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xmmficathon assignment! :)
Title: The Man On The Flying Trapeze
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: X-Men movieverse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,500 words
Spoilers: X3
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The X-Men are not mine.
Summary: Some people aren't meant to be kept on the ground.
Written for:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
redfiona99
Scenario requested: Warren; Something flying related, can be set pre, during or after the film.
Author's notes: Thanks toksorcere for the beta. :)
*****
The Man On The Flying Trapeze
*****
The first time Warren flies, it's an accident, and it might not even be real. He slips in the shower, heels skidding against the slick tiles under his feet, and he grabs onto the bar onto the side of the shower before his hip slams into the floor. But he could swear the breeze from behind him is as much of a surprise as the slip-slide of his body towards the tiles, the powerful tug of something pulling him upwards.
His wings are still too small, he thinks, but maybe.
Maybe.
*
The second time he flies, it takes just as many months to practice as it does to work up the nerve.
The practice is easier than he thinks. The initial shock of reaching back to scratch his shoulder blade for the millionth time in a week and brushing his fingertips over pinfeathers, white and perfect and slightly damp where they emerge from his skin, dies a quick death. The fear of being found out fades away the first time he tilts back his head and looks up at the sky, the feathers tickling his flesh as they skim across the inside of his expensive school uniform.
If something's calling to him up there, he's probably just imagining that.
When they finally begin to take the shape of wings, he comes up with an exercise regiment, as lame as it is. He flaps them whenever he gets the chance, even when they're too small to gain any sort of lift or support his weight. He learns to do his homework at his desk with paperweights on everything and a slight breeze coming from behind him. He gets good at not splashing shampoo lather in his face in the shower. He sits up on the roof of their penthouse and makes a dent in his reading list for English class and works out his wings until his shoulders burn.
Dad is in Washington talking to Senators, Dad is in London on business, Dad has to go to Japan, Rio de Janiero, Moscow. Dad isn't home enough to notice.
So no one important really knows the day Warren Worthington III throws himself off the roof of a parking garage.
Someone grabs onto his ankle and tugs, tugs hard, and he's afraid for the briefest of moments that someone really is yanking at his leg until his ankle swells. He fights back, struggling against the thing pulling at him, and he grabs with frantic hands at the edge of the roof. He holds on for dear life, wings flapping like crazy. His breath comes out ragged and harsh, and his small chest heaves from the effort.
It doesn't even occur to him until later that the creature forcing him towards the ground against his will is gravity.
*
The third time he flies, it's just a few feet off the roof of the parking garage, just enough to feed his craving. But then the wind blows, a teasing breeze, and he nearly tumbles right over the side again.
*
The fourth time he flies, he glides a little.
Not a lot, but enough. The wind carries him forward, sends him along with the toes of his sneakers skimming along the cement. He doesn't flap, just lets his spread wings hold him up off the ground. They are big and strong enough to carry him. They're not a useless sort of beautiful, not fragile and powerful and perfect and flawed all at once. They don't just take up space.
He smiles to himself, his argument found, and allows himself to drift on the breeze.
*
The fifth time he flies, it's in front of his father.
He times it just right, the butler gone, the elder Worthington's assistant off filing something or faxing something or whatever it is Louis does after Warren Worthington, Jr. claps him on the shoulder with a smile and says, You got that? Louis golfs once a month with his boss, and his mother gets a bouquet of flowers every Mother's Day with the elder Worthington's neat handwriting signing the card. His dad's just like that.
Warren doesn't have to knock on his father's office door to get his attention. He's spent more time in the office in the penthouse growing up than he has in his own bedroom, crawling on the floor under the huge desk, running his toy trucks along the lines in the Persian rugs. There's a vague memory from long ago of being hauled up from the ground by his waist while his chubby legs kick and flail playfully, the gummy imprint of his mouth on the edge of the desk. He thinks his father lifted him in the air to a chorus of happy squeals, with the mayor or a congressman or someone important waiting for Junior's attention, but he might have just imagined that last part.
He opens the door, and his father looks up from the report he's going over to flash Warren a wide grin. Hey, kiddo, he says, putting aside his work. He pushes his chair away from his desk, waves Warren over with an eager hand.
Later on, Warren thinks he said something along the lines of, There's something I've got to tell you, or maybe, A funny thing happened while you were away. He knows he tugged aside the knot in his bathrobe. He later remembers the moment his wings sensed freedom and stretched outward in reflex under the robe, because that's when his father's eyes widened and stayed that way.
