sad wet puppy & old man yaoi appreciator

Jack Abbot could be anywhere in minutes. That was the whole point of him.

As a shifter — one of the few he'd actually met in his life — he turned out to be literally the perfect combat medic. He had his hawk form to get wherever he needed to get before anyone else could, and his human hands for the medical side. His reputation, everything he'd done within the army had been to improve his instincts, his capabilities, and his abilities. Jack was the first out, covering space that took the army vehicles double the time it took him. Being able to shift made him good at his job, but most importantly… It meant he never had to sit still long enough to let anything of what he's seen truly get to him.

Unfortunately, the blast that took his leg also harmed the other part of him. Jack could still shift fine. That wasn't the problem at hand. It was, what was waiting on the other side: a wing that wouldn't hold, wouldn't carry his weight and drop him out of the sky if he so much as tried. The leg he could replace. Prosthetic, physical therapy, gritted teeth. Solved on his own terms, just as he solved absolutely everything. The wing unfortunately didn't work that way. There was no… fitting a hawk for parts.

So… Jack opted for the one thing he could think of that could give him some idea of how bad and irreparable the damage was without having to go through the frustration of having to explain what he was. Thus, he turned up at the local conservatory, sporting his injured form, hoping there might be someone there who could fix whatever he couldn't. Jack simply let himself be found with his wing dragging, trying his best to appear less guarded that he was.

Bitten on an unfortunate night as a child, his mother never forgave him for surviving the painful transformation into a were beast. She left him behind, discarding him like a broken toy, and in the end, his grandmother took him in. She raised him with a combination of a soft hand and an even softer hard that never quite understood what was waiting beneath his ribs. Michael grew up gentle on purpose, because it was something his Bubbe felt the need to build brick by brick, ensuring that he still understood what it meant to be kind.

Conservation work became his whole life once he fell into it. Not because he preferred animals over humans, but because he'd come to hurt so many of them against his will over the course of his life, he simply felt compelled to give back to them. Within the conservatory, Michael could trust his hands and his heart to do whatever was necessary to help the animals in need. The only thing he wanted was to heal them and to ensure they had the best life possible, even if they could never be released into the wild again.

One day, a hawk turned up on the premises, with its wing hanging all wrong, sharp eyes that seemed to look into his soul even more than usual, and an air of exhaustion that concerned the wolf. Unfortunately, Robby had no idea he would spend weeks, first nursing him to full health and then past that, into the harder work of trying to teach him to live without full flight ability. He also didn't know that somewhere in those weeks, he would learn that the body of this hawk belonged to a man who'd been just as afraid of being a burden as Robby was afraid of hurting others.

A fated meeting

Jack didn't let anyone near his wing. Which, in all honesty, wasn't really the smartest move, considering the damn reason he'd dropped himself in the middle of Pennsylvania. He simply wasn't used to needing help in this form of his, even if he was more than aware that he did right now. Having gone through months of recovery and physical therapy after being fitted with his prosthesis, Jack was more than used to professionals taking care of him in a way that he himself simply couldn't, but this? This was instinctively different. He held himself tight for the first days, turning away despite keeping the young man in his view at all times.

Michael learned quickly that the young hawk did not like being disrespected. Learned it from a scratch across his forearm that he didn't even flinch at, merely cleaned up and kept talking like nothing had happened. He'd dealt with so much worse from much smaller predators, and something in his chest told him that this one wasn't as bad as he tried to make himself seem. No one knew better what a cornered animal felt like, knew the difference between dangerous and unsure and scared. He figured that this particular one here was clearly the second, maybe third one, dressed up as the first.

"You're a little jackass, aren't you?" Michael commented after the first bite, when he'd tried to get a proper look at the injured wing. "I thought you wanted our help and now here you are biting me."

Little did he know how correct he was, fondly calling him 'Little Jack' from that day onward.

The first two weeks of rest without an attempt to fly were almost hopeful — the same way they were every time Jack spent resting his hawk-form. The swelling in the wing went down; the joint started moving further than it did before. Every small movement got logged by Michael, who congratulated Jack each time, because each little success meant something… until it didn't anymore.

