going to bed." He spun, his wader boot heel crunching in the rocky beach, and he stormed off back toward the town.

—

The next morning, Scar surfaced just under the wharf, hidden from prying eyes and quiet. The human from the night before—Grian?— was dangling his feet off the end of the next dock over, fishing line cast out. His fishing rod was held loosely in one hand, the other holding a book he was reading.

Scar could hear the human humming the same siren song Scar had been singing last night in broken pieces.

Smirking, Scar dipped back under the water and pushed himself deep before shoving off the wharf's supporting poles to cross the gap to the human. He looked up at where Grian's bare toes drifted back and forth, kicking idly, and smirked.

Using his arms to swim upward to keep his tail as still as possible while it healed—Etho's brace was great but if he didn't have to use his tail, he didn't want to—Scar got close to the surface.

He snickered to himself and tugged on Grian's toe.

Grian screeched like a startled bird and tore his feet out of the water, scrambling back on the dock.

Scar slid his head out of the water, an easy laugh leaving his throat. "Well, hello there!" he greeted brightly.

"What are you doing?!" Grian hissed. "What was that?!"

"Can't a merman just say hello to a new friend?" Scar asked, pouring bravado into his voice with a smirk.

"Not if you're trying not to draw attention! Not like that, at least!" Grian snapped.

Farther out in the marina, on one of the boats anchored away from the docks and wharfs, a voice called out. "Everything okay, Grian?"

Scar immediately ducked under the dock Grian was on, hiding among the support structures.

"Everything's fine, Gem!" Grian shouted back. "Bit of kelp just brushed my foot."

From the boat, a feminine laugh rang across the water. Scar giggled too, quietly. "Alrighty! Be safe!" Gem called.

After a moment, Grian dropped to his knees at the edge of the dock. "Still here?" he whispered loudly.

Scar popped back out. "Of course!"

"I never caught your name."

"Most people just call me Scar. My full name is too complicated. You're Grian?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Grian, I can't help but notice that you were singing my song." Another smirk.

Grian's expression soured. "You got it stuck in my head."

Scar chuckled. "Well, I mean, if you want," Scar tried to sound confident, but was definitely blustering a little, "you can always meet me in the same place out on those rocks after dark tonight and I'll teach it to you properly. You can meet my cousin Pearl properly too!"

"Was she the scary one with the white tail?"

"That's my Pearlie!"

"Promise she won't try to drown me?"

"She would never!" Scar said, sounding a lot more promising than he felt.

Grian looked skeptical. "Fine. After dark over on the rocks. See you then."

Scar beamed. "See you then!" He moved to dunk back under, and paused. "Also will you tell Tango that Jimmy has a present for him?"

"Sure. Why not. I'll find a time when Impulse isn't there."

"Well, thanks! You have a good day!" He twisted and dove back underwater, heading for open waters.

—

Grian stared at where Scar's long green tail disappeared.

"This is going to be more trouble than it's worth," he muttered. But curiosity was going to get the better of him, he already knew it.

Drawn in by the siren song.

Frustrated, he shook his head and abandoned his fishing for the morning. That would have to wait.

#hermitcraft fic #kinda? featuring friends #GoodTimesWithScar #Grian #GeminiTay #jimmy solidarity #TangoTek #Tango Tek #pearlescentmoon #Etho #smallishbeans #LDShadowLady #Mermaid!Pearl #Merman!Scar #Merman!Jimmy #Mermaid!Lizzie #Aurora Writes #Rory Writes