“You can’t work yourself forever. Ranboo’d worry about you.”
“He can worry about me when he’s back.”
It’s a cold night, the air is stale and frozen. The fire is a crackling mess of torn paper and embers. Techno couldn’t care less. He wants to be cold. He deserves to be cold.
“When’s the last time you’ve slept?” Phil’s own voice seems soaked with grief, the type of scratchy grief that wracked him when Wilbur died. The type that Techno had to hold him through when it reared its ugly, melancholy head. He doesn’t remember if he’s ever taken his eyes off of the fire. He doesn’t want to.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s no good, Tech.”
He hasn’t been there to keep the bird together, he realizes faintly. He wants to make himself smaller, wants to curl into a ball of snow and drift away into the night. Phil deserves better than his mopping self, drifting between fits of rage and anguish, always cursing Sam, Dream, Himself.
“I’m sorry.”
“Shut up, Mate. I don’t want to hear it. Come to bed before you turn to ice.”
“I deserve it.”
A comforting but harsh hand comes to rest on the back of his neck, warm against him. It pets at his mussed up hair, scratches at his scalp. He leans over himself.
“No you don’t.”
“I do.”
Phil huffs. “I’m not arguing when you’re sleep deprived. Get up, come on.” He doesn’t even bother to come around to face him, just grabs him under the arms and tries to pull him back over the couch like a sack of moldy carrots.
Techno makes a “mmph” noise as he’s hefted back, the bird trying to no avail to drag him through the hypothetical ‘time for bed, pig boy’ dirt. “I’ll get up as soon as you quit trying to tear my arms off.” He smiles up at Phil, fighting the insatiable urge to fall asleep right there. He really is tired.
Up he goes, padding down the hall like an old bear. Phil is quick behind him, lighter steps underlined with an air of exhaustion. Grief always hits the parents harder, makes them worry themselves in circles about their own little one (however little a 46 year old terrorist can be. He shakes thoughts of helping that kid learn to swim). He’s not much better, he supposes, tying himself in knots over a kid he didn’t even know well enough to know he had a son, let alone an actual house with a partner and a life.
Long enough to still see his eyes when he closes his own, tear shot and filled with worry. Worry for his kid, like how he worries now and how Phil worries all of the time but especially when it’s around the anniversary of some long-dead family ritual like a birthday or a cute photo. He wants to cry. He feels himself lean into the bird as he settles in bed beside him.
“Alright enough to sleep?”
“Don’t think I’ll ever be alright enough.”
“Then at least for tonight?”
“It’s night?”
“Has been for the last 6 hours, I’d assume.” Phil mimes checking a watch that doesn’t exist. Techno snorts and flops down onto the bed, tugging a soft quilt over his nose. Phil nestles beside him.
“We can’t keep taking in people who have a death date.” He whispers. Phil’s voice is shaky when he replies.
“Easier in the books.”
He nods as sleep finally sets in his bones. “Easier in the books, definitely. Goodnight, Angel.”
Phil’s already rolled over, breathing slowed and feathered ears twitching against the cold air. He murmurs something between a goodnight and another one of his famous Sleep Patented “insults”. Techno nods and rolls over so their backs are facing. He probably deserves the space between them being there.
When he’s just about to close his eyes, he thinks again about how Ranboo had looked so lost, so alone in those milliseconds before Sam’s sword made contact with the space between neck and shoulder. He flinches and rolls back over to face where Phil’s hair is tangled. He wants to cry.
He does. Quietly.