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Andrew doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone—not to his useless coworkers or infuriating family, and certainly not to you. He keeps to a strict tit-for-tat system that ensures he owes nothing to nobody; it works for him. It’s a buffer, of sorts.
It also means that it takes over a month for anyone to notice something is… off, with him.
Because Andrew is in hell, Neil picks up on it first. Narrows his infernally cold blue eyes as Andrew slinks through the back door into the kitchen with mussed-up hair. Neil’s eyes are too piercing to be looking at anyone like that, and even with his usual layers of armor donned, Andrew can feel Neil’s scrutiny prickling his neck.
If this were any other day, Andrew would make the next move. He would look at Neil for a second too long before tapping two mocking fingers to his brow in a bastard’s salute. Under literally any other circumstances, Andrew would glut himself on anything and everything Neil has to offer, but he won’t do that, not now. Not when he’s so mortified by what’s going on.
Andrew is being bullied by a seagull.
Yeah, laugh it up. Have fun with that. One day you’ll be suffering a plight so pathetic as to be unmentionable, and then you’ll see.
The thing about Neil noticing is that he doesn’t bring it up at first. No, Neil lets it sit, festering in all the quiet ways that Andrew is different, now that he’s looking. Analytical little fuck, collecting evidence to use in Andrew’s imminent demise.
When Neil deigns to begin his deep-dive into Andrew’s misery, it is, of course, while Andrew is scarfing down a sandwich over a trash can. Andrew, who is soaked through with sweat and lacks the patience or empathy for bullshit, eyes him warily as he chews and swallows faster than his stomach can keep up with.
“You’re acting weird,” Neil says.
Andrew grunts. There is nothing weird or even unusual about trash can meals. Neil will have to be more specific.
“It has to do with the alley,” Neil continues, casual as can be and definitely, totally not catching the way Andrew’s shoulders tighten, and certainly missing how he swallows his half-chewed bite of sandwich twice. “Someone’s bothering you.”
“Right now?” Andrew scoffs, sandwich halfway down his throat. “Sure.”
Neil nudges the trash can with his foot just as Andrew goes to drop the last inedible shred of crust into it, sending bread and all its associated crumbs scattering across the floor. More things for Andrew to track down during closing. Usually annoying, but even more tonight because he’s stuck on a revolving clopen schedule that’s fucked up his already tenuous grasp on sleep in a way that is going to take months of miserable work to fix.
“You’re cleaning that up,” Andrew says, stalking to the hand sink and kneeing the hot water pedal. He can feel Neil watching him, and knows this is only the beginning.
The beginning, of course, does not mean conflict has only just graced Andrew’s presence. No, the beginning means that Andrew needs to put in more effort to hide the truth from Neil’s prying eyes. From everyone, really, but even Nicky’s do-gooder attitude, Allison’s nose for drama, and Kevin’s arrogant wisdom have never been finely tuned to Andrew’s character—not like Neil, who always knows with one look when Andrew is not acting his normal self.
The truth is, Andrew doesn’t care if Neil knows. He could tell him, point blank, that he has a new nemesis, and that his nemesis is a seagull, and this would be accepted as fact so quickly that Andrew would never have to discuss it again.
The thread of a lie woven into that truth is that Andrew’s nemesis is not strictly villainous. For all that seagulls are conniving pests, they’re still birds: were the situation different, Andrew would brush its reign of terror off as an act of nature. The issue keeping Andrew up at night is that he is ninety percent sure this specific seagull, which he calls the Pestilence, is addicted to nicotine.
Let’s back up, just a step, to make sure everyone’s on the same page here. Living in a small beach town means that one gets used to seagulls taking up space in restaurant drive-thrus and parking lots; that’s just the way things are. The terrible, squawky fucks demand food and know from trial and error that tourists are all-too-happy to share spare fries and leave their trash in the parking lot. Easy pickings. Seagulls, despite being birds with no concept of morality, are also prone to evil, and have no issue dive-bombing people to steal their food.
