Chapter Text
Martin and Jimmy started celebrating when they got home, not only had they managed to find work, but also gotten a hefty raise compared to the last place they worked at. But the best part of it all was that they wouldn’t have to try and hide their identities from Grian. They would (hopefully) not get any suspicious looks when they got phone calls from weird numbers, questions about their freetime and no confrontations about odd injuries.
But a deal like that came with some down sides, first of all, their boss is undeniably a cannibal. Martin couldn’t lie, he felt disgusted by the mere thought of eating another human being but in the end he could live with it, his feelings were nothing compared to Jimmy’s. The other blond (who Martin considered his brother) would probably not get over their boss’s diet that easily. Since Jimmy is a canary avian it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t eat meat, with other words: Jimmy can only eat vegetarian foods.
But hold your horses, it gets worse because the avian made the choice to go vegan at the age of fifteen because he felt bad for the farm animals. Yep, you heard it right. A vegan man is gonna work for a cannibal, in a building that stores human meat in the basem*nt and he’s gonna sell coffee on the floor above.
There were probably other downsides that came with working for Grian but Martin knew that he’ll have to get to know Grian to see the true side of him. But he hoped that they would get along, not only because their pockets were a little empty right now but because Grian seemed like a decent human. (Not decent as in good, obviously not, but it seemed like he had a decent personality.) Martin could hear Grian’s heartbeat the first time they met and it seemed like their visit caught him off guard, which was fair. He and Jim showed up on the man's front door while he was taking care of a… unusual chore… So of course he’d be a little on edge.
Now they will get to see the calmer side of him, so hopefully they’ll make a good second impression.
…
“Hey Martin, Grian said that we would meet him at nine right?” The avian said as he knocked on the back door to the shop, they had first tried knocking on the entrance door but got no answer there. Hence why they tried at the back
“Yeah, he did.” Martin closed his eyes and used his power, he pictured Grian’s face in front of him and tried to listen to him by moving his consciousness towards him.
Martin's power might seem simple but it couldn’t be further from the truth, it’s obvious that he can hear pretty much everything in the room he’s in but.. In order to hear specific people who are far away he first needs to activate it by opening his ears. It sounds weird but it’s kind of the thing that happens when you hold your nose closed with your fingers and then try to blow out air through your nose. Then he has to think of the person he wants to hear and when he sees their face in front of him it allows his soul to leave his body and ‘teleport’ to that person. Only then is he able to hear the person and what's going on around them.
Martin imagined the worst case scenarios in his head, he expected a crime scene to unfold where his boss was so imagine his shock when he heard… snoring?
It was most definitely Grian who was sleeping and Martin swore to prime under his breath because they were slightly screwed.
“Jimmyyy, best bud- could you be so kind and do me a tiny tiny favor and use your good ol’ lock picking skills and open this door?” Martin asked innocently.
“I mean sure-” Jimmy then realized what he was asking- “wait. NO way!” He stared angrily at Martin who was basically asking him to get fired. “Do you want me to get fired or something!?”
“Of course not!” He defended himself. “Why would I want you to get fired before we’ve even started working?”
“I don’t know, you’re the one who asked me to break into a house and not just anyone's house but our boss’s!” Jimmy was livid with Martin and the tone of his voice showed his frustration.
“Well yeah because Grian is literally asleep right now!”
The blonds stayed quiet for a minute and Jimmy processed what Martin had just said. Admitingly, it made sense. And here he stood for half an hour believing Grian had locked them out because they were five minutes late due to traffic.
“Okay, just let me grab the kit and I’ll open it.” Martin chuckled and patted Jimmy on his shoulder.
It didn’t take long for Jimmy to crack the lock open, he worked swiftly with the lock and used the different key-like tools he had to move around the little space he was working with. Jimmy was a natural at getting locks open and maybe he could’ve been a locksmith in another life. But not now, in this life he had another goal that needed to be accomplished and money was a requirement for that goal.
‘Klick’ Martin smiled at Jimmy who began putting away his tools in the little bag he kept. “There we go, you should be able to open it now.”
And just like that he reached out his hand and opened the door, Martin then reached out his hand to help Jim stand up. “Get up big dog, you did a wonderful job and now we just need to..” Martin paused as he wondered how he should explain their next task in words.
“Wake up Grian?” Jimmy asked, trying to help Martin.
“Yeah, let’s go and wake him up.”
Grian laid on his couch, his head on the armrest tilted to the side while one of his legs were hanging limply off the sofa's edge. There was a wineglass by his hand that had somehow managed to stay on the couch whilst Grian was asleep, it still had some bloodwine in it that would pour out if he moved his hand ever so slightly. But the waffle man was lying very still on the couch, abnormally so, another thing that wasn’t really normal was the “dream” he was having.
Well, it wasn’t really a dream. Memories don't count as dreams, at least not in Grian’s book.