The wing stopped improving before regaining enough movement to grant Jack the ability to do anything but stabilize himself while hopping over the floor. When he saw Michael's face on the next little checkup, Jack knew that all the hope he'd put into this place had combusted into nothingness. Michael wasn't happy either. He knew the shape of a plateau when he saw one and he hated it more than words could describe.

In the end, he was the one who said it out loud, crouched in the enclosure with the little bird watching him too closely, as if he already knew. "You know, buddy… I don't think it's gonna get much better from here," he mumbled the words, trying not to crush the little jackass's heart, despite knowing he didn't understand him in the first place. "That doesn't mean it's over. Just means what happens next will look a little different from what you probably wanted."

For a moment, Jack didn't move, and then he looked away. And if Michael weren't certain he was reading a bird's body language a bit too much like a human's, he'd have sworn little Jack was flinching away from the words.

So the weeks after stopped being about resting and letting the injury heal and became much more about Michael working with what they'd got. By now, the little jackass let him touch the wing, let him perform specific movements to gauge its range and capability. Michael tested him for the strength within said range and made sure it didn't seize up uselessly at the bird's side from disuse.

Michael had caught himself, once or twice, how he'd been talking to Little Jack the way he never let himself talk to anyone else at the sanctuary. Without any filter or performance, simply speaking his mind about whatever was actually weighing on his chest that day. It didn't occur to him to wonder why that was so much easier with a hawk than with any of the other animals.

Jack watched the conservationist start to build him low perches — for 'safe gliding exercises,' he'd explained — and noticed something odd as time passed. Michael spoke to himself a lot, which in and of itself wasn't too peculiar, but the things he said, had Jack cock his head to the side every now and then. Besides his grocery list, like remembering he needed to buy flour, when he was cleaning the sandy floor of Jack's enclosure, he had an odd habit of counting days out loud sometimes.

'Three more til plenilune'

Then, a few days later, Michael didn't show up at all.

He was gone a whole four days. Trinity covered the enclosure in his stead, competent and feisty in the way Jack didn't hate, yet the hands on him were those of a stranger nonetheless. He found himself thinking about what it had meant.

Plenilune. Jack didn't need to know the word to dissect its meaning. Pleni for full, Lune for the moon. Now, since the enclosure had been flooded with moonlight right around the night Michael had disappeared, the math started to add up fast. It wasn't proof he could have laid out in front of a jury, but the implication sat deep in his chest either way.

When Michael finally returned, he was a shadow of himself; moving like every part of him ached from the inside out. That particular hollowed-out stillness of someone who'd spent the last few night being something other than a man. Jack had felt that exact stillness before, in the wake of his own worst shifts, where it had cost him more than the shift returned. He recognized it like looking into a mirror from years back, because he'd lived it.

Shifter.

It wasn't proof he could have laid out and defended in front of a jury. But between the plenilune, the absence and that empty walk, it was close enough to certainty that Jack stopped seeing a reason to keep pretending. He'd hidden with the leg, stayed inside longer than he should have, isolated himself even though it helped no one and recognized the shape of doing it again now. Jack was reaching for the comfort of the sanctuary because the alternative, admitting that his wing had suffered the same consequence as his leg, hurt too much to sit with honestly.

He was tired of being the little jackass in the corner. And he was tired of watching Michael carry something heavy through that door, alone, while Jack hid and let him.

So, when Michael came back for the early afternoon check-in, there was no hawk sitting on the low perch he had built. Instead, there was a man sitting on the sandy floor of the enclosure, looking up at him with eyes that weren't just the same color as the little jackass's, but carried the same wary, faintly judgmental glare in them too.

"Huh." Michael blinked at the handsome naked body he had not expected to be sitting there. "Okay. That's- okay. Yeah."

He didn't shout, didn't call for security, didn't reach for the animal-safe pepper spray he wore around his belt — not that he'd ever needed even for the wolves, but it was policy. He just stood there for a second too long, his hand frozen halfway through pulling the gate shut, like his body hadn't caught up with what his eyes were telling it.

