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ice-cap-k · 8 months

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Just Gold: CH2

Soooo, I forgot to cross-post here that I've written a chapter 2 for the team ranchers au fic I wrote up back in October. Tango's a dragon. Jimmy's a bird. Good fun.

Read it on AO3: Just Gold

Chapter 1 on Tumblr

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Jimmy was a Phoenix.

That's not to say he was very good at being a phoenix, but that was what he was. Phoenixes were supposed to be all about death and rebirth and eternal life. It’s hard to be good at the ‘eternal life’ portion of the job, though, when he keeps dying all the time.

Not like most phoenixes, though. There was almost never a cycle of burning to ash at a ripe old age and emerging as a newly hatched chick from the ashes. Even when he literally burned to death. He never got that far. It was more like he just woke back up having never aged or unaged a day. That wasn’t normal for his kind, but he supposed that after so many repeated deaths so close together over such an extended period of time, he must have somehow stunted his growth. Ungrowth? Aging, maybe? Whatever it was supposed to be, it was messed up for him.

It had its ups and downs. Dying wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but at least he still came back. He always came back… eventually. And unlike other phoenixes, he didn’t have to deal with the crippling discomfort of old age, or the helplessness of reverting back to a chick. But he also could never grow back the brilliant plumage that people associated with his kind. The bright yellow feathers he was left with made him look no different than a larger than average canary.

To be honest, he was a little self-conscious about it.

It was partially his fault, as much as he hated to admit it. He was pretty accident-prone. Bird brains, ya know? It was hard living in a world with glass windows. You’d think after all these years he would have learned a thing or two about self-preservation.

But here’s the thing about immortality, when you know that nothing can actually do any permanent damage, you start to lose sight of the inherent threat. And when you don’t notice a threat, it’s easy to underestimate the world around you. And to overestimate yourself.

Case in point, Jimmy’s newest friend was a dragon.

Dragons are meant to be big scary beasts with razor-sharp claws and fangs. They were meant to be merciless, and prideful, and very very dangerous.

It never really occurred to Jimmy that Tango could be all of those things… Well, at least not until he watched Tango burn over a dozen people to ash. So yeah, now he supposes Tango could be all those things.

But what he first saw when the golden dragon came crashing through his nest at the base of the mountain, after the initial annoyance began to fade, was someone suffering from the kind of bad luck he was all too familiar with. Someone who wouldn’t come back from the fraying edges of death like he would have.

Fortunately, Jimmy was still a phoenix.

He had a long memory that reached back eons across his many previous lives. And in one such life, there had been an old ranch not too far from here. One large enough that the dragon could hide indoors. One that was out of sight of the nearby village. One that Jimmy knew had been left vacant.

Someone with a healthy dose of self-preservation probably would have kept their distance until the dragon awoke, so as not to startle it into attacking. Or maybe they would have pointed the poor beast in the direction of shelter and been on their way. If they were feeling really reckless, they might have tested to see if the dragon would have let them help it get up, or bandage some of its many wounds.

Not Jimmy. If Tango had burned him or clawed him off or rolled over and crushed him, he would have just come back anyway. And cleaning wounds or helping the dragon leverage itself up wasn’t in the phoenix’s wheelhouse at the moment. Tango was so big compared to the phoenix that Jimmy could fit in the palm of his hand comfortably. And what would he stem the blood flow with? His feathers? He didn’t have nearly enough to go around.

Of course, Tango didn’t do any of those things when he woke up. He had done nothing to hurt Jimmy, except maybe the Phoenix’s pride when the dragon tried to shoo him away like a common pigeon.

And while he didn’t have to go with Tango, Jimmy wanted to go back to the ranch with the dragon. The old building housed a lot of fond memories. That was one reason. The other was Tango himself.

The truth was, Jimmy had been setting up his nest at the base of that mountain because he knew that people were nearby. Maybe not necessarily a giant gold and red dragon, but the humans of the village weren’t too far away. Phoenixes worked best in a flock. Especially Jimmy. He could handle being on his own, sure, but he thrived amidst others. And what a ‘flock’ looked like to Jimmy had changed over the lifetimes. Sometimes that meant coexisting with humans. Sometimes it meant flying with large groups of your more typical, non-magical birds. Sometimes a flock was only him and one other, and sometimes it was a large group of friends and family. He had been looking for his next flock. Had been planning on finding a nice family to settle down with for a while and play the part of a typical pet canary.

And then came Tango.

Really, dragons and phoenixes were pretty similar if you think about it. Depending on how you define immortality, both species were technically immortal. Dragons could live forever as long as they weren’t killed. And sure, Jimmy died all the time, but death wasn’t permanent for him. A phoenix couldn’t breathe fire, but they still had the same fire in their belly that dragons did. They both could fly. They both could burn. They both could bleed gold…

According to that train of thought, dragons were practically big scaly phoenixes in their own right.

