Dawn Chorus (Proxies x Reader)

Tests and Tasks

"How did she manage to get back there?" Tim asks Hoodie, like I'm not even here.

Hoodie shrugs. Tim sighs and backs up on his hands and knees. He ducks down to look at me once more before glancing over his shoulder.

"Toby, can you reach her?"

"I can t-try," Toby says.

He bounds over, dropping to the floor. Hoodie shuffles back for him, unlike for Tim, so that Toby has plenty of space to try and shimmy in the narrow space between the floorboards and bed. Scrawny and snakelike, with his arms at his sides, he squirms side to side and kicks with his feet, lodging himself half under the bed.

"You should stop right there and leave me be," I suggest to Toby.

He looks up at me, tongue sticking out from between his lips in his concentration to get under the bed.

"Wh-why?" He asks, cracking a smile.

"Hoodie is trying to poison me," I say with full seriousness.

Toby studies my expression for a moment, sticks his tongue back out, and begins the long process of squirming out from under the bed. Once he pops up in the open air past my sanctuary, he takes a deep, dramatic breath.

Then like a tattling younger sibling he practically screams, "M-Masky, Hoodie is try-trying to p-p-p-poison (Y/n)!"

"You do not need to yell," Tim snaps, then processing the words, snaps again, "What?"

More soft thuds and shuffling, people pushing each other. Tim's face and Hoodie's mask come back into view, side by side, so close its obvious each is trying to push the other away.

"Hoodie's trying to poison you?" Tim asks.

Hoodie shakes his head. I sneer at him with as much malice and hate as I can muster, then deciding it isn't enough and wanting to follow Toby's childish lead, I stick my tongue out. It feels juvenile and entirely too silly for the situation, but in those ways, it is also refreshing. Hoodie raises a hand to his chest as if taken aback.

"Can we focus?" Tim asks.

I look at him and his sour expression, the amusement of our interactions not reaching him.

"On his desk," I tell Tim.

The long explanation sits on my tongue, a tangle of words and sentences and disjointed thoughts. I'm not sure I can get it out clearly. Worse, I'm not sure if I get it out clearly, if Tim will disagree with what Hoodie wants to do. Once Tim has crawled away and stood up so all I can see are his dark grey socks, Hoodie lifts his mask just enough to stick his tongue out back at me. I gasp, and I'm not sure if the shock is truly a joke. It's almost fun in the unseriousness of it, almost relaxing. The ache crawling up my body in a pattern I can only described as a stiff tube of LED lights outlining every limb and the clink and rattle of glasses remind me of the threat past my burrow, of the reason my heart thuds so hard against my ribs.

"Ooh! I re-recognize that o-o-o-o-o-one!" Toby calls out.

"Careful," Tim shouts, followed shortly by the shattering of glass.

Hoodie's head jerks up at this, peering over his shoulder.

"Oops," Toby mutters.

A thick, sweet, almost floral scent permeates the room. It tickles and burns the back of my nostrils. Before the others have fully processed or reacted, I am crawling out from under the bed, guided solely on instincts. The world around me is an unintelligible blur to my race to escape the odor, bursting from the dark of Hoodie's room and into the hall. I bang into the wall, use the force to redirect myself into the bright living room. My eyes burn at the sudden change in light level. I bound across the room and leap out the front door, willing the fresh air to clear the scent from my nose.