No, it's definitely, There's something I've got to show you.
He's afraid and slow, but then his wings push at the soft material of the robe and suddenly he's frantic and pulling it aside.
There's something I've got to show you, Dad, he says again, and before Warren Worthington, Jr. can say anything in response his son is three feet off the ground.
*
The sixth time he flies, it's six months later.
That's how long it takes for his wings to grow back. There's a few weeks there when he can't even remember what happened, where he feels the urge to ask how he lost them before he looks into his father's pitying gaze and remembers, Oh. That's why.
It's mostly sensation he remembers, the hot shedding of tears down his cheeks even before the first cut, wet feathers sticking to his skin and leaving dark smudges behind, a sharp pain like lightning that faded into a dull ominous roar that didn't go away for weeks. He remembers the weight of shredded flesh and broken bones in his hands. He remembers throwing up more than once and the acidic burn in his throat that lasted almost as long as the empty ache across his back.
He thinks he threw up when he heard his father asking the doctor who came to fix him if he could surgically remove what was left of his wings.
Or maybe he threw up when the doctor shook his head.
When his wings finally grow back, twice as plush and pristine and white, even bigger than they'd been before, it's like a silent threat. Don't take us away again, Warren. We're not so bad. You'll see.
He flaps them out of instinct and lifts off the ground, stopping before he gets more than a few inches away from the safety of the hardwood.
He sits on his bed with his head in his hands and his thoughts on another planet, his wings stretching behind him as if living a life of their own. Searching out somewhere to go, something to do, open air, a stiff breeze.
His father settles beside him on the bed and rests a warm hand on the back of Warren's neck, careful not to touch the wings.
Don't worry, he says, and Warren isn't worried until he adds, We'll find a way to get rid of them for good, son.
*
The seventh time he flies, it lasts all summer long.
The first few times it brought bad luck and pain, and Warren tries not to think about flying. He stares out the window during classes -- his wings fit comfortably under his clothes, and thank God for small favors -- and he closes his eyes to block out the steady glide of birds across crystal blue skies. He ignores the wantneedlust in his brain, the desire to shuck the pressed shirt of his school uniform and make a run for the roof.
He hasn't really flown since his wings grew back, won't allow himself the taste of it. He learns the word atrophy, barely twitches the damn things and hopes in spite of himself.
They line themselves with lean muscle in defiance, and the rest of his body follows suit.
When he's sixteen, his father announces at the breakfast table, How'd you like to spend the summer at the country house, son?
Warren holds his forkful of scrambled eggs in midair and wonders who's spending the summer at the penthouse that his father wants him to avoid.
The "country house" is more like a mansion, a huge sprawling building in the middle of the Appalachians surrounded by miles of family-owned land and far from the curious eyes in the Hamptons or Connecticut. The last time he was there was before the wings, but the staff is long-term and silent and well-paid to remain both ways.
Yeah, sure, he says, and shovels scrambled eggs into his mouth before the excited tremble in his fingers shakes them off his fork.
When he arrives at the house, he recognizes them all -- Mrs. Cooper, the housekeeper; Begley, the butler; Mr. Garcia, the groundskeeper, and his tomboy of a daughter whose name escapes Warren at the moment. He can't say anything, knows the words will break and shatter before they can even pass his lips. Everyone's smiles are friendly and warm, and when Mrs. Cooper says, We've missed you around here, young man, she hugs him tight and presses her hands down on his back right over his wings.
He's pretty sure she did that on purpose.
She leads him upstairs to his bedroom yammering the whole way, Aired out your room and scented it with those brownies you used to like and That awful dog of the chauffeur's got run over, if you can believe that and Jorge's girl's quite the math whiz, it seems, she'll be off at MIT come graduation at the rate she's going. She waves her hands as she walks beside him and the anxious hum in his nerves bleeds away.
His room is the way he remembers it, with the exception of the stack of folded clothes on his bed. He picks up a T-shirt he doesn't recognize that looks to be about his size and sucks in a ragged breath when he turns it around.
Two slashes extend down the back of the T-shirt, neatly mended into the cotton.
When his gaze darts almost frantically to Mrs. Cooper, her cheeks color as she shrugs. Now, if they don't fit, you'll let me know, she says, and it's nothing short of an order. The back field is free. I'm sure no one will bother you there.