And as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.

______________________________________________________________

“Tango Tango Tango TANGO TANGO TANGO!!!”

The lump of stone is heavy in Jimmy’s claws. He’s not used to feeling so imbalanced while flying. Not for this long. He kept having to remind himself that it would be worth the effort once he saw the look on his buddy’s face.

That doesn’t make the uneven strain on his wings better, though. It’s so bad, he nearly missed the window entirely. The backside of his wing brushed against the wooden frame. A stray splinter caught at his coverts. There’s a painful twinge as a few feathers are pulled loose and he over-corrects, sending him spiraling to the floor inside.

The little bird lands in a messy heap on the floorboards, losing his grip on the pretty rock. It went rattling across the floor in front of his beak.

He tested his toes, gingerly flexing each one to make sure he hadn’t broken anything in the crash. Nothing appeared out of place outside of a few wisps of broken yellow feathers. That would probably leave a bruise or two, but nothing more severe. Jimmy wasn’t about to die this time around. Even the rock looked completely intact after its little tumble.

He had landed in the old ranch house kitchen. It looked warm and inviting in the late evening haze, despite the unused furniture strewn across the floor. The smell of smoke still clung to the walls and floor. Enough time had passed that the uncomfortable burn of brimstone had begun to fade. The ruined walls had been stripped away and patched up with new oak and spruce timber. The smell of the hewn wood boards mixed with the lingering scent of ash. It almost reminded him of sitting alongside a nice warm bonfire under the stars on a cool summer night.

“Tango?”

The dragon wasn’t answering, but something was creaking nearby. Floorboards groaned. Hinges squeaked. Jimmy had a good idea of where his friend could be, but he wasn’t about to go flying around indoors while carrying that stone around. So he hopped to his feet and took flight. The kitchen floor was as good a place as any to leave it for now.

“Can you hear me, buddy? I brought you something?”

With the slightest shift of his wingtips, he banked around an open archway into the living room. Sure enough, there was Tango. The dragon had his back to him. His claws scraped at the inside of a makeshift hopper he had managed to fashion out of an old shovel head and a little fire-breath metalworking. Looked like something had gotten stuck in the sorting system again.

“I can’t believe this. This is ridiculous,” Tango was saying as Jimmy landed on his favorite perch; one of the ridges of the dragon’s right horn. It was just so nice and warm; glossy and easy to nestle against. It shifted as Tango tried to look up at him, his head tilting to compensate for the slight weight change. “Oh! Hey Jimmy.”

“Hey, I’m back. How’s the progress coming along?”

A wisp of smoke wafted out of Tango’s nostrils. He turned back to the funnel in his claws. “Well, it was going pretty fantastic for a while there until this thing decided to jamificate the whole operation.” Jimmy tightened his grip on the horn as the dragon beneath him let out a sigh. The delicate swirls of smoke turned into a turbulent stream as he breathed in then out. “These quick fixes just aren’t cutting it.”

“Quick fixes?” Jimmy chuckled. “Tango, you know you can take all the time in the world, right? Automatic sorting will be nice and all, but we don’t absolutely need it right now. We barely got the house patched up. The barn’s not even rebuilt yet.”

If anything, the sheer amount of work that he had managed over the last few days had been impressive. With the barn gone, the two had taken shelter in the farmhouse. In that time, Tango had thrown himself into making the place as easy to live in as possible. The ruined portions of the wall had been stripped away and replaced. A door had been renovated so that there was an entrance large enough for the dragon to pass through. Bedrooms had been ransacked and rearranged so that they had a place to sleep at night. For Tango, that meant a padded stretch of floor space for him to curl up in. For Jimmy, a simple shelf with a nest he had put together all on his own.

And then there were the projects! The redstone projects were in every room. The sorting system, a trash dispenser, a line of automatic cooking furnaces. Whatever materials he and Tango had gathered into a tiny hoard while the dragon had been grounded were gone, put to use in whatever idea his friend had thrown himself into.

But they hadn’t touched the barn.

Jimmy could tell that the memory of the attack was still a bit of a sore spot for Tango. Sometimes, the barn served as a reminder. Even after all the bodies had been cleared away.

The stream of smoke coming from Tango’s nostrils petered out. He could hear the dragon's claws clicking against the shovel head as it turned in his claws. Gold wings still trussed up in their splints stretched ever so slightly, nearly knocked over a dusty grandfather clock they had shoved into the corner of the living room. The contact was enough to make Tango wince beneath him.

“You’re right,” Tango relented. He placed the funnel down on the hardwood floor at his feet. It rolled unevenly away to bump against one of the chests. “There’s not enough room for us here.”

The feathers along Jimmy’s shoulders puffed up. “Us? Excuse me. I find this place rather cozy. I think what you meant to say is that there’s not enough room for the two of us.” He almost tented his wings to make himself bigger. A show of fluffed feathers and bravado as if he could square up against the massive creature beneath him, but his friend wouldn’t be able to see that. Not as long as he was perched on the horn. “I’m a big man. The big man!”

