Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The wind had a voice out here.

It spoke in long, slow sighs through the black spruce, slipping between frostbitten branches and over frozen streams like the ghost of some old god. The air was thin, sharp, and clean, untouched by exhaust or human breath. The nearest neighbor was miles away; the nearest town, even farther. Out here, the land belonged to the snow, and Matthew was content to let it.

He had built a life in the stillness.

Five years had passed since he’d left the cities behind in favor of the woods— Five years since he’d walked away from his parents’ tall glass office tower without a word. No letters. No phone calls. He hadn’t given them the chance to stop him or bless him or curse him. He didn’t know how they’d reacted and if they were angry, sad or disappointed. Some days, he assumed they probably were pissed. Other days, he didn’t let himself think about it at all.

Francis and Arthur had always been larger than life, one flamboyant, one sharp-edged, endlessly tangled in their debates, pride and endless plans for his future. And Alfred, of course, had always been the golden child. Loud, ambitious, eternally praised. The son who stayed. The son who climbed.

He had always been the other one. The quiet echo trailing behind his twin brother’s shining star.

And in the end, that suited him just fine.

Out here, in the deep belly of northern Canada, there were no meetings. No boardrooms. No uncomfortable family dinners. No one asking why he wasn't more like his twin. Just the steady rhythm of wildlife, and the breath of the land beneath the snow. No one cared who he was out here. No one cared who he wasn’t.

The house he’d bought sat like a lodge carved into the woods— Oversized, yes, but not for luxury. It was a trust fund purchase, along with the land that surrounded it. Ten acres of deep forest, a private lake that froze into a sheet of glass half the year, and towering pines that blotted out the horizon. His parents had probably would’ve seen it as another act of rebellion: Taking the money and building himself an exile.

But exile, Matthew had learned, could be a kind of peace.

The house was his sanctuary, each creaking floorboard familiar, each window framed with thick wooden beams that trapped the warmth inside while the snow raged outside. It wasn’t loneliness. It was freedom.

He pulled his scarf tighter against his face as he moved along the narrow trail, snow crunching beneath his boots. His breath coiled in soft plumes. The sun, low and pale in the winter sky, cast long blue shadows across the unbroken white. Around him, the world was quiet, save for the occasional whisper of wind or the distant call of birds.

Matthew paused, looking up. A small flock of ravens wheeled overhead, their black wings cutting sharp lines across the pale sky. He watched them for a moment, lips curling into a small, private smile.

Clever things they were. His kind of creatures.

He pulled out his small notebook, jotting down the observation— Location, time, flight pattern and all that kind of stuff before slipping it back into his coat pocket and continuing on. The trail snaked deeper into the forest, toward one of the old service roads that hadn’t seen maintenance in years. It was part of his daily circuit, tracking raven migratory paths for the long-term study he’d negotiated with the university. They were content to leave him be, so long as the data kept coming.

He preferred it that way. The silence of his work fit him better than the conversations he never knew how to maintain.

As he trudged forward, something shifted in the air.

The birds had gone silent.

He froze mid-step, instinct prickling at the back of his neck. The quiet wasn’t natural. The forest rarely fell completely still unless something had disturbed it— Something larger or louder than him.

Slowly, carefully, the Canadian man scanned the trees ahead.

At first, he saw nothing. Only the long white drifts of snow, broken here and there by the dark spines of pine trunks. But then, farther ahead near the thinning edge of the forest where the old road cut through something gleamed unnaturally in the light.

Metal.

He frowned, approaching cautiously, boots crunching softly through the snow. As he closed the distance, the full scene unfolded before him like something from a fever dream.

A traffic light lay twisted and shattered across the road, its thick pole half-buried in a snowbank as though something had torn it clean from its base. Shattered glass glittered like ice crystals around it, tangled in cables and broken wires that snaked through the snow like black veins. And beneath it—

His breath caught.

Pinned under the fallen pole was something that should not have existed.

The figure was humanoid, but only barely. Pale skin, almost translucent in the cold, glistened where blood hadn’t yet frozen to it. Shaggy white hair clung to a bloodied face, matted with ice. Its figure was obsucured by its wings— Massive wings that were pure white gleamed against the snow, enormous and too perfect, like alabaster carved into something living. The feathers were pristine where they hadn’t been mangled, spreading in heavy drifts of snow-dusted down. But one wing, the right one, bent at a grotesque angle beneath the metal pole, twisted sharply.

And then there were the eyes.

Bright crimson. Not human at all with vertical slits like a cat’s, gleaming even in the weak light. They locked onto Matthew’s with a raw mixture of pain, fury, and something deeply animal.

The creature hissed, lips curling back to reveal sharp, thin teeth. Its chest heaved, breath shallow but ragged, and it let out a sharp bark of words. He realized it was German a beat later.

“Zurück! Geh weg, Schwein!” The feathered male screeched. The voice was harsh, rasping, thick with something deeper than an accent— Almost like a bird mimicking speech. Its taloned hands scraped against the snow, claws twitching in reflexive defense.

He stood frozen for a long second, his mind racing to make sense of what he was seeing. The blonde wasn’t hallucinating. He couldn’t be.

This was real.

Something that was completely impossible, something utterly alien— Yet not. There was too much humanity in the angles of the face, too much pain in those intelligent eyes. Despite the wings, despite the claws, despite the monstrous frame— He could not look away.

He shifted, trying again to pull free, and Matthew saw the full extent of the damage. The wing was mangled badly beneath the traffic pole. The creature howled in pain as it twisted, then collapsed back into the snow, chest heaving.

"You’ll tear it worse if you keep struggling," He murmured softly, instinct taking over. His voice was calm, even. The way one spoke to a cornered animal. "Don’t move."

“Schweinehund.” The albino spat weakly, another hiss in German that he couldn’t fully translate but didn’t need to. The intent was clear enough. Fear. Rage. Desperation.

The Canadian took a slow step forward, lowering his body to appear smaller, less threatening.

"I’m not going to hurt you," He said again, voice soft, steady. "But you’re bleeding. You won’t survive much longer like this."

The creature trembled. The blood loss, the cold, the panic— It was all catching up. Even its talons seemed to twitch less now.

Matthew's thoughts raced.

If anyone else found this, if anyone with a phone, or a weapon, or authority stumbled across this scene, this creature would not live to see tomorrow. The government would take him. Scientists would cut him open. Hunters would see a prize.

He couldn’t let that happen.

His hand slipped into his jacket slowly, fingers curling around the tranquilizer gun he carried for his fieldwork. Not ideal. The dosage wasn’t calibrated for... Whatever this was. But better sedated than dead.

"I’m sorry." Matthew whispered, more to himself than the creature. "But this is the only way."

The creature’s crimson eyes widened slightly as it recognized the motion, but its weakened limbs barely twitched in protest of his actions. He fired. He had to.

The dart struck cleanly in the shoulder. The creature let out a sharp, broken cry, half-human and half-avian, then sagged as the sedative began its slow, heavy pull. Its wings drooped. The bright red eyes fluttered, pupils dilating wider, then closing.

The man exhaled sharply, allowing the tension in his chest to ease for the first time since he’d spotted the twisted metal and the cryptid. He shakily ran a hand through his blond hair.

Then he moved fast.

The traffic pole was lodged deep in snow and ice, but the thaw earlier in the week had softened the layers beneath. Gripping the edge with both hands, Matthew leveraged his weight and strained. Slowly, inch by inch, the pole shifted. He slipped his boot beneath it for extra leverage, using his body weight to wedge the pole upward.

Finally, with one last grunt, the metal lifted enough to free the pinned wing.

The joint hung limp, dislocated or broken, he couldn't yet tell, but at least it was no longer pinned. Carefully, he shifted the wing closer to the creature's body, minimizing any further pull on the joint.

Up close, the albino’s face looked younger than he expected. Angular. Strangely delicate beneath the bruising and blood. His skin, though pallid, was smooth— Almost too smooth, like porcelain. The albinism only added to the haunting image. Red cat-like eyes that contrasted against the snow-white hair and wings made his eyes look like blood staining the snow.

An impossible contrast of color and life.

Swallowing down the lingering awe, Matthew slid his arms beneath the creature’s torso, adjusting for the awkward spread of the wings. The creature was heavier than expected, but he had carried worse across this wilderness before.

His muscles strained, but he hoisted the limp body carefully and turned toward the narrow trail that led home but the weight grew heavier with each step.

Even with his broad shoulders and years of hauling gear across dense forest trails, the Canadian felt the strain burning in his arms as the creature sagged in his grasp. Its limp form shifted slightly against his chest, the dead weight of the wings throwing off his balance with every uneven snowdrift. He adjusted his grip again, tightening one arm beneath the creature’s legs, the other cradling the twisted wing as carefully as possible.

The snow crunched beneath his boots. The trees whispered.

He couldn’t risk losing more time.

Matthew stopped near a fallen spruce, its thick trunk offering a partial windbreak from the cutting air. His breath was heavy now, fogging in quick bursts as his heart hammered. Carefully, he lowered the creature onto the packed snow, kneeling beside it.

The tranquilizer was only going to buy him so much time.

With shaking fingers, he unzipped the heavy side pocket of his parka and pulled out the small emergency med kit he always carried for fieldwork. It was standard: Antiseptic, gauze, wraps, butterfly bandages, suture strips, a thermal blanket and various tools for stabilizing injured animals in the wild. It wasn’t meant for something like this but it was all he had.

He exhaled slowly, grounding himself.

The creature’s blood stained the snow a deep, shocking crimson like it’s own eyes. Where the wing joint met the back, a jagged wound had opened beneath the pressure of the traffic pole. Blood continued to seep sluggishly, dark against the pure white feathers.

First, stop the bleeding.

He tore open the antiseptic wipes, dabbing around the wound with as much gentleness as he could manage. Even unconscious, the creature flinched at the touch, his body twitching faintly.

“Easy, easy…” He murmured gently under his breath, as though speaking to a wounded crow or fox. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

The antiseptic hissed against the open wound. Matthew worked quickly, layering clean gauze pads against the worst of the bleeding before securing them tightly with long wraps of bandage. His breath clouded the air as he leaned close, inspecting the twisted wing joint again.

He didn’t dare try to reset the break out here— The bones beneath the feathers were likely hollow, far more fragile than mammalian limbs. Any wrong move could do more damage.

Stabilize first. Transport second. Repair later.

He continued to wrap the wing as best he could, gently tucking the long primaries against the creature’s side, making sure they wouldn’t drag or catch during the trek. The feathers were impossibly soft beneath his gloved hands, lighter than air despite their size. If not for the blood matting them together, they would’ve gleamed like fresh snow.

His blue eyes flicked to the creature’s face again.

Even now, unconscious, those sharp features held an uncanny sharpness— Too delicate for a man, too human for an animal. The thin lips parted slightly with each breath, and the blonde could see the faint glimmer of fangs resting behind them.

Fangs. Cat-like pupils. Albino coloring. Wings.

There was nothing in any of his textbooks for this.

It was like nature had stolen parts from a dozen species and sewn them together into something new. Or ancient.

Mythical.

The word slid unbidden through his mind.

Nachtkrapp.

He had heard the old European stories in passing during university— Black-winged creatures who preyed on children, omens of death that stole hearts in the night. Monsters from bedtime tales. But those were black birds. This wasn’t black. This was something else entirely. 

He shook the thought away and focused.

Next, the head wound.

A deep cut along the creature’s temple had bled freely earlier but was slowing now, likely thanks to the dropping temperatures. Carefully, Matthew cleaned the area, dabbing with antiseptic until the blood no longer seeped fresh. He applied butterfly strips across the gash, securing it as best he could before finally wrapping a thin gauze band loosely around the head to keep the wound protected.

The creature stirred again as he worked.

Its long lashes fluttered, red eyes rolling slightly beneath the lids before sliding closed once more. The tranquilizer was wearing thin.

Matthew’s heart sped up. He needed to move.

Fast.

With quick, efficient motions, he unfolded the compact thermal blanket from his pack, draping the lightweight material over the creature’s body. It would do little against the brutal cold, but it was better than nothing. The last thing he needed was hypothermia complicating things further.

Gripping the creature beneath the shoulders, he hoisted him up once again. The awkward weight of the blanket-wrapped wings forced him to adjust his stance, but this time, the blone found a more balanced grip.

The house wasn’t far now. Less than a mile.

Snowflakes began to fall as he trudged forward again, small and dry like tiny glass needles slicing through the wind. The world blurred into muted shades of white and gray, the treeline closing in like silent witnesses.

Matthew kept his head low, breath steady.

One step at a time.

The creature's weight pressed heavy against him, but Matthew refused to slow. His boots slipped once on a patch of hidden ice, and for a terrifying second, he nearly dropped his burden— But he caught himself, teeth gritting against the strain.

“Almost there.” He muttered, more to himself than anyone. He did that a lot.

The narrow trail finally opened up into the clearing behind his house.

The familiar silhouette rose before him— Tall, dark, and solid against the pale world. The wide windows reflected the swirling snow, flickers of warm firelight dancing behind the heavy glass panes. Smoke still curled from the chimney. Home.

He staggered toward the back door, kicking it open with his boot before carefully stepping inside. Warm air wrapped around him instantly, the crackle of the fire filling his ears. Matthew carried the creature across the polished wooden floor, setting him down gently atop the thick sheepskin rug in front of the hearth.

The flames cast flickering light across the creature’s pale face, painting it in soft golds and reds. The bleeding had mostly stopped, but the shallow rise and fall of the chest was still alarmingly weak.

The Canadian stood over him for a long moment, catching his own breath.

He paused for a second and thought. ‘What have I done?’ He wasn’t entirely sure. All he knew was that if he hadn’t intervened, this creature would’ve died. And as impossible as it seemed, as surreal as the entire encounter was— He couldn’t stand by and let that happen.

Not out here. Not in his woods.

He moved quickly again, gathering more supplies. Fresh blankets. A heated pad for the worst of the wing injury. Painkillers. Antibiotics. Clean water. The creature needed warmth And stabilization.

Matthew knelt again beside the prone form, gently brushing a blood-matted strand of white hair from the creature’s temple. The skin was cold, but not dangerously so for now.

“You’re going to be okay.” He said softly, voice barely above a whisper. “I promise. You’re safe here.”

The albino made no response, but a faint, uneven breath puffed through its parted lips. Matthew exhaled, allowing a small weight to ease from his chest.

The worst of the bleeding was controlled. The fractures would need real setting— But that could wait. For now, it was enough that he was alive.

He wondered how long the creature had been lying there, bleeding into the snow, alone beneath the shadow of that broken traffic pole. Long enough to stop calling for help? Long enough to believe no one was coming?

Something flickered behind the creature’s tightly shut eyes, even in unconsciousness, there was a tension in his brow, a quiet strain in the muscles of his jaw. Not just pain. Not just fear.

It looked like shame.

Matthew didn’t understand it, not yet. But he would.

He sat back against the couch, finally allowing his muscles to tremble with exhaustion.

Tomorrow would bring questions which could lead to complications... Maybe even danger.

But for tonight, the blond could only stare at the impossible being now breathing softly before his hearth— And wonder what the hell he had just brought into his home.

Chapter Text

The first thing he felt was heat.

Not the searing pain of a snapped wing or the piercing cold of snow packed into his feathers. Not the burn of blood slicking down his back or the bite of wind as it screamed through black pines.

Just… Warmth.

It was everywhere. Heavy and quiet. Beneath him, against him, inside him. Like he’d been dropped into something thick and living. Not fire— Fire was cruel. This was something else. Something soft. The kind of warmth that only existed in childhood memories, back before the pain began. Back when someone else might have held him. Back when he still had a flock, when voices still sang through the trees, and wings folded around him like shelter.

He wasn’t cold anymore so wondered is this was what dying felt like?

Gilbert didn’t open his eyes yet. His breathing was slow, steady, too even to be conscious or so he thought. He floated in it, the weightless bliss of sensation without context. Something smelled like bread, he realized dimly. Or tea. Or something yeasty and rich that hadn’t come from a corpse or carrion or desperation. It smelled like comfort.

He must’ve died.

He must’ve died. That was the only thing that made sense at first.

This kind of warmth didn’t exist in the wild. Not anymore. Not for him. But it was not hell— Not yet. If this was hell, it was the cruelest trick of all. No, it had to be something else. A waiting room for broken things. A place to wait.

But then pain whispered under his skin. It was real. If this was death… It had teeth. He took back his words. This had to be hell. Yet underneath that pain he felt bandages that pressed into his ribs. There was something beneath him. Fabric, thick and plush, not dirt or pine needles or rotting leaves. He could feel the texture under his arms, even through bandages. Bandages?

That’s when the thought crept in.

‘Why would I be bandaged if I was dead?’

He shifted his fingers. He moved them slowly and rigidly as not to strain himself. The stiffness in his joints told him everything: He was alive. Alive and stitched up like a doll.

The pain returned with the thought, flickering in little warning pulses down his spine. It simmered under his skin, deep in the joint of his wing. Not screaming pain… No, not anymore. That was even worse. It meant someone had tended to him.

They had touched his wings.

Something inside his chest cracked like ice underfoot.

His breath stopped. Just for a second. Just long enough for that animal instinct, buried beneath the pain and exhaustion, to flare hot and bright. His wing was wrapped and folded neatly at his side in a way he couldn’t have managed himself. His claws flexed against the fabric beneath him.

And then—

A touch.

It was careful but too close. The touch was near his wing. Near the place no one touched. A thumb and forefinger brushing gently through his primaries— Not plucking, not tearing, but grooming.

Like one of his own. Like a mate.

But it wasn’t quite right. The motion was clumsy in certain places. Plus the fingers were too thick, rhythm slightly off. Not a beak, not talons. Not someone who knew the patterns of feather grooming. It wasn’t preening, not really. But it echoed the feeling. Enough to trick his instincts.

That was worse.

Something ancient stirred in him. Revulsion, and fear, and a bone-deep confusion that twisted everything wrong.

He opened his eyes slowly, the world sharpening around the edges like a glass finally clearing after a long fog.

What met him was not the endless black of the void, not the cold, infinite sky stretching overhead. There was no brilliance, no ethereal light flooding his vision. No winged figures, no whispered voices from the shadows.

Instead, there was something far more mundane, and yet profoundly disorienting.

A human.

Not just any human. A really pretty one. One who seemed impossibly out of place in the quiet wilderness he had known all his life. The man’s face was striking. He had sharp cheekbones that caught the flicker of firelight, a tousle of blonde hair falling carelessly over his forehead, soft lines that hinted at kindness rather than cruelty. 

His eyes, partially hidden behind glasses, held a quiet intensity, curious but cautious, like someone carefully approaching a wild animal they both feared and wanted to understand.

He was knelt in front of him, sitting back on his heels beside the couch Gilbert lay on. He was tall and broad-shouldered. The man was wearing soft grey henley and black sweatpants, like someone who had never known real violence. His blond hair fell messily over one eye, glasses pushed up into the strands as though forgotten. His brows were furrowed, focused. His hands were combing slowly through Gilbert’s wings. Untangling. They were preening him but incorrectly…

The German didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Yet he kept staring.

The man didn’t notice right away. He was murmuring something, too quiet to make out. Humming under his breath. Hands gentle.

With blank eyes he stared ‘He’s touching my wing.’ He wanted to scream but the scream didn’t come.

He didn’t bare his teeth or lash out or screech like he had in the forest. Instead, something darker settled over him. A stillness he hadn’t felt since the betrayal. His eyes, slit-pupiled and crimson,fixed on the man like a falcon locking onto prey. Gilbert was of course bewildered at the audacity but he was also in pain.

He didn’t blink. The realization hit him slowly, like the shadow of a cloud passing overhead.

After a bit the human looked up at him because of the slight trembling. Their eyes met. The other’s eyes were blue but looked almost lavender.

The stranger said nothing at first. He didn’t pull away from the wing he’d been tending. His hand hovered near the feathers, uncertain. The fire crackled softly in the stone hearth behind him, casting flickering gold across the room as shadows danced across the wooden beams and polished floors. The room smelled like warmth, bread and herbs.

Gilbert didn’t speak. He didn’t make a sound. Just stared, silent and unflinching, like a predator waiting for the exact moment to strike.

The other swallowed nervously before speaking up. “You’re awake.”

His voice was soft. Not startled. Not frightened but still careful. Like he was speaking to something wild. Something sacred. Something that could break if mishandled or tear out his throat if cornered.

Gilbert still said nothing.

He shifted carefully, easing back just enough to give him some space, his movements deliberate and slow, as if afraid to disturb the fragile tension between them. His voice came then, soft and measured, each word carefully chosen, carrying a hesitant kindness that seemed almost foreign in this quiet room.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d make it through the night.” He said quietly, eyes flickering briefly to the broken wing tucked at the Nachtkrapp’s side. “You lost a lot of blood.”

