sunbeams and seraphim wings

Baxter's wingcare routine takes up a chunk of his day; from the outside looking in, however, it doesn't seem that way.

He tells himself that the unveiled looks of awe and desire are worth it, that the pride on Adrian and Amelia Ward's faces when their friends offer doting words of praise are a justification for the long and tedious routine of carefully preening, brushing, and oiling each feather upon the six dusty grey wings that bloom from his back. The smile he wears, when a classmate in school comes up and stammers requests for a glance of his their way, and more than mere minutes brushing of shoulders, is that of someone who's used to people's eyes first being drawn to the feathered appendages, then to the sparkling pristine image of a Ward; last, if it ever comes to that, to the young man who lets himself be touched with covetous hands, his body a feast for people's eyes and mouths and fingers, like a bird plucked and then shared among the famished until there's little else but bones.

The truth that no one will ever, ever unearth from his tightly clenched fingers - the beating heart that's never been conquered, even if the rest of him is to be shared — is that Baxter Alexander Ward fucking loathes his wings.

"How do you keep these beauties looking immaculate?" A hand buries itself into the middle wing on his left side, fingers dragging through the feathers. 

Baxter's jaw flexes within a hair's breadth of a frown before it smooths into a smile as he cants a look upwards through veiled lashes. "It's no large undertaking. I've made some rather excellent purchases as of late that have made it all a breeze." A tilt of the head, an empty offer tumbling from his lips that expects no acceptance. "Would you like to see how I care for them? Perhaps," here, his voice drops into a coax, though he dares not hope for more. "You would like to try it on me?"

"I might," the person in his bed laughs. "If you'd also do me the favor?"

He sees them off with a gentle swipe of his uppermost wing against theirs — a sparrow's wings, he knows he'll remember them by this and not the name which will eventually slip from memory — drawing them close one last time with a wistful peck on their mouth. They bow over him and press back, smiling as their feathers rustle against each other; one side enthusiastic to the point of ruffling the other. The sound makes Baxter's stomach twist, and he pulls away to let them step back onto their doorstep.

"You're seriously something else, Baxter Ward." They shake their head in amusement, eyes roaming up and down the length of his body again. "I've got a newfound respect for how much of a pain those things are. Seriously." An awkward pause. "My bad, for the—"

The spot on his lower right wing twinges, the scapular feather that had been wrenched and bent out of shape by an impatient hand. "It's no big deal. Nothing of import, and something that can be easily fixed." 

They look at him oddly. He imagines that the concern in their eyes is his own wishful thinking. Though if it was real, it doesn't last, and soon his friend shrugs. "If you say so. Anyway, Jules's got something cooking this Saturday. See you around, then?"

"Yes, I'd love to." He knows that they won't. The campus is big enough to hold both of them and keep out of each other's orbits.

In the evening, Baxter Ward plucks the errant feather without even flinching and throws it in the bin. It irritates him to look at it, and even then, it'll grow back in time.

His hand snaps out and wraps around her wrist before she can pinch at the tip of her wing and pull. 

"Don't do that." He realizes that his voice is more forceful than usual when her eyebrows pinch together, a startled look on her face. "Come with me, if I may be so forward." He slips his hand down and twines it with hers, nudging a clenched fist open to make room for his digits. She latches on more gently than he expects out of her. Baxter exhales, casting a look at the way the wings at her hips flex and loosen in an attempt to ease off the restlessness. It's been thrumming through her the moment he opened the door and found her looking so lost, a disquiet that speaks louder to him than she likely wants it to; he doesn't fancy himself an adept coastal dweller who can tell when a storm is coming through the movements of the waves and the specific shades of the sky, but he imagines it like this — one look into Wisteria Blanc's clouded grey eyes, not a glimpse of the sun behind them, and he finds himself just as unsettled.

"It's not a big issue," Wisteria refutes, yet she's allowing herself to be led inside. "And it'll grow back. I was rather careless earlier. Normally, I'm not..."