There was a jolt below as Tango shook his head. The sudden movement knocked Jimmy’s feet out from under him. With a shrill cry, he went tumbling down the glittering gold slope of Tango’s head until he skittered to a halt hanging halfway from his nose. Yellow wings stretched and pressed against scales as his feet dangled uselessly over open air. “TANGO! HELP!”

“You know you can fly, right?” the dragon huffed, a smile evident in his voice. Still, he reached up and scooped Jimmy up in his claws.

“Y-yeah. Of course I do,” he sputtered, adjusting his jostled feathers back into place. It took a bit of time, considering how ruffled they were from the tumble. The wave of embarrassment washing over him did not help.

“Sure thing, buddy.” The corners of Tango’s mouth pulled up for a moment, before his head swung back and forth to take in his surroundings. “You’ve got a point, though. This place isn’t big enough for us. I should just settle down until my wings finish healing. It’s not like I have to wait much longer.” As if to illustrate his point, he shuffled his wings against his back. He didn’t recoil from the movement. His eyes didn’t crinkle at the corners from strain. He seemed fine.

The only apparent problem was that there wasn’t enough room to risk spreading them out. Just that little motion knocked a faded family portrait off the wall with a thumb claw.

It had been more than Tango had been able to manage without wincing in pain a couple of weeks ago. The membrane between the wing fingers had healed over a while ago. Dull scars pitted the skin, stubborn reminders of how badly the dragon had been hurt. The bones were less obvious, but beneath the scales and muscle, they were well on their way through the healing process. Tango had been good about keeping them still and letting them mend. And when he had been tempted to put pressure on them early and take a risk, Jimmy had made sure he was there and ready to give him a solid peck upside the head to chase those thoughts away.

“You… you want to leave?” The question hung in the empty air. There was a moment of silence. Not even the grandfather clock ticked with the passing seconds. They had never bothered to wind it.

Eventually, Tango shrugged. “It’s an option. Beats accidentally busting this joint up. Feels like I’m trying to put a square peg through a round hole, and I’m the peg.” He held his claw up to his head for Jimmy to hop back up onto his horn. The small bird gratefully settled down against his perch while Tango reached down to scoop the picture off the hardwood floor. He watched the two smiling faces centered in the frame as Tango hung it back up on the wall. One a woman. One a man. Both familiar to the phoenix.

When the dragon’s claws pulled away, the frame was crooked. “This place is made for humans.” There was a sad note in his voice. Something distant. Something angry. A shiver ran down Jimmy’s spine as he thought of men on fire. People rendered down screaming smudges of light on a dark night.

He didn’t like where that train of Tango’s thought seemed to be going. “Or human-sized people,” Jimmy blurted in a rush, trying to bring the conversation around to something more his speed. Something that didn’t involve Tango leaving. Or humans. “Or me-sized birds.”

“Or that,” the dragon agreed with a snort.

“You know, we could get back to finishing up the barn. It was a lot of fun. You know, before it burnt down… And there was a lot more room for the both of us.”

Tango’s head swayed thoughtfully. Jimmy rocked along with him, shifting with the movement instinctually. “Yeah, we could do that,” Tango hummed. They turned towards the door. “That’s another option.”

“I say we just focus on getting the roof back up and then worry about the walls after.”

“That’s not going to protect us from much.”

“I’m not concerned.”

“Well of course you’re not, mister ‘I can’t die.’”

“Hey, I don’t appreciate that coming from you, mister ‘immortal.’ You very well know I can die.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“EXCUSE ME?!”

By now, Tango had lumbered back into the kitchen. It was the only way he could go to get to the only door big enough for him to fit through. There was the stone in the middle of the floor, right where Jimmy had left it. “Here I am, all excited, bringing you a gift, even,” he twittered, alighting from his perch. This time, the little bird landed on the floor with much more grace and intention next to the glittering red gift. “And you’re bad-mouthing me. I will not stand for such slander.”

Jimmy watched with satisfaction as Tango’s eyes glittered. He had just noticed the large chunk of redstone. “Wait-a-minute…” The dragon had to hunker down, practically resting his head on the floor so that they were eye level. “Where did that come from?”

“I found it.” Pride warmed Jimmy over from head to tail tip. Chest feathers puffed out as he pushed the rock forward with one foot. “Had to go pretty far out for it to. We’ve picked the nearby valley and mountain clean, but I know how much you’ve been wishing for more. You practically used up everything we were using for your temporary hoard, so I brought you back the biggest piece I could find.”

There had been more past the villages, but Jimmy hadn’t been physically equipped to tackle an entire ore vein, even if it was on the surface. Mining was out of the question, and what was readily available was usually no bigger than fine grains of dust. What was he supposed to do with dust? Sweep it up with his wings? But this! This he could bring back on his own.

