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When they’d initially met on that muggy little bridge all those years ago, when Matt christened this kid his new name, ‘Bird’, maybe it was the sound dampening headphones but the reference flew over his head. Only when Matt finally learnt the real name of the strange meek boy he’d met did their destiny to meet seem clear (or maybe Jay’s mother was playing cruel pranks with his wardrobe)
It was less like ‘Bird’ was something he always was and more a role he’d grown into over the years. He’d dread being someone else's ‘Bird’, after all, who was it that named him that?
He fit his role well, a companion, a musician, a living centrepiece in the house, and he was happy with that. It was really only Matt who could perceive Jay's metaphorical cage he was made to live in, or rather, happily took to. Matt would often imagine themselves as creatures of all sorts when he wasn't busy trying to invent new ways to upset the public. He could picture himself as a great menagerie of beasts from macaques to foxes, even the odd fish.
It must certainly be destiny then, that he could only ever picture Jay as an avian.
Their relationship dynamic had definitely shifted after the whole ‘my best friend ran away from me in an alternate timeline and floundered in the real world so badly it resulted in two casualties’ episode from Jay, though not in a spiteful direction. It took some convincing from Jay to get Matt to believe his absurdist plot but the details were too rich for it to have not been real. Matt quickly forgave him, mostly assuming this was a weird dream Jay had.
But Matt couldn’t escape the thought of Jay fleeing the nest again, so to speak, and neither could Jay.
Even as they brainstormed new plans and schemes to worm their way into the sacred grounds of the Rivoli, Jay preferred to stay at home more and more often. Matt would joke that this evil dream he had ‘clipped his wings’ and domesticated him. That combined with their slow yet ever present maturation meant that a lot of their plans ended up happening from their HQ of sorts.
Matt would never tell Jay but he loved this almost as much as he idolised the Rivoli, if that’s even believable. Somehow this horrible scare Jay had apparently been through made both of them quite content with their lives.
Matt slept restlessly on the bottom bunk, the one that smelt like both of their feet and body odour, though mainly Jays. It was a mix between his chocolatey body odour and spicy stick deodorants. His smell snuck into the back of Matt's mind as he replayed the retold events of this evil dream reality Jay had subjected himself to. If it was true like Jay said then this wasn’t his Jay then, this was some Jay who had the capability to fly off somewhere else (assumedly straight into a powerline transformer) and that made him sick.
He couldn’t imagine this Jay making the same mistake again, but knowing any Jay, he’d likely forget it a few years later and try again, and Matt couldn’t let that happen, he had to properly cage him in.
Jay slept like a rock above him, a boulder he’d hoped would karmically slam into his head if he ever got the thought of instilling him with the urge to flee again, he slept so eerily quiet compared to the Jay that used to sleep in his place. Timeline differences were strange, or his trauma response to his freaky dream, he still wasn’t entirely decided on the ordeal.
Matt would slink out of bed to the best of his ability and sneak off to the workroom in the basement to look for useful equipment to ‘birdmax’ his plan.
The old rope he’d had sitting around since their first apartment jumped out to him, but that felt too extreme; too scary. Then he eyed the jar of miscellaneous trinkets Jay (his original Jay) used to collect off the street or pick up from second hand stores. The one consistent theme between all of them was their bright colours, often metallics. They’d dance in the light as Matt gently examined the jar, rolling and shaking it to get a look at the whole contents.
This Jay still had an affinity for small shiny objects, thank goodness, though to a much less kleptomaniac degree. (much less fun, in Matt’s eyes)
Along with the jar Matt spied an old set of prop handcuffs he and Jay had bought for a fake police plan, before they quickly discovered how genuinely horrid an idea it was to pretend to be an officer of the law. They were cheap plastic, easily broken open if Jay got scared of this idea. Matt imagined holding him in his arms and reassuring him he wasn’t actually that serious about keeping Jay to himself, totally.