He practically scrambles out of his blazer and his button-down shirt as she watches, her eyes widening as his wings stretch and yawn and tremble at being restrained so long. My word, she whispers, and he flinches as if he'd forgotten she was there. Maybe he had, just a little. There's snaps and hooks sewn into the fabric of the shirt, but one arm's in and the other's out and he'll worry about maneuvering them around the wings just as soon as he gets it on over his head, except --
-- except Mrs. Cooper's hands are on his cheeks, heavy and warm and smelling faintly like chocolate chip cookies, and if she cries he's not sure what he's going to do.
Don't you listen, she says, right before she hurries from the room.
*
The eighth time he flies, completely and totally separate from the long brilliant nonstop flight that's been his summer, it's the night he loses his virginity.
Mrs. Cooper is right, that the others will leave him alone in the back field. He supposes they were paid to do so, but he doesn't care. His feet don't touch the ground for hours, and if his wings could exhale in ecstasy, they would. He tests his limits, how fast he can go and how long he can stay up and how high he can reach above the clouds before the lack of oxygen starts to get to him.
After a week of days left to himself, he lands to find the groundskeeper's daughter sitting cross-legged on the slope down to the back field.
She closes the faded copy of Christine in her hands with her pointer finger stuck in between the pages, marking her place. Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, she says. That a record?
She tilts her head and her long dark hair spills over her shoulder. He hasn't seen it out of braids since he came here, and it's more disconcerting than it should be. With a shake of his head, he says, I was up for at least five hours on Wednesday.
That long, huh?
It sounds like teasing.
I could be up for longer if I want, he says in his own defense, and it suddenly occurs to him that he's arguing about his flying with someone, with a girl, and not about how a freak like him shouldn't even be able to do it.
Instead of keeping it up, though, she says, Does it hurt when they get plucked out?
He frowns. Not really, he says. The primaries hurt, but the secondaries feel like pulling out a hair.
Okay, she says, and reaches back to take one.
He winces when she does it, and she raises the feather she removes with a smile. Thanks, I needed a bookmark.
And that's Millie.
She doesn't stop coming to the back field, always there from that first visit onward. He half-expects her to throw breadcrumbs at the ground to get him to come down more often as a sick joke, but she doesn't. She reads her books and plays classic rock music on a weathered boom box that's probably older than both of them and threatens to slip in a boy band CD if he doesn't talk to her more often.
You don't have to come down to talk to me, she points out one day. Your voice works just fine up there.
So what exactly are we supposed to talk about?
His wings catch the air in great greedy movements as he speaks, and he can't help but think of his classmates in prep school if they'd been in his position. They'd have said the same thing, he imagines, but he can just hear their snide tones in his head, looking down on Millie in ways that he can't even when he's hovering twenty feet off the ground. He's a rich mutant freak with wings who needed a tutor to pass chemistry. She's a groundskeeper's daughter who's probably going to invent a cure for cancer. Their conversation topics are limited.
She shrugs, though. Just keep talking, she says. Sooner or later, we'll figure out something.
She's right. They do figure out something, and it only takes two months for them to do it.
When he finally kisses her, she tastes like warmth and plums and sugar, her small tongue sliding along his and leaving behind the faint hint of cinnamon. He thinks of the gum she's seemingly been chewing for six weeks straight, and his smile presses against her lips. Hours later she moves beneath him, her hands stroking along his arms, ribs, hips. Afterwards, she runs her fingers over the feathers, through them, and he shivers.
Take me up?
He's never done that, not with anyone, not even with his father, but they're out in the back field staring up at the starlit midnight sky and --
Yes. Okay, let's do it.
Up above, the mansion looks like an oasis of candles in a pool of shadows, but he goes up just high enough to see other homes, nearby towns, the gentle roll of the land. Millie holds on tight with her arms wrapped around his chest, the smooth movements of his wings blowing her hair away from her eyes.
She smiles in amazement at the view and pokes him in the ribs. You should sell tickets, she says. You'd make millions.
When she laughs, soft and infectious, he laughs along in spite of himself.
*
The ninth time he flies, it's the last chance he gets before everything he goes to hell.
The car comes to pick him up at the end of the summer and his wings are out for all to see. He's pretty sure the staff doesn't even see them anymore, not the way others do. Begley artfully moves around them as he passes Warren in the halls and Mrs. Cooper's only complaint involves finding down clogging the shower drain or feathers strewn on the hall carpeting. You sure you're not molting, young man? she always says, and he never can stop himself from blushing at that.
