The throb of my heart was receding, which only meant more room for my mind to settle and my perceptions to right themselves on their bases. Slowly, the impact of Leos’ presence settled on my shoulders and haunches until I realized why it was such a big deal in the first place. My ears perked steadily upward and my face was probably pulling into all kinds of taut, fantastically weird positions, because it was a stupid mess in my head with how glad I was to see him and my gears weren’t as well-oiled as they could have been and the struggle to keep the idiotic grin off my face was all too real and critical. So I uh…I probably kept at least half of it off.

Good work, team.

It didn’t help that a whole half of him was fucked up, and my brow rose as he seemingly owned up to the shit, like it was deliberate or whatever. “I mean,” I sort of blurted, because even though my head and my heart was returning to the closest thing to normal as it could whenever I was around Lee, that doesn’t mean I could think, “I ain’t trying to judge or nothin’, but uh…” My eyes swept his form top to bottom, taking in his scruffy appearance with greater detail (a free card to stare if you wanna be picky, but you shut up) “….it looks like you just got done bustin’ your ass.”

And then it got funny and I was having trouble keeping the smirk off my face because the longer I looked, the more I noticed that the thistles and the debris and whatever that clung to his coat seemed to be concentrated on one side of his body, like he really had bust his ass not that long ago—and I dunno, the image tickled me a little more than it should have and I was biting my lip a little to keep the grin from getting any bigger than it already was and fuck me if I wasn’t already screwing things up in all the 4.59 seconds of us speaking together and--

I turned suddenly, my gaze careening behind me in a nervous tick, eyes scanning the sky for shadows that weren’t gonna be there.

Because I hadn’t stopped feeling your happiness, had I? And maybe that was the giddy bubbling in my head when I should have gone back to being cool and collected; maybe that feeling in my gut was still you, and there was a flash in my head of clouds and wind getting in my too-big lizard eyes and a growing adoration for winged creatures you thought were the bomb-diggity--

--but I was remembering other things, too, things that sobered up the bubbles that poured from your head and into mine. The bite in my lip got harder and the lines in my face fell a little and suddenly there wasn’t a smile anymore. “She won’t—uh, actually drop him, will she?” I asked quietly, my voice sort of oozing out from behind my teeth before I could stop it. “He’ll be fine, won’t he?” And I knew it was kind of a dick thing of me to do, to start doubting him and his owls after I had attacked the bastards, oh yeah, that happened didn’t it?, but ah, I couldn’t help it. The afterimage of your tiny, falling body had faded but the impression was still engraved, the faint worry still tugging at me, and I couldn’t help it.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted suddenly, turning back to Leos again, the words rushing quickly from my mouth, “I—I couldn’t help it, I didn’t see who it was, I wasn’t—I didn’t mean to hurt her or any--“ No, of course I didn’t mean to hurt her, not after I had realized who she was, who she was associated with. But in the moment Chico had been snatched from my reach, and into the heavens—no, I was trying to fuck someone up. There was no point in sugar coating it.

I felt absolutely dickish. I mean, I dunno, maybe that thing that had happened to me was still playing shenanigans on my best judgments, because I was coming up with the weirdest crap to settle my nerves and make things right. In that moment, desperate to try and make up for nearly flash-frying his snowy owl, I ducked down and plucked some thistles from the ground—and, after sort of bumbling my way closer to Lee, I attempted to shove them onto his side, the cleaner side of him that seemed so desolate and pristine all at the same time.

“You’re lopsided,” I said in defeat.







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