Work Text:
The metal under his arms was warm.
This gave Parrot a lot to work with, actually. Firstly, metal. His bed wasn’t normally made of metal. That meant he was in an unknown location, or at least a different one.
Secondly, arms. His arms were folded under his head. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t quite make sense with the impersonality of the metal. On his left arm, there was something pressed against his skin, something he couldn’t quite identify.
Thirdly, warm. Warm was the most unnerving part. Warm meant Parrot had been here a long time, and it was supported by the stiff feeling in his joints, as he tried to move. His ankles met leather, and something similar was around his waist, just above his tailbone. He was wearing… trousers, he was sure, but nothing above his waist. Not a good sign.
Parrot opened his eyes, and stared at nothing. Not nothing, actually. The darkness of the space between his folded arms and the metal bench he was strapped to. Whoever had put him here, they didn’t seem to have expected him to wake up.
Careful, now. Parrot waited, waited to see if anyone was actively watching him. There was the beeping of a machine, and something that sounded strangely like the cawing of birds. Definitely the cawing of birds, if he focused on it. That was weird.
Then, he tilted his head, not moving anything apart from his body. There was a sterile chill in the air, and this didn’t feel like a dungeon. Parrot had a feeling this was something else, something that would know if he tried to break it.
It was a laboratory. Or an operating room, maybe. Parrot couldn’t say. He could see a tray beside him, lined with tools and, weirdly, feathers, and a metal bench beyond it. Everything was made of quartz, or some mauve stone, and topped in clean, shining metal. It was familiar, tugging at the back of his blurry mind in a way that didn’t make sense.
Ominous. Parrot filed the information, wondering if he could reach the scalpel beside him, if it was safe to move his hands. He turned his head the other way, shifting his shoulders, just a little. His back felt oddly numb, something strangely cold down his spine.
On the other side, he felt his breath catch in his throat. He’d been right.
Parrot stared at the wall of cages on the opposite wall, each one with a different, brightly coloured bird perched inside it. The cawing had gotten louder, if anything, as his eyes flicked across, seeing the same, jet-black tag on every clawed foot. Twenty birds, at least, behind thin metal bars, staring right back at him.
Dread felt like the fear of a caged animal, as Parrot stared in the eyes of a parakeet, and felt nothing but interest reflected back at him.
“You like them?”
Cold fingers laid on his shoulder, and Parrot felt his muscles lock up, unwilling to push himself into quite this level of processing. This was illogical, not registering, not making any sense.
“That was a question. You’ve got until I put you under again. Just needed you awake to test your reactions.”
The voice was moving, low and clipped and oddly thoughtful, like an academic. Because he was an academic, of course. Parrot couldn’t even hear any trace of insanity, which made it so much worse.
“Wifies- what- what is this?”
The dread was gone. No point fearing something he knew. This terror was worse, in its own way, as Parrot didn’t dare move his head, to make this real.
“An experiment. You know, I’ve always thought you’d look pretty with wings…” Wifies laughed, softly, moving Parrot’s head so he was facing down again, and passing another strap over his shoulders. “Tell me what you feel, ok?”
Parrot couldn’t breathe right. This was Wifies, who was never meant to hurt him. His head was spinning, and he’d definitely been drugged, and he felt a frozen sort of sensation in the centre of is back.
“Why- why are there birds, Wifies?”
“Tell me what you feel, Parrot.”
“N- nothing.” Parrot moved his head, trying to catch Wifies’s eye, to talk some sense into him. “Almost nothing- Wifies, please, why are you-“
Wifies looked down at him. And Parrot felt everything in his body turned to ice, at the empty look in his best friend’s eyes, nothing but a spark of scientific sadism amidst the coldness.
“You- you’re not Wifies, are you?”
“I am.” Wifies turned away, then leaned back, holding a strip of fabric. “Just not the one you know. He’s dead, if you’re interested. As dead as anyone can be.”
