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Fenton wakes the next day, blinking at the bright sunlight that filters through his window. Grunting softly at the assault on his irises, he shifts to bury his face his pillow.
Instead, he meets something softer than his pillowcase, something sweet-smelling that shifts over and tickles his beak.
He opens his eyes again, looking down to see Gandra’s head tucked under his chin. They’d shifted in their sleep so her back was pressed to his front, and she’s holding one of his arms to her chest in both her hands.
They’ve woken up this way maybe a hundred times, but this time feels different. Not just because it the first time they’ve woken up together since before she was kidnapped (actually, he thinks the last time they were actually in the same physical space was when she stole the electronic disruptor, but that had been about ten minutes of fake battle after weeks of not seeing her), but because this time, she feels a little smaller in his arms, clings a little tighter.
After six weeks of separation, and a whirlwind of a trip home, Fenton wants nothing more than to stay here with her, hold her that much tighter, just to assure himself she won't disappear again.
But he’s suddenly aware both his arms have fallen asleep and he’s starving, his grumbling stomach becoming increasingly harder to ignore.
He flexes his fingers, wiggling them slightly to gauge her awakeness. She sighs and loosens her grip on his arm, but, otherwise, doesn’t stir.
Easing his arm from around her, he presses a kiss to her temple and slides out of bed.
He waits until he’s out of the room to crack his back and shakes, ruffling his feathers. The living room is brighter, too, like the storm they’d flown into last night hadn’t happened. A calm after the storm, as it were.
He hopes it lasts.
Wandering into the kitchen, Fenton finds a note on the refrigerator door in M’ma’s rushed handwriting, stuck to the surface with a brightly-colored donut magnet.
Pollito and Gandra—I’ll be at work until after dinner. There’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge if you get hungry. I’ll see you tonight. Love, M’ma.
Fenton has no doubt the fridge is over-stocked with food—while neither he nor M’ma are particularly blessed with time or exceptional cooking skills, cooking was the stress release of choice in the Crackshell-Cabrera household.
At the thought of food, his stomach rumbles.
Pancakes. Pancakes sound good, even with the promise of already-made food. As long as they have the box mix, he can actually make them.
They do, thankfully, and, before long, he’s started on a growing stack of somewhat lumpy, slightly too-brown pancakes.
Just over the sizzle of the griddle, he hears the soft padding of feet behind him. A moment later, Gandra’s arms slide around his middle and her head settles on his shoulder.
“Hi,” she says, voice raspy and rough with sleep. “Why are you awake at this ungodly hour?”
Fenton snorts. “It’s three p.m.”
“Point stands, Suit.”
He lays a hand over hers on his stomach, squeezing lightly. “Then go back to sleep.”
She shakes her head against his back, arms tightening slightly around him. “No, the bed’s cold without you.” Her head peeks over his shoulder. “What are you making?”
“Pancakes.” Fenton winces as he flips one over, revealing a too-brown side. “They’ll taste better than they look.”
“Are you kidding? Too-brown pancakes are the best kind.”
He looks down at the hands around his waist, at the rope burns around her wrists. They’d treated it as best they could while they waited for the plane to be repaired, but they were still an angry red, a harsh contrast to her feathers.
Smoothing a thumb lightly over the burns, Fenton raises one of her hands to his beak and attempts to preen the bent feathers so they’re smoothed down and laying the right way.
Gandra hums, the sound vibrating against his shoulder, and flexes her hand in his. He stops, worried he might have aggravated the rope burns.
“Tickles,” she says by way of explanation, flicking the underside of his beak lightly, and he realizes the humming had actually been a giggle.
He hasn’t heard her laugh in so long.
Before he can respond, she raises up on her toes enough to lean over his shoulder so she can kiss him, nudging his cheek with her beak. Dropping back down to her heels, she squeezes around his waist once more before letting her arms slide from him and hopping on the counter across from him. "When's your mom getting back?"
"M'ma drew the late shift tonight, so probably not for another few hours."
“Mm.” Gandra nods and yawns, pressing the heel of her palm between her eyes.
Flipping a pancake, Fenton moves to the ancient coffeemaker (he’d tried to buy M’ma one of the newer, pod-based coffee makers for Mother’s Day, once, but she’d promptly called it “café diablo” and hidden it, saying the coffeemaker she and Dad bought before he was even hatched was perfectly fine.
He’d found it two years later, buried in the shed, and he and Gandra used it for the foundation of the Fusion-Powered Deluxe Cocoa-Maker, so. Not a total loss.)
As he fills the basket with grounds, Gandra seems to rouse a bit at the smell of coffee. “Do you have any paper in here?” she asks.