There was no response. Not even a twitch. Only the weight of silence pressed in, thick and heavy, unyielding.

Gilbert’s sharp gaze never wavered, tracking every subtle movement he made— The slight twitch of his fingers as they rested lightly on the couch, the small, almost imperceptible flexing of his throat as he swallowed. His breath was shallow, cautious, almost reverent. Gilbert’s claws dug into the fabric beneath him, one talon catching on the weave and pulling just enough to make the thread strain, but still, no flinch.

The human exhaled slowly, the breath trembling just a little, and in that fragile pause he spoke again, voice steady but low and quiet, as if naming himself might anchor the strange new connection between them. “I’m Matthew. Matthew Williams.”

Still no answer.

He shifted again, this time rubbing the back of his neck in a small, human gesture of discomfort and uncertainty. His eyes held a flicker of vulnerability. “I found you yesterday.” He murmured, his tone gentle, like sharing a secret. “You were pinned under a traffic light. Out by the east road.”

The silence stretched.

Matthew’s gaze didn’t waver, though it softened. “I know you’re not human…” He said slowly, almost reverently, as if stating a truth he was still trying to process himself. “That’s obvious.” His voice dipped into something quieter, more earnest. “But I didn’t think you deserved to die in the snow. So I brought you here.”

Still, no sign of acknowledgment.

His hands flexed in his lap before he spoke once more, voice dropping to a near whisper, full of care. “I wrapped your wing,” Matthew said, voice gentle but certain. “It’s badly broken, but I think it’s salvageable. I’ve seen damage like it in birds. If the joint isn’t shattered, it should heal. Obviously it will take some time though.”

His red eyes narrowed.

It wasn’t the words that unsettled him. It was the tone. The kindness. The slow, steady cadence of someone trying not to spook a wounded animal. He’d heard it before.

Hunters used it to coax prey closer. To make the kill easier.

But this man didn’t smell like a hunter.

He smelled like pine. Tea. Woodsmoke. And something else— Something bright and living that hurt his nose.

He hated it.

Matthew’s voice stayed level, though there was a new edge to it now that was gentle but threaded with something firmer. Not command. Not threat. Just a kind of quiet certainty, the kind that came from someone who had already made a choice and was living with it, regardless of the cost.

“You’re in my home.” He said softly, not moving from where he sat. “About half a mile from where I found you. Out by the east road.”

His eyes flicked to the albino’s wing, then quickly back again. “No one else knows you’re here.”

The words settled into the space between them like stones dropped into still water. They didn’t echo. They just landed.

Gilbert didn’t answer.

He didn’t blink or even twitch because stillness was his armor right now. But inside something coiled a little tighter. Not because of the words themselves but because of the way they were spoken. As if this human was trying to offer something rather than take it. Like he was telling him a truth he needed him to hear, not just to know, but to understand.

There were no chains. No locked doors. No threats. However, there was the fire. The closed-in walls. The silence.

The fact that no one else knew he was here was double-edged sword.

Matthew didn’t push. He waited a beat longer, his hands resting loosely on his knees, eyes watching him with that same cautious reverence— As if he were studying something holy and half-broken.

Then, more gently this time, he spoke again.

“Do you understand me?”

The question was quiet, but not unsure. Like it had been asked before. Like Matthew already suspected the answer but needed to hear it confirmed.

It had been years since he’d heard the human tongue and even longer since he'd used it. But the sounds hadn’t left him. Not fully. They floated in his mind like old snow, soft and undisturbed. Familiar, but foreign. A muscle memory of speech.

He hated that it was still there.

It was the smallest movement, a tilt of the chin, barely perceptible but it sent a wave of tension through the other’s shoulders. He nodded back, once, cautious.

“Okay. Good.” He said calmly as the other  watched him.

He wasn’t sure what he expected. The human, Matthew, wasn’t panicking. Wasn’t demanding answers. Wasn’t calling for help. He’d found a monstrous, half-dead, winged creature in the forest, and instead of leaving it to rot, he’d carried it home. Touched it. Preened it.

Seriously who did that?

More importantly was why?

The fire popped behind them. The room smelled like rosemary and bread. Too good. Too human. The soft wool blanket covering him itched where it brushed his feathers. He shifted slightly, the motion stiff, but didn’t cry out. Pain flared in his back, but he kept his face blank.

Matthew didn’t speak again.

He just sat there without reaching or demanding anything from him.

He simply existed quietly and steadily in the corner of the Nachtkrapp’s vision like a misplaced stone in the middle of a stream, disrupting the current without trying to.

Gilbert didn’t like it. Didn’t like him.

The silence wasn’t the kind that came before danger. It wasn’t the low hum of a forest before the kill, or the brittle hush of snowfall before something snapped underfoot. It was too calm. Too still. A patient kind of silence, like water slowly wearing down rock.

That was worse.

Stillness was fine when it was his. But this deliberate waiting was unbearable. It meant the human had time. It meant he was in no rush to force anything. That he was letting Gilbert make the next move.

And that felt like a trap.

His pale claws curled against the couch again, dragging softly through the fabric like talons across bark. A thin, frayed thread caught on one and snapped with a barely audible pop. His fingers twitched once, then stilled.

He could feel Matthew watching him. Not intently, not with the sharpness of a predator, but with the cautious stillness of someone observing a wild animal from too close. Not interfering. Just present. Just there.

It made his skin itch.

His jaw tightened, lips parting slightly as his chest rose in a shallow, measured breath. His pale wings tensed beneath the weight of their bindings, sending a dull shock of pain through his shoulder that curled hot in his spine. He didn’t flinch. He wouldn’t give that away.

But the ache was there, constant and cold. A reminder.

He was grounded. He was crippled. He was alone. That meant he was exposed.

And still the human waited.

Gilbert could feel the tension winding tighter in his chest with each second that passed, invisible threads looping around his ribs and pulling with every breath. The fire crackled softly behind him, far too calm, casting long, flickering shadows that danced across the wooden beams above like ghosts of trees long buried.

His instincts screamed at him to run away even if it meant breaking another wing or to fight before the human tried to hurt him or worse… Gilbert could feel it. His body was begging him to do something.

Anything but this.

But he didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t blink.

Because every part of him, every feral instinct that had ever kept him alive, told him that movement meant weakness. Speaking meant surrender. And looking away? Looking away meant trust.

So he didn’t.

Instead, he glared, unflinching, his crimson eyes locked on Matthew with the kind of predatory focus that could make smaller creatures stop breathing. He held that stare like a blade in his hand, daring the human to flinch.

The blond didn’t flinch and instead just sat, posture relaxed, hands loose on his knees, head slightly bowed not in submission, but in understanding. Like someone who knew they were trespassing in sacred ground, and chose reverence over retreat.

The warmth of the fire wrapped around Gilbert like a noose. It was gentle but unrelenting. He hated the way it eased into his skin, how it softened the tension in his muscles without permission. His body betrayed him with each breath, aching toward comfort even as his mind recoiled.

He needed to stay. Not because he trusted this human. Not because he was safe here.
But because dragging himself back through snow and ice with a shattered wing would be suicide.

While Gilbert had done many reckless things in his life. But dying alone, half-frozen and humiliated in a ditch, wasn’t going to be one of them. He was much too awesome for that.

That’s why he stayed.

Matthew rose slowly. No sudden movement, no reaching. The albino didn’t blink. He followed the rise of the man’s body with his eyes alone, pupils slitting to catch the shift in light. When the man moved out of arm’s reach, he exhaled through his nose, low and almost inaudible.

To Gilbert it was good that he was leaving. He’d touched too much already.

He crossed the room with that same casual grace that showed he was neither predator nor prey. Gilbert’s gaze tracked him to a gap in the den’s wall that led to

He stayed motionless, his body unyielding despite the sudden surge of unfamiliar sensations swirling in the air around him. Not because he feared anything or because of confusion or hesitation but because every detail of the strange den, the place that encased him now, felt wrong. That felt wrong. His wing throbbed with dull, pulsing pain, but it wasn’t the pain itself that kept him still. It was the odd, heavy stillness of the air, pressing down on him like a blanket.

The fire crackled steadily behind him. It wasn’t a forest fire. He could tell by the way it stayed caged in a hollow of blackened stone. Its light flickered softly against smooth, golden-brown walls, illuminating every surface with the illusion of movement. There were no shadows stretching far or fast, no predators hiding behind tree trunks. No frost. No sky.

Just this… Den?

No, not a den. It was larger and full of angles and surfaces too perfect to be made by claws or time. This place was built. With intention. Each thing had its place. Each line had been carved.

He didn’t know the word for it. But it felt like being inside a carved tree— One that had forgotten it was once alive.

He shifted, just barely, feathers brushing against the couch beneath him. The texture beneath his claws was thick and soft, but artificial and denser than fur, softer than moss. It was strange but clean. He could still feel the deep ache in his back where the wing joint had snapped; it throbbed with each heartbeat, pulsing dull reminders of fragility into his shoulder.

Pain meant he was alive. Pain was familiar.

But this?

It unsettled him more than the break.

His eyes moved slowly around the room completely still. Always still. No sudden motion, no twitching. Only long, lingering observations.

The ceiling was high, supported by wide beams, polished and stained, not rough like real trees. Between them, small glass fixtures sat like trapped stars, casting amber light in perfect halos. Strange stone vases filled with curling branches sat atop wooden shelves. Books lined the walls. Hundreds. Maybe more. Their spines formed a rainbow of muted color, some labeled with symbols in languages he did not know.

A square device on the wall made a steady tick-tock sound. Gilbert’s eyes fixed on it for a long time. He could hear it more clearly than the crackling fire. It had numbers on it... He wondered what it could mean.

His wing itched.

That was new.

The bandages bound him carefully, precisely. Each layer was tight but not crushing, clean and dry. Someone had gone to great lengths to keep it supported. Someone had handled him with care. He grinned, teeth sharp.

“Okay, wing…” He whispered. “New plan. We fly straight into a wall and die with dignity.”

His body gave a rough twinge that translated roughly into: Absolutely not.

He reached up with one clawed hand and grazed the edge of the wrap. His hand was scabbed, bruised beneath the feathered wrist. But still his. Still strong enough to kill if it came to that.

If that human thought this meant he’d been tamed, he was wrong.

The room smelt off. Not like death or blood but still off.

It smelled like herbs, something sharp, piney. Dry leaves, cracked open. The lingering scent of wet fur, probably the dog (It looked more like a bear honestly), who now slept curled in a ball near the fire like a white sentinel. And something else… Something savory and sweet and alive.

His eyes flicked toward the archway where Matthew had disappeared.

He heard motion in the other room. The clink of metal. The soft hiss of something simmering. Feet moving carefully over hardwood. Humming. Quiet. Tuneless. It was almost worse than silence. Matthew’s voice broke through the motion, low and calm. “Are you hungry?”

Of course he didn’t answer. His gaze remained fixed ahead, eyes narrow, unblinking. He didn’t want to respond. He didn’t need to answer. Gilbert didn’t need to admit to anything.

But his stomach growled again, louder now, more forceful. A deep, rumbling sound that reverberated through the quiet room. His jaw tightened, but still, he didn’t react. His eyes never left the door to the other room, his attention fixed entirely on it.

Matthew waited, but there was no pressure in his tone, no insistence. Just the quiet murmur of the question, fading into the background like the hum of the clock. He didn’t push. He didn’t pressure him to answer. After a bit he stepped away as if understanding Gilbert’s answer.

Gilbert remained still, his eyes never wavering from the door. He focused on the steady rhythm of the fire, the smell of food filling his senses until it became almost unbearable. He could smell the crispness of the skin, the savory richness of the meat, the subtle sweetness of the potatoes. Everything was right there, so close, but out of reach.

He clenched his hand into the fabric of the couch, the softness of the material strange beneath his claws. He didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to give in to the hunger, to acknowledge the gnawing emptiness inside him.

But when Matthew returned, plate in hand, the scent of food too overwhelming to ignore, Gilbert’s gaze finally shifted, tracking the human’s every move. Matthew placed the plate down gently, not too far from Gilbert, but not pushing it toward him, either.

The food was there. So close yet out of reach.

Gilbert didn’t touch it immediately. His claws twitched, his fingers itching to take the food, but something inside him held him back. He had to wait.

And then, after a long moment of silence, he reached out, slowly, cautiously, his eyes flicking to Matthew only once. But the human wasn’t looking at him, his gaze focused on the fire instead. Gilbert’s hand hovered over the plate for a heartbeat before he closed the distance and snatched the meat, feeling the heat of it burn against his fingers.

He bit in. The texture was perfect. Crisp on the outside, tender on the inside. It was like nothing he’d tasted before.

He ate quickly. He couldn’t help it. The hunger clawed at him, devouring everything in its path. His mind was still distant, but his body needed this.

When he finished eating, Gilbert wiped his fingers on the sleeve of his tattered shirt without ceremony. His claws left faint streaks across the fabric, dragging grease and crumbs into the worn material. He didn’t look at Matthew right away, didn’t offer thanks or acknowledgment. Gratitude was foreign currency. It cost too much.

Instead, he tilted his head slightly, lips curling back just enough to show a sliver of pointed teeth. His voice, when it came, was rough, thin and cracked from disuse, but still laced with venom. “If you poisoned this I’ll pluck your eyes out.” He said flatly.

The silence that followed was heavier than it should’ve been. Not dramatic but instead it was simply real. The kind of silence that settled like dust after something breaks.

He didn’t jump or respond with that forced gentleness some people use when they think they’re talking to something dangerous. He just looked at the Nachtkrapp for a long moment, his face unreadable in the shifting glow of the fire.

Then he nodded once.

“I didn’t poison it.” He said quietly. Without any defense or argument. Just a statement, calm and unshaken.

Gilbert didn’t reply. The words weren’t the point. It was the tone, the ease of it, that crawled under his skin. No fear, no panic. Just a steady truth given like an offering.

And that unsettled him more than any threat would have.

He leaned back, slowly, claws retreating from the plate, and let the quiet swallow the moment again. The warmth from the fire still pressed against his side, but now it felt too close, like fingers creeping toward a wound. His stomach no longer twisted with hunger, but the absence of pain just made the rest of him feel more exposed.

He didn’t trust the human.

Not even a little.

Kindness was more dangerous than cruelty. At least cruelty had rules.

And this? This stillness, this patience… It felt like being watched by something that understood too much.

Chapter Text

This morning was colder than it had been in weeks.

Matthew woke to the sound of the wind dragging its claws against the cabin walls, a hollow groan of winter pressing against every seam. The windows rattled in their frames. Fine powdery snow pressed in like salt against glass, obscuring the view outside into a blur of white. He could barely see the tree line, only faint dark silhouettes swaying like shadows in the storm.

The wood stove had burned low in the night, leaving the cabin with a damp chill that crawled along the floors. His breath came out in faint white streams as he pushed himself up from the couch. The dog, Kumajiro, all two hundred pounds of thick-furred, lazy guardian, had claimed the rug near the fire, curled in a tight ball, tail twitching slightly in dreams.

The albino hadn’t moved.

Matthew’s blue eyes flickered instinctively toward the couch against the far wall where the creature lay. The blanket had shifted sometime in the night, feathers poking through the edges like the broken quills of an abandoned quiver. His body was rigid even in sleep, one wing folded tight against his side, bandaged in layers of careful gauze.

The first thing he noticed wasn’t his stillness… It was the way he watched.

He didn’t need to open his eyes to let him know he was awake. Matthew had learned quickly when the Nachtkrapp was truly sleeping, his claws curled loosely over the couch cushion, his breathing deepened just slightly, and his jaw unclenched. When he was awake, he looked like this— Still, perfectly still, but coiled. As if he was waiting.

When he approached, the pale creature opened his eyes without moving the rest of his body.

It was always the same: Those crimson, slit-pupiled eyes locking onto him like twin blades.

Matthew offered the smallest, least-threatening thing he could which was speaking in a quiet tone, “Good morning…” His voice sounded too human for the space they shared.

The Nachtkrapp didn’t answer.

Of course he didn’t. He never did.

The first couple of days had gone like this: Matthew talking softly, like he was coaxing an injured bird to perch on his hand. The other man staring, unblinking, like he had suggested ripping his heart out. Even the simplest actions (Like a meal or a glass of water) were met with suspicion. He would sniff at the food, stare at Matthew like he’d personally handcrafted a poison, and only eat after several long, tense minutes passed. And never while he was watching.

Even now, the blond could feel that razor’s edge between them, the unspoken question hovering in the air of whether he was a predator or a caretaker. He hadn’t earned an answer from the albino yet.

Still, he tried.

“It's bad out there.” Matthew murmured, crossing to the stove. He crouched and fed the embers more wood until flames sparked back to life, the warmth beginning to crawl through the cabin. He was aware of the Nachtkrapp’s eyes tracking his movements, precise and unwavering. He could practically feel the stare between his shoulder blades.

When he finally turned back, the creature was still there, wings folded tight, gaze flat. He didn’t even twitch when he approached.

“You can relax.” The taller man said softly, more for himself than the Nachtkrapp. “No one’s coming out in this weather.”

He blinked once slowly and deliberately. It wasn’t acknowledgment. It was more like a warning. That caused him to sigh before rubbing the back of his neck. “Right. You don’t care.”

But he did care.

He had learned that, too. The stillness wasn’t apathy— It was control. Every twitch of his claws, every flare of his nostrils, every subtle tightening of his jaw and every time he tensed meant something. He wasn’t an injured animal lashing out at random. The Nachtkrapp was calculating and fully functioning being.

And that was what worried him most.

He started the day the way he always did: making food, stoking the fire, talking softly to fill the void between them. The other didn’t answer, but he had decided that wasn’t the point. Talking to him was more about proving he wasn’t a threat.

But there was something else he had to do. something he’d been putting off.

The wing.

It had been three days. The bandages needed to be checked, and maybe replaced. Even a minor infection could be catastrophic in a creature like this. He didn’t know how resilient Nachtkrappe were, but the way he moved told him everything. Pain, stiffness, barely restrained tension— He could go on! That wing wasn’t just damaged; it was fractured in a way that would take time and care to heal.

And yet, he hadn’t been able to get close to it since the first night.

Matthew waited until he had eaten (If you could call the suspicious, glaring consumption of a plate of roast chicken that) before approaching. He kept his posture relaxed, voice even.

“I need to check your wing.” He said gently while kneeling beside the other.

Once again He received no response.

“I just need to make sure the break isn’t worse. I’ll be careful.”

That earned him movement but it wasn’t out of compliance. In fact it was quite the opposite as the German’s wing pulled back sharply, feathers bristling. His body stiffened, not jerking away, but coiling like a spring.

Matthew froze.

The reaction wasn’t loud or dramatic. No growl, no hiss, no sudden lashing out. Just that subtle, precise withdrawal, like he had drawn a line in the sand and dared him to cross it.

The message was clear— Not a word spoken but the meaning was loud enough: Don’t touch me.

Matthew exhaled slowly through his nose, lifting his hands slightly in a show of retreat. “Okay. I won’t touch it.” He didn’t reach for the wing. He didn’t even lean closer. He stayed exactly where he was, letting the silence stretch until the coil of aggression in the albino’s frame settled into something more like watchfulness than imminent violence.

Still, those eyes didn’t blink.

The Canadian had handled wild animals before. Raptors, mostly. Hawks that had been struck by cars, ravens with frostbitten wings. They’d fight, snap, claw— Do anything to keep a human from touching their feathers. It was out of instinct and self-preservation. But this? This wasn’t that.

This was something else.

“You don’t want me near your wings.” Matthew said softly. It wasn’t a question.

The Nachtkrapp didn’t nod. Didn’t deny it. Just stayed perfectly still, the tension in his body speaking for him.

He sighed and sat back on his heels. “Fine.” He murmured before giving up. Despite the fact that he had to help him Matthew couldn’t tranq him again since he might not get the right dose and he couldn’t force the creature to still because it might cause further injury.

That meant he had to wait.

He didn’t understand. Not really. Not until later when the other had finally fallen asleep, real sleep this time, his face slack, his claws relaxed, Matthew pulled a notebook from the shelf.

It wasn’t really a journal, not in the personal sense. It was a field notebook. A collection of observations from his work. Drawings of wing structures. Notes on migratory patterns, behavior charts and all the other joys of being a biologist.

He flipped to a blank page and wrote a single word at the top.

Nachtkrapp.

The name felt strange in his handwriting. He’d written it a hundred times before, buried in reports and research, but it had always been abstract. A concept. A myth. Not a man with red eyes and a broken wing sleeping on his couch.

