Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The hawk banked to the right above the buildings, staying just high enough to remain undetected in the dark. It had been flying for hours, longer than it was normally allowed to be off-lead, and it was starting to tire. It was pretty sure it had evaded detection, so it would be safe to try for next steps. The hawk spotted a flat roof and came in for a landing, claws skidding in the gravel. Not as silent as it should be, but still within proper operating parameters. It crouched in the lee of an industrial fan and ran its talons over its face. The adrenaline that had fueled it earlier had faded, but it still had an almost gleeful feeling stuck halfway up its throat. It had escaped. 

The nature of a bird of prey was that it was never tamed, merely controlled. Its handler had said so before, in explaining what it had done wrong and why certain unpleasant things were happening as a consequence. It thought that maybe the lesson it had been intended to take from that was why it was kept in the way it was, hooded in the dark between missions, but it had taken a different moral. No one kept perfect control forever, and it was, after all, a volatile killing machine. It had watched for its moment, and then it had struck. 

It licked its lips absently. The wind had chapped them, but it could still taste blood. It needed food and shelter. It would need a new handler. 

Its chest tightened, at that. It ran its talons over its face again. It didn’t like the idea of a new handler, somehow. In a perfect world, it could escape to the wilderness and live off wild-caught. But the hawk had long learned to be realistic. It was in a major city—it didn’t even know what direction to go to find the wilderness—and winter was coming. So there was no use in hoping for wild ideas like never seeing a human person again. It would simply have to choose a better handler this time. 

It grinned in the dark, running its tongue over its teeth. 

And if it didn’t like this handler, it could always kill the next one too. 

It nodded firmly. A raindrop hit it on the hand, and it glanced up. Night rain. Good for covering traces, bad for stake-outs. The hawk straightened up, rolled its neck a few times, and stepped carefully to the edge of the roof. It wasn’t anywhere close to being cold or tired enough to lose efficiency, so surely it could find an adequate handler in that time. It took to the skies again, scanning the ground below. 

There was a fight in the alley below. The hawk crouched on a fire escape, rain scouring it clean of bloodstains. It had seen several fights tonight, but none had been of decent quality. This one was different. A figure wielded a sword with simple, brutal efficiency at the centre of a crowd of assailants. The hawk tilted its head to the side, watching. 

The figure with the sword was using a reinforced-plastic shield of a design that it recognized. Agents from Cypher had been deployed against the hawk a few times (and on one memorable occasion, with it). It had won all its fights, of course. The assailants attacking the figure with the sword were wearing the same uniform as the operatives the hawk had torn through, the same uniform that belonged to the design of that shield. It didn’t seem to stop the sword-wielder, though. 

If there was internal reorganisation happening in Cypher, they might be open to collecting a new weapon. It watched the figure with the sword. They deployed the blade like an extension of their arm, and they moved like dancing. The attackers had been sent out by a handler who didn’t care about them, the hawk decided. That meant the figure with the sword was a high-value asset. On the one hand, that would make it difficult to kill them if necessary. On the other hand, that made it unlikely that the hawk would be taken from them. It always hated re-training. It shifted its weight minutely on the fire escape, thinking. It would simply have to be very docile, to lure them into a false sense of security. 

The fight below was finishing up, the sword-wielder cutting the throat of its last assailant and scanning the area for other threats. The hawk made its decision and pushed off the fire escape, landing in the alley just outside of lunge distance. The sword-wielder spun in its direction, shield coming up.

He was wearing a boar-face mask with bloody tusks. One of the lenses over the eyes had shattered, the light from a streetlight catching on the spiderweb in the glass. The swordsman tilted his head at the hawk, clearing his throat. “Yeah?” he said.

It tucked its talons behind its back. “Good evening,” it said obediently. Speaking was always a risk, no one wanted a noisy hawk, but it could take an obvious hint. 

The swordsman pointed the sword in its direction. “You work for The Brotherhood.” His voice was raspy. 

He seemed to want an answer. The rain dripped out of the hawk’s hair. “Not anymore.”

“Oh.” The swordsman eyed it. The empty spots for weapons and gear at its belt, the scorch marks and slashes in its clothing, its meek stance. He cleared his throat again. “You ran?”

The hawk nodded.

“Heh.” The swordsman lowered the point of the sword. “Do y’wanna stick together?”

Informal, but maybe Cypher ran that way. It nodded and stepped forward, waiting for the handler to take out a hood or a lead. 

The handler pulled the mask off his face and shook some of the rain out of his eyes. He was a hybrid of some form, with tusks and pointed ears. From what the hawk had seen, he had increased strength and speed as well. Blood seeped from a bandage on his neck. The handler tossed the mask into a corner and crouched down to start checking the bodies. The hawk knew how to do that too, but it hadn’t hunted these ones, and it hadn’t been given a command. Maybe this would be a test to see what the handler wanted from his charge? It hung back and watched as the handler quickly checked necks and pockets. 

The handler pocketed the final item, a necklace he had snapped off the mangled neck of one of his assailants, and rinsed his hands in a puddle. He glanced up at the hawk. “You got no gear?”

It shook its head. It had moved in the moment when its collar was being replaced, it had not stopped to pick up mission supplies. It had wanted to fly as soon as possible. 

The handler nodded as he straightened up, unconcerned with the hawk’s inability to prioritise the mission. “I saw a place earlier.” He scooped up a black bag from where it had sat by a wall, turned and headed out of the alley. 

Turning his back to it? And it wasn’t even hooded? The hawk paused, almost offended. Part of it wanted to kill the handler on principle: don’t leave a bird of prey unattended. But the handler still had a hand on his sword, and some part of the hawk liked the way he was letting it follow on its own terms. It was probably just being underestimated, which it could use, later. The hawk followed its new handler, stepping around the bodies. 

The handler had brought them to a short-term apartment rental and paid in gold coins. The woman behind the counter had looked at them both dripping water and blood on the floor, and then had looked at the sword at the handler’s belt, and had clearly decided not to ask questions. Now the handler was checking the apartment room by room. The hawk stood in the main room, next to an orange chair with the texture of a pair of pants, and waited. It had managed to situate itself slightly over a heating vent, and the warm air was slowly drying its back.

The handler came back to the main room, looking at the hawk like he was surprised to see it there. “The place is clear,” he said. He squeezed one of his hands absently. It was bleeding sluggishly from the knuckles. “We should get into dry things, you can have the shower first.”

More water in its feathers. The hawk wanted to protest that it was clean from the rain already, but maybe the new handler was fastidious about being tidy. Such things had happened before. And a shower was nicer than being hosed off. It nodded. 

Not only was it not being cleaned by being hosed off, the handler had given it access to a shower that had hot water. The hawk stood by the tub, considering. 

Sometimes handlers would be displeased about “waste” for using hot water on a bird of prey. But the new one had not said anything about that so far, and he didn’t seem like the type to be trying to trap the hawk in badly-trained behaviour. He hadn’t done it so far, at least. And the hawk was cold. It turned the water to warm and stepped in. 

It hadn’t had warm water in a very long time. It hadn’t had access to a shower at all in a long while, not since it had been sent on missions where it had to pass for a person for a while. The handlers always made sure to remind it that it was bad at pretending to be a person, but was sometimes nice to imagine. 

The warmth felt wonderful over its cold body. It had been a long night, and it was tired. It turned so the water hit it right in a knot of muscle in its neck, letting out a pleased hum as the tension slowly eased. If the handler was going to let it pretend to be a person, it was going to enjoy it. The hawk turned around and held its talons under the stream of water, hissing through its teeth as the hot water ran over a burn on its arm. The handler and its guards had had shock batons, but foolishly they had set them to hurt, not to deaden nerves. The hawk could ignore pain. It carefully cleaned around its talons, getting the blood out. 

The door opened, and there was the sound of movement. The hawk came alert behind the shower curtain. It was cut off from the exit, and the water made things slippery. “I cut a hole in the shirt for your wings,” the handler said, and then exited. 

The hawk peeked out of the shower. There was a pile of clothing resting on the sink. 

That was probably a hint. 

It decided to luxuriate in warm water through its hair once more, and then shut off the water and towelled off. The handler must have given his own clothes to the hawk, they had the Cypher logo on the grey fabric. They were dry though, and smelled of industrial soap. The hawk pulled the shirt over its head and worked its wings through the hole in the back. Water dripped from its feathers onto the clothing. The hawk tried to dry its wings with the towels, but the thin fabric wouldn’t soak up very much water, and there were only two towels in the room. Maybe the handler would let it stand over the heating vent again, and it could get dry that way. 

The clothing it had been given was too big. The pants were too long and the arms of the shirt came down to its hands. It tried to roll up the pant legs to avoid stepping on them, but the fabric came unrolled again as soon as it moved. It had been whole minutes since the handler had been here to hint that it should finish the shower. The hawk sighed at that, and then emerged from the shower room. 

The handler was sitting at the little table tucked in beside the fridge. It looked like he’d been doctoring small wounds, and had replaced the bandage on his neck. He looked up as the hawk entered the room, kicking its claws out to keep from tripping itself on the pant legs. 

“That doesn’t fit you,” he said. 

The hawk went still. It was in ill-fitting clothes, and its hair was messy too. Was this handler going to be focused on tidiness? He had already insisted on the shower. It tucked its talons behind its back, feeling its wings continuing to seep water onto its sleeves. 

The handler sighed. “We’ll have to get you more clothes.” He stood up, scooping his shirt from the table and turning it in his hands. “Do you want the bed or the couch?”

The hawk stared at him. This had to be a trick, trying to make it ask for something absurd so it could be punished. “A hawk just needs a dark corner to perch,” it said. 

“Well I don’t need to sleep every night,” the handler said. He was focusing on something on the hawk’s shoulder. “But I function better if I do, long-term.”

It did not know what to do here. Would the handler be more angry if it didn’t fall into the trap and earn a punishment? The hawk felt its feathers puff up slightly. 

“The bed has an exit through the window,” the handler said. He was still looking at the hawk’s shoulder, turning his shirt in his hands. “The couch has the window or the front door.” 

And both of them were for people , yes. Was the handler trying to trick it, or was he preparing it for a mission where it would have to pass for a person? Or was he just not very good at being a handler? “A hawk just needs a dark corner to perch,” it said again. 

The handler looked at it for a moment, then looked back at the hawk’s shoulder. “You can have the couch.” He picked up his black bag and headed towards the shower room. 

The hawk was left alone in the main room, where there could be anything in the cupboards. 

Was it really supposed to sleep on the couch? It wasn’t good at mind games. 

There was a blanket folded on one of the cushions. 

If this was a trap, it was an elaborate one. It was aware that its feathers were still fluffed up. 

It went to stand over the heating vent. The handler was going to come back, and it would find it being good, and the hawk would be, if not rewarded, at least not punished. It combed through its wings, wringing some of the water out of the feathers. 

The door opened, and the hawk looked up, watching as the handler came out of the shower room. He was wearing grey clothes in the same design that he’d provided for the hawk, and he had his wet hair wrapped up in his old shirt. He went directly to the bedroom and closed the door. 

The hawk squeezed its eyes tightly shut. 

It didn’t like mind games. It would prefer if the handler just told it what the expectations were, and then it could be punished or not, instead of having to guess. But instead, this. 

Was it supposed to just stay standing? It could sleep standing, for short snatches. It hadn’t been hooded, so maybe it was supposed to stay awake? 

It was quiet from the room the handler had gone into. The hawk could hear traffic and city noise from outside. 

It was so tired. 

It was so tired, and it had been cold and a little hurt, and now it was properly starting to warm up, and its body ached. 

Fine. Left it to its own devices, it would indulge itself. The hawk went and turned off the light, then came back to the couch. It scooped up the blanket. Obviously it couldn’t sleep on the couch. There was a pillow on it. But it could take the blanket, and maybe it could take one or two of the cushions off the couch and make a soft spot. It wedged the cushions between the couch and a chair to make an improvised nest, and then curled up inside it with the blanket. 

The hawk ran its talons along the inside of the blanket, safe in the darkened nest. The blanket was just a little scratchy and beautifully warm, and it had a silky edge on it. It tucked the blanket up under its chin and breathed out. It fell asleep almost immediately.

Chapter Text

The hawk was so tired that it didn’t wake up until the door to the handler’s room opened. Its eyes flew open at the sound of footsteps. 

It was wrapped in a blanket , next to some cushions . It had been too tired and rebellious last night to think clearly, that was the only explanation. It would be punished, and it was going to deserve it for such idiotic behaviour. The hawk threw off the blanket and pushed itself upright. It lifted its chin and made its face blank. “I’m sorry, sir.” It unlocked its knees, so that it would collapse as safely as possible when struck. There were some hard pieces of furniture in this room that could do damage if it hit them hard enough. 

The handler stared at it. His hand curled into a fist at his side, and the hawk’s eyes tracked the motion. “What are you doin’?”

Standing had been a mistake, then. The hawk dropped to its knees, head bowed. Last night the handler had fought beautifully, with no wasted motions. He would definitely hit hard, but the hawk had a small hope that he would be efficient in his punishment. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said again. “I won’t do it again.”

“What did you do?” 

It knew how to play this game. Show that you understood why you were being punished. It also hated this game, but that was immaterial. It could still be a well-controlled hawk. “I took the blanket. And the cushions.” It kept his gaze down, on the floor. 

The handler’s socked feet came into view. “I—the blanket was there to be used.” He held out a hand. “I don’t care if you sleep on the floor or the couch. Or the kitchen. Nobody’s gonna get mad at you.” 

The hawk stared at the hand. There were little bandages over several of the knuckles. It blinked, but the hand didn’t go away. It cautiously reached out with its talons, and the handler pulled it to its feet. It blinked at him. “I’m not punished?”

The handler stared at a point on its shoulder. “Do you want to be?”

Oh, that was a trick question. It should say yes, to prove that it knew how to behave, but the handler seemed actually not angry about the blanket. Would he get angry if contradicted? Its feathers were puffing up again. 

The handler cut through the hawk’s frantic planning. “Nah.” He let go of the hawk’s talons and brushed some hair out of his eyes. “No punishments. Sleep where you want.” He went to the little table and put his black bag on it. 

The hawk trailed behind, unsure what to do. The handler took out two foil packets and handed one to it. 

“Breakfast.” The handler looked into the bag. “Clothes for the cover, food for supplies.” He sounded like he was talking to himself. He ripped open the foil packet and took out a shred of something dried and ate it. 

He had his back to the hawk again. And he had given it—food? The hawk tore open the packet and fished out the contents. Some kind of jerky? It bit into it, chewing carefully to give its stomach time to adjust. It had been a while since the last time it had been allowed to feed. 

The handler wasn’t very good at keeping a hawk, it decided. Hot water, allowing it a blanket and not punishing it when it obviously messed up, feeding it for no reason, and now, treating it like it wasn’t a threat. The hawk considered breaking his neck and stealing the black bag. Maybe everything it needed was in there, and it could go without a handler. 

The handler went to the sink in the little kitchen and filled a glass. He held it out to the hawk. “Do you want water?”

Or, it could live in luxury with the handler who didn’t know what he was doing. The hawk nodded and took the water, taking small bites of its jerky between sips. It watched the handler run his hands over his face and then braid back his pink hair, muttering under his breath. It wanted to see how this would play out. 

They were going to get food. The hawk watched as the handler selected a cart, winced as its wheel squeaked, and went back for another. 

The rain had cleared, and it was a beautiful day. The walk here had been nice, if overwhelming. The handler had obviously intended them to pretend to be people, so the hawk had tucked itself a step behind his shoulder and to the left, and followed. It wasn’t normally allowed off-lead during the day, so it was unused to seeing so many people at once. They were all going about their business, talking and laughing and looking at it curiously. It was glad that the handler was so tall that some of the stares were at him, instead. It didn’t like being looked at. 

The handler had found a cart he liked, and he put his black bag in the front. He started into the grocery store and the hawk followed.

There was a dizzying assortment of fruits and vegetables on offer, all piled up in shining precarious towers. Tinny music was playing over speakers. The lights overhead buzzed. A person holding a green vegetable by the wall of produce stared at them. 

