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minecraftbookshelf · 10 months

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To Walk A Mile In Each Others Shoes: The Ranchers

Summary: The soulbonds have consequences, and for some they are more welcome than others. Tango and Jimmy Edition

Characters: TangoTek & Solidarity Gaming

Word Count: 370

General Note: I'm posting these as separate one-shot style posts for each soulbond pair. They are all written but I have them queued up and spaced out. All posted will be on this blog under the tag "to walk a mile in each others shoes" and also on my AO3, which is linked on my pinned post.

Tango notices the itching first. A creeping sensation at his hairline and in-between his shoulder blades. At first he thinks its just sweat and dust, the normal byproducts of the work he and Jimmy are putting into building and populating their ranch. It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to realize that it isn't.

It's feathers. Sprouting in his hairline and down his back, fewer than Jimmy's, but in the same places, an unmistakable mirror of downy fluff and a few scattered emerging pinfeathers.

The itching gets worse and Jimmy shows him how to use pressure and cold to relieve it. Tango doesn't seem to have the ability to make the oil needed to keep them healthy, so Jimmy uses his own, flustered and rambling the whole time he shows Tango how to work it into the feathers.

They feel better after, though still itchy. An odd sensation of growth against his skin.

The pinfeathers never get the chance to open up.

(He never connects the dots, doesn't really register the weird sensations of deja vu, the vague sense of Knowing what is about to happen right before it does. And even if he had, he probably wouldn't have realized where they came from.)

Jimmy doesn't notice until the ranch burns.

He knows a lot of people would probably make a joke about his obliviousness there, but in his defense he doesn't usually stick his hands into fire.

Until the ranch burns and Tango is raging and Jimmy is trying to put out two fires at once, both of them more literal than advisable.

The ranch burns and Tango burns and Jimmy reaches into the flames and pulls him out and it doesn't so much as singe his skin.

One things avians and netherborn have in common, Jimmy learns, is that they are always cold. Hollow bones and Nether-nature equally out of place on the ground of the Overworld. But netherborn produce heat, warming the air around them. Jimmy can't get as hot as Tango, no shimmer over his hand no matter how hard he strains and stares, but Tango says its enough he can feel it.

They may not have many nights in the game, but at least they can keep each other warm.

Team Ranchers || Team Box || Dessert Duo || The Boat Boys || The Homewreckers || Bad Math || Tilly Death Do Us Part

#None of the Evo Survivors are Okay #trafficblr #double life smp #team rancher #solidaritygaming #tangotek #to walk a mile in each others shoes #also yes im aware that this one especially can be read romantic #its not really the intent exactly #one of the ao3 tags for this character study collection is 'canon-typical ambiguous relationships'#make of that what you will #im super aroace and in a queerplatonic polycule so i play fast and loose with relationship categories anyway #rain writes fanfiction #rain rambles #at some point i need to write the essay percolating in my mind about minecraft relationships in general and mcyt rp in particular #and how well the medium and the culture lend themselves to relationship models that would be considered 'non-traditional' in the west

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