But then the car arrives, and when his father steps out of it, he looks triumphant.
Good news, son. We think we've found a cure.
Warren can't be sure, but it feels like he swallowed a lead weight.
His father says they're leaving that afternoon, that they'll go back to the city to start testing on him, that the cure may take years to perfect but when they do he'll be first in line for the procedure. His father sounds so damn hopeful that just looking at him makes Warren go numb.
He asks for a moment alone before they leave and gets it, darting to the back field. He's off the ground and into the sky before he even realizes it, going higher and higher until he can't see anything but the rippling white of the cloud cover and the golden warmth of the sun on his face. He can stay up there for hours, he thinks. No one says he has to come back down again, that he has to drift back to earth and lash himself to the ground. No one says he has to spend the rest of his life feeling like his arms are missing.
No one, really, except for his father.
*
He stops counting his flights the day he leaps to his freedom.
His father's behind him somewhere up there by that broken window, he knows, not feeling the same sort of awe Warren sees in the faces of those he passes over. He hears whispers of angel and miracle, catches sight of a few people crossing themselves. It's not unexpected, but he's never seen it before, never let it register even if it had.
It doesn't matter. He's flying, really goddamn flying, and he never has to stop if he doesn't want to.
There's this saying he heard once, about flying being the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing. He wishes there were someone he could argue that with, somewhere he could send an angry letter, some person he could call to bitterly complain.
Flying's not about throwing yourself at the ground and missing, he'd say, it's about throwing yourself at the sky and grabbing on in desperation. Flying's about going through life with too-broad shoulders from carrying the extra weight of feathers and bone and flesh and still feeling weightless all the time. Flying is always being only a discarded coat and an unbuttoned shirt away from complete and total freedom.
He's never been a poetic kind of guy but for this ...
Yeah, for this he could be.
xmmficathon assignment! :)Title: The Man On The Flying Trapeze
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: X-Men movieverse
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,500 words
Spoilers: X3
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: The X-Men are not mine.
Summary: Some people aren't meant to be kept on the ground.
Written for:
redfiona99 Scenario requested: Warren; Something flying related, can be set pre, during or after the film.
Author's notes: Thanks to
ksorcere for the beta. :)The Man On The Flying Trapeze
*****
The first time Warren flies, it's an accident, and it might not even be real. He slips in the shower, heels skidding against the slick tiles under his feet, and he grabs onto the bar onto the side of the shower before his hip slams into the floor. But he could swear the breeze from behind him is as much of a surprise as the slip-slide of his body towards the tiles, the powerful tug of something pulling him upwards.
His wings are still too small, he thinks, but maybe.
Maybe.
The second time he flies, it takes just as many months to practice as it does to work up the nerve.
The practice is easier than he thinks. The initial shock of reaching back to scratch his shoulder blade for the millionth time in a week and brushing his fingertips over pinfeathers, white and perfect and slightly damp where they emerge from his skin, dies a quick death. The fear of being found out fades away the first time he tilts back his head and looks up at the sky, the feathers tickling his flesh as they skim across the inside of his expensive school uniform.
If something's calling to him up there, he's probably just imagining that.
When they finally begin to take the shape of wings, he comes up with an exercise regiment, as lame as it is. He flaps them whenever he gets the chance, even when they're too small to gain any sort of lift or support his weight. He learns to do his homework at his desk with paperweights on everything and a slight breeze coming from behind him. He gets good at not splashing shampoo lather in his face in the shower. He sits up on the roof of their penthouse and makes a dent in his reading list for English class and works out his wings until his shoulders burn.
Dad is in Washington talking to Senators, Dad is in London on business, Dad has to go to Japan, Rio de Janiero, Moscow. Dad isn't home enough to notice.
So no one important really knows the day Warren Worthington III throws himself off the roof of a parking garage.
Someone grabs onto his ankle and tugs, tugs hard, and he's afraid for the briefest of moments that someone really is yanking at his leg until his ankle swells. He fights back, struggling against the thing pulling at him, and he grabs with frantic hands at the edge of the roof. He holds on for dear life, wings flapping like crazy. His breath comes out ragged and harsh, and his small chest heaves from the effort.
It doesn't even occur to him until later that the creature forcing him towards the ground against his will is gravity.