Parrot didn’t have time to wrench away, as Wifies tied the blindfold over his eyes, humming in satisfaction as Parrot flinched belatedly, trying to breathe right.
“He’s not- he can’t be dead, Wifies, it- it’s me, you don’t want to do this. Please.”
His emotions were muted, but the stutter in his heartbeat was real. Everything was out of sync, as Parrot tried to push the blindfold off, and Wifies tutted like he didn’t care about him at all.
“Calm down, you don’t want to feel this. Trust me.”
Wifies’s fingers ghosted down, then pushed down hard, directly on his tailbone, and Parrot yelped. It felt unnatural, even worse with the blindfold, and everything was underwater.
Wifies was dead
Parrot felt like crying. But he couldn’t, not when he needed to escape, even when Wifies was the one person he never seemed to be able to get away from.
“Noted. You’re more sensitive than I’d expected.”
This wasn’t his Wifies. Parrot didn’t want to believe it, but he didn’t want to believe the alternative even more. This couldn’t be his Wifies, not this cold touch and colder voice. If he’d never see the Wifies he knew again, he didn’t want to ruin his memories with this.
“And… hold still, if you would.”
Parrot didn’t have much other choice. Not when he could move a few inches, at most, and he wasn’t moving anywhere when Wifies’s hand lingered on his back, and something slipped into his arm.
An IV. It was an IV drip.
——————
Silly bird.
Wifies sighed, to himself, pulling gloves on up to his elbows. This shouldn’t be messy, but he didn’t take risks. He hadn’t taken any, with getting Parrot here, and making sure he wouldn’t leave.
Better check the straps again. Wifies’s hands moved smoothly, tightening the ones around Parrot’s ankles, tying on the ones around his thighs, and unbuckling the one around his waist. He needed good access.
At his shoulders, he hesitated. He wanted Parrot to be comfortable, and he wouldn’t be, if Wifies strapped his wrists down at his sides.
Tapping the metal to the side of Parrot’s head, Wifies smiled brightly, enjoying his small whimper.
“Hands up, or down?”
“…up…”
So he could speak. Wifies nodded, undoing the leather band across his shoulders. It wasn’t that useful.
He gathered Parrot’s hair between his fingers, brushing it out of the way, petting down his neck gently. Parrot couldn’t feel it, of course, but it was amusing.
By all standard medical procedure, his patient should be fully unconscious. It would be less painful, too, even if Parrot should be numbed out of his mind right now. But Wifies wanted to hear him talk, and as long as there was no danger of the strain being lethal, he’d prefer to see the fear in his bird’s eyes.
Or hear it in his little breaths, at least, as Wifies lined up his scalpel with his first marked incision point. He should play with Parrot’s vocal cords, after this.
First wings, then a tail, if Parrot’s body seemed up for it, then cutting out his voice box would probably be the easiest part.
Wifies pulled his goggles down, leaning closer. Parrot was begging, softly, mumbling into his arms. Like he thought it would help. He didn’t get it, Wifies was helping him. He was making him into something beautiful.
Wifies liked birds. Falcons and parrots, in particular. Intelligent enough to solve his games, but not so intelligent he couldn’t shoot them, if it came to it.
He’d shot a lot of birds.
One of the ones on his wall, one of the louder ones, that had narrowly managed to escape being dissected for this little project, started kicking up a fuss, as Wifies sliced through Parrot’s shoulders. He glared over at it, eyes narrowed to slits as he stared the dumb thing down.
It shut up. But it carried on watching him, and Wifies hissed. Parrot could wait. He straightened, walking over to it, scalpel still held between his fingers.
In one movement, he opened the door of the cage, and grabbed the bird by its throat. Wifies tightened his grip, as its claws scratched down his arm, nearly through his gloves.
“Stupid animal...”
He wasn’t wrong, even if Parrot whined pitifully, as Wifies made his way back over.
“Not you, darling.” He might have been a little distracted, as he pressed the bird against his surface, cutting through its wings in two sharp movements. “Delighted to have you...”
