Chapter Text
Neil is almost obnoxious in the hedonistic way he drapes himself on things: the top edge of the fence, with his tiny legs dangling loosely down either side; on his back on a high branch in a tree so tall it makes even Kevin anxious; in one black stripe of the patio umbrella that’s only loose enough to curve Neil’s spine into a gentle parenthese. Kevin has yet to discover how to let his body go like that - he lacks the capacity in both human and owl form to drape and fold, to curl and linger. His instincts are to guard, to tuck his wings in tight and feel the flex of bone and feather like armour on a battlefield. But Kevin watches Neil, catalogues the way he stretches in the late afternoon, the way he adjusts and wiggles, the way he snugs in tight to the last splash of sunlight across a branch. Kevin wants to let go like that too. He yearns for it. But, he can’t. So instead, he stands guard.
Usually, it’s an honorary post, with nothing to ward against other than Neil’s complete lack of self-preservation instincts. They have a routine now: Neil rolls out of bed sometime in the mid afternoon, stumbles into Kevin’s room, and pokes him in the foot until he wakes up with a squawk and yawn and grumble and finally pads naked after Neil out the back door. They race. They nap. Kevin withstands Neil’s determined grooming. Finally, about an hour before they can expect Andrew home - particularly if the sun is friendly and warm and kind that day - Neil will conk out hard, his tail tucked around his nose or his wings spread wide or even, one time, upside down and belly-up in the net of the exy racket that lives in the yard.
Today, Neil has splayed himself out indecently on a thick, wide leaf that rocks gently under his weight. He’s snoring softly, tuckered out from the twenty odd times Kevin had launched him into the air with aforementioned exy racket, and Kevin is intently focused on memorizing the way Neil’s little paws are flopped open and boneless, full on crucified by comfort. Which is why, perhaps, Kevin doesn’t notice the red-tailed hawk landing soundlessly on the far corner of their fence. It’s not until the rustle of feathers catches his attention that he remembers the other kind of hunger he’d felt the first time he’d seen Neil that vulnerable.
Fuck.
Kevin freezes, however many eons of predatory shifter instinct taking over his feathers and muscles and tendons until he is an avian statue in a tree, rendered all but invisible to the hawk. Kevin’s body knows what it’s doing before his mind does—locking up while his instincts assess possibilities with the radiant precision of lightning. He eyes the hawk without moving his head, and catches the moment the hawk stills too, his gaze locked in on the little flutter of Neil’s wing in the subtle breeze.
Some riotous blend of parent instinct and mate instinct explodes behind Kevin’s eyes. He is ready to sit on top of Neil or fight a bitch, both or either to the death if need be. His wings snap open. A sound of pure murder spits out of his beak. The hawk has already launched, but Kevin’s blood curdling screech knocks him off his path in a mid-air stumble. It also, unfortunately, startles Neil so epically that he tumbles off of his leaf and plummets from the magnolia tree in a nose over tail spiral. Kevin and the hawk both somehow pause in the sultry heat of the South Carolina summer, a shimmering, quavering, slow-motion of a hover, watching as Neil fights for a scrap of air to catch him. In the space of a heartbeat, two birds of prey simultaneously change trajectory. The roar of wind snapping against feathers fills Kevin’s ears like static, a fluid sluice of noise that makes the ripple of fur when Neil’s leg catches enough air feel paradoxically immediate and incredibly distant.
Owls, in general, are not shaped for dive bombing. They are more of a swoop and snatch sort of breed. But Kevin is not your average owl - he is a shifter. And this stupid, wayward, dumbass hawk has stumbled into the wrong yard to threaten the wrong squirrel. Kevin tucks his wings and drops like an avenging angel of death, rocketing face first through the air and crashing into the hawk, knocking them both out of the air and into a tangle of feathers and rage in the grass.
Distantly, he hears the thud of Neil’s body against the grass when he shifts human mid-roll. He sees the flash of orange out of the corner of his eye when Neil grabs the exy racquet from its usual lean against the deck. Kevin manages to flip the hawk, his anger pure molten fire in his wings as he flaps for balance, as he sinks his claws into the hawk’s back and screeches his outrage.
Don’t. Screech. Touch. Screech. My. Screech. Family.
The hawk twists its head to bite at Kevin’s legs, but it falls short with a scream of fury. Kevin hops once, twice, slamming the hawk’s beak into the ground. The struggle is futile: Kevin outweighs it by almost double. He shifts, raising the lethal claws of one foot high in the air, lining up his killing blow, victory so close it is flooding his senses in blood.