“And it’s for me?!?”

He gave the rock another tap with his clawed toes. It rocked, then rattled and rolled to its side. “Well, I sure ain’t gonna use it.”

“Oh my gosh. I don’t even know what to say.” With careful claws, Tango plucked the stone off the floor. He held it gingerly, like he was afraid he was going to break it. Knowing Tango’s strength, it was entirely possible he could have crushed it to dust if he wanted to. “Thank you, Jimmy.”

It felt good. It felt good to see Tango smile like that. “Don’t worry about it. Just use it towards something cool, ya hear?”

He nodded. “I don’t even know what I’d do with it. Or if I’d even do anything with. I think I’m just gonna hold onto it for now.” Then, to Jimmy’s horror, he tucked it into one of the folds of his bandages.

“No!”

Tango whipped his head around, eyes wide, pupils shrunk down to hairline slits, thrown utterly off guard by Jimmy’s outburst.“What- What? What?? WHAT?!?”

“No. No. NO,” he repeats unhelpfully. “You’re not putting it there,” he chirped. “That’s just asking to aggravate your injury. I’m not letting you go and do that.”

The phoenix hopped towards the dragon, who scrambled away with wide eyes. Considering their size difference, it would have been a comical sight to see the little bird scaring the dragon. But Jimmy wasn’t laughing. He was too concerned for that.

“But I-”

“No buts!”

“Fine!” Tango still looked a bit baffled as he pried the rock back out from a layer of gauze.

It had only gone beneath the first layer of clean linen. There were plenty of layers that would have separated the rock from skin and scale. There were also plenty of spare bandages to replace it if necessary. As far as the phoenix was concerned, it still wasn’t worth the risk.

“I’ll just stash it in my nest or something instead,” the dragon huffed. “Just gotta find a spot where I won’t roll over and crush it first.”

“You don’t have to do that. Why don’t we find you something to help you carry it? A safe place to put it until you decide.”

The sharp scales making up the ridge of his eye raised in a way that Jimmy thought looked uncomfortable, what with all those sharp edges. Tango made no sign that it was uncomfortable in any way, though. “You’ve got something in mind?”

“I’ve got an idea.” Jimmy bounced forward, craning his neck so he could see past his friend through the kitchen door. There was a trapdoor in the hallway ceiling. Cobwebs dusted the corners and the wood looked warped and faded from years of disuse, but it was still there. “If memory serves me correctly, I bet ya there’s something in the attic we can use.”

“The attic?” Tango turned, following Jimmy’s gaze to the hatch in the ceiling. “Oh no way. I’m never going to fit through that.”

“That’s why you’ve got a big strong man like me to help.” With a sweep of his wings, Jimmy took off. “Mind lifting the door for me a smidge, though?”

He was too busy circling the hall to get a good look at Tango’s expression, but he could still hear his friend’s voice. “Will you even be able to see up there?”

“Sure I will.”

A golden tail snaked its way to the ceiling, pushing the trapdoor open a few centimeters. That was all Jimmy needed. With a twitch of his tail and a twitter, he pulled his wings in tight and swooped through the opening. Almost immediately, he crashed headfirst into the long thin wires of an old bird cage.

Bam!

“What was that?! Is everything alright?”

“Fine! It’s fine Tango!” It was fine. There were a few more bruises added to the number he already had from crashing into the kitchen, but his wings weren’t broken and he hadn’t hit his head. Another potential death avoided. Another win in his book.

The birdcage was ruined, though. It had toppled to its side after the impact and rolled into a forgotten rat trap. He looked it over as he settled feathers back into their places. There were massive dents in the wires now. One gap was big enough for someone his size to easily pass through.

The sight sent a twinge through his chest. What a shame.

“Could you hold the door for me, Tango? I need a minute to look around.”

“Yeah. I got it.”

“Thank you!”

Well, there was no reason to dwell on an old cage. It hadn’t been used in years anyway. Instead, Jimmy turned his attention to the rest of the attic. Trunks and boxes and chests, oh my. The space was piled high with more junk than he recalled. The abandoned items were dusty from years of neglect. It made what should have been a brightly colored, overstuffed room feel dull and hollow.

Again, there was no reason to dwell on that now. The old inhabitants were long gone. It was him and Tango now. So Jimmy flew, passing over a dress form with a long wedding gown and a crate painted with a hot air balloon. He instead began his search with the piles of boxes on the other side of the room.

_____________________________________________________________

Night had fallen.

Jimmy felt nice and snug in his nest. It was perched in the Y-bend of the support beams holding up the newly built barn roof. If you could call it that. Slats of timber had been screwed together and raised onto the supports at an angle. There weren’t any shingles or insulation to keep the water out if it were to start raining. There definitely weren’t any walls. Tango was right, it wouldn’t protect them from much. It wasn’t much, but it was still a lot for a day’s work.

