Chapter Text
A chunk was missing from the chocolate chunk brownies. It wasn’t the first time this week. Not even the first time today.
His boss was up his neck about it. His boss was up his neck about a lot of things.
There was always something wrong. His hours weren’t flexible enough, his focus was too flitty, his batches were too small. The batches that she would order the scale of.
And now there were rats in the kitchen.
She’d told him to take care of it. Said that if she had to spend the money to hire an exterminator, an employee would be terminated to free up space in the budget. “Too many extra hands that all do nothing,” she’d gripe.
So it was once again that Chase found himself staying late. Tired. Cleaning the kitchen after everybody had already left. The keys hung waiting on his waist—he’d be the last one there, the one responsible for locking up that night.
But the rats.
His strategies weren’t working. Not a single one had been caught, and she would be in tomorrow morning demanding evidence of his success.
So he’d try again. And he’d hope.
Despite his best efforts, Chase once again found himself hips-deep in the cabinets. His movements were miscalculated, and this soon came back to bite him.
A loose-sitting pan slid into the side of his head, bouncing against his skull. He jumped from the pain. Except above him was an unmoving slab of wood and marble.
The observer of this mayhem, hidden in the back corner of the same cabinet, slammed a sticky hand over his own mouth as he willed himself desperately not to cackle. Ohhh but how the situation deserved it- the sheer absurdity of what he’d just witnessed. The oh so satisfying clang of metal against oversized human head, the yelp of surprise. The way every other pan fell after it when he jumped and shook the entire counter.
Yes, it was remarkable. Nox jammed the rest of the chocolate into his mouth, freeing his messy hands to cover his ears as the clumsy human attempted to wiggle free of this situation. The clatter of metal echoed around him, filling the relatively small space with ease. When everything finally settled, the human now observing from the outside where he belonged, the remaining predicament was no less than chaos. And the object of the human’s initial focus, the small metal mousetrap, remained clutched in his hand. Having never reached its intended spot.
He’d gotten smarter about it, though. Instead of cheese like the last dozen traps, he’d actually placed a chocolate in the center. Perhaps, if Nox was the thieving rodent the human assumed him to be, he’d fall for such a trick. But luckily for his own survival, only half of those descriptors accurately applied.
The kitchen was quiet now, no movement to be heard since the rattling of the pans settled. Nox dared not breathe in the silence—the sort of silence that had him mentally begging the air conditioner to kick on. Or the oven to beep. Anything to mask his presence.
It wasn’t the appliances that broke the stillness, though. It was a soft sigh. The breath bounced off the cabinet’s floor, teasing Nox’s skin as it whisked past. The human had not yet moved. He remained hunched over on his knees, forehead pressed against the top of the cupboard as he stared lifelessly within it. Everything was disorganized now. A wreck having all tumbled out of place at once.
Nox stood properly hidden behind a mess of metal. Metal he blended with like a lizard to the bark, a fox to the snow. But he still could not move until that door was closed. Until he could safely scurry into the walls without the risk of human attention finding him.
“Look.”
Nox froze at the sound of a gentle sob.
“Look, I’m going to…”—the voice faltered—“I’m going to lose my job. Please. I won’t hurt you- I just- I just…”
Oh, he’d lost it. The human had finally broken. Here he was, slumped on the floor, talking to an empty room.
Any pity Nox might have felt in passing was replaced with mild impatience. He was stuck in place, nowhere to go, until that door was closed. He needed to make it home. Needed to slip safely into bed with a piece of chocolate muffin in hand. His sister would expect him back soon, as would his tired head. He had no time for a giant to have a breakdown between him and his exit route.
Ringing.
Nox’s attention jerked upward to the vibrating ceiling, to the voice radiating from the familiarly bad quality of a phone speaker.
“Hey, what’s up?”
A sob. “DeaconIDon’tKnowWhatToDo-”
“Oh, oh-” A pause as the voice realized the obvious severity of the situation. “Chase, did you sleep last night?”
Another long set of sobs. Sniffles. If Nox dared to peek out, he’d find a usually-happy face dripping with tears. Usually-sparkling eyes bearing deep sunk bags.
“I’m at the end of another double,” he managed through hiccups.
The voice on the other end responded, laced with worry. “You need to go home. You’re tired and overwhelmed. Come by my place. We’ll get some food in your stomach, and you can stay in the guest room. Call off sick tomorrow.”
Another sniffle. A sleeve wiped halfheartedly against a drippy nose. “I can’t, man. I have to catch at least one mouse or else she’ll chew me out. I can’t- I’m not in a position- I can’t afford-”
“Chase, you’re tired. Wait there. I’ll come pick you up.”
The beep of a dead line sounded before any arguments could be made, and the room was again cast into quiet.
Quiet, until a pot slammed against the tile ground.
Then another.
Nox’s heart found refuge in his stomach: he was clearing the cabinet.
Another pan removed- this one closer to Nox’s hiding place.
One by one, everything was ripped from its place. The human tore apart the kitchen in a.. rage? Storm?
A sopping, tearfilled wave of something.
Something determined to find what he was looking for. In this case, Nox realized with wide eyes, a rodent.
Or any other small creature hiding in this kitchen.
No amount of mental preparation or training could have prepared him for the feeling of the moment. The moment he knew he’d inevitably be caught as another pot was thrown from its place. He knew he ought to keep his breathing quiet, to keep his body as still as possible in hopes of somehow being overlooked. But as a hand twice as long as he was tall lowered toward his covert, the cabinet suddenly felt much smaller than it ever had before.
His heart jumped.
His soul attempted to flee his skin.
His feet, with no goal except get away, tried to back out of the situation. Only for his shoulders to meet the rough wooden walls of the corner behind him
The hand lowered onto the pot he was half beneath, half behind.
Then in one rough, rushed motion, it was removed.
At some point, Nox’s hands had found their way to clutch at his chest. His knees found their way to the ground when he finally felt the human’s gaze touch his skin.
What now? the voice in his head asked in a panic. Then another remembered the mousetraps. The ultimate purpose of them- the end goal that he’d never truly feared enough, as he considered himself too smart to fall for tricks like that. Too sly to ever be caught.
They were meant to kill.
Now it wasn’t just one set of eyes crying in the empty kitchen, but two. Blue met brown, both wide for different reasons. Fear. Surprise.
The human paused for a long second. A long second for Nox to sit in a panic, with lungs never able to get enough air.
“Oh,” he finally said. The hand hovering over Nox inched backward. “I’m… I’m sorry. I thought-“—the human glanced around the mess surrounding him, at each individual dish that had caused such a clamor—“I thought I was alone….”