Finally he scouted for his, hopefully clean, blindfold mask from that great time he managed to fend off a bunch of star wars maniacs while totally visually impaired. He still thought that was pretty cool. It was in a pile of other costume wear they’d used over the years, the rest of that police costume, his chef's apron and hat, numerous other gaudy carnivale masks he used to line the walls with (yuck.) until he finally found his blindfold. Giving it a quick sniff to check for blood, everything seemed clean. His new plan was ready for action.
Slowly, Jay roused from his sleep to the sound of Matt pacing the house like usual. Probably dusting off the lights or wiping down the always alarmingly greasy windows. He rolled to get a better eyeline to Matt in the livingroom, not cleaning, surprisingly. On the coffee table was a small bundle of objects he could barely make out in the majority warm rusty lighting of their house. He’d slowly begun to emerge from the circlet of pillows he slept amongst, settling feet first on the floor in an attempt to get closer to Matt’s mystery assortment of objects.
“Bird, what’re you doing ah, up… so early?”
“Checking what all the noise is about, and all that junk on the table.”
“It’s not junk, thank you very much! It’s actually quite essential for today’s plan.”
“My jar of trinkets? Tell me, what’s the idea with that? Are we gonna sell everything in the house again? I don’t think that's Rivoli money here.” Jay mourned the idea of letting go of his hard work, even if it wasn’t this Jay’s work entirely, at least one Jay contributed quite a lot, and that pleased him.
“Well maybe if the Bird could get a little song going I could go through my idea.”
He made his regular shuffle over to his piano bench, worn enough over the years to have a small dent of his rear only visible when the light hit it just right. Once he got positioned he began to carve out something he’d imagine a little dandy strutting around to, feather in his cap, very ‘macaroni’ indeed. Matt began his usual preamble:
“So last night, I was kinda uhh… Ruminating on what you’d told me about the timeline you’re from” Matt played along. “How you left and got famous or whatever and adored that attention.” Matt drew a little bird on the board, the kind you see in the margins of a third graders' English homework.
“Is that supposed to be me?” Jay stumbled out of the dinky tune he was playing to get a better look at Matt's illustration.
“Great work recognising it as you, so first step out of the way ‘Get Jay into the Bird mindset’” Whatever that meant.
Jay kept playing, a new melody emerged, one you might imagine in an old tweetie bird short, kinda dorky and desperately missing woodwind accompaniment.
“Okay so, you’re basically already a bird, I think- YOU think, in many regards, right?” Matt started on a list of bullet points.
- Musical (A true statement)
- Adores attention (This one he underlined, twice, just to be clear on his words)
- Handsome (He gritted his teeth as he wrote it, but he knew the reality he lived in)
- Fluffy (A curveball)
- Has beak (If a little rude to point out, also true)
“I’m sure you see yourself in all five?” He motioned to Jay to respond.
“I suppose. Where are we going with this?”
“Bird, Birdie, I know how to calm your neuroses and ensure we get into the Rivoli before you…” He trailed off, trying not to say before you think about flying away again.
“Before I what..?”
“Before you can… Perform! To the best of your ability! Let me illustrate… this idea, I think it’ll convey better to a birdbrain like you. Pun intended.”
“Hey-” But before Jay could retort, Matt had crudely scribbled a little mask onto the bird, drawing a big arrow pointing toward it and captioning it ‘FALCON HOOD!’
“So, you know in those uhm… those aerial shows at zoos and things, or at like a renaissance faire? How they have the birds in those little blindfold hat things?” Matt drew a little smiley face coming from a speech bubble pointed roughly at the mouth of his bird drawing. “That, for some reason unknown to science, helps them stay calm; cool as a cucumber.”
“I’m picking up what you’re putting down… I think.” Jay rubbed the back of his neck, the shorter hairs leading up to his head started to feel like down as he pictured himself as a bird-man-freak-thing, a visual he didn’t entirely hate. “So I play… Blindfolded? Fun gimmick-”
“Not just that. What are birds also known for doing?”