At least it was a nice night outside. Almost like they were sleeping under the stars. The twinkling lights were just visible through the spaces where walls would eventually go up. And it was spacious. Jimmy didn’t have to try very hard to coax his friend into sleeping there for the night. He had a feeling that the dragon hadn’t been excited about spending another night cooped up in one of those too-small bedrooms. In a show of solidarity, he had even helped the dragon carry his nest out. That is, if ‘helped’ meant ‘asked Tango to do it.’ What could he say? Tango could carry the whole thing in his claws. If Jimmy had tried doing it himself, he would have had to carry it twig by twig.

Still, the dragon hadn’t seemed to mind. He was in good spirits, curled up beneath Jimmy in the bedding they had pulled from the linen closet. The leather coin pouch Jimmy had found in the attic was tied around one of his wrists, the redstone rock nestled inside.

“Okay, my turn,” he was saying. With one claw, he traced a line from one star to another, to another, and another as if connecting the dots.

Jimmy followed the motion, trying to find a pattern in the movements. “Looks like a triangle with a line down the middle. Is that supposed to be one of your hoppers?”

Tango shook his head. “I was going more for a cross shape. I’m also ninety-nine percent certain that it’s a real constellation I’m pointing at. Come on. Try again.” He traced the line of stars once more. Jimmy’s head twitched, following its path intently. Left, right, center, a small swipe up, and then a long trail down. A real constellation, huh? He’d never been very good with those. He wasn’t some lowly pigeon that had to worry about keeping track of directions.

Wait a minute…

“Is it a bird?”

“Ding ding ding! We have a winner!” With a grin, Tango knocked his tail into the base of the Y-beam. The shockwave made Jimmy’s nest shiver around him. “Pretty sure it’s supposed to be a hawk or something, but I don’t remember the name of it.”

“Well, don’t look at me,” he said, pushing the twigs back into place. “I wouldn’t know the first thing about that sort of thing.”

“Really?”

Jimmy peered over the edge of his nest. There was Tango, staring up at him with red eyes brimming with curiosity. His friend tilted his pointy head as if seeing him from a new perspective would help him understand. “Well, yeah,” he mumbled. “I’ve never really needed it.”

“Then how’d you navigate?”

He didn’t. Jimmy shrugged his wings, a motion that probably wasn’t visible to the dragon below. Not over the ledge of his nest. “Usually my other flock mates handled that.”

“Flock?”

“I’m a bird, Tango. That shouldn’t be so weird.”

“I don’t know! You’re the first Phoenix I've met. For all I know, you’re all meant to be hermits.” With that, Tango pushed himself up to a seat in his makeshift bed. Bandaged wings trailed at his sides as he craned his neck back to get a better look at Jimmy. “Besides, you’ve never talked about a flock before. Where are they now?” Scales scraped the bare dirt as the dragon worried at it with his claws. “I’m not keeping you from them, am I?”

“Of course not,” Jimmy exclaimed. He almost laughed at the thought. “Far from it.”

Those big red eyes narrowed at him. “I don’t understand.”

Jimmy wanted nothing more than to sink further into his nest out of sight. Of course Tango wouldn’t get it. It's not like Jimmy had ever talked about it. It was his own fault of course, but had his reasons. The main one being that it had simply never come up in conversations. Another one was that he had gotten his hopes up about Tango sticking around, and with it came the fear that if he voiced his feelings about flocks, it would only make things awkward and ensure Tango would leave. Now he wasn’t sure what to do with the sudden rush of self-consciousness. “Sorry. I guess this is kind of confusing. What I mean is, I don’t really have a flock right now. Not anymore.”

“Oh…”

A shadow passed over Tango’s eyes and Jimmy realized that his wording probably hadn’t been the best. “It’s not like anything bad happened to them,” he quickly added, trying to set the record right before his friend got the wrong idea. “It’s just, every so often, time passes and you’ve gotta move on. Kinda comes with the territory of being tangentially immortal when everyone else around you isn’t, you know?”

Tango blinked. “So it’s not a flock of phoenixes, like you?”

“Nah.” Jimmy waved his question off with a flick of his wingtip. “I haven’t flown with my kind for a very long time. I guess flock might be the wrong word for what I’m trying to say. I’ve lived with flocks made up of birds, sure, but I’ve also stayed with people. Humans. All sorts. Could probably call it family, or friends, but ‘flock’ feels right. Like it works the best for what I mean.”

He expected Tango to start shooting off more questions, or to laugh at him. Maybe even squint at him with those brightly colored eyes as if that could help the dragon figure him out. To his surprise, his friend instead looked back at the farmhouse through one of the many gaps in the barn’s foundation. His wings slumped to the ground as he let himself fall back into his bedding. “Humans, huh?” While it was technically a question, there was no hint of curiosity in his voice. If anything, it sounded strained.