He had studied ravens for years. They were his favorite corvid. They were highly intelligent, playful, social and notoriously cautious. They didn’t trust easily.

Especially not with their wings.

He remembered a paper he’d read once, years ago: Corvid Flight Behavior and Social Trust Cues. It had mentioned that ravens almost never allowed strangers to touch their wings. Not even among their own kind. Wings were survival. Only trusted partners or bonded companions were ever allowed that close.

He stared at his notes, the implications slowly settling in. The reason the Nachtkrapp hadn’t let him near his wing was because he didn’t trust him.

It wasn’t about pain. It wasn’t about instinctive aggression. It was about boundaries.

He dropped his pen and leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “How am I supposed to gain your trust?” He murmured to no one before continuing once again though his tone was softer, “You won’t even tell me your name…”

The silence offered no answer. Not that he expected any.

He thought back to the first night. The way he hadn’t fought him when he’d first wrapped the wing. How he’d been too exhausted to resist, his body limp, he wasn’t fully conscious and he was trembling with blood loss. How different that had been from now where every inch of him screamed defiance, even when he was silent.

It made Matthew uneasy.

Not just because of the danger, though there was plenty of that.

It was because he didn’t know how to reach him.

He rubbed his temples, exhaustion gnawing at the edges of his patience. He needed to understand him. Not just as a patient, not just as a creature but as whatever he really was and that was the part that unsettled him most.

He looked at his notes again. At the careful sketches of raven wings. The list of behaviors. The warnings he’d written years ago in the margins.

Do not approach. Do not touch the wings. Offer food at a distance. Wait.

All of it came flooding back, muscle memory from a part of his life he rarely thought about anymore.

He didn’t wonder if he could be dangerous because that had an obvious answer. He wondered why the albino hadn’t been already.

Matthew closed the notebook.

“Trust.” He said softly to himself, the word leaving his lips like an exhale, heavier than it should’ve been. It hung in the cabin air, faint and fragile, as though even speaking it aloud risked breaking the thought entirely.

That was what he needed.

But trust wasn’t something you took. It wasn’t like scavenging, wasn’t like force-feeding a wild animal or trapping it long enough to make it bend. Trust was something painstakingly grown, coaxed out like a shy creature in the underbrush, built over days or weeks or months of proving you weren’t a threat.

He’d seen it before, in the field, in those long hours watching ravens on the edge of the tree-line. You couldn’t rush them. They’d watch you for hours before daring to come closer, clever black shapes tilting their heads, eyes bright with suspicion. Sometimes, they’d come back for days before accepting a scrap of food. Sometimes they wouldn’t come back at all.

And this? This wasn’t even a raven.

The man before him wasn’t just an animal whose instincts Matthew understood from research. He wasn’t just a patient with a broken wing and too many scars. He was something else. Something that moved like a predator but watched like a man. Something that could sit perfectly still for hours, silent and unblinking, yet every inch of him humming with calculation.

He rubbed his thumb along the spine of the notebook, tracing the faded letters that marked years of field use, his mind turning over the same question again and again. ‘How do you earn the trust of something that doesn’t live by human rules?’

He’d built trust with birds before. He knew the signs. The way a raven would tilt its head instead of flaring its wings. The way it would stop hopping back in retreat when you approached. The little trills of sound they gave, soft and curious, when they began to see you as more than a predator.

But this wasn’t the field. This wasn’t just observation.

This was his home.

And the thing he needed to win over wasn’t a corvid testing the edges of his patience. It was a Nachtkrapp, a living myth, lying on his couch, watching him with blood-red eyes like he was one wrong movement away from ceasing to exist. He had no idea how to earn the trust of a creature that looked at him like that, like he was one wrong move away from losing his throat.

So he sat back, stared at the sleeping figure on his couch, and decided he’d have to learn.

Because for reasons he couldn’t even explain to himself, reasons buried under years of study and quiet fascination, he wasn’t scared of the Nachtkrapp.

That’s why he wouldn’t let him die.

Chapter Text

The night came with the cold wind.

It wrapped around Gilbert like a shadow too thick to shake, a biting breath that clawed at his skin and rattled the bare branches of the endless trees around him.

Despite not remembering taking off he flew, wings spread wide as the wind howled around him, a relentless force that lashed at his feathers and tugged at his frame with invisible claws. The cold was sharp enough to bite, slicing through muscle and sinew like a blade of glass, but still he flew driven by instinct or fear or something older and deeper he couldn't name. Below him stretched the vast, desolate expanse of the German wilderness, an ancient and unforgiving sea of green, black and white.

The trees rose like monuments to some forgotten age— Immense pines and towering firs, their trunks gnarled and thick, bark roughened by centuries of wind and storm. Their branches knit together high above, forming a near-unbroken canopy that blotted out the sky. Only the occasional shard of pale winter sunlight speared through the gaps, catching on drifting snowflakes and vanishing just as quickly. The forest was smothering in its silence, vast and endless, a cathedral carved from living shadow.

Beneath him, the ground was buried under a dense, untouched quilt of snow, layer upon layer of white piled thick over root and stone, smooth and unbroken save for the faintest indentations where something once moved long ago. There were no signs of life, no sound but the whisper of the wind through the needles. Everything felt suspended in time, frozen not just by temperature but by the weight of something older and more watchful.

The air was sharp in his lungs, every breath crystalline and stinging. It smelled of wildness and winter— Of pine needles crushed underfoot, of old bark and snow chilled to the core. Beneath those scents lingered something deeper, earthier. The damp musk of soil just beginning to thaw, of decaying leaves sealed beneath the ice like secrets never meant to be unearthed. And then, laced into it all, a whisper of something fouler.

Faint but unmistakable.

The scent of iron, metallic and raw, threaded through the air like smoke through cloth. Not fresh, not sharp, but old and clinging. It mingled with the cold, turning it thick and nauseating, like blood spilled long ago and frozen where it fell. It was a scent that didn’t belong in a place like this, but refused to be ignored.

Death.

The slow rot of something once living, now half-buried and forgotten, reclaimed by snow and silence. It lingered in the air like a memory too faint to grasp but too heavy to ignore— A cloying presence was nestled beneath the crispness of frost and pine. The scent wove through the wind in ghostly threads, subtle at first, then stronger, like a wound reopening in the earth itself. He told himself it was just an animal carcass, some fox or deer claimed by the cold, left to decay beneath layers of snow and time. Nature’s quiet, merciless cycle. He tried to ignore it, to keep flying, but the stench clung to his senses like a warning. Something about it felt too old, too wrong, as if what had died hadn’t done so peacefully or alone.

Gilbert’s wings beat steadily, muscle and feather moving in the practiced rhythm of flight. His breath came in sharp bursts, misting in the frosty air as he soared above the trees. His body felt light, free in a way it hadn’t in years, wings strong and sure, slicing through the cold like a blade. Above the distant horizon, the mountains rose in jagged peaks that gleamed with icy white under the pale winter sun. It was beautiful, endless and looked almost eternal.

He heard the flap of a pair of wings suddenly before he saw him.

Ludwig.

He hovered in the air ahead of him, tall and proud, a figure carved in shadow and frost. His wings stretched wide against the wind, vast and imposing, each feather blacker than midnight, catching the pale winter light with a sheen like polished obsidian. They dwarfed Gilbert’s own, broader in span, denser in structure— They were wings made not just to fly, but to command. The wind tore at his frame, but he didn’t flinch. He stood firm against the storm as though it answered to him.

His blond hair was tousled by the icy breeze, strands fluttering like silk banners around the sharp lines of his face. His eyes, those impossibly clear, cold blue eyes, gleamed beneath the fractured sunlight, alight with something fierce, something sharp. For a moment, the albino felt a flicker of relief at the sight of him. Here was his baby brother, his anchor, his constant, his strength—

But then Ludwig smiled and everything shifted.

The smile that spread across his face was wide. Too wide. Too precise. It split his face in a way that felt practiced, mechanical— An echo of human expression rather than the real thing. The curve of his mouth was flawless, almost surgically so, but it held none of the weight, none of the quiet honesty that usually marked Ludwig’s rare smiles. It didn’t reach his eyes. Those stayed cold.

Gilbert’s breath caught. Because he knew something was off. This wasn’t the brother he knew.

Not the one who spoke in careful words, who rarely smiled at all unless the moment meant something, unless there was cause, or purpose, or a fleeting crack in the armor of his discipline. Ludwig's smiles were rare, deliberate things. Like when Gilbert taught him how to fly for the first time or when he managed to hunt his first buck.

But this smile? This smile didn’t belong.

It was too bright, too polished, stretching across his face like a mask that had been worn too long and started to crack at the corners. It didn’t comfort him like it was supposed to. It was a grin filled with something unfamiliar. Something dark. Something wrong.

There was no warmth in it. Only the chilling sense that whatever looked out from behind Ludwig’s eyes wasn’t him at all.

And then the smell came again but it wasstronger this time to the point it was overpowering his senses. So strong that Gilbert could taste it. So strong that he felt it.

The iron tang of blood hit the back of his throat like a swallowed nail. It coated his tongue, thick and metallic, clinging like syrup, sticky and wrong. It laced the air, heavier than the wind, more real than the trees below. It clung to the frost like a bruise too deep to fade, saturating the snow with a warmth that didn’t belong.

It wasn’t the sterile cold breath of winter anymore. It was wet and almost lukewarm in his mouth. It felt like he was tasting rotting and fresh meat at the same time before his tastebuds finally came to the conclusion that it was living.

It literally choked the sky around him. He gagged, the taste crowding his mouth, smothering every breath. His stomach twisted violently as if rejecting something buried deep in his gut, something familiar. The air curdled around him like spoiled milk, thick with memory and decay. It was the scent of wounds unhealed. Of something dying loudly and endlessly.

“Are you happy like this?” Ludwig’s voice cut through the suffocating air, disturbingly calm as if he was talking about the weather, like water breaking the surface of still ice. Clear, yes, but wrong. It echoed through the trees and came back to him from behind, even though the other German hovered directly ahead.

Gilbert blinked, disoriented. ‘What does he mean?’ He asked himself in his head trying to make sense of the words. ‘What is he asking?’

He tried to answer, but no words came. They clotted in his throat like frozen tar, heavy and useless. His mouth worked soundlessly, jaw aching with the effort, lips cracking under the strain. Even the act of forming a sound felt foreign, like using someone else’s mouth.

Ludwig repeated the question but softer this time and almost tender. Almost loving. “Are you happy like this?”

The words dug into his ears, burrowed deep. The sound of them didn’t belong in the world, didn’t fit the space around them. They rang like a blade dragged slowly across porcelain, delicate but unbearable. The older man’s wings beat once, a jolt of panic sparking through his spine.

He turned to look at Ludwig properly this time and the smile was already gone. No, it wasn’t just gone in fact that would’ve been better than what actually happened.

It was slipping.

The face began to distort— Not like flesh but like wax under a slow flame. The skin sagged and quite literally melted. The lines of Ludwig’s face lost their definition, collapsing inward. His cheeks ran soft, his chin vanished into his throat, his eyes… God, his eyes—

No, not eyes anymore. Only smoothness.

A blank expanse of skin where his features should’ve been. No eyes. No mouth. No nose. Nothing but an absence, pale and seamless, as though the face had been erased by an uncaring hand. The smoothness pulsed faintly, skin trembling as if something beneath it wanted out. Gilbert stared, paralyzed, watching breathlessly as that thing pretending to be his brother, if he could even call this thing that, tilted its head slightly.

Despite the lack of a mouth, Gilbert could still hear the voice. “Are you happy like this?” It asked again in that distinctly German accent, as if tasting the question. As if savoring it.

The faceless shape smiled somehow— He felt it more than saw it. A smile beneath the skin, tugging from the inside, distorting the blankness with impossible movement. Tiny bulges rolled beneath the surface, lips pressing outward from within like larvae squirming in their cocoon. The sound that followed wasn’t speech anymore but it was so much worse. It was breath dragging across vocal cords that no longer knew how to function.

Panic surged through his chest as he tried to spread his wings but realized they weren’t there anymore.

His back felt hollow, stunted, like a cathedral gutted of its arches. His arms were useless stubs, and where once feathers had bloomed, bright, white, proud, they now drifted around him like funeral ash, each one spinning lazily in the freezing air. It was not flight anymore. It was descent. Not graceful, but stripped.

The wind howled louder, turning into a shrieking cacophony that tore through his ears like a siren made of ice and knives. It no longer lifted him. It instead dragged him down, howling with laughter, as it pulled him into the mouth of the forest like a punishment earned.

He was falling. Not like a bird. Not like the mythical creature he was. Not even like a man.

No, like a god cast out for daring to rise.

Like Icarus, but worse. Not scorched by sunlight but devoured by shadow. Gilbert had not flown too close to the sun. He had flown too close to something deeper. Something below. And now the dark was claiming him— Not as a victim, but as a wayward piece of itself.

The forest beneath him cracked open like a wound.

The branches reached up, warping and writhing, no longer trees but limbs. Actual arms twisted by time and clawed by ice. They reached for him like mourners, like jailers, like lovers made cruel by abandonment. Fingers of bark scraped at his falling form, trying to snatch the remnants of his wings, to rip free the last of his defiance. They tore through his clothes like talons through silk, but never quite caught. Just grazed.

As if the forest wanted the impact to finish him.

And it did.

The snow met him like concrete, unyielding and white as bone. The sound wasn’t a thud but it was a crack, the brittle shatter of something fragile and once-beautiful. His back arched violently as agony blossomed through what was left of his wings— Phantom limbs filled with real pain. His vision went white at the edges, not from the snow, but from the shock, blooming like frostbite behind his eyes.

He lay there, half-buried, the breath knocked from his lungs, his ribs like shattered birdcages. He couldn't tell if the red staining the snow around him was real or imagined. But the copper bite in his mouth was undeniable.

Then—

A sharp, ragged gasp tore from his throat.

He woke.

Cold sweat soaked his feathers and skin. His chest heaved with ragged breaths. His crimson eyes snapped open, wide with terror, the nightmare lingering like a shadow clinging to the edges of his mind. The coldness of the dream wrapped around him still, clutching his ribs with icy fingers.

He pressed his wings tight over his face, trying to shut the world out, but the panic was clawing inside his chest, raw and desperate.

Soft, broken sobs spilled from his throat alongside low and guttural croaks. They sounded so unlike the proud, dangerous Nachtkrapp he usually was, so raw and unguarded in the quiet of this den.

The noise stirred the whole cabin.

Matthew, the human who took him in like he was a stray cat, walked in, the sounds seemed to have pulled him from sleep like a thread. His eyes adjusted to the dark. He saw the pale figure curled on the guest bed, shaking, wings pulled tightly over his face as if to hold back the storm raging inside.

Surprisingly, Matthew didn’t move toward him.

He didn’t try to reach for the wings or pull them away. It seemed he knew better than that. He knew that any sudden motion or unwanted touch would only deepen the terror, not soothe it.

Instead, he quietly left the room, careful not to disturb Kumajiro, who stirred but didn’t wake fully, curling tighter on his rug. The blond moved softly, gathering his clothes and slipping into slippers by the door. He padded to the  kitchen, the heated floor warmed his feet.

The place was silent except for the faint crackle of the dying fire. The windows were frosted with icy patterns, outside the storm still raged, whirling snowflakes caught in the sharp wind.

He pulled out a small kettle and set it on the stove. The faint clink of metal against metal rang softly in the cabin’s hush, followed by the gentle whoosh as the flame caught. Soon, the hiss of heating water filled the room like a whisper, steady, rhythmic, soothing. It was the kind of sound that didn’t demand attention but offered presence.

He moved slowly, deliberately. Every motion was quiet, careful, as though the very walls of the cabin might crumble if disturbed too quickly. He didn’t glance toward the bed again, but he felt the broken weight of Gilbert’s cries, shallow and trembling, pressing against the silence like a bruise.

While the kettle warmed, he padded to a small shelf tucked in beside the hearth, fingers brushing past boxes and jars until he found the old ceramic bowl he always used for small things like berries, nuts and seeds. Something simple and familiar. He pulled open the pantry and reached for the jar of unsalted peanuts, pouring them into the bowl with a muted rattle. A modest offering, but one the German had accepted before. Something solid. Nourishing. Nothing too complicated or flavored. Nothing that might overwhelm.

He set the bowl aside and leaned against the counter, arms folded loosely across his chest, letting the heat from the stove warm his fingertips. The air smelled of pine and aged wood, the subtle musk of fur from the sleeping bear nearby, and the fading embers of the fire still breathing faint orange in the hearth.

When the kettle finally whistled, he turned off the flame and reached for the cocoa tin— A dark, weathered thing with a worn paper label. He unscrewed the lid with practiced hands and measured out a generous spoonful into a clay mug, dropping in a touch of honey from the small glass jar he kept for winter. Not too much. Just enough to soften the bitterness, to round out the edges.

He poured the hot water over the powder and honey while calmly stirring it as it bloomed, dark and rich, spiraling into warmth. The smell rose at once, thick, earthy and sweet, chasing back some of the lingering cold in the room. It mingled with the pine and smoke and clung to the beams like a memory.

He held the mug in both hands for a moment, letting the warmth seep into his skin. Then, with the bowl of peanuts in one hand and the cocoa in the other, he walked slowly back to the guest room. His footsteps barely made a sound across the wooden floor.

Gilbert’s breath slowed, but the wings still hid his face, shadowing the glint of red eyes that flickered with pain and confusion. The night’s terror lingered like a wound raw and aching.

Slowly, as if drawn by some quiet need he didn’t fully understand, the German reached out with one trembling claw. His movements were hesitant, almost shy, as though his own body didn’t quite belong to him yet. The tips of his fingers hovered over the small ceramic bowl, pausing for a long moment above the peanuts. He didn’t look up. His head stayed bowed beneath the shelter of his wings, like a bird still afraid to uncurl after the storm.

Then, finally, his claws closed around a few.

He brought them to his mouth with deliberate care, each movement slow and unsure, as though the act of eating was a foreign ritual— One remembered only in fragments. He chewed in small, halting bites, as though unsure if his body would accept the food, if it was real, if it would stay. But he didn’t stop. He ate a few more, still slowly, still tentatively, like each bite grounded him a little more into the waking world.

Matthew said nothing.

He didn’t move any closer. He didn’t try to reach out or interrupt. He remained seated nearby, still and quiet, nursing his cocoa in both hands. His eyes stayed respectfully averted, watching the shadows on the floor instead of the man they belonged to. The Canadian understood this was sacred ground now, delicate and raw. The silence between them wasn’t empty— It was intentional.

He knew that some wounds weren’t soothed by words.

The wind pressed against the cabin from outside, rattling softly at the windows, but it was no longer a threat. Inside, the warmth offered a gentler rhythm. The scent of hot cocoa, woodsmoke, and honey clung to the still air like a blanket. Time moved slower here, stretched and softened, as if even it had agreed to wait.

Gilbert didn’t speak. His breathing was still unsteady, but it had begun to level, like a bird’s chest rising and falling after flight. His wings, though still wrapped around him like armor, had loosened just slightly. Enough for the flicker of firelight to catch in the shine of his white feathers. Enough to see the faint tremble that still lingered along his spine.

Matthew glanced toward him, just briefly. Not to study. Not to pry. Just to see. That made the albino a bit calmer.

His profile was cast in half-shadow, his pale skin catching the orange flicker of flame like marble kissed by warmth. Gilbert’s crimson eyes were dulled with exhaustion, but beneath the weariness, something small flickered— He didn’t know whether to feel ashamed, sad or even grateful. Maybe all three would be appropriate.

But he was here. Still here.

He took another sip of cocoa, letting the warmth bloom gently in his chest. Matthew didn’t speak. He wouldn’t press. It seemed that the human didn’t want to know whatever nightmare had followed him from the dark. Not yet.

The minutes passed slowly.

The soft rustle of feathers against fabric was the only sound besides the occasional crackle from the fire. Gilbert’s breathing grew steadier. The tight coil of tension in his muscles slowly unwound. “Gilbert.” He said softly. “That’s my name.”

He didn’t speak after that or move much.

But he stayed.

And that was enough for now.

Chapter Text

The cabin smelled faintly of woodsmoke and the lingering scent of pine that clung to the beams like a memory.

Matthew had been awake for hours already, long before the pale edge of dawn had managed to creep across the snow outside. The cabin was hushed, wrapped in a cocoon of muted silence broken only by the occasional pop from the stove. Its soft orange glow spilled across the floorboards in uneven patterns, flickering as if it were painting warmth onto the walls themselves. He moved carefully within it, every step deliberate, every motion softened, as though even the air might shatter if handled without care.