He added one point to the list
- Flying away (He felt a small pang of guilt hit him as he turned to look at jay)
Jay’s body language shifted inward, shameful. Matt tried to course correct.
“Well I know you have no intention of… ‘flying off’ any time soon, clearly you don’t either and- what am I on about, I just want to make sure in my mind it cannot happen again.” Matt paused, capping his dry erase marker. “Even if we both know it won’t it’s… symbolic, you know?”
“Yeah I fucked up, bad, don’t rub it in please.” Jay turned away before Matt approached and gently placed a hand on his shoulder. His glare softened into more of a soft gaze, so too did Jay’s. Wordlessly, Matt apologised before he continued with his plan, ‘Jesus, we’re so in sync these days’ both thought.
Matt knelt down, the cheap plastic cuffs emerging from the back pocket of his ready to retire jeans. For the first failsafe, he demonstrated to Jay wordlessly how easily he could open them if he needed to. He handed them to Jay so he could get a feel for it. They were the kind of cheap pseudo-metallic injection molded plastic that was much softer than it looked, more pearl than metal.
Matt would motion with his hand like a starving Victorian street urchin before Jay handed them back. The second failsafe was, obviously, the fact the piano bench was not bolted to the floor (much to Matt's weird sadistic dismay). He took one of Jay's willingly limp ankles as he cuffed it gently, and then with the other end, cuffed him to the bench. Matt could feel the boneyness of Jay's ankle as he strapped him in, nothing had changed there.
“Symbolic, see? Like if you’ve gotta pee or something you can just, yank it off, easy removal.” He spoke with the inflection of an as seen on TV advertiser.
“Not going anywhere today, Matt, I promise.”
Matt stuttered before finding his words again, not very adept at calming anyone, not even Jay. “You’re really freaking out man- Bird- Birdman, do you want the hood?” He stood back on his feet to meet Jay’s eyes, a thousand yard stare that was quickly interrupted upon seeing Matt.
Jay pondered Matt’s comparisons of himself to real birds. The distance between himself and them was much smaller than he initially thought possible. “I should have a go, at least, if it works on real birds it could work on me..?” He reluctantly spoke, verbally acknowledging the reality of Matt’s comparison.
Matt bit his tongue, resisting the urge to reinforce ‘You are a bird, Jay, you’re my bird.’ before he strode toward the coffee table to get his old costume blindfold.
Jay leant into the touch as Matt cradled his head with his comparatively broader hands before he started sliding the hood over Jay's head. It pushed what Matt would now probably call Jay’s ‘feathers’ out the back like some kind of wild anime protagonist. Almost as soon as it slid onto his head, Bird’s shoulders relaxed, the visual stimulation that constantly overwhelmed his life was suddenly gone and it felt so ironically freeing.
“So… How do you feel, Birdie?”
“Well, blind. Uhm… I trust you to not… do anything I wouldn’t like. You’ve gotten better at that, you know?” Jay smoothed the fabric over his head a little more evenly. “If i can play like this…” His dainty talons slowly found their way to the keys as muscle memory took over, playing a small jingle, testing the waters.
“Jay, Bird, great idea. How about… You uhm… Speak through the piano, like birdsong?” Matt rested his hands on Bird's shoulders, he flinched slightly before Matt spoke again. “I mean some birds do speak but, that’s like parrots and lyrebirds and things… You don’t strike me as the speaking kind of bird, Bird.”
Jay agreed, playing a nod-like sound. Matt was always amazed at the emotive power of music and Jay’s willingness to follow asinine directions.
The tune would shift to more arpeggio like strums as he felt Matt move to caress the top of his head. He’d play a small chirpy riff every time Matt pet him, nicer more major notes coming through when he’d graze over particularly rewarding zones. He wordlessly moved Matt's hand around his scalp, truly at the end of the day, the Bird was in control.