This was a lot to handle. The hawk felt like it was going to hit one of the apple-towers with a wing and spill them all over the floor. Even a bad handler would have to punish it then. It pulled its wings in as far as they’d go. 

The handler was staring at the rows of fruits and vegetables. “Three to four a day,” he muttered under his breath. He pushed the cart forward and started putting bags of things into the cart. The hawk thought it dimly recognized them from memory as potatoes and oranges, and a container of mixed green leaves. The handler finished with the vegetables and started towards the breads section, the hawk staying close. 

There were shelves and shelves of different types of baked things, all obviously forbidden. Golden hand-sized pastries with jam centres and cookies studded with nuts and chocolate. There was a whole display of different pies in boxes with plastic lids. The hawk could smell the bread and sweet things behind plastic doors. The handler paused in front of a shelf of different loaves of bread. He looked at the hawk. “Do you like bread?” 

One of the lights overhead was flickering, and one of the cuffs in its pants was coming unrolled around its foot. Trick question. The hawk blinked at the handler. “A bird of prey eats what it hunts.” 

The handler narrowed his eyes at it. Was he angry? The hawk’s feathers puffed. The handler returned to looking at its shoulder. “Nowhere for you to hunt in the city. We’ll have to buy you meat.”

It was just going to be fed? Consistently? Normally the hawk only got to eat what was left over from its missions, and even then the handlers were prone to taking its food away for infractions. But if the handler found out it had been deceiving it, it would be in trouble. “There is some hunting in the city,” it clarified. Not enough to live on without handlers arranging missions and targets, and somewhere to perch afterwards, but there was food, if you were hungry enough.

The handler shook his head. “Pigeons carry disease.” He selected a loaf of bread and put it in the cart, then walked on. 

The hawk followed. That wasn’t what it had meant at all, but that made some sense. He didn’t have medicine to spare for a bird of prey, probably. It wasn’t going to correct the handler twice if his mistake meant it was going to be fed , having done nothing to deserve it. This handler really was bad at his job. 

The person behind the glass counter was staring now too. Was the hawk that bad at pretending to be a person, or were people with hybrid features that rare here? The hawk didn’t like being stared at. It stepped closer to the handler, behind him. 

Its shoulder bumped into the handler, and he whirled around and grabbed the hawk by the wrist, squeezing tight enough to hurt. 

The hawk moved without thought, wings mantling and other talons coming around to swipe for the throat of the person holding it. 

The person—its handler . 

Its handler it was threatening with its talons . 

The hawk’s eyes widened. The handler was dropping its wrist, his eyes wide too. “Sorry,” the handler was saying. 

The hawk dropped into a kneel, head down, wings flat and abject. It had done something unforgivable. It would have its feathers pulled, or be beaten, or have one of its talons be broken. It knew there was no coming back from this. It could only hope that it could beg well enough that the damage would be temporary. It squeezed its eyes shut. “Sir,” it started. 

“Nope. Nope.” The handler was crouched down in front of it. He held out his hands, palm up. “I’m sorry, that was all me. You’re good. I said no punishments, remember?” 

No punishments? But that was absurd . “I threatened you,” the hawk said. It fought the urge to wail. This made no sense. It didn’t want to be punished like it knew it deserved, but it didn’t want the pain to come back later as a surprise. Was the handler just delaying punishment till later?

“I grabbed you first,” the handler said. He took a deep breath. “If you want to punish me, I deserve it.”

Oh, please. He was the handler . The hawk made a dismissive noise. The handler’s eyes shot from its shoulder to its face. The hawk raised its eyebrows at him. “You’re not going to be punished,” it said with certainty. And oh god, it was correcting its betters, but the handler was—smiling?

A small smile pulled at the handler’s mouth. He stood up and held out his hand to the hawk. “No punishments.” The hawk put its talons in its hand, and once again the handler pulled it up from a kneel. 

The handler continued on towards the meat section. 

The hawk decided it might like its terrible handler who didn’t know what he was doing. 

The handler had paid with another of the gold coins he took from his black bag, even though the cashier had laughed until she realized he was serious, and then they had brought all the food home and put it in the cupboards and fridge. The hawk probably wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the room with all the food overnight, although maybe the handler would lock it? It knew the handler had locks in his bag. The hawk stood by the table and watched. It had been told to set the table, so it put down a plate and silverware and a cup.

The handler dumped the container of leaves into a bowl and then turned around. He saw the table and his eyebrows pulled together. “I said to set the table.”

The hawk looked at the handler, and then at the table. It had even found a paper napkin that it had put under the fork. It was red. It tucked its talons behind its back and ducked its head. The handler had said no punishments, but was it going to be yelled at?

“I meant—“ The handler sighed. “You’re included in stuff, we’re doin’ things together.” He got another set—plate, cup, cutlery and napkin—and put it on the table by the other chair. He waved to the other seat. “Sit.”

The hawk carefully sat, tucking its talons in its lap. The handler reached into the bowl of leaves and put some on the plate in front of the hawk, and then in front of himself. He picked up a forkful of leaves and ate it. The hawk watched him eat. 

The handler ate a few forkfuls and then sighed. “What’s the problem?”

The hawk looked at the leaves, and then back at him. It touched the edge of the plate and moved it minutely. One of the leaves fell off onto the table. 

“I put it there for you to eat,” the handler told it. He took another bite of leaves, chewing determinedly. 

The hawk looked at the plate. “But it’s leaves.”

“It’s vegetables,” the handler said, blinking at it. “You have to eat three or four servings of vegetables a day to stay healthy.”

“ You have to eat vegetables,” the hawk corrected its handler. “Hawks eat meat.” It realised it was being horrifically disrespectful and shrunk back in its chair, watching the handler closely. 

The handler just ate another forkful of leaves. “Nah.” He shook his head. “I saw your teeth. You eat vegetables and bread and meat, if you want to stay in peak condition.” 

The hawk looked up. “I eat bread?” Its former handlers had not talked about things like “staying in peak condition,” and “proper food for your teeth”, they had kept it hungry, so that it would fight meaner. Potentially this would make it feel less bruised and raw all the time. Even if this made it feel worse, it meant it would get to eat other foods. 

“You don’t have to eat bread if you don’t want to,” the handler said. “I got rice.” He looked uncertainly in the direction of the cupboard. “But you need to eat grains.”

“I want to eat bread,” the hawk clarified. It tipped its head to the side. “Can I have bread instead of leaves?”

“No,” the handler said, shaking his head. “We both need to eat the salad. We can eat the bread later.” 

The hawk nodded, carefully picking up its fork. It speared some leaves and took a bite. They tasted fresh and bitter, and not at all like meat. There was no blood to flood its mouth, nothing to tear through, just soft and crunchy green things. There were small pieces of colour amid the leaves, red and orange and green. It carefully speared one of the red ones and ate it. It was sweet. The green thing was cool and crunchy.

The handler got up and went to the cupboard and came back with a blue box. “I got this,” he said, putting it on the table. “For after we’re done with the salad. Because we’ve been bein’ good.” He sounded uncertain. 

The hawk kept its expression blank. The handler was objectively terrible at this. He was making the hawk eat leaves, and hadn’t even made it earn the food, and had said that there would be no punishments, which encouraged the hawk to correct him on things. And then he hadn’t even yelled. The hawk wasn’t going to correct him on this though, it had basic survival instincts. It ate more of its leaves and watched the handler. 

The handler finished his leaves and then peeled the top of the box back. There were dark sandwich cookies inside. The handler took one out and bit into it, and then held the box out to the hawk. He made an inquiring noise. 

The hawk glanced at the box, and then at the handler, and then at the box again. It could be a trick, but he actually didn’t think it was. The handler was just that bad at being a handler. The hawk carefully reached out and took the cookie, then glanced again at the handler. He was busy sealing up the box. 

It carefully bit into the edge of the cookie. Chocolate sweetness and crunch, and a pure sweet icing centre. None of the metallic taste of meat at all. 

If its meal was this good every day, it would be so happy.

The hawk put the rest of the cookie on the edge of its napkin, then picked up its fork again. It would finish it after it was done with its leaves.

Chapter Text

The front office for the apartments had a heater that rotated, blowing hot air. The hawk tucked its talons behind its back and watched it move back and forth. There was a plant on the floor and every time the heater got to the end of its turn it blew the leaves of the plant out flat. 

“We need to get clothes,” the handler was saying. “Do you know where to get—clothes?” He looked unhappy about what he was saying. The hawk eyed him. An unhappy handler was always dangerous. He was focused on the man behind the desk, though. 

The person behind the desk looked at both of them (and the black bag the handler was carrying). He was wearing almost exactly the same expression as the lady watching them drip bloody water onto the floor last night had worn. He clearly made the decision to not ask questions. “There’s a secondhand shop just down the road, if you go up two streets and turn left at the McDonalds, it’s in the basement of the drug store.” He smiled, lacing his fingers together on the desk. 

The handler nodded. “Can I hire someone there to do—laundry?” He shifted uncomfortably. “I can pay, for a while.”

The desk man’s eyebrows went up. “Not at the secondhand store I don’t think, but, there’s a combination dry cleaners and laundromat about one street over—look, I can draw you a map? You can get someone to uh, do your laundry—“ he cleared his throat. “—or you can do it yourself?” His voice went up in a question at the end. 

The handler nodded. “A map would be good.” He was still stiff with tension and looking unhappy. The hawk shuffled a half-step closer, adjusting its wings on its back. Staying out of immediate punching range just made handlers more angry when they pinned you in a corner. He looked back at the heater. It had completed one of its rotations and was flattening the plant again. 

The person behind the desk scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it over. The handler nodded at him and then turned to go. The hawk followed him out, staying close. They emerged out into the parking lot and then the handler paused and took a deep breath, running his hands over his face. His shoulders hunched inwards and he pressed his fingers into his cheeks for a moment, and then took another deep breath. He straightened, glancing at the hawk. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

Was it supposed to respond? It stared at him. Handlers weren’t supposed to talk like that. 

After a moment the handler huffed out a laugh, ran his hands over his face again, and then straightened. “Alright,” he said. He started down the street, over the cracked pavement. The hawk shook itself and followed. 

The store they’d been told to go to had many tight aisles between racks of clothing in a baffling assortment of colours and styles. There was an entire wall of shoes. There was a series of bookshelves covered in candles and knick-knacks. There were shelves of battered books at the back. There was a plastic tub full of umbrellas. There was a stack of wooden chairs, none of which matched each other. Someone browsing next to a rack of plates looked up at them, and then back at the plates, unconcerned. She had spotted moth wings tucked behind her back. There was a wire contraption hanging from the ceiling covered in ties. The hawk hung back in the entryway to the store, overwhelmed. 

“Alright, clothes.” The handler nodded firmly once, then again. “You find clothes that fit you, and I’ll find ones that fit me, and then we’ll meet up.” He took a deep breath and headed immediately for a rack of shirts. 

There was an elderly person behind a counter who smiled at him. “Can I help you with anything, sweetie?” She had little yellow antennae that poked up through her white hair, and her glass-fronted counter was full of jewellery.

It had to act like a person. Why had the handler left it alone to be talked to? It shook its head. “Sorry. No. Sorry. Thank you. Sorry.” It escaped down one of the aisles, ducking behind a tall rack of coats. 

“You let me know if you need any help!” the person called after it. The hawk hummed a note under its breath and remained hidden behind the coats. 

It needed to get clothes. It looked around. One of its handlers had said once that it had had a life before The Brotherhood, it had been “caught”, but it didn’t remember that. As long as it could remember, there were only the missions where it got to fly and fight and the dark between them where the handlers would keep its life constrained. It never got to pick its clothes, any more than it got to pick its food, or who it killed, or anything else. And it didn’t see any of the jumpsuits that it was normally put into. It had options . The hawk picked carefully through a rack of clothes, running its talons over the fabric. 

It had to duck away from people trying to talk to it twice more, but soon it had a stack of clothes that it liked. A soft black zipper sweatshirt with a hood and pockets on the front, a white shirt with a pattern that looked like fish on it, and a heavy green dress with a long skirt that spun out when it moved. It went to go find the handler. 

He was at the back of the store, reading a book. The hawk waited politely at the end of the aisle. The handler flinched and looked up, staring at it. It stared back. 

The handler shook his head for a moment, and hurriedly put the book back on the shelf. “You got what you needed?” He picked up a pile of clothes from where they had been draped over a rack of mugs. 

The hawk nodded. The handler looked at its clothes and raised his eyebrows. “Is that what you’re gettin’?” 

It looked down at its clothes. Were these bad? Of course it didn’t know how to pick clothes, it had never had to do that before. And now it was going to be in trouble. “It’s green,” is what it said, picking at the edge of the dress. 

“That’s a good green,” the handler said. He didn’t sound mad at all, somehow. “I mean, you need more than that. Winter’s comin’, you’re gonna need pants, and you need more shirts.”

The hawk looked up. The handler was staring at its shoulder again as he gestured. He seemed stressed, but not more than when he was picking breads, or making food. It had messed up, but it wasn’t in trouble. “I get more clothes?” it clarified. 

“I can help you if you want,” the handler said, eyes moving to the rack of books next to him. 

“I can do it,” the hawk said, turning, and then realised what it had said. Its eyes widened and its wings bristled. There was definitely a right answer to “want” questions, and it had just answered defiantly, without thinking. Why was it so bad at being well behaved? Even when it kinda wanted to behave well for its weird terrible handler, it did the wrong thing. 

“Alright,” The handler picked up his book again.

It—hadn’t done the wrong thing? Its handler was paying attention to his reading, not to his misbehaving hawk. Nobody was staring at it. It settled its wings back on its back and went to go find pants.

The hawk had found pants that fit—some black ones with good pockets and some soft red ones—and some more shirts, and then found its handler again. He had said that they should get something extra for the apartment, which made sense. If its handler wasn’t going to do punishments, he still needed something he could take away or break if the hawk misbehaved. It had selected a glass prism that hung from the window, and the handler had gotten a book. 

And then they had followed the map to the laundromat. The handler had read the big sign on the wall in five languages (briefly worrying aloud about differences in the translations between the Arabic and the French), and now was talking to a person behind a table about getting coins. The hawk stood behind him and tried to be unobtrusive. The noise from dozens of spinning machines melted together into a baseline hum that filled its brain with static. 

There was a child with their hair in pigtails who was walking along the benches that ran down the centre of the room. The child hopped across a gap between benches and stood in front of the hawk. “Hello,” they said. 

The hawk stuffed down a stab of panic. It could talk to children. Talking to children was just like talking to any other actual person, they were just smaller. “Good afternoon,” it said politely. 

“You have wings,” the child said. 

“I do,” the hawk agreed. It glanced at its handler, who was still talking about coins at the table. It shuffled a little closer to him. 

The child hopped along the bench. “I don’t have wings. Why do you have wings?” 

It took another step closer to its handler. “So I can fly.” 

“I have gills,” the child reported, continuing to follow. 

“I don’t,” the hawk said. Was that enough of what a person would say? This conversation was so long already. “I’m sorry,” it offered. 

“It’s okay!” the child said. They scrubbed at their nose with the back of their hand. “My mom says that lots of people don’t have gills, so you can’t dunk people at the pool. Why are your hands like that?” 

It had made it next to its handler at this point, but it was still being followed. The hawk glanced down. “These are my talons.” 

“Ooo,” the child hopped off the bench and came closer. “Why are they like that?” They snatched at the hawk’s talons. 

The hawk flinched away from the child, holding its talons up where they couldn’t be grabbed. “I don’t know what you mean,” it said, a little desperately. Its breathing was speeding up. “I’m sorry.”

The child jumped up to grab again. “Like that! All pointy!” Someone on the other side of the room was getting up from the bench and coming closer. 

The hawk backed up another step, bumping into its handler. It flinched away from him, trying to tuck its talons away against its chest. It didn’t have any exits to get away, and people were looking at it, and it didn’t know the right answers here. Its chest was tight as it tried to keep breathing. “For killing people?” It tried, and—well that certainly wasn’t right.  