This morning he had resolved on something different. Not the rushed bowl of oats or the half-hearted eggs he usually scraped together, nor the utilitarian scraps he’d taught himself to accept when living alone. Today, he wanted more than sustenance. Today was for watching, learning. Not just how Gilbert survived, but how he lived— If he even knew what living in gentleness felt like.

The preparation was almost ritualistic. He laid out ingredients in precise rows as though order itself might help calm the storm of uncertainty always lurking in the cabin. Flour sifted onto the counter in a pale drift, catching faint light so it shimmered like frost along the wood grain. A neat mound of sugar sat nearby, crystalline and still, while a cold pat of butter waited patiently, its edges softening slowly in the heat of the room.

He had chosen pancakes as they were simple, forgiving and extremely adaptable. The kind of food that didn’t demand perfection, but allowed for subtle adjustments. Pancakes could be made crisp at the edges or soft as clouds, stacked high or kept modest. They were a way of asking a question without words.

He measured the flour, stirring it into a small bowl, when he hesitated over the basket of eggs at the counter’s edge. His hand hovered, fingers brushing the fragile shells, and he frowned slightly, lips pressing together in thought. ‘Was this safe? Appropriate?’

The reason he asked himself such things was because he knew Gilbert was not human. He was a Nachtkrapp. They were part bird and part human. Would eggs on his plate be a kindness or an insult? A practical choice of protein or something dangerously close to cannibalism? He grimaced faintly at the thought, withdrawing his hand. He imagined those crimson eyes narrowing, feathers bristling and long claws tapping against the wood if he realized what they were made of.

“Right…” The Canadian murmured under his breath, sliding the eggs aside as though guilty of a small crime. “No eggs. Probably better not to test that boundary yet.”

Instead, he returned to the safer ingredients, whisking self-rising flour, sugar and a pinch of salt together in a slow, steady rhythm for a while to give it a fluffy consistency. He poured milk in carefully, the liquid swirling pale against the dry mixture, then melted butter, stirring until the batter came together smooth and thick. The air filled with the faint sweetness of sugar and the soft promise of something warm, something meant to comfort rather than provoke.

A pan hissed gently as he added the first ladle of batter, the smell of browning butter curling upward into the air. Matthew tilted his head, listening not just to the sizzle but to the quiet around it— The steady hush of the cabin, the muted creak of the timbers as if the house itself were listening.

This wasn’t just cooking.

It was communication even if it was wordless because every movement he made became a kind of grammar. The way he smoothed out a crease in the tablecloth, the precision of each folded napkin even the measured pace of his footsteps across the wooden floor! These were the sentences he could offer in place of conversation. He didn’t have the right words for him yet and he wasn’t certain the Nachtkrapp would fully understand them if he tried.

So instead, he relied on what could be understood which was his intentions and actions.

The way he stirred batter with slow, even circles. The way he placed each item with care rather than haste. He wasn’t just preparing food. He was trying to offer comfort in a form that couldn’t be mistaken for threat or pity. He set out a small plate of bread next, each slice arranged in a fan, neat and inviting. Alongside it, he placed several jars of jam from blueberry, sharp with wildness to golden apple which was soft and mellow and even his pink elderberry blend that caught the morning light like stained glass. Each one chosen not just for flavor, but for the subtle suggestion of choice, of autonomy. Take what you like. Leave the rest.

Another plate followed, bearing cheese and ham laid out with quiet precision. The cheese was pale ivory, thinly sliced, slightly translucent at the edges. The ham, a deeper pink, marbled with delicate veins of fat. He’d arranged them in concentric circles, not out of any culinary flourish, but because he wanted the presentation to feel thoughtful, not thrown together, not utilitarian.

Lastly, the hot chocolate. Despite Matthew not usually being a fan of sweet things (Aside from maple syrup which probably seems stereotypical as he’s Canadian) he saw how Gilbert softened last night at the taste of it. It seemed like a safe choice.

The hot chocolate was dark and rich, it simmered quietly in a small pot on the stove, its scent slowly unfurling into the cabin like a ribbon. The bittersweet cocoa and a hint of vanilla, grounded with the faintest trace of cinnamon. The steam curled into the air in lazy spirals, rising past the rough beams overhead, catching the golden morning light like smoke from a dream.

He would never say aloud what he hoped this might mean to the other. Wouldn’t ask, or press, or label it hospitality or healing. But each careful step he took, each quiet arrangement, each softened sound, was a line in a language only the heart could hear.

There was no need to rush, not today, not ever, not with Gilbert still somewhere between sleep and the waking world. Speed belonged to emergencies, to fear. But this morning was about calm, about creating something soft enough that even a creature carved from myth and shadow could step into it without alarm.

Matthew had learned the hard way that sudden movements were like lightning to the Nachtkrapp. A dropped plate, a too-fast turn even the scrape of a chair leg on the floorboards could summon a reaction like thunder with his feathers bristling in an explosion of white, eyes flaring crimson and claws flashing before instinct caught up to intention. Luckily he hadn’t been hurt, but only because he had adapted quickly, learned how to be quiet, to be still, to be intentional.

So he moved through the cabin as if it were a sacred space. He even left a soft blanket folded on the couch to ensure Gilbert wouldn’t feel cold.

He hoped the nightmares hadn’t left something permanent behind like some splinter lodged too deep to reach. The way Gilbert had thrashed awake, clawed at nothing, feathers fanned out in alarm… It still haunted the edges of Matthew’s thoughts like smoke that refused to clear. He hadn’t expected peace, not really. In fact, after the night they'd had, he’d half-expected the albino to be gone by morning— That he’d have just vanished into the snow and shadow the way injured animals sometimes fled the moment they could move.

But he hadn’t fled. He hadn’t even stirred.

Instead, Gilbert had remained curled in the nest of blankets, body lax, wings tucked in, his breathing slow and even. Not the shallow, restless rhythm of someone merely exhausted, but something closer to true rest. The blond had watched for a long time, uncertain if it was a trap laid by trauma with stillness only masking tension or if had had finally, briefly, found enough safety in this quiet space to slip into a deeper sleep. A human kind of sleep. One earned, not just collapsed into.

So Matthew continued his work in the kitchen as though the fragile calm were a living thing that might fracture at the wrong sound. He moved with a reverence usually reserved for rituals, mindful of the weight of each step, the placement of each object. He kept the kettle’s whistle low, nudging it from the heat before it could screech. The pan sizzled quietly with butter, its scent curling warm and golden into the air. Floorboards creaked underfoot, but only softly, as if they too understood what was at stake.

Even the birds outside seemed to know, their chirping subdued, like a lullaby offered to the woods. The usual morning chaos, the banging of pots, the scrape of chair legs and the groan of the old floor, was absent. Every motion was intentional, subdued. There was no need for noise, no appetite for it.

Because in that silence, a kind of language bloomed.

And then, just barely, he heard it.

The soft whisper of feathers shifting. A subtle rustle from the bedroom, too fluid to be the wind, too deliberate to be the settling of fabric. A slow exhale that wasn’t his own and the faint sound of claws scraping against wood.

Gilbert was awake.

He didn’t look directly. Not yet. Matthew continued preparing the food, flipping a pancake with a practiced flick, stirring cocoa with slow, deliberate circles, pouring slices of bread onto a plate in neat stacks. He watched the light change in the room instead, noticed how the frost on the windowpanes caught the sunlight and refracted it in delicate shards across the floor. Every movement was measured, unobtrusive. He didn’t want to startle Gilbert, didn’t want to demand attention or engagement.

The door to the bedroom creaked softly. He glanced, careful not to meet those red eyes just yet. The German emerged slowly, feathers still ruffled at the edges, the fine down at the back of his neck standing on end in agitation. His movements were deliberate, almost rehearsed: wings folding neatly against his back, claws flexing slightly, claws catching the light like pale steel. His crimson gaze flicked to the kitchen, then away, assessing, calculating. Matthew sensed the hesitation. The creature was aware, still tense, still on edge.

He didn’t say anything so Matthew didn’t either. Instead, he carried the plates carefully toward the small table near the stove, setting each one down with measured hands before he slid a chair out for him, placing it across from his own, but left it empty for now. The albino paused near the threshold, tilting his head slightly, crimson eyes scanning the display. There was something almost human in the way he regarded the food, but it was laced with suspicion.

He didn’t move closer. He simply watched.

Matthew took a seat at his own place, picking up the fork and knife as if he were eating, but not really. His eyes rested on the white scruff of hair from the corner of his vision. Subtle details leapt out at him like the way the feathers at the back and sides of Gilbert’s neck slowly lowered when he wasn’t startled, the slight twitch of a claw when his tension rose and the faint pull at the corners of his mouth that betrayed the smallest hint of curiosity.

He remained rigid at the edge of the room, wings tucked so tightly against his back it looked almost painful with his shoulders drawn taut, as though even the space between them might betray him if left unguarded. Every feather was sleeked down with control, white and sharp against the dim wood of the cabin, yet Matthew saw the tension beneath the surface like how the pinions at the edge of his wings flexed minutely. He stood like a guard at the border of a world he didn’t yet trust.

The Canadian made no move to bridge the distance. He didn’t speak. Didn’t coax. Instead, he sipped his hot cocoa slowly, letting the warmth settle into his hands and chest like an anchor dropped into deep water. Each breath he took was intentional, calm, his posture loose in quiet invitation rather than demand. It wasn’t performance but it was offering. He was allowing Gilbert decide.

The silence between them stretched long, but not hollow. It was a waiting silence, delicate and watchful. Not unlike the way one waited for a wild animal to decide if it would drink from the same stream.

Minutes passed.

Matthew, without staring, tracked every detail from the way Gilbert’s clawed fingers flexed and uncurled at his sides, the faint twitch of an ear as if listening for some sound beyond the walls to the sharp stillness that seemed to tighten around him when the stove cracked too loud or the kettle clicked as it cooled. The Nachtkrapp was coiled, ready to flee or fight, maybe both, but something held him there. Maybe it was the scent of food. Maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the memory of waking up warm for once, and not in fear.

Then, at last, something shifted.

A slow, subtle twitch of feathers, barely more than a breath, and Gilbert’s wings relaxed just enough for the tips to fall slightly, brushing faintly against the wooden floor with a soft whisper. His eyes flicked toward the table. Not at Matthew. Not yet. But at the food. At the arrangement.

He moved. One step. Then another.

Every motion was cautious, his claws clicking softly against the floor, body language poised on the knife-edge between instinct and decision. He approached the spread like one might approach a trap— Half-expecting it to vanish the moment he reached out. His crimson gaze darted quickly over the offerings. They first went to the pancakes, which he studied with a furrowed brow, as if puzzled by the texture of the soft, cloud-like things that didn’t seem to serve a purpose. Then the bread and jam, the array of glistening jars catching the firelight like jewels. Finally, his eyes paused on the cocoa.

He lingered there.

Matthew watched the way his gaze narrowed slightly, recognition blooming just faintly at the scent. The creature’s claws flexed again, this time not in warning, but in thought. His attention returned to the bread. After a long pause, he reached out slowly.

He selected a single slice, handled it with almost surgical precision, as though still uncertain it was truly meant for him. Tearing off a small corner, he raised it to his mouth and took a bite. His eyes never left Matthew’s. Not for a second.

He held the gaze with gentle steadiness. No challenge. No force. Just presence.

He watched the subtle language of Gilbert’s body unfold in those next quiet seconds. The slight shift in his weight, the nearly imperceptible flutter at the tips of his wings and the way his shoulders stayed high for a moment longer before easing down just a breath they all pointed to wary relaxation. The albino moved to the chair but didn’t sit yet. Instead, he hovered there like a bird unsure of a perch, claws grazing the backrest, reading every detail of the space.

Eventually, cautiously, he lowered himself into the seat.

His wings folded closer. Not quite at ease, but no longer braced for flight. He ate in silence with small bites, precise movements as he watched the food as much as Matthew. He chewed like someone trained to detect poison, every flavor suspect until proven otherwise. Yet… He didn’t stop.

He stayed quiet and marked every sign— Every tension that didn’t return, every glance that lingered longer. The feathers along Gilbert’s neck rose and fell in short, shallow shifts, an involuntary signal of thought or feeling from head to claw Gilbert was being watched but not by a predator. Not yet at least. His talons tapped once against the edge of the table, then stilled. There was no explosion of alarm. No threat.

Matthew made a mental note. ‘Still wary. Still measuring. But not rejecting and showing signs of improvement.’ He thought instinctively. The body language was uncertain, yes. Defensive, absolutely. But it wasn’t the hard, cold posture of someone preparing for violence.

The Nachtkrapp’s gaze finally lifted from the food, meeting his own azure eyes for a brief, intense moment. The red eyes were sharp, inquisitive, and yet tinged with the residual tremor of fear from the previous night. He finally spoke, voice low and careful, still thick with German cadence, “Why do you keep staring at me like that?”

He smiled, not wide, not showy, just enough that the corners of his eyes crinkled, warmth softening his features. “I’m taking care of my patient.” Matthew said gently, tone light but not flippant, as though that single sentence explained everything that had come before it, and everything that might come after.

Gilbert paused mid-chew, his crimson eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “Pae-cient?” He echoed slowly, voice shaped by the weight of his accent, every syllable tentative— As though tasting the word might reveal its function. He tilted his head like a bird puzzling over something unfamiliar, feathers along the back of his neck lifting in a small, reflexive flare.

Matthew rested his forearms lightly on the table trying not to lean in. “It’s a word we use for…” He paused trying to think of how to explain in a non-offensive manner, his tone as even and unobtrusive as the steam curling from his cup, “It’s what we call someone when they’re hurt or sick.” A small shrug followed, the motion casual, but the intent carefully wrapped in it. “It means… I’m responsible for making sure you’re okay. That you have what you need. That you’re safe.”

Gilbert’s jaw worked slowly, finishing the bite of bread as if the act itself helped him process. His eyes never left the taller man, searching them not for deceit, but for hidden obligation. The word was alien, yes, but it carried echoes of something that scratched at the edge of familiarity. The idea of being someone's "Patient" wasn't offensive, but it felt strange. Like stepping into clothes not tailored for him that were too soft in places where he’d only known hard lines.

“Safe…” He murmured, almost to himself, as if testing the feel of it in his mouth.

Matthew gave a small nod, not pressing. “It’s not a job I take lightly.” He said before stopping mid-sentence. “It’s not something I do out of pity. Just something I do because I care.” He met those ruby colored eyes with calm gaze that showed contentment. “That’s all.”

He frowned faintly, the expression not angry but searching. The feathers at the albino’s neck ruffled again, then settled slowly. His claws tapped once against the side of his cup, thoughtful. He looked down at the bread still in his hand, turning it once between his fingers as if reassessing its meaning now that it had been served with such an explanation. Matthew noticed the subtle relaxation as he ate. The feathers lowered slightly, tension easing just enough to see the movement. Which despite being small was important.

When Gilbert finished the first plate, he gently slid the pancake plate closer. “Try one of these.” he said quietly, almost like a suggestion rather than an instruction.

With an odd look Gilbert examined them, sniffing carefully, picking one up with deliberate claws. He brought it to his mouth, chewing slowly. Matthew noted the pattern: Sweet flavors caused his eyes to flick briefly toward the jar of honey, savory ones made him pause longer, and textures mattered as it seemed soft pancakes were preferred over the slightly crisp edges. This wasn’t just a meal; it was a study, a mapping of taste, a subtle understanding of a creature who lived somewhere between myth and biology. After all Matthew knew basically nothing about Nachtkrapps except for outdated logs and fairytales.

Finally, after tasting the pancakes, He looked up again, crimson eyes narrowing. “Why do you watch me so closely?” He asked, voice quieter this time, almost uncertain. Matthew set down his utensils, meeting his gaze directly. “Because I need to know my patient is okay. Because I care.” He didn’t elaborate further. The cabin was quiet except for the soft hiss of the kettle and the crackle of the stove.

His white wings twitched, but he didn’t pull back. He chewed slowly, considering the words. The German didn’t fully understand them, he was not human, after all, but the sentiment reached him in a way words alone could not.

Matthew leaned back slightly in his chair, fingers absently brushing the rim of his mug, then trailing over the worn grain of the table. The silence between them had stretched just long enough to feel settled—not awkward, but tentative, like frost that hadn’t yet melted. He glanced toward the window, where morning light caught on snow still clinging to the eaves in thick, slumping drifts.

Then, without shifting his tone or posture, he offered in the softest voice he could muster, “Would you like to help me with the garden today?” The word hung in the air like smoke.

Gilbert stilled not knowing how to answer. It was the kind of stillness that didn’t belong to humans as every muscle of his locked in place with unnatural precision, even his breath held. Crimson eyes darted toward the frost-laced glass, narrowing, calculating. He blinked once, slow and deliberate, before his gaze returned to Matthew. “Garden?” He repeated, the single word shaped with a mixture of suspicion and faint disbelief, as if it were a concept he hadn’t encountered in years or perhaps ever.

Matthew nodded, deliberately slow. “The greenhouse is overdue for some attention.” He said, voice quiet, soothing, but never condescending. “There’s not much growing right now, just overwintering plants. A few root vegetables. Some herbs. But it’ll help you to move around and get some fresh air.” His tone softened further, almost coaxing, but not quite.

His wings gave an involuntary twitch, feathers shivering down his spine. The fine down along his collarbone lifted like static, the reaction more instinct than choice. His claws flexed once on the table’s edge, then slowly relaxed again. Those blood-red eyes stayed fixed on Matthew, unreadable. “What would I do there?” He asked finally, his voice low, wary. “I do not grow things.”

“You don’t need to.” Matthew said, gently. “Just help. Loosen the soil. Clear dead leaves. Breath a little. I could use the extra set of hands.” Weirdly enough Gilbert snorted faintly, though not cruelly. “You think claws are helpful in a place full of fragile things?” Matthew didn’t flinch. “I think you’re more careful than you pretend to be.” That earned him a sharp glance that was too quick to be hostile, too brief to be called defensive. Something flickered behind the Nachtkrapp’s eyes that was not offense, but the echo of something unfamiliar. Consideration, maybe. He looked down at his hands, at the claws, stained with the last of breakfast’s crumbs, and flexed them again. The tips scraped lightly against the wood, sound soft but pointed.

Finally, his gaze lifted to the window once more, where snow melted slowly in slanted sunlight, dripping in intermittent rhythm. “It is cold.” He said in that distinctive accent as if still testing for a trap in the offer. “You’ll be dressed for it.” Matthew replied quickly before speaking up again. “The greenhouse is warm once the sun hits it.” Silence followed. Not the tense kind, but the kind that came before something important. Then, with a sharp, subtle motion, a single, almost imperceptible nod, it seemed the albino agreed

“Fine.” Gilbert’s voice wasn’t sharp or frustrated, just resigned, like someone who had finally made a decision after letting it hang in the air for too long. He let out a quiet breath as if releasing something he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. “I’ll help you garden.”

His smile came slowly, almost imperceptibly, a small, quiet thing. It didn’t stretch wide or make any grand gestures. It was the kind of smile that simply acknowledged the moment— A soft acceptance of what was being given, not asking for anything in return, but content in the truth of it. It was a choice but one Gilbert didn’t have to make yet still had.

“Thank you.” He said, voice low, the words settling into the space between them like snow.

He stood, the motion unhurried, deliberate, gathering the plates with care as though the dishes themselves were part of the ritual they’d just completed. His fingers moved with a steady rhythm, the scrape of ceramic barely louder than the hush of breath and stove crackle.

He paused as he reached the sink, glancing back over his shoulder, not directly at Gilbert, but enough that the glance landed near him, like a thread offered, not tugged. “I’ll clean up in here.” He said, the quiet cadence of his voice steady and soft, “Then we’ll go.”

Gilbert didn’t answer right away. He simply watched him go, wings shifting subtly behind him. His posture hadn’t relaxed fully, not yet, but the rigid line of his shoulders had eased, just slightly, just enough to notice if one was paying attention.

He ate the remaining pancakes in relative silence, occasionally glancing at Matthew, measuring the human’s movements against his own instincts. Matthew continued to watch carefully as he cleaned up, noting the subtle ruffles of feathers, the tension in the shoulders, the way Gilbert’s breathing shifted when he relaxed even slightly. Each small observation was a step forward. A tentative bridge being built across suspicion and fear.

By the time breakfast was finished and the plates were cleaned, the cabin was warm and bright. The storm outside had softened, snow drifting lazily from the trees rather than whipping against the walls. Matthew gathered the dishes, humming softly as he worked, the other standing nearby, watching with a mixture of curiosity and detachment.

When the last plate was set aside, the Canadian gestured toward the door. “Ready for the greenhouse?”