Given as Andrew works in a kitchen, you should see where this is going. If not, allow me to spell it out for you: Andrew takes his smoke breaks in the alley behind Rosie’s kitchen. He has done this even before he began working at Rosie’s, and will continue to do so until he stops gracing the shithole with his presence. Eating is usually low on his list of priorities when he’s outside.
The seagulls do not know this.
The Pestilence, being a particularly stupid bird with a notably crooked beak, stole one of Andrew’s smoking “French fries” a little over a month ago. The stupid twit was not dissuaded from a life of crime by singed feathers and the acrid stench of cigarette smoke; instead, it’s taken a shining to the things. Andrew rarely makes it outside at the same time for his breaks. During the day, the Pestilence appears to be otherwise occupied, or perhaps too stupid to realize Andrew might be outside. In the evening, and especially at night, the damned bird waits for him. Sometimes he makes eye contact with it as he lights up, stares at it over the lit end of his cigarette, and swears a storm when the fucker finally makes its move. Other times, he’s barely gotten his pack open before the Pestilence is moving in.
The Pestilence has been less patient, as of late. This is why Andrew believes it is addicted. That, and the fact that over the past week, the bird has been coming back for seconds.
Andrew’s wallet has been significantly lighter ever since the Pestilence discovered its new favorite vice.
“You’re smoking more,” Neil notes one night at Andrew’s apartment. Kevin is in the bathroom, scrubbing grease from his shins following a mishap with the grease traps, and Neil has perched on the back of the couch that Kevin still refuses to sit in, lest the curbside infested it with fleas before Andrew dragged it up the stairs and deposited it in the living room-kitchen-dining room.
Andrew grunts, crumpling his now-empty cigarette carton and flicking it in Neil’s general direction.
Neil squints. Wriggles around on the couch to get a clean read on Andrew, his eyes piercing, flicking left to right like he’s reading. Maybe he is. Maybe, for Neil, Andrew is an open book. That would certainly explain a few things.
“That’s your third pack this week,” Neil says. It is as much an observation as it is a line of inquiry. The floor is open, the mic ready and available should Andrew feel like opening up about his smoking habits.
“You should smoke less,” Kevin shouts from the bathroom. His voice is muffled by the fan. “You’re going to have a heart attack by thirty if you keep up at this rate.”
“Small miracles,” Andrew mutters. Should he be so lucky as to have one now, he could escape the conversation Neil is so determined to have.
Neil wriggles again, and Andrew is distracted by the way he pulls his calf under his thigh. The position does not look comfortable: he looks like a hurdler was stopped mid-jump and pinned to the couch by gravity, as if he could sprint away at any moment. And yet, he still looks relaxed. His shoulders are loose, and his long, knobbly fingers are toying with the torn fringes of a hole in his jeans.
“I am not talking about this,” Andrew says, since Neil is clearly trying to think up something of his own to share. He operates under the false belief that Andrew’s strict tit-for-tat system extends to him; he has yet to understand that there is little Andrew would not do for Neil, if only he asked. It is a leash, handed to the one man he trusts not to pull. “It is none of your business.”
Neil frowns. Just a little thing, the sort of fleeting expression that Andrew had to learn to look for, when Neil first started working at Rosie’s. There was a time when Neil’s strung-out, skittish behavior made him a cause for concern. Andrew knows better now; Neil is not on drugs, nor hunting for information on Kevin. He is just high-strung and reactive, in the building sort of way that appears explosive when really, it is not.
“Can’t believe you thought anyone would buy you as a pushover,” Andrew says, changing the subject.
Neil groans and sinks into the couch. Andrew does not watch his hips sink lower into the cushion and entertain a fantasy of better uses for Neil’s flexibility. Instead, he takes a drag of his cigarette and holds it deep in his lungs before turning to the window. Ash trembles at the lit end, begging to fall, but his hand is steady. He’s curious how long it will take before it falls on its own.