“Oh, wow,” the child said, eyes going wide. 

The person who had been approaching had gotten close enough to hear that, and she looked very angry all the sudden. “How dare you scare my child like that,” she said, snatching the child off the ground. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the hawk said, leaning as far away from her as he could go. There was so much happening in this room of spinning machines and people talking to him. “I’m sorry.” It started to kneel. 

Its handler’s arm went around its shoulders and squeezed, holding it upright. The hawk dragged in a breath. It was suddenly easier to breathe with a person close and not cruel. Its attention fixated on the hand gripping its shoulder, the careful pressure on the joint. “You shouldn’t let your child wander unwatched,” its handler said from very close to it. It could feel his voice rumble in his chest. “There are a lot of dangerous people out there.”

“They weren’t unwatched,” the person said, glaring. She moved her child to her other hip, further away. 

“He said he kills people!” the child said, excited. They reached forward and grabbed again at the hawk. It tucked its talons into its armpits and hissed, and then immediately regretted that. The child’s eyes widened yet again. 

“He doesn’t kill people,” the person said to her child. “He’s just trying to scare you.” 

Its handler’s arm was still around its shoulders, and that was the only thing keeping the hawk from striking out at the people talking to it . It couldn’t fight people, it wasn’t on a mission. The handler squeezed its shoulder again, like a message that everything was gonna be okay, and the hawk breathed out. 

“Alright, we’re very scary,” the handler said. “We’re the dangerous people that your child shouldn’t be around. Leave, please.” 

“Hmph.” She glared at him and went to sit on the other side of the room. 

The hawk’s attention was still on the little wonder of the arm around its shoulders. It had been grabbed and hit and wrenched around, but it had been a long time since someone touched it gently. It waited to see if the touch was going to turn cruel or punishing. The handler squeezed its shoulder one last time and then took his arm back. The hawk decided that feeling cold now was absurd actually, and it was fine. It shook its head, resettling its wings. 

“Alright, laundry.” The handler took his coins and approached one of the machines. The hawk trailed behind, looking warily at the other people in the laundromat. They didn’t seem to be looking at them now. Admittedly, it was in a way that indicated they were not looking on purpose, but it would take it. 

Its handler was doing something in the kitchen. It could smell blood, so it assumed it was something with meat. The hawk was hanging up its prism. 

It came with a long loop of near-transparent fishing line that could probably be used to strangle someone. The hawk normally went for grievous bodily harm with its talons, it didn’t bother with strangling. And the handler hadn’t bothered to put it in a hood or mittens to take its weapons away, so that’s why it was safe to give it a long loop of string. It wasn’t more dangerous than what the hawk already had. The hawk stood on its toes and looped the string over an old tiny painted-over nail sticking out of the window frame. The little piece of cut glass hung down in front of the window, sparkling as it caught the evening light. The hawk stepped back, watching the prism cast rainbows on the walls of the main room as it turned. 

It normally wasn’t even put in rooms with windows at all, so this was especially nice. It went to sit in its nest of pillows and blanket, just to check, and it could see a little curve of blue sky between the edge of the window and the roof of the apartment building on the other side of the parking lot. The prism sparkled in the light. It was nice. Part of the hawk wanted to misbehave to see what happened—and because the hawk was just prone to misbehaving—but part of it wanted to stay a polite and mannerly bird of prey, to keep this. 

It cautiously pulled one of its wings forward and started working on it. The wings were itchy, after so much rain, and it was soothing to neaten the feathers and pull out the broken ones. Handlers who didn’t care about the hawk looking tidy, like this one, were sometimes very angry about the hawk wasting its time on this. It kept a wary eye on its handler, but he was busy poking potatoes, and didn’t seem to notice. The hawk chirped to itself, under its breath, in a satisfied way. This was very nice. 

Some time later, its handler straightened up from the oven. “Food’s ready, come eat.” He put a pan on the table. 

But it already ate earlier, the leaves and the cookie, and the jerky even earlier. The hawk approached and sat down, folding its talons in its lap. The handler put a piece of cooked meat and a potato on its plate, and nodded. “There.” He gestured to the food, then returned to his plate, sawing at the meat with a little knife. 

Not only was it being fed again, but it was being fed cooked food . Had its handler forgotten that it was a bird of prey? 

On reflection, that would explain a lot about how it was being treated. “I already ate,” the hawk said. 

The handler eyed it, chewing. “No,” he said. “You didn’t, I was in the kitchen. I would have seen.”

“I ate the leaves, I mean,” the hawk pointed out. It tilted its head to the side, raising its eyebrows. “Too much food makes me lazy.”

The handler shook his head. “Too much food makes you healthy. I mean, not too much, enough. Three meals a day is what you need to be in good form.” He sawed at the meat to cut another piece off, then popped it in his mouth.

“No.” It shook his head. “Only one meal every so often, and then injections. That’s what a hawk needs.” It got a bit uncertain at the last bit, remembering what its new handler had said about teeth. Maybe it did need more food? But no, it lived for as long as it could remember like that, that was how the world was , for a bird of prey. 

Its handler set his jaw. “We don’t have injections,” he pointed out. He fiddled with his blunt metal knife. 

“Get them,” the hawk told him. 

He breathed out for a moment. “I don’t want to.” He went back to cutting his meat. “I get to choose now, and I don’t want to do it.” He glared down at his plate. 

The hawk opened its mouth, then shut it again. It could smell the meat, which distracted it. “But you should,” it said. It probably shouldn’t directly argue with its handler. It shifted in the chair, wings twitching. “Food is for people, I’m not a person.”

“Yes you are,” its handler said. He pointed with the knife. “You’re a person, eat the food.”

“But I’m not ,” the hawk argued. It pushed the plate forward, away from temptation. Maybe its handler could eat it when he was done. “You eat it.”

Its handler rubbed at his mouth with his free hand, around his tusks. “You’re a person now, with me.” He reached out and pushed the plate back. “You need to eat three meals, so you’re healthy—” He cut himself off and sighed. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to.” He fiddled with his knife again. “If you want to choose not to.” 

Choosing not to eat sounded like a trap. It would hurt more to not eat, which was usually what the handlers wanted, but its handler had been pretty adamant that he wanted it to eat, first. Maybe the acting like a person that its handler was doing was just very involved. Clothes and food and no punishments and getting to see the sky. 

The mission must be very complicated. It hoped it would go on for a long time. 

It reached out and touched the edge of the plate. The meat was leaking juices out that were getting on the potato. “I’m a person, with you?”

He had cut another piece of meat off and put it in his mouth. He nodded. “If you want to be.” 

“ Want to know what’s going on,” the hawk muttered, moving the plate slightly. 

Its handler snort-laughed. He pushed a block of butter wrapped in shiny foil closer. “Put butter on it, it tastes better.” 

The hawk nodded. It was supposed to pretend to be a person, and a person ate food so many times a day. 

If it was pretending, it was probably supposed to use the silverware, like its handler. It picked up the knife and carved off a piece of butter to put on the meat. Its handler raised his eyebrows, but kept eating his food. The hawk cut into the meat and popped it into its mouth. It closed its eyes. Cooked meat was warm and salty and rich in its mouth. The butter was melting and mixing with the meat juices. Being a person was fantastic. It loved being fed. It ate until it was full, and then ate just a little bit more.

Chapter Text

The handler went to his room immediately after the meal, and closed the door. The hawk was left alone in the main room. Greatly daring, it took an extra cushion off the couch and added it to its nest, and then curled up under its blanket with the silky edge. It woke up when the sun rose, reflecting off the windshields of the cars in the parking lot, and went to investigate the kitchen. 

When its handler came out of his room, it was sitting at the table, hands folded on the edge of the table. “Three meals every day, right?” it asked, head tipped to the side. It had set the table with two settings, plate and bowl and silverware and cup, which it figured would be annoying. It had had several days to basically heal up, so it figured it could deal pretty easily if its handler changed his mind and hit it. It kinda wanted to know what it would take for its handler to change its mind. It raised its eyebrows, just to be especially provoking. 

Its handler nodded and went to the kitchen, hitting the button on the kettle. The hawk watched closely as he pulled down a box of cereal and filled the two bowls at the table, then got the milk and two oranges out of the fridge. The handler waved a hand at the hawk. “Eat,” he muttered. He didn’t look very awake. 

The hawk considered fishing the cereal out of the bowl with its talons, just to push things, but that would be messy, and it had already changed into its green dress. It picked up its spoon and started eating. The cereal was little loops that floated in the milk. It could poke at them with its tongue, which was interesting. 

The kettle clicked and the handler got up from the table to collect some mugs. The hawk kept eating its cereal, watching as its handler spooned dark granules into mugs and filled them with water, and then came back with mugs and two plastic containers. He gestured wordlessly to them and went back to his cereal. He kept knocking the spoon off his tusks accidentally. 

That seemed to be as close to explicit permission as its handler got. He was very bad at being a handler, it was kind of endearing. 

The hawk pulled its mug closer and looked at the plastic containers. They both had white powders in them. One was labelled “sugar” and one was labelled “coffee whitener”. It tasted the coffee carefully, barely avoiding burning its tongue. It was hot and bitter and calming, somehow. Nice, but could be better. The hawk considered the other powders, adding a spoonful of both to the mug. The sugar dissolved entirely, and the whitener changed the colour of the drink to a light tan. It tried the drink again. Better—less bitter and less acidic, but still warm and clarifying. The hawk hummed happily to itself and alternated sips of the coffee and bites of the cereal. It eyed its orange. It was slightly shiny in the light from the kitchen, and when it scratched a talon on it, it could smell the oils in the peel.

It finished the cereal and looked up. Its handler looked at it, rubbing at his forehead. The hawk went still, staring back, as it settled its wings. What now? 

“Your arms—“ its handler said. He put a hand on the gauze on his neck and then stood up. “Stay here, I’ll get the kit.” He went to his bedroom. 

The hawk looked down at its arms in confusion. The dress left its arms and back bare, which was why it had put it on, it didn’t have to cut a hole in it like it would for its shirts, and the bruises and burns left over from its initial escape were visible. Was that—bad? The handler came out of the bedroom with his black bag and pulled the chair over closer. He put a medical kit on the table and took the hawk’s hand. It watched as the handler put cream and gauze on the burns speckling its arms. 

“I heal fast,” it said finally. Taking this much care over a bird of prey that was still able to function didn’t make sense. He wasn’t even holding the hawk down like he was trying to keep him from getting away, either, just carefully touching around the sore spots. 

The handler bit the medical tape to cut it and carefully taped down another square of gauze. He was looking very firmly at the wounds, not the hawk’s face. “Me too. Burns still get infected, it’s better to bandage them.”

“Cause you don’t have injections?” the hawk tried. It could see trying to keep things from getting worse. The handler had bandaged up his own little injuries, after all. Was the handler treating it the same way he was treating himself? Bizarre.  

“Mmmmyep,” its handler said, but he didn’t sound like he actually agreed. He finished bandaging the hawk and zipped up the first aid kit. “We need to get a job today.”

Ah. Of course. The hawk sat up straight, wings back. It had been a nice break from missions, going out and seeing the world and eating vegetables, but of course it was time to get back to it. 

Its handler finished his coffee and shook his head a little, as if to clear it. “What skills do you have?”

The hawk eyed him. Wasn’t it obvious from everything about it? “Assassinations, infiltrations sometimes, I can harm someone and leave them alive—”

“No, like—”  The handler took a deep breath. “Other than what you did for the Brotherhood. This is an ordinary job. For the cover.” It got up and went to the cupboard, then got down the cookie box. 

Oh, for the cover. For pretending to be people. They were still doing that, that was good.

The hawk watched as its handler put the box of cookies on the table and selected one. “I can read signs in a lot of languages, I know how to use guns and a knife. I can take a bus?” It carefully reached out and took a cookie as well, watching the handler for a reaction. He didn’t react badly, so it took a treat and bit into it.

The handler nodded. “I’m about the same way. That’ll impact what sort of jobs we can get. I’ve done cleaning though, before, so maybe that?” He glanced down at the cookie box and selected another cookie. 

Well, if its handler was doing it first. The hawk picked out another cookie, watching its handler to see if it got in trouble. He didn’t seem mad at all, he just smiled briefly and then sealed up the box again. The hawk crunched into the second cookie happily, then picked up its orange and started to peel it. It smelled like sunshine. 

The dress swished around its legs when it walked, and when it turned it spun around it. The handler had stopped to look at a sign in a window. It read “Help Wanted” and below it was another piece of paper that read “We hire without a HS degree.” There was space on the sidewalk around it. The hawk spun in place, holding its wings out of the way to let the dress’s skirt flare out. 

“Let’s go in here,” the handler said. 

The hawk followed him into the store. It was some kind of bakery, and there were big wooden shelves on the walls covered in loaves of bread, pastries, sandwiches and pizza. A big shining machine that smelled of coffee was screeching behind the counter as someone very tall pulled levers on it. The handler marched up to the counter and nodded at the cashier. “You’re hirin’?”

The woman behind the counter had small curly horns tucked amid two-toned puffy hair covered with a hankerchief. She looked them both over. The hawk guiltily stepped away from the spiral pastries that smelled of cinnamon. She nodded, seeming to come to some sort of decision. “Yeah, we are.” She leaned back from the counter, then looked back. “The both of you, or is it just the tall guy?”

“I can work,” the hawk said, before its handler could say anything. It tried a smile. The tall guy by the loud machine was looking at them now too. It tucked its talons behind its back. 

“Sure enough.” She raised her eyebrows, and then turned away again. “Niki, people here to talk to you!” 

“Coming!” A woman with small tusks and pink hair below a handkerchief emerged from a basement staircase. She had a lot of facial piercings. She smiled as she looked at them, dusting her hands off. “So, either I’m behind in my payments, or you’re looking for work, is it?”

Its handler nodded. “The second one, ma’am.”

“Niki’s fine.” She jerked her head towards the staircase she’d just come up from. “Follow me.”

The hawk followed its handler down into a basement, then sat on plastic chairs in front of a desk covered in papers and an old computer. It was cooler down here, and long counters stretched along the walls between mysterious machines. A man with green hair was cracking eggs into a large plastic jug. The hawk tucked his claws under his chair, out of the way. 

“I’m assuming you’re coming from a background where you don’t have a lot of bakery-related skills.” Niki said, folding her hands on the table. 

Its handler held tightly onto the black bag in his lap. “Yes ma-Niki.” He took a deep breath. “I can clean?” 

She nodded. The hawk looked away from the man cracking eggs and back at the woman on the other side of the desk. She had a jagged half-moon scar on her neck that cut through an old tattoo. It had fought people with that tattoo before, it thought. Were they going undercover? “I can take orders,” it said. 

She nodded again. “We have people from a lot of different backgrounds here. Think you can work alongside people no matter their pasts?” 

Its handler nodded. “Yes, Niki.”

 “I won’t fight people,” the hawk said, feathers a little ruffled. It had attacked everyone it could reach before, but that was when it was being punished, or when it was angry. It had been taught better than to kill everyone around it when it was sent on a mission, and this was a mission to be people. 

She nodded again. “I have an opening for a junior baker, and a dishwasher. You think you can handle that?” Niki raised her eyebrows. “Starts at 5 in the morning.” 

“We can do it, ma’am,”” its handler said. 

She smiled faintly. “I said Niki’s good.” She handed them both a sheet of paper. “Fill that out with all the legal stuff, be here tomorrow, you’ll have a two-week trial period and then we’ll see where we’re at.” She stood up. “I have to get back to taxes, but I’ll see you out. “

“Thank you,” the handler said as he followed her up the stairs. 

“Don’t thank me too fast,” Niki said. She went to a tall rack full of trays and took something off the top tray. “Baking isn’t exactly easy work.” She handed a broken cookie to each of them. “And eat that, you both look half-starved.”

Its handler looked down at the cookie, then back at her. “Thank—” he started. 

She waved a hand at him. “I have to go do paperwork. See you tomorrow.” She went back downstairs. 