He allows himself a silent raise of the brow, lip twitching at the near-petulance she trails off with. With a firm push, he settles her down on the couch, shooting her a look as he pats one of the throw pillows down on her lap. "Let me hazard a guess: you'd rather not have Pamela or Noelani noticing?"

She bristles, feathers on either side of her head ruffling in time with the shake of her head. "... Wouldn't be good if they did. Cove would also feel bad, and I'd rather not see that."

Baxter promises to himself that he would get to the root of what this thing is, for it to make a trenchant eighteen-year old mumble and avoid his eyes. What is he to do when he finds out, he doesn't yet know, but there must be something. He lets go of her hand, keeping all his focus on her as he sits down. 

It's experience that makes him keep a respectful distance, after he's interfered with her earlier. 

Wisteria's right wing curls around her; the little bent feather at its very tip flutters with the motion. He makes sure not to comment on it, sensitive to every little motion and the jitters that follow them. After a long moment, she sinks her hands into the pillow, eyes intent on the patternless maroon fabric. "I saw one of my old classmates at work today. We weren't close, but... He was very tactile with everyone in class— And I tolerated it, to an extent."

It's a picture that paints itself, even with the incomplete details that she provides him. He takes a moment to let it sink in, watching her mangle the pillowcase between her fingers, before standing up. His own wings are just as stiff as hers, mirroring her. "I shall be back shortly, we must soak that part in a basin." Is there a shallow enough washbasin around his rental condo? Baxter quietly curses at himself. Of course, his habit of hardly staying inside long enough to know his way around this temporary summer residence — which feels less and less like a prison around her - would come back around to haunt him now of all times. 

Casting a warning look at Wisteria when he spies her hand slipping down to her wing, he leaves her in the living room. 

When he reemerges from his hunt around the condo, he clutches the plastic washbasin in his hand. Precariously balanced on top of them are the products he uses for himself, ones that take Wisteria out of her stupor long enough for her to blink at him in incredulity. He sets it all down on the coffee table, all except for the washbasin, and hurries to the open kitchen. 

The sound of water from the faucet, filling up the basin, is the only thing in the room until she speaks. "... What are these for?" 

"You will see soon," Baxter replies, shutting off the faucet and turning around. 

She's inspecting one of the bottles, holding it up to her face with an upwards tilt to the corner of her mouth. "Guerlain? Abeille Royal Revitalizing & Fortifying Care Feather Conditioner?"

The tight ball in his chest loosens. "I believe the results of my usage must speak for themselves." With a raised brow, he arches his six wings a little higher, a little wider, as much as he could indoors. Flaunting them, dancing around the edge of presenting. His face brightens when hers spread out on either side of her; tentative, and not as forward as she would on another day. 

Baxter has to remind himself that this is the same girl who flared out her wings, a warning in the way she stepped in front of Cove, on his very first day at Sunset Bird.

Wisteria Blanc's wings are ghosts that have haunted his memories ever since that strange little Summer Soiree at a country club. He doesn't think of them on the regular, but every so often he remembers the girl with plumage that looked like white paper halfway dipped in ink. The topmost part of the backs of her wings were a gradient that began from feathers as black as a starless night sky, lightening to varying shades of grey until one's eyes were near-blinded by the immaculate white of the remiges. It was a mirror to the unusual shade of her hair, an inkwash painting given life in silken strands that fell to her back and argent eyes that looked at him with undisguised curiosity.

What stuck out the most to Baxter Ward, fourteen years of age and already loathing the dismal dusty grey of his own plumage, was the tiny pair of wings on either side of her head, like a crown of laurels. 

He had been very young when he had learned that one's wings standing out was not always a good thing. 

