thinkin about royal beasts again
and about how grian Does Not have an exit strategy planned for 'pretending to be a Normal Not-King Guy' to be canary's friend
(cub thinks this is very funny to watch him agonizing over)
all the more complicated by neither jimmy nor grian realizing that they knew one another when they were much much younger
grian because jimmy's been changed and twisted by so much magic and operations to make him more monstrous/birdlike by his previous owners
and jimmy b/c he's assuming everything he's feeling/noticing is just b/c it's his first time being around another avian in Literal Years, especially for a long period of time while being able to do things like relax and nest. he assumes he'd feel this familiarity with any avian.
further hindered by communication issues, with jimmy at first being unwilling to even try talking, and later finding out that he can pretty much only do bird noises/birdsong, and some mimicking of things people say around him
i'm not entirely settled on if they should figure it out before or after jimmy gets some operations (Doc and Grian working together) to restore some of his previous form (some parts he's stuck with b/c it'd be too much to reconstruct safely, like fully birdlike legs and feet, and some he Wants to keep, like his larger wings and additional vocal range) but like. his organs need a Lot of work to not be. A horrorshow.
grian works a lot of the magic side of things in the operations, both undoing what parts were done with magic so Doc can operate on the rest, and also just. using his magic to keep jimmy alive through Very dangerous and delicate procedures, basically through sheer force of will and overwhelming magical power. it drains a lot from grian, and puts a huge strain on grian's human body to be constantly channeling watcher magic through it over long periods of time, on top of the operations being hugely stressful to jimmy's body, so they have to take it slow and work in stages, with recovery time in between
i am very fond of the suggested idea that the court sees this draining grian and taxing his human body and many of the close inner circle of people volunteer magic via passing the magic to grian's vex in smooches, and then scar and cub being able to channel that into grian to give him breaks from using watcher magic (and also give him mushy feeling abt people caring about him), so that very much also happens here
