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The worst thing that’s going to come out of this job, Arthur thinks, is a Pavlovian response to the sound of a bell.
It’s an old brass thing, situated directly above the doorway to the convenience store. The newer shops have virtual bells—a ding dong tone that rings through speakers every time the glass doors swing open. But this place is a mom-and-pop sort of establishment named Freddie’s Food and Drink, nestled on a street corner and made busy by the bus stop that sits right outside, and Arthur supposes the bell is part of its charm. That and the cracked linoleum floors and cramped aisles.
Arthur assumes that most individuals who work in a shop with a doorbell develop some sort of automatic reaction to the sound of it. A turn of the head, perhaps, or an instinctive, “How can I help you today?” And Arthur has that too—a snap to attention every time the bell rings, even if his posture is already whip-straight.
But more prominent than that is the way his pulse quickens, his chest tightens, and his breath catches in his throat as he looks expectantly towards the door. It’s exceedingly inconvenient, given that the bell rings dozens of times per day, and rationally it cannot be the person Arthur wants it to be every single time. But though Arthur has gained great control over his body throughout the years, he cannot quite master this.
Every day, the bell rings. And every time, Arthur’s heart climbs into his throat as he hopes that the face he sees coming through the door will be that of Linus Baker.
Linus is a DICOMY employee. Arthur knows this—and his name—because a few weeks after Linus became a regular at the shop, he came in after what had clearly been a harrowing day at work, frazzled and glassy-eyed, with his ID badge still pinned proudly to his chest. The kind thing to do would probably have been to point it out, but curiosity had won out over compassion and instead, Arthur had snuck a glance at it when Linus had approached the register.
He first noticed the name: Linus Baker. Then, the photograph: an unflattering thing even by ID photo standards that had caught Linus’s eyes half-closed and his cheeks covered with a ruddy flush. A little curl of something between sympathy and affection began to spread through Arthur’s chest, but then Arthur noticed the rest of the ID—the familiar logo emblazoned across it, proudly proclaiming its owner as a valued member of DICOMY—and the curl withered and died.
Arthur finished checking Linus out, and after Linus left, Arthur sat back and considered the situation carefully.
Linus had never given Arthur reason to fear him. He was pleasant and polite and quite good-looking, all the more so for the fact that he clearly didn’t think himself so, and he always gave Arthur a smile and told him to have a nice rest of his day before he left with his spoils. And Arthur knew that not everyone who worked for DICOMY was the kind of person to enable the sorts of … less than comfortable accommodations that Arthur had grown up with. But still, he couldn’t help but withdraw, the real smile he’d taken to giving Linus peeling away to reveal the customer-service one underneath. He didn’t even think Linus had noticed as he’d paid for his things and gone on his way.
Of course he didn’t, a small part of Arthur said bitterly. You’re just an employee to him.
And maybe that was true. But Linus still greeted him every time he came by the shop—which was not every day, but was often enough that it became a regular part of Arthur’s working routine—and traded precious bits of small talk with him, and it was a lighthouse in the dark that Arthur wouldn’t give up for anything.
Hence, the bell.
Perhaps Arthur is weak, to still look forward to seeing a man who may think that all people like Arthur deserve to be caged. (Or at the very least, branded with the numbers he’s legally required to carry on him at all times. Perhaps across his shoulder blades where his wings burst free from, or wrapped around his neck like a collar.) But he can’t help it. Linus is still a beautiful, awkward, kind person, and Arthur has always fallen in love so easily.
Not that he’s in love with Linus. He barely even knows the man. But he’s in something. Infatuation, maybe. A crush.
Arthur is 23 years old, fresh out of university, working a dead-end convenience store job because nowhere else would hire him, and he has a crush on his repeat DICOMY customer who has a preference for cheddar jalapeño bratwurst. Not exactly where he saw himself landing when he finally shook off the shackles of the DICOMY school he spent the latter half of his childhood in.
The bell over the door rings again, and the turn of Arthur’s head is almost lazy this time, so caught up is he in his thoughts. They all skid to a cacophonous halt, though, leaving him off-balance and breathless, when he sees Linus Baker stepping into the store.
… And then stepping back out of the store?
No, Arthur realizes a moment later. He hasn’t left; instead, he’s stepped back to hold the door open as a small child practically sprints into the shop, bright red hair pulled up into a tangle of braids atop her head. Arthur watches her, and this time, he feels off-balance and breathless for a different reason entirely.
