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The worst part about developing stupid bird instincts, Tommy decided, is that they were stupid.
Sure, there were some nice things. Being able to flutter and glide down from great heights was awesome, and making a nest was really cool. When he remembered to preen his wings correctly, or get Phil to do it for him, that felt really great as well.
The problem was the way his stupid bird brain had developed and gotten attached, as if the past several years of Tommy living on his own had been erased and replaced with this instinctual feeling that consumed his mind with worry regarding the whereabouts of the people around him. When he had asked about it, once, Phil had called it the flock instinct, which Tommy thought was just as dumb as all the other things his bird brain had come up with. Why did he need a flock? He was Tommy Innit, avian hybrid above-average boy, and he did not need a flock . He had friends. Neighbors. Companions. But flock? No. He did not have a flock. He would not have a flock, not again.
Except, no matter how many times he tried to tell his brain that, it seemed intent on rewiring itself to be constantly seeking out one of the people he lived with. And more often than not, his brain seemed to want to seek out Phil. Tommy supposed that was because he was also a bird, like him, but that didn’t mean he liked that feeling.
Especially not right now.
Thunder crashed around them, and Tommy flinched as a bright flash of lightning sharply illuminated the window of the pub for a minute before disappearing, once again revealing the dark and stormy world outside.
“You’re sure he hasn’t messaged you?” Tommy couldn’t stop from asking pitifully from where he sat curled in the nest of pillows and blankets he had made on his bed. He was leaning heavily on Tubbo’s shoulder, trying to focus his ears on the quiet buzzing hum that Tubbo always seemed to emanate as the storm raged on around them.
“No, Tommy,” Tubbo hummed gently. “If he had messaged anyone, it’d be Wilbur or you, and then you’d know either way, right? Wilbur said he’d keep you updated.”
“Well why hasn’t he messaged?” Tommy complained. “He should message us, let us know he’s safe!”
“Maybe he’s stopped at a village for the night?” Tubbo suggested, always the practical one. “Maybe he’s already asleep, and just forgot to message us.”
“Maybe.” Tommy screwed his eyes shut and squeezed Tubbo’s hand, trying to get his brain to listen to his friend’s words. His heartbeat picked up, and every fiber in his being burned with the feeling of wrongness, of aching emptiness, and his eyes flew open in frustration. “But that’s not it, Tubbo, Phil always messages us, he always tells me when he’s coming home and he said he’d be home tonight, he said it wouldn’t be more than three days!”
“Well, he probably didn’t anticipate such a storm,” Tubbo reminded him. “None of us did, right?”
There was another crack of thunder, and Tommy bit down on a whine in the back of his throat. “Oh, where’s Phil?” he groaned, turning and flopping down against a pillow on his side. His wings fluttered at his back, still puffed with nerves that he couldn’t shake.
“I’m sure he’ll be back soon, Tommy, don’t worry. Just try to take your mind off it, alright?” Tubbo said soothingly, and Tommy buried his face in the pillow as a strangled keen full of worry and fear involuntarily left his mouth. That was the whole problem. He couldn’t take his mind off it, no matter how hard he tried. Every attempt circled back to the rapid, cycling thoughts of flock flock danger unsafe where flock help flock only he couldn’t, he couldn’t go out and find Phil, not when he couldn’t fly and didn’t have a clue what direction to go in anyways. Beside, he had already asked Wilbur and he was pretty sure if he were to step foot outside the pub the phantom hybrid would instantly materialize and drag Tommy back inside, so that was a no go.
Like his thoughts had summoned him, Wilbur rose out of the floor, rainwater sliding off his translucent skin. “Hey, Tommy,” he said, the slightest note of sympathy in his tone. “How are you doing?”
Tommy lifted his head from the pillow just enough to glare furiously at Wilbur. The bird-brain part of him beckoned for Wilbur to come closer flock flock more flock safe flock here , but his mouth beat his mind to the punch. “Not great, dickhead. Has Phil messaged you or what?”
Wilbur sat at the end of the bed, water dripping from the ends of his hair onto the pillow. Tommy considered snapping at him for it, but as he twisted his head to do so he caught the look in Wilbur’s dark brown eyes, a mixture of worry and fear that Tommy felt reflected in his own heart and mind. So he sat up instead, throwing his legs over the side of the nest to settle in between Tubbo and Wilbur.
