(Minor gore warning.)
Zack turned back to the Human once he was sure he wouldn’t do something stupid, and pulled the knife up into the air and stabbed it almost through his arm. Zack didn’t show any sign of pain as he pulled the knife swiftly out of his skin and set it down, cupping his hand under the bleeding wound.
“Dip the feather in.”
Bryn swallowed heavily and dipped the feather shallowly into the blood. His stomach turned sharply at it and he was pretty sure he was paper white, but he didn't protest. If he did, this would all be for nothing, and that would be even worse than whatever deal they were about to make. "Now what?"
(bump)
(Sorry)
“Now you have to put it on your shoulder.” Zack grabbed some toilet paper and collected his blood casually. “It’ll brand you with my mark. Before you ask it’s a pair of wings and it’s basically like a tattoo except it doesn’t disappear until I die.”
Bryn frowned at that, he wasn't exactly eager to brand himself for this deal, but eventually pulled up his shirt and touched the feather to the lowest part of his shoulder blade. "There's a first aid kit behind the mirror, patch yourself up."
“Don’t worry about me, just focus on what you’re doing,” Zack growled gruffly, keeping his head down as he tossed away the paper towel. His arm was clean and the wound was stabbed over already.
Bryn glared over at him but did as he was told. The feather shook slightly in his hands. "There, I'm done. What do I do with this?" He waved the feather in front of Zack's face.
“You can do whatever you want with it. Some Humans throw it away, weird ones keep it.” He slapped the hand waving his blood-soaked feather out of his face. “Just don’t do that. It’s annoying.”
Bryn frowned at him and grabbed some toilet paper, wrapping the feather until it was a clean white bundle and tossing it into the trashcan. Then he shoved Zack away from the sink and washed his hands. "So we have a contract now?"
Zack flicked water at the Human with a low hissing noise, stalking out of the bathroom with a limp.
“Yes, we do.” Unfortunately….
Bryn rolled his eyes as Zack's retreating back and dried off his hands, catching up to him in the living room. "So what does our contract entail exactly? I know you're supposed to be my companion, but how long does that last? And what does that even mean beyond the obvious?"
“I don't know it’s what you want. Stop asking questions.” He crossed his arms and stalked away into the hallway. He was starving and wanted a snack, but wasn’t going to get anything with the bug-like Human moving after him. There were certain things Zack had to do for him if Bryn wanted it, but it wasn’t too important to mention.
"Chill the fuck out, I'm just trying to get my feet on solid ground with this." Bryn sighed and crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I haven't done this a million times before, just explain it to me and I'll stop talking."
“It doesn’t matter, I do what you would want a companion to do. There’s stuff I can do if you ask but I doubt you will.” He shut the door to his room in Bryn’s face, locking it and sitting down, looking at his wings which were still shivering. He stroked the thin part of the feathery wing, sighing. It used to be the fullest part of his wing.
(Sorry, I thought I responded. Have fun on your trip!!)
Bryn growled at the closed door and, hoping Bryn could sense the anger radiating off him in waves, stormed into the kitchen to eat all the snacks. He just wanted to know what the fuck was happening, but apparently that was just too much for him to ask.
(Np m8)
He curled up into his wings and burrowed into his sheets again, hooting softly with his eyes squeezed shut. His dislike for this Human burned a hole in his chest, faint growls issuing from his lips with each exhale.
Bryn made a beeline for the cache of candy he found in the fridge earlier and quickly worked his way through the kitchen until he'd found all the snack food. He wasn't actually sure if he could eat all of it, but he'd be damned if he didn't try.
Zack heard snaps and openings of his precious snacks and his eyes flew open and he sat up straight in his bed, standing and running across the room with the speed of an Olympic champion. He exploded into the kitchen and thrust Bryn away from the giant pile he got for himself, growing lowly.
“These are mine!”
"Fuck off." Bryn snagged a bag of chips and hopped up onto the counter, munching on them loudly. He glared pointedly at Zack as he dug into his precious snacks. "My house, my food."
Zack seized the Human’s legs and threw him down off of the counter, where he landed on his wings which just happened to be there. They flicked him off and he landed on the ground anyway, with the angry Demon standing over him.
“Right, like you went out and got all of these?”
Bryn froze for half a second, panic slicing through him like a knife, before he forced himself to continue eating the chips. He had to swallow before he talked but his voice still had a distinct tremble of fear to them. This whole situation was all too familiar. "Listen up asshole, I don't know what your fucking problem is but you can always just avoid me if you're going to be such a shithead. I came here to eat some chips, not get fucking assaulted by a demon with every issue in the book."
Zack wasn’t about to treat this Human like how he got treated, he had actually planned to just take the snacks and make him be snack-starved until Zack himself decided to go out and get more. He bared his teeth and clicked them angrily.
“Maybe I will just fuck off. It’d be a great thing for the both of us, wouldn’t it?” His voice was laced with sarcasm.
Bryn rolled his eyes at the sarcasm, not making any moves to get up just in case it would set Zack off again. The lasting he needed was a black eye or some bruised ribs or something. "Well, I have no clue what else you'd want. Your two greatest joys seem to be telling me to fuck off or hurting me, what am I supposed to think?" The tone was poisonous and angry but the question was sincere.
“Maybe if you just got your head out of your ass you’d—” He cut off with a loud huffing noise, shaking his head and collecting the snacks in his arms, wrapping his wings around himself and glaring back down at the other. “Just leave me alone for a while.” He was honestly up to his nose in how done he was with Humans. He just wanted to leave and never look back, and this whole predicament wasn’t helping much at all.
Bryn's frown deepened. "That's what I was doing before you stormed in here and yanked me off the counter, dickhead," he murmured, finally laying back and letting his head clack against the tiles. Even the ceiling had been cleaned; How did Zack manage to do that?
Zack flopped the snacks into an armchair he had picked out for himself in his room, shutting the door and locking it. He curled up again, his body still aching as he moved against the comfy surface, biting back a noise of pain. When he said he cleaned everything, he meant everything. It wasn’t really all that hard apart from the actual cleaning. Reaching wasn’t a problem for lanky Zack.
For Bryn, who had never been the tallest, the ceiling may as well have been a far off fantasy land. He'd never even realized ceilings were a thing you had to clean before now. He laid there looking up at the ceiling for a long time until he finally ran out of chips and forced himself to get up. Zack had commandeered all the sacks, but he still had some cash on him and it wouldn't take long to swing by the convenience store.
Zack wondered idly what the Human was going to do now. He had the idea of just locking him out and barricading the door, but all of his hard work would go to waste if the precious Human couldn't enjoy it, too. He was forced just to reach for the closest pack of snacks that fell on the floor and eat those quite angrily.
Bryn meant for it to be a quick pit stop, he really did, but one of his old friends recognized him and invited him out to a bar crawl and by the time he remembered he wasn't the only person home it was almost three and he was absolutely hammered. He struggled with his cell phone for a few seconds before he was able to dial the right number for the apartment's landline. "Heyyyyyyy."