The two sat in silence. Tango stared out at the other building, tail-tip twitching, and Jimmy picked himself over to the edge of his nest, not sure what to do or say. Now he’d gone and done it. This was exactly the type of reaction he had been trying to avoid. At least since the barn burned down. The little bird wasn’t sure what else to do, so he decided to fill the silence himself.

“They’re not all like that, buddy. I swear. And the ones I hung out with…” Jimmy found his own gaze drifting towards the barn house as well. It had changed so much but was still so similar. “They’re long gone. I promise you. And even if they weren’t, I can also promise you that they weren’t the type to go around harassing folks like us.” He blinked and saw green eyes and a cheeky smile in the empty space behind his eyelids. “Well, not like those fools who showed up here,” he corrected himself. “Harmless. Good people living a good life and I was there helping them out. Rooting ‘em on-”

“Hey, Jimmy.”

Jimmy blinked. He shrank down against his nest a little lower. “Yeah?”

Tango didn’t look at him. Just kept his eyes locked on the farmhouse, his head propped up on a lump of fabric. “Is that how you knew about this place? When you first found me? Is this your human friends’ home?”

The little bird sighed. “Yeah.”

“What were they like?”

Oh. “Um, really nice actually,” Jimmy twittered. “There were two of them. You know that portrait in the living room, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“That was them. The man, the- uh- the one with the green streak in his hair, he liked to annoy me. Kept reminding me I was small and rubbed it in my face, but he also threatened to punch a guy in the face for almost breaking my wing. He had a big head, but he was a really good friend…

“And the woman with the pink hair, that was his wife. She was the one who found me. I had just gotten tossed around in a nasty storm. Wasn’t pretty. I was probably just as hurt back then as you were when I found you. She picked me up and took me back here. Took care of my bandages and gave me plenty of seeds to eat while I was on the mend. We got along really well. It was just how I’d imagine having a sibling is like.”

“And they knew what you were?”

Jimmy couldn’t help the little chuckle that escaped his beak. “Yeah. Yeah. They thought I was a normal bird at first, just like you. Didn’t take them long to realize that wasn’t the case after I started talking.” Another thing they had in common with Tango. “They were good flockmates once they figured it out, though.”

“I see…”

Was that an invitation to talk more? Or a dismissal? Jimmy couldn’t tell. He wasn’t sure what to say. He could talk about old memories of this house. Of the ranch. Of the people inside. Would it help? Would it only make things worse? Tango didn’t say anything else, either. He just kept looking at that farmhouse, away from Jimmy.

More silence. More of that infuriating quiet that made it feel like time had stopped around them. There wasn’t even a breeze. No whisper of grass or whistle of wind. Empty. Jimmy hated it. And after what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than a minute, he decided he had enough of it.

The little bird jumped off of the beam to glide down to Tango. At the last second, he pulled in his wings and dropped, clawed toes catching on Tango’s horn.

“Tango I-”

Jimmy cut himself off. The dragon’s eyes were glistening. Tears pooled at the corners of his eyes. Wet streams left streaks from his eyes down to his chin. As soon as he noticed Jimmy looking, he tucked his face beneath his claws.

“Tango, are you alright?”

“I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry Jimmy.” Bright little droplets began to fall from between his claws.

“For what?” The phoenix leaned down closer, patting one wing against his friend’s head. He wasn’t sure if Tango could feel the brush of feathers through the scales, but he hoped that the pressure and motion could comfort him. “What on Earth do you have to be sorry for?”

“I messed up. I lost my temper. I ruined everything.”

“What are you on about? Of course you didn’t.”

“But I did. It’s because of me the ranch burnt down. Here you are telling me that this was your home, that you lived here and had family here and they were humans, and I- And I went messed it all.”

Jimmy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Tango, you’re being silly. They were trying to kill you,” he said, exasperated. “And they were the ones who started the fires.”

“Exactly! They wouldn’t have been here if it wasn’t for me. They wouldn’t have shot you or ruined your home if it wasn’t for me. I led those people here, and then I killed them. Humans, just like your friends.”

This was ridiculous. Jimmy hopped off the horn. Tango moved his claws away automatically, making room for the little bird to avoid accidentally bumping or crushing him. With the space cleared, Jimmy perched instead on the end of the dragon’s nose so that he could look his friend in those big, teary eyes. “It’s fine, really. And it’s not your fault by a long shot. The ranch, the house, it’s been vacant for years. I haven’t been there for years. Neither have my old flockmates. They’re gone. This hasn’t been home to me for years. Not until I came back here with you. And it’s not because I lived here before. It’s because I’m here with you and these past few weeks have been a blast. And yeah, I’m sad it burned, but I’d rather those guys burn the place down than get you.”