“I sent Niki out to look for him,” Wilbur said finally. “Phil should be close by, right, since in his last check-in message he said he was on track. Niki volunteered to check the nearby rivers to see if she could spot him around there.”
“So now we wait for a message from her? From either of them?” Tommy asked hopefully. His communicator was sat in his lap, still painfully empty of any and all messages.
“Suppose so,” Wilbur said tightly, eyes flicking to the lightning flashing in the window. Then, “This storm is really quite awful, isn’t it.”
Rain battered against the windows that Phil had crafted and placed himself, and the aching in Tommy’s chest returned tenfold. He curled his legs up to his chest, wings folding up against his back briefly before he remembered himself and forced them to relax. His white and pale yellow wings drooped, brushing Tubbo and Wilbur’s backs and just touching the blankets he sat on. His wings brushed against Tubbo’s thin, nearly transparent wings, and both winged hybrids flicked their wings comfortingly against each other, resting feathers against the membrane. “I hope Phil’s alright,” he said morosely. “He’s got to be, right?”
“If anyone can fly through a storm, it’s Philza,” Tubbo said confidently in a manner that was probably meant to be reassuring, but only filled Tommy’s mind with a hundred scenarios of the exact opposite happening. Another keen left his mouth, and he pressed his head against his bent knees to muffle the sound.
“It’s stupid,” he bit out. “I hate this, I hate feeling like this, Wilbur, where the fuck is he?”
“Oh, Tommy,” Wilbur cooed gently, grasping Tommy’s other hand. Tommy squeezed it back tightly, wings rising a bit, extending like he was trying to cover the two on either side of him with his wings. It didn’t work, of course, his shorter wings only barely reached their far shoulderblades, but it was enough for Tommy that his racing mind slowed down, if only for a moment. Soon enough though, it was back to that borderline panic of wondering where the rest of his flock was. Stuck where he was, Tommy could only stare as the storm shook the branches of trees below back and forth wildly, and listen to the thunder rumble around him, praying that Phil would be landing on the balcony at any minute, and his dumb bird instincts would finally calm the fuck down and leave him alone.
|||
Here was the thing about storms, in Phil’s experience. If you could manage to stay above the downpour, and catch the updrafts higher in the air, they were pretty avoidable. Yes, the air was thinner, and yes, it was harder to fly long distances at that altitude, but Phil considered himself to have pretty fucking good stamina. He could hold out, at least long enough to get to the familiar part of the forest so he could make his way on foot through the rain if he had to.
In the end, all it had taken was one miscalculation, one moment of weariness where he had allowed himself to glide too far down in the clouds. Before he had known it, his tired mind was snapped to awareness by the heavy raindrops pummeling the hollow bones of his wings, soaking the feathers necessary for keeping him aloft.
It almost felt like the ocean as the wind and rain tossed him around in the sky, soaking him to the bone as he desperately tried to keep his head above water. Phil’s wings flapped desperately as he struggled to keep himself in the air, but the rain had made its intent clear, and with every second Phil was being shoved closer and closer to the ground, a landscape of thick trees that looked wholly unfamiliar.
Phil flinched and twisted in the air as a strong gust of wind threatened to rip the well-covered back off his back; his hand tightened around the strap of it as he yanked it as close as possible. This trip would not be for nothing, not if he had anything to say about it.
The treetops hurtled closer, and Phil still didn’t see anywhere safe to land. His wings were fully extended in an attempt to slow his descent into a glide, but the soaking weight on them made his appendages feel more like two heavy stones pulling him straight to the ground.
Phil spat water out of his mouth, blinking it out of his eyes best he could as he aimed for a patch of forest floor that seemed to have the least branches in the way. He tucked his waterlogged wings to his side and dove.
A gust of wind slammed into his side out of nowhere, sending the elytrian pinwheeling across the air as he struggled to get his bearings. So close to the treetops, Phil didn’t have time to orientate himself before his wings, forced open by the sudden wind, met the branches.