“We’d be a lot better off if he were,” Kevin says, finally emerging from the bathroom in nothing but a towel. His hair is soggy, dripping down his cheeks and onto his chest. Andrew watches his reflection swan across the room to check the pizza rolls steadily burning to coal in their oven.
“Yeah?” Neil asks. “Expand on that.”
“No,” Kevin responds, having learned better than to indulge Neil in a fight, except, of course, for when he also wants to get into a scrap. “These are inedible.”
“Tough,” Andrew says. A quarter inch of ash hangs precariously toward the window sill.
“You should cook something for us,” Kevin says, thinking he’s sly as he pulls the pizza roll corpses from the oven. “The fridge is stocked.”
“I am not cooking for free.” Andrew bends his neck to his left shoulder, and the crack is easily audible across the room. “You got money?”
“You’re wasting your talent,” Kevin grumbles. “I’m making smoothies.”
Andrew grimaces. “Don’t bother me with anything green.”
“You’ll get what you’re served!”
Neil stands up, unfolding easily from the couch. “Is there any fruit?”
“In the freezer,” Kevin says. “Milk, too.”
Making a face, Neil grabs a frozen bag of mixed fruit and a carton of ice cream, which he scoops into the blender alongside a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Andrew’s throat burns with anticipation; he does not think chocolate ice cream and frozen raspberries will be complemented by the metric ton of vanilla extract Neil dumps in, but it is Neil committing food crimes, so he will try it regardless.
It tastes bad. Very bad, to be more precise. It-should-be-classed-as-a-bioweapon type bad. A healthy dose of rum is enough to salvage the overwhelming burn of vanilla, but it melts the cream, and Andrew dumps the whole mess back into the blender with a handful of ice just as Kevin emerges from his bedroom, finally dressed. He glares at Andrew the whole time. Andrew gleefully turns on the blender and drowns out the incoming lecture.
His chocolate monstrosity gets him through the rest of the night and most of the morning. He can still taste it in the back of his throat when he wakes to Neil’s body weight shifting a fraction of an inch beside him. The morning is still young, the light weak and soft, entirely at odds with the sharp angles that comprise Neil. He takes his time getting up, remembering the taste of chocolate on Neil’s tongue after he’d stolen a spoonful from Andrew’s glass.
He has a thing for thieves, apparently. First Neil, and now the Pestilence. So long as Neil keeps his thefts to a minimum, Andrew will enjoy his role as enabler.
Kevin is already in the kitchen when Andrew finally crawls out of bed.
“He’s still out?”
“Sleeping,” Andrew grunts. There is a pot of burnt coffee on the counter; he takes that and fills an overlarge mug with sugar and cream with just a dash of Kevin’s near-lethal coffee.
The rest of that morning is irrelevant. It doesn’t matter, which is why Andrew neglects to mention that Kevin sleeps exclusively in boxers and scrunched up gym socks (of the variety that are meant to sit beneath the calf but will inevitably rest around your ankle if you move in a way that matters), or that Kevin’s body hair also gets bedhead. It’s irrelevant. He doesn’t notice, so why the fuck should you?
The story, such as it is, picks up again that evening, with Andrew parked outside of Rosie’s watching Nicky get mugged by a seagull. The Pestilence, having fleeced Nicky’s wallet from his back pocket, makes quick work removing a thick bundle of bills while Nicky tries to regain control over the situation. Andrew makes a mental note to dig up one of his twin’s old wallet chains when he gets off work.
“Did you see that?” Nicky asks once he’s lost a wad of bills and barely managed to grab his leather wallet from the offending seagull’s beak. “It stole my money! The nerve of that thing!” A fractional pause. Then: “Do you think seagulls pay taxes?”
“In what world would a seagull be a law-abiding citizen?” Andrew asks. “How much did it take?”
Nicky counts quickly, then sighs. “Twenty total. Ripped my last five, too.”