A lot of societies since the dawn of the age of man have waxed poetic and built religions out of the appendages that every human was born into this world with. Some claimed it to be a leftover of the age of the divine, when gods and monsters walked the earth and brushed shoulders with mortals. Others claimed it to be proof of the existence of the soul, a physical manifestation of your inner self — an indicator of what kind of person you would grow up to be, the mark you would leave the world with. Yet even other schools of thought out there simply believed that it was a vestigial organ linking man to an older species that had once dominated the skies. Now, flight is more often than not impossible, since the structure of most wings don't make it feasible for them to carry their human bearers. A growing sentiment in the 21st century is that wings are useless limbs on humans, and the option of having them amputated is quickly growing popular. 

But most people are attached to a feature that they had been born with, even as they grow to bear complex feelings about their wings and the way the world would grow to judge you for how you carry them.

Baxter had known that his wings couldn't be an extension of his soul. They didn't reflect who he was at all, not when it took all that grooming and preening to look halfway presentable for his parents. If souls could be tampered with so easily to look as clean as a polished mirror, then perhaps humans are better off not trusting each other at all. Mirrors are dishonest things, the way they prey upon the weaknesses in your heart and morph your countenances into something you loathe once the negative feelings get their claws in.

He had wondered. What did that girl see in the mirror, with her four oddly-placed wings? It is a question that follows at the heels of fond remembrance; her blush stains that black-and-white memory, a shade of red that sometimes takes the edge off of the self-loathing that he feels when he grooms himself.

"You're very considerate," she had told him, back then, as they danced to the steps of a waltz. His wings were tucked in close to his back, painfully aware of the eyes on him. Adolescence had been an awkward, dreadful time with his lengthening limbs and wings, and how he had to make himself smaller, so as to not bump into others. "No need to keep them folded close; I want you to enjoy yourself as much as I am. The dance floor has plenty of room, and you don't need to constrain yourself for others' convenience."

A beat later, she had followed up with that blunt comment about his smile being cuter when it's genuine, and the Summer Soiree girl had found a place for herself in his heart. Autumn and his pretty golden wings, already a lingering ache that was slowly being buried with time, are swept aside by a lone encounter. One dreamlike midsummer evening that could only be topped by the summer of five years later.

His plans for this evening are cast aside; what’s one night spent aimlessly driving, seeking out the next empty attraction to whittle away his time in Sunset Bird, to caring for her? Sitting in his living room, kneeling down at the side of the touch, he keeps his palms spread open. Hovers them by her wing, eyeing her as he poses the question.

“May I touch your wing, Wisteria?” Her expression is at once hard to read and achingly familiar as he continues, “I would like to help you with your wing, if you would allow it.”

With his past flings, he’d readied himself to be rejected with his offers of them caring for his wings, after he’s finished with theirs. Yet he finds himself more mindful of her rejection, while at the same time fully understanding if she is to do it to him.

“We’ve already touched each other’s wings,” she prods, tentatively lowering her eyes to her hands. “I didn’t mind it during our hangout with the others.” 

Baxter remembers fully well what she means. There’s precious few memories that could make him feel like he could fly, wings as useless as they are. He still wonders what possessed him to have such courage at the time: to draw his shirt around her shoulders, enclosing her in three pairs of wings to ward off the cold, right until her friends jeered at them. The moment is as ingrained in him as the taste of the chocolate from her popsicle, when he bent down to try it. It’s the same taste lingering on her lips when he kisses her under the glow of the fireworks, their feathers pressed close to each other as she leans back against him.

“That was then, and this is now,” he smiles at her. “As elated as I am that you’re trying to tell me that I am implicitly allowed to touch you, I would still like to hear a confirmation from you this evening. Indulge me, if you will.” 

She regards him; he wonders what she sees in his face, to bring such a look of relief to her eyes. A gentle smile curves her mouth. “... right.” She takes a breath, and straightens her spine. “I’d like it if you help me, Baxter. Please, go ahead.”