A few years ago, DICOMA scientists had run a brief but prolific campaign claiming that all magical creatures could tell when somebody around them was also magical. “Extrasensual detection,” they had called it, based on a few preliminary studies done with various magical creatures in their care, and the media had jumped on it with a ferocity that Arthur at the time had found surprising. What did it really matter, if one magical creature was able to identify another by sight alone?
He gets it now, though. The appeal of knowing. Even though magical beings are required to show registration for official functions, everyday life has no such restrictions (yet), and it’s relatively easy for those who can pass as human—like Arthur—to come across as just that. There have been campaigns in recent years by more conservative factions to implement policies that clearly label all magical creatures as such, and though they haven’t gained much traction in political spaces, it’s clear to Arthur everywhere he goes that the sentiment—to know, simply by looking at somebody, whether or not they’re “human” or “other”—is frighteningly common.
Thankfully, the extrasensual detection campaign dried up after a few years when it became clear that no other scientists could replicate their results. The word of magical creatures counted for very little, but it was given more credibility in scientific spaces than in others. Magical creatures did not have an inherent ability to see one another, study after study reported, unless that was the sort of magical creature one was. As very few magical creatures fit that criterion, the concept was quickly dropped and buried.
Arthur has no special ability to tell whether somebody he’s looking at is magical or not. But he knows anyway, watching this child run into the store, that they are. It’s nothing biological or innate, and it certainly isn’t based on the child’s energy or vibes or whatever people still try to claim in certain circles.
Instead, it’s the look on their face—like this is the first time they’ve ever been allowed in a place like this, and they plan to enjoy every single second of it before it’s taken away again.
Arthur knows, deeply and viscerally, what that feels like. So it doesn’t surprise him when behind the first child comes another—this one walking quickly and looking around with a naked expression of wonderment—and another, and another, and another. A little trail of orphans into the convenience store.
Arthur can tell that Linus doesn’t realize who they are at first, because his mouth forms a comical ‘O’ of surprise when one of the children, apparently unwilling to go through the great effort of going round the door, instead runs straight through the glass. It shimmers as they pass through it and then re-solidifies, and the child gives Linus a wide-toothed grin before darting into the shop. Linus stares after them for a moment, then says to himself, “Oh. Well, then,” the same way one might address an extra sock found in their basket when they’ve returned from the laundromat. It’s such a delightfully Linus reaction that despite the anxiety that’s begun to worm its way into Arthur’s stomach, he can’t help but smile.
A tall, whisper-thin woman forms the end of the line, giving Linus a little nod in thanks as he finishes holding the door for her then walks in behind her. Arthur’s smile cracks a little at the sight of her, and he takes a deep breath and reminds himself that not every orphanage master is deeply, unbearably cruel. Mr. Abbott certainly wasn’t the sort to take the children to a convenience store and let them run wild through the shelves, at least not without a fair bit of shouting involved.
This woman wouldn’t shout, a part of Arthur that has gotten very good at learning the mannerisms of people with more power than him whispers. She calmly demands and expects others to listen. Perhaps she even smiles and says that it’s all right if you break a dish, or come in with mud on your cheeks, or don’t finish your vegetables. But there is a danger in that smile, and it doesn’t matter how long it takes—punishment will come.
Arthur shakes off the mounting anxiety and gives the group a bland smile. The children are too busy racing about to notice, and the woman’s eyes pass over him as if he doesn’t exist. But Linus sees it and offers him one in return—a smile, that is, but there is nothing bland about it, warm and genuine as it is. Arthur can’t help but bask in it, and his own grows a bit brighter in kind.
As the chatter of small children fills the shop, Linus turns and heads with purpose towards the prepared hot food section, then hesitates halfway there and changes course, trudging instead towards the little cooler of salads and sandwiches off to the side. Arthur frowns and finds himself leaning over the counter to watch, curiosity winning out over professionalism; he catches himself and forces himself upright and neutral again. Staring is rude, Arthur.
Instead, he turns his attention towards the children.
There are seven of them altogether, all quite young; the oldest can’t be more than eleven or so. None of them appear particularly magical upon first glance (and a sneaking suspicion takes root in Arthur that that’s why they’ve been allowed on this outing in the first place), though glimpses of it come out when the orphanage master’s back is turned. A candy bar is doubled in the hands of the red-haired child, who giggles before snatching up another treat and repeating the process. The child who passed through the glass door appears to delight in phasing through the shelves and startling whoever happens to be standing on the other side. Another child—the oldest, Arthur guesses—has grown at least a foot since they entered the shop; they appear to be using their newfound height to pluck snacks from the top shelves.