Gilbert nodded again, and for a moment, the sharp edges of tension softened just enough that he could see the faintest hint of anticipation, or at least, acceptance, in the crimson eyes. He didn’t say anything further, simply letting Gilbert take the first step outside, wings flexing in preparation for movement, claws brushing against the snow-dusted wooden floor.

Outside, the world was pale and clean. The last storm had passed in the night, and now snow clung only to the branches and the edges of the greenhouse roof. The air was sharp, smelling of pine and melting frost. The Nachtkrapp stepped lightly, his wings flexing as if testing the wind.

Matthew followed, basket in one hand, tools in the other.

The greenhouse loomed like a relic at the edge of the house. Its panes streaked with fog, soil inside dark and resting. They stepped through the door into the quiet warmth. Inside, breath clouded faintly, but the air was rich with the scent of earth and green things beginning.

Matthew stepped inside the greenhouse first, breath fogging faintly in the warmth that clung just below the ceiling. It smelled of damp earth, old wood, and the faint green note of herbs overwintering in the corners. Sunlight filtered through fogged glass in narrow beams, glinting off the frost still clinging to the panes.

He crossed to the bench where his tools lay, then turned, holding out a trowel and a pair of worn gardening gloves. “We’ll start here.” He said, his voice low and even, not wanting to startle the other from the delicate calm he’d carried all the way from the cabin. “Just loosening soil. Checking roots.”

Gilbert accepted the trowel, his long fingers curling around it with an uncertain grip like he was holding a weapon too small to be of any use. When he extended the gloves, the Nachtkrapp paused, staring at them as though they were objects from another world entirely.

He took one and turned it over in his claws then glanced sharply at Matthew.

“I don’t think I can wear these…” He said, voice caught somewhere between exasperation and amusement. His tone made it clear that this was not refusal out of offense, but simple, unfiltered practicality but h tried to slide one over his hand anyway.

The glove stretched… Then it immediately tore open at the seams, the fabric giving way around the curve of his talons with a soft rip. The blond winced a little, not at the loss of the glove, but at the expression that flickered across the other man’s face which was a mixture of annoyance, embarrassment, maybe even shame, quickly buried under a scowl.

“My claws will get dirty.” The albino said, voice flat as if that would deter him. “You can wash them after.” Matthew replied, a smile warming the edge of his tone. “I promise it won’t get under your claws much.” That was a lie but one future him would have to deal with not current him.

After a quick glance Gilbert gave a faint, dry huff that wasn’t quite a laugh but also wasn’t dismissive. He dropped the shredded glove, kept the trowel, and stepped deeper into the greenhouse. His wings shifted slightly, brushing the narrow walkway, and he folded them in tight with deliberate precision, like a person edging through a room full of glass.

He lowered himself slowly to a crouch near the first bed of soil, claws flexing once before sinking into the earth with surgical delicacy. Matthew watched in silence as he began to dig not with the mindless enthusiasm of a gardener, but with the concentration of someone dismantling a puzzle piece by piece. Each movement was cautious, meticulous. He loosened the compacted soil, unearthing old roots, pulling weeds with a level of care that seemed to surprise even himself.

The first few minutes passed in irritated muttering. It was a mix of “This one is dead.” and “Your plants are weak.” but the muttering never turned into refusal.

He kept working.

He dug deeper, peeling back layers of winter-stiff earth with deft, sharp motions, his claws slipping between the roots with surprising gentleness. Matthew knelt a few feet away, trimming brittle stalks from overwintered rosemary and watching from the corner of his eye.

There was something almost strange in the contrast. This creature, who could tear flesh with those same claws, who had startled birds into silence with a glance, now knelt among sleeping roots and thawing soil, his albino feathers catching faint rays of sun through the glass. The quiet sound of trowel and claw working in tandem became a rhythm, not unlike breath.

Matthew watched quietly for a time, then began trimming dead leaves from a row of overwintered herbs. “You’re good at this.” He said after a while.

Gilbert snorted. “Digging? I was born to tear things apart.”

Matthew chuckled. “Maybe. But putting things together… That matters much more.”

This time he didn’t reply, but his claws moved more gently. The German replanted a sprig of mint with unexpected care, patting the soil down like it was something fragile. They worked in tandem. Matthew repotted small seedlings. Gilbert cleared a row of dead plants. At one point, a squirrel passed by the greenhouse roof, shadow flickering. Gilbert flinched, but didn’t flee.

He noticed but didn’t say a word.

Later, they sat on a low wooden bench near the compost bin, breathing in the quiet scent of loam and sunlight through glass. Gilbert’s claws were caked in dirt. He stared at them, then at Matthew’s hands, equally filthy.

“You like this?” Gilbert asked finally, incredulously.

Matthew looked around at the light, the soil, and the stillness that came from being so far away from other humans after being stuck in another’s shadow for so long, so far from the noise of obligation, the jarring interruptions of city life, and the brittle tension that always seemed to thread itself through human interaction. Out here, everything breathed slower. The snow muffled the world. The trees stood as silent witnesses. There was a kind of stillness that wasn’t empty, but full of scent and sound and life.

He exhaled slowly, the faintest smile curling at the corner of his mouth. “It’s calming, no?” Matthew said. His blue eyes weren’t on the Nachtkrapp now, no, they were looking up at the darkening sky.

Gilbert didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his hands, dirt wedged beneath the curve of his claws, the dry, cracked soil clinging in stubborn streaks along his pale skin. He flexed his fingers slightly, watching the filth shift and crumble. His feathers were dusted with earth, a smear of green clinging to one wing joint where he'd leaned too close to the mint. By all appearances, he looked more animal than man, wild, strange and wholly out of place among the rows of sprouting life.

Yet somehow he wasn’t.

The albino’s crimson eyes narrowed slightly at the question, though the reaction lacked its usual edge. There was no bristle of feathers. No flash of irritation. Only a quiet, unreadable expression. He looked back toward the beds they’d just worked, the neat rows of loosened soil, the newly repositioned rosemary, the transplanted mint and then toward the corner where a tiny green shoot had broken through the earth sometime in the last hour, reaching toward the filtered light above.

He tilted his head.

“…It is quiet.” He admitted at last, as though prying the words loose from somewhere unfamiliar. Almost like it was a jinx. “It is not empty.”

Matthew glanced at him, surprised by the phrasing. “Yeah.” He said softly, nodding once. “That’s exactly it.”

They sat there in companionable silence for a little while longer, the faint scent of damp soil curling in the warm greenhouse air. Outside, a breeze stirred the trees. The light filtering through the glass had softened to a warm gold, casting their shadows long across the floor.

Gilbert’s gaze drifted upward, following the shift of branches against the sky. His wings twitched, not with tension, but in response to the light. It caught along the edge of his feathers, illuminating the fine down with an almost imperceptible glow. He didn’t speak again, but his posture no longer read as defensive.

Matthew stood slowly, brushing off his hands. He offered a hand not as a demand, but an invitation. He wanted Gilbert to trust him. Not ans animal would trust an human but in the way one would trust an equal. Of course, he eyed the outstretched hand for a long moment.

Then, without a word, he took it. Willingly.

Chapter Text

The storm had finally passed.

Outside the tall windows of the cabin, the forest shimmered with the aftermath of the storm. Rain clung to the branches in glittering droplets, running in slow rivulets down the trunks of ancient pines. The scent of wet earth, moss, and resin filled the air. It was fresh, sharp and grounding. A soft mist still clung to the forest floor, curling around the roots like breath.

Inside, the library was a world unto itself. The stained glass windows filtered the afternoon sunlight into fractured hues of green and gold, casting the tall shelves in a dreamlike glow. The structure, though humble from the outside, held a cavernous interior with walls lined from floor to ceiling with books, scrolls and glass-front cabinets filled with carefully preserved specimens from feathers to skulls even blood and unlabeled bones.

At the room’s heart sat a heavy oak table, its wide surface covered in a sprawling, chaotic tapestry of research. A topographical map had been pinned flat at one end with its corners held down with weathered field notebooks. Beside it lay a pair of battered binoculars, a compass, vials of preserved plant matter and a microscope angled to catch the light.

Matthew leaned over the mess with quiet focus, a pencil tucked behind one ear and a smudge of ink on his sleeve. His pale fingers moved quickly and precisely as he recorded his latest findings into a leather, bound field journal, his handwriting neat, exact, and densely packed. Open beside him were several charts tracking migratory bird patterns over the last five years, annotated in multiple colors.

He paused to cross-reference a data set, tracing his finger along a hand-drawn graph marked with temperature anomalies. The storm that had just passed was the third major weather event this season alone. It was unusual for the region and possibly disruptive to nesting cycles. He jotted a note: ‘Storm intensity consistent with abnormal El Niño pattern; compare nesting behavior of Corvus corax population in NW quadrant. Increased altitude range? Check tomorrow.’

He flipped to another page where he’d logged birdcalls recorded on wax cylinders, outdated tech, but reliable and durable. Beside the notes were sketches. They were of large-winged figures in flight, some clearly raptors, but others… They were less easily identified.

His gaze lingered on one of those sketches. A massive avian shape with an exaggerated wingspan and odd curvature of the limbs. Something he'd seen only briefly, far above the canopy during a fog-heavy dusk. Something that didn’t quite match anything in his official taxonomy guides.

Matthew exhaled slowly and pushed that drawing aside.

On the far corner of the table sat a small digital weather monitor, still damp from being retrieved earlier that morning. He checked the logged readings, barometric pressure had dropped fast before the storm, then spiked. The erratic shifts could confuse migratory instincts, even among more resilient species. He made a note to check his camera traps. He had three positioned in the northern ridge, where he’d recorded increased nocturnal activity.

It was all ordinary, at first glance. The habits of birds, the rhythm of the forest, the subtle signs of changing climate. But layered beneath the scientific routine was something stranger.

Hidden under a clean sheet of parchment were several books, their spines filled with myths and warnings. Volumes bound in leather, their pages brittle and stained with age, books with names like Bestiarium Obscura, On the Night-Feathered Ones, and Cryptid Records of the Black Forest Region. These were not part of any accredited curriculum. Yet Matthew returned to them again and again, cross-referencing their descriptions with sightings that, officially, never happened.

Deep down, he knew what he was looking for wasn’t anything normal. His work was careful, methodical, and couched in science, but the margins of his journals told another story. A glyph here. A feather type that didn’t belong to any known species. Strange tracks in the snow that defied classification. Reports from isolated mountain villages of winged shadows, of unnatural calls in the night.

He didn’t always believe. But he couldn’t afford to ignore the patterns either.

With a quiet sigh, the Canadian sat back for a moment and ran a hand through his soft, blond locks. The silence in the cabin was absolute, broken only by the faint ticking of the wall clock and the distant drip of rainwater from the eaves.

His eyes drifted to the stained-glass window. For a moment, he thought he saw movement, just a flicker of wings between the trees.

A sharp knock shattered the stillness, abrupt and hollow against the thick wooden door. It echoed through the cabin like a stone dropped into deep water.

Matthew froze, heart leaping into his throat. His pencil slipped from his fingers and rolled off the table with a quiet clink, vanishing into the soft rug below. For a moment, he just stood there, breath shallow, listening. He was half expecting the knock to come again, louder this time, more insistent. But the silence held.

Then, instinct took over.

He moved swiftly, sweeping the leather-bound texts into his arms. Their weight was familiar, too familiar, and it made his stomach clench as he crouched, pushing them into the shadowed space beneath the heavy oak table. The aged spines thudded softly against the wood. A sheet of blank parchment followed, spread hastily over the table’s exposed surface like a veil.

No time to check if everything was hidden. No time to think.

He couldn’t let Gilbert see. Not yet. Not when he was so close.

He straightened slowly, exhaling through his nose to steady himself. His hands still smelled faintly of ink and cedar bark. Quickly he ran them down the front of his cardigan, smoothing the fabric, then stepped toward the door. “Come in.” He called, tone carefully level.

The old iron latch clicked. The door opened with a low, reluctant creak, as though the cabin itself didn’t want to be disturbed. Then the albino stepped inside.

The light caught him immediately, streaming through the stained glass and fracturing across his form in pale greens and golds.

Matthew’s blue eyes flicked over him automatically, the way one takes in a familiar view after a long absence, not searching for something new, but noting what had changed. Gilbert stood just inside the doorway, framed in fractured green and amber light from the stained glass. Damp curls of platinum-white hair clung to his forehead, and his breath still steamed faintly in the cool, post-storm air. Water beaded on the tips of his feathers, glinting like dew, and his wings, neatly folded now, shivered once before settling against his back with quiet discipline.

His boots were scuffed and stained, dark with wet soil and flecked with crushed leaves, a few still clinging stubbornly to the laces. The cuffs of his trousers bore a soft smear of dirt, the kind that came not from a single misstep, but from hours crouched low, fingers in the soil. A faint, earthy scent trailed after him, pine needles, damp bark, crushed rosemary and the raw, green bitterness of pulled weeds. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it smelled like rain-soaked growth and quiet labor.

So he’d been in the garden after all.

His gaze sharpened as it traced the curve of the Nachtkrapp’s back, feathers sleek, preened and still carrying a few residual droplets, and settled on his hands. Or rather, the claws. One was faintly smudged at the tip with dirt that hadn’t quite come off, the dark grit tucked stubbornly beneath the curve like a secret half-told. Matthew’s eyes lingered there for a heartbeat longer than necessary, mind cataloguing the detail like all the others.

Gilbert noticed. His crimson eyes rolled with theatrical annoyance, and he let out an exaggerated sigh. “Ugh, the garden was a nightmare today!” He muttered, shaking out his coat and sending a small spray of water droplets across the entryway. “All those weeds and stubborn roots. It took forever just to get everything trimmed and neat. I swear the plants are conspiring against me, Mattie—”

His tone was petulant, but Matthew caught the edge of satisfaction buried beneath it which was muted but unmistakable. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing. He’d come to know Gilbert’s gardening grumbles well by now. The muttered complaints, the dramatic sighs, the mock battles with vines and brambles— Those were just part of the ritual.

He knew the truth behind it, too. The quiet joy Gilbert took in the work. The way he lingered in the dirt long after the tasks were technically finished. The reverence with which he sometimes handled a new sprout or a late bloom, as if recognizing something older than language. He never spoke of it directly, but it was there in the careful way he laid mulch, in the way he coaxed life from the earth with patient, practiced hands.

Even when his claws got in the way.

Even when it left him streaked with dirt and sore by dusk.

Gilbert might grumble, but he had seen the look on his face when the first seeds sprouted in spring. That look had nothing to do with obligation and everything to do with belonging.

He flopped into the chair across from Matthew with the grace of someone entirely unconcerned with appearances. His damp coat sagged as he sank into the cushions, and his left wing unfurled in a long, lazy stretch, feathers splaying with a soft rustle like parchment pages shifting in the quiet. A few droplets flicked off the tips, catching the fractured light from the stained-glass window before vanishing into the rug. He let his left wing linger for a moment, part stretch and part display, before folding it back with an audible sigh, as if the very act of sitting down had been an ordeal. His crimson eyes scanned the room out of habit, flickering from the bookshelves to the cabinets and back again.

There was always something in his gaze when he looked at the library, a flicker of restlessness masked as disinterest. Curiosity, restrained just enough to seem casual. He tried to play it off, but Matthew had come to recognize the signs.

Gilbert was fascinated by the books, even if he never admitted it out loud. Not the data logs or the scientific journals, not the ones the blond spent hours buried in, but the older volumes. The strange ones. The ones about classical love stories or horrific children’s stories.

His eyes lingered for a moment on a shelf labeled “Mythology for idiots.” then drifted to the darker corner where the unmarked books lived. Matthew said nothing, watching only with the corner of his eye. He’d learned that too-direct a comment would make Gilbert pull back like a startled cat. Better to let him come to things on his own. Eventually, with a dramatic huff, Gilbert eyes dilated and he leaned forward and plucked a thick, well-worn dictionary from a nearby shelf. The spine creaked as he flipped it open, landing somewhere near the middle with deliberate carelessness. He began turning pages with exaggerated boredom, one claw tapping against the edge of each sheet before he flicked it over with a flourish.

Matthew glanced up briefly from his notes, expression unreadable. How a creature of myths could find joy in a dictionary of all things was something he would never understand…

Still, the sight of him thumbing through the pages, with those sharp claws and garden-dirt still clinging under his nails, somehow fit him weirdly enough. Everything Gilbert did was a strange dance between the mundane and the unnatural.

He returned to his work with a low murmur, voice steady but not unkind. “The migratory birds are shifting their patterns this year. Climate changes are affecting their routes… More sightings farther north than usual.” Those words were muttered unconsciously. Matthew secretly hoped that the other knew the reason for this phenomenon since he was a Nachtkrapp.

Gilbert gave no reply at first, seemingly absorbed in his chosen book. His eyes traced down a column of text with comically intense focus, as if deciphering sacred script. He paused. Blinked.

Then, without warning, Gilbert struck the page with the flat of his clawed finger— Not violently, but with a kind of decisive, gleeful finality, like a child uncovering buried treasure in the garden and knowing, deep in his bones, that no one could take this moment from him. “AWESOME!” He proclaimed, the word bursting out in his thick German accent, jagged at the edges, as though it had been waiting behind his teeth for too long and had finally been granted permission to escape into the rafters of the library.

The sound echoed, clear, proud and strangely reverent, as if he weren’t simply quoting a dictionary definition, but naming something sacred, something true, something that had waited quietly in ink and vellum for someone like him to notice it. The word seemed to vibrate in the air for a moment after, catching in the corners of the stained-glass light like a spell half-cast.

He blinked once, slowly, his pencil pausing mid-notation as if even it had been completely caught off-guard. When he looked up, expression carefully composed but with the faintest edge of disbelief pulling at his features. “I’m sorry?” Matthew said softly.

Gilbert’s face lit up with that particular grin, the one full of too-sharp teeth and far too much pride, the one that meant he’d made a discovery that, regardless of its actual usefulness, he found profoundly important. “Awesome.” He said again, softer now, more deliberate while tapping the word on the page as though summoning its power. “It means something that inspires awe, or wonder, or even reverence. That's what it says, right here. You can check it yourself. It’s official. You can’t argue with the book, Mattie.” His voice held a strange undercurrent, still playful, still smug, but threaded with something more earnest beneath the theatrical lilt, like a violin string vibrating just beneath the surface of a loud piano chord.

It was as though, in that moment, the word had attached itself to him not just by definition but by destiny.

Matthew stared at him for a second longer, absorbing the absurd sincerity of the scene— The creature of nightmare folklore, wings still damp from sweat and playing in the rain, claws still rimmed with garden soil was now sitting in his library and declaring himself awesome with the conviction of a prophet and the delight of a child discovering fireflies.

“You dug through a dictionary just to define a word you already use fifteen times a day?” He asked finally, deadpan. His brows were already furrowed which caused the Nachtkrapp to straighten slightly, chin lifting in mock indignation. “No.” He said, almost solemnly. “I didn’t define it. I claimed it.”

Matthew gave a soft exhale through his nose, the closest he usually came to laughing outright, but said nothing at first. He let the silence settle again between them, just for a heartbeat, long enough to let the absurdity of it pass through him like a breeze, but when he spoke, his voice had softened at the edges. “It’s a good word…” He said, half to himself. “And it fits, I suppose.”

The other’s grin widened into something more triumphant, as though he'd just been granted knighthood. “Told you.” Gilbert said, wings shifting slightly with the pleased weight of attention. “It is a perfect word. Full of meaning. Applies to me, applies to thunderstorms, applies to fresh strawberries and birds of prey and certain types of explosions from the portable tapes (He meant movies. On Netflix. On a device). Honestly, I’m shocked more people don’t use it for me.”

Matthew didn’t reply immediately. He looked back down at his notes, but his pencil hadn’t resumed its work. Instead, he was staring at the space just beside his journal, eyes distant, lips twitching with something between amusement and resignation. “I expect I’ll be hearing it more often from now on.” He said quietly, a little dryly, but without any real bite.

Gilbert’s grin widened. “Oh, you bet. Consider it the most awesomest word in this awesome book.” The conversation lapsed after that, but the word seemed to linger in the air between them.

Something that struck the heart. Something vast, unknowable, edged with wonder and fear. And perhaps, Matthew thought, as he watched him stretch one wing lazily and reach for another book, perhaps that was the point. After a while, Gilbert’s attention drifted from the dictionary to a book on a lower shelf nearby. He pulled it out—a thick, leather-bound volume titled Folktales of Magical Beasts.

Matthew’s eyes narrowed slightly, but he said nothing.

Gilbert shifted in the armchair with the ease of someone long accustomed to occupying space on his own terms. The thick, leather-bound book rested across his lap, its spine creaking faintly as he angled it toward the fractured light streaming through the stained-glass windows. Dust floated in the air, catching in the beams like pollen or ash, and he idly brushed a few motes from the cover with the back of one clawed hand.