The bird was squawking, as its blood poured over Wifies’s gloves, and he struggled to drive the scalpel flush with its neck.
“Hold- still, god…”
There. It went limp, with a satisfying spray of blood, and Wifies made a sharp noise of satisfaction. Parrot whined again, probably hearing the bird’s cries cut out, and Wifies could just about hear his voice.
“Wifies… please, you- you don’t…”
“Already did.” Wifies stabbed through the bird’s neck, enjoying the feel of tearing through its vocal cords. “Just relax, Parrot. I need… a second.”
He should dispose of this. But he had things to do, another bird to attend to. After a moment of thought, Wifies flipped the limp corpse over, spreading the wings across his metal workbench. Now he had a reference dummy.
Smiling, he turned away from the brief irritance. Maybe he’d let Parrot keep his ability to speak. It would be frustrating, to only hear those intolerable bird noises.
But the corpse’s wings looked so pretty, splayed across his bench like roadkill, and Wifies felt like he’d killed one bird to help another, as he turned back to his patient.
——————
Parrot couldn’t feel anything.
Now, this felt almost like a comfort. He didn’t know what Wifies had done to that bird making all those noises, he didn’t want to know, to be so honest, and Parrot definitely didn’t want to be able to identify the numbed freezing on his back.
But at the same time, his mind was fuzzy with hysterical terror. This was Wifies, not-his Wifies, and somehow, Parrot had begun to realise that the person he’d let closest to him was the one he could predict the least.
He didn’t even know what Wifies was doing. And there was no way to find out, with those gloved hands roaming up and down his back, preventing Parrot from moving even if he’d been able to.
He’d have tried going to sleep, if these drugs didn’t seem to be keeping him suspended in a state of half-consciousness, just under enough to have no control, but close enough to the surface to be aware, pumping in steadily through his arm like a rising tide. Besides, Parrot wasn’t sure he could cope with sleeping, or passing out. Not when he didn’t know what Wifies was doing.
He’d forgotten the blindfold. His mind was fuzzy, and Parrot was beginning to lose track of everything making his heart constrict in every slowed beat with panic. But the blindfold was there, keeping him from knowing even if he could have tried, in some way.
It was horrible. Everything felt too much and too little. Parrot’s body wasn’t sure whether to relax or flinch away in Wifies’s presence. He was hot with panic, cold with anaesthetic, unaware of anything beyond his own muffled thoughts.
Wifies had killed that bird. Parrot could feel it, one less life in the room. That had been… how long ago, now? Hours? At least, Parrot felt like he’d been trapped in purgatory for days. Maybe he was dead too, bleeding out and numb to the feeling of not-his friend dissecting him, as he lay here, helpless.
He needed to know what was happening to him. Parrot had distilled his needs down to that singular one, and he’d been struggling with it for what felt like it could have been weeks. Everything was slippery, even sensations.
Wifies spoke to him, sometimes. Calm. Cold. There was something in his voice, or a lack of something. A clipped impersonality, like anything that made him him had been removed. Parrot tried to speak back, and could only presume he was making noise, in some manner. It seemed to make Wifies happy.
And the worst part was, some part of Parrot still wanted to make Wifies happy. Even if this wasn’t his Wifies, even if none of this was right, Parrot couldn’t stop himself. They might not have his heart, but they had Wifies’s face, and some vestige of his voice.
And they had his careful hands. If Parrot could have felt safe under these circumstances, he would have right here. Wifies worked silently, professionally, and Parrot could imagine his Wifies’s warmth in those cold, phantom fingers.
He was glad he couldn’t feel the pain. It was a small mercy, and Parrot had nothing better to be feeling than gratitude. Fear would get him nowhere, anger felt out of reach compared to the equally unproductive grief, so it felt a little better to feel something soft. If he pretended, pretended this thing with Wifies’s face was Wifies, Parrot could almost feel at home.