“Kevin.” Neil’s voice is low and steady and comes from right behind him. Kevin’s senses had narrowed so tightly to kill that he hadn’t even heard Neil move. Neil waits—or must wait—for Kevin to cock his head in answer before he continues. “Kevin, don’t you think you’re being a little bit of a hypocrite?”
Kevin huffs. And hesitates. And then hops off the bedraggled hawk to snap back human and turn to face Neil. He crosses his arms and frowns. “He was going to eat you.”
Neil grins at him. His teeth are very white and there is grass in his hair. “Pot,” Neil says, weighing the air in one hand, and then the other, “kettle?”
Kevin stares at him. His heart is still hammering, the blood still thrumming in his ears like a battle cry. The hawk sputters and flutters and rights itself in Kevin’s peripheral vision, but he can’t make himself look away from the stupid fucking squirrel in front of him. For a moment - for the tiniest of moments - he wonders if this is what Andrew feels when he sees them flying through the air, Neil strapped to Kevin’s back and trilling in delight. “You could have died Neil. You could have been dead.” Kevin’s voice cracks on the last word.
Neil drops the racquet and the pretense at the same time, stepping close and offering himself for grabbing and holding as soon as the hawk is out of range. “I know,” Neil says softly. Kevin makes an inarticulate noise and grabby hands, and Neil steps even closer, letting himself be reeled in and wrapped tight, and Kevin struggles to wrangle the jumble of emotions ping ponging around his body now that the hawk is gone and Neil is safe and warm in his arms.
He doesn’t think Neil understands the devastating size of the wound that ripped inside of him when he imaged Neil, impaled on the hawk’s talons, Neil, torn open in a heap in the grass, and Andrew—the look on Andrew’s face when Kevin had to tell him. Kevin can’t say all of this, so instead he drops his chin on Neil’s head, pulls him even closer, and says again, a whisper, “You could have died.”
“I know,” Neil whispers back, rubbing a soothing circle with his palm on Kevin’s shoulder blade, and this time Kevin hears that he knows all the unsaid bits too. “You saved my life, asshole.”
A little piece of grass from Neil’s hair attaches itself to Kevin’s mouth. He turns to spit it out and the moment is more or less broken by the harsh, slippery sound that comes out of him. Frowning at his failure, he lifts a hand to pick it out from between his lips. Kevin says, “I think maybe Andrew is right about this dare-devil stuff.”
“Shhh,” Neil says. He steps back, looking very solemn, and says, “That’s crazy talk. Come inside and eat some Goldfish. You’ll feel better.”
“Parmesan?” Kevin asks quickly. Neil’s favorite. To the degree where he has pretty much exclusive rights over any of them in the house—which is fine, as they’re not actually Kevin’s favorite . (Those are Teddy Grahams - the honey kind.) But if he’s learned anything from Neil, it’s to strike while the iron is hot. Something in him is still raw and exposed, tender around the edges, but he thinks that he could be gathered up and put back together. By Neil. By Neil’s willingness to let Kevin devour his favorite snack.
“Yes, pigeon,” Neil says fondly. “You can have my parmesan goldfish.”
Which is how Kevin ends up with his knees over the back of the couch, his head hanging off the seat. Neil is cross-legged on the coffee table in his matching flying squirrel onesie, Andrew’s puddled in his lap in anticipation of his return home. Neil tosses a goldfish cracker at Kevin’s open mouth and just misses.
“Focus,” Kevin says sternly. “You’re better than this.”
The next one goes right in. Then the next. Then they start trying two at a time. Kevin has just managed to catch both in his mouth when the front door opens and Andrew strolls in, looking bemused, trailed by what almost looks like a dog from this angle, but which can’t be. Not if the very particular smell coming off of it is real.
“Hey,” Andrew says. He looks down at his feet helplessly. “This dog just kind of got in my car.”
“That’s not a dog,” Neil says. “That’s a coyote.”
Kevin hastily swallows the crackers in his mouth and angles himself up for a better view. “And not just a coyote,” he says, exchanging glances with Neil. “He’s a—”
The man now crouched beside Andrew straightens before Kevin can finish his sentence.
“Jeremy,” the man finishes. “I’m a Jeremy. And I fucking knew it. ”