«☆Dream angst oneshots☆» (Slow Updates)

✧☆The Sky is Overcast☆✧

Summary:
"Do you need help with that?" Phil asked, gesturing towards Dream's wings.

Dream's wings twitched, fluttering a bit and pulling up closer to his ears. He eyed Phil, and Phil still couldn't get over how weird it was being able to read Dream, both through his expressions and his wing movements. It made him feel less off balance than he used to when dealing with Dream. He scrutinized Phil, and Phil bore the weight of his piercing gaze as Dream tried to find whatever he was looking for. "And if I do?" he asked, voice cold and hard, contradicting the way he worried his bottom lip between his teeth.

Phil slowly shrugged, wings jostling with the movement. "Then I'd help, if you let me," he said simply, trying to keep his voice light.

Or; Phil helps Dream preen his wings after they break him out of Pandora's Box, and he learns Dream knows surprisingly little about being a winged hybrid.

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Work Text:

When Phil first joined the SMP, it'd been hard not to stare at Dream, and despite his best efforts, he was sure Dream noticed the way Phil's eyes widened, locked on the wings bound tightly between Dream's shoulder blades. There really weren't many winged hybrids scattered across the world, and Phil hadn't seen another one since he'd left the winged community he grew up in centuries ago. Phil could feel the instinctual tug in his chest that he hadn't felt in decades, that familial pull that screamed kin, but it was hard to tell if Dream felt the same pull; his masked gaze rested on Phil a few seconds longer than it did on the others, but it was impossible to tell with the blank smile staring back at him. Phil felt his wings flair out, the tips reaching toward the sky in a greeting, but Dream's wings stayed tightly bound, barely twitching in response.

It wasn't solely the fact that the admin of this server was winged that sent Phil's thoughts stuttering to a halt. Phil stared at where the curve of Dream's wings arched over his head before streaming back down his back, and Dream's jet black feathers shone sleek under the afternoon sun. Phil had heard whispered stories of hybrids with black wings when he was growing up; they were incredibly rare, and Phil had never seen one in his travels throughout the decades, on any of the servers he'd explored. He remembered being a fledgling overhearing tense conversations between the adults when they thought he'd fallen asleep, about how valuable those dark, downy feathers were, as a status symbol or for ritualistic use. The lengths some would go to get them.

Phil almost thought there were no hybrids with black wings left, until he was standing there with his family, meeting the residents of this new server and watching the way the admin's dark feathers ruffled slightly in the breeze.

And in the days that stretched into months after that, it became... strangely easy to forget the fact that Dream was a winged hybrid at all. Phil never saw Dream with his wings unbound, and in the early days, he had tried to figure out why. If he was honest, it worried him; having wings bound that long was never good for them, and Phil would cringe every time he saw how snuggly Dream's wings were tucked up along his spine. It was rude to outright ask a hybrid about their wings like that, though, especially since Phil barely knew Dream, so he tried his best to be subtle.

When he would run into Dream near the community house, his eyes would linger on Dream's bound wings, and he'd cock his head to the side, letting the tips of his wings flutter twice- a question, a light nudge of curiosity- but Dream would never give him anything back, just staring at him with that infuriatingly blank mask. Once, when some of the SMP members were gathered to discuss something, Phil noticed Dream's wings twitch against the binds, a shudder going through them down to where the tips almost brushed the ground, and Phil let some of his scent leak out. He hadn't used pheromones in a long time, considering there hadn't been any other winged hybrids around to pick up on it, but it was still easy to let his scent loose, coating the air with curiosity tinged with worry. Dream had glanced at him, stuttering midway through his sentence before regaining his train of thought, but he didn't do anything beyond that. Dream's scent was bitter, acrid, and it didn't tell Phil anything.