It makes something in Arthur’s chest grow tight, to see a group of young magical children who feel no need to hide themselves in public. (Even if they all quickly fall back into a parody of normalcy the moment the orphanage master rounds the corner.) He subtly presses a hand to his sternum in an attempt to loosen it, to no effect. Beneath his skin, flame shifts and swells, then grows silent once more. He breathes out and moves his gaze to the next child.
Just in time to see the bottle of soda they’re holding explode into a spray of liquid and glass.
The child from the door, who had just phased through the shelf in front of them and startled them, goes stiff and wide-eyed. “Uh oh,” they say, and then, when the child in front of them begins to sniffle, “I’m sorry! I didn’t know that would happen! Please don’t cry!”
Though the children may be magical, these words are not. Arthur can see the wave of tears looming like a tsunami, moments from crashing onto shore. From behind the counter, he has a wide view of the shop, so he sees it when the orphanage master—previously tending to another child—turns towards the sound like a bloodhound on the trail of a hare and begins stalking through the aisles with purpose.
She wouldn’t shout. That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t raise a hand and call it justice.
Arthur is moving before he even makes the conscious decision to do so. He rounds the counter (and he can hear his manager’s voice in his head, terse and frustrated, Never leave the register unmanned, Arthur) and rushes towards the child. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do when he gets there—hold off the orphanage master physically? Bundle the child away where they’ll be safe? Simply comfort them?—but that doesn’t matter. He just needs to get there, and he needs to protect them, and then everything will be all right.
Except it’s not all right. Because Arthur doesn’t get more than three steps from the counter before his path is blocked by one Linus Baker, plastic container of salad in hand.
Arthur stops, instinct taking over once more and keeping him from colliding with Linus and creating yet another spillage of food. “Oh,” he says, and then, when Linus doesn’t immediately move out of the way, “Could you please—?”
Linus cuts him off with a smile and a small, awkward laugh. “Oh, it’s really no trouble. An awful mess, to be sure, but—well, you know how kids are.”
Irritation flares in Arthur’s chest, hot enough to approach anger. He tries not to let his body temperature rise as he attempts to step around Linus, but Linus is a bigger man than Arthur and he does a good job of keeping the narrow aisle thoroughly impassable. Arthur throws aside subtlety and says, clipped, “I need to get by, so can you—”
Linus cuts him off again. “It’s just that—well, magical or not, everybody makes mistakes, right? No harm done. In fact—you know what, why don’t you just add that drink to my order? Then we can sweep this all under the rug. What do you say? Perhaps it’d be best to do that now, before we forget. Shall we?”
Linus nods towards the cash register. Behind him, the orphanage master has reached the crying child. Arthur flinches, preparing himself to shove past Linus—shelves be damned—and rush in, but the woman’s hand does not raise, nor does her voice crescendo. Instead, she crouches down to the child’s level, brushing the glass gently from their arms and murmuring something to them in quiet tones. The child sniffles, tears dripping down their cheeks, but they nod, and then nod again when the woman says something else and then smiles comfortingly.
Perhaps she even smiles and says it’s all right that the bottle’s broken, Arthur’s brain reminds him viciously. And maybe it’s true. Maybe the children will leave this place, and maybe hours or days or weeks later, this child will be punished, and Arthur will have absolutely no way to stop it. The thought makes tangled, thorny vines curl in Arthur’s stomach, a sickness he knows he can’t cure. The knowledge that there are so many children out there suffering, and nobody cares.
Except.
Arthur looks at Linus again. The adrenaline has ebbed a bit, now that there is no immediate danger to the child, and Arthur sees the expression on Linus’s face more clearly. He’s trying to hide it, but Linus is a painfully straightforward man, and he does deception quite badly. There’s a wary unease undercutting Linus’s smile, a tension keeping the lines of his body rigid and stiff, an uncertainty in his eyes as they scan Arthur’s face. It’s an ill fit on the man that Arthur has come to know over the past months, but that’s not what makes Arthur’s blood turn to slush.
It’s the fact that Linus is looking at Arthur the same way Arthur used to look at Mr. Abbott as he stood protectively in front of another orphan who had incurred the master’s wrath. Don’t hurt them. Hurt me. Look at me. They mean you no harm.
Linus wasn’t trying to keep Arthur from helping the child. He was trying to keep Arthur from hurting them.