The third time he flies, it's just a few feet off the roof of the parking garage, just enough to feed his craving. But then the wind blows, a teasing breeze, and he nearly tumbles right over the side again.
The fourth time he flies, he glides a little.
Not a lot, but enough. The wind carries him forward, sends him along with the toes of his sneakers skimming along the cement. He doesn't flap, just lets his spread wings hold him up off the ground. They are big and strong enough to carry him. They're not a useless sort of beautiful, not fragile and powerful and perfect and flawed all at once. They don't just take up space.
He smiles to himself, his argument found, and allows himself to drift on the breeze.
The fifth time he flies, it's in front of his father.
He times it just right, the butler gone, the elder Worthington's assistant off filing something or faxing something or whatever it is Louis does after Warren Worthington, Jr. claps him on the shoulder with a smile and says, You got that? Louis golfs once a month with his boss, and his mother gets a bouquet of flowers every Mother's Day with the elder Worthington's neat handwriting signing the card. His dad's just like that.
Warren doesn't have to knock on his father's office door to get his attention. He's spent more time in the office in the penthouse growing up than he has in his own bedroom, crawling on the floor under the huge desk, running his toy trucks along the lines in the Persian rugs. There's a vague memory from long ago of being hauled up from the ground by his waist while his chubby legs kick and flail playfully, the gummy imprint of his mouth on the edge of the desk. He thinks his father lifted him in the air to a chorus of happy squeals, with the mayor or a congressman or someone important waiting for Junior's attention, but he might have just imagined that last part.
He opens the door, and his father looks up from the report he's going over to flash Warren a wide grin. Hey, kiddo, he says, putting aside his work. He pushes his chair away from his desk, waves Warren over with an eager hand.
Later on, Warren thinks he said something along the lines of, There's something I've got to tell you, or maybe, A funny thing happened while you were away. He knows he tugged aside the knot in his bathrobe. He later remembers the moment his wings sensed freedom and stretched outward in reflex under the robe, because that's when his father's eyes widened and stayed that way.
No, it's definitely, There's something I've got to show you.
He's afraid and slow, but then his wings push at the soft material of the robe and suddenly he's frantic and pulling it aside.
There's something I've got to show you, Dad, he says again, and before Warren Worthington, Jr. can say anything in response his son is three feet off the ground.
The sixth time he flies, it's six months later.
That's how long it takes for his wings to grow back. There's a few weeks there when he can't even remember what happened, where he feels the urge to ask how he lost them before he looks into his father's pitying gaze and remembers, Oh. That's why.
It's mostly sensation he remembers, the hot shedding of tears down his cheeks even before the first cut, wet feathers sticking to his skin and leaving dark smudges behind, a sharp pain like lightning that faded into a dull ominous roar that didn't go away for weeks. He remembers the weight of shredded flesh and broken bones in his hands. He remembers throwing up more than once and the acidic burn in his throat that lasted almost as long as the empty ache across his back.
He thinks he threw up when he heard his father asking the doctor who came to fix him if he could surgically remove what was left of his wings.
Or maybe he threw up when the doctor shook his head.
When his wings finally grow back, twice as plush and pristine and white, even bigger than they'd been before, it's like a silent threat. Don't take us away again, Warren. We're not so bad. You'll see.
He flaps them out of instinct and lifts off the ground, stopping before he gets more than a few inches away from the safety of the hardwood.
He sits on his bed with his head in his hands and his thoughts on another planet, his wings stretching behind him as if living a life of their own. Searching out somewhere to go, something to do, open air, a stiff breeze.
His father settles beside him on the bed and rests a warm hand on the back of Warren's neck, careful not to touch the wings.
Don't worry, he says, and Warren isn't worried until he adds, We'll find a way to get rid of them for good, son.
The seventh time he flies, it lasts all summer long.
The first few times it brought bad luck and pain, and Warren tries not to think about flying. He stares out the window during classes -- his wings fit comfortably under his clothes, and thank God for small favors -- and he closes his eyes to block out the steady glide of birds across crystal blue skies. He ignores the wantneedlust in his brain, the desire to shuck the pressed shirt of his school uniform and make a run for the roof.
He hasn't really flown since his wings grew back, won't allow himself the taste of it. He learns the word atrophy, barely twitches the damn things and hopes in spite of himself.
They line themselves with lean muscle in defiance, and the rest of his body follows suit.