“Call animal control,” Andrew suggests. “Report seagull crime. Maybe they’ll do something.”
He leaves Nicky alone, defenseless against the seagull horde gathering outside, and ignores the dead-eyed glare from the plastic, noise-making owl that’s supposed to protect them from these exact scenarios. The seagulls stopped seeing it as a threat years ago; they fear no man, no owl, and certainly no god.
Kevin is up to his elbows in meal tickets, too frazzled to so much as glance up at Andrew when he wanders into the back of house five minutes late with his apron hanging loose around his neck.
“Grab some slip-ons,” Kevin orders, having mostly organized the latest batch of orders. “There is no world where I let you wear Keds in the kitchen.”
“Tyrant,” Andrew mutters, ripping his apron off and tossing it on a hook before weaseling his way into the cramped supply closet to find a pair of rubber slip-ons that won’t drive him insane.
For anyone wondering, his shift goes about as well as expected. Which is to say it’s a disaster on all fronts, wherein everyone is frazzled and pissed off and the servers keep forgetting they 86ed the sweet potato fries and panicking when they have to go out and make amends and, really, it’s a goddamn miracle Andrew makes it out for a smoke break at all. He’s red in the face, running off so much adrenaline he can’t feel his fingers, and it takes him three tries to get his lighter to spark.
“Fuck off,” he says to the lumpy, seagull-shaped shadow looming over him. “You take this and I’ll strangle you myself.”
“Wow,” says Neil, because of course he does. His timing is im-fucking-peccable. “Wasn’t planning on it, but if you’ve got a spare…?”
Andrew does not. He’s down to his last three cigarettes thanks to the Pestilence’s efforts, and he’s going to need all three of them to get through tonight without committing a felony.
“Buy your own,” Andrew snarls, flicking ash at Neil.
This does not elicit the desired response, which is Neil slinking back into the building with his tail tucked between his legs. Instead, Neil’s eyes glimmer something clever, and he leans against the brick wall. He is downwind of Andrew; he wouldn’t have needed his own cigarette to get his fix. He’s a conniving little shit.
“You’ve gotten territorial,” Neil notes lightly. “Want me to buy you a pack when Nicky stops for gas?”
“I don’t want you to do anything,” Andrew says, reining his temper in. This is easier to do with the pleasant bloom of nicotine and his fading adrenaline rush. “Get yourself a pack, for once.”
Neil appears to think this over. Then he tilts his head to the side and says, eloquently, “Nah.”
Andrew tosses his cigarette on the ground and cuts his break short before he does something stupid. He thinks the jury would understand; the judge, less-so.
He doesn’t stick around long enough to see whether Neil or the Pestilence get the cigarette first. He's not sure he wants to know. He worries, absently, how withdrawal would affect a seagull.
“Did you call animal control?” Andrew asks when Nicky comes sweating into the kitchen.
“Why would I call animal control?” Nicky asks, because he is apparently a victim of memory loss. “Please tell me we found some more sweet potato fries.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Andrew says, which is all the response Nicky deserves.
Andrew calls animal service while he takes his lunch break. His sandwich is bland and unappetizing, but he wolfs it down in the back alley while the call goes through. He lights up when he’s done eating, scanning the horizon for birds. He can’t see the Pestilence yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not watching.
A very bored woman answers the phone. Andrew gives her all the requested information, doubling down when she hesitates. The second he mentions a seagull, her tone shifts, and not for the better.
“You think it’s addicted to cocaine?”
“Nicotine,” Andrew says.
“Right.” There is humor in her voice.
Andrew pinches the cigarette so tight the filter shifts between his fingers. “This is not a joke.”
“Sure, right, no—of course not.” She is laughing. A seagull is smoking and she’s laughing. “Where did you say this was, again?”
He finishes his report. By the end of it, she’s not even bothering to conceal her laughter. He does not anticipate a follow-up vis a vis seagull addiction and intervention.