Matt grew curious as his hands drifted down his Birds neck, rubbing under his jaw near his vagus nerve. His piano voice rang through the kinds of chords you hear in church, those dedicated to a higher and mightier being. His light stubble reminded Matt of newly developing pin feathers, he circled his thumb around them and imagined breaking open a keratinous shell to reveal soft down. Bird continued to chirp away, the notes drifted deeper as Matt continued to scratch and rub just behind his ears.
Matt should not be as aroused by this as he is, but then again, he thinks that anyone who dedicated their life to someone else for long enough might start crossing wires when they’re essentially moaning using a piano, shifting from major chord, to minor, to resolve, over and over.
It reminded Matt of that cheesy song, yankee rose or whatever, the one with the crazy haired dudes where they made their guitar laugh and wolf whistle. Except it was his best friend, with slightly less crazy hair, whining and moaning through the medium of upright piano.
Bird rumbled on a series of deep notes, much like a purr, as Matt adventured lower down from his shoulders to his chest. He’d given Jay the ability to pull away if he felt he needed to, but unexpectedly he pushed into the touch. Matt remembered a factoid he was told years ago when they did this awful messenger pigeon stunt.
(the one where they tried to get pigeons to send adverts all over the city, only to forget they’d just return to the house they were trained in once released)
The factoid about where you should and shouldn’t touch a bird, not because it hurts, but because it gets them… without mincing words it gets them aroused. Matt ran through the list in his head as his hands wandered aimlessly, under the wings, on the back, on the stomach, on the legs and on the tail. He now had his goals, hit each spot, or at least their equivalents. He felt like he was just given directions to open a great gate or something of equivalent majesty in an adventure game.
He began his ‘quest’ of sorts by moving down to Bird’s ribs, just barely feelable under his pyjama shirt. The piano affirmed his motions, changing from incoherent chirps to something a little more constructed. It was slower, more thought out, like a forgotten part of moonlight sonata where Beethoven was essentially getting jerked off while composing. Out of the back of Bird’s real throat came a deep sigh, once again leaning into the touch. Bird’s smile grew more slack, his top teeth just barely hovering over his bottom lip.
‘He would stop me if he hated this’ Matt ran through his head ‘He’s enjoying this, maybe’
Continuing his mission, Matt’s hands glided from Bird’s side to his back, offering grand strokes from the base of his neck to just below where his ribs connected to his spine. It wasn’t too far removed from how a stereotypical James Bond villain would be petting a cat, slowly up and down. Bird’s song adapted as he shuffled on the piano stool, trying to keep his own growing erection at bay. The song began to stutter or break whenever Matt would hit his sweet spots, blushing deeply, like all his secrets were being read to an onlooking audience.
He tried to hold back a moan from his mouth, not wanting to break the illusion of his birdsong, though it was just audible over his slowly breaking melody.
Matt would keep toying with Bird just to hear how the music changed, regaining some sense of control as he crouched further to keep hearing all the wonderful noises his Birdie could make. The ones he made once Matt got his hands under his shirt and onto his chest and stomach were wonderfully stuttery. The soft fur of his belly wasn’t too different from the gentle down of a real bird. He could feel Bird’s stomach muscles twitch as his delicate hand traced light fingers all around. His head began to find rest on the small of the Bird's back.
It was an open secret between them, after the bad dream/alternate timeline/psychosis saga had been retold that in a panic, Jay had kissed him square on his plush lips. It wasn’t deep or anything, just a shy peck before he recoiled like he was about to be smacked. Matt to some degree, somehow, understood the great stress of it all that was weighing Jay down. Along with not entirely hating the kiss and his own need to reassure Jay, he kissed him back. The whole thing ended up snowballing into the weird pseudo-relationship thing they had going on for the past few months.
Neither of them considered themselves emotionally prepared for a true relationship, but the compromised homosocial ‘thing’ they had going on felt correct, nothing more, nothing less. It was gay, sure, but it wasn’t that bad of a situation to be in all things considered, the same as when a guy and a girl do it they both expressed.
