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“Hey, King Parrot, you got a moment?”
“Not- really, Theo, sorry-“
“Nah, bro, like- it’s urgent urgent. Kinda just asking so you’d get to say yes.”
“Theo, I’m really- really not-“
Parrot flinched, wings flying up to cover his back, as he heard the door open behind him. Really, it should be expected. Being a king meant he had a sacrifice some things, and maybe some of those things were his human right to privacy. He’d sacrificed worse, for less, but it didn’t ease the heaving in his chest, as he dimly registered that his hands were covering the back of his head, and his wings were on full display.
His heart pounded, blood throbbing in every inch of his body, as Parrot silently sent a thanks to something that still cared that he had underwear on. Nothing else, though. He’d finally found it in himself to wash, and had just been…
Well, he’d been trying to work up to preening his wings.
He’d have to rub the redness out of his eyes, before he turned to speak to Theo.
“Oh, s- shit, bro. Sorry. My bad.”
Theo didn’t sound all that apologetic. Which was fine, he’d clearly actually needed something, because Parrot- trusted Theo, to have something important that he’d rationally judged to be worth barging in. That would be logical, and inarguable, so Parrot needed to calm his racing heart.
“…It’s fine, bro.” Sighing, Parrot slowly lowered his hands, but they stalled, his irrational mind unwilling to lower them and expose himself without so much as seeing Theo. “Sorry, I just…”
“Not trying to arrest you, dude.” Theo laughed, low and soft and harmless, and Parrot needed to get that through to his stupid brain. Harmless. “Did I frighten you, little bird?”
“Yeah.”
It skipped out of his throat, alongside his heartbeat. It went with a little of his tension, and Parrot let out a low breath, slowly dragging his arms to his sides and pulling his wings back in to a reasonable position. That was a pathetic show of defence, and the fact his body still thought it meant something was worrying, honestly.
Or maybe it was fawn, rather than freeze, that had fuelled that one. Parrot had been trying to make his wings pretty again, at least.
“Uh-“
Fuck.
In that single, miserable moment, there was nothing in Parrot’s heart except regret. He’d let his thoughts slip, for a moment, and now Theo had questions, and it took so little for him to be tired again, tired like his body was insisting he was until he went through all the motions to make himself feel clean again. And it all felt so raw, when he’d been about to preen his own wings.
“Parrot… bro, you’ve got…”
“…yeah…”
Wings pulled in now, to wrap around his arms like a makeshift comfort blanket, Parrot turned around, hiding his back from Theo with his arms crossed across his chest, and sunk onto his bed in despondency. His head lowered, and his ears burned.
It wasn’t even anger. Not even shock. Just numbness, because he’d had this conversation so many times with himself, because every time it was a shock to his system, to discover once again the parts o this body that weren’t his own.
They all had plenty of scars. Theo liked to wear his proudly, wounds and chains and poisons looping around his arm like bracelets. Streaked across his chest, his back, every hard-earned victory and meaningless blow that he’d borne with all his constitution.
Parrot… didn’t. Not because he was ashamed, exactly, and he certainly had enough to be proud of. But his were a different kind of old. They told a story, from his ears to his ankles, and it would tell people too much about him, if he let them catch so much as a glimpse.
He’d never wanted to be known like that again.
“What… is that? Some cult or shit, dude, it’s good, we’ve all been there.”
“Not a cult.”
“So, uh…”
“Not a cult.”
Parrot could feel it burning, again.
It was one of the most sickening mysteries of his life, that he still didn’t know exactly how Wifies had branded him. He just knew it was there. He wasn’t even sure how long it had been there, as the days blurred, and Parrot had tried to block out most of it.
“So… some kinda personal thing? Spiritual?”
“Paragon.”
The least painful, shortest explanation he could give. Parrot always found it came with a clinical overtone, to take the edge off, to discuss it in purely academic tones. Paragon had been a marvel.
Wifies had been a marvel too, in his own way.
Bad thoughts. The kind of thoughts that made him flinch forward, just barely swallowing a pitiful sound of grief and anguish. Somehow, every time the ocean of pain was revealed again, it had never shrunken. Every time, Parrot just barely scratched the surface, but the depths he could feel below always loomed, and it made him so dizzy he wanted to be sick.
“Oh. Ah.”
