The people who lived in the town did give them double the bounty money, and a cake, and a firm handshake from the mayor. Tyla looked a little uncomfortable with the attention, and if Finch had been there he probably would have just about had a panic attack from the loud, enthusiastic crowd that had gathered to celebrate their triumph, but Malyn thought it was nice. Most of the time, there was no one waiting to thank them for risking their lives. Malyn didn’t do it for the glory and babes, so that was fine, but it was still good to be appreciated from time to time.

Still, there was something nice about being done with it all, about walking back out to the bike and helping Tyla with his jacket. To have it just be the two of them outside where it was quiet and still, getting ready to go home.

“How’s your arm?” Tyla asked, his voice even softer than usual.

Malyn moved his arm around, testing it. “Fine, actually. Painkillers must have kicked in.”

“It will scar.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be a badass scar. Besides, apart from the getting bitten part, this was a nice night. We had a good chat, got a free cake, shook a mayor’s hand. Having something to remember it by isn’t so bad.”

Tyla smiled. “Ah. I don’t scar. I suppose I’ll just have to keep you around to remember days like this by.”

“And make sure all your best days involve me getting hurt bad enough to scar.”

“A shocking number of them do, though mostly incidentally.”

“You know, same,” Malyn said. “I guess it’s like that when you work with your friends and that work is dangerous a good chunk of the time. And, let’s be honest, sometimes the dangerous stuff is more fun. This was a way better day than yesterday’s seed collection adventure.”

“I agree, although mostly only because that lasted an actual full day. If it had also only taken us two hours, I would have had no complaints.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

It would have felt so right to just lean forward and press a gentle kiss to Tyla’s lips, but Malyn wasn’t sure he was reading the mood correctly. Tyla was soft and sincere with everyone, all of the time. It didn’t mean anything.

Malyn helped Tyla put his helmet on to put an end to the temptation.

Though he’d reassured Tyla, Malyn had been a little worried about the bite on his arm making the ride home more difficult, but it really wasn’t too bad. Maybe it would be tomorrow, or for a full two weeks to come. Some injuries were like that. You’d think you were fine, but then you’d wake up aching.

Malyn opened the garage door with the remote on his keychain, drove his bike slowly in, and then almost fell off when his headlines lit up two reflective eyes in the corner of the room. The light flooded the figure properly, it lifted an arm to cover its face, and Malyn realised it was the man from the linen closet. Shadow.

Malyn properly parked his bike and pulled off his helmet. “Fuck, you scared me. Were you just in here, in the dark?”

Shadow nodded.

“But you can see in the dark, right? Your eyes reflect.”

Shadow nodded again.

“Yeah. See, I may have failed every single class in high school except for drama, but you don’t need school for the important things. John, my foster dad, was always like, if you don’t do well in school, you’re going to have to become a male prostitute, and I was like, well, yeah, I’m not gonna become a female prostitute, am I? But he didn’t foresee this career path, which is kinda weird since I was already sneaking out to do this stuff and I’d never shown any interest in prostitution.” Malyn took a deep breath. “Anyway, I’m Malyn and this is Tyla. You’re Shadow, right?”

Another nod.

“Do you want some cake? They gave it to us for killing some dogs and shaking a mayor’s hand.”

“Okay,” Shadow said. So he could speak.

“Hold on. I need to pretend like Tyla doesn’t have hands and help him take his jacket off.”

It had been a joke, mostly at his own expense, but Tyla was the one who looked embarrassed. “Oh. No, it’s okay. I can do it.”

Malyn opened his mouth to take it back, but what could he say? That he liked the excuse for a bit of intimacy with Tyla? Yeah, because that wasn’t creepy. Instead he just watched Tyla take his jacket off on his own and felt regret.

He tried to shake it off as he retrieved the cake, which was mostly still in one piece after the ride, and they headed into the house. “We’re back and we have cake!”

“Oh!” Adin said as he stood up from his desk and approached. “Is that carrot cake?”

Malyn looked down at the cake. “This is a vegetable? I’ve been scammed.”

“I assure you, it’s still very unhealthy.”

“Oh, okay. I shouldn’t have doubted the mayor. He shook our hands.”

“You’re very focussed on that mayor shaking our hands,” Tyla commented.

“Getting respect is so rare around here that when it actually happens, it feels like a joke,” Finch said. “How’d it go?”

“They gave us double the bounty money for double the dead dogs,” Malyn said. “Want to see my gross bite?”