It is a familiar routine to him, the act of soaking a bent feather to soften it up. “Your feather will straighten out,” he keeps speaking in low tones, taking glances at Wisteria. She’s relaxed in just the exact way to let him know that she’s not relaxed, hands lightly clasped atop the throw pillow she’s been clutching since he handed it to her earlier. If she’s mangling it like earlier, it’d probably be more reassuring.

He lips thin, pressing together as he turns his focus back to the ruffled feathers. “If I may ask. Is this your first time?”

“My first time having someone else care for them?” She shakes her head. “I groom my wings together with my family, once a month.” 

Baxter hasn’t ever seen his parents tend to each other. They had people they paid to do that for them, so what was the point? It had also been the way with him, growing up as a young boy, until he had one day visited the Murrays with Qiu, seen Mrs. Murray’s gentle hands preening her kid’s feathers. Of course, his friend had blushed so furiously when they both noticed that Autumn and Baxter had arrived early. 

It hadn’t seemed like a thing to be flustered about. Being preened by someone else looked warm and comforting, like a blanket around his shoulders as he sat in front of the fireplace in his big house, a cup of tea heating his palms.

He shakes his head. “Ah, I meant something else. Was earlier your first time,” he murmurs, hands drifting up to groom her feathers as the tip of her wing is left to soak in the basin. “Having your wing grabbed without your permission?”

She stiffens, the topic they had been dancing around brought to the spotlight. He briefly regrets bringing it up, before he remembers that she came to him of all people. Walked up to his doorstep, to her temporary neighbor, when she could have sought refuge at Cove’s, or even Terri and Miranda’s places. There are a good number of others that would have taken care of her, but she had come to him instead. It’s a callback to that day on the yacht, the way she had looked green around the gills and still refused her sister’s concern, only to allow him down in the cabin with her.

“No,” she sighs out. “It’s not.” 

Her wings are healthy, and carefully tended; a life being well-loved writ in glossy flight feathers and soft underwings. He’s seen her and Cove sometimes straighten each other’s feathers out in casual motions, barely taking a thought to do it for each other, and felt an odd twist in his gut. It’s not quite grooming each other, but Baxter could never have afforded to be so casual with someone else in such a way. Not after he had long left Golden Grove and the days of his boyhood behind.

“I find myself sincerely hoping that your manager had words with your old classmate.” He pauses for a moment when she squirms against his hand, realizing that her scapula feathers are ticklish. “If they were a customer.”

“You don’t have to keep hoping about that,” Wisteria’s reply comes out dry. “Yes, he kinda got kicked out of the restaurant and blacklisted. My manager is at least good about that, or maybe she didn’t want me to end up punching a customer on the job.”

This breaks a laugh loose from him. “Would it be too remiss of me to say that I would have loved to see that?”

“What, me getting fired?” There’s mirth dancing in her eyes. “Or punching someone?”

“Speaking any further would incriminate myself,” Baxter says, primly stepping away from answering that. He gives her a soft grin. “Thank you for coming to me this evening.” For ending up on his doorstep, just in time for him to stop her from plucking at her feather when she deserves a place to feel safe. For asking for him on the yacht when Liz, Lee, and Cove would have gladly gone. For making his evenings feel much less empty, even when she bumbles about it.

Later, she ends up half-asleep on his couch when he’s finished grooming her wings; having deemed it a long enough soak to soften her flight feather, he straightens it and feels a deep sense of satisfaction.

After the ice cream truck, the sun shower might be one of the quintessential summer experiences that could get him near-giddy.

Running through the sprinklers in a suburban neighborhood is one thing. Rain drizzling down like a lingering remnant of the clouds that have drifted far away, splashing the unsuspecting, reminds him of the weather in Golden Grove. It often rained in Golden Grove, particularly as autumn drew close; it was a much different experience, with cloudy grey skies offsetting the deep reds, golds, and browns of the trees far below, the rain like tears that tried to cleanse the deep ache that had made its home in his heart and brought him to flee the nest.