Wood cracked as loud as thunder in his ears as Phil plummeted the far shorter distance to the ground. Branches cracked all around him, and Phil lost himself in sound and fear and the instinct to survive as he attempted to tuck in his wings enough to fall into a roll.
He halfway succeeded, thankfully tumbling on the muddy forest floor without totally snapping a leg or his spine. Phil ended up splayed flat on the ground, wings outstretched, and the rain pummeled his body relentlessly.
As he struggled to catch his breath and organize his mind to focus on something other than pure fear, Phil slowly became aware of a pulsing pain in his left wing, and the way it stung with each heavy raindrop that fell on the spot. Phil tipped his head to the side, water pouring down his face and getting in his eyes, but even through the rainwater, he could make out the stick that had embedded itself in his wing, piercing through him as straight as an arrow.
Phil groaned, shivering as he sat up and felt rain pour down his already-soaked back. He tilted his head up and around, searching for any kind of cover the treetops might provide. Unfortunately, everything seemed to look the same level of absolutely soaked, and so Phil gave up on finding any kind of shelter for the moment, and instead pulled his wing around in front of himself to examine the wound.
The stick had pierced his wing completely, and Phil could already tell it would be a bitch to heal, as most wing injuries were. It was hard to figure out through the heavy rainfall, but Phil was pretty sure it had missed any major bones, and instead had plunged through mostly muscle, ripping some feathers in the meantime. The more Phil focused on it, the more it hurt like a bitch. Simultaneously, as Phil became aware of that pain, so too did every other injury on his body make itself known; the scrapes and scratches and bruises all throbbed in a patchwork forming across Phil’s skin, stinging skinned palms and knees and aching where a branch had slammed into his side or leg hard enough.
Phil bent over his pack to keep it safe from as much water as possible, and opened it to pull out a half empty potion of healing. The sickly sweet scent of melons passed Phil’s waterlogged senses as he uncorked the bottle. He flattened out his wing, and briefly balanced the open potion between his legs as he reached out and grasped the stick with two hands, hesitating for only a moment before yanking the impaling object out. Immediately, blood began to drip steadily from the wound, but Phil upended the rest of the potion on the open hole before it could bleed much further. It didn’t close the wound completely, but it at least stopped the outpouring of blood that was coating his wing and dripping onto the ground. Both wings continued to ache terribly despite the healing potion on one of them, and Phil was growing pretty certain that both were sprained from the failed effort of keeping him aloft.
Phil attempted to sigh heavily, only to find himself choking on the surrounding water. The downpour had increased, and it almost felt like one great neverending sheet of water, stealing all air around it. Phil raised one hand against his nose, perpendicular to his face, just to allow the water to bounce off his hand enough that he could take a few deep, unhindered breaths.
“Right, where the fuck am I?” he said at last, words immediately swallowed by the wind and rain swirling around him. He stood on unsteady legs, the aches and cuts causing them to shake as he struggled to keep his balance against the torrential weather. “Fuckin’ shit,” he spat, once against leaning over as he struggled to pull his communicator from his pocket. Unfortunately, no part of him was dry enough to wipe away the screen to send any kind of message; any attempt Phil made only spread more droplets of water across the screen from his soaking clothes or fingertips. He just about managed to make out his coordinates, turning until he would be moving the direction that could take him home.
Moving was slow going. The forest was thick with spruce trees, and the wind whipping around him only stung harder as loose pine needles were torn to mix in with the gusts, scratching at Phil’s face and tangling in his wind-blown hair and outstretched wings. Each step was a brand new exercise in balance, and more often than not Phil found himself pressing scratched and bleeding hands to rough tree back just to keep himself upright. The landscape stretched out in front of him with an endless, unyielding darkness, and it wasn’t long before mobs were alerted to the sound of his noisy, exposed body working through the forest. Phil’s breath caught in his chest at the sound of a bowstring being drawn, and sent a prayer to the Void in thanks as the wind veered the arrow off course. Unfortunately, the wind did not manage to deter the groaning zombies or the hissing spiders as the both drew nearer, only barely visible in the gloom.
Phil winced as the sound grew, pulling his sword from his scabbard and spinning to thrust the diamond encrusted blade through an undead body, yanking it out just as fast. Weary limbs slowed his movements, but instinct took over where his focus could not, and so Phil ducked past rotting, outstretched arms, and bat away leaping spiders with the flat of his sword, pushing his way through the forest even as the wind attempted to turn him around every other second.