He makes it to the last quarter of his penultimate cigarette before the Pestilence shows up, its beady eyes glinting in the alley’s shitty floodlights. With everyone but Neil, Andrew operates on a tit-for-tat system. He’s mentioned this before, if you recall. He would very much like to engage the Pestilence in a deal, if only to regain some semblance of control over the situation, but the issue is seagulls do not understand human speech, and even if they did, they would not be inclined to bargaining.
Thus, the threat: “If you steal this cigarette, that’s the only one you get tonight. This will not be a two-stick night.”
The Pestilence stares at him with dark, vacant eyes. It is the very essence of evil.
When it makes its move, Andrew is as prepared as he can hope to be. Which is to say: he does not flinch or punch the bird’s crooked beak, and barely even grunts when the Pestilence’s feathers brush his wrist. He does, however, make a small sound when its talons caress his wrist. How could he not? He felt the sting even through his rolled-down sleeves.
“Fucker,” Andrew hisses, making a lunge for his cigarette. He misses. Turns out being short is a major disadvantage when warring with those of the avian persuasion.
His hands are shaking almost too much to light his last cigarette, but Andrew manages after a few minutes. He thinks his fifteen minutes are up, but no one will come look for him, not even Dan, who runs a tight ship. With the trajectory this night seems determined to take, Andrew needs this cigarette.
He’s barely inhaled when the Pestilence returns, wings spread wide as it lunges at him. Like this, it looks like a bird of prey; like this, Andrew will lose a fucking eye if he tries to hold onto his cigarette, so he doesn’t. As it is, he was unprepared for the attack. The Pestilence made off with his other cigarette less than five minutes ago—and it’s already back for more?
“What the fuck,” Andrew says, too shocked to put any feeling into the words. He’s fresh out of cigarettes, and the Pestilence is long gone.
He goes the rest of his shift without chemical assistance. He thinks maybe he speaks once or twice, but he doesn’t quite recall. Everything is a confusing blur, distorted from the moment the Pestilence turned to violence.
“Go away,” he tells Neil at the end of the night.
Neil, who is leaning insouciantly against the hood of Andrew’s car, raises an eyebrow. “Should I go to my place tonight?”
“No,” Andrew says. “Yes. I’m a bad influence.”
“So Allison says,” Neil agrees. “But she’s coming around.”
“She isn’t.” Andrew unlocks his car and points his key in Neil’s direction. “She does not step foot in our apartment.”
“That’ll make game night difficult.”
“We don’t have a game night.”
“Yet,” Neil says ominously. He gets in the car. Andrew follows suit. Usually, he smokes before driving, and Neil gives him a sideways look when he doesn’t light up. “You good?”
“I’m just peachy. Nothing I love more than smelling like grease and orange-scented floor cleaner. Are you going to interrogate me or am I free to go?”
Neil rolls his eyes, but stays quiet. Andrew does not wait for him to put on his seatbelt before pulling out of the parking lot, but Neil gets it done. He is well acquainted to both Andrew and Nicky’s suicidal driving habits, and doesn’t even grab for the passenger rail when Andrew takes a ninety degree turn at speed.
Despite Andrew’s best efforts, they make it back to the apartment in one piece. They put themselves to bed after quick, overlapping hot showers to rid themselves of grease-smell. They act as if everything is fine and Andrew smells as strongly of smoke as he usually does before bed. This lasts until Kevin, bleary-eyed from his melatonin-haze, pokes his head out of his bedroom and tells them to kindly shut the fuck up.
They weren’t being especially loud. Kevin just needs someone to blame when he can’t sleep the night before he opens. Andrew flips him off anyway.
They continue to be quiet when they slip into bed, the light sheet weighed down by a threadbare quilt that Andrew flips over and onto Neil, who insists he needs the layers but refuses to purchase a weighted blanket. Andrew has a strict life rule that means he avoids sweat behind his knees whenever possible, and as his sweaty knees already fused with his black work chinos once today, he is well past capacity.