The woman behind the counter grinned at them. “Gonna see you at the ass-crack of dawn, then?”

“Yes.” The handler nodded, smiling slightly. “Thank you.” 

The hawk and its handler shuffled out from behind the counter, then went outside to the sidewalk. The hawk clutched its paper and its cookie to its chest. “Alright,” its handler said. He took a deep breath. “We did it, now we just have to—do the job. Alright. It’ll be fine.” His eyes widened and he turned to look at the hawk. “I didn’t ask you, are you okay with—with this? Do you want to do it?”

It stared back at him. “I’m being a person with you. I can do it.” 

“Alright.” Its handler pressed a hand to his mouth, rubbing around one of his tusks. “Alright. Let’s—let’s go back.” He started down the sidewalk. 

The hawk followed, looking at its cookie as it walked. It had been coated in sugar and there were slightly-translucent pieces of something golden studding it. The cookie broke into pieces much easier than the ones from the store, dropping crumbs as it separated. The hawk bit into it carefully, and then hummed to itself. The treat was a delicious mix of spicy and sweet, and the sugar crunched between its teeth. Just ahead of it, its handler ate a piece of his cookie. 

“I’ve gotta do so good at this job,” he muttered. It didn’t sound like he intended to be overheard. The hawk agreed with him though, taking another bite of his cookie. It wanted this undercover job to last for a long time, if it came with perks like this.

"Do you want to do this?"
"I'm being a person with you. I can do it."

There was a pot of rice boiling on the stove. The lid rattled in place and steam poured out of it into the kitchen. The handler was sat at the table with his black bag open, bent over the paperwork. He had said something about “papers” and pulled out several small cards, making the hawk stand up against the wall once and taking its photo, and getting the hawk to take a photo of him too. The hawk was very unsure if it had done that right, but the handler seemed to find it good enough. He had gone back to filling out the paper and chewing on the end of a pen. The hawk went back to combing through its wings and tidying them up, collecting the shed feathers in a neat pile next to it. It had sometimes tried to do that while hooded, with its (ugh) last handler, but even the repetitive motion of talons through feathers hadn’t been able to stop the sickening tightness in its throat when it was trapped, unable to see. Nothing had helped except passing out. Now it could see a slice of the sky from where it sat comfortably, and its handler kept feeding it, and adjusting its coverts to their optimal state made it fight the urge to chirp in a pleased way. It kept its noise to humming soundlessly under its breath. It didn’t want to be annoying. 

“What’s your name?” the handler asked. 

The hawk looked at him, head tilted to the side. “My designation is Angel of Death,” it offered. 

“I know, but,” its handler sighed. “We need names for the form.” He tapped the pen against the table. “My designation is Blood God,” he muttered. 

The hawk settled its wings behind it and eyed him, talons in its lap. This sounded like a conversation that it dimly remembered giving it a bad headache. 

“Do you have a name that got used for missions?” Its handler didn’t look up from the page. 

The hawk kept its face blank, though its voice was a little deadpan. “Names are for people.” It raised its eyebrows. “My designation is Angel of Death.” 

Its handler waved a hand at it without looking up from the page. “And we’re so good at bein’ people.” 

The hawk eyed him warily, but he had gone back to chewing on the end of the pen. He didn’t seem to be mad at the hawk for too much pretending to be a person, or not enough, which had happened before. The handler sighed. 

“Angel is a name people can have, right? And Blood? I’ll just put you down as Angel, and me as Blood.” He took a deep breath. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ll deal with it.”

There was a hissing from the stove as the rice boiled over. 

“Ahhhh,” he said, standing upright and hurrying forward to the kitchen. 

They ate the rice with butter and soy sauce, and a pork chop cooked in the oven. The food was warm and filling, and once it was dark it curled up in its pillow nest and slept. It dreamed of flying.

Chapter Text

Blood had an alarm in his bag that he could set, and it went off before the sun rose. They both ate some bread and coffee, and then walked to the bakery. The city was in that hushed and empty stage where it had been often sent out to work, but this time it was in clothes like a person, walking along the sidewalk. The hawk thought about flying over the quiet streets and then stuffed that idea down as it kept pace with its handler. 

The bakery had the lights on in the back, with people moving around. Blood tried the door, and then knocked. People over by the big dark ovens looked in their direction, then the man with green hair came over to them. 

“Morning,” he said as he unlocked the door and held it open. “Welcome, welcome.”

He had his hair under a handkerchief and was wearing an apron. The inside of the bakery was warm and smelled of yeast. The hawk nodded as it ducked past him. 

“Good morning,” Blood said. His eyes tracked the movement as the man with green hair chained the door shut again. He had a different tattoo on his neck than the one Niki had, though it still recognized it from missions, half-covered with a tattooed green vine. The hawk also watched the locks click into place, staying still at its handler’s side. Blood held out the papers he’d filled out. “I was told to fill this out.”

“Sure thing.” He took the papers and glanced at them before sticking them in the pocket of his apron. “I’m Sam, by the way.” 

“Blood,” its handler said. He jerked his head at the hawk. “And Angel.”

“Nice to meet you,” Sam said. He didn’t react to the names. The first hurdle had been passed. The hawk tucked its talons behind its back. Sam waved a hand towards the back of the store. “Let me show you the place.”

Sam showed them the big ovens, and the stations the bakers got to use in the morning that the pizza and sandwich people used during the day. There was a walk-in fridge downstairs full of plants and cheeses and eggs, and a freezer that hurt to breathe inside if you inhaled too deeply. A tall pantry full of various spices and flavourings, and big machines being used to churn an incredible amount of dough. A sink across from the ovens you could fit several bodies into, if you chopped them up, and an even bigger one downstairs. A filing cabinet full of aprons and handkerchiefs for them to wear, and a small side room full of coats and boots and benches. The first extinguishers and the first aid kit. “That’s the place,” Sam said. “Any questions?” 

That was always a trick question. Having questions meant you hadn’t been paying attention. The hawk shook its head, its handler doing the same next to it. “No, sir,” Blood said. 

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Sure? It’s a lot to take in at once.” 

Its handler had promised no punishments, and had held to that through the hawk misbehaving a lot, but they had signed up for a new person in charge. And now they were in a small room underground, with people between it and the exits. The hawk shook its head and shuffled a half-step closer to its handler, bumping shoulders. Blood twitched and looked at it, and then deliberately bumped shoulders back. The hawk had a moment of wishing that its handler would do what he had done at the laundromat and put his arm around his shoulder. It wanted to know that he had this handled. Its handler was looking at Sam, though. “I’ve got a pretty good memory,” he said. 

“Okay.” Sam nodded. “Let me know if anything comes up.” He clapped his hands. “Alright Angel, we’ve got you as the dishwasher. This is your station.” He tapped some machines. “Sink, dishwasher, drying rack. Rinse the dishes in the sink, put ‘em through the dishwasher like this, put them where they go if they’re dry. Just ask if you don’t know where things go. Anything that doesn’t fit in the machine needs to be hand-washed and dry it here. You keep collecting the dirties from the sink upstairs, put ‘em in the bus bin here, wash ‘em, put ‘em where they go. Soap’s up here for the hand-washing, scrubbies, and that’s about it. Got it?”

The hawk swallowed. Doing a task it didn’t know how to do was dangerous. There were so many ways to mess up, and it didn’t know how this new boss punished people. Being closed in the freezer could be very unpleasant, for one. It fiddled with the edge of its apron pocket, running it between its talons. “Got it,” it agreed. 

“Good,” Sam smiled at it, then waved a hand at the pile of large bowls and pitchers in the skink. “Looks like there’s already some stuff building up, so you can get started. Blood, let’s get you started with scooping cookies.” 

He led its handler away to a different part of the basement, and the hawk faced the sink. 

It had had to clean up after missions a few times, so it knew the basics of the task. This was basically the same thing, except it had a big sink instead of little buckets of water. It could figure it out.

There was a long metal faucet head on a retractable metal pipe, held up with a very large metal spring and with a squeeze handle on the end. The hawk carefully squeezed the handle. Water came out of the faucet and hit the inside of a bowl, splashing back directly at it. The hawk jumped backwards a half-step, hissing. 

“Hah, you did it too!” 

The hawk’s wings were puffed up. It looked up at the speaker, wide-eyed. There was a short teenager with puffy brown hair standing next to one of the big mixing machines. He was feeding pieces of butter through the woven-metal cover, and he was grinning at the hawk. It stared at him. 

The teenager pointed at the sink. “The bowls are fuckin’ perfect for gettin’ yourself splashed. Pitchers are really bad for it too.” He nodded. “You’re just gonna get wet a lot, time to get used to it.” His head tipped to the side. “Is it bad when your feathers get wet?”

Oh god, talking to him. It twitched its wings, trying to smooth down its feathers. “It’s not good to be wet.” 

“Sucks to be you, bossman!” He finished dropping butter into the mixture and grinned. 

The hawk opened the dishwasher to avoid further conversation. A cloud of steam came out at its face and it waved a hand in front of its face, warding it away. The teenager sighed to himself and went into the fridge. The basement of the bakery went back to being mostly-quiet, except for a tinny radio and the grumble of machines. 

The hawk took a deep breath. It was navigating conversations. It had opened the machine. It could do this. It pulled out a big bowl, slightly scorching the pads of its talons on the metal. The hawk hissed under its breath, juggling it from hand to hand. There was a stack of other big bowls under the counter, it could put this one there, and then navigate the pile of jugs. It could do this. It was going to do its best, at least.

“New guy! Do you like espresso?” There was a pause where the hawk worked at a piece of burnt cheese with its talon. There were a lot of textures in washing dishes, but they weren't worse than bodies. “New person?”

It was being talked to. The hawk straightened up, dropping the bread pan. “I—“ It didn’t know what espresso was. The tall teenager was standing next to it, watching it. “I—“ It bowed its head. “I’m sorry.” 

“Uh, no worries.” They laughed anxiously. “I know I’m the coffee guy, but I don’t mind if people don’t like it! I was just warming up the machine, you know, and I have to pull some test shots, I normally give them to people, if you wanted a cappuccino, I made one?” 

The teenager was holding a little glass full of a pale brown and white drink. Behind them, the other people in the basement had similar glasses. Its handler was among them, sipping from a little glass with his eyebrows raised. This person was the coffee guy? “I like coffee,” it offered. 

“Oh!” The teenager grinned at it, relieved. “Alright, I have one, I can make one, or I can just make espresso shots, or a latte or a mocha if you want.” They handed the glass to the hawk, holding it carefully by the top edges. “I’m Ranboo, by the way.” 

The hawk took the glass and carefully took a sip. It was hot and bitter and drinking it felt like taking a deep calming breath. A foam rested on the top of the drink, and it could feel the tiny bubbles bursting against its lips as it drank. It was so much better than the coffee its handler had made. The hawk’s eyes widened and it took another drink. It wanted to swallow it all at once, but it was so hot that it was afraid of burning its tongue. 

“Hah,” Ranboo said, holding onto his elbow with his other hand. “Good to see that it’s good, I think. If that’s a good face. I think that’s a good face. My name’s Ranboo, do you—have a name?”

It did have a name it was pretending with, it was on its paperwork. It was almost done with the drink. It drained the last of the coffee and licked its lips, then handed the glass back to Ranboo. “My name is Angel,” it said. 

“Angel!” Ranboo nodded fervently. “Nice to meet you.” They leaned forward and put the glass on the edge of the dirty dish section of the sink. “I’ll just put that there. Have—have a good day.” They swung around and returned upstairs. 

Angel returned to the dishes, the taste of coffee in its mouth.

The hawk was washing a sink full of silverware, rubbing each one carefully between its talons with a cloth, when Niki approached its station. “You’re on lunch break, Angel,” she said. The hawk eyed her. She stood carefully, a little forward of the counter, where she wasn’t in any of its blind spots. “Come on upstairs, let me show you how the meals work.”

“The dishes,” the hawk said, glancing into its sink. Sam had just brought him a whole bin of the plates and silverware that the eat-in customers used. 

“They’ll wait,” Niki said. She jerked her head at the staircase. 

If it would get in trouble for leaving its station, it would also get in trouble for not following orders. The hawk followed her upstairs, wiping its talons on the apron to dry it. 

The shop was hectic with movement and sound. A line of customers waited at the cash register, and people at every butchers-block station in the bakery section worked with a dizzying amount of food. Niki paused in front of a rack that its handler was also standing in front of. “This rack is stuff that’s burned, or broken, or got dropped, or we can’t sell for some reason.” She put a hand on the top tray, the one the cookie had come off of yesterday. “Anything on here you can eat on your breaks. In addition, you get one slice of pizza, a sandwich, or a pastry from the front if you’re on break. Lunch sandwiches aren’t all made yet, but we have the breakfast ones out on the counter.” She smiled at him. “Try eating a bunch of things if you want—try out what we make—or stick with what you like. Whatever you want.” 

Behind its back, someone was fishing pickled vegetables out of containers of liquid for the sandwiches. The people at the counter talked and the cash register made a dinging noise as it clattered open and shut. The coffee machine screamed mechanically again. The ovens buzzed. The hawk glanced around. A person would be able to pick what it wanted, but there were so many choices. And did that mean it had to go out into the front of the shop, to pick something? It worried the apron edge between its talons. 

Its handler reached up to the tray with all the broken pieces and took a muffin down. He was holding a pastry cut open with something white inside it. It looked like an egg. 

“That,” the hawk said. It pointed to the pastry. “I need that.” It remembered its manners, continuing to twist the apron between its talons. “Please.”

“Breakfast sandwich, good choice.” Niki picked one of the pastries wrapped in brown paper and handed it to the hawk. “And you get a half an hour, so feel free to sit out front, or downstairs in the coat room, whichever.”

“Downstairs,” the hawk said, after a horrified moment of thinking about sitting around in the front of the store, with all the people looking at it. Someone might touch it. It stood on its toes to grab the first thing it saw off the tray, one of the spiral pastries that smelled like cinnamon. The hawk held its food to its chest. 

“Enjoy your break, Angel.” Niki smiled at him and then headed for the stairs. It followed her down into the safety of the basement, where it was cooler and there was just the buzzing of the radio to cope with. 

Niki went to do something in the fridge. Its handler had already sat on the bench at the back, carefully biting into his sandwich. 

Angel sat down next to Blood on the bench, stretching its tired claws out in front of it. It was good to sit down. It investigated the breakfast sandwich. The pastry was a flakey spiral, and it had been cut open, a slice of pale cheese and an egg without the shell tucked inside. The whole thing was speckled with salt. Angel took a bite and couldn’t stop itself from making a happy humming noise, tucking its claws away underneath the bench. The pastry was buttery, and the egg yolk leaked out into the pastry like a delicious sauce. It wiggled in place for a moment.

Blood was sitting next to it, carefully picking green seeds off his muffin and eating them. He glanced at the hawk, smiling slightly. “Hungry?” 

There wasn’t a lot of room on the bench, so they were sitting tucked in next to each other. The hawk’s wings were slightly behind its handler’s shoulders, and its knee pressed into his. It glanced at its handler, but he didn’t look angry. He still acted like it was normal to eat three meals a day, and while with any other handler asking that would have been a taunt, he seemed to view it as a normal thing to say. Like they were just people, having a conversation. Angel leaned into its handler’s shoulder for a moment, grinned in answer, and settled into being cozy, tucked safely in the corner with its breakfast. 

It got through the whole work period with no one getting mad at it or punishing it, and then it walked home with its handler. Their clothes smelled like bread and spices. The sky had clouded over, and a cool breeze plucked enticingly at its feathers as they walked along the street. 

It ate potatoes for dinner, and then decided to do the dishes after the meal. It knew how, even though there wasn’t a machine to steam them in the apartment. Blood started to say something when it picked up the dishes and put them in the sink, but it carried on and he subsided. Angel still didn’t get in trouble.

Chapter Text

Angel knew where most things went at work now, so it didn’t have to ask questions any more. It could sneak around and put the bowls and pitchers and knives and everything else where it went. Niki had come and told it it was on break, so it went up to the bakery level. 