Tango sniffed. The rush of air and smoke nearly knocked Jimmy from his perch. It certainly left his feathers in a mess. But he stood strong as his friend wiped at an eye. “Really?” he asked.

“Really.”

“But- but what about the humans?”

“What about them? Far as I’m concerned, they got what was coming to ‘em.”

Tango’s eyes widened. “But… but I thought… The way you’ve been avoiding talking about the fire, and we don’t ever mention the humans… I thought I really scared you.”

Well…

“I mean, I won’t lie, you’re temper took me by surprise. But you thought I was dead. And like I said, they were out to get you. I don’t hold it against you if that’s what you're thinking. I’m not scared of you.”

Tango seemed to melt beneath him. Massive wings that were once wound against his sides untensed and pooled across the ground. A massive sigh escaped his nose. It was less violent this time, though, sending the oddly comforting smell of bonfire smoke wafting over Jimmy. The guilty glisten in his eyes turned into a reassured glitter. “Oh thank goodness. I thought we were avoiding talking about all this time because I scared you. You would keep mentioning it and then dropping it right away. I felt so guilty all this time, you don’t understand.”

“What? No,” Jimmy huffed, settling his feathers back into place. “Is that really why you’ve been shutting down every time I bring up the fire or humans?”

“Uh… yeah…” he said sheepishly, trying to look away. It was a difficult task, considering Jimmy was right on his nose.

“I thought it was because you didn’t want to think about it. Every time I mentioned it you got that look in your eye and I thought you were still angry at them or something. And then you were talking about leaving today-”

Tango cut him off. “I thought you’d want me out for ruining your place and losing my temper!”

“Of course NOT!” That was the farthest thing from what he wanted. “If anything, I’d hope you might stick around for a while after your wings were healed. It was finally starting to feel like-” Jimmy snapped his beak shut, realizing what he was just about to say. Was it too soon?

“What? What what what?!” Tango asked. He pushed his head forward, trying to lean in, but Jimmy was perched on his nose. The little bird just moved with him. He blinked, realizing his mistake before reaching out with his claws to scoop Jimmy up. “What were you going to say?”

He debated. He warred within himself, thinking so hard there was probably smoke coming out the sides of his head in a similar fashion to the smoke coming from Tango’s nose. If there was ever a time to say it, now was that time.

“It was starting to feel like we were flockmates.”

#Life series #trafficblr #fanfiction #team ranchers #the ranch #jimmy solidarity #solidaritygaming #tango #dragon tangotek #phoenix jimmy #alternate universe - fantasy #alternate universe - dragon #past life #found family

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estrogenboyfriend · 3 months

Text

some questions i won't answer yet

expand read more to find out the answers:

masc enby femboy (he/him/any)

around 5'6? i don't remember

murica

i don't know or care

you can figure it out from my UID in genshin screenshots if you want

for now i'll only say english

turquoise

rice with soy sauce

idk currently

(possibly) coding OR playing video games

idk, i listen to obscure japanese stuff

don't have one currently

i can't choose

i don't have a favorite movie cuz i don't watch movies anymore

GENSHIN IMPACT!!!! it has become my new hyperfixation

i don't watch TV shows anymore either. but there are a few i wanna watch including toilet bound hanako kun which I have watched a bit of, and hazbin hotel which i've only seen the pilot of

i'm not into sports

same as favorite activity

my favorite article of clothing are DEFINITELY my pink femboy shorts. they are SOOOOOOO COMFYYYYYYY and cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love wearing them so muchhh

pansexual demiromantic with a VERY strong preference for guys

single (& recently broken up too) 😢

never had one

any guy(optional) who is bonded with me (i.e. i am hyper attached to them) and also sexually compatible with me (i.e. it's possible for me to adapt to what satisfies them)

any irl meetup with someone from whom i don't have to hide my identity

online: probably. irl: no

satisfying someone else, being appreciated (mostly just people liking/complimenting my body), and praise (call me a good boy PLEASE)

excessive misgendering, "sissy" stuff (please don't EVER call me that🤢), nipple/genital piercings (sorry), excessive bondage, strain on the genitals (done by certain contraptions i've seen and it looks super disturbing), catheters, and any phobia that i have (needles and sharp objects near "veiny" areas, insects, excessive gore, etc). a lot of those are not just turn offs, but also triggers

not rn, no

not that i'm aware of

not yet

around 5? maybe more...

only reddit, discord, and tumblr

u/xhydrochaeris, xhydrochaeris (i don't accept friend requests unless i know you), and @estrogenboyfriend

no, i don't like NSFW subreddits/pages and don't really find them appealing

discord > tumblr > reddit (????)