“Yeah, try that drawer.” He points. “M’ma usually keeps notepads for groceries and stuff.”
She hops off the counter and crosses the kitchen, rummaging through the drawer until she unearths a colorful notepad and pen. Sitting at the table, she uncaps the pen, chewing on it a moment before writing.
“What are you working on?” he asks after a moment of listening to the pen scratch.
“Everything I need to do now that I’m not a prisoner. Find a new job, eventually find another place to live…”
“Well, those are easy. After the GizmoCloud, I showed Dr. Gearloose some of the projects you helped on, and he wants to bring you on in the lab. He said could use another intern now that Manny is helping restore the magical artifacts to their rightful owners.”
“Intern?” she asks, raising an eyebrow skeptically.
“I’m…mostly sure that’s just a title.” There’s something about the conversation that feels familiar, and he tilts his head. “Wait, I told you this, didn’t I?”
Gandra shrugs a shoulder. “First I’m hearing it.”
He narrows his eyes, thinking, trying to recall, sure he’s told her this already. “Oh.” He nods, finally remembering. “I think that was right around the time your number disconnected.”
“Right." She points the pen at him. "New phone. That goes on the list. Buzzard broke mine.”
“Well, you have a job, barring some paperwork, and you can stay here as long as you need, or want, so a new phone’s priority. And going to the doctor," he adds. "You should probably make sure you’re not malnourished or anything.”
She shakes her head immediately. “I don’t need a doctor.”
“I’m sorry, did you somehow also attend medical school in the last six weeks? Because last time I checked, you weren’t a medical doctor.”
“I’m not malnourished," she says easily and too quickly. "F.O.W.L. weren’t villains, remember? They fed us. It wasn’t particularly good food, but it was food. I’m fine.”
Fenton lets out a slow breath. “Gandra, I was raised by a single mother for most of my life, so I know there are certain things you’re not supposed to discuss with a woman, but…you’ve lost weight. And that’s from a strictly concerned-boyfriend-purely-clinical viewpoint! Not a creepy male gaze way,” he rushes to assure her. "It can't hurt to just check and make sure."
He had hoped that the weeks of separation had caused him to imagine it, but in the light of day, removed from the rosy lenses of reunion, Fenton can’t deny it. She’s thin, thinner than before, her hips jutting out over the waistband of M’ma’s pajama pants, and her feathers have lost their luster
Gandra eyes him for a long moment, and he worries he stuck his foot in his beak again. Thankfully, she just asks, “Is that why you made a stack of pancakes taller than me?”
“Crackshell-Cabrera habit. We cook when we worry. I guarantee the fridge is full of leftovers M’ma hasn’t even touched.” Fenton waves the spatula at her. “But don’t try to get me off topic! Why won’t you go see a doctor?”
She shakes her head, averting his gaze. “It doesn’t matter, Suit, I’ll be fine in a few days anyways.”
“You’ll be lucky to get a few days. One word to M’ma, and she’ll drag you to the hospital herself. And she’ll cause a scene.”
He means for it to be joking (or a half-joke, anyways, because he’s not convinced M’ma wouldn’t do it), but then Gandra surprises him, burying her head in her arms, hiding her face from him.
Clicking off the stove, Fenton moves towards her, reaching for her. “Gandra? What’s wrong?”
She shakes her head.
He lays his hand on her arm. “Gandra, what is it?”
“You’re gonna think it’s stupid,” she mutters.
“We’ve been through this, haven’t we?” he chides gently. “I don’t think anything you say is stupid.”
Without looking at him, she mumbles something into her arms. Thankfully, he’s well-versed in the art of Gandra-Mumble.
“Needles? Gandra, lots of people are afraid of needles.”
She props her chin on her arms, giving him a half-hearted glare. “I’m not afraid of needles. I just…have a general, very deep hatred for them and never want them around me. Ever.”
Fenton slides his hand down to hold her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “Okay, so a very deep hatred for needles, then. You should still really see a doctor. Just to make sure everything’s okay.”
Gandra shakes her head. “That’s not…everything.”
“Then what is it?”
“What doctor’s going to believe me?” She pulls her hand from his, waving both in the air now, the nanotech flashing between her feathers. “Hey, doc, I was taken prisoner by my ex-boss for over a month, forced into a tiny cell, didn’t really sleep in all that time because my crazy fellow prisoner never stopped playing a harmonica. I was fed this weird paste that, theoretically, has all the nutrients and calories you need in a day, but clearly didn't, since my boyfriend can tell I've lost weight. Oh, and if you come near me with a needle, I’ll probably shock you, because I have nanotechnology in my hands from a surgery I performed on myself when I was sixteen! I sound like a total crack!”
