"It wasn't me, Grandma!" Marcus yelled as he shot up his bed, the sound of something crashing mixed in with a cry of pain acted as his wake up call.

"What the hell?" he groaned, left hand rubbing his face as he tried to fully wake up and recall where he was and take in his surroundings.

"Ow!" he yelled, putting his left hand out in front of him and even with the darkened room, due to the setting sun, he noticed a bandage around his hand and everything came back into Marcus' overworked mind.

"Shit," he sighed, throwing his legs over the bed and placing his elbows on his knees, bending his messy hair forward and ruffling it furiously with his hands.

Another moan came from outside his bedroom door and Marcus, with his shock and moment of panic gone thanks to his long nap, came to the still odd, frightening and admittedly, interesting, conclusion that bird-man was real and had been bleeding on his couch for hours.

"Shit," Marcus mumbled, getting off his bed and swinging his door open.

With quick steps, he walked out his room and down the hallways until he stood in front of his destroyed glass coffee table, eyes widening slightly at the sight of bird-man lying on top of the glass shards, shaking and crying as he bled all over the place.

A loud yelp of pain from the unbelievable being in front of him made Marcus move, swallowing his surprise, and moving around the heap. He wanted to call himself stupid for forgetting shoes, having to maneuver around glass pieces, but Marcus would have never done such a thing.

"Hey," he said, awkward. He squatted in front of the creature's face and winced at the sight of the guy.

He looked even more beat up than before.

On his cheeks were small pieces of glass and one particularly big shard inside his left forearm. The poor guy was sweating, shivering and his lips were turning blue.

The wing didn't look so good either, twisted even more. Half of the bend of the wing, the top gliding part of it, was twisted forward, the other half twisted back. A horrible break that Marcus wasn't completely sure he could fix by himself.

He stretched out a shaky right hand, just to touch the large, feathery thing that, in a way, took his breath away. Even though he was still uneasy about the whole thing, how unexpected it was and the subconscious disbelief he was still feeling, Marcus could not help but think the black as night wings were beautiful.

A sudden movement from the bleeding heap on the ground snapped Marcus out of whatever trance he had entered and looked down to see bird-man trying to growl and glare at him, wincing when he moved the arm with the glass shard.

"Fucking hell," Marcus grumbled, placing his hand on bird-man's forehead, ignoring the small growls and removed his hand from the intense heat as fast as he could.

"You're boiling. Let me just...Close your eyes." That was the only warning Marcus gave before grabbing the dislocated wing and snapping it back in place.

He felt his heart ache at the loud, sobbing sound that escaped bird-man's lips that filled up the otherwise quiet living room. Then bird-man just slumped on the ground, unmoving with his eyes closed and his breathing, deep and rough, his claws slowly retracting to reveal long, but more human looking, black nails.

"I am so, so sorry," Marcus said, feeling even worse about leaving the poor guy alone just because he was panicking. Even if his reaction made sense, it was still not a good enough excuse.

If he had slept any longer, he would've left a living creature to die when he could've done something.

Dwell on that later, make sure he doesn't die of a fever first, he thought to himself as he got up and stood over bird-man.

Lifting him from under his armpits, as gently as he could, Marcus groaned at the weight and dragged him to his bedroom's bathroom while apologizing all the way.

Placing him in the bathtub, the cold water running to keep his fever down, Marcus used the tweezers from the first aid kit to remove every shard of glass he could find. Even the ones on the creature's crotch, wincing whenever he found one.

That must really, really hurt.

Marcus treated the poor being the best he could. Cleaned his wounds, bathed him, washed his hair and bandaged him up, stopping halfway to watch the large wings vanish slowly, getting smaller and smaller as they entered two sliced-like openings on his back before they, as well as the openings, vanished.

The hardest part about the whole thing was the crying.

All through it all, even as Marcus got him tucked into his bed, bird-man would curl into himself and begin to sob like a scared child during a nightmare.

It would've taken anyone without a heart to not feel something at the sight and Marcus felt his heart practically break because someone did that to the creature. Someone or something was cruel enough to cause such a horrific wound to appear around the poor guy. Someone was disgusting enough to cause so many scars on another living being.

And Marcus knew that someone did do all of that because, not counting the new wounds caused by the shards of glass, a lot of the creature's wounds were too precise to have been accidents and unable to have been self-inflicted. So many even looked like stab wounds from either an actual sword or a very large kitchen knife. His time on the force at least let him know about the different ways people used to try to harm others.

Marcus felt like such an ass for not helping the guy sooner, sitting in front of his door as he watched over his new guest.

What now? Am I supposed to just look after the guy? For how long?

He would in a heartbeat, ready to help the creature that had obviously been through so much. It wasn't like him to just leave the guy alone.

But this isn't exactly safe, right? What's bird-man going to do whenever he woke up? Dude could hurt me, couldn't he? Kill me maybe?

Marcus didn't know but like always, he decided to just go with the flow and leave room to regret it later. Whether that would be in the afterlife or not was up to his new guest.

He only wished he could stop feeling emotions for a moment. Every time he heard a whine or cry or sob or croak of pain, Marcus' chest felt like it would explode and tears began to run down his own cheeks.

He just wanted the poor guy to at least escape the pain when asleep. If only for a little while.