A spider sprung out of the darkness, and Phil’s body carried him to parry the mob just like he had every other. Only, when he brought his arm up, he found it empty of the sword. Phil felt the weight of the weapon pulling down his other arm too late to actually bring the weapon up, and as he attempted to shove the spider away with only his arm, the eight-legged creature sunk its fangs into Phil’s forearm.
A gutteral screech tore itself from Phil’s mouth, and he twisted to jam the blade into the underbelly of the spider. The spider was pulled from Phil’s arm, legs twitching as the life bled out of its husk onto the soaking forest floor, and the sword dropped from Phil’s hand as he stared at the blood and rainwater mixing on his skin, washing away the blood before it could coat the wound. It almost didn’t seem that deep, Phil observed, there was hardly any blood with all the water continuing to wash it away.
He had the distant thought that he should find a bandage, but Phil only swayed, shock and exhaustion keeping his body from reacting to the blood loss properly. The wind took its advantage, rushing at him with a gust that not even Phil’s outstretched wings managed to shield him from in time. Phil crumpled to the ground, good arm just out of reach of his sword. His arm throbbed in time with his heart beat, and his whole body felt weighed down by the rain soaking his heavy wings. Phil’s eyes fluttered shut, grimacing at the sound of another approaching hiss. He grasped the handle of his sword, nearly dropping it as the rain loosened his grip around the leather-wrapped handle. He heaved himself upward, pressing his aching back to the tree next to him. The wind carried sopping wet hair across his eyes, obscuring his vision, but his other arm was so heavy at his side he didn’t have the strength to lift it.
For the first time in a long while, Phil’s heart skipped a beat with real fear. Fear that this is how he would die, of all the ways. Fear that he would never return home, he would never see his flock again. Phil tightened his grip around the sword, biting the inside of his cheek to hold back the panicked keen that threatened to pass his lips. He looked out into the darkness, listening more than seeing, waiting for the sound of an approaching mob.
Instead, he heard a sword slashing, and incoherent, distant yelling. In a weak attempt to get the hair out of his eyes, Phil’s head dropped to his shoulder to shove the soaking strands away, and then he was listing sideways, the heaviness in his injured arm and the dizziness throughout his body nearly too much to bear.
“-il? Phil, Phil! Wake up!”
A small but strong hand gripped his shoulder, shaking him. Phil’s water-laden wings twitched, and as a second hand brushed the hair back from his face his eyes opened on hazy lantern light and a woman with pink hair, shimmering scale dusting her face.
Phil’s brow furrowed, head pounding so hard he could barely think. “Niki?” he slurred, coughing on the water streaming down from his face and pooling in the corners of his mouth.
“Oh gods, Phil, what happened to you?” Niki gasped, and Phil numbly felt his injured arm raised and turned. Niki said something else that Phil didn’t comprehend; he merely stared at her with eyes that blurred with rainwater or otherwise as she set down her bag, wrapping something around his forearm. When the bandage had been secured, Niki’s hand was on his face again, pushing him upright once more. Phil hadn’t realized he had even been falling over.
“Niki?” he asked again, fighting for coherency. “You’re out of the water, aren’t you going to run out of breath?”
“There’s enough water in the air for me, Phil, you need to be more worried about yourself,” Niki said firmly. “We need to get you home. Can you stand?”
“I’m alright,” he lied reassuringly. “I jus’ needed a little break.”
“Well, consider your break over, for now,” Niki responded, stepping back and holding out her hand. “You need to return home, Phil. Everyone’s worried out of their minds for you.”
“They are?” Phil frowned, grasping Niki’s hand with his uninjured one and standing. The wind buffeted against him again, but Phil managed to keep standing this time, sheathing his sword as Niki handed it back to him with a trembling hand. Niki’s lantern filled the space around them with a warm, hazy light, and she beckoned at him with one hand as they set off toward what Phil could see was now a riverbank, just beyond the trees.
“Yes. Now, come on.” A soft, worried smile crossed Niki’s face as she led him along the bank, toward a faint, blurry light in the far distance. “I’ll lead you home.”