It reminds him of Golden Grove, and yet it is everything that a rainy day in his old hometown is not.

The sunlight is still out in full force. Rain droplets, caught in the sunbeams, lit up and glinted gold as they fell and cascaded down Wisteria’s face. It is the sight of them that snaps him out of his stunned delight, long enough to remember—

He brings her in close with one arm, shutting the car door she had just come out of with his other hand. Chiding himself for having no umbrella on hand, he brings his wings up above the both of them to shelter her from the unexpected drizzle.

The sunshower continues for a few minutes more; he wonders if Wisteria can feel his heart pound against his ribcage, her face tucked against his neck. He is at once both peaceful and unmoored, in awe of how the rain can feel so gentle. They stand there, Baxter unbothered by his feathers becoming damp, the droplets seeping through the topside to run in unseen rivulets down his plumage. 

For once, his seraph wings feel useful. 

When the rain ebbs, he lowers his wings with a sigh. A part of him feels almost wistful; it’s another moment that passed him by so quickly, one that he will look back on from time to time.

She is suspiciously still, wrapped up in his arm, up until she pulls away. “You didn’t have to do that,” Wisteria squints at him. “Your wings are all wet.”

Baxter grins at her, broad and unabashed. The tips of her ears are very red. “I would rather not see you beset with another cold, and right after our date. My wings will simply dry off.” 

Wisteria’s look is supremely unimpressed. She ruffles her wings, the ones on either side of her head flattening against her hair, and reaches out to take his arm. “Come on. We’ll dry off together inside my house.”

She brings him past the Blanc home’s threshold, pausing when they’re both inside. 

Elizabeth has once again made herself at home on the living room couch, hunched before her laptop with a frown to rival the size of Pamela’s Cheshire cat grins she sometimes sends her beleaguered daughters. Her wings, in fiery hues of deep orange and pale gold, flex about in annoyance behind her. He suspects that her summer courses are going on rather challengingly, and he and Wisteria both pause when brown eyes flicker to their entrance and narrow.

“That drizzle just now got you two, huh?” She eyes Baxter’s wings. He tenses, ready to be turned out the door for dripping all over the floor. Instead, all the elder Blanc sister says is, “Why is he soaked?”

Ria shrugs. “He thought that I needed an umbrella. And then decided his wings would work out.”

The frown that had seemed near-permanent for this afternoon melts from Liz’s face. “Huh.” She regards Baxter with an odd little half-smile, an impish tilt to her eyes and lips that has her little sister immediately on guard around her. “Well, hurry to the bathroom and help the poor guy, won’t you?”

Before Liz can say anything more, Wisteria shoots her a flinty look and tugs Baxter after her. They go to the bathroom on the second floor, and she gives him a little push on his back when he hesitates at the doorway. “Come on.”

The drying fans whirr to life, pelting them on either side with warm breezes that penetrate through the top layers of their feathers. He sighs as the temporary chill — brought on by stepping inside an airconditioned home with his feathers soaked through — melts away with the heated blasts of air. 

“I forgot to say this earlier,” Wisteria begins, prompting him to turn towards her. “But thanks for that.” She steps up, close and personal, towards him. “I would like to do something for you, in turn.”

His smile grows mischievous, from languid to heated at the drop of a hat. “I would adore anything from you, Ria, but you needn’t insist on a repayment.” He pauses, letting his gaze point to the closed bathroom door meaningfully. “I believe that a bathroom at your home wouldn’t be the most appropriate, though, would it?” His tone is idle musing and faux demureness. 

Cocking her head, Wisteria frowns. Her tone carries a distinct note of confusion. “I was about to ask you if I could groom your feathers after they’ve dried off.”

“What.” 

He… He didn’t mishear her, did he?

She grins at him, sharp and pointed. “You didn’t think I’d let you take care of me without doing the same for you in turn, did you, Baxter?”

