Malyn

The people in 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—he kept angling slightly behind Malyn, like he was hoping the crowd wouldn't notice him—and if Finch had been there, he probably would have lost his entire mind. Malyn thought it was nice, though. Most of the time there was nobody waiting to thank them for risking their lives.  He didn't do this for the glory and babes—which was lucky, because the babes situation had not really panned out—but it was still good to be appreciated every once in a while.

But as the night air hit cool and quiet as they walked back out to the bike, Malyn decided this was the part he liked best. The noise of the hall behind them, just the two of them standing there in the dark, 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.”

"Same, honestly," Malyn said. "I guess that's just what it's like when the work is dangerous a good chunk of the time and your coworkers are also your friends. 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 with his helmet to put an end to the temptation.

Though he'd reassured Tyla, Malyn had been a little worried about the bite making the ride home harder, but it really wasn't too bad. Maybe it'd be worse tomorrow. Some injuries were like that—you'd think you were fine, and then you'd wake up aching two days later like your body had been saving it up to ruin your week.

He opened the garage with the remote on his keychain, drove slowly in, and then almost dumped the bike when the headlight caught two reflective eyes in the corner of the room.

The light hit the figure full on and it threw an arm up over its face. Shadow. The guy from the linen closet. 

Malyn's heart was still trying to climb out of his throat as he parked up properly and yanked off his helmet. "Fuck, you scared me. Were you just sitting in here in the dark?"

Shadow nodded.

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

Shadow nodded again.

"Yeah." Malyn swung his leg off the bike. "See, I may have failed every single class in high school except 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 going to become a female prostitute, am I? But he didn't foresee this career path, which is kind of weird since I was already sneaking out to do this stuff and I'd never shown any interest in prostitution." Malyn took a breath. "Anyway. I'm Malyn, 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 talk.

"Give me one sec. 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 and then shut it again. What was he supposed to say? Yeah, I just like having a reason to stand close to you for thirty seconds? Cool. Very normal. Instead he just watched Tyla take his jacket off on his own and felt silent 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 appeared from behind his desk. "Is that carrot cake?"

Malyn looked down at it. "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 happens, it feels like a prank," Finch said. "How'd it go?"

"Double the bounty for double the dead dogs." Malyn started unwrapping the bandage on his arm. "Want to see my gross bite?"

“Always.”

“Why are the lights off, by the way?”

“They’re too bright for Shadow’s eyes.”

"Oh, okay." Malyn drifted closer to the lamp on Adin's desk and peeled back the gauze covering the wound. "Huh. Actually, it's not as bad as I thought."

Finch took Malyn's arm and angled it toward the light. "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. 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 dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. "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.”

Adin cut the cake. Tyla pulled the first aid kit over and began rebandaging Malyn's arm without being asked, with the quiet focus he brought to everything. 

When Finch had first proposed living and working together, Malyn had mostly seen it as a matter of convenience. Finch had kept people at arm's length back then, Malyn had barely known Adin, and Tyla hadn't even been in the picture. Now here he was, Tyla quietly re-dressing his arm while Finch watched from across the table with the face he made when he was concerned but wanted everyone to think he was just bored.

Malyn looked around as Adin set a slice of cake 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?”

"We were sparring, and—well, I was going to say I pulled my punches, but actually I never managed to hit the acrobatic little fuck, so I guess it doesn't matter either way. He won. Doesn't seem like he's that strong or anything, but it doesn't really matter who's stronger when only one of you is getting any hits in."

"Badass," Malyn said around a mouthful of carrot cake. It was pretty good. “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 was squinting at the back of it, lips moving slightly. "I can't read."

Malyn inhaled his cake. He thumped his fist against his chest, coughing, and Tyla patted him on the back with calm, unhurried efficiency. "Oh man," Malyn wheezed. "You catch me off guard sometimes."

Tyla shot him a small smile. "I've been trying to learn, but of course there aren’t any resources that translate into Talan, so mostly I've been using things designed for young children learning to read for the first time. I know the written names of a number of common animals from your world, but this—" Tyla pointed to a word on the box.

Malyn leaned in. "Orally. Means by 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 says twice a day with food. Two tablets, by mouth, twice a day, with food." Malyn tossed back a couple with some orange juice Adin had set out. "That's one time, but it’s already night, so I’ll take my next two in the morning.”

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

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

“I would appreciate that.”

"I'll do it the same way I learned. Immersion. Before bed, turn off your spell and I'll just talk at you about whatever. Reading too, eventually, but honestly that's kind of useless until you know what the words mean first."

“That sounds fantastic. Thank you.”

Malyn tipped his head sideways until it rested, just barely, against Tyla's shoulder. He left it there for a second, then sat up and went back to his cake.