He flipped through the yellowed pages with exaggerated flair, claws clicking softly against the paper. “Matthew?” He drawled after a moment, his voice laced with playful suspicion, “Did you get this book to learn about me?”

The question was lighthearted on the surface— It was teasing, even flirtatious in that irreverent way he often used when trying to mask real curiosity. But beneath the grin, there was a pause, the kind that could have passed for a joke if not for the way his eyes flicked up so quickly, so sharply.

He froze, not visibly, not enough for most people to notice, but he hesitated for just a beat too long, breath catching silently in his throat. His pen stilled above the page, the ink beginning to pool faintly at the nib. He didn’t look up. When he did finally speak, his voice was carefully measured.

“I might have.” The human said evenly. “Folktales sometimes contain fragments of older truths that are distorted, yes, but worth considering.” He flipped a page in his notebook, the motion precise, but his hand lingered at the corner. “Even exaggerations can be informative.”

Gilbert hummed as if amused, though the sound had a strange edge to it. “Huh.” He said, the syllable stretched out like he was testing it for weight. Then he glanced back down, skimming until he found the chapter title written in ink darker than the rest, the font twisted into gothic curves. “The Nachtkrapp: Children of Nyx.” He read aloud, with a mock-dramatic flourish. “Sounds ominous already.”

He puffed out his chest in theatrical pride, wings flexing slightly behind him like a visual exclamation point. “Let’s see what you humans have written about the awesome me!” The German announced clearly excited. Matthew’s hand remained poised over his notes, pen unmoving. His eyes, though still fixed on the page, had subtly narrowed. Gilbert began to read, voice slipping into something lower, more resonant as he translated the old German.

“The Nachtkrapp… A creature of shadow and wind. Said to haunt rooftops and treetops, watching children through their windows and descending only when the night is darkest…” The words drifted through the air like smoke, curling into the crevices of the cabin. “A terrible beaked thing.” He continued, tilting his head. “With claws like scythes, and feathers black as pitch. It is said to carry off disobedient children in its talons, stealing their voices, their breath, even their dreams—” Gilbert paused, glancing over the top of the page. “Wow. Dramatic much?”

But Matthew wasn’t laughing.

His pen hovered in the air, motionless. He hadn’t written a single word since the reading began. His eyes were fixed on the map in front of him, but they weren’t seeing it. A chill, cold and coiling, had settled low in his chest. Not because the tale was particularly gruesome, he’d read worse, but because he thought Gilbert had realized his secret

And here Gilbert was, reading the stories aloud like they were nothing but gothic campfire tales “Sometimes, it sings.” Gilbert continued in a mock-spooky voice, “The song it sings is so low it vibrates the bones, so haunting it drives listeners to madness or sleep. It favors silence. It hates fire. It fears the sun.” He looked up while snorting at the story. It seemed he found it amusing... “Who writes this stuff?”

Matthew didn’t answer.

The other either didn’t notice the silence or chose to ignore it. He kept reading for a while longer, mocking the inconsistencies, laughing at the florid descriptions, but eventually even his jokes tapered off. His eyes darkened a bit as the pages turned, his wings drawing closer to his body. The stories didn’t stay light for long. They grew stranger. Some versions didn’t just describe a creature who punished the misbehaved but one that fed on guilt and suffrage. One that watched the lonely. One that lingered.

After nearly an hour, Gilbert finally exhaled and closed the book with a soft thump, letting it rest against his chest as he slumped further into the chair. His expression had shifted, still casual, still cocky, but with a faint furrow in his brow that hadn’t been there before. As if something he couldn’t name had lodged itself behind his thoughts.

His red eyes skimmed the page one last time, his fingers flipping through the worn edges of the folktale with an almost casual grace. He let out a soft and quick snort as he closed the book with a loud thud. The albino’s face twisted into an exaggerated expression of disbelief, and he shook his head, as if trying to expel something unpleasant. “Well.” He said at last, the words coming out lighter than they should’ve, but there was a faint tremor behind the flippancy. “That was super inaccurate.”

He glanced up at Matthew, his smile crooked and slightly strained. Gilbert shook his head again, as though trying to dislodge the weight of the stories that had settled into the space between them. His wings fluttered restlessly at his back, a soft rustle that hinted at something deeper, a stirring that went beyond mere annoyance. “I mean, come on.” He continued, his voice slipping into a playful, mocking cadence. “I don’t have a beak, which would be super cool don’t get me wrong but I don’t have one. Also, I definitely don’t eat children and I’m certainly not some terrifying shadow stalking rooftops at night.”

Matthew gave a faint smile trying to hide his emotions. No one could know. His gaze shifted, but his expression remained calm, carefully controlled, even as his pulse quickened. He cleared his throat quietly. “Folktales tend to be dramatized.” He said, his voice barely above a whisper, though it carried an undercurrent of something unspoken. Once again Gilbert leaned back, his body relaxed, but there was a flicker in his crimson eyes, something that lingered just below the surface.

A smirk curved his lips as he nudged Matthew lightly with his elbow, playful yet with a subtle, almost knowing tilt. “Looks like someone’s been letting their imagination run wild~” He teased, his voice dripping with mock accusation, as if Matthew were the one weaving fantastical lies.

Matthew’s lips twitched into a small smile, and for the first time, his eyes sparkled with a hint of warmth. “You’re not wrong.” The other man chuckled and set the book down on the table. The room fell into comfortable silence again, punctuated only by the soft scratching of Matthew’s quill on parchment.

After a while, the Canadian stood with a soft groan, stretching his arms above his head, his body arching like a cat waking from a long nap. The muscles in his back protested with a brief crackle, but he ignored the discomfort with practiced ease. A glance at the clock told him it was nearing evening, the light outside dimming into the pale twilight that filtered through the cabin’s stained-glass windows.

“I’ll prepare some food.” He announced, his voice still calm, though there was a faint edge of warmth to it. “You’re welcome to in the library if you like.”

Weirdly enough Gilbert didn’t respond immediately. Instead, his crimson eyes remained fixed on the table, the open folktale book now forgotten in his lap. For a moment, Matthew thought the Nachtkrapp might decline, as he often did when it came to the quiet, mundane moments. But then he simply nodded, his pale hair falling over his eyes in the dim light. “Sure, I’ll stay here.” He muttered with a shrug, though his attention had already shifted, his gaze wandering around the room as if there were something in it he hadn’t noticed before.

Matthew gave a small smile, one that spoke more of familiarity than amusement. Turning on his heel, he moved toward the small kitchen alcove, tucked just behind the low bookshelf. He knew Gilbert wouldn’t care much about what was served(He seemed to enjoy everything); it wasn’t about the food. It never had been. It was about the small ritual of the two of them sitting together in the silence that followed, the same comfortable routine they’d fallen into over time.

As Matthew walked toward the small kitchen alcove, a heavy book slipped from the edge of a low shelf nearby and fell to the floor with a soft thud.

Gilbert’s sharp eyes darted toward the noise instantly. His head turned slowly, gaze snapping down to the floor where the book had landed. The cover caught the last flickers of the light from the window which was black leather, aged and worn with time. There was something odd about it that made the back of his neck prickle, and his curiosity flared immediately.

It wasn’t the book’s age that caught his attention though. It was the embossed French text on the cover, delicate and precise, the gold lettering almost too ornate for something left carelessly on a shelf. He leaned forward, his sharp eyes narrowing as he tried to read the words.

"Les Loups-Garous: Légendes et Réalité."

A frown pulled at Gilbert’s pale lips. He wasn’t exactly familiar with the French language but he was curious. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before he leaned forward, his long, delicate fingers curling to grasp the edge of the book. The moment his claws touched it, a faint shiver ran through him, though whether it was the touch of the book itself or the realization of what he’d found, he wasn’t sure.

Of course, Matthew was now busy gathering ingredients and utensils, was already focused on cooking, completely unaware of the discovery happening behind him.

He traced the title still unsure of what it meant. Then he opened the book. It said the title again but in English. ‘Werewolves: Legends and Reality.’

Chapter Text

The book was heavier than it looked.

Gilbert grunted softly as he hauled it onto his lap, the worn leather cover thudding against his thigh with more weight than seemed reasonable for a single volume. The spine cracked faintly under his claws pale, talon-tipped fingers curling around the battered edges with something between care and irritation. Dust puffed into the air as he shifted, settling deeper into the armchair with a rustle of feathers. The upholstery let out a tired groan beneath his weight, protesting every movement like an old house complaining about a storm.

Dim, amber light slanted through the tall windows, just enough to catch the faded embossing stamped across the book’s front cover. ‘Werewolves: Legends and Reality’ shimmered faintly, the gold letters dulled with age but still stubbornly proud, glinting like old coins at the bottom of a fountain. The kind of book that thought too highly of itself.

Gilbert rolled his eyes and flipped it open with a flick that was rougher than it needed to be. The first page fluttered up like a moth caught in a breeze, then settled flat against his thigh. He stared.

His crimson eyes scanned the opening lines and almost immediately, he wanted to throw it across the room. It seemed so… Odd. Not because of the content but because it was boring.

No, worse than boring.

It wasn’t even pretending to ease the reader in. No moody folklore, no haunting little epigraphs. Not a single blood-soaked full moon or cautionary tale about villagers vanishing on foggy nights. Just— BAM! Straight into the driest, most joyless preface the albino had ever seen, like being shoved face-first into a brick wall made of footnotes. There was no ominous warning carved into bark, no ancient curse spoken in a trembling voice by firelight. Just blocks. Thick, uniform blocks of text.

They marched down the page like a regiment of pompous scholars, armed with citations and polysyllabic words no one had used since Latin died its second death. Every sentence looked like it had been pressed out of the same miserable academic mold. It was precise, humorous and criminally resistant to interest.

It was, to put it bluntly, a trap.

Gilbert, fool that he was, had walked right into it thinking this would be fun. He’d watched Twilight with Matthew two nights ago, mocked the glitter, the brooding and the melodrama, but he’d still expected something with at least a little bite. A dramatic origin myth, maybe. A gory account of a medieval massacre. A moonlit transformation involving torn clothes and tragic howling.

Instead? He got a textbook. A textbook written by someone who sounded like they’d never even seen a werewolf, let alone been scared by one.

Worse still, half the words weren’t even in English. Of course, it was Latin. Because nothing says approachable reading like Canis lupus this and homo-something that. Line after line of genus names and biological hierarchies spilled across the pages like someone had shaken a scientific journal until all its most joyless pieces landed in one place.

The margins looked like a thesaurus had exploded there. Or been murdered. Possibly both.

He narrowed his eyes at a particularly bloated sentence, lips moving silently as he tried to untangle it. ‘Preliminary investigations into chronobiological strain differentiation suggest a non-linear temporal cycle specific to lycanthropic endocrinological triggers—‘ “What.” Gilbert said aloud as he stared at the page blankly blankly. He skimmed the line again, slower this time. It didn’t help.

“Are these even real words?” He asked to the void.

The Nachtkrapp leaned back, squinting at the page like maybe it would morph into something readable if he glared hard enough. “Chronobiological strain factors? Preternatural morphology? Canis lycaoniformis?” He repeated, dragging each syllable out with increasing disbelief. Gilbert’s nose wrinkled. It felt like chewing gravel just to say them.

He shut one eye and muttered, “Half of this sounds like someone lost a bet with a Fae and had to write a thesis in their sleep.” Gilbert said with annoyance etched on his face. A beat passed. Gilbert tilted the book sideways. Nope. Still nonsense. Then Gilbert tried flipping a few pages forward. Maybe it would ease up.

It didn’t.

The language didn’t loosen— It calcified. Paragraphs thickened with increasingly obscure references, a parade of technical jargon that seemed less interested in describing werewolves and more focused on dissecting them like lab rats. No wonder Matthew had sticky-noted every other page, this thing needed a decoder ring and a minor in archaic taxonomy just to navigate.

He turned the page. Reluctantly.

Still more text. No break. No breath. Just an endless slog through academic mire, as dry and lifeless as the paper it was printed on. There wasn’t a single mention of claw marks or transformation rituals or even a good, old-fashioned moon howl. Just a barrage of taxonomies and subtypes, classifications that seemed more interested in dissecting werewolves than telling you what it actually meant to be one.

Gilbert exhaled sharply through his nose, feathers along his shoulders twitching with irritation. He flexed his claws slightly, the tips tapping rhythmically against the edge of the page like he could drum some sense into it. “Stupid fancy-shmancy words.” He muttered, his wings curling around one arm in faint agitation.

But he didn’t close the book.

But despite the book’s best efforts to smother his brain with academic sludge, Gilbert couldn’t bring himself to shut it.

Because beneath all the bloated phrasing and weaponized vocabulary, there was something. Not on the surface— No, the surface was all Latin genus names and footnotes that read like war crimes but underneath. A thread, faint but persistent, tugging at the edges of his attention. It curled between the lines, slipped beneath the clinical dissections and cross-referenced species maps, like a heartbeat trapped inside a marble statue.

He didn’t know what it was exactly. Not yet. But it hummed with the quiet promise of something real.

Maybe that’s what kept him turning the pages. Not the title, not the crackling spine, not even the subject matter. But the evidence of another reader, someone who’d wandered through these same impossible sentences and left a trail of breadcrumbs behind.

Sticky notes. Dozens of them. Neon rectangles clinging to the margins like stubborn barnacles in a sea of overcomplicated nonsense. They peeked out in mismatched colors, electric pink, highlighter green, migraine yellow, tiny flags staked in the dry terrain of academia, each carrying a message for anyone willing to squint.

Some were immaculate: Tiny, machine-like handwriting in black ink, angled perfectly, the kind of notes you could use to teach a class. Precise underlines, little arrows pointing cleanly to key phrases, tidy clarifications nestled in margins like obedient soldiers. That was definitely Matthew as his handwriting was as neat and unflinching as the man himself. Gilbert could picture him writing them with a straight back and a ruler nearby, the kind of guy who alphabetized his spices and meant it.

But not all the notes were his.

Not even close.

As he flipped another page, Gilbert blinked at what looked more like a cryptid than anything the book had mentioned so far: A jagged scrawl slashed across a lime-green sticky note, ink bleeding like it had been applied mid-earthquake. It leaned at an angle that suggested either haste or chaos (It was likely both) and the word at its center was baffling.

He squinted. Tilted the book. Tilted his head. Still nothing.

“Toothflaps?” He muttered aloud, voice dripping with disbelief. “Is that even a thing?” He turned the book sideways. “Maybe it’s ‘truthlaps’? Or ‘footmaps’? What the hell even is this?”

Beneath the illegible mystery word was a tiny annotation, clearly added as an afterthought ‘Ask M later’.

Gilbert barked a laugh, sharp and echoing in the quiet library. “Brilliant. Cutting-edge science, ladies and gentlemen: ‘Toothflaps, ask M later.’ Absolutely groundbreaking.”

He shook his head, but he was grinning now. Because it was so human. This book, this dry, monstrous tome with its fossilized tone and ego the size of a cathedral. had been battled. Someone had wrestled with it, cursed at it and even doodled fangs in the margins like they were trying to summon personality by sheer force of will.

The sticky notes became a conversation. Not just between the reader and the author, but between two minds at wildly different altitudes, Matthew, the methodical scientist, and someone else who was clearly more chaotic, more impulsive and possibly drunk during note-taking.

Some notes were full of tiny diagrams: skeletal structures with question marks, arrows pointing at muscle groups labeled unconfirmed. One page had a sketch of a moon with phases marked, and beside it ‘Why does this matter if they don’t even need full moons anymore???’ Was written in angry block letters.

Another simply said ‘SOUNDS FAKE!!!’ circled three times. Yet another, in bold red pen ‘Don’t trust this source. Dad said was drunk monk???’ Gilbert flipped through faster now, eyes darting between paragraphs and post-it notes, half-frustrated, half-thrilled. It was like digging through an archaeological site, layer after layer of obsession, frustration and odd contradictions. He couldn’t tell if the annotations were arguing with the author, each other, or the universe itself. Probably all three.

But they brought the pages to life. They made it bearable. They made it interesting. No, more than that. They made it familiar.

Because whoever had left those messy notes, whoever had fought the text with sarcasm and pen ink— They understood. They’d been where he was caught between skepticism and belief, boredom and fascination, irritation and the gnawing sense that somewhere in this jungle of words was something true. Something important.

It was absurd. Yet he couldn’t stop reading.

Gilbert shifted again, his damp feathers brushing the armrest as he flipped page after page. His crimson eyes darted between the dense scientific passages and the chaotic commentary in the margins, half amused, half confused. Occasionally, he muttered a word aloud, testing it on his tongue like it might make more sense if he spoke it.

Most of the time, it didn’t.

By the time he hit chapter twenty, he was scowling. His head tilted to one side, wings rustling in irritation as he stared at a line buried deep in the jargon ‘It is generally accepted among contemporary naturalists that the extinction of lycanthropic species was inevitable, accelerated by widespread hunting practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’ That caused Gilbert to cock his head.

Extinct?

That was flat-out wrong.

A humorless laugh slipped from Gilbert’s throat, brittle and cold— Like glass cracking under pressure. He tapped the passage with one claw, slow and deliberate, as if the weight of his touch might make the words any less idiotic. “Extinct.” He echoed, voice pitched low, heavy with disbelief. “Right. Sure and I’m a pigeon.”

His eyes narrowed, the page catching a glint of amber light as he tilted it again, rereading the offending line like it might’ve rearranged itself into something less stupid when he wasn’t looking. “Extinct, my ass…” He muttered, the sarcasm curling like smoke through his words. “Tell that to the pack up north. They’d eat this book. Literally. Spine first like the mutts they are.”

He snorted, but the edge in his voice had dulled. Less a jab, more a sigh. The fight in him hadn’t vanished but something gentler crept in around the corners of his expression.

The German leaned back, letting the chair creak its tired protest beneath him, and for a moment the fire drained from his posture. His wings slumped slightly, feathers shifting with a dry whisper as he stared at the ceiling, red eyes dilating and then stopping showing he was clearly unfocused. The book lay open on his lap, its pages fluttering faintly in the draft.

“Ludwig would’ve eaten this up.” Gilbert murmured, softer now. Not teasing. Not bitter. Just honest. He could picture it with aching clarity. His brother perched at the opposite end of some half-collapsed train station or forgotten church, hunched over a scavenged desk with his head bent low and his brow furrowed. Turning pages with that same steady focus, tracing every Latin name and diagram like they were sacred. Ludwig, with ink on his fingers and dirt on his collar and that maddeningly calm look in his eyes. Quiet, precise, unshakable.

He’d have had this whole chapter memorized by now. Probably the footnotes too. And he would’ve corrected Gilbert’s pronunciation without even looking up, just a soft hum of disapproval and a finger tapping the word in question. Gilbert could practically hear it: ‘You skipped the vowel again, idiot.’ A faint smile tugged at his mouth, gone as quickly as it came. The ache settled in his chest like an old bruise, familiar and unwelcome. Sharp around the edges. Gilbert swallowed it down.

Ludwig had always been the one who understood the world by taking it apart piece by piece with quiet curiosity turned obsession, methodical to a fault. Gilbert had never had the patience for that. He’d rather light the whole book on fire and learn from the ashes.

But damn if he didn’t miss hearing someone read the boring parts out loud just to keep him from skimming.

He shook it off with a grunt and snapped the book shut harder than necessary, feathers ruffling. “Extinct.” He scoffed again, louder this time, as if daring the empty room to argue. Then, with a decisive flick of his wrist, he tossed the volume onto the nearest table. It landed with a dull thud, pages fluttering like startled wings before settling into silence.

Enough.

He was fed up with all the ‘fancy-shmancy’ words, the endless diagrams, the contradictions scrawled in the margins. It wasn’t even a good storybook— It was just science pretending to be magic, or maybe the other way around.

Pushing himself up from the chair, Gilbert stretched, wings arching wide in irritation before folding neatly against his back. He raked a clawed hand through his damp hair, shaking free a few lingering droplets. Why Matthew, of all people, would spend hours on this kind of book. He supposed it wasn’t surprising. The man loved animals. Of course he’d dig into every legend that blurred the line between beasts and myths.

Still. Something about it left an itch under Gilbert’s skin. He turned toward the door and that was when he heard it. A voice, low and sharp, drifting in from the small kitchen alcove. At first, Gilbert barely registered it— Just the rise and fall of Matthew’s usual calm cadence. But then the tone cut through. Not calm. Not careful.

Angry.

Gilbert froze, blood-red eyes narrowing. He had never heard Matthew sound like that before.