He’s discombobulated, more than just a little stunned, and despite it all, so damn comfortable. Lying on his stomach atop her bed, he represses a shudder when lithe fingers smooth the downy insides of his wings, preening and tugging at long flight feathers.

“I’m sorry we don’t have the—” Wisteria pauses. “Guerlain products you use, but my Ma has something similar that she mixes herself.” She tilts her head. “I don’t really need additional oiling for mine, but Mom needs additional care for hers since she doesn’t produce as much oil naturally, and that’s why Ma picked the practice up. I suspected that it might be a similar case for you, considering the volume of six wings.”

An involuntary giggle escapes him when she pulls away from his flight feathers to run her fingers through the tiny feathers along his spine. He’s ticklish there, and he didn’t even realize until someone touched him gently enough to make the reflex kick in.

Baxter bites his lip afterwards, his face burning red.

There’s a pregnant pause, and then the fingers return to dancing atop the feathers up and down his spine. With a vengeance, and the deftness of an experienced piano player.

He tenses, doesn’t try to hold back that hard, and laughs; he fears that Elizabeth downstairs would hear the snorts and giggles that Wisteria evilly pries from him with her quick hand. 

Once the impromptu tickle attack has ceased, and Ria has taken pity on him, Baxter huffs and glares at her headboard. “You devious little— I swear, one day I will yet have my turn.” He sends her a look over his shoulder, promising playful vengeance.

“You relaxed.” Wisteria hums, turning her attention back to his upper right wing. He tries to ignore the ache in his chest. “I’m glad.”

His throat tightens, and he rests his head against her pillow. It’s fragrant with the scent of her shampoo, sweet and entirely her. “Tending my wings will be quite the hassle, I did not wish to impose it upon you.”

“... Baxter, I help three other ladies in this house with their wings every month. Well, two, since my sister is away at college more often than not.” Wisteria’s gaze burns into the back of his head. Her voice is quiet, laden with a meaning that he’s not yet ready to comprehend. “It’s really not a problem for me.”

There’s a lull in conversation afterwards, and he finds himself near to dozing off, eyes slipping shut more than once. She takes her own pace, moving like she has all the time in the world to focus on each and every feather. It makes thinking — more importantly, dreading — so much more laborious when there’s a gentle hand in his middle left wing, treating it like it’s a cherished part of him.

Wisteria speaks, voice barely above a hushed whisper. 

“In the one moment I got to take a good look at you before you hid me from the rain, Baxter Alexander Ward, I thought I was looking at an angel.”

In the hazy in-between limbo straddling consciousness and dreams, the part of him that listens recognizes the feelings that linger behind her words. He keeps his silence, letting her go on to think that such an admission went unheard.

“I think I’d prefer you over the popular interpretations of angels… You’re wonderful. You contradict yourself so often that I’m often confused. And you’re infuriating sometimes, and I can’t stop looking away from you. I don’t think real angels could ever be like that. So please, just remain as you are without trying to live up to them, or anything else.”

It’s not the first time someone has called him an angel. Rather, it’s an on-the-nose nickname from past flames, considering the three pairs of wings that he carries.

But it is the first time that someone has breathed it into the silence like it’s a secret, not meant for him to hear. Not meant to flatter him. 

Why, then, are they worth millions more than the praises so easily bestowed upon him?

It’s evening when he wakes up, just in time for a dinner at the Blanc household. There’s a sharp tease at the ready for him and Wisteria when they come to the table, courtesy of Elizabeth.

As Wisteria passes him a dish of mung beans, his hand brushing against hers, he swears to carry her words and their glow with him for as long as he could.

They say that humans have long become incapable of flight, their wings not physically capable, their wings a vestigial trait left over after millennia of evolution. To fly is a pipe dream, and humans can only look to the heavens with coveting eyes or resort to contraptions of steel and technology to mimic what they once took for granted.

But he thinks they found the feeling of flying attainable in other things, in the words one can say when they think the other is asleep.