“I hope you melt to death in your sleep,” Andrew whispers, shoving his arm under Neil’s pillow.
“In your dreams,” Neil mutters back. His mouth is already lax, his eyelids drooping. He didn’t fall asleep this quickly when Andrew first let him into his bed, and it’s hard not to indulge the vicious twist of satisfaction when Neil falls asleep before him, peaceful and easy.
Andrew has enough time to get gas and cigarettes when he leaves for work the next morning. Kevin is groggy and bleary-eyed in his passenger seat, threatening to drool on the Mustang’s leather seats with each passing minute, but that has never influenced Andrew before, and it doesn’t stop him now.
He gets gas. He goes into the station and buys a Red Bull for Kevin and a Starbucks pre-bottled monstrosity for himself. He grabs a couple bags of sour-sweet watermelon candy on his way to the register. The attendant returns his blank stare as she rings him up. Andrew would usually get a couple packs of cigarettes.
He leaves the station with candy and energy drinks and nothing else. Kevin snuffles when Andrew gets back in the car, but is not awake enough to comment on Andrew’s purchasing habits.
Having already dealt with withdrawal once before, Andrew thinks he’s prepared for it, but the itch beneath his skin as his body craves for something to take the edge off is so strong he nearly screams. He loses grip halfway through his shift, snapping at Nicky so savagely that Dan pulls him off the stoves and relegates him to the dish pit.
Whatever. He takes his impotent rage and channels it into scrubbing the dishes clean. The haphazard stacks of dirty dishes disappear under his ministrations slowly but surely, only for the sink to fill up again like a terrible Sisyphean curse. That’s just the way it goes; he knows this as surely as he knows the sky is blue. Logic has never been effective at curbing rage.
An hour into pruning hands, he senses Neil at his back, clattering through the shelves of clean dishes.
“Why are you back here,” Andrew growls. He is elbow-deep in the sink; he has no patience for whatever scheme Neil is cooking.
“Have you seen my barback?” Neil asks. There is the barest hint of bite to the words. Anger tamped down just low enough that the impending explosion will dole out collateral on an incredible level. There is an undeniable attractiveness to Neil when he’s angry, so Andrew flicks him a cool look. Just to piss him off more. No other reason.
Neil’s nostrils flare. Andrew suspects he’s counting to ten. “I’m out of cups.”
“Cups just got sanitized.”
“Not the point and you know it.” Still, he stacks the mostly-dry cups, gathering them close to his chest. “You seriously haven’t seen him? He’s supposed to be keeping me stocked. We’re fucking swamped out there.”
Andrew shrugs. “Sounds like a you problem.”
Neil’s eyelid twitches. Extremely visibly. “If you see Jack before I do, tell him he can go fuck himself.”
Neil storms off, muttering something about Jack under his breath. 50/50 whether he means the liquor or the disappearing barback. Andrew hasn’t seen the little shithead since he clocked in, but that doesn’t mean much given as Andrew’s had his back to the kitchen at large for most of the day.
“I’m taking a break,” he announces, ignoring the way a pile of clear cambros lurches ominously off balance. Dan, who is currently trying to sort out a seating problem, waves him off.
Andrew stops by Kevin’s locker on his way out and steals his half-empty Red Bull. He needs it more than Kevin and doesn’t care enough to let him know.
Outside, the alley is clear and bright. The Pestilence does not usually bother him during the day, but it had also never grazed him with its talons before yesterday, so he keeps an eye peeled. Just in case.
The Red Bull goes down poorly. It refuses to settle in his stomach even after he chokes down a handful of watermelon candy. If he could get away with chewing gum in the kitchen, he would, but he needs this job and knows better than to play with certain health code violations. So he drinks, and a stomachache joins his headache, and he watches the sky. No bird comes.