“You can- go, bro, or- I’ll just… no, you can- you can talk to me now. Don’t mind me.”
“Dude, it’s literally- no, you don’t worry about that shit. You can take a moment, baby bird, it’s ok. Looks like it hurts like shit.”
“I- I know.”
Theo’s footsteps worked towards him, heavy, yet unthreatening. Parrot had so many better things to fear than physical footsteps. The demons in his nightmares. The demons in his happy dreams. The demons in his memories, and it all trapped him in the present, which was hardly any less painful.
“Want a hug?”
Parrot pulled his arms tighter around himself. There were more things Theo didn’t need to see. More things that Wifies had… done for him. Done to, done for, done with. It all came out to be academic. Why couldn’t he be academic about this?
“Theo, there’s… there’s shit you don’’t…”
“Know about you? Yeah, bro, I’m sure. You’re like a- cabinet of mysteries. Magician’s hat. All of that.”
Parrot laughed. It hurt his chest. Other things hurt, in and on his chest. Theo was the only person, to make him laugh at a time like this.
“You really want to know, bro?”
“Hell yeah. Hit me with whatever you’ve got, baby bird.”
“…ok.” Parrot shifted, and nodded, mixing the gesture with wiping his face as best he could on his shoulder. He wasn’t prepared to move his arms yet. “You- sit there.”
Theo did as he was told. He was good like that. God- Parrot could see the appeal of it, and the nausea was back. There was a burning on his back, and on his chest, and in his throat, and could feel Wifies’s fingers pressing over every vulnerable part of him, working out how to make him better and tameable.
This, at least, was something good Wifies had done for him. Parrot should be glad for that.
There weren’t many places in Unstable, to get decent transition surgery, much less a stable hormone regime.
So, one upside. Something he really should tell his new companion.
Agonisingly, Parrot peeled his hands away from his chest like he was removing bandages, like he’d felt Wifies’s gaze taking him apart, when he’d first seen Parrot taking of his top and binder when it hadn’t seemed to matter between them. He should have seen it then. That well-meaning hunger in Wifies’s eyes.
Always such a benevolent scientist, his Director.
“…Huh. That’s for-“
“I know, Theo. It’s for my- yeah, y’know.”
“Huh.”
Parrot didn’t want to look. He didn’t really want to know if Theo was staring. It wouldn’t make him feel bad, no, he’d been inured to prying eyes. But it would feel strange.
When he dared to flick his gaze, Theo was eyeing his wings in protective, irritable concern.
“Dude. Wings. Feathers. You told me you handled this shit yourself.”
He didn’t even care.
Parrot’s wings fluffed out, alongside his breathless laugh, because avian instincts were- so much nicer, than creeping, perverted eyes. Theo didn’t give a fuck about his body. Parrot could be branded, surgically changed, broken inside and out, and Theo would judge his wing care, before he thought to judge his gender.
“Shit- sorry, bro, didn’t mean to- bad subject?”
“No, Theo- good subject. Yeah, g- good subject. I thought you’d…”
“Hey, you seem pretty happy with yourself. You do you.”
“But…” Parrot bit his lip, and thought over his meagre comeback. But Wifies had done it to him. Did that make it wrong, that it happened to be something he liked? “I kinda hate it.”
“Because of that- prison shit?”
“Yeah. Same reason my wings are useless, sometimes.”
“Dude. Tell me this stuff.”
Theo cast him a reproachful look, and Parrot scowled. He was aware he still hadn’t been told the business so important to justify barging in here. A traitorous voice said it was because Theo would betray him, that this was all part of the plan.
“My bad I got- fucking traumatised last time I let someone know my business. Let me know when you want at go at my wings with scissors a- and-“
Bad idea. Bad joke, and Theo hadn’t even been the one to make it, so there was no one to blame but himself.
Parrot stifled his own gasp, realising far too late that that had hurt far too much, the the idea of Theo, somehow, despite Parrot trying to protect both of them-
“I mean tell me when you can’t do something, baby bird.” Theo rubbed his lower back, gently, leaning just unobtrusively enough into Parrot’s space to be tolerable. “No need to- to tell me anything more.”
Theo was so smart sometimes. The right kind of smart. Not Parrot’s terrible, self-destructive kind of smart. The kind that was useful.
Maybe Theo was the kind of smart he should be.