When he's sixteen, his father announces at the breakfast table, How'd you like to spend the summer at the country house, son?
Warren holds his forkful of scrambled eggs in midair and wonders who's spending the summer at the penthouse that his father wants him to avoid.
The "country house" is more like a mansion, a huge sprawling building in the middle of the Appalachians surrounded by miles of family-owned land and far from the curious eyes in the Hamptons or Connecticut. The last time he was there was before the wings, but the staff is long-term and silent and well-paid to remain both ways.
Yeah, sure, he says, and shovels scrambled eggs into his mouth before the excited tremble in his fingers shakes them off his fork.
When he arrives at the house, he recognizes them all -- Mrs. Cooper, the housekeeper; Begley, the butler; Mr. Garcia, the groundskeeper, and his tomboy of a daughter whose name escapes Warren at the moment. He can't say anything, knows the words will break and shatter before they can even pass his lips. Everyone's smiles are friendly and warm, and when Mrs. Cooper says, We've missed you around here, young man, she hugs him tight and presses her hands down on his back right over his wings.
He's pretty sure she did that on purpose.
She leads him upstairs to his bedroom yammering the whole way, Aired out your room and scented it with those brownies you used to like and That awful dog of the chauffeur's got run over, if you can believe that and Jorge's girl's quite the math whiz, it seems, she'll be off at MIT come graduation at the rate she's going. She waves her hands as she walks beside him and the anxious hum in his nerves bleeds away.
His room is the way he remembers it, with the exception of the stack of folded clothes on his bed. He picks up a T-shirt he doesn't recognize that looks to be about his size and sucks in a ragged breath when he turns it around.
Two slashes extend down the back of the T-shirt, neatly mended into the cotton.
When his gaze darts almost frantically to Mrs. Cooper, her cheeks color as she shrugs. Now, if they don't fit, you'll let me know, she says, and it's nothing short of an order. The back field is free. I'm sure no one will bother you there.
He practically scrambles out of his blazer and his button-down shirt as she watches, her eyes widening as his wings stretch and yawn and tremble at being restrained so long. My word, she whispers, and he flinches as if he'd forgotten she was there. Maybe he had, just a little. There's snaps and hooks sewn into the fabric of the shirt, but one arm's in and the other's out and he'll worry about maneuvering them around the wings just as soon as he gets it on over his head, except --
-- except Mrs. Cooper's hands are on his cheeks, heavy and warm and smelling faintly like chocolate chip cookies, and if she cries he's not sure what he's going to do.
Don't you listen, she says, right before she hurries from the room.
The eighth time he flies, completely and totally separate from the long brilliant nonstop flight that's been his summer, it's the night he loses his virginity.
Mrs. Cooper is right, that the others will leave him alone in the back field. He supposes they were paid to do so, but he doesn't care. His feet don't touch the ground for hours, and if his wings could exhale in ecstasy, they would. He tests his limits, how fast he can go and how long he can stay up and how high he can reach above the clouds before the lack of oxygen starts to get to him.
After a week of days left to himself, he lands to find the groundskeeper's daughter sitting cross-legged on the slope down to the back field.
She closes the faded copy of Christine in her hands with her pointer finger stuck in between the pages, marking her place. Four hours, twenty-seven minutes, she says. That a record?
She tilts her head and her long dark hair spills over her shoulder. He hasn't seen it out of braids since he came here, and it's more disconcerting than it should be. With a shake of his head, he says, I was up for at least five hours on Wednesday.
That long, huh?
It sounds like teasing.
I could be up for longer if I want, he says in his own defense, and it suddenly occurs to him that he's arguing about his flying with someone, with a girl, and not about how a freak like him shouldn't even be able to do it.
Instead of keeping it up, though, she says, Does it hurt when they get plucked out?
He frowns. Not really, he says. The primaries hurt, but the secondaries feel like pulling out a hair.
Okay, she says, and reaches back to take one.
He winces when she does it, and she raises the feather she removes with a smile. Thanks, I needed a bookmark.
And that's Millie.
She doesn't stop coming to the back field, always there from that first visit onward. He half-expects her to throw breadcrumbs at the ground to get him to come down more often as a sick joke, but she doesn't. She reads her books and plays classic rock music on a weathered boom box that's probably older than both of them and threatens to slip in a boy band CD if he doesn't talk to her more often.
You don't have to come down to talk to me, she points out one day. Your voice works just fine up there.
