Work Text:
Grian's busy working at the buttercup camp, feeding the sniffer and adding some decorations to his tent when he hears the tell-tale sound of rockets firing in the air. Assuming it's either Mumbo or Scar he ignores it.
When he hears the clink of hooves on gravel he realizes his assumptions were wrong, it was Doc . Now, everyone on the server are friends, if someone ever has an actual problem with someone else there's meetings and a high chance that someone will end up banned from the server (that, luckily, hasn't ever happened.) But... That doesn't mean Grian isn't at least a little bit frightened by Doc. The guy was nearly seven feet tall and some sort of cyborg-creeper-goat-centaur thing. Anyone with any sense of self preservation would be at least a little scared of Doc.
And, well, they are at war with each other, as much as it is mostly just pranks (even if some of those pranks went a little overboard.) So... No one can fault Grian for staying quiet.
Maybe if he had just left, or even gone out and talked to Doc he wouldn't have watched the creeper from behind a box, he wouldn't have noticed the new elytra the goat had. No, not elytra. Those were wings . Butterfly wings, sure, and they seemed to work like elytra (given that Doc had no actual elytra on him, and the sound of fireworks having gone off before) but they were wings and they moved . They didn't sit flat on his back like an elytra; they responded to Doc's emotions (as much as Grian could tell from his hiding space.)
And if anything were to make his phantom wings more... Alive? There? Whatever. That would be the thing to do it. His feathers puffed up, as if to make him look bigger, which was an odd feeling in Hermitcraft. Usually he'd only feel scared enough for them to puff up in the Life Games, but he supposes Doc is a nearly three block tall creeper.
Maybe if he had gotten more sleep the last few days, and hadn't been having such intense shifts, he wouldn't have left his tent. And maybe the hybrid wouldn't be looking at him, as if wondering why he would ask what he had.
"You... Want me to make you robotic wings?" Doc's head tilts to the side, a gesture that makes Grian remember the creeper wouldn’t actually harm him.
"Yes, or well, just a custom looking elytra would do, as well." Grian would honestly take some craft store feathers glued onto the back of an elytra, Pearl had jokingly mentioned doing that before.
"Is there... A reason you want this?" That... Grian should have expected that to be honest. But, well, he didn't really think he'd ever have a conversation like this, it's not like he wakes up and thinks 'I wonder if my neighbor has made working robotic wings today.'
"I just think it'd be cool, you know. Practically half the server has wings in some way naturally, I want something that stands out!" Doc narrows his eyes and Grian's wings twitch back, flapping a few times as if to get him away from the giant creeper. And then Doc blinks and turns around, and walks off.
-
Grian... Honestly doesn't think much of it, the next few days. Too caught up with the Buttercups and the war with the Perimeter.
And then he gets a message from Doc.
[Docm77]: Come to the Perimeter, I have something for you.
If that's not a frightening message, he doesn't know what is, especially after the... battle(?) They had earlier that day.
But, he's nothing if not a brave bird. And also he can just respawn and get his stuff back later when Doc is asleep, worst case scenario.
It's only when he walks into the Hall of Goat that he remembers what he asked earlier. When he sees the wings lying out on a table he almost trills .
And when Doc helps him get them on, he barely pays attention to what the goat says because as soon as the straps are comfortable, he suddenly feels right . Like a part of him that has been missing is finally, finally , back where it needed to be.
And if he trills when he waves goodbye to Doc, flapping his wings and spreading the brightly colored feathers out under the sun. Well, it's not like the creeper would tell on him.
(And if Doc gently touches his horns, and remembers how right he felt when he had made them from metal during the break between the seasons. And if he recognizes how Grian reacted to the wings. Well, who’s he to stop someone else from feeling more comfortable in their own body.)