Marcus coughed loudly, the chalk dust in his mouth making him gag.

With a day like he had had, one would've expected him to be screaming with joy at getting to return home, walking down the hallway to his apartment and looking forward to a weekend to himself. Not for him though.

If anything, he thought returning to an empty, quiet and bland place was even worse than dealing with pompous rich kids that thought they were above education. And that alone told a lot about his life and the amount of joy in it.

He sighed as he stared at the pink chalk dust on his old black and white sneakers and thought that maybe picking out a career from a bunch of choices in a hat wasn't the best idea he had ever had.

He didn't hate teaching, gave him a free summer to binge all the new anime he could and make a pathetic attempt at not caring that he was alone, but he didn't love it either.

He was just going with the flow, something he had done for most of his life.

Get dubbed a genius, then went to college at an age that made the lecturer think he was a student's kid. Get a job that involved using that genius brain, then got fired because of one slip up. Picked a new field, he chose from decisions written down and shaken in a hat.

Became a teacher, and lost all semblance of a social life and repeated the same process of waking up, go to work, be ridiculed in a posh school for how he looked tired all the time and not having a wealthy background, get back to his empty home and sleep.

The same thing every damned day and truth be told, Marcus didn't see that changing anytime soon no matter how much he wanted it to.

Another plain existence of a mediocre human being with nothing to really live for outside Japanese animation, puzzles and the personal things he watched on the internet.

"I wonder what I'm going to watch tonight," he mumbled, his deep voice holding exhaustion as he began to unlock his apartment door, his wavy brown hair tickling the nape of his neck.

Marcus paused for a moment, pressed his forehead to the dark brown door and closed his eyes, breathing deeply.

He never liked entering his home after a long day at work. He may have seemed like a boring man with little to no emotion, even getting the nickname 'Dead-fish eyes' from his students, but he wasn't. Not generally.

For one thing, the crippling loneliness he felt when he entered his apartment made him cry on countless occasions but alas, sleeping in the hallway wasn't an option. He wouldn't have wanted to give Mister Sweeney another scare.

So he sighed again and opened his door, the sarcastic words, "I'm home", on the tip of his tongue. At past six in the evening on a Friday, it was looking like the end of another regular day.

Only thing was that it ended up not being another regular day in the life of bored, lonely and in desperate need of a hug, Marcus Norris. And later on, he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be grateful for that. Maybe not.

"I'm ho-" With the rest of his words stuck in his throat, Marcus blinked with his half-closed eyes, his supposedly genius mind unable to fully process what was staring right at him from his living room three-seater couch.

There was a man crouched on his couch. A tall, handsome and naked man. A tall, handsome and naked man with wings. Huge, black and threatening wings, one of which looked to be bent in a painful way.

Marcus stared blankly into the silver eyes of what was something he could not explain, even if his brain hadn't gone off.

The man, who was crouching on his couch like a bird on a branch, tilted his head to the right as he stared at Marcus, his long, black, dirty hair falling to the right.

They stared at each other for who knew how long, lidded brown eyes on almond-shaped silver ones, both just staring.

At least until the winged-man made a low, bird-like, croak sound and Marcus could do nothing else but close his eyes, sigh, and then slowly step back and quietly shut the door after him, his back resting against it.

There was silence around him for a moment as he stared down at his chalk covered shoes, and with his usual tired way of speaking, he said, "There was definitely something illegal in that chalk."