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Enji finds him starving in the desert.
Chained, like mere common livestock to a stake and his feathers hanging limp, the brilliant red of them gone dull from this endless sea of sand and sun, of a world that only knows how to take and take and take – never to give in return.
Feral child. Orphan of the skies.
And yet, his eyes still shine when he raises his head.
Gold, catching the light.
The only thing his handler wants is a fair price. Harpies are so very difficult to come by these days after all, and to have trapped one this young? To have it still be so pliable? Priceless, surely.
“Tame him and he will hunt for you,” the man simpers. His merchandise barely stirs when kicked. “Get up, boy. Show him.”
His leash is a short one. Crudely made from rusted metal links that are already pulling taut by the time he’s hovering above their heads.
“Pretty, isn’t he?”
Enji stands in the shadow of outstretched wings and this close, he only needs to lift his head to feel the warm gust of air from each downward beat. Strong enough to stir the sand at their feet, but not quite enough to bear himself away.
He pays a fair price in the end. Enji makes sure of it, just like how he makes sure to clean the blood off his blade before offering it hilt-first to the boy.
“Leave,” he says and though the hand that reaches for it is far too gaunt, the skin around his wrists still rubbed painfully raw, at least it’s steady. At least it’s free. “Go home.”
Enji expects the boy to leave once he’s taken to the sky, but all he does is stay there, circling. A shadow in the sky that Enji needs to shield his eyes to look at.
“Go home,” Enji calls again, but the wind must steal his voice away because when he lies down at night, there he is, still.
Lifted high on a thermal and soaring up, up.
Wings held wide enough to block out the stars.
He’s curled up by Enji’s feet in the morning, head pillowed in the crook of one arm and wings folded haphazardly around him like a makeshift shroud.
“Boy,” Enji says, and though it’s supposed to wake him, it somehow comes out quieter than he’d intended.
One eye opens all the same, just as golden as ever.
“Keigo,” he corrects before going back to sleep.
Enji’s contracts eventually take him out of the desert and into the rest of the world.
Here, a town with tall spires.
There, a dark alley that hides desperate hands.
And through it all, Keigo follows him. Perches up high and swoops down low sometimes, nothing more than a swift shadow that causes feet to falter and daggers to miss their mark.
“You hunt,” Keigo observes after a while. His head is tilted to one side, curious. Like he’s considering something that Enji himself has yet to notice.
“I do,” Enji says evenly. He doesn’t look up from making their evening meal. Only meets Keigo’s eyes when giving him his share of bread, but when he does, they’re bright in the firelight.
Warm, like honey.
The first time Keigo sees him injured, he rips the other man’s throat out. Lands on him talons first and with a cry that’s barely human, the ugliness of it only surpassed by the wet screaming of someone who’s suddenly afraid to die.
It’s fine. He was supposed to anyway. The method doesn’t really matter in the end.
Nevertheless:
“I’m sorry,” Keigo says not too long later. He’s trying his best to stay still, but his nervous energy makes it hard – makes it clear that he’d prefer to be anywhere but kneeling on the ground before Enji like this. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
Enji merely dips his cloth once more into the water he’s warmed by the fire.
“It’s fine,” he murmurs.
Men like him don’t know how to be gentle, but Enji tries anyway. Holds one devastatingly sharp claw up to wipe the blood off.
“Is it?” Keigo keens then, the sound of it low and unhappy. “It was your kill. I stole it.”
“You saved me,” Enji says firmly and by the time he’s done, Keigo is clean.
Keigo leaves during the day sometimes now, but Enji has no right to ask where he goes. All he knows is that come sunset, Keigo will be there.
Red wings on the horizon, soaring in ahead of the night.
“You’re back,” Enji greets him each time and tries not to be surprised about it.
“You’re free to go, you know,” Enji tells him, once.
Keigo hasn’t stopped sleeping at his feet, but now, he does so on soft furs and an even softer blanket.
“Just like how I’m free to stay?”
“You are free,” Enji says again, simply.
(He doesn’t need them. He runs hot, anyway.)
When it happens, he almost doesn’t recognise the gesture for what it is.
Keigo lands with his gaze lowered and lays the hare before Enji, his talons having barely left a mark in its soft fur.
Its neck is snapped. A quick death, likely painless.
Inexplicably, the sight of it makes Enji’s heart ache a little.
“Yours,” Keigo says.
His voice is quiet from where he’s crouched, feathers trembling. Still shaking from the cold of flight, maybe. From the north wind that bore him back to Enji, the song of it singing over the trees and sweeping down low into their valley.
Or maybe it has something to do with how he won’t meet Enji’s eyes.
Either way, his claws leave gouges in the dew-wet grass when Enji kneels. Digging into the dirt, his wings eventually settling with a sigh when Enji touches the still, small body before him.
“I didn’t tame you,” he says in wonder.
Keigo looks at him, then. Finally made brave from the knowledge he’s always carried within him.
“You never had to.”
There’s a ritual to it, barely remembered. Something ancient from a much older time – a wilder one when men would still have cause to bind their beasts to them in this way.
A lifeline to the earth. An anchor for the sky.
Enji doesn’t insult him by asking if he’s sure, but when he lays Keigo down, it’s with a tenderness he didn’t know he had.
He has no silver for a bell and no finery fit for a hood, but the leather he wraps around Keigo’s wrists is soft, at least. His knife is honed and sharp, still carried on Keigo’s hip.
More compass than weapon, these days.
The true north of his freedom, guiding him back each time.
“Who do you hunt for?” Enji asks, one large hand covering Keigo’s eyes as he presses into the softest parts of his boy, and the answer is only a gasp, a whimper, a cry.
A promise freely surrendered.
“You,” Keigo says in the dark. He’s arching into Enji’s touch now, wings spread out so beautiful beneath them. “Only you, always you.”
And when he sees again, Enji will be there, waiting. Looking at him with something like love.
This is home.
(The bell, so a hawk may never be lost.
Jesses, so it will know to return.
And most important of all, the hood, covering its sight.
That it may trust in the safety of the hand that holds it, always.)