The rest of his shift goes by in a restless train wreck spent entirely on dishes. He is pruney and uncomfortable when he clocks out, and Kevin is almost as bad, his cheeks and neck flushed a bright red that will have barely begun to fade by the time they make it back to their apartment.
“Nicky’s dropping Neil off again,” Kevin says. “Did you steal my Red Bull?”
“No,” Andrew lies. He probably shouldn’t have brought caffeine into the mix, so Kevin doesn’t need to know his drink went to waste; Andrew’s pretty sure he’s going to start his rare two consecutive days off with a caffeine hangover so severe it borders on becoming a migraine. What Kevin doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
“Fucking Jack,” Kevin mutters. “He was slacking off all shift. You’d think some caffeine would at least get him working.”
Andrew allows Jack to become his scapegoat. It’s just one more small, meaningless crime to add to a long list of civil disobedience. Kevin grumbles a few more times while they pretend to be normal, functioning adults who keep a clean house, but it’s an act and they both know it. By the time Kevin is shirtless on the couch, his dark hair dripping onto his shoulders, they have accepted their truth and ordered pizza and cinnamon sticks for lunch-dinner-dessert.
It's late, nearly eleven, when Neil clatters through their door. He doesn’t spare a glance for Kevin’s head in Andrew’s lap, but it would be weird if he did. Kevin always deflates at the end of his week; it’s a miracle of passive aggressive staring on Andrew’s end that they all get the same days off. Dan had some choice words for Andrew about messing with her schedule, but Andrew will let her destroy his sleep schedule if it means he can laze about in his underwear without worrying about either Kevin or Neil working without him.
“There’s a game on tonight,” Neil says. He’s left the shower door open. Most of the clothes he keeps in Andrew’s wardrobe are dirty, so it’s no surprise when he comes out with a bundle of Andrew’s soft-worn sleep clothes. Neil stares at the two of them on the couch for a long, indulgent moment before raising a petulant eyebrow.
“Kevin recorded it,” Andrew says at length. “Watch it with him tomorrow. Tonight is turtles.”
“Fufck yeah, turmts,” Kevin says, voice muffled with exhaustion and a mouthful of Andrew’s skin. His breath is a warm tickle on Andrew’s inner thigh, but he refuses to comment or shiver or do anything to imply he enjoys the sensation beyond threading his fingers through Kevin’s hair.
Neil gives in with a surprising lack of grumbling. He’s clearly grumpy—who wouldn’t be, after the shift they had?—but Andrew doesn’t hold it against him. Instead, he makes room for Neil on the couch, leaning into Neil’s side and relaxing when Neil leans into him as well.
Why are you still here? None of this is relevant.
The next week is also irrelevant, except for the small, dotted shadow of the Pestilence watching Andrew sulk in the alley on his fifteens. It would be weirder if he sulked in the break room. There is quiet menace in the way the Pestilence watches him, and it escalates into the daylight hours, staring him down before lazily flying away.
Maybe it’s gotten over its short-lived addiction?
That would be nice, but the tourists complaining about a seagull stealing their cigarettes suggests otherwise. Clearly it has realized there are other ways to get its fix. This should be a relief, because it means Andrew is no longer feeding its nicotine addiction, but it just weighs strange and heavy on his shoulders instead.
He has three more chances to buy cigarettes, all while Kevin is dozing in the passenger seat of his car. Each time, Andrew leaves the store with Red Bull, coffee, and mouth-puckering candy. He keeps stealing Kevin’s half-drunk Red Bull during his breaks, which drives Kevin up the wall and has become as much a source of free entertainment as it has a caffeine fix.
“Have you seen my drink?” Kevin asks toward the end of one of their opening shifts. “It’s not in my locker.”
“Maybe you finished it and forgot.” Andrew delivers this without enthusiasm, so it’s not really a lie. If he really wants to rationalize his petty theft, he could point out that as he bought and paid for it, it’s technically his drink, not Kevin’s, but he’s not stooping that low. Yet. Kevin, for his part, is not as stupid as he looks, and glares at Andrew before snagging a stale cup of burned, watered-down coffee from the break room.