So what exactly are we supposed to talk about?
His wings catch the air in great greedy movements as he speaks, and he can't help but think of his classmates in prep school if they'd been in his position. They'd have said the same thing, he imagines, but he can just hear their snide tones in his head, looking down on Millie in ways that he can't even when he's hovering twenty feet off the ground. He's a rich mutant freak with wings who needed a tutor to pass chemistry. She's a groundskeeper's daughter who's probably going to invent a cure for cancer. Their conversation topics are limited.
She shrugs, though. Just keep talking, she says. Sooner or later, we'll figure out something.
She's right. They do figure out something, and it only takes two months for them to do it.
When he finally kisses her, she tastes like warmth and plums and sugar, her small tongue sliding along his and leaving behind the faint hint of cinnamon. He thinks of the gum she's seemingly been chewing for six weeks straight, and his smile presses against her lips. Hours later she moves beneath him, her hands stroking along his arms, ribs, hips. Afterwards, she runs her fingers over the feathers, through them, and he shivers.
Take me up?
He's never done that, not with anyone, not even with his father, but they're out in the back field staring up at the starlit midnight sky and --
Yes. Okay, let's do it.
Up above, the mansion looks like an oasis of candles in a pool of shadows, but he goes up just high enough to see other homes, nearby towns, the gentle roll of the land. Millie holds on tight with her arms wrapped around his chest, the smooth movements of his wings blowing her hair away from her eyes.
She smiles in amazement at the view and pokes him in the ribs. You should sell tickets, she says. You'd make millions.
When she laughs, soft and infectious, he laughs along in spite of himself.
The ninth time he flies, it's the last chance he gets before everything he goes to hell.
The car comes to pick him up at the end of the summer and his wings are out for all to see. He's pretty sure the staff doesn't even see them anymore, not the way others do. Begley artfully moves around them as he passes Warren in the halls and Mrs. Cooper's only complaint involves finding down clogging the shower drain or feathers strewn on the hall carpeting. You sure you're not molting, young man? she always says, and he never can stop himself from blushing at that.
But then the car arrives, and when his father steps out of it, he looks triumphant.
Good news, son. We think we've found a cure.
Warren can't be sure, but it feels like he swallowed a lead weight.
His father says they're leaving that afternoon, that they'll go back to the city to start testing on him, that the cure may take years to perfect but when they do he'll be first in line for the procedure. His father sounds so damn hopeful that just looking at him makes Warren go numb.
He asks for a moment alone before they leave and gets it, darting to the back field. He's off the ground and into the sky before he even realizes it, going higher and higher until he can't see anything but the rippling white of the cloud cover and the golden warmth of the sun on his face. He can stay up there for hours, he thinks. No one says he has to come back down again, that he has to drift back to earth and lash himself to the ground. No one says he has to spend the rest of his life feeling like his arms are missing.
No one, really, except for his father.
He stops counting his flights the day he leaps to his freedom.
His father's behind him somewhere up there by that broken window, he knows, not feeling the same sort of awe Warren sees in the faces of those he passes over. He hears whispers of angel and miracle, catches sight of a few people crossing themselves. It's not unexpected, but he's never seen it before, never let it register even if it had.
It doesn't matter. He's flying, really goddamn flying, and he never has to stop if he doesn't want to.
There's this saying he heard once, about flying being the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing. He wishes there were someone he could argue that with, somewhere he could send an angry letter, some person he could call to bitterly complain.
Flying's not about throwing yourself at the ground and missing, he'd say, it's about throwing yourself at the sky and grabbing on in desperation. Flying's about going through life with too-broad shoulders from carrying the extra weight of feathers and bone and flesh and still feeling weightless all the time. Flying is always being only a discarded coat and an unbuttoned shirt away from complete and total freedom.
He's never been a poetic kind of guy but for this ...
Yeah, for this he could be.
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Date: 2006-09-23 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 02:30 pm (UTC)I love the time progression, and the orderly list, and the down clogging the shower (details!) and the way the staff at the summer hous totally adore him, and Warren's dad is such a dickhead.
He was always my favourite character in the comics and I wasn't so hot about what they did in X3, but this totally makes up for it.
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Date: 2006-09-23 05:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-01 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-22 05:32 pm (UTC)Lovely fic.
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Date: 2008-07-20 01:06 am (UTC)I can almost feel what it would be like to fly, to crave the sky.