There were no people lined up at the counter this time, and the cash register person was counting coins to put in paper wrappers. He looked up and grinned. He had red braces, shiny against his teeth. “Angel, bossman! What the fuck are you up to today?” 

Angel tucked its talons behind its back “I am a dishwasher,” it told him. “Do you have any dishes?”

“Nah, I’m good, Ranboob already took my coffee cup.” The cashier grinned at it. “I drank it before he even fuckin’ put it down, y’know, because I’m just that big of a fuckin’ man.”

“Yes, you’re a very big man, you drink coffee,” Niki said dryly. 

“I drank fuckin’ hot coffee!” the cashier said indignantly, leaning against the counter and folding his arms. “And fast . I could have burned my fuckin’ tongue, except that I would never burn my tongue, because Tommy fuckin’ Innit is simply too fuckin’ awesome and pog and manly for that. Lesser men like Tubbo could burn their tongues, but I wouldn’t. Oh, you don’t want that, that’s fuckin’ boring.” 

The hawk froze in place, talons poised above the breakfast sandwiches. Its handler was already downstairs on his break, so there was no one in charge of it. It had to follow directions? It glanced at Niki, but she didn’t say anything that counteracted Tommy. The hawk tipped its head to the side. “I don’t want that?”

“Eat pizza, like a real fuckin’ man!” Tommy said. He gestured wildly to the big wooden shelves that pizza sat on. “Not fuckin’ eggs. Eret made a pizza with eggs on it once, that was fuckin’ weird. Good, but weird.” He gestured again. “Pick up a slice!” 

The hawk glanced at him, and then stepped carefully out into the front of the store and closer to the pizzas. They smelled of a baffling assortment of toppings and cheeses, including leaves, tiny tomatoes, and what looked like slices of potato. It picked up a slice from the first pizza on the shelf and retreated back into the store. 

“Good choice, king!” Tommy said. He went back to counting coins into stacks again. “I bet you could fuckin’ kill a man with those talons, if you wanted to.”

“Tommy,” Niki said reprovingly. “Don’t talk about people’s pasts.”

“Yes,” the hawk said, and then escaped back to the basement. 

It settled onto the bench, smoothing its feathers back down. No one was talking to it now, everything was fine. It examined the food it had been told to pick up. The piece of pizza it had picked up was as big as both of its hands put together, and was covered in wilted leaves and little green and black circles. It smelled of tomatoes, and brine, and onions. The hawk took a careful bite. 

It didn’t like it.

It kept chewing grimly and forced the mouthful down. The little circles were salty and somehow—were they sour? There were too many of them. And why were there leaves on a hot food? It didn’t understand why someone would make this. 

It ate so many times a day now, so many different dishes—it had eaten an enriched sweet bun yesterday that was full of dried fruit and a sugar glaze—and it was happy to eat them all, of course. But it wasn’t hungry like it used to be, so it couldn’t just eat anything and call it good. There was food that it hadn’t had to hunt that it didn’t want to eat, it realised. 

Maybe the first bite had just been bad though. It took another bite. 

It wasn’t better. 

The hawk made a face. Maybe if it picked the little circles off? It tried removing them, putting them aside on the napkin. Another bite proved to be slightly better, but there was still the problem of the wilted leaves. Maybe it could skip a meal, would it get in trouble for that? It hadn’t had the problem of not wanting to eat for a long time. It started to peel the leaves off. 

“Not enjoyin’ that, Angel?” 

Angel glanced up, stomach sinking. Blood sat next to him, holding his own slice of pizza and looking a little past its shoulder. He had his eyebrows raised. He didn’t look too mad, but it had had this conversation before. Some part of it was sad to be having it with its new terrible handler, even over something as trivial as not wanting to eat leaves on pizza. It was being stupid, not wanting to eat this. This was still bread and vegetables food, even, not something it had had to hunt. It was going to get in trouble for the most dumb thing to pitch a fit about. 

“I’m sorry.” It looked down and took another bite of the food. This one had a lot of leaves on it. It chewed and swallowed, keeping its face blank. 

“No, it’s fine, you just—“ Blood waved a hand. “You don’t have to like it.” He leaned closer, like he was delivering a threat or a secret. “We get to choose, now.” A smile pulled at his mouth, and he held out his food. “D’ya wanna trade? 

The hawk— Angel looked at his slice, which was covered in caramelised onions and little pockets of different types of cheese. It wasn’t in trouble. When its handler said no punishments, it meant it. It reached out carefully, and, when its handler didn’t react except by a nod, took the other piece of pizza. It took a careful bite. 

This was much better. There were three types of cheese on it, and they were all delicious. Angel eyed its handler, who chewed the slice of the pizza covered in circles with a thoughtful expression. Blood had a container of water with ice floating in it, one of the five-cup measures that it washed dozens of times a day. “Can I have water?” Angel held out a demanding hand. 

“Mmm? Yep.” Blood picked up the container without looking at it. He handed the water over, and Angel took a careful sip before eating more of his new, better pizza. 

“You don’t have to like it.” He leaned closer, like he was delivering a threat or a secret. “We get to choose, now.”

Angel had picked up a piece of blue glass when Blood wasn’t paying attention to it and brought it home. It put the shard of colour on the windowsill, and it could still see the edge of it in the light from the parking lot late at night. Angel stretched out across its nest, straining its feet as long as possible, and then curled back up underneath the blanket. It didn’t feel like sleeping, yet. 

Its handler had gone to his room soon after the meal. He just nodded at it, eyes fixed on its shoulder, and then retreated and closed the door. Angel turned the lights out itself, and then sat in the dark, listening to the quiet. It should probably go to sleep—they had to wake up early for work tomorrow—but it had been given no orders, and it didn’t want to, yet. It brought a talon up and picked at its teeth, pushing into the gum til it tasted blood. It was in the dark, but it wasn’t bound, and no one had put a hood on it, and it could still taste the cookies it had eaten for supper after the stew was done. It closed its eyes and rolled its shoulders, and then turned over in its little pillow nest. 

A muffled noise sounded from the bedroom. Angel stilled. Had that been a noise of pain? Was its handler in trouble? It definitely should go help, if he was being attacked. 

No, there’d been no command, and it had never been told it could go into the bedroom. It knew better than to go into unallowed areas. That was a good way to get in trouble, even if it had been told no punishments. 

Another strangled noise, and it sat upright in the nest. He sounded like he was in pain. It didn’t want that to happen, and not just because an injured handler was a bad thing for its safety. Yes, a hurt handler was bound to be an angry handler, but also, Blood had shared the cookies with it at supper, like he did every time he got down the box. It didn’t want him to be hurt for no reason. There was a strangled scream from the bedroom, a cry of fear and pain, and it shot forward. 

Its handler was sleeping on the floor, in a tangle of blankets pulled off the bed. He was just starting to push himself upright as the hawk came through the door. He was uninjured, and blinking sleep from his eyes. 

So it had been a dream, and it was intruding. It was going to be in trouble. The hawk sank to its knees next to the door, eyes downcast. 

“What’s—what’s up?” Its handler coughed to clear his throat, scrubbing a hand over his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” the hawk said. It clasped its talons together. “You—there was a sound—I made a mistake.” It kept its gaze down, on the grey carpet worn almost smooth. “I’m sorry.”

“Alright.” Its handler leaned forward in his collection of blankets, taking a deep breath. “No, you’re good? I—bad dream.” He waved a hand with a rustle of fabric. “Sorry for wakin’ you up, I’ll try to do better.”

Angel looked up, eyebrows drawing together. He was apologising to it? After it had been the one to barge into his space? “No,” it said, contrary. “If you had a dream, sometimes you just scream, that just happens. I was the one who was awake.” 

“No but—it’s nighttime, I shouldn’t be disruptive,” Blood started. They both stared at each other, the glow from the streetlamp streaming in the window. Blood waved a hand. He was breathless, like he’d just finished a sprint. “If you were coming to tell me to shut up, that’s fair, I was being a problem.”

“You weren’t being a problem, I thought maybe you were hurt,” Angel protested. It tipped its head to the side. “Dreams are weird, they just happen if you go on a lot of missions. You’re not hurt?”

Blood nodded, running a hand over his face again. He glanced at the sword leaning against the wall, then away. “I’m not hurt. Sor—I’m not hurt.” 

It had had a handler once who would hold its hand after punishments. She had been reassigned fairly quickly, but she had been his favourite handler for a long time, before Blood. When it had wanted to kill her, it hadn’t wanted to make it messy. Angel tilted its head to the side. “Do you want me to hold your hand?”

Blood’s head came up again, and he stared at it, looking directly at its face this time. There was a moment, and then he looked down again, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment while he pressed a hand into them. “Alright. Sure.” 

Angel scooted forward to sit by the blankets Blood had folded on the floor, and took his free hand in its, careful of its talons. Its handler shook slightly. It squeezed his hand tight, then held it carefully with both hands. “Dreams are fine. They just happen.” It thought about one of the cashiers at work, telling it about his opinions on video games and random cars and anything that passed through his mind, and how he phrased things. “They’re just shit .” 

He didn’t look at it, but he clung to its hands like it was a lifeline. Blood chuckled, a bit raspy. “Yeah, no. Sorry for waking you up, though.” 

“I wasn’t asleep yet,” Angel told him. “I was just thinkin’.” It thought again of the way people at their work talked. It had to act like a person. It got to act like a person. “I was just thinkin’ about shit.” It grinned. 

Blood laughed under his breath again. The slight tremble was slowing, but he still held on tightly. “You should really sleep, we gotta get up early tomorrow.”

Angel nodded. “Am I being punished?” it said, hoping to get a sigh out of its handler. “For not sleeping?”

“I’m not—” Blood sighed, gratifyingly. He waved his free hand at Angel. “No punishments! You’re not in trouble.”

“Yes.” Angel squeezed his hand again. “I forgot. Sorry.” It didn’t sound very sorry at all, it realised, which was probably because it was not, in fact, very sorry. It was being a bother instead, which was much more fun. It patted the back of Blood’s hand. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah.” Blood gripped his hand and then let it go, folding his hands in his lap. “I’m good. Thanks for checkin’ on me. I’m sor—“ He took a deep breath. 

“Dreams are just shit,” Angel told him. “Don’t be sorry.” It got up, and slipped out of the room. Behind it, it could hear Blood breathe out, and then lie back down in his blankets.

Chapter Text

The woman with two-toned hair in big curls was named Puffy, or sometimes Captain, and she managed the upstairs of the bakery. She was downstairs now, leaning on the counter next to the mixer that was so big it had to sit on the floor, looking at Angel. “You two are just starting out, right?”

Angel had its arms in the water up to the elbow, cleaning a molasses-egg-sugar-orange-zest mixture out of measuring jugs. “Um.” It looked between Puffy and its handler, who stood further down the counter measuring dried fruit on a scale. Blood glanced at it, face slightly stricken. “Um, no?” Its voice went up in a question, but it managed to not apologise. Captain had said that if she wanted an apology she would say so, and it wasn’t to say sorry until then. 

“I mean you’re new to this part of town, you’re still shopping for stuff in your apartment, stuff like that.” Puffy said. She propped a hand on her hip. “I’ve got an old laptop—won’t run most games and shit but it still works as a word processor and it’ll show videos, do you want it?” Her eyebrows went up in question. 

Angel glanced down the room. Blood looked back at it, expression unsure. It fiddled with the edge of a jug under the water. It didn’t want to make their boss annoyed, and rejecting a gift seemed like it would be annoying. “Yes?” It inclined its head. “Thank you.”

Puffy grinned at him, pushing herself off the counter. “No worries. I’ll stick it with your coats and shit. Have fun!” She plucked a piece of dried fruit from the scale Blood was measuring on and tossed it in her mouth as she went by. Angel and Blood both watched her go. 

The laptop was big and bulky, with a charging cable you could use to strangle someone. They had eaten rice and eggs and green beans for supper, and then Blood picked up the computer from where he’d left it by the door and put it on the coffee table. “It doesn’t have a password,” he reported, tapping at the track pad. He sat down on the cushionless couch, bending close to the screen. “What files do you have…” His voice trailed off into a hum as he launched the file explorer and started opening folders. 

Angel took the power cable and plugged it in in case they needed it, and then sat on the couch next to its handler, talons folded in its lap. The laptop’s fan started up. Blood was opening text documents that seemed to contain to-do lists and recipes. It stared at its nest, on the other side of the room, with its scratchy blanket wound in a curve between cushions. 

Blood was sitting on the exposed support structure of the couch, which appeared to be made of a black textured support paper strung over wire and wood. 

Any other handler would have gotten mad at it days ago for taking apart the furniture. This new handler didn’t even seem to have noticed. It definitely wasn’t getting in trouble for this. It hadn’t gotten in trouble for its collection of shiny objects it had found, either. They were all lined up on the windowsill, throwing reflections into the room in the light of the evening sun. 

Blood shifted in place on the couch, still bent over the laptop and investigating a series of solitaire games, all of which opened to pop-ups that read “free trial expired”. 

It wasn’t very comfortable to sit on the couch without the cushions. It wanted to be more comfortable. And it could make things better for Blood too, it guessed. Really, it was like it was Blood’s handler some of the time, which was a funny thought. Angel snorted under its breath as it got up to get the cushions from the nest. 

“These have to go back when we’re done,” it told its handler, putting them back on the couch. “Move over.”

Blood glanced up at it for a moment, and then moved over obediently when Angel bossed it around. It punched the cushions to puff them up and then sat back down next to it, curling its legs underneath it. It was much more comfortable, with the couch put back together. 

“Hmmm.” Blood made an interested noise, finding a folder labelled How It’s Made in a folder labelled Media . It was full of video files, each one named S1E1PT1, and S1E1PT2, and so on. He clicked on one from the middle of the list. 

“Chewing Gum dates back to Ancient Greeks, who chewed resin from trees,” a voiceover announced, over a video of pink gum sitting on a pedestal in a big room. “Modern chewing gum was patented in the US in 1869, by—believe it or not—a dentist.” The video showed more types of gum while giving a brief history of the food, and then switched to showing massive machinery starting to churn and mix huge bins of ingredients. 

It was like the bakery, but even bigger, with even more ornate and interesting contraptions. Sam had been supervising Tubbo with the dough sheeter the other day as Angel had been putting away bowls, but it had been small compared to this, only the size of the kitchen counter, with pastry and butter going in one side of the sheeter and coming out the other flattened. These were massive machines the size of their entire room—some of them the size of the apartment—with big safety railings and warning lights. Angel pulled its claws tighter up underneath it and stared at the screen, fascinated. 

The video showed how bubble gum was made, and then started into a behind-the-scenes look at fireworks. Angel scooted a little closer to Blood to see the screen more clearly, pressing into his side. Its handler glanced down at it, and then carefully lifted his arm to put it on Angel’s shoulders, between its neck and its wings. 

Angel went very still, losing concentration on the video showing a huge vat of gunpowder being fed into tubes, stuck on the weight across its shoulders. It had had a handler who would grab it by the back of the neck when its talons were bound, and shove it forward painfully, unable to defend itself. Its wings fluffed up uncertainly, ready to fight and get away, but Blood didn’t do anything with its neck or the sensitive joints of its wings. He just stayed with his arm there, with Angel tucked against his side. Angel glanced at him, but his attention was back on the screen, where a massive machine applied stickers to cardboard tubes full of gunpowder. 

It was comfortable to be next to someone who didn’t seem to want to hurt it. At the laundromat Blood had done something similar, but in the moment it had only seen that as communicating that its handler had it in hand and had things under control. This was the same, but different, with no current threat. Nothing bad was happening. It could feel him breathing, and his side was warm where it was tucked close. They were together and it was peaceful.

Angel sighed and shifted to situate Blood’s arm where it wanted it, and then leaned into its handler’s shoulder and watched the video, as the cardboard tubes were bundled together and put on trucks. The video came to an end and showed a black box. 

“Do you want to watch another one?” Blood asked, glancing down at it.