“Always.”

“Why are the lights off, by the way?” Malyn asked as he began unwrapping the bandage on his arm.

“Lights are too bright for Shadow’s eyes.”

“Oh, okay.” Malyn moved closer to the lamp on Adin’s desk as he carefully peeled the gauze off. “Huh. Actually, it’s not as bad as I thought.”

Finch angled Malyn’s arm, pulling it closer to the light so that he could examine it properly. “Well, it’s not great, but I was expecting worse. Take some antibiotics and I won’t make you go to the hospital.”

“Pfft, you’re not my dad,” Malyn said. “You can’t make me do anything.”

“Take some antibiotics and I won’t make you go to the hospital,” Adin countered.

“Ah, fuck,” Malyn said. “I should have known calling you dad all this time would backfire. Well, not really. I was going to take antibiotics anyway. I may not like hospitals, but I do love not having horrible infections.”

Malyn sat down at the kitchen table while Adin cut the cake and Tyla brought the first aid kit over and began rebandaging Malyn’s arm. When Finch had first proposed living and working together, Malyn had never anticipated that it would get as domestic as it did at times. Finch had always been a little emotionally distant, Malyn hadn’t known Adin well, and Tyla hadn’t been in the picture yet, so he’d seen it mostly as a matter of convenience. Now, though… Now they felt like a family.

Malyn looked around as Adin placed a plate with a slice of cake down in front of him. “Hey, where’d Shadow go?”

“Fuck knows,” Finch said. “I’ve given up worrying about it after he kicked my ass in a fight.”

“He what now?”

“Well, we were sparring, and I… well, I was about to say I pulled my punches, but actually I never managed to hit the acrobatic little fuck, so I guess that’s just all there is to it. He won. Don’t think he’s that strong or anything, but it doesn’t really matter who’s stronger when only one of you gets any hits in.”

“Badass,” Malyn said around a mouthful of carrot cake. “So he seems… generally okay?”

“Is that what him kicking my ass tells you?”

Malyn shugged. “It impresses me.”

“It impresses me too. Still don’t know fuck all about, like, his personality, though. He’s quiet, but I don’t know if he’s shy. He keeps disappearing, but I don’t know if that’s because he doesn’t like us or if that’s just how he is. Or, y’know, because he’s still processing a vampire breaking into his home to kill him.”

“Could be that, yeah.”

Tyla had found the box of antibiotics and squinted at the back of it for several long seconds. “I can’t read.”

Malyn let out a startled laugh and immediately inhaled his cake, then pounded his fist against his chest as he coughed. “Oh man, you catch me off guard sometimes.”

Tyla shot him a smile and patted him on the back to help with his cake inhalation. “I’ve been trying to learn, but of course there aren’t any resources that translate from Talan to English, so I’ve mostly been using things designed for young children who are learning to read and write for the first time. I know how to read and write the names of a number of common animals from your world, but this…” Tyla pointed to a word on the box.

Malyn leant in closer to read the tiny text. “Oh, orally. Means in the mouth, like oral sex.”

“Ah,” Tyla said. “I know numbers. It says take two, ah, orally…”

“Yep.”

“I don’t know the rest,” Tyla admitted. “I only really knew two. The problem is that even if I sound out of words, if they come out of my mouth, I don’t understand them. The spell I use can’t translate things the speaker doesn’t know the meaning of.”

“The rest is twice a day with food. Two tablets, by mouth, twice a day, with food.” Malyn tossed back a couple of the tablets and washed them down with some orange juice Adin had given him. “And that’s one time, so I’ll need two more later on.”

“Thank you,” Tyla said. “I feel a little silly for relying so completely on magic. You learnt all of these things for yourself.”

“I can help you, if you want,” Malyn said. “I mean I did fail English, but that’s because they expect you to like… write a fucking essay about a poem or whatever. I can read and write and I can speak the language just fine. You’d think that’d get you at least a passing grade, but no.”

“I would appreciate that.”

“I’ll teach you the same way I learnt. Immersion. Before we go to bed at night, turn off your spell and I’ll ramble to you about some dumb shit. I can help with reading too, I guess, but let’s be honest, that’s completely useless until you know what the words mean.”

“That sounds fantastic. Thank you.”

Malyn leant his head to the side until it just barely rested against Tyla’s shoulder, left it there for a second, and then sat up and returned to eating his cake.