Her breath hitches, and she buries her head in her arms again, a shudder going down her back.
Scooting his chair closer to her, he tentatively reaches a hand for her arm, barely making contact before she flinches, and Fenton retracts his arm. Instead, he lays his head on the table next to hers, watching her shoulders shake slightly.
Honestly, he'd wondered if she'd hit this point. As long as he's known her, Gandra's been all or nothing, in every aspect of her life. She's admitted to staying up for almost a week straight, working on W.A.N.D.A. before allowing herself to crash.
She's forced herself to to keep pushing, helping wherever she can, the last couple of days to get home. He thinks last night was the first time she slept longer than thirty minutes at a time. And now, up for barely twenty minutes—without coffee, he notes—she's trying to force her life back on the broken pieces of tracks left over from her life before she was kidnapped.
Gandra is a many great, wonderful, brilliant things that Fenton admires, none more so than her fiery passion, the literal spark he felt on their very first date. But it's times like these he's worried that spark will catch, spread, grow into an inferno, consuming her from the inside out. She'd burn herself out before admitting to anything she thought resembled a weakness.
She's been running head-first into a brick wall, trying to break it down with only her fists, but, instead, it broke her down.
After a long moment, Gandra finally turns her head to look at him with one teary blue eye. "I'm supposed to be fine, now," she insists, scrubbing her cheek with the back of her wrist. "I'm here, I'm not a prisoner anymore, I'm not F.O.W.L. anymore. I'm here with you, and instead I'm losing it over the thought of a doctor's visit."
Fenton reaches a hand for her face, waiting for her nod of approval, before he brushes the strands of hairs that stick to the damp feathers of her cheek. "We've been home less than twenty-four hours, cariño. You don't have to be fine, yet, but you are safe now."
"I know it's over, in my head, but the rest of me hasn't caught up yet, I don't think."
"No one expects you to," he assures her softly. "Even badass Gandra Dee needs more than two days' recovery."
The side of her beak ticks up briefly, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes. "I just...thought that once we came back, I could put the whole kidnapping, double-agent, spy work, losing-the-only-job-I-ever-knew thing behind me. I should be able to, right? It's what I wanted, was to be able to put it behind me, move forward."
"You didn't exactly plan on a kidnapping, though, did you? Something like that throws a wrench in the 'moving forward' plan." He squeezes her arm lightly. "There's no rush to try and get back to normal. You can take as long as you need."
She uncurls herself from a ball long enough to crawl from her chair to his. Fenton straightens as she climbs into his lap, resuming her ball-like figure, and wraps his arms around her, setting the bottom of his bill on top of her head. "Thank you," she whispers.
"We don't even have to go back to work right away, you know. We could take some time off,” he suggests. “Take a sort-of vacation.”
She snorts, settling her head in the crook of his neck, relaxing minutely. “Have you ever taken a vacation in your life?”
“Have you?” he counters.
“You mean besides the resort I was just at in Alexandria for six weeks?” She giggles as he jostles her shoulder, and the knot in his chest loosens, hearing her laugh a second time that morning. He knows her doubts are far from gone, but it's still good to hear the sound. “No. Might be nice to try, though."
"Dr. Gearloose won't mind having the lab to himself. Apparently, I've been 'insufferable' to have around," he adds, which is true. Just about anyone who wasn't M'ma or Huey thought Fenton had been difficult to be around, or going crazy, in the last month.
Or both.
"Aww." Gandra cranes her neck back so she can see him. "Don't worry, Suit, you can hang out with me. I don't think you're insufferable."
"Oh, that's nice. That leaves you and M'ma." She snorts, and he tightens arms tighten around her. He feels her relax further, fingers plucking at his tshirt.
"What was that you called me? Cari—?"
"Oh, cariño?” She nods, still toying with his sleeve. “It’s Spanish, it just means sweetheart, dear, that kind of thing.” Her fingers still against the fabric of his shirt. “I-is that okay?”
Gandra's head shifts against his shoulder. "Yeah," she says quietly. He cranes his neck to see a faint blush dusting her cheeks and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
They sit like that in the quiet kitchen, wrapped around each other in the kitchen chair, listening to each other breathe, feeling the other's heart beat.
"So, like...where did we fall on the whole doctor thing?"
Fenton snorts. "I still think you should still go, but it can wait a few days. Just...don't argue with M'ma when she tells you to eat, or she'll know something's up."
She shakes her head adamantly. "Oh my god, no. I'd never argue with that woman. She terrifies me."
"Now you're getting it."