So, when Wifies’s gloved fingers trailed over parts of him that felt muddy to Parrot’s distorted mind, he keened softly, making a noise he didn’t know he could make, pushing his back up into the sensation. It was like rewiring a computer, like connecting a new breadboard, and continuing to mess with it as the operating system buzzed.
Parrot’s skin was buzzing. That was the muffled sensation, and it was keeping him in a constant state of paranoia over whether it meant the drugs were wearing off. He wasn’t sure he wanted them to. Besides, they wouldn’t. Not with the IV drip still in his arm, barely even detectable through the fog. Wifies was too good to make mistakes. Too careful. Even this Wifies, maybe more so.
It was strange, having such a familiarly unfamiliar presence above him. Parrot would have squirmed, uncomfortable with being observed so closely, self-conscious and anxious, but the eyes were familiar, roving across his body with the scientific interest maybe even his Wifies would have had, if they didn’t know each other.
Maybe this was what Wifies was really like. Maybe neither of them had died, and this one had just forgotten him.
Maybe that made Parrot’s lack of resistance ok.
——————
Wifies had to say, he was pleased with his work. It had been tricky, on some spots, but he’d had some breakthroughs that made up for it.
Like how he hadn’t needed to mess with Parrot’s throat at all, it turned out, because the bird had started making animal noises all on his own. Like his brain readjusting itself, bringing bestial instincts back to the surface and adapting them to his new body.
It was fascinating stuff.
Like the way Parrot made soft, trilling noises as Wifies unbuckled the straps holding him down, almost but not quite distressed. He probably didn’t have the mental capacity for it.
He’d upped the dosage, as he finished up, and Parrot was practically unconscious, as Wifies unhooked the IV from his arm. It was useful, to have a line directly into his blood. Like a remote control, implanted inside him. Something to look into.
Before he moved anything, Wifies took a small step back, smiling to himself as he tilted his head.
Parrot looked beautiful. Prone on a metal bench, limp and unmoving and quiet, only his breathing betraying that he wasn’t just as dead as the bird corpse behind Wifies. His shallow, steady breathing, making the feathers on his back ripple and shine, layers of blue and green and orange and yellow sliding across each other.
The tail had been trickier, oddly. Bones were easy, Wifies could construct bones. It was like a puzzle, a satisfying one could solve with textbooks and dead bodies. So, the wings had been little problem, from drawing out the designs to calculating Parrot’s bodyweight to wingspan ratio.
But the tail had been a rash decision, maybe, and Wifies was yet to see its full effects. He’d only thought of it a week ago, when he was putting the finishing touches to his designs, and had only spent a dozen hours pouring over it.
It looked beautiful, in his professional opinion. Wifies ran his hand over the feathers, every colour of a neon rainforest, listening closely for Parrot’s whimpering chirps. This was strictly research.
His hand stilled. Wifies paused, everything, for a moment. The birds seemed to have learnt their lesson, having been silent for the last few hours he’d been working.
Strictly research. Parrot was just another test subject.
Albeit a cute one. Wifies was still human.
Humming softly, he pulled Parrot off the bench, enjoying the way he fell limp into his arms. Wifies had messed with a few of his bones, just the ones he had access to, swapping them out for lighter variants he’d modelled off his birds. Just to make a little lighter, to save him from wings metres wide.
He should look into whatever it was he was feeling, as he hefted Parrot up to get a better grip. It wasn’t normal. Wifies wasn’t sure what to make of it, wrapping awkwardly around his heart, trying to find where it fit.
Parrot’s head lolled against his shoulder. Wifies moved silently across his lab, heading for the stairs up to his living space. It was a little tower-like, but a clean aesthetic, between the purple lightning and shining black stone.
And he had a room prepared, for Parrot. It was technically his wardrobe, but Wifies was efficient. And he didn’t want his little research subject going too far. So, he’d cleared out his cupboards, and installed a lock on the door.
It was a big wardrobe. Wifies wasn’t lazy.
Nudging the door open, Wifies laid Parrot gently in the thick pile of blankets and pillows he’d put together, reaching for the chain attached to the wall. It went easily around his ankle, and Wifies lingered on his hands.