It was the furthest thing from a dream, all his memories from his time in school could only be considered nightmarish. Even so, this particular flashback was a pretty good memory of his. There were only a few weeks left of school and he was walking home from school but even though he had rushed to get home, he… Ran into someone…
It happened to be the avain boy from his school, Grian knew that the bully lived around the area he was walking through, so he wasn’t surprised to see him. But he was not happy either, they were on bad terms because Grian stepped on his talon a while back. Once he saw the frustration on the guy's face he knew that the near future would not be pretty.
“Are you the one who did this!?” The boy pointed towards a two story house that appeared to be the boy's home but on the front door there was someone who had written a bunch of… bad words… with a sharpie. Most words were disrespectful towards the avian culture but Grian managed to see a few that were about rumors regarding the boy.
“No.”
“Oh stop lying, if you know what's best for you you’ll just admit to what you’ve done.” The boy kept talking, he kept spitting out threats, thinking that Grian would admit to something he didn’t do.
“I’m telling you, I’ve just gotten out of school. I couldn’t have done it even if I wanted to.” He instantly realized that he had said the wrong thing.
“You’re saying that you would’ve done it if you could huh?” Now he stepped closer to Grian and grabbed his arm, pulling him into a nearby park that had a small ‘forest’ in it.
Grian didn’t bother trying to break free, the guy was already digging his nails into his arm and he could only picture the scratch he’d get if he even protested slightly. Even when the guy pushed him towards a tree he didn’t even try to escape. But out of the corner of his eyes he saw something he did not expect, but the boy didn’t seem to notice how his eyes widened as he tried to kick Grian in the stomach. His foot met the tree when Grian shifted his body down to the ground, angrily he retrieved his foot and used his hand to push Grian to his knees.
He reached his hand out for the thing he saw earlier, he was so close, only needing to reach a little further-
‘Thump’
The boy kicked him, right by his gut. But now he finally managed to reach the hatchet he had his eyes on and he grabbed it, now feeling the raw wood of the hatchet's handle. Behind him he heard the avian taking a step back, presumably because he saw what Grian had gotten a hold of. Grian rose to his feet and turned his head just enough to see the boy's terror filled face. He began running, further into the woods and Grian watched him, the trees made it so the avian couldn’t take off and fly to safety.
It was as if something possessed him in that moment, well, it was more like something inside him urged him to hunt down the boy.
The boy was also stupid, it seemed like it because he was running in a straight line and Grian held on to the ax with both his hands. Then he aimed for the boy and threw the weapon with a surprising amount of strength. It was as if his body was created to do this, like he had done it a hundred times before even though he had never even laid eyes on such a weapon.
The hatchet flew through the air, spinning in a way that gave it more momentum until it finally collided with the boy's head. It caused the boy to fall forward, head landing right on a sharp rock that somehow managed to split his head open. Grian stood still in his place, staring towards the avian who was now laying undeniably dead on the ground with blood pouring out of his head wound.
Grian trembled and felt how his legs were about to give up and make him fall to the ground like the avian.
“What have I done?” He couldn’t help but ask it out loud.
His mind began racing and all of a sudden he got abnormally paranoid. It was unclear to Grian if everything was getting louder or if it was just his imagination making everything louder. One thing was however clear, he had done something bad, incredibly bad.
Grian’s hand dug into his hair as he tried to figure out what he was supposed to do now. If someone saw him leaving and then found the body in the park then they would tell the authorities and it would end badly for him. But if he tried to move the body there was an even higher risk that someone would see him. What if he-
What if he didn’t leave any evidence behind…
Grian looked at the boy as his stomach growled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten very well in the past days. Hesitantly he reached his hand out and grabbed the boy's arm, using the hatchet to cut it off the body. Then he put it by his lips slowly opening his mouth and closed his eyes.
…
Grian looked down at his blood stained hands and then at the full moon above his head. Time had passed incredibly slowly, each time he took… a bite… it felt like an hour or two had passed. Maybe it was his power to make everything go slower at the worst possible moment, no, it couldn’t be. His parents were powerless, just like he himself.
Sighing he looked down towards the boy and saw how his ink black wings shone in the moonlight, he had never been this close to them before. He crouched down to the boy and touched the wings, oh prime, he had always been so jealous of them. So jealous that a tormentor like him got to have such beautiful wings.
“I wish I had something as beautiful as your wings on my back.”
The night seemed to stop in its tracks as he said his wish out loud, the tree’s stopped moving with the wind and the animals became awfully quiet. Grian’s eyes widened and he looked around him, debating whether it was a natural occurrence or not. But before he could speak up or move there was a pause.
He felt as if something was growing inside him, by his back, it hurt, it was a sharp pain he hadn’t experienced before. All the pain he had endured was nothing compared to the feeling of your spine splitting in half, somehow creating new limbs under your skin. It forced him down to the ground, screaming his lungs out trying to get it to stop but his attempts were futile.