Jack watched him do the math. Watched it settle.

"You could've said something," Michael eventually managed to say, his voice not his usual warm tone; not yet. He lowered himself down at the same careful distance he'd usually kept from the bird, which didn't go unnoticed by Jack. He hated how much it still steadied him, even after all this time. "You let me hand-feed you for a month, man."

"Didn't want the usual screaming fit." Jack's own voice came out all wrong. It was rough, sharp-edged, unused. "Wasn't exactly sure 'I'm actually a guy' would land well if it came from a bird that bit you on day one."

"That's-" Michael dragged a hand over his jaw, his fingertips rubbing the short beard and whatever he'd been about to say seemed to get lost somewhere behind his teeth. When he tried again, there was no edge in his voice at all. Instead, it was disbelief, bordering on wonder. "You've been you this whole time? In here?" He shook his head, still catching up to it, his face one of childlike surprise. "That's- Little Jack, I don't even-"

He caught the nickname the second it left his mouth and let out a short, startled laugh at himself. "Guess that one doesn't fit right anymore. Man your size."

Something eased in Jack's chest at that stupid little statement and the fact that the nickname he'd gotten used to had survived his reveal instead of getting left behind with his feathers. "Nah, keep it," he said with a slight shrug. "I like a good misnomer. Especially one that anyone with eyes can see is wrong."

That pulled a real laugh out of Michael this time, short and disbelieving, but as the man looked down, a sudden, heavy flush spread across his cheeks and down his neck. The sudden realization that he was having a casual conversation with a very broad and very bare man seemed to hit him all at once.

"Right. Well," Michael quickly unzipped his heavy sanctuary work jacket. He shrugged out of it and tossed it over to Jack, using the gesture to break eye contact. "Cover up before someone else walks in here doing checks."

Jack caught the jacket, smelling the scent of cedar and outdoor dirt on the fleece as he pulled it over his shoulders. It was a little tight across his back, but it took the edge off the afternoon air. "Appreciate it, brother."

For a good moment after, Michael didn't say another thing, simply sitting back properly by the door and rubbed both his hands through his hair, like he was setting aside the little silliness they'd been having and tried to actually take all of this in. When he looked back up again, there was nothing guarded left in his expression. Just curiosity, wide open.

"Okay," he said again. "Okay. So what have you been doing then? A month of just… being a guy who happens to also turn into a bird?"

"No." Jack held his gaze. "I've been trying to find out if the wing was permanently broken. If I'd ever fly again." He let that sit for a second before finishing it. "Wasn't ready to find out what happens to a hawk who can't."

Jack said it plainly, no self-pity dressing it up, but he watched Michael's face do that work either way; watched him get there on his own, one piece at a time. "That's why you fought us on the vet, isn't it?" Michael asked, his voice dropped into a quieter register." Any time Trinity or I talked about bringing in a specialist in here, you went ballistic. We thought you were just wild."

"I knew what a specialist would say," Jack replied simply. "And a vet doesn't treat a red-tailed hawk that can't be released back into the wild. They put it down. I couldn't risk that."

A heavy silence settled between them as Michael took in those words. "I would never have let them do that. You thought we were going to euthanize you?"

"I didn't know you," Jack said. "And I wasn't going to take the chance."

Again, Michael's hand flew to the back of his neck, rubbing the skin there the same way he'd done whenever Jack had snapped at him or shown signs of frustration in his animal form. There was a pained look crossing his face as the reality of Jack's month in captivity fully hit him. "Little Jack…" The nickname didn't ease the rest of his words one bit. "I already told you that the nerve damage was permanent. Weeks ago too. We sent your images off and they're… not looking hopeful in the slightest." A pause, subtle and cautious, followed. "Did you actually get what I was saying back then, or was some of it lost in translation?"

"I got it." Jack's mouth twitched, not quite into a smile but something much darker. "Wasn't exactly a conversation I could forget, brother."