Claws. He had claws pencilled in alongside ear feathers, if Parrot seemed to be recovering after three weeks. His thumb swiped over Parrot’s knuckles, and Wifies’s eyes darted to the cuffs in the shelf beside him. It normally held his jewellery, but he’d stored most of his collection of restraints in there, for now.
The cuffs could stay off. Parrot had been so well behaved so far. Wifies stroked his hair, thinking over other rewards he could find. Pets deserved to be taken care of. Especially birds, when they actually played nice.
Parrot shifted, and that would be his cue to leave. Wifies wanted to think over his next steps.
——————
Warm.
nest
Soft, and warm, and warmer, a heavy warmth on his back.
nest
It was getting more insistent. Parrot whined, softly, feeling himself shift. He was confused. This was confusing. He was somewhere that both did and didn’t smell familiar, and somehow it was still helping.
Up. Sit up.
nest
Feathers surrounded him, as Parrot struggled upright, sinking into his own mind and the pile of soft around him. There were feathers resting on his shoulders, on his legs, on his back.
And he was feeling something he shouldn’t be able to.
Not in a didn’t want to way, or a drugged-out uncertainty. No, Parrot could feel with perfect, sickening clarity, as nerves that shouldn’t exist sparked and frayed.
Closing his eyes, Parrot concentrated, trying not to be sick. If he could chase that sensation. Maybe he could work out where it was coming from, maybe it would be something innocuous.
Something in his body moved. It was awful, as Parrot felt tendons he shouldn’t have stretch, and bones that weren’t his click against each other. He could feel where Wifies had cut into him, didn’t want to think about what he’d left behind.
In the corner of his eye, colours flashed, and Parrot flinched, whirling around as he tried to control himself. He didn’t succumb to hysteria this easily. But his head was wrong too, this wrongness in his body was infectious. His breath was catching, as he searched for the movement he couldn’t find.
More feathers. Against his leg, now, and Parrot looked down.
He was going to be sick.
Parrot grabbed a handful of the feathers beside him, and nearly cried out, as it sent a sparking sensation of something to his head.
pain
The voice in his head really wasn’t useful. Parrot could swear he could hear it laughing, as he let go, trying not to hyperventilate or vomit. So that was connected to him.
Carefully, with shaking hands, Parrot ran his hands up the sheaf of feathers, until he found his own waist, and felt his stomach flip.
His Wifies would never have given him a tail. His Wifies would have known how much he hated this.
Parrot looked up, struggling to hold it together, as the hissing in his mind rose and fell, and he touched the edge of one of his wings in wonder. His neck hurt, from this position, but it felt immaterial. Unimportant, compared to staring at whatever his body was now.
He hated how much he didn’t hate it.
That was the worst thing, the thing that made Parrot snatch his hand back like the neon feathers burned, cradling it as he stared at the floor, trying not to break down. He didn’t hate it. Maybe he hated the tail, and the voices in his head, but it scratched an itch.
His ankle met metal, and something in him snapped. It wasn’t the chain, tying him to the wall, and it wasn’t his fragile-feeling bones, as Parrot tried not to collapse under the uneven weight he wasn’t sure he could lean backwards into. But he didn’t care either, because there were tears running down his cheeks, and why did he care about being careful with Wifies’s work? He hadn’t asked for this. These weren’t his wings.
But they felt like it. Parrot hugged his knees, shivering, feeling the mass of feathers press around him like an alien appendage entirely, but he could feel their pull in the back of his mind.
He was crying, maybe, or just breathing through his hysteria, because his body didn’t feel his own. It was unnatural, changed by hands that weren’t his own, too heavy and too light and wrong, so wrong, so wrong in so many ways.
nest
And there was a voice in his head. Parrot felt a little psychotic, looking around with red eyes like he could find some speaker. He found a camera, and barely stopped to think about it, because the part of him that wasn’t him was fixing his eyes on the pillows surrounding him.