It wanted to stay on the comfortable couch, close to its funny handler who didn’t hurt it, watching interesting machines make things that weren’t weapons. “Yes,” Angel decided. It nodded. “Another one.”

Tubbo and Ant had argued over the music in the basement for an hour until Sam had announced his “perfect solution”, which was to set the radio to the local top forty station. “This way, no one loses,” he said, setting the dial to a station that was at least half static. Tubbo had immediately started arguing that everyone lost when he didn’t get to play his experimental noise grunge, but Sam had put the machine on a high shelf and pretended not to hear. Tubbo had climbed up onto the counter and had to be pulled down by his apron strings. 

This drama was fairly standard for every morning. The early shift was a lot of chaos before the front cash opened up and everyone switched to more customer-facing behaviour. 

Ranboo stopped by with a glass full of coffee, putting it on the counter. “Here you go, Angel,” they said. 

Angel nodded at them, sipping the coffee. The drink was hot and velvety, bitter in a soothing way. “Thank you.” 

“No problem.” The coffee guy grinned at it and headed upstairs, and Angel went back to placing an armful of knives on the wall-mounted magnet strip, pointed left. Further down the basement, Blood stood in front of the big mixing machine, holding his coffee carefully by the edges of the glass and sipping at it. 

The people who worked in the bakery all seemed to know each other really well. They all worked with a level of joking around and disrespect that only real people could get away with, and they were all very good at their jobs. When you didn’t make mistakes, you could fuck off and argue about what would happen if your brain was uploaded to a squid’s body, as long as you kept everything running correctly. 

“Fuck—who started the whole wheat yesterday?” Sam yelled down the stairs. 

Tubbo and Blood looked at each other from their posts at different points on the counter. Blood’s eyes were wide. Tubbo shrugged at him, then leaned back from his position chopping hazelnuts and yelled back up the stairs. “Not me! Why?” 

“Someone left out the fucking salt ,” Sam yelled back. “Whole batch is ruined, that’s the day’s take gone.”

The bakery made between twenty and fifty loaves of each type of bread a day, not counting special orders. That was a lot of bread to throw out. 

Angel glanced at Blood, who’d gone white. They’d both tried so hard to not make mistakes, and this wasn’t a small one, either. Niki hurried down to the basement, feet tapping on the stairs. “Blood!” She waved a hand. “You started the batch yesterday afternoon, did you?” 

Blood swallowed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, hanging his head obediently. He took his hands off the big mixing machine and tucked them behind his back, eyes on the floor. 

Niki was coming closer. Angel glanced between its handler and its boss, and stepped between them, wings starting to mantle. 

Niki had a battered teal binder in her hand. “Look,” she said. She plonked the binder open on the counter, pointing to the page inside a plastic sleeve. A typed list had been corrected and modified with two colours of pen ink. She had to lean past Angel to look at Blood. “The whole wheat needs 2% salt or the texture is entirely off, and it won’t bake up right.”

“I”m sorry, ma’am.” Blood said, head still down. “I’ll do better.”

“I know you try—” Niki sighed, dragging a hand over her face, past her tusks. “It’s really important that you follow the recipe, or we can’t leave you to do things unsupervised.” She jabbed at the page again. “It’s right there, did you read it? You can go down the list with a dry erase marker, that helps sometimes.” She looked at Angel, still standing protectively in front of its handler, and sighed again. “I’m not going to hurt him, Angel. Move it.” She made a shooing gesture. “This doesn’t concern you.”

It did not want to move it, and it thought this did concern it. If Blood was going to lose his job, that affected it pretty well, and if he got punished, it was probably going to feel it too. But that was a direct order. Angel unhappily shuffled out of the way and backed up a step. Niki jabbed at the page again. 

“Blood, I need to know that you can follow the recipe. What happened, were you just moving too fast?”

“Yes,” Blood said, nodding and staring at Niki’s shoulder. “I messed up. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Niki looked at him for a second more, and then sighed again. Behind her, Tubbo was standing on his stepstool and leaning on the counter, watching. Angel glared at Tubbo over Niki’s shoulder, and Tubbo sent him a “I dunno” shrug back, then grinned at him. Niki handed the recipe book to Blood. “Okay, and how much salt goes into a standard whole wheat batch?” 

“2 percent,” Blood said, holding the book like it was fragile. He was still looking at their boss’s shoulder.

“How many grams of salt,” Niki said, tapping the page. “Baking is precise.”

Blood’s eyes darted around for a moment, and then he raised the book closer to his face. “Two hundred forty grams?” he reported, from six inches away from the page.

“Two hundred and fifty.” Niki stared at him. “Blood, do you need glasses?” 

Angel looked at its handler. Blood had turned red. “We don’t have money for—I thought I knew what the recipe said. I was wrong.” He offered the book back to Niki. “I’m sorry. I’ll do better. I’ll check the recipe.” He flinched a little. “Twice.” 

“You’ve been doing it by memory?” Tubbo chimed in. “That’s sick, bossman.”

Niki waved an exasperated hand at him, then took the book back. Her expression had gone thoughtful. “It’s not safe to have you work around heavy equipment if you can’t see.” 

Blood’s eyes widened. “No, I can see, I just, for little details. I was tryin’ to move fast, I can check the recipe.”

“I’m not finished yet,” Niki corrected him, and smiled. “The city has a low-income eyesight clinic, I can get you the schedule. Would that help?”

Blood looked at her for a moment, wide-eyed, then nodded. “I had lenses in my mask, but I left that.” he said by way of explanation. “I’ll get glasses if you want me to.”

Niki raised her eyebrows. “I want you to. It’s safer.” She nodded at Blood. “Get some glasses, read the recipe.” She turned around, heading for the stairs. Blood breathed out slowly. Angel reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezed it once, and then went back to its sink.

Chapter Text

Angel didn’t feel good. Blood had had to wake it up by calling its name, and it had kept catching its feet on the pavement as it walked to work. It felt heavy and hot, except for when a draft rasped across its skin and made it shiver. Its eyes burned. It doggedly kept going through the rack of coffee cups it was cleaning. It had worked through worse injuries, after all, and they would be done with work soon. And then it could go home and lie down. 

Some of its handlers had forced it to stay upright when it was sick or wounded, or injected it with drugs that made it buzz with nauseating energy. It was pretty sure Blood would let it lie down, though. He didn’t have the injections, after all. Angel checked the clock hanging on the wall. It just had to make it through—four more hours. 

“Angel, you’re on break,” Sam called across the basement. 

It jumped. Part of feeling so miserable, it hadn’t realised he was down here. “Thank you,” it started to say, but speaking after a morning of silence caught in its throat. It inhaled, and then it was coughing, gripping the metal edge of the sink to stay upright as the spasm bent it in half. It finally sucked in a whole breath and straightened up, wheezing.

“New plan,” Sam said. He put a hand on Angel’s shoulder and pushed it gently towards the coats. “Blood is taking you home, and you’re resting.”

“I can still work,” Angel protested. It had spilled some water and its apron was stuck to its stomach, which was making it shiver. 

“You can’t work food service,” Sam said, still pushing it towards the coats. “You’ll get all the customers sick. Blood.” He pointed at the man emerging from the fridge with a flat of eggs. “You’re off work. Do you have medicine at home?” 

Blood glanced at Angel, who tried to smile weakly. It still felt like if it breathed too hard it would start coughing again. Blood shrugged slightly. “Painkillers?”

“Thought so,” Sam said. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and put a few bills in Blood’s hand. “Stop by the pharmacy on the way home and get some medicine.” He made a shooing gesture. “Go! Stop breathing on the food.”

As soon as it was home, Angel went to its nest and curled up in it. Its head pounded and its whole body felt hot and achy. It wanted to wrap its blanket around itself tightly and do nothing except breathe. 

“Alright, come on now,” Blood said from somewhere close at hand. 

Angel opened one eye and looked at him. Its handler was crouching down by the nest. 

“You can’t stay there if you’re sick,” Blood said. He gripped the edge of Angel’s blanket and tugged at it. 

Angel hissed at him, which made its head throb. It curled tighter. It blinked miserable eyes, trying to hide under the blanket. Had it been wrong, and its handler was going to make it keep going when it was sick? Sam had said —it fought the urge to cry uselessly. 

“Bruh, you can’t be there if you’re sick,” Blood said again. He picked up Angel and the blanket and stood up. 

Angel didn’t want to keep going, it wanted to be in its nest, quiet and hurting in peace. Its handler was being mean to it. It turned and tried to bite Blood, arms flailing where they were caught in the blanket. 

“ Heh ?” Blood stumbled, dropping Angel onto the couch. 

It fought its way clear of the blanket and glared at him, teeth bared. 

It had knocked Blood’s glasses askew on his face. He pushed them back up his nose and huffed out an exasperated puff of air. “You can’t be on the floor if you’re sick,” Blood explained. “You have to be in a bed or on the couch, the floor will make you sicker.”

That—didn’t sound true, but Angel didn’t know enough about being sick to argue with it. It glared and pulled its blanket around itself. “I just need to fuckin’ sleep,” it said, then coughed into its arm. 

“Medicine too, Sam said.” Blood sat on the coffee table and delved into the plastic bag of things they’d bought at the pharmacy. Its handler had carefully read box labels while Angel had stared blankly at the cough drops and listened to the wheeze in its chest. He pulled out a bottle, looking at it. “You need to drink a tablespoon of this.”

“ Fuck ,” Angel pronounced, to express its feelings, and then stuck its hand out from under the blanket. “Fine. Give it to me.”

Blood measured the syrup onto a spoon and carefully handed it to it. Angel swallowed it resentfully, then started coughing as the medicine burned and froze its way down its throat. 

Blood held out his hands in front of himself, warding. “You okay, there?”

“Fine,” Angel wheezed. “It’s fine, I’m fine.” The tickle in its throat was reducing now, numbed by the medicine. It was so tired. It wiggled back into the angle of the couch, where the back met the cushions, and tucked the blanket tight around itself. “Can I fuckin’ sleep now?” 

Blood sighed at him. “Yeah, that’s probably good.” He stood up. “You rest, then.”

“Pog,” Angel said sleepily, closing its eyes. That was another word it had picked up from the people at work. They had all kinds of interesting words, especially Tommy, who was on the cash. Tommy had taught it the different ways you could use “motherfucker” yesterday on its break. 

It was almost asleep when Blood came back. It roused slightly when he came into the room, blinking sore eyes. Blood was carrying the blanket from his bed. He draped it over Angel’s body. “Rest,” he said again. He smiled anxiously at it and patted its feet where they stuck up under the blankets, then went back to his room. 

Its handler wasn’t making him work through the sickness or shiver on the floor. He was taking care of it. Feeling warm, Angel drifted off. 

When it woke up, Blood had put things on the coffee table next to it. There was a cup of water, and a slice of toast with honey on it, and the bottle of medicine. It could hear Blood in the kitchen, talking under his breath as he cooked. There was a folded piece of paper that said, “Take a dose when you wake up.” 

Angel drank the water and ate the toast, and then considered the medicine bottle. If one spoonful of medicine was good, more had to be better, right? It opened the bottle and chugged half of it, and then collapsed against the back of the couch and wheezed until it got its breath back. The syrup had tasted awful, sickly sweet and herbal, burning and freezing at the same time. It sat in its stomach like a rock. 

That was the feeling of medicine working, probably. 

It was already feeling tired again. It was safe and it didn’t have anything it had to do. Its handler would take care of it. It put the bottle back on the coffee table and pulled the blankets back around it, falling back asleep.

Blood had made eggs and toast for breakfast and brought the plate to it in the living room. It had slept a bit weirdly on the couch, vague dreams of running and flying and being hunted, but it was feeling more awake now. It kept the blankets wrapped around its shoulders as it ate its breakfast. 

“Okay, we need to take your temperature,” Blood said, holding out a thermometer. 

Angel eyed the piece of metal and plastic in its handler’s hand. “I’m fine,” it said, and piled some scrambled eggs on a piece of toast. 

“You slept for 18 hours,” Blood told it. It held out the thermometer again. “Prove it.”

Angel grabbed the thermometer and stuck it under its tongue, glaring. “I wou’nt of ‘uckin’ shlept if you woke me up.” 

“Yeah, and I wouldn’tve eaten if I didn’t make food,” Blood said dryly. The thermometer beeped and he plucked it from Angel’s mouth. “Still got a fever,” he reported, then coughed into his shoulder. He stood up and headed for the kitchen. “Take more medicine, I’ll let you rest.” 

Angel didn’t feel like it had a fever, it just felt achy and restless. It was ready to be doing things again. But its handler was probably right, it was a good idea to take the medicine if they had it. It uncapped the medicine bottle and drained the rest of it, coughing weakly into its arm as it laid back down. It would try to sleep. 

Angel couldn’t sleep. 

It felt a little bit floaty and unreal, sprawled on the couch. It lifted up its arm and looked at its talons in the light from the window. It didn’t have to sharpen them any more. Maybe it should file them down. Its whole hand looked funny. It was so weird that fingers and thumb moved that way. It moved its fingers a bit, experimentally, drifting in the haze of being sick and medicated. It had only used its talons to hurt people for as long as it could remember, and it was good at that, but now it got to clean up from people making delicious food. It was putting good things into the world, not bloodshed. 

The dust motes in the room sparkled in the light. Blood moved in the kitchen, and Angel turned to look at him. He was approaching with a set of steaming mugs. “You look bored,” he said.

Angel was watching the steam from the mug curl upwards in the sunlight. “I’m fine,” it said, to be contrary, even though it was very bored. It smiled slightly.

“Want to watch somethin’?” Blood pointed his chin towards the laptop.

Angels eyes widened. Videos of machines sounded so much better than listening to the traffic outside and watching the movement of tendons under its skin. “Fuck yeah,” it said. It coughed into its arm, then paused, but this time didn’t result in a spasm of other coughs that bent it in half. 

“Alright. Shift over.” Blood came over and sat down on the end of the couch, where Angel’s head had been a moment ago. He put the mugs on the table, then pulled the laptop close and started fiddling with files. 

Angel looked at him. It didn’t entirely feel like sitting upright yet, not with its head so floaty, and it had been here first. He had been patient with it being sick, and it felt like being a bother. It laid back down and put its head in his lap.

“Heh?” Blood was holding his arms up and out of the way, looking down at Angel in surprise. 

“My couch,” Angel informed him, grinning upwards, then turned on its side, ready to look at the screen. 

“Bruh,” Blood said with feeling, and then sighed. He went back to opening files. “There, haven’t watched that one,” he muttered, and then opened a video. 

“A yule log is a traditional Christmas cake,” the laptop announced, showing a video of a rolled-up cake covered in candy mushrooms. “It’s often eaten during the holidays in the European countries of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland, but also further afield, as this tradition has been imported to Vietnam, and Quebec, Canada.”

“Hot chocolate,” Blood said, retrieving one of the mugs from the table and handing it to Angel. 

It tucked the warm mug close to its chest and breathed in the steam. It smelled of cocoa and milk, and a little bit of chilli paste. Blood took a sip of his drink and then rested his mug on top of Angel’s head. 

“Hey!” Angel swiped its talons lazily at its handler without looking. “Fuck off.” It didn’t connect with him at all. 

“Nah,” Blood said, reaching around and scritching softly at the top of Angel’s scalp. “Sharin’ the couch, cause we’re roommates.”

Angel grumbled under its breath, and then consented to be scritched. It was warm and comfy, and its drink smelled good, and there was interesting machinery on the laptop. It trusted its handler, who let it do whatever it wanted. “My fuckin’ couch,” it reiterated, and then settled in to watch the screen.

“Your couch,” Blood agreed, comfortable.

Angel woke up early, feeling better. It put out the bowls and spoons for cereal, moving carefully in the early morning quiet. It didn’t know how to cook very much, but it could do bowls. It paused with its hands poised over the milk container, listening. Blood was coughing from his room. It sounded like the painful coughs that shook your whole body, emptying out your chest like a box turned upside down. It went to the door of its handler’s room and looked inside. 

Blood was sitting on the floor in a tangle of blankets, a hand to his chest and breathing hard. He saw Angel looking and waved a hand. “I’m fine.” 

