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He manages to speak!...

It is a completely awful squawk.

He is no closer to escaping his predicament.

He does not manage to successfully squawk. There is a feeling of warmth, of consolation, of apology--

--and then he's Rylan again, two arms, two hands, two eyes, a human mouth.

There are two very attractive men nearby.

One minute, they were all moving, dancing, he was laughing, ready to give both a rewarding kiss for the serenade, but when he turned to look at Rylan again --

-- he was gone.

The good humor and mirth were wiped away in an instant, his grin falling into a line of shock. "Chief?" he asked, turning between the men and putting a hand on the taller man's cheek. "Ry?"

Nothing.

Lucas felt his chest swell with fear. Not him. Not him too. He shot Thorne a look that spelled out that fear before trying to grab Rylan by his arms, not sure what had just happened. He'd seen men go blank before, but -- that was in war, and he was not going to accept this happening --

And then Rylan was back with a strangled sound, startling Lucas back against Thorne and gripping the falling man's arms. He tripped with the weight of the larger man going down, catching himself on both hands and a knee, ignoring the jolt of pain and taking Rylan's arm with both of his hands. Alarmed, he looked up to Thorne, then back to Rylan. "Hey, Chief, breathe, breathe." His prosthetic hand cupped the other's face. "You were right here, but you were -- you were gone. Are you okay?"

His heart hammered in his chest. Not him. Not him. Please not him too.

"I don't- I was," a ******** bird. But that probably sounded as crazy out loud, if not more so, as it did in his head. And Rylan wasn't sure he was ready to put that on Lucas and Thorne just yet.

All his life, he'd been the one to shoulder other people's burdens. Because he had broad enough shoulders for it, both literally and figuratively. Because it was damn near impossible to rattle him. Because he'd made it his job to care about other people, and now that he was rattled, now that he probably needed some care himself, he wasn't prepared to ask for it.

"I must've... I don't know, blanked for a minute," he said finally, but not before shooting a sidelong glance at the window he'd been peering through only moments before. If the bird he'd briefly inhabited had really been there, it was gone now, and with it any evidence that the episode hadn't just been a figment of his imagination.

"Say, did you... Was there a bird over there, just now? Did you hear..."

Ah. What was the point.

He covered Lucas' hand with his own, holding him tight, wanting to pull him - hell, both of them - to him and lose himself in their embrace, just for a moment. But he didn't.

There is a bird outside the window still, a black bird with a white spot on its head. Even from here, it can be discerned that the bird has eyes exactly the same color as Rylan's.

Rylan's eyes were not, in any sense of the word, common. He shared them with his biological mother and no one else - so far as he had met - in his life. He had wolf eyes, as his dad would call them, amber eyes the color of warm honey and they had a way of catching the sun in them and lighting up in a fiery gold when it was bright out.

They were, for all intents and purposes, pretty damn recognizable eyes.

So when he lifted his eyes out of the embrace and found the black bird sitting silently on the windowsill, staring in with eyes that were startlingly and undeniably familiar, even Rylan couldn't call it a coincidence.

"Ye- Not... a specific bird," he managed to say, looking away for fear that it would someone suck him into its body and mind again. The episode had shaken him in a way that no fire, no IED could ever do. Those were physical threats, which he knew how to overcome. This was something else entirely.

And he would have sat there and let the terror of it all consume him, but that wasn't something he was willing to do. Whatever was going on in this town, whatever it wanted from him, it wasn't going to get that easily. Not without a fight.

He shut his eyes and shook his head and took a breath. Does it hurt? he asked himself. It didn't. Not physically. Will it kill you? No. Or maybe it would, but as far as he concerned, it was all mental. So you can get up. Yes. Guess what. You can do whatever you ******** well want to unless it kills you. You know damn well it won't. Your head wants to tell your body it can't do something? Well ******** that guy. What does he know. Get the ******** up.

He'd given himself this talk half a million times, had heard it yelled at him through a speaker by his coxswain half a million more. The familiarity of it filled him, made every muscle in his body tense with anticipation. Finally, when he opened his eyes, he looked at Lucas, looked at Thorne, looked for the black bird with the white spot on its head again.

"I'm alright," he said. "I'm fine. Are you guys alright?"

Sure you are, Thorne almost said, but that would have been pot calling the kettle black and he did not want to by the hypocrite in the room. (Even though all of them were, to varying degrees, hypocrites.)

He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, sinking a canine in to ground him to the reality here - sure, everything was terrifying and things were happening that he couldn't explain... but here they were. Whatever was going on, whatever came - here they were.

"I'm - " he started, wondering just how he was. Worried, concerned, terrified? Happy, hopefully, dangerously on the edge? It was a war, and Thorne wasn't sure where to lean. He cocked his head at Rylan, mouth curving into a curious expression. "Better," he offered.

And then he paused, and stared at Lucas. And then he realized something. And then his face turned an ungodly shade of red.

"Alright, listen," he said in response, his eyes ghosting between the two of them, wild-bright but focused, hungry and sated and searching at the same time, "how is it that I have asked both of you out on separate occasions without ever realizing that you both know each other?" His eyes closed and he tilted his head back with a loud groan. "I'm a homewrecker, oh my god. I asked your boyfriend out, Lucas."

And then he opened his eyes, and looked at them both. There was something there, a brazen honesty. And letting his voice lower, he said, "You can come home to this - both of you." And paused, then pushed on before his courage left him. "I'm not going to pretend - I know what's happening, or how the ******** cosmos dragged all of us together in this world. But if - " The words caught in his throat. "I have a door, and a cat, and a window. I'm willing to find a way, if you want."

He exhaled, eyes flicking to the bird again. It was remarkable what it resembled - who it resembled. But Lucas and Rylan brought him back, and he shifted, happy for a task that wasn't being embarrassed at how terrible he was with words or staring down The Enemy Bird.

"If Millie doesn't try and eat it first," He said mildly, "I think we could try inviting it... in? I have... bird seed?" He lifted his head as Millie herself appeared, leaping onto one of the skewn couches and peering at the bird. "Don't you dare," he added in a hissed aside to her, and the cats eyes found him. Her tail flicked once, twice, and she seemed to decide that getting roasted wasn't the way to go today, curling up instead to sleep with her back to them.

With a sigh and stretch, Thorne carefully untangled himself enough to push up to his feet, regretting the loss of contact immediately. "Here," he said, turning and offered both of his hands to them.

"I know this place is a mess," he added, "but since we're already unconventional as ******** and I still owe Rylan one for saving my a** - want to stay for dinner?"

And quite possibly A Talk.

But. But that came later.