Honestly, Parrot didn’t even know where he was. He just knew he was reaching for the blankets, trying to suffocate himself so the feathers on his back would be just another mass of fluff surrounding him.
Maybe he was trying to suffocate himself. He certainly wasn’t breathing, head spinning between a need to cover himself in soft things and the dizzying sensation of not knowing why his hands were moving. Parrot felt sick. He wasn’t in control, he was trapped and helpless inside his own body.
He was screaming. That was the ringing in his ears, the tightness in his throat. His fingers curled into blankets—no claws, why didn’t he have claws—and Parrot was screaming hysterically as he curled in on himself, feathery masses covering him like a saccharine lover.
——————
“Wifies, please-“
Parrot was cut off by sparking pain from his neck, and he keened weakly, going limp all over again as his body shorted out. His shoulders pressed against thin metal bars, and he could hear his own ragged breathing, overheating on his back and too cold everywhere else.
The shock collar was the worst part. Bulky, uncomfortable, making Parrot want to tear his own skin off every time it dug into his neck.
Honestly, the cage was tolerable. It was big, across the whole wall, making Parrot feel like he was just in another part of Wifies’s office, only separated by silver bars. It resembled the wall of cages those birds had been in, however many days ago it had been. Only this one wasn’t divided into sections, but stretching uninterrupted, even if it only went back half a metre at most.
It was claustrophobic, but at least Parrot could see everything. Wifies, at his desk, looking over at him occasionally with those sharp, mismatched eyes, making Parrot’s stomach turn. They were Wifies’s eyes. But nothing else was Wifies. The desk was too ordered, the office too dark as it stretched upwards, the macabre taxidermic creatures on the wall too disturbing to linger on.
Every time he’d tried to talk, he’d gotten the same thing. Pain through his throat, until his voice felt raw, and Parrot was pretty sure he was giving up here. But there was nothing else to do. He was hungry, and a little delirious, and distressed as soon as he let his thoughts settle, only for them to whip themselves into a frenzy again. And he didn’t want to be left with nothing but himself, not when everything inside him still felt wrong.
He’d been in here for half a day, give or take. Parrot liked to think it had only been two days, total, but he was sure he’d been drugged most of the last one, so he couldn’t be sure. Time was fuzzy, not something the bird-brain in the back of his head seemed to care about. Half a day was a long time, stuck with his thoughts.
Wifies moved, and Parrot hated how he perked up, watching as the person who wasn’t his friend approached the cage, and knelt down on one knee to his eye level.
Parrot didn’t speak. He bit his tongue, instead, feeling his wings ruffle. It earned him the barest hint of a smile from Wifies, and he scowled, just to hide how it made his feathers prickle.
flock
The voice could shut up, too. He didn’t want this, any of this. He glared at Wifies, whose smile disappeared back to that clinical calm.
“Hand.”
Wifies held out his own, and Parrot just stared at him, fighting hard not to break. The urge was there, to start crying right there, to press himself as close as he could get to him and let himself feel safe.
Besides, what did Wifies even want him to do? Parrot couldn’t get his hand through the bars, not how they were spaced.
He raised it anyway, and Wifies moved his, pressing his palm against the bars. Parrot mimicked, thin metal separating their hands as he stared into one black, one grey eye, searching for someone who was meant to take care of him.
For a few seconds, they both sat there. Parrot, half-collapsed on the floor, hungry and scared and as angry as he could muster, while his own body held him back from anything truly retributive. Wifies, calm and smiling oh-so-slightly, his eyes lingering on every part of Parrot’s body in turn.
“Close your eyes.”
Parrot keened in fright, fighting the urge to flinch away, begging silently to be asked anything, anything else. Wifies knew how much he didn’t want to do that. Last time he’d let his guard down, he’d woken up with wings.
“I’ll give you food.”
For a second, Wifies’s eyes seemed to soften, and Parrot was dizzy, for a moment, dizzy in the idea that this could be his Wifies, if he could pretend to himself.
