A Taste For Chicken

Trick Fraud - Part 1

February rolled up in no time, the winter was beginning to fade. Winters in Fukuoka were never more than mild anyway, but Hawks still hated feeling cold. The sky was mercifully bluer again and the sun was shining and soon enough the winter would be banished fully. Spring would bring a whole new mess of problems, but Hawks didn't want to think about that for now.

He ended up meeting with that fan at her house only two more times before he could admit to her that he wasn't interested in her. She seemed to take it well, but still asked not to see him ever again. That felt fair, but at the same time he felt a little hurt. It wasn't as if he could have anything more with her anyway, but it was also difficult not to grow attached after his experience.

There was also the gnawing issue that the whole act hadn't really been as wonderful as he'd hoped. Not that he blamed her for that; it wasn't her fault. He was the inexperienced one, not her. But nothing has been as intense or as raw as what he'd experienced with Halcyon and that was basically just a drunk hand job. Wing job? What would he even call that?

Worst of all, he and Halcyon were practically at each other's throats for nearly everything lately. He couldn't go a damn day without a shitty comment from her or in the least a rude gesture. He hated her. A lot.

Or at least right now he did. Hawks had a lot of enemies these days, countless people hated him—good and bad. But it was always and only Halcyon that drove him crazy, in more ways than one.

Initially, Hawks was sure this latest rough patch would blow over. It had before, so why not? It seemed that way at first. He held a positive attitude until that intense anger didn't seem to fade from her eyes. The friction between the two didn't seem any softer even after a few weeks. She challenged him at every turn, questioning his strategies and mocking his decisions. Her eyes always seemed to carry a healthy dose of disdain whenever they locked with his, and her words were always sharp, biting with a hint of malice that he still wasn't accustomed to.

Nest seemed to become a battle ground of egos, each of them pushing each other to the limits in every single aspect in every place they ran into each other. In the field? Aggravating. In the gym? Frustrating. Break times? Horrendous. Hell, even in interviews she couldn't resist a chance to make fun of him on camera.

The fans ate that shit up of course. They'd even become a popular hero ship! How the hell that made sense was something Hawks couldn't understand. Even Kiwi and Perplex had gotten in on it and it drove him insane.

"Hey, Hawks," Kiwi had said one day, wearing a garish yellow shirt with the words "The Birdy and Beasts" complete with a drawing of one of his feathers. Kiwi had a grin on, pulling the shirt to show him.

"Where... What..." He'd floundered, his hands aimlessly struggling to find the gesture appropriate just as much as his brain failed at finding words, "Kiwi take that off!"

"What?! No way! This is amazing!" She'd laughed.

It wasn't even the ship that-- no. That wasn't true. It was the ship. It was the whole thing. It was all of it that annoyed him. But then the worst part of all...

“You’re so fucking shit at this, Birdy.”

Halcyon knew he hated that nickname; even Kiwi had stopped using it after he'd asked her to—but Halcyon really, reallyyy stubbornly refused even when he threatened to put her on morning patrols every day.

“Bullshit, Birdy. You don't have the balls.”

She was such a teasing piece of shit too. She would even brush right up against him just to annoy him. That stupid leotard and her stupid thick ass and stupid hips. She was the only one who dared to touch his wings without permission. She knew damn well what it did to him too, so he really should have reported her for sexual harassment.