He thought Arthur was going to—
Arthur feels ill. He glances again over Linus’s shoulder—the orphanage master is using her sleeve to scrub soda out of the child’s hair—then looks back at Linus. He tries to make his body language look as non-threatening as possible as he says, “I promise, that won’t be necessary. Nobody here is in trouble; after all, as you said, accidents happen.”
Linus doesn’t seem convinced, which is—it’s horrible, this whole situation is horrible, and Arthur feels horrible, but he also feels a stab of something else. Respect, maybe? There’s something in the fact that Linus didn’t hesitate to stand between Arthur and a crying child when he thought Arthur meant to do the child harm that is making something warm collect beneath Arthur’s sternum. He wants to rub at his chest again to try to dispel it, but Linus is watching him intently, cataloging his every movement. So instead, Arthur swallows and says again, softer, “Nobody here is in trouble, Linus. Please trust me when I tell you that I wouldn’t let anything happen to a child.” He hesitates. “Especially a magical one.”
That seems to finally get through to Linus. He relaxes, no longer filling the aisle quite so completely, and says, “Well, good. I apologize for being so confrontational, but one can’t be too careful about these sorts of things, you understand. All sorts of people in the world who would punish a child for simply—” He cuts himself off and grimaces. “Well, anyway.”
The warmth is increasing in temperature. Arthur clears his throat, which has absolutely no effect on it whatsoever, and says, “No apology necessary. It’s … honestly, it’s rather nice to find a DICOMY employee who cares about his charges.”
Linus looks at Arthur, startled. “How did you—?” He cuts himself off with a groan. “I suppose I must’ve forgotten to take my name badge off at some point. How embarrassing.”
Arthur is spared the difficulty of formulating a response other than, No less embarrassing than me remembering it all this time, by the arrival of the orphanage master. “Apologies for the mess,” she says in the sort of perfunctory way that Arthur recognizes as more a formality than a genuine apology. Indeed, before Arthur can even open his mouth to tell her that it’s quite all right, she continues, “We’re ready to check out, if you please.”
She nods to the register. Arthur takes a deep breath, then pulls his customer service façade back over himself like a costume. It’s ill-fitting, but it does the job. “Of course,” he says. Then, with one last glance at Linus, he takes his spot behind the register again.
(If he slips the still-teary-eyed child an extra candy bar when they pass by the register—well, nobody needs to be the wiser. It makes them smile, which is all that matters.)
Linus is at the end of the queue. A few customers have entered the shop since the incident, but they’re still milling about, so for the moment at least, it’s just Arthur and Linus. Linus sets his items somewhat meekly on the counter and says, “I know what you said, but I feel as though I owe you another apology for … well, for simply assuming that you would react poorly. I always tell myself never to make assumptions about someone before you get to know them, and yet here I’ve gone and done it anyway. It was terribly rude of me, and I’m sorry.”
Arthur has been shaking his head since the word apology came out of Linus’s mouth. “I would much rather you assumed the worst than the best. Better to be surprised by kindness than to be unprepared for cruelty.”
Linus lets out a long exhale. “Oh, I suppose. What a terrible way to live, though. To constantly expect others to be unkind to one another.”
It’s all I’ve ever known. Arthur swallows that down for another day and simply says, “I suppose.” He begins ringing up Linus’s items.
Linus furrows his brow and continues, “It’s the way things often are, though, isn’t it?” He casts his eyes towards the door, even though the children are long gone, and seems to deflate a bit. “I joined DICOMY to help children. I had such lofty ideas of what it would be like to work there—to go to these orphanages and ensure that everything was up to code, that these children were being well taken care of as per the Rules and Regulations. I knew there would be some, of course, that didn’t meet those requirements. Always a few bad apples in the bunch and all that. But I didn’t expect there to be so many.”
Linus sighs. Arthur has finished scanning Linus’s items, but he can’t bring himself to interrupt. He watches Linus, rapt, as Linus continues, “It’s the little things—a small breaking of rules here, a bending there. Things that have slipped through the cracks for years, that nobody else has cared to report or correct in any way. And it’s good that I’m catching them now, of course, but I—well, I’m simply one person. And I’m beginning to wonder whether anybody else in my department even cares about the children we—”
Linus cuts himself off and gives Arthur an embarrassed look. “Oh, listen to me—rambling about workplace drama. I don’t mean to bore you with all that.” He fumbles his wallet out of his pocket and begins sorting through the cash inside.