Martin and Jimmy walked up the stairs of the café building, everything was clean, way cleaner than Jim had imagined. Before he had walked inside he thought that everything outside of the café part of the building would have bones laying around along with blood stained walls. So imagine his shock when everything he saw was spotless and didn’t even have a dash of blood. But still, he walked around cautiously because there was still a chance that his first thought could come true.
It felt… wrong. They were not familiar with the place and it felt suffocating to walk around a place they were not invited into. But the fact that they were in their boss’s home was even worse. What if they misheard what day they were supposed to start working?
Before Jim could convince Martin to turn around and try again tomorrow they reached the highest floor, where there only was one door. It seemed like an ordinary door, a little worn out, but it had a relatively new doormat with the text ‘If you step inside, you may never come out’ on it. How such a long message fit on one doormat was concerning but somehow impressive to both blonds.
It was tempting to just stay there and not go inside the apartment but Jim found himself guilty of opening the door that for some reason was left unlocked. Both of them stood still just looking around the new place they had unlocked. As if they were sharing one brain cell they both spoke out loud at the same time.
“Is our apartment bigger than this?”
“Don’t tell me our flat is larger than his.”
They both looked at each other for a moment and then started laughing, but it didn’t last long because they were both startled by the sound of glass hitting the ground. At an instant it became quiet again and the two villains ran inside the flat to check what in the world just happened. As they ran through the short corridor and made it to the living room/kitchen area they found Grian sound asleep on the couch. But as they observed the place around them it appeared that Grian’s personal floor was slightly messy. Not dirty or neglected, just messy with food, cooking utensils and ingredients that were still by the stove and the glass they heard earlier was over by the couch, somehow not broken, on the floor by Grian’s sleeping body.
“Oh my god, he’s actually sleeping.” Jimmy said, although Martin had told him that Grian was sleeping there was a part of him that thought that the man would wake up to the noise they made.
“Jimmy… look down.”
The avian didn’t even question why he should look down, he was used to Martin giving him instructions and more often than not it was for the better if he just followed without question. Especially when he was going out as a villain, when he does so he doesn’t even have time to question things Martin says. There have been multiple times Martin had screamed at him to fly up as high as he could when he was holding someone hostage or handling weapons. Those situations always ended up with an explosion below him. He didn’t know when they were put there or how Martin could detect them, he had decided to not question it.
“Is that blood!?” Jimmy nearly screamed as he saw that the wineglass on the floor was stained with a liquid way too red and thick to be wine.
Martin didn’t even know how to answer Jim’s question even though he had the answer on the tip of his tongue. The lack of an answer was mostly because he saw blood in the corner of Grian’s mouth. He looked back and forth between Jimmy and Grian and he quickly decided to wipe away the blood so Jim wouldn't have to see it. A picture of Jimmy throwing up at the mere sentence of a person eating another person popped up in his head. If mentioning it caused that reaction then he wouldn’t be able to handle the blood in the corner of Grian’s mouth.
As Jimmy stood up and looked over at Grian he saw that the guy’s hair was a mess, it was painfully obvious that he had been asleep for a while. Then he saw that Martin’s index finger was held by his nose, touching the edge of his nose and how his other hand was held up in surrender. But before Jimmy could register what in the world Martin was doing the man said “Not it!” and then he finally understood.
“There’s no way I’m the one waking him up!” Jimmy said and crossed his arms.
“Nose goes.” Martin shrugged but then he inhaled dramatically. “Plus, there is no way I’m gonna risk getting fired today.”
“Well excuse me!" Jimmy half yelled. “I’m not willing to risk my life by waking up a literal cannibal!”
“Oh come on, he’s not gonna kill you-”
“HE EATS HUMANS!” Jimmy argued loudly, not noticing how his yelling disturbed their boss’s beauty sleep. “If you’ve already forgotten about yesterday then I might have to remind you that he only hired us because he wants us to keep his secret.”
“...” Martin looked at Jimmy, his (not so biological) brother was right. But that did not stop his attempts at getting him to wake up Grian however. “If he didn’t believe we could keep a secret then he would’ve killed us yesterday, big dog just wake him up already.”
“NO WAY!” His yelling sounded a lot like an angry bird shrieking, loud and piercing to people's ears. The sound was bad for normal people. but it was horrible for Martin’s sensitive ears and the guy immediately held his hands over his ears.
As soon as Jimmy had stopped yelling he realized his mistake and apologized to Martin who breathed in and said he was alright. Then they heard a groaning sound and they turned towards Grian. The man was now sitting up looking at them as they stood still in shock. Jimmy could now see that the t-shirt he was wearing had an ace flag with a white background, how he hadn’t noticed it earlier was odd. Not that he had time to think about it, right now he only hoped to prime that the cannibal was a morning person.