Quietly, he padded closer, wings tucked tight to avoid brushing against the shelves. His claws clicked faintly against the wooden floor as he edged nearer the half-open kitchen door. The smell of chopped vegetables lingered in the air, undercut by the harsh crackle of a phone receiver pressed too tightly to someone’s ear.

“No, I told you already! Those readings don’t match the migratory disruptions. They’re something else.” The Canadian’s calm voice was clipped, sharp. Not loud but tight andcontrolled in the way someone speaks when they’ve already repeated themselves too many times and are now trying very hard not to snap.

From the hallway, Gilbert’s ears pricked at the change in tone as the feathers at the base of his neck bunched up. He stilled mid-step, one clawed hand resting lightly against the doorframe. His feathers gave the faintest rustle as he shifted his weight, careful not to creak the floorboards. Inside the kitchen, silence stretched. Not the peaceful kind as this was charged, electric. He could just make out the soft hiss of the phone line, followed by the indistinct, muffled cadence of a voice responding on the other end. Calm and seemingly dismissive.

Matthew didn’t let them finish.

“Do you even understand the implications of this?” Matthew’s voice didn’t rise, didn’t crack, didn’t falter. It simply hardened, like ice under pressure, each syllable dense with quiet fury, the kind of restrained sharpness that came not from emotion alone but from the unbearable strain of knowing exactly how bad things were and being forced to explain them again, and again, and again, to people who refused to listen until it was far too late.

From the hallway, Gilbert could hear the subtle rhythm of movement like the soft, uneven scrape of socked feet across aging linoleum, the sound of a chair being pushed back with just enough force to catch on the floor’s imperfections and even a cabinet door opening and closing again in quick, frustrated succession, as though Matthew had reached for something instinctively, tea, perhaps, or composure, and found neither within reach.

“They’ve stopped following tidal patterns,” He said, and though his tone remained even, it had acquired a sort of precise urgency, the cadence of someone reciting evidence not because he thought it would be believed but because he had to say it anyway, like a ritual performed in the face of disbelief.

“They’re not hugging coastlines anymore. They’re not tracking migratory routes or lunar shifts or brine concentrations. The environmental triggers are irrelevant now, completely decoupled from behavior.” He let out a shallow breath. Not to steady himself, he was already steady, but to rein in the rising edge of disbelief at the silence on the other end of the line.

“They’re inland.”

He said it slowly, each word falling like a stone into water, sending out ripples of implication too vast to follow. Not shouted. Not dramatized. Just stated, with the quiet confidence of data that had been checked too many times to still hope it might be wrong.

Another long pause stretched out between sentences, and in that silence, Gilbert could almost feel the tension in the air thickening, stretching between speaker and listener like a wire drawn taut, just waiting for the wrong sentence to snap it. “There have been three confirmed attacks in non-coastal territories in the last six months, two in agricultural corridors, one in a suburban drainage system. All verified. All catalogued. And all dismissed by your department as statistical anomalies because they didn’t fit your models.” His voice didn’t rise, but something inside it twisted, like a scalpel turned slowly in a wound. “Because God forbid a predator adapts faster than your paperwork.”

The Nachtkrapp blinked, feathers prickling faintly along the nape of his neck. Predator. That word didn’t come lightly from Matthew’s mouth. Not him.

“They’re not just changing behavior.” Matthew went on, relentless now, like a dam had cracked just enough to let the current through. “They’re changing geography. Ecosystem boundaries. Feeding zones. Territory shapes. This isn’t just a mutation. It’s a migration. It’s a redefinition of myth, and you’re too busy arguing semantics to see it.” There was a sound that was brief and abrupt. Fist on countertop. Not loud, but jarring in the quiet. A punctuation mark carved into the conversation by force.

“Inland.” He repeated once more, and this time it cracked. Not the word itself, but the force behind it. His voice jumped an octave, not in volume, but in urgency— An edge of disbelief fraying the edges. “Inland!” The word hit like a thrown pebble in a quiet room. Not an explosion, but something sharper, more surgical.

Frustration vibrated through every syllable now, not just from being unheard, but from being dismissed. The kind of frustration that only came from knowing you were right and watching someone shrug it off anyway.

Another pause. Then something heavier, more grounded. A thump. Fist on countertop, maybe. A sharp, jarring punctuation mark to a conversation that was no longer polite. Gilbert tilted his head slightly, crimson eyes narrowing. His wings shifted close to his spine, pulling tight in reflex, but he didn’t move otherwise. He just listened, barely breathing.

And Matthew, in the kitchen, stood surrounded by steam from the kettle that had long stopped whistling, phone pressed too tightly to his ear, speaking into silence that refused to listen.

Gilbert blinked. Sirens?

His feathers rustled. The word meant nothing to him, not really. He only knew the stories but Matthew was saying it like fact. Like he knew they were real.

Another pause, thicker this time, heavier, the kind that stretched across the room like a fault line, brittle and brimming with the threat of fracture then the sharp, unmistakable sound of a fist meeting countertop, not violent exactly, but decisive, controlled in the way an avalanche is controlled by gravity inevitable and carrying weight. “You’re missing the point!” The younger male snapped, his voice splintering through the silence like a blade through fabric, and for a moment it didn’t sound like him at all, not the careful voice Gilbert had come to expect, the one that wrapped data in velvet and presented it like a gift, no, this voice was stripped bare, no softness, no diplomacy, only raw urgency sharpened to a needlepoint. “If you ignore the data, more people will die. Do you understand? These aren’t fairy tales, they’re active populations, and they’re shifting.”

Gilbert’s eyes widened.

The calm, polite Matthew he knew, the one who spoke so softly he sometimes vanished into the background, was gone. In his place was someone raw, furious, demanding to be heard.

From the hallway, the albino stood frozen, back pressed lightly to the wall beside the open door, wings pulled in tight. The kitchen smelled like oversteeped tea and something burning slightly— The steam long gone cold, kettle forgotten. And Matthew’s voice filled the space like it didn’t know it was supposed to stay small.

“They’re changing everything.” He said. “Territory boundaries, behavioral patterns and even prey selection. It’s not seasonal. It’s not environmental. It’s systemic. A biological shift yet you people, who may I remind you signed up for this bullshit, keep brushing it off because it doesn't fit your pre-approved risk model!”

Then the list started. Names. Creatures. Things that didn’t belong on an any type of call unless something had gone very, very wrong. “Waheela packs. Kelpies. Qupqugiaq— Yes, I said Qupqugiaq, check your own field reports. The northern ridge sightings? That was not a bear.” He was pacing now. Gilbert could hear it as each tight footstep dragging against the old floors, too quick, too frustrated. The sound of a man walking circles not just around a room, but around a cage built from red tape and disbelief.

The Canadian seemed more frustrated by the second. “Wendigos are pushing further south. Sirens have decoupled from coastal triggers entirely. We’re seeing activity in other biomes. Literal marsh sirens, for god’s sake. What does that tell you?” He’s said causing Gilbert blinked. The words washed over him like heat off pavement, surreal and too real at once. This wasn’t academic rambling. This was data. Cold, clinical data spoken with the desperation of someone who had seen it firsthand. Who had measured it.

Matthew, his Matthew, the quiet one, the kind one who collected feathers off the windowsill like they were treasure was spitting that data out like bullets.

“Nachtkrapps.” The word fell like a gunshot in the quiet.

Gilbert froze.

His breath hitched silent, sharp and utterly involuntary. The kind of breath you take when something ancient brushes up against your spine. His claws flexed hard against the doorframe, gouging shallow lines into the old wood. The air in the hall seemed to press inward, thickening, compressing around him until the only thing he could hear was the echo of that name ringing in his ears.

Not a description. Not a euphemism. Not a sanitized term buried in taxonomy or myth but a name.

His name.

From Matthew’s mouth.

The feathers along Gilbert’s spine lifted in a slow, involuntary ripple, as though every instinct he had was dragging itself to attention. No one said that word aloud. Not like that. Most didn’t even remember it. It was a relic, a scarecrow syllable pulled from old Black Forest folktales, used to keep restless children in bed and shape-shifting things in the dark but this human had said it like fact. With precision. Like someone referencing not a legend, but a classified entry.

A sharp scrape of motion inside the kitchen Matthew shifting, maybe pacing, maybe stabbing a finger toward some unseen set of papers and then his voice followed, low but intense, vibrating with the sort of anger that only came from trying, again and again, to get someone to believe. “Yes. I said Nachtkrapps.” The name again, this time carved like stone. “Don’t insult me by pretending you’ve never seen the files. I’ve gone through your archives. I’ve seen the sightings. The footprints. The residual samples.” He paused, breathing hard through his nose. “You filed them under corvid cryptid subclass. That’s not even accurate. The morphology doesn’t match. You know that we’re fucking trained to know this.”

Gilbert’s eyes flicked wide, lips parting in silent disbelief.

They had files?

He took a step back from the doorframe, wings pressing tight to his back, every feather now tense and bristling. There was a hollow, ringing sensation in his chest, like someone had plucked a wire strung through his ribcage. It felt oddly terrifying yet exhilarating.

“You buried it.”” Matthew went on, and now his voice had dropped into something colder. Not just angry— Disgusted. “Classified it as ‘statistical noise.’ You all dismissed the Frankfurt incident as ‘folkloric interference.’ The Wilhelmshaven audio logs? Scrubbed. Why?” A pause, then: “Because they didn’t fit your models. Because something that didn’t behave the way your numbers predicted was easier to label extinct than to understand that those cryptids didn’t die out.”

Another pause. Longer, this one.

Gilbert could hear the faint buzz of a response that was low and muffled through the speaker, but Matthew didn’t wait. “I don’t care what your official records say. Sightings have been on a slow incline since 1978. You think I didn’t cross-reference? Post-war fluctuations in Northern Germany. Sudden spikes in corvid-based predator patterns. Witness statements from military outposts describing ‘Man-sized shadows with wings’ and ‘Screams that kill sound in the throat.’” Matthew’s voice cracked, just a little, under the weight of fury restrained too long. “They weren’t owls, Mikkel. They weren’t figments and they sure as hell weren’t mass hysteria.”

Gilbert’s heartbeat drummed louder in his ears.

Nausea curled low in his stomach. Not fear exactly, but something cousin to it, a sharp, twisting awareness. That word, Nachtkrapp, had always been a thing other people whispered about. Something parents said to keep children from wandering into the woods. It wasn’t meant to be a category.

It wasn’t supposed to have a file number.

Inside the kitchen, Matthew was still talking. Still defending his species like someone fighting for a creature nobody else believed in. Like someone who cared.

Once again the German’s mind spun, rapid and jagged.

The carefulness. The endless notes. The way Matthew seemed to know so much about him and yet not enough. The way he always, somehow, anticipated what Gilbert might like, what might calm him, what might keep him close.

The library full of strange books. The annotated margins. The myths turned into charts and graphs.

It was obvious and painfully so. Matthew wasn’t just a quiet, bird-loving human who collected oddities and tracked migratory patterns.

He was a cryptid biologist.

Gilbert’s wings shifted restlessly, feathers scraping the narrow doorframe as his chest tightened. Of course! If monster hunters existed then so would biologists, no? That was why the man could look at him with both familiarity and uncertainty, why his notes had been so precise and yet so outdated. Matthew knew the legends, the science and the sightings but not the truth of what cryptids had become.

Not the truth Gilbert carried in his own feathers.

The realization was like a crack of thunder in his skull, sharp and ringing yet, beneath it, something else stirred. Something quieter. A flicker of… Amusement?

Gilbert’s lips curved into a grin, sharp and toothy. “Awesome…” He whispered under his breath in the accented voice, the word rolling out soft and reverent this time, not loud or brash. The kind of word you saved for moments that shifted the ground beneath you. He leaned back from the door, crimson eyes still gleaming with the aftershock of revelation. His wings rustled faintly as he straightened, shoulders loosening from the tense curl they’d held.

The Canadian of his had secrets. Big ones.

It was obvious to Gilbert that he had just stumbled straight into the middle of them. For the first time in a long while, the library no longer felt like a cage of books and dust. It felt alive, buzzing with possibility. With questions. With the tantalizing promise of truths half-hidden, waiting for claws sharp enough to pry them open.

He wondered, briefly, what Ludwig would’ve said if he’d been here. Probably something annoyingly sensible, like ‘Don’t snoop through people’s stuff, Gilbert.’ He could almost hear his brother’s exasperated sigh, the one that came whenever Gilbert did something reckless but unavoidable.

“Yeah, yeah, West,” Gilbert muttered under his breath to someone who wasn’t there, smirking faintly. “But you’d wanna to know more about this too. Admit it.”

The muffled sound of Matthew’s furious voice carried on in the background, a storm still raging just beyond the kitchen wall. He tilted his head, listening, but already his grin had shifted, softened at the edges.

A cryptid biologist... It fit Matthew.

Gilbert? He was going to make damn sure he was the best field study Matthew ever had.

Chapter Text

The call ended with the kind of abrupt click that feels personal.

Like extremely personal. The poor soul on the other end probably had no idea their innocent ‘Let’s revisit the methodology again.’ would finally snap Matthew’s last fraying nerve.

He set the phone down on the kitchen counter with exaggerated gentleness, as though it were a fragile bird, because if he doesn’t, he might fling it straight through the window and watch glass scatter across the floor. His fingers linger for a moment on the cold countertop, as if pressing into it could somehow absorb the frustration roiling in his chest. Then, slowly, deliberately, he presses both palms over his face. “For the love of—” Matthew’s voice cracks in the middle, strangled and uneven. “I literally wrote the paper they cited! I wrote it! Every last citation, every methodology, every single painstaking experiment— My fucking name on it! And they still called me ‘kiddo.’ Kiddo! I swear—”

He cut himself off with a sharp inhale, chest tightening. The air had that faint metallic tang, mixed with whatever’s left of the kettle. He sucked in a slow breath, trying to shove the storm of frustration back down. He lets out a long, bone-deep sigh, the kind of sigh that feels like it originates from beneath his ribs and travels down to press against the soles of his feet. A sigh that said, ‘I am not screaming, but I could.’

The kitchen light hummed softly above him, a high, steady note that scratches faintly against his nerves. Shadows pool in the corners of the room, curling along the edges of the counters, stretching toward him like passive witnesses. Outside, the forest croons in its dusky voice, low branches rattling against one another like secretive tongues passing forbidden messages. Every leaf seems to vibrate in sympathy with the thrum of his blood, every gust of wind whispering its own sharp little commentary.

The fridge hummed in the background, a dull, persistent reminder of necessity.

Matthew leant back against the counter, knees slightly bent, letting the weight of his body sink into the worn linoleum. He could feel the stubborn vibration of the floorboards beneath him, the way the house absorbs and reshapes the sound of his misery into quiet resonance. The walls seemed to lean closer like they were waiting.

Carefully, he ran a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands in frustration, nails catching faintly on the scalp. His jaw aches from clenching, teeth grinding the edges of his irritation into physical tension. Each muscle is taut, coiled with the kind of strain that doesn’t fade with sleep or silence.

“I give them data. I give them evidence. I give them years of work.” He muttered, voice low and bitter. “And it’s never enough. Never respected. Never trusted. And I’m too young to have earned any of it in their eyes. Because apparently thirty years of breathing earns more respect than a single groundbreaking discovery.” The shadows deepen around him. The hum of the refrigerator is almost like a heartbeat. Outside, the wind picks up, rustling branches and dead leaves, sending little flakes of light and shadow dancing across the windowpanes.

The Canadian exhaled again, sharper this time, a whistle of air through clenched teeth. His hands dropped from his face, fingers splayed over the counter as if bracing against the force of invisible waves. The sound of the room pressed against him, heavy and familiar. Matthew’s gaze fell on the dull gleam of the kettle sitting idle on the stove, its silence nearly mocking. The faint scent of boiling water, faintly metallic, still lingered in the air, mixed with the faintly sweet undertone of the paper he had been reading earlier, of dust disturbed and the faint musk of aged wood.

A tiny noise made him flinch. A branch tapping the window? The house settling? The voice of his own frustration echoing too loudly inside the walls? It didn’t matter. The world felt like it was holding its breath, all of it leaning toward him, pressing against the corners of his awareness, waiting for him to either crack or act.

He straightened slightly, shoulders tense. One hand idly brushed the counter, feeling the chill of stone beneath his fingertips, grounding him. The other rested on his hip, thumb pressing into the waistband of his jeans in an absent-minded, almost compulsive rhythm.

Matthew closed his eyes for a moment, let the air settle inside his chest, and exhaled slowly. Another sigh, less sharp and more resigned, tinged with the faint promise of something salvaged: maybe patience, maybe wine, maybe the faintest hope that the night could still be claimed before it slipped away entirely.

Outside, the wind murmured. But he couldn’t take it, so he swung open the fridge with the determination of a man reaching for salvation.

The cold rushed out like a wave, crisp and biting, brushing against the sweat on his temples. Shelves lined with vegetables and jars and half-forgotten timbit boxes that Gilbert claimed blurred past his vision. The hum of the fridge filled the quiet kitchen, a low mechanical heartbeat that promised reprieve.

There it was.

A bottle of chilled Vidal Icewine, oh how he missed this… Light bent across the glass, fracturing into tiny rainbows that shimmered over the cold metal of the shelf. It gleamed as if the sun itself had been condensed into liquid. Matthew’s fingers hovered over it for a moment, savoring the anticipation, the way the light seemed to warm the tips of his fingertips despite the chill.

His favorite. A familiar warmth coiled in his chest at the sight. Liquid sunlight in glass. Sweet enough to melt the knots in his spine that had been tied tight by endless calls and dismissive colleagues. Strong enough to vaporize the lingering sting of condescension, to loosen the rigid, tired lines in his jaw.

He lifted it carefully, cradling it like fragile treasure. The glass was cold against his palms, a smooth promise, a rare indulgence he allowed himself when the world refused to acknowledge his worth. The scent of the wine hit him faintly— Honeyed, musky with a whisper of golden grapes grown slow in distant vineyards.

“Come to papa…” He muttered reverently. The words slipped out with a quiet fervor, half a joke, half a prayer. He rocked the bottle gently in his hands, the liquid swaying lazily, teasing him with its glinting surface. Salvation was cold, sweet, and contained in this slender vessel.

He retrieved the bottle and a glass, set both on the counter, and continued grumbling as he fumbled with the corkscrew.

“I hate this.” He droned, voice tight with a mixture of exhaustion and simmering frustration, as if the words themselves were sharp enough to draw blood. “I hate that everyone in my field is fifty and three divorces deep, comfortably entrenched in their own egos and their ivory towers, and here I am trying to make an actual difference. Twenty-four? Twenty-five? Too young to be taken seriously, too old to be coddled, expected to command labs, analyze data, write papers, all on no funding and no sleep. Fantastic.”

His hands curled around the bottle, knuckles white. He turned it over, examining the frozen droplets clinging to the glass like miniature icicles, each one a reminder of the hours he had spent in cold labs chasing truths nobody wanted to acknowledge.

The cork popped with a triumphant little sound.

Matthew’s ears caught the tiny snap like applause or perhaps mockery. He poured himself a generous glass, the deep golden liquid catching the kitchen light, gleaming with a quiet promise. The scent rose in a swirl of sweetness and frost, thick, clinging, intoxicating. Frozen fruit, honeyed ice, the faintest hint of late summer sun trapped in every drop. Then he lifted the glass slowly, inhaling the aroma. It filled his senses, pushed the tension from his shoulders, coaxed a long, slow exhale from deep within. A moment of quiet in the chaos of constant pressure.

He took a long sip. Letting it trickle down, warming the base of his throat, pooling in his chest like a stone sinking into quiet water.

Another sip. A sigh followed. Longer yet, so much softer. Carrying the weight of endless meetings, disbelieving colleagues, and all the nights spent staring at spreadsheets while the rest of the world slept. The warmth spread, low and steady, grounding him, reminding him that something in the world still existed purely to be savored.

He leaned against the counter, eyes closed, allowing the sweetness to coat the edges of his tongue, the slight sting of alcohol pressing gently at the corners of his mind. For a heartbeat, the world was smaller, quieter, and almost bearable.

Once again, Matthew sighed, he was much less angry this time, more exhausted. “Best in the damn field.” He muttered, rolling the rim of the glass between his fingers. “I have awards. I have publications. I have a dissertation that made old men weep. And yet every time I speak up in a meeting someone pats me on the head like a toddler who said a big word. ‘Oh Matthew, look at you trying science.’ Ridiculous.”