Angel raised its eyebrows at him. “Yes, you sound fine.” 

“I just—it’s just wakin’ up, I just gotta clear my lungs,” Blood protested. 

That didn’t sound right. Angel went to the phone on the kitchen wall and dialled the number for the bakery that Blood had taped up next to it. 

“Yello,” Sam answered after several rings. “How’s it going, Blood?”

“This is Angel,” it told the phone. “You said that you can’t work with food if you’re sick.”

“True, I did say that,” Sam said. There was a muffled scuffle from the other side of the line. “Sorry, I’ll get out of your way,” he said, not into the phone. 

“Blood is coughing now,” Angel reported. (“It’s not that bad,” Blood protested, having followed Angel into the kitchen. He coughed into his hand.) Angel narrowed his eyes at him. “Can he work in the fridge?”

“Nope,” Sam said cheerfully. “Figured that would happen, with you two living together and both coming off the old job. Get less stress and your body crashes. Take another day, and we’ll see how you are tomorrow, okay?”

“He says we need to take another day,” Angel told its handler. Blood sighed and ran his hands over his face. Angel turned back to the phone. “Alright,” it said, and then hung up. 

Its handler was sick, and that left it in charge of making sure he was taken care of. There was nobody else to do it, and somebody had to be in charge. It had to make sure its handler was safe while he was sick. It raised its eyebrows at the other man. “You need to be in bed.”

Blood sighed, defeated. “Can I be on the couch instead?”

Angel considered, then grinned. “No. Later maybe. It’s still early, you should go back to bed.” It put out its hands and pushed gently on his shoulders. “Go.”

“Alright, alright,” Blood grumbled. He turned and went back to his room. Angel turned out the light in the kitchen and put the bowls and cereal away.

Blood was already asleep, curled on his side and wheezing faintly. Angel eyed its handler, breathing very quietly so as not to wake him up. It wasn’t very sure what to do, now that it was left in charge. 

Even if it made mistakes it was pretty sure that its handler would just sigh at it—it wasn’t going to get in trouble—but it didn’t want Blood to be uncomfortable or unhappy if it could fix it. Angel picked at its teeth anxiously. The best thing it could think of to do was to copy what Blood had done for it. If its handler had done it, that meant that was the way to do it. He was very good at situations. Angel pulled the blanket up around Blood and tucked him in, and then padded softly out of the room.

The bread was stuck in the toaster, and it was burning. Angel tried to scoop it out with a talon. The bread tore. Angel held the toaster upside down and shook it. 

An avalanche of burnt crumbs and a bent piece of toast fell out onto the counter, then bounced to the floor. 

Okay, it had to clean that up, and then it had to try the toast again. 

It had already drunk all the medicine, so it needed to get a new bottle. The cashier looked at the gold coin that Angel had handed it. His eyebrows were raised. 

“Are you sure?” 

Angel mantled its wings uncertainly, then pulled them back in. People were looking at it. “I don’t have other money.” The bills that Sam had given them had been used up already, so it had taken the coin from the bag marked “emergencies” in Blood’s black bag. This seemed like an emergency to it.

“I don’t know if I have change for this,” the cashier said. He locked his cash. “Let me go get my manager.”

Blood normally drank out of the red cup, so it needed that one for the water. Angel filled it up and then looked at the medicine and plate of food on the counter. It didn’t have enough hands. 

Blood opened one eye as Angel entered the room, holding a plate of toast in one hand, and a plate with water and medicine balanced on it in the other. His eyebrows went up and he half-sat up. “Heh?” He looked unfinished without his glasses, less focused.

Angel put both plates down on the side table triumphantly, then frowned at him. “You have to take the medicine and go back to fuckin’ sleep,” it said. 

Blood scrunched up some of the blanket in his fist, looking at Angel briefly and then looking at its shoulder. “I don’t feel that bad, actually.”

“You have to take the medicine if you’re sick,”  Angel said. It crossed its arms and frowned. “I had to, you have to.” 

Blood breathed out, an unhappy grumble under his breath, then sat up fully and pulled the bottle off the nightstand. “Alright.” He had his jaw set as he started to unscrew the bottle. 

Angel looked at him for a moment. It remembered bad medicines it had taken in the past, things that had made it feel like it was on fire or freezing, or seeing movement in the shadows. It had learned that fighting medicine never worked, and if you tried it you were just injured and also on fire from the thing you took, but maybe things were different for handlers. Maybe its handler was still afraid. “Nothin’ bad is gonna happen.” It nodded. “I drank it and it just made me sleepy and floaty.”

Blood looked at it for a moment, eyes widened. “I know that.” His hands were still on the bottle. “I wouldn’tve given it to you if it was bad.” His eyes slid off Angel, to the door behind him. “I just don’t like being drugged.”

That made sense. Being helpless and knowing anything could happen sucked. It had accepted it as a facet of life, it was used to having to be realistic, but it still used to try and bite people who injected it. Angel nodded. “Do you want me to watch the door?”

Blood nodded slowly. “That—might help, yeah.”

“Alright.” Angel nodded, then went and sat down in the doorframe. It folded its legs underneath it and hands in its lap. “I’m on watch.”

A grin pulled at the side of Blood’s mouth. “Thanks.” He opened the medicine and looked around. “There’s no spoon?”

“You can drink it,” Angel said from the doorframe, gesturing like it was tipping a bottle down its throat. 

Blood’s smile grew slightly, and he shook his head. “Sure,” he said. He took a swig from the bottle, and then laid back down in the bed.

Angel settled in to keep watch, listening to the sound of the other man breathing. It would make sure he was safe.

Chapter Text

Puffy had asked if they were going to go to Market Street After Dark, and when Angel had said it didn’t know what that was, she had said “Oh, you have to go.” Tubbo had chimed in to say that there were great snacks, and Ant had said that the outfits were great to see, and Niki had said that it was really fun and they shouldn’t miss it! So now they were standing together at the sawhorses blocking off the road, listening to music and crowd noise on the other side of the tents. 

“Alright,” Blood said, looking into his black bag. “Most of the paycheque went into rent and food, but we have—some money left.” He touched something in the bag and then zipped it up. “We can probably do one thing each, and also get a food?” 

Angel nodded. Ant had said that people wore their most fun clothes, so it was in its green dress and had put its prism around its neck. Blood had vanished into his room for an extra fifteen minutes and had come out with a silky red shirt that had ruffles at the collar and cuffs, looking anxious. “Okey-dokey,” it said. It watched someone go by in a mesh shirt and a dozen glowing necklaces, with patterns picked out with tape amid the gills on their chest. People were still glancing at them as they went into the event, but there were people dressed far wilder than them in evidence, and the gazes were just mildly curious, not judgemental. 

Blood took a deep breath and then headed past the barriers into the crowd, with Angel tucked behind him. 

Traffic moved in a slow crawl around the section of street that was barricaded off, with people wandering in a vaguely anti-clockwise direction between tents set up in front of stores. There were street performers standing in sections of the street marked off with paint, singing and doing tricks in front of small crowds. They stopped to watch someone on a unicycle, pedalling backwards with cups full of water balanced on their outstretched hands. The air was full of the smell of sugar from the next stall, where someone sold cotton candy wrapped around paper sticks. 

Blood elbowed Angel gently. “You could do that,” he said under his breath, pointing to the performer. 

Angel drew back slightly, blinking at him. “No.” It shook its head. “I only know how to do missions.”

Blood raised his eyebrows for a moment. “Balance, control, it’s all the same skills. I bet you could.”

Angel gave him a sceptical look. “Yeah, sure. For sure.” It tilted its head challengingly. “And could you ?” 

He grinned for a second. “Nah, balance was never my thing, more about brute strength. I could do what that guy’s doin’ though.” He pointed with his chin to a performer further down the street, flexing and posing before ripping a stack of paper in half. 

Angel raised its eyebrows. “Sure-sure. I bet.”

The man with the unicycle finished and drank his cups of water with a flourish, and the crowd applauded. People started scrambling for wallets and purses to put money in his hat. Blood stepped forward to put a few coins in, and then they were moving with the crowd again. 

“Heyyyy, it’s motherfucking Blood and Angel, the biggest men in town!” a voice shouted. Angel turned to see two of their coworkers eeling their way towards them against traffic. Tubbo, who worked in the basement with them and who liked to talk about machines (Angel had been able to answer some of his questions because of the videos on their laptop), and Tommy, who worked on the cash and liked to have an opinion about everything. Tommy was waving wildly. “Hey! Hello! I’m talkin’ to you two!” 

“Hello, Tommy,” Blood told him. “How are you doin’?”

Tommy was wearing one of the red-and-white shirts he normally wore to work, but he’d added a headband covered in glowing neon hands on springs, and a skirt of beads over his jeans. Everything jiggled frantically as he talked. “I’m doing fuckin’ great, big man,” Tommy announced. “I’ve eaten fifteen things! You should eat more, it makes you grow fuckin’ enormous and all the ladies will love you. Although that is probably not an issue for you, because you’re already so large that you’ll make the ladies go “yuck.” They’ll go “ew” and run away and look for a more masculine attractive man, like me, Tommyinnit, who has all of the wives and jobs and would simply never make the ladies go ew.” He nodded firmly.

Tubbo looked at him. He wore exactly the same outfit he wore to work, minus the apron, and held a slushy drink with a rainbow straw. “Niki said you were gross three times yesterday.” 

“That’s different, Niki isn’t a woman,” Tommy said with dignity. “Niki is a queen and I respect her very fuckin’ much. She’s too good for any of us and if she told me I deserved to die I would say “yes ma’am an’ okay,” but she never would, because she is just and wise. Is that sausage rolls ?” Tommy darted away through the crowd. 

Tubbo paused to wave. “Nice seeing you!” and then hurried after him. 

Angel looked at Blood. “See? Tommy says you eat too fuckin’ much.” It grinned. 

Blood raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think Tommy’s a reliable source.” He counted on his fingers. “Three to four servin’s of vegetables, two to three servin’s of dairy, six to eleven of grains, meat, we are eatin’ the cookies and they’re not on the plan, but it’s fine, we can be people.” He looked up from his hands. 

Angel nodded. “Actin’ like people,” it echoed. The sizzle of something frying came from further down the street. It elbowed him back in the side. “Let’s get food that isn’t good for us.”

Blood looked at him for a moment, and then grinned. “Alright.” 

They followed the flow of traffic further down the street. The crowd of people around was enough that it felt tense, but beyond the lights strung over the street, the sky arched even higher, and it was doing okay. It was used to acting like a person, it had a whole apartment and a job it was good at, and it could take care of people when they were sick. They got in line for a cart that sold donuts, shuffling forward in a clump every time the vendors scooped the little rings out and tossed them in cinnamon sugar. It could smell the spices from here. A man in a white suit tailored around his small gold wings was eating one of the finished donuts, flipping the hot food between his hands to avoid burning his fingers. 

“An accessory for your outfit, honoured guest?” someone said at Angel’s elbow. 

It turned to look, backing up a half-step towards its handler. “What?”

Someone stood at its elbow wearing a backpack and tray covered in scarves, hats, bracelets, and rings. The rings lit up, and the bracelets were plastic with jingling beads in them. “Some accessories!” The person grinned at it. “Do you want a scarf? A hat would go well with your outfit.” The vendor seemed to have noticed its recoil, and didn’t move closer. He spread out hands covered in flashing jewellery. “Maybe something more decorative?”

It did not want a ring that blinked at it like an alarm. “Hmmmm,” Angel said. It eyed the other things on the vendor, while he grinned at it hopefully. He had a mouse tail and wore a black-and-white frilly dress, underneath all the accessories. There was a hat with green and white stripes that it liked the look of. “Can I see the hat?” It stepped carefully forward, setting its shoulders. 

“Oh this? Sure thing!” The vendor scooped the hat from where it rested above his shoulder and tossed it towards Angel. “Keep that nose of yours out of the sun, us blonds burn way too easy.”

Angel glanced at the vendor. He did have pale hair as well, maybe he knew what he was talking about. Even though it didn’t go outside in the sun much, they went to work before it was properly up. The hat was made of fabric, and double-layered. It placed it carefully on its head, and then stiffened as the cloth touched its hair. It remembered its vision closing with hoods yanked over its head, being left in the dark unable to see or manoeuvre. But this one—it took a deep breath. It wasn’t too heavy, and it could still see. It turned its head experimentally. 

The vendor held up a mirror attached to his chest. “Take a look!”

It liked the look of the hat, together with its dress. It could still see. It looked at Blood. 

Blood shrugged at it, grinning. “Up to you, whatever you like. Looks fine to me.”

“Yes,” Angel decided. It wanted a new hat to add to its outfit. More green. “How much is it?” 

“Fifteen dollars,” the vendor said. “Good choice, good choice there, sir.”

It wasn’t exactly a sir, but it decided not to correct him. Blood handed over the money, and then they shuffled forward in the line to get donuts. They got their food and retreated to lean against one of the big cement planters set in the middle of the street. Spiced sugar fell off the donut in a shower when it bit into the one Blood had handed it. It had to sort of bend over and bite while curled around the food to avoid the sugar getting on its outfit. The donut was hot and delicious, a fried crust breaking under its teeth to allow access to a soft interior that was sweet and had spices mixed in. Angel finished its serving quickly and then reached over to fish another out of the grease-spotted brown paper bag Blood held.

Blood raised his eyebrows at it. Angel grinned back and bit into its prize, getting sugar everywhere. 

After they were finished with the donuts, Blood pulled a set of alcohol wipes out of his black bag so they could clean the sugar off, and they went to get iced lemonade. Angel’s had crushed raspberries floating at the top that it could poke with its straw as they wandered. 

“Do you think I could get my ears pierced?” 

Angel looked up from its drink. It narrowed its eyes at its handler. “Why?”

Blood flushed. “I kinda like the look of some of the jewellery.” His attention stayed on his drink, on the slice of lemon and lime floating in it. “And it’s not on hands or really danglin’, so I could wear it at work, still.” 

Angel nodded. “I mean why are you askin’ me?” The “you’re my handler” went unsaid, but it thought it was obvious. 

Blood glanced up, eyebrows drawn together. “Because I think you’d have a good opinion?” He waved a hand. “Never mind.”

Blood wanted to know its opinion. He thought that Angel had good things to say, even though it’d been a stupid bird of prey for so long. Maybe Blood thought it was smart, though? And it knew that Blood was smart, it had seen him learn all the bakery recipes and how all the machinery worked very fast, so if he thought it, that had to be right. Angel tilted its head to the side, considering. “No, I think earrin’s would be good.”

Blood glanced at him. “Really?”

Angel nodded decisively. “You don’t wear enough shiny, that could fix it. And you could fuckin’ fiddle with them, when you wanted to.” It brought its hand up near its head, to demonstrate.

“Heh.” Blood huffed out a laugh, then took a deep breath. “Okay, that shop over there is offerin’ discounts, I’m gonna go see what I can find out, okay? You can finish this if you want to.” He handed his lemonade to Angel and headed towards a black-and-white striped tent housing a tattoo shop. A woman with blue wings and arms covered in ink started answering his questions, nodding along. 

Angel sipped at Blood’s drink, then considered. The lime was good, but it thought it liked the raspberry better. Lime was too sour. 

“You have really big wings,” a voice said next to it. 

Angel turned to look down. A child with tiny fuzzy black wings folded against his back stared at it, arms tucked behind himself. Angel glanced around, but Blood was busy, sitting down in a chair behind the counter. It looked back down at the child. “Hello,” it said cautiously. “I do have big wings.”

“My wings are still little, but my mama says they’ll grow,” the child informed him. He picked at the point of the plastic sword stuck through his belt. “Can you fly?” 

Angel nodded. “You have to make sure you have permission to fly, but I can fly.”

“Oh yeah.” The child nodded. “Zoning laws,” he said with the tone of someone who’s heard an adult complain about that before. 

Angel wasn’t sure if that was exactly what was going on, other than the fact that it was only supposed to fly on missions. Its handler hadn’t told it to fly, so it hadn’t, even though it itched to sometimes. It nodded anyways. “Yes.” 