“It’s all right,” Arthur says, and then surprises himself by adding, “I rather enjoy hearing you ramble.”
Linus looks up, a startled flush spreading across his cheeks. The fire inside Arthur roars, and he clenches his hands behind the counter as the flames push against his skin with sudden intensity. He can feel himself growing hotter, and he dearly hopes that Linus can’t feel it as well. Get ahold of yourself, for goodness’ sake. “Oh! Well—I—you—I suppose that’s all right, then.”
Linus snaps his mouth shut and thrusts a wad of bills towards Arthur, who takes them. He doesn’t mean for their fingers to brush, but the little gasp Linus lets out when it happens makes Arthur think that he really does not have any sort of handle on his body temperature right now. He focuses on his breathing as he pulls his hand back quickly and says, “More than. It’s…” Arthur hesitates, then decides, To hell with it. Who really cares about professionalism, anyway. “Honestly, it’s the highlight of my day. Talking to you.”
Linus flushes further. He stuffs his wallet unceremoniously back into his pocket, then gathers his food in his arms and nods stiffly at Arthur. “Good! Good. Well, then. I’ll be seeing you tomorrow—later. Er, later. But probably tomorrow. Yes. Good. Er. Goodbye.”
With cheeks like ripe tomatoes, Linus turns on his heel and practically flees the store. The bell over the door jingles merrily as he departs. Arthur watches it move back and forth, and with each oscillation, he feels the flames inside him crackle and swell. The deep breathing and calm thoughts and clenched fists are not doing a single thing to stop the wave that’s coming, so Arthur quickly bundles a Be Back Soon! sign onto the counter, turns, and makes his escape to the bathroom.
He only barely makes it. As soon as the door shuts and locks behind him, he feels the tension inside him snap, and his wings burst free from his back, arching behind him in a yellow-orange blaze of heat and light. They stretch up towards the ceiling, reflecting off the mirror and brushing against cheap popcorn paint, and Arthur exhales in relief as he finally lets himself burn.
He’ll see Linus Baker again tomorrow. He’ll see him tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that, and even if he doesn’t come to the shop, Arthur suspects Linus will occupy his thoughts to such a thorough degree that he may as well be standing in front of him. It’s as if the last threads of Arthur’s self-control have been burned to ash, and all Arthur is left with is a kind, awkward, beautiful man who cares about children and wants the world to be a better place and who was willing to stand in the way of a man he thought intended violence. My brave, wonderful Linus. Arthur doesn’t know him yet, not truly, but he wants to. God, he wants to.
Arthur’s wings wrap around the room, and he shivers in the growing heat. A thousand thoughts crowd his mind, tumbling over one another like rocks in a stream. I should give Linus my number. No, that would be highly inappropriate. But professionalism has gone right out the window—who cares about what’s appropriate? What if I give him my number and he doesn’t respond? Or worse—what if he does, and we get to talking, and we meet, and I fall in love, and then after all that, he finds out who I am and loses interest? Just because he cares about magical children, it doesn’t mean he’s interested in dating a magical creature. Perhaps he’s not even gay. Oh, what am I saying—I saw the way he blushed earlier. Though I did just learn about the danger of making assumptions. Perhaps I should ask. For his number, not if he’s gay. Should I ask that too? I just want to hold his hand so badly. I want to see him when he doesn’t come to the shop. I want to know what he does when he gets home, and I want to know what his favorite food is when it doesn’t come from a convenience store, and I want to know what kinds of music he likes and what books he reads and what movies he watches, and I want to know what it feels like to kiss him. I want to tell him that I—
Somebody bangs on the door. “If you want to smoke,” Arthur’s manager shouts through the thin metal, “you need to go outside! But first, get back to the damn register; there’s paying customers, and they ain’t got all day. And for god’s sake, clean up that mess on the floor before it gets sticky.”
Arthur’s romantic musings are tucked away inside him just as quickly as his flames are. “Sorry, sorry,” he calls back. “I’m coming.”
He ignores the sour look on his manager’s face as he opens the door. He offers the man a small, apologetic smile and says again, “Sorry,” before retreating to the register where there is, indeed, a small queue of people waiting to check out.
Arthur still smells vaguely of smoke, and he can feel the phoenix curled in his chest, satisfied but nowhere near settled. He hides a giddy smile behind a polite one and begins ringing up the next customer, sneaking looks at the clock whenever he can. Already counting down the minutes until tomorrow evening.
He can’t wait to see Linus again.