Bringing himself back to reality, Matt listened to the vibrations deep within Bird's throat that resonated all throughout his body and into Matt’s. Even if he was trying his hardest to keep his own sounds contained, Matt couldn’t help but let a little satisfied sigh escape his nose. His Bird took this as a sign he too could whimper as Matt’s hands grew more groping on his soft stomach. There was a surprising lack of muscle underneath his skin, Matt unfairly compared it to his own body, his only other point of comparison. Matt could feel his Bird shuffling strangely in the stool, trying his best to increase the pressure of Matt’s touch and the pressure in his boxers.
Bird knew Matt wouldn’t dare touch his crotch this early, he knew how much he loved to torment him and drag out their pseudo-sex games, and Matt knew he still had to complete his erogenous zone tourist checklist before he could even begin to address the growing issue (not quite in anyone's hand)
He kept a now quite harshly groping hand on his Bird’s stomach as his other hand drifted up and down one of his exposed legs. They’d always been so skinny, Matt remembered them in their 20’s, noting very little change besides the addition of body hair. Bird’s song was all but incoherent spare keys that clashed with each other as he tried to buck into Matt’s hand.
“Birdie, I know I’ve got all your feather’s ruffled-” He snorted out a tiny laugh before he continued. “But not yet, you can wait for me, yeah?”
“Ye- Yes, Matt.”
“With the Piano, remember, birds don’t speak like people do.” He gently guided him back on track, a little arpeggiated agreement meant Matt could continue.
With both hands now groping his Bird's thighs, he would catch the small of the back of Bird’s shirt (not like he could help it, his face was smushed right against it), still chocolatey, still spicy, now followed by the fresh musky odour of his sweat. The little meat Bird’s thighs offered were enough to satisfy him, he wouldn’t change them, or Jay for that matter, even if it would save the world.
Because of where his head was sitting on Bird’s back, he couldn’t help but rub his face on him. The motion wasn’t too distant from a cat rubbing its face on all the furniture in the house to declare by scent ‘This is mine, mine and nobody else's’. He felt quite the same way about Jay too, even if he tried to suppress his dialogues on the topic.
A long since forgotten thought sprung into Matt’s mind, the jar of trinkets on the table, going unused and unloved. From where Matt was kneeling he could just about make out a few of the items in the jar: two small hairclips (probably from a doll), a variety of plastic jewels (he wishes Jay could see right now), at least three little army men figures (cool but not part of the task at hand) and most in line with today's theme? A large bright red feather, one from that horrid carnival mask Jay used to ogle on the wall.
“Can you stay there for a second? I mean not like you can move much right now, sorry.”
Bird nodded on the keys as Matt stood to move to the jar. His song slowly returned to normal as Matt rifled through the contents to reach for the feather, the whole thing smelt of dust and dry soil. His thick fingers barely managed to grab onto the feather as he wiggled it out, the room filling with coherent music once more. Once he re-capped the jar, he took a moment to admire his work, Bird blindfolded, cuffed to a stool, fully immersed in the identity of an avian.
He was a little nervous to re-engage with Bird’s body, opting to continue staring at him, not like he would notice or protest anyway.
The song he ‘sang’ returned to a slower pace, maybe 80bpm or less. Matt could visualise a scene of birds slowly arranging in the sky into their numerous migration formations. Large swarms of little songbirds, the carefully constructed ‘V’ shapes of traveling geese, the solitary path of a lone raven. The list capped off with, of course, the bird singing right in front of him. He took the opportunity of Jay beginning a larger more elaborate section of his birdsong to move in with the feather.
Again, crouching behind his Bird, he notified him of his presence with a gentle palm rub to his back before he got into his real work. At a snail's pace, he began to expose his rear end, pale and slightly speckled with hair. It was much more endowed than one would assume for someone as inactive as Jay, though Matt supposed it helped add some padding to the otherwise hard wooden bench he found himself perched on near daily. Bird’s breath hitched as he felt the gentle tickle of the tip of the feather against his tailbone, his erection once again making itself known.