They make it through the week unscathed. Andrew should have known this was a bad sign.
Things take a turn for the worse on Monday, at the end of a lagging morning shift that left Andrew’s heart racing and his bones sluggish. He’s escalated to drinking Kevin’s Red Bull in plain view while ignoring Kevin’s complaints, which, of course, only annoys Kevin more.
“I will give you more money if that means you’ll stop stealing my drinks,” Kevin says, following Andrew into the parking lot and fishing his wallet out of his pocket.
Andrew raises an eyebrow. “You don’t give me money in the first place.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Kevin snaps. He flaps his billfold at Andrew once. “How much?”
“Hm.” Andrew pretends to think while taking a slow sip of Red Bull. He empties it a solid twenty seconds before he pulls the can from his lips. “You can’t buy entertainment like this.”
“Entertainment?” Kevin’s eyes are wide, his eyebrows pinched low. Andrew’s not sure why; Kevin should be long immune to the audacity. “I’m sorry, is this funny to you?”
“Yeah,” Andrew says, genuinely meaning it. Riling Kevin up is one of his favorite past-times. Again, Kevin should already know this and should not be surprised.
Kevin makes an unhappy noise, clearly ramping himself up for a lecture. These are less enjoyable than his rants, but Andrew can tune him out and wait for self-righteous arrogance to turn to indignant rage. It’s fun to mess with Kevin.
Turns out, Andrew is not the only one who thinks this.
As Kevin’s lecture escalates in both heat and pitch, Andrew spots a familiar blur on Rosie’s road-sign. The Pestilence stares with its dark, beady eyes, watching the scene unfold. It looks like a supervillain, if supervillains were the same size, shape, and intelligence as a common seagull. Andrew squints at it—and realizes too late that the Pestilence is not locked onto him at all.
It’s staring at Kevin. Specifically: at Kevin’s flapping billfold.
“Kevin,” Andrew says, forcing a command into his voice. “Put your wallet away.”
“Fuck you,” Kevin snaps. “Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?”
Andrew doesn’t have time to tell him the obvious (“No.”) before the Pestilence makes its move. Its wingspan seems broader in daylight, its crooked beak sharper. He’s not scared of the bird. Don’t think that for even a second: he just has a healthy respect for wildlife, especially when that wildlife is on the hunt and Kevin’s wallet is its prey of choice.
Kevin swears when the Pestilence closes its talons around his wallet. He spins around to face his assailant, his expression of blatant offense being overtaken by comical surprise when he realizes he’s being mugged by a seagull.
The Pestilence squawks and tugs harder at the wallet, tugging Kevin off the sidewalk and onto the pavement. He assumes a wide stance and grabs his wrist to strengthen his grip. It is all very technical and impressive, if you ignore the cursing and grunting and the fact this is even happening in the first place.
Worse still is the way the Pestilence has an equally firm grip on the wallet. Andrew knows firsthand how sharp its talons are, and he’s pretty sure it’s punctured the leather. Put kindly, Andrew wouldn’t bet on Kevin to win this fight.
Neil wanders onto the sidewalk and stops next to Andrew. They watch Kevin steadily lose his grip on his wallet. Once, Neil throws out a suggestion and is soundly cursed out for his efforts. This only puts a peaceful smile on Neil’s face.
Turns out being tall is also not an advantage when at war with flying beasts.
They watch Kevin fight his losing battle in mutual silence for three long, loud minutes before Neil’s lips quirk into a knowing smirk. Andrew glances at him, feeling something to the left of dread settle in his chest. Here it comes: the very judgment he’s been avoiding for weeks.
“When did you stop smoking?” Neil asks, casual.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Kevin gets mugged. They don’t talk about that, either. Sometimes, it’s better to just move on.