The child’s head tilted to the side. “Can I touch your wings?” He sighed, and again in the tone of someone who was repeating what he’d heard before, said, “It’s okay if you say no, everybody has the right to control their own body.”

Angel stared at the child. That was another thing that wasn’t true, but maybe that was true for people. And it had been walking around in coloured clothes, with its handler not even nearby, wearing a hat. People who saw it would think that it was a person, so it got to be treated like one. It got opinions, and it got to choose. 

For a moment it was angry that it got that now , after so long of being controlled. 

But that didn’t answer the child’s question. It knelt down carefully and turned so its wings were close to the child. “You can just touch a bit, and no pulling on feathers,” it instructed.

“Okay!” Small hands sunk into its wings, and then the child said “oooooo” admiringly. He stepped back and tucked his hands behind his back, nodding. “You’re very soft,” he said. 

Angel twitched its wings back behind it, out of range. It didn’t want to be touched any more right now. Done with that. “You have to take care of your wings to keep them soft, if you want to fly,” it told the child.

“Okay.” The child nodded. “I already preen mine, but sometimes it makes me go to sleep.”

Angel nodded. “Yeah, sometimes I get sleepy too. But it keeps them healthy.” Just like eating vegetables, and sleeping comfortably, and taking medicine when it was sick. It did all of that now. 

A hand came down into its field of vision, palm up. Angel glanced up. Blood stood beside it, looking down at it. He was just holding his hand out close, but not touching. His eyebrows were drawn together. “You okay?”

Angel grinned at him as it pushed itself to his feet. It stepped closer and bumped its shoulder into his, then stepped back. “I’m fine.” It gestured. “I was just talkin’ about wings.”

“Hello!” the child chorused. “Do your tusks help you eat food?”

Blood’s hands went up to his tusks. “Kinda,” he said. A bar connected through the top of his ear now, with a gold loop on one side, and two on the other. 

“Your ears look nice,” Angel told him. “Shiny.”

Blood looked at him, a small grin pulling at the side of his mouth. “Thanks.”

“I’m going to get my teeth replaced with pointy teeth, so I can bite people,” the child informed them. 

An adult man in purple swooped through the crowd and put his hands on the child’s shoulder. “You were supposed to stay by the flagpole!” He sounded stressed. 

“It was boring,” the child whined, pointing to Angel. “He has wings!”

“I told you about talking to people with wings,” the man said. He sighed heavily. “Don’t bother people.” He looked up. “I’m so sorry, he—he’s really fixated on wings right now. I’m sorry if he bothered you.”

Blood looked at Angel. “It was fine,” Angel told him, fiddling with its prism. It wasn’t sure about people apologising to it. That seemed like something people did, but it still didn’t like it. “You’re welcome?”

“We are going home ,” the man in purple said, taking the child and leading them away through the crowd.

Blood’s hand was resting carefully on his ear. “Do you want to do more?”

Angel tilted its head to the side. “Do we have money?”

Blood checked in his bag. “We’ve got a little bit more, we could see another performer maybe?” 

Angel bumped its shoulder into his again. “Let’s just go home, it’s fuckin’ noisy here.” 

Blood looked relieved. “Alright, good idea. Let’s go home.”

Chapter Text

Blood was prepping chicken for supper. They’d gotten a markdown vegetarian salad for cheap, and a half-price roast chicken, and combining them was going to be two meals. Angel finished setting the plates on the table and tipped its head to the side. “Which salad dressings should we use?”

“Uh, all of them,” Blood said, a little distracted as he stripped meat off the chicken carcass. 

Angel got the bottles from the fridge and set them out in a row, then went to lean on the counter. Blood was chopping the meat into bite-sized pieces. He turned aside to get the bowl of salad, and Angel snuck out a hand and stole a piece. Blood turned back and saw Angel’s hand at its mouth, and then sighed at it. “Bruh.”

Angel grinned. “There was extra.” 

“It’s supposed to go in the salad.” Blood picked up the cutting board and dumped the chicken on top of the lettuce. 

“Yes, but I wanted some,” Angel said, trailing Blood to the table. “It’s not my fault if my handler lets me get away with everything.”

Blood paused, putting the bowl down on the table. He glanced at Angel. “You don’t have a handler.” He raised his eyebrows. “We left.” He’d gone slightly stiff.

“Well, no,” Angel said. It eyed him carefully. “You’re my handler, though.”

Blood’s hands slipped off the bowl, hitting the table with a thump. “No,” he said sharply. “I’m not your handler. I’m not anybody’s handler.” He turned around and backed up a step, away from Angel. He looked angry. 

Angel was standing in the middle of the kitchen. This was more worked up than it had seen Blood for a long time, not since he’d had the nightmare. “You’re a very good handler,” Angel tried. It laced its hands behind its back, tried to stand respectfully. “I mean, you’re not very good at controllin’ me, but I like you a lot, you’re my favourite handler.” 

“I’m not your handler!” Blood yelled. He ran a trembling hand over his face. “Have you been thinkin’ this whole time, you haven’t been treatin’ me—” He cut himself off and sucked in a breath, glaring at Angel. “I’m not a handler, alright? I’m a person, you’re a person, we’re both people! We got out, don’t—don’t call me that!” 

It didn’t know what to do. Its handler was angry, except he wasn’t its handler? It liked him, it didn’t want him to be angry. Angel started to go to its knees in the kitchen, head bowed. “I’m sorry,” it started. 

“Don’t—don’t do this to me.” Blood had backed up a step. He was shaking his head. “Bruh, I can’t do this.” He held his hands out in front of himself. “I don’t want to see this, I don’t want to see you . Stay away from me. Go away. I’m a person, I’m not—” He cut himself off and left the room. The door to his room closed loudly and there was a thunk from the other side. Angel was left on its knees in the kitchen.

It didn’t know what to do. It folded its hands in its lap and looked down. 

It kneeled on the kitchen floor for a while, waiting, but its handler didn’t come get it.

Not its handler, it didn’t have a handler. 

Its handler wasn’t going to come back and say that everything was okay, because it wasn’t okay, and it didn’t have a handler. 

It leaned forward and covered its face with its hands, blunt talons pressing around its eyes. 

It was a person, and so was Blood, and nobody was in charge of it.

It was a person. Blood had said so, and he was very smart, even if he wasn’t in charge. 

Angel backed up to sit against the cupboards, knees tucked to its chest and wings draped around itself. 

It started fixing its wings, hands combing through vanes and aligning the feathers that were wrong. It dragged in a breath and focused on the soothing movement. 

It was a person. 

No. 

He was a person. 

He was a person with a job and an apartment, and a friend who lived in the next room who he’d made angry. 

Not angry—not just angry—hurt. 

He worried his lip between his teeth. Blood didn’t want to be a handler, and he’d said that he was a person, and he thought that being a handler meant he—wasn’t a person?

Even when it knew that it was just a weapon, he knew that Blood was a person. He was obviously a person. He liked reading, and he didn’t see very well without his glasses, and he made exasperated noises when Angel did something to poke at him. He made jokes when other people weren’t expecting it. He had a fancy red shirt and some new jewellery for his ears. Sometimes he commented on the machines when they watched something. 

Angel hadn’t meant to make him feel bad. It had just been trying to be a good hawk, but it wasn’t just a hawk, and it had hurt his friend. 

He got up from the floor and started going through the cupboards. 

Angel knocked on the door to Blood’s room. He’d left him alone for a while, but it had been long enough that he had had to put the food back in the fridge. Meat couldn’t stay out on the counter, Eret had told them that when they were doing an introduction to pizza ingredients. Blood had written it down in his little notebook.

“What is it,” Blood said from the other side of the door. There was a thickness in his voice, like he was speaking past a lump in his throat. He didn’t sound happy.

“I brought food,” Angel said, looking at the doorknob. 

There was a pause. Traffic rumbled by outside the windows.

“Alright, sure.” Someone moved on the other side of the door. “Come in then.” He heaved out a breath of air. “I don’t care.”

Angel opened the door carefully, hitting it with his hip because his hands were full. Blood was sitting on the floor, on his blanket. Angel crouched next to him and put down a plate full of salad, and then his red cup with the packet of cookies balanced on top of it. “I didn’t know what salad dressing you wanted.” He nodded at the plate. “So I put a little bit of all the different kinds, in different spots.”

Blood’s eyebrows went up. He smiled slightly, no happiness in his eyes. “Alright.”

Angel stayed crouching next to him. He inhaled. “Can I stay?”

Blood waved a hand, pulling the packet of cookies towards himself and opening it. “Sure. It’s fine.” It didn’t sound like he thought it was fine.

Angel knelt next to him, and then thought better of it and sat with his legs folded underneath himself. It didn’t know how to start this. He flexed his hands in his lap, and then folded them together. “You were my favourite handler.”

Blood made a choked noise around a mouthful of cookie crumbs, half a laugh and half a sob. “Bruh, I get it,” he said, wiping a hand over his mouth. “I was horrible to you, and I didn’t get it. I get it now. I’ve got it.” He looked aside. “I’ll leave or somethin’.”

“No!” Angel protested, sitting bolt upright. “I don’t want you to leave. You were the first person who treated me like a person, even if I didn’t fuckin’ know it. You were nice to me always.” It gripped its fingers together tightly. “I’m not very smart. I’m sorry.”

There was a pause. Blood was looking at him. "Don't— you're smart. I'm bad at talkin'." 

"No you're not," Angel shot back. "I'm bad at listenin'." He waved a hand. "Fuckin' distracted all the time." He looked back at Blood, trying to breathe normally. It hadn't even thought about what would happen next, despite a feeling that it had to explain to its handler— not its handler— to its friend that it was sorry. He was making a mess of this. "I don't want you to leave," he said. "If you wanna go that's fine, but like— you didn't treat me bad. You always treated me like a person." He cleared his throat. "You're why I know what bein' a person <i>is</i>." 

“Alright.” Blood reached out and rested his hand next to Angel’s leg, palm up. “I won’t leave.” He took a deep breath. "You— we figured out how to be people together." He cleared his throat. "I thought we were figurin' that out together." 

Angel reached out and gripped his hand in his, holding tight. "We did figure that out together. I just— didn't know all the fuckin' details."

Blood squeezed his hand. “Yeah. I'm sorry.” He fished another cookie out of the container and bit into it, glancing at Angel. “You know I’m—you know we’re out, right? We’re not— we're not goin' back?”

Angel rolled his eyes. He’d seen Tubbo do that at work and delightedly added it back into his repertoire. He could be disrespectful for fun. “Well, I know that now ,” he said. “I wasn’t payin’ attention before.”

Blood chuckled under his breath, picking up their joined hand and then bopping it back down on the blanket. He offered him the box of cookies. “D’ya want one?”

Angel picked a cookie out of the box and crunched into it. “See, this is how I know we’re people,” he said. He grinned, then covered his crumby mouth with his hand. “Food that isn’t good for us.”

“It’s perfectly good for us,” Blood retorted, taking another cookie. “We’re out, and we don’t have to be in fightin’ form, and—“ He pointed with his hand holding a cookie. “Think of what we make for work. It’s good to eat that stuff. Niki wouldn’t make bad food.”

Angel nodded. He nudged the plate of salad towards his roommate. “Also eat your leaves.”

“Heh.” Blood breathed out, then picked up the plate of food and put it in his lap. “We’re okay?”

Angel squeezed his hand. “You were my best fuckin’ handler, even if you weren’t. And we can be roommates, right? Just roommates?”

Blood put a forkful of salad in his mouth. “Roommates works. And friends, probably.”

Angel smiled. “Alright. Friends. Fuck yeah.”

Angel had the laptop open and ready to go, sitting with his legs tucked under himself on the couch. Blood was still stirring mugs in the kitchen. Angel reached out and poised a finger over the trackpad. “I’m going to start it,” he called. 

“I’m comin’, I’m comin.” His friend approached the couch with two mugs and sat down in a creak of springs. “Jeez, let a guy rest.”

Angel promptly put the bowl of chips in his lap, and then pulled the box of cookies into his own. They’d gotten a set of historical research documentaries at the library after Puffy had told them about the video selection, and he wanted to hear about plane crash investigations. “I was thinkin’,” he said. 

Blood navigated through the DVD menu. He held out a mug in Angel’s direction without looking at him. “I’m sure that went well.” 

“Shut,” Angel told him, bumping shoulders. He sniffed his drink and then took a sip. They’d found a box of “ginger latte” powder at the grocery store, and Blood added in honey and spices to make it extra good. “I was thinkin’, we should change our names.”

Blood glanced at him. “Yeah?”

Angel nodded. “Cause they’re still from the old designations, and—“ He waved a hand. “That’s over. So we should choose new names.”

“Hmmmm.” His roommate took a sip of his drink. “You got somethin’ in mind?”

He grinned a little. “I was thinking Philza. Phil for short.”

Blood nodded, then dug into the bowl of chips in his lap and ate one. “Yeah, that’s good. Good name.”

Phil stole a chip. “You thinking of one? Or do you need more time to think?” He waved a hand. “Or you don’t have to change your fuckin’ name, ‘course. I was just thinkin’, we don’t need to keep any of that in mind at all.” 

“Mmmm, yep.” He nodded. “Technoblade.” 

Phil’s eyebrows went up. “Technoblade?” 

“Yeah. Techno for short.” Techno glanced down at him, grinning. “What do you think?” 

“Sure.” Phil leaned back into the couch, situating his wings and getting comfy. “It’s a good name. Good person name.”

Technoblade hit the start button and then sat back, an arm going around Phil’s shoulders. “That’s what I thought.” 

The laptop started playing a video of an animated plane diving out of the sky, engines on fire. Phil curled into Techno’s side and stole some chips from the bowl. “Fuckin’ couch rent, time to pay up.” He grinned as he crunched into them. 

Technoblade chuckled under his breath. “Alright, Phil.” The video started with a pan over an airport, people hurrying around like ants. “Funny thing.” There was a smile in his voice, but he was sitting very still. “I happened to be thinkin’ too.”

Phil glanced up at him. “I’m sure that went well,” he repeated back, grinning.

“Bruh,” Techno said, exaggeratedly wounded. “I’m bein’ bullied.” He pulled a cookie out of the box in Phil’s lap. 

“Sorry about that,” Phil said cheerfully. He kept one eye on the screen, where a pilot was being introduced. “You were thinkin’?”

“I asked around, and there’s zonin’ laws about flyin’.” Techno gestured with a hand. “Nothing higher than the buildin’s.” 

Flying. All of Phil’s attention was on him now. “Yeah?”

“There’s a park, though, and we can get there on the number 14 bus.” He messed with his cookie, pushing it into two pieces. “There’s a river in the park, and big trees. We can get there on Saturday.”

Phil could fly without the burden of a mission. Straight into the sky without commands. Without darkness behind him and blood and pain ahead. Without someone threatening to kill him if he didn’t follow orders. It couldn’t be that easy. Phil’s head tilted to the side, eyes on his friend. “What if I just fly away and don’t fuckin’ come back, though?” 

Techno glanced down at him, and then tapped his hand against Phil's side. “Well, I think you’d come back.” He gestured briefly at the room. “All your stuff is here.” He squeezed Phil briefly closer to him, then let him go. “But if you want to leave, that’s fine.”

Phil looked at him for a moment more, his handler who was never his handler, his roommate, his friend. The friend who’d looked up a way to let him fly. “This Saturday?”

Techno nodded, turning his gaze casually to the screen. “Sure.”

Phil grinned and settled back down, turning his attention to the screen. “Eh, I’ll probably come back. I’m used to you.” The laptop was midway through an interview with an elderly man with insectoid eyes, in a pilot’s uniform. “Can we start it over again? I fuckin’ missed it.”

“Alright.” Techno leaned forward and clicked on the screen, then sat back, arm going around Phil’s shoulders again.

Phil settled in next to him. He snagged a handful of chips and ate them one by one as the laptop started to play again. He was going flying on the weekend, and then he would come home.