He tried not to moan but couldn’t help himself and how sensitive his backside was. Literal featherlight movements looped around his cheeks in an infinity symbol like shape, causing his hips to jerk in response. He felt one of Matt's warm hands come up to cup and grope his right cheek as his song all but disintegrated into the occasional flickering chord.
“Such a pretty bird aren’t you?” He spoke as he pulled Jay back toward him, his ass now hanging slightly off the chair as Matt took both hands to it. “So soft and delicate, -m so lucky.”
Jay moaned verbally as he arched, both to reach his keys better and to give Matt more of his ass. He needed his penis addressed sooner or later, lest it fell off and turned black (which was entirely possible at this point). With two higher keys, he alternated between them in an alarm-like sound as he bucked, hoping to get his message across. It took a bit of whining, bucking and creation of alarm sounds for Matt to pick up on his coded message, ‘Touch my cock, please, it’s urgent’.
For as much as Matt loved toying with him, he also loved seeing him unravel when pleased. One of his hands snaked its way to the front of Jay's hips, inching its way down his stomach hair and into his boxers before eventually finding his erection. Though he was often embarrassed of the size of his own compared to Jays, it was so amusing to him how useless all that length was when they did anything together, how much more important Jay’s ass was to his cock. Matt stood just enough to stash the feather in the knot of the blindfold as he arduously began to pump Jay’s cock.
“I wanna hear you, all of it, your piano birdsong moans, it’s electric.” He rambled as his pace increased. Jay tried his best to speak through his instrument as his worryingly fast orgasm threatened to end their game.
It began to sound more like a housepet had wandered onto the keys, wildly stumbling around. He was more or less gripping onto them for dear life, each stroke sending out a broken discordant pang. He bit his lip to try and keep his out of character human sounds contained but couldn’t help himself. His voice joined the unsellable song as he grew closer and closer to eruption.
Matt stood to lean over him, head on his shoulders to steady his uneven motion as his wrist sped up. “So obedient, you really are a house pet huh?” He put his mouth to Jay’s ear “My pretty Birdie”
That was the final key to the puzzle of getting Jay off, warm and thick sperm found itself coating the inside of Jay’s boxers and Matt's hand as his melody slowly petered out. He was panting, trying his best not to fall over onto his piano from the relief of his orgasm.
“Can aah- Can…” Jay took a moment to catch his breath. “Can I speak like… a person now?”
“I mean after all… of this, absolutely man.” Matt resisted the urge to shake the cum off of his hand like a wet dog, opting to take off Jay’s blindfold with a clean hand and wipe it off on that.
“Nasty. Dammit I gotta change my pants too.” His eyesight eventually returned as his cones adjusted to the daylight of the room, the wet smear in his boxers now upsettingly visible. He turned to look at Matt, his face flush too. “You just gonna leave yourself blue balled? Very out of character Matt.” Matt wagged a finger.
“I think if I cum today I’ll be couchbound dude, like way too exhausted.” Matt giggled. “Anyway the plan was about you, and sex aside, it clearly helped keep you calm, no?”
Matt was right, as per usual. Usually Jay would be stammering and overthinking his sex, overthinking how to play his improvised music, overthinking was his natural state of being. It would be a fun gimmick for when they eventually played their lifelong dream show, ‘come see the amazing blindfolded pianist and his friend who looks like an onion and sings* along.’
He picked up the bench as he stood, carefully removing his cuff from the bench's leg. “I’ll be in the shower, I can’t focus with jizz in my pants, you know this.” Cracking his stiff knuckles.
Matt took note of him not removing the cuff from his own leg as he stumbled to his feet and toward the upstairs bathroom. He was caged in, had no idea, and loved every minute of it. His bird was safe, forever.