Michael huffed, dragging a hand back through his hair, and for a moment he looked almost as tired as he had before the conversation managed to perk him up. He didn't say anything for a few seconds before finally settling on something that sounded a lot more like a confession than anything else. "Guess that makes two of us then. Hiding out here from our own fates. Pretending to be something we're not."

Jack let the words sit a moment before picking them up. "That why you disappeared? Four days? Right around the full moon?" He kept his voice even, not smug or pushing. Just laying it down between them and giving Michael the room to decide what to do with it.

For as long as Michael stayed quiet, there was a little bit of fear in Jack that he'd misjudged or pushed somewhere he shouldn't have. Then, slowly, Michael let out a breath that was only half disbelief and half sincere relief. "You clocked that."

"Wasn't exactly hard, considering you count down to the full moon like it's rent due." Jack snorted with a slight shrug. "Didn't fully put it together until you walked back in here looking like you had the worst hangover ever. Put it all into perspective."

Again, Michael didn't answer right away. This was different from how he'd acted around Jack in his hawk form. Then he'd been much more talkative and open, compared to now, with his nervous hands and his avoidance of any and all eye contact. "Wolf. Bitten as a kid. It's not a good story."

"Didn't figure it would be." By now, some of the roughness in Jack's voice had worn off. "Not much about mine is either." As a sort of proof of that, he lifted his leg — the one he was missing half of.

Neither of them seemed to want to fill the quiet that followed right away. It wasn't uncomfortable, per se; just full in the way a room gets after something true finally gets said out loud within it.

"For what it's worth," Michael eventually said. "I'm still not thrilled about the bite."

That made Jack's lips curl into a slight grin, because he knew exactly which bite the other was talking about. "For what it's worth," he replied, "I'd probably do it again."

That got him something close to another real, genuine laugh out of the other, and Jack couldn't help but feel his chest swell with pride at it. He'd gotten a couple of laughs from Michael in his hawk form, but this one felt better. So Jack caught himself looking at the man in front of him with his kind eyes and his gentle hands that never once hurt him.

"I'm done pretending," Jack continued, meaning more by it than just hiding away. "But I still need someone who knows how a body this fucked works, going forward. Aaaaand I can't really do that squatting in a hawk enclosure, now, can I?"

Michael looked over at the little perch he'd built with his own hands, jaw working like he was actually weighing it rather than just being polite. "I can't continue treating you here," he said finally. "Not like this, at least. It wouldn't be in good conscience to keep you confined in here and… we do not treat humans." Another pause followed, this one longer than the former. "But I've… got a yard and a spare room if you're in need of a place to stay. I could move the perch over and we could figure out the rest from there?"

Jack raised an eyebrow, giving him an out if he wanted one. "That an invitation, or… do you just not like leaving business unfinished?"

Michael huffed at him, shaking his head with a soft little smile. "Bit of both," he said, almost looking like he was debating his answer still. "Mostly I don't like the idea of you having to do this alone. You're my responsibility now, no matter if you have the ability to turn into a human. Plus… I know how hard it is to do your own thing alone for too long."

Something within Jack's chest loosened at that, a feeling so similar to what he'd felt earlier that day, when he'd recognized Michael as something so much closer to him than anticipated. "Careful," he said, a grin on his lips. "Might take you up on that. Overstay my welcome, Little Jack style."

"I'll survive it." Michael rolled his eyes, getting up on his feet and finally stepping forward, closing the distance between them. Hesitating at first, he did extend his hand down towards Jack, showing that the offer that came along with it meant a lot more than the gesture usually did. "Speaking of- What's your actual name? Feels only fair for me to know, considering you've had mine for a month."

Jack's grin came sharp and easy as he took the offered hand and hauled himself up on his good leg, noticing the way warm brown eyes that were more than familiar started to travel south as the jacked hitched up — clearly remembering the Jack's comment concerning a misnomer right about when those cheeks flushed with heat once more.

When his answer landed a moment later, there was another one of those beautiful, barked laughs that escaped Michael's lips at his words. One that Jack listened to with real pleasure.

"I'm Jack. Jack Abbot."