He cut himself off before he spiraled into a dramatic monologue and took another drink. The warmth of the Icewine spread slowly down his chest, a tiny comfort against the gnawing irritation that wouldn’t quit. The house was still. Too still. The kind of stillness that felt intentional, as if the shadows themselves were holding their breath, waiting. The ticking of the wall clock became sharper, louder, a metronome counting off the seconds of suspense. Somewhere, a floorboard sighed, and it sounded like a whisper rather than wood.

Matthew swallowed and took a measured step toward the corridor. He didn’t think Gilbert was there because the other was never one to be quiet and collected.

The corners of the kitchen seemed darker now, longer, stretched thin like taffy pulled by unseen fingers, warping gently in his peripheral vision as though the house had exhaled while he wasn’t looking. Shadows clung to the seams between cabinets and floorboards, pooling in places that had been harmlessly bright just a moment ago. His own footfalls echoed softly beneath him, muffled by the old wood, each step swallowed by the heavy quiet that draped itself over the room like a thick blanket.

The scent of wine lingered in the air, a chill sweetness that rose from his glass in gentle curls. It threaded itself together with the old musk of timber and dust, with the faint memory of last night’s broth, with the cool breath of the house settling into its nighttime bones. The mixture made him feel strangely awake and dizzy all at once, sharp at the edges, blurred in the center, as if he had stepped into one of his own dreams by mistake.

He let the glass sit loosely in his fingers and turned the corner but rammed ‘straight’ into something solid. Or rather, someone.

The impact jostled him harder than it should have. Matthew’s entire body jerked backward, instinct kicking up through him in a bright, startled flash. The wine sloshed violently inside the glass, a pale golden arc that nearly leapt free before settling back with a soft splash. His breath jammed in his throat. His heartbeat bucked against his ribs in a startled, uneven rhythm, thudding like it was trying to sprint straight out of his chest.

He quickly fixed his glasses up and then his eyes finally caught up to him so he could finally make out the other person, focused, adjusted—

Gilbert.

But not the usual Gilbert.

Not the chaos-soaked creature who moved like thunderstorms and spoke like mischief in human form. Not the feather-ruffled, bright-eyed, easily startled cryptid he had spent weeks trying to categorize in a reasonable manner. Not the patient that didn’t trust him at one point yet somehow he had grown to slowly befriend.

No, this Gilbert stood too still. Far too still.

As if he had been waiting in that patch of dark, carved straight out of the shadow and placed there deliberately. As if he had known Matthew would turn the corner at that exact moment. His feathers lay sleek against him— An unnatural smoothness, arranged as if curated by careful fingers or an invisible comb. They gleamed dully in the low light, ordered and glossy, every barb lying obedient and flat. His posture was steady, unthreatening, yet unnervingly precise, like a statue dressed in bird-bone and twilight.

Matthew recognized him, of course he did; he knew Gilbert in the way one knew the shape of a recurring dream, but something about him being there, in that dim corridor, with such quietness and composure… It startled him in a way that scraped down his spine.

He had expected noise. Movement. A rustle of wings. A chirp of curiosity. Anything. Gilbert was always loud. But tonight he wasn’t and the blond? Well he just didn’t expect it. Not the soft, unreadable half-smile settling over Gilbert’s mouth, the expression too mild to decipher and too calm to trust.

Matthew’s pulse kicked again, a sharp, electric spike. He sucked in a breath that felt too loud for the room. “G-Gilbert?” He managed, his voice catching on the edges of the name and elongating the letters.

But Gilbert didn’t answer right away.

He simply watched him, eyes pale and clear, reflecting the faint gold of the wine, studying him with a gaze that seemed too old for his usually boyish restlessness. Something simmered quietly under his calm exterior, something Matthew couldn’t place, something that tugged uneasily at the back of his skull.

He tilted his head, the faintest quiver in his feathers betraying a curiosity that Matthew found disarming. The air between them felt taut, electric, as though the house itself had pressed closer, leaned in to watch. “You look pale…” The Nachtkrapp said. His voice was casual. Smooth. But Matthew knew better. He knew the way Gilbert saw things others overlooked. The way he noticed without being told. “Bad news?”

Matthew blinked. The words felt impossibly heavy, though they were nothing but a question. His lips parted, but he swallowed. He shook his head once, forcing a controlled smile. “No. I’m fine,” he said, because he couldn’t, wouldn’t, admit the stress, the frustration, the tiny quiver of worry that the other’s presence seemed to tug out of him.

Gilbert nodded slowly, not believing a single syllable, yet choosing, graciously or strategically, to let the lie settle between them like a small, shivering bird that neither of them dared touch. His expression stayed mild, but Matthew saw it: The faint tightening at the corner of his eyes, the slight precision in the way his feathers lay. Gilbert had noticed something. Gilbert had seen something. And he was pretending not to know that Matthew had noticed him noticing.

It sent a tremor through Matthew’s ribs.

God, of all the things he could not afford right now— Gilbert sniffing anywhere near the truth was the worst of them. He cared about him. Too much and way too quickly. He had no business caring about a creature who could smell lies better than a hound, nor mourning the idea of Gilbert ever looking at him with anything like hatred. Yet here he was, clutching his wine and praying the cryptid didn’t ask the wrong questions.

Matthew forced himself to breathe, slow and steady.

But then Gilbert’s gaze flicked downward to the bottle in Matthew’s hand, and that razor-edged focus evaporated at once, like sun glinting off a knife before the blade was tucked away again. Gilbert was infamous for getting sidetracked; curiosity tugged him around by the nose, by the feathers, by whatever internal compass he possessed that always pointed to ‘New and shiny thing.’

His attention snapped fully onto the bottle.

He squinted at it as though it were some rare species of insect preserved in amber. “…What is that?”

Matthew blinked, caught off guard by the abrupt pivot. His pulse had only just slowed from the panic of almost being read like an open page, and now he faced a different kind of shock— The benign kind, but still disorienting.

He stared at the wine bottle. Then at Gilbert, standing close enough that Matthew could see the fine white barbs in each feather, could smell the faint forest-cold scent that always clung to him.
Then back at the bottle again.

“You don’t— Oh. Right.” His voice faltered, softer than before. “Right. You wouldn’t know.”But the truth was more complicated. Gilbert did know many things— Too many, sometimes. Odd fragments of human behavior. Strange vocabulary that Matthew was certain he had not taught him. Half-remembered cultural tidbits that must have filtered through the forest somehow.

So being asked such a simple question felt startling.

Gilbert leaned closer with the eager deliberateness of a bird spotting prey— Quick, intense but somehow infinitely curious. His eyes shone, pupils narrowing, then widening again as he tried to decipher the object. His feathers gave a faint rustle, a sound Matthew had learned to interpret as a mixture of intrigue and excitement. “Is that…” Gilbert paused, lifting his chin slightly, nose almost brushing the cold glass, “Juice?”

The way he said juice, so serious, so deeply invested, pulled a startled, tiny laugh from Matthew’s throat.

For a heartbeat, Matthew let himself simply look at him. At the heavy-lidded red eyes trying so earnestly to puzzle out human habits. At the sleek feathers that should have been wild and ruffled but were instead oddly, unsettlingly neat— Too neat, as if Gilbert had groomed himself purposefully for this conversation, which only made his earlier fear twist a little deeper. “It’s wine.” Matthew explained softly, holding it up like a teacher demonstrating a rare specimen. “An alcoholic drink. Humans make it from grapes. It’s fermented. You drink it to relax.”

The German’s expression transformed, brightening instantly, excitement blooming across his face like dawn breaking over a frost-tipped forest. His whole body seemed to wake up with it; his wings gave a sudden rustle, feathers fluffing in a delighted halo. “Oh!” He chirped, voice ringing with pure wonder. “So it’s like awesome beer!”

Matthew almost dropped his glass. The stem wobbled between his fingers as he stared at Gilbert, whose grin was so wide and earnest it felt physically impossible to be mad at him— Even if the statement made absolutely no sense. “Beer?” Matthew repeated, his voice climbing an octave in pure disbelief. “Beer? You know beer?”

Gilbert puffed up proudly, wings giving a smug, rippling shimmy like a bird preening after a successful hunt. He looked so self-satisfied that Matthew’s annoyance tripped over itself and fell face-first. “I’ve heard things,” The albino said mysteriously, lowering his voice as though he were confessing membership in some secret society. His eyes gleamed with mischief.

“Heard things?” Matthew echoed. “From who?”

Gilbert only offered a loose, careless shrug, as though the question were far too trivial to deserve elaboration. “Awesome things travel.”

Matthew blinked at him. Hard. Twice.
He could not believe this— This same creature who, a week ago, had stared at a wall clock like it was an oracle stone, had poked it, then asked with full sincerity if time lived inside it, now had the audacity to talk about beer like a seasoned tavern regular.

“You— What do you…” Matthew sputtered, hands lifting helplessly before he dropped them again. “That’s not how this— Okay, you know what? Never mind.”

Gilbert beamed at him, radiating triumph, as though he had not just said something completely unhinged. And somehow, impossibly, Matthew felt the corners of his frustration soften and curl into warmth. Because Gilbert always did this. He always looked at him with that bright, unfiltered fascination, like Matthew was the only person in the world who knew answers worth knowing. Not like his colleagues, who questioned every breath he took, every hypothesis he made, every conclusion he reached as though youth made him incompetent. Gilbert listened like Matthew’s knowledge was treasure. Like every word he spoke was a spark worth catching. Like Matthew was brilliant, extraordinary, someone to admire rather than second-guess.

That look, the one he wore now, head tilted, eyes gleaming, made something deep in Matthew go unbearably soft.

It was ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Gilbert couldn’t tell the difference between a microwave and a radio. He thought the washing machine was ‘A small portal that eats clothes and spits them out cleaner.’ Hell! He still didn’t understand why humans needed doors.

And yet he stood here, feathers fluffed proudly, speaking of beer like he’d been part of human tavern culture for centuries.

Before Matthew could interrogate him further, Gilbert reached out with one clawed finger and tapped the bottle, the talon-tip clinking lightly against the glass. “This is good, right?” he asked, voice curious and soft, carrying that strange mixture of caution and eagerness that always made Matthew’s chest tighten. “I want to try.”

Matthew froze, heart fluttering oddly. He knew this wasn’t a normal interaction. He had handled drunken humans before, messy humans, clumsy humans, but Gilbert wasn’t quite human. Not entirely. He looked human, sure, tall, lithe, pale skin with sharp crimson eyes, but the feathers brushing the back of his neck and forearms, the faint sheen along his wings, the talon-like nails that curved unnaturally over his fingertips, all betrayed him. And those talons, Matthew knew, weren’t made for the delicate tasks of opening wine bottles or swirling glasses. They were made for hunting, tearing and gripping prey.

Matthew hesitated, lifting the glass slowly to his nose and inhaling the sharp sweetness of the wine. Its scent was rich, like sunlight trapped in gold, the faintest hint of frozen grapes and honeyed warmth. He swirled it in the glass, watching the light shimmer through it, thinking how fragile and perfect it looked.

Was this wise?

No. Absolutely not.

He knew, or at least strongly suspected, that Gilbert’s species were not built for human vices. They were rare, nearly mythical. Their metabolisms, though eerily human in some respects, were likely ill-suited to alcohol and most processed foods. Yet Gilbert had insisted, that small spark of curiosity bright in his eyes, watching Matthew with a tilt of his head and a slight curl of his lips. Matthew had seen that look countless times in crows, wild creatures deciding to step into the unknown. And just like those crows, Gilbert didn’t understand the danger, didn’t calculate consequences the way a human would.

And yet…

The blond found himself softening, not in judgment, but in awe. He reached out and held Gilbert’s wrist gently, his thumb brushing the smooth curve of feathered skin near his forearm. “Just a little.” Matthew said, voice low and warm, carrying reassurance rather than command. He tried to be infinitely soft, the kind of softness that could cradle curiosity without breaking it, the kind of softness Gilbert had never known from a human before. “Only a sip. You have to be careful… You’re not like me.”

The shorter male blinked, crimson eyes wide, as though processing the words more in tone than meaning. He tilted his head slightly, watching Matthew’s expression, the soft worry that threaded through the careful tilt of his hands, the way he’d drawn Gilbert a step closer into his arms without words. Then he nodded, apparently trusting him utterly, that fragile trust in someone not of his own kind.

Matthew poured a tiny amount of wine into a small glass, sliding it toward Gilbert with the same caution he might have shown handling a newborn creature. He could feel Gilbert’s eyes on him, tracing every movement with fascination, feathers brushing faintly against his palm, talons tapping lightly against the counter.

“Drink slowly.” Matthew whispered, leaning closer, lowering his voice as though the walls themselves were too eager to overhear. His other hand hovered near Gilbert’s shoulder, ready to steady him at the first sign of faltering. “I’ll be right here. You’ll be fine, I promise. Just take small sips.”

Gilbert’s lips curved into a faint, mischievous smile, almost like a child discovering fire for the first time, but he obeyed. He lifted the glass with both hands, talons cradling it carefully, and took a tiny sip. Matthew watched his throat work, noted the flush creeping into his cheeks, the way his feathers trembled slightly with surprise at the warmth.

“Oh…” Gilbert murmured, eyes widening as the liquid warmth spread through him, a flicker of delight touching his voice. “It’s funny? Warm. Like the sun is inside me.”

Matthew chuckled softly, brushing a loose feather from Gilbert’s neck with his fingertips, careful not to disturb the slicked-down plumage. “It is,” He said, voice gentle, coaxing. “Sweet, warm… It makes everything feel lighter.” He leaned close, letting the faint scent of wine mingle with the softer scent that hung around Gilbert.

Gilbert tilted his head again, crimson eyes shimmering with something between wonder and mischief, his wings twitching slightly against his sides. The tiny flutter of feathers along his neck and shoulders seemed almost celebratory. He tilted the glass for another cautious sip, and Matthew’s hands hovered near him, ready to steady him against imbalance. It was intoxicating in more ways than one, the way Gilbert leaned into his care without hesitation, a blend of curiosity and human-like boldness softened by the exotic fragility of his true nature.

Matthew’s lips curved softly in a small smile, the warmth in his chest blooming gently. He let Gilbert sip again, watching the slight flush deepen in his cheeks, the subtle light in his eyes intensify. “Slow…” He murmured, wrapping a hand lightly around the other’s wrist, thumb brushing over feathered skin.

But Gilbert was already tapping the glass against the counter impatiently. “More?”

Matthew should have said no. He really, absolutely should have. Any sensible man would have taken one look at the bright expectancy in Gilbert’s eyes and the way he held that glass like a child about to sample forbidden candy, and gently refused. Told him it was too strong, too sweet or too much for someone who had never tasted alcohol in his life.

But Matthew was tired, warm from wine, and more than a little enchanted by the rare sight of Gilbert behaving so politely while asking for something. So instead, he sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and poured a second small glass.

Gilbert downed it even faster than the first. Not drank— Downed. As if he had discovered a shortcut to happiness and intended to sprint through it.

“Slowly,” Matthew warned, though a small laugh threaded under his voice. “You’re supposed to enjoy the taste—”

“More?” Gilbert interrupted breathlessly, eyes shining.

Matthew’s shoulders slumped in resigned amusement. “You have no sense of pacing, you know that?”

He poured a third.

And then a fourth.

And Gilbert accepted each one with increasing eagerness, like a scholar devouring chapters of a forbidden book. Time loosened around them; minutes bled into hours almost without shape. The soft kitchen lighting dimmed into evening shadows. The bottle grew lighter with suspicious speed.

Matthew, who was nursing his own fifth glass and feeling pleasantly foggy around the edges, finally set the bottle down with the ceremonious care of a man trying not to fall in love with his own poor judgment. Gilbert swayed almost immediately, as if the motion had been waiting for permission. His posture, usually so precise and alert, dipped like softened wax. His shoulders loosened. His wings sagged downward giving him the floppy appearance of a bird caught in warm rain. His pupils widened until they were almost entirely dark, drinking in too much light.

A lazy, crooked smile stretched across his lips, unguarded and charmingly uneven.

Matthew blinked at him. Then he blinked again, slower. A faint laugh escaped him, soft and incredulous. “Oh no…” He murmured. “Oh no.”

Because it hit him then, very belatedly, just how catastrophically lightweight Gilbert actually was. Of course he was. He had never had alcohol. His body had absolutely no frame of reference for what to do with it. And Matthew had just given him— What? Four glasses? Five?

Good lord…

Gilbert blinked owlishly, lifted a hand, and pressed his palm against his own cheek as though astonished by the discovery of his own face. He prodded it twice, then sighed dreamily. “Maffhew…” He slurred which made Matthew have to fight a smile. “Yes?”

“Mattie,” Gilbert tried again, leaning forward until he listed dangerously to one side. “Maffey.” He grinned, pleased with himself. “My favorite awesome scientist— Your house is spinning.” Matthew stifled a laugh behind his hand, trying to sound stern and failing magnificently. “You’re drunk…” He said, voice mild.

Gilbert gasped. A real gasp, dramatic and scandalized, his wings giving a feeble little flap of shock. “I am?” His eyes widened in delighted betrayal. “That’s so cool!”

Matthew gave up and laughed, soft and helpless, shaking his head as he stepped closer to steady Gilbert before he toppled over. The amusement warmed him more than the wine did. “No more.”

Gilbert pouted, his wings drooping at the edges like wilted petals left too long in the cold. The motion pulled at Matthew’s heart in a way he absolutely refused to examine. Gilbert leaned forward and Matthew instinctively reached out. His hands landed at Gilbert’s waist with practiced gentleness, steadying the other before he tipped forward completely. Gilbert gave a small, startled huff and seemed to melt into him without resistance, collapsing the remaining distance until he was pressed fully against Matthew’s chest.

The top of Gilbert’s head tucked itself beneath his jaw as naturally as a bird finding shelter beneath a roof. His hair brushed Matthew’s throat in soft tickle while the warmth of his breath unfurled against Matthew’s collarbone in rhythmic, tender puffs.

“You’re so warm…” Gilbert murmured, voice softened by alcohol and closeness. “Humans are so warm.” The words vibrated faintly against Matthew’s skin, and that was far too much. A nervous laugh almost slipped out of him, but it dissolved into silence when his pulse threatened to leap right out of his neck. He could feel it, loud and traitorous, thudding against Gilbert’s cheek.

He swallowed once. Hard. He absolutely did not need this right now. Not when he already felt frayed from the phone call, irritated from the day, and stupidly aware of every inch of Gilbert leaning into him.

And, oh god, he was still drinking.

He realized that only belatedly, staring dumbly at the nearly empty glass in his free hand. Somewhere in the haze of frustration and comfort, he had topped it off again without thinking. He brought it to his lips almost on instinct, taking a slow, weighted sip that lingered too long on his tongue. The wine bloomed warm in his chest, settling into his bones, softening everything. He felt pleasantly unmoored, as though someone had loosened the knots inside him, one by one.

Gilbert clung to him loosely, but not carelessly. His hands rested lightly at Matthew’s sides, the touch warm, curious, and full of a strange trust. A few stray feathers brushed the side of Matthew’s neck and jawline, light as drifting ash. The delicate texture made Matthew shiver before he could stop himself, the sensation darting down his spine like a startled spark. The albino lifted his head just slightly, enough for his cheek to graze Matthew’s jaw in a slow, searching movement.

“I like you.” He announced abruptly, the words drifting out of him with the uninhibited sincerity of someone half-drunk and utterly honest. “You’re nice.”

The sentence landed like a match struck in a dark room.

Matthew’s breath stuttered. His cheeks grew warm, too warm, and he prayed it was just the wine and not something embarrassingly visible. There was no universe in which he should have been blushing over this. None. But his body did not care about logic or dignity. It felt like his stress had been quelled (That was partly due to him drinking) but some thoughts of annoyance still lingered.

Gilbert nuzzled slightly closer, as if the honesty had made him brave. Or maybe the wine had. Matthew wasn’t sure, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “You’re… Very nice.” He added, voice softening even further, almost fading into a hum. The Canadian’s heart flickered like a candle caught in a draft.

He did not know what to do with his hands. They hovered stupidly at Gilbert’s waist, not pushing him away but not daring to pull him closer either. The closeness was dizzying. Gilbert let out a slow exhale that warmed his throat, and his weight settled fully against Matthew as if gravity itself had chosen sides. His wings sagged further, drooping in a tired, contented arc.

“Gil?” Matthew whispered, trying to keep his voice steady, but it came out softer than intended. “Are you… Uh still with me?”

Gilbert hummed, a low, drowsy sound that vibrated against his chest. Then his legs gave a tiny buckle. Matthew reacted on instinct again, arms folding securely around him before he slipped. He made a small, pleased sound, almost a chirp, and laid his head back beneath Matthew’s jaw as though that had been the plan all along.

Matthew stood frozen for a long moment, unsure what to do, unsure what to feel and confused why his chest felt strangely full.