none lol, i'm a fucking lonely ass nobody everywhere

yes, all of them

uhm i don't know? probably very little compared to average for the actual functions of social media, but a LOT to communicate with others

idk lol probably some 冰淇淋 shit that i got obsessed with ages ago

black/very dark brown

no i don't, I'm pretty enough without makeup

uhm medium for a girl, long for a boy. i am a boy but girl standards apply more to me since i present femininely

kinda fat but fem (i am working on my body, eating disorder fucked me up tho)

extremely messy, naturally curly, so it just is a constant mess

usually a t-shirt, hoodie/sweater, and sweatpants.

online: yes, if you mean me with a boy. but it doesn't really happen anymore....

idk i forgot (memories are not sorted and i'm not gonna bother sorting them)

idk i ACTUALLY forgot, like forgetting on demand which is apparently something that i can do if i try hard enough...

no bruh eww lung cancer

nope

does pirating music and video games count? oh and also hacking(homebrewing) my new nintendo 2DS XL

uh probably not, im a good kid

YES... A LOT. i have sleep issues.....

anything that has been within 0.5m of an onion/garlic. those fuckers are NASTY, they smell horrible, taste horrible, and their smell and taste LINGERS in your fucking mouth for DAYS.... YYYYYUUUUUUUCCKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!

yes

not sure if i've met any famous people

i kinda forgot ... i have a bunch of japanese CDs/records that i like but those haven't seen the light of day ever since I got burnout months ago

baizhu in genshin impact because i WHALED for him 😢 I was so desperate but hey at least i got him now :3

GTA V on epic games cuz it was on sale

probably my phone or laptop or smth idk

my homebrewed new nintendo 2DS XL which is so fucking cool because nintendo wants it to die but i am keeping it alive against their will and i really need to start playing with it again.

奥村チヨ - 恋の奴隷 / 眠くなるまで (vinyl 7" single, jun 1 1969) https://www.discogs.com/release/3249405-%E5%A5%A5%E6%9D%91%E3%83%81%E3%83%A8-Chiyo-Okumura-%E6%81%8B%E3%81%AE%E5%A5%B4%E9%9A%B7-%E7%9C%A0%E3%81%8F%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8B%E3%81%BE%E3%81%A7

i mean, the sega genesis model 1 that i have qualifies as futuristic, doesn't it? in fact i think it's way more futuristic that a LOT of stuff that have come out recently. being "futuristic" isn't about features, it's about aesthetic, and those designers in 1989 LARPed futurism WAY better than whoever the fuck is in charge of the capitalist machine nowadays

idk, check my weird shit drawer. i once had a massive dick-shaped crumpled up paper object but i think it's been recycled now.

phone and laptop. couldn't even do basic shit without them.

i said this before, my favorite article of clothing are DEFINITELY my pink femboy shorts. they are SOOOOOOO COMFYYYYYYY and cute!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i love wearing them so muchhh

my hard drive. don't worry, there's nothing sussy on there, just 8+ TB of illegally downloaded music

money

some clothes for men just sitting in my closet... they disturb me so much and i fucking hate them

yes

BOTH. i place equal value on both yellow and purple. on light backgrounds, it's purple, on dark backgrounds, it's yellow.

i don't like either, but i dislike taylor swift a TINY bit less

neither, the nerds can fight over this without me

sour. i have terrible spice tolerance

i guess i'd prefer cold cuz i could cover up more. hot weather would require me to show off my body even when i'm under the most dysphoria...

this kinda contradicts the last question, but summer because more free time

i am masculine in a feminine way 💙

video games

PC, but for proprietary media, nintendo

uhm i really don't know honestly

idk...but i have a pet dog

whichever has the least rules and strategizing involved. i am NOT gonna spend thousands of spoons on a game i have to learn for months and years before i can even enjoy it slightly

....what?

.......what??

...don't know

neither

lemon juice probably

if i'm in the US, neither. if i'm in europe, then mcdonalds (there is a MASSIVE difference because of capitalism which makes sure that all murican fast food and processed foods SUCK ASS and are filled with unhealthy AND un-tasty junk, and the government can't do shit to regulate the hypergigacorporations that are doing this bullshit)

uhhh depends on my mood really. maybe horror?

MAYBE alternative rock, idk..... it's hard to pick

not gonna lie, lotr is IMPOSSIBLE for me to get into and it takes 50 million spoons, but i won't pick harry potter any time soon because jk rowling is a prick, so if i'm FORCED to, it's gonna be lotr. FYI i don't enjoy any nerd media at all due to the sheer amount of effort it takes to get into them and keep up with them. it's like i'm almost completely incompatibility with them

again, i don't fucking know.

i don't want either, please leave me alone

invisibility.

i haven't listened to either so i don't know

soccer, because i don't understand baseball at all, and i kiiiinda understand soccer very little

yep a pet dog

question 33

i'm about to go to university

a B in a particularly shitty class (the professor was a prick)

As in literally all except 1 class

most programming classes

i am ABOUT to start working out. not at a gym tho, just gonna do some workouts at home and see how it goes.

probably not

maybe? idk?

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