He closed his eyes. He wasn’t even that hungry, really, it was tolerable, but it was that flash of Wifies. That tiny spark of hope, enough to make Parrot think that, maybe, he wasn’t entirely alone here.
Metal moved, and hands found his shoulders, then his hand, guiding him forward, and Parrot was too close to Wifies, too close for either of their sakes. His eyes were still closed.
“Look at me.”
Mismatched eyes. Parrot’s thoughts were slush. Wifies smiled at him, so close, so close and practically underneath him, and he seemed real. His Wifies. Parrot had missed him.
Then Wifies touched his cheek, easing Parrot off him, and his hand was cold. Too cold. Parrot whimpered, skittish as he recoiled back, sitting on his heels in a hurry to he further away from this person he didn’t know.
“Better. Don’t touch me.”
Wifies wiped his hands on his white coat, then got to his feet, the picture of composure as Parrot tried not to cry at his feet. He’d really had hope. That had been stupid, of course it had been.
flock
This voice only knew how to say one thing, it seemed, but this time it said it so sadly Parrot wished he had claws, so he could tear it out of himself.
At Wifies’s gesture, he got to his feet. At Wifies’s word, Parrot followed to his desk, sinking to his knees on the floor again when told, cheeks flushed red and numb from the deepest pain of humiliation.
Everything was working against him. His wings folded awkwardly on his back, because Parrot didn’t know how to control them. His tail jarred against the floor, and he trilled in pain, adjusting it himself as Wifies’s sharp eyes found him.
“What was that?”
“Why- why do I have a tail?”
Parrot couldn’t help asking. He hated it, so much, he didn’t want to believe that anyone with a resemblance to his Wifies would do something like this to him for no reason.
Too late, he remembered the rules he’d had beaten into him over today, and flinched, anticipating a shock that didn’t come. Instead, Wifies’s voice was calm, a little clipped, not close enough to soothing to offer any comfort.
“Good question. It upsets your centre of balance, which means you compensate. Mentally, and physically.”
Miserably, Parrot nodded, trying to organise the information in his scattered mind. Honestly, he hardly cared. He wanted to care. But there was only so much he could hold onto, as Wifies snapped his fingers, and Parrot’s attention snapped upwards.
“Don’t bite.”
Parrot frowned, for a moment, then noticed Wifies holding out his hand, and narrowed his eyes.
“No.”
Wifies raised his eyebrows, as Parrot looked up, trying his hardest to draw this one line. He wasn’t eating from Wifies’s hand. He… had limits. They were eroding, but they were still there.
Then, a nod, and Parrot got a plate of fruit, vegetables and what looked suspiciously like steak placed in front of him instead.
It was too easy. Parrot had been ready for a fight—not ready, not when it was Wifies, but he’d been getting there. Now, he was lost again, and hated how everything seemed to catch him off guard.
“Wait- why-?”
A shock, and Parrot hissed in pain, eyes watering as he stared at the floor. Wifies didn’t speak. He wasn’t getting an explanation, apparently.
Instead, he tried eating. Maybe settling the ache in his stomach would help him think straight. Parrot doubted it, but it was worth a shot.
Pulling the plate into his lap, Parrot spared a nervous glance up as he sat back in his heels, not daring to do anything apart from kneel where he’d been shown. He didn’t want to upset Wifies. It was a stupid desire, but he couldn’t shake it, like honey in his feathers.
Parrot didn’t like how quickly that analogy came to him.
He shoved a handful of berries into his mouth instead, muffling his jumpy discomfort with a burst of sugar. It helped, a little. He felt his shoulders relax.
Wifies wasn’t so bad. Parrot wasn’t sure where the thought came from, his conscious mind or something out, but it was irresistible once it wound its way around his thoughts. He wasn’t unjustly cruel, and his Wifies was in there, somewhere.
Looking up, Parrot studied Wifies’s face, as he worked, with those familiar eyes and cold expression.
He could see his Wifies, if he tried.