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“Niki’s found him,” Wilbur had said, briefly materializing in the upper room of the pub. Tommy’s eyes had widened as he looked into Wilbur’s brown eyes weighed down with worry. “I’m going out to meet them, you- it’s going to be alright, okay Tommy? He’ll be here soon.”
Tommy choked back a warbling chirp in response, choosing instead to nod as Wilbur sunk through the floor again.
“That’s good, Tommy, isn’t it?” Tubbo said from beside him, rubbing his hand along his back in the spot where his wings met the tight skin of his back. Tommy nodded wordlessly, hiding his face in his hands as he tried to meet his brain with this new information. Every part of his mind had exploded in a flurry, worried and scared and protective and overjoyed all at once. It was overwhelming, and Phil hadn’t even showed up yet. Tommy’s feathers shook with that mixture of emotions as he did his best to try and fail to process it all.
Fuck, now the bird brain shit was getting to him again, and he couldn’t stop it, and he hated it, and-
“‘S great,” he managed to rasp. “It’s great, yeah, um.” He opened his mouth, and found nothing to say. Everything felt like it had gone still, or it could be that Tommy could no longer hear the wind over the rushing in his ears. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, see? Told you it’d be alright. Phil’s always fine,” Tubbo reassured, humming as he pressed his forehead to Tommy’s shoulder in reassurance. Tommy turned and met him, dropping his head to the top of Tubbo’s shoulder and feeling the buzz underneath his skin more than he heard it.
A vwoop across the room indicated another presence, and Tommy blinked at floating purple particles as he registered Ranboo. The enderman hybrid’s head nearly brushed the tall ceilings of the attic as he looked over both their heads. “Phil’s coming back,” he said, looking as openly worried as Tommy felt. They had that in common, Tommy could reluctantly admit to no one but himself, but that didn’t mean that Ranboo knew how he felt at all. “Wilbur messaged me- do you guys know where Jack is? He said he was needed.”
“What the fuck does he need Jack for?” Tommy grumbled, feathers bristling.
“He’s in the basement, in that lava area,” Tubbo provided. “I think he’s sleeping, so good luck waking him up, you know, in lava.”
“Oh, I’ll be alright, I think. Thank you!” Ranboo chirped, disappearing in another puff of purple particles.
“Why does he need Jack?” Tommy muttered sullenly.
“Beats me,” Tubbo said. “Hopefully that means Phil will be here soon, though.”
“I guess,” Tommy responded, curling his hand in his tangled hair. Every thought was a whirring repetition of flock flock protect flock where flock and Tommy had never wanted bird instincts less. This was hell. This was actual hell, and if Phil didn’t come back here right now, if more of his flock didn’t return home right now Tommy was pretty sure he would just straight up combust.
In a desperate attempt to calm the bird part of his brain, Tommy sunk down and curled up best he could in the cold and empty nest, fingers curling in a blanket as he made a low, distressed noise.
“Ranboo’s calling for me,” Tubbo said mournfully, the bed lifting slightly as he stood off the bed. “You should rest, Tommy. We’ll be sure to let you know as soon as Phil gets here, alright?”
Tommy found himself repeating the same noise of quiet distress, but Tubbo didn’t catch on, he couldn’t catch on, and apparently he just took it as a noise of agreement. There was a feather light touch on his hair that Tommy just barely chased, and then the room was horribly empty, with only the sound of hammering rain and pounding wind to break the tumbling thoughts within Tommy’s own head.
He didn’t sleep, but emotional exhaustion allowed him to at least drift, eyesight hazy and body numb as he allowed the time to pass in an unidentifiable frame of it.
Words filtered in and out of his ears, fuzzy as the rest of it.
“…was really torn up about you being out there, he wouldn’t…”
Tommy shifted, peeling a sweaty and tearstained face from a pillow, wincing at the low lantern light of the attic.
nest nest empty where flock find
“…must’ve worn himself out, the poor kid, you should’ve seen him, he was really…”
Tommy cracked one eye open again. The voice sounded like Wilbur, and that was starting to send his mind into a flurry once more, because if Wilbur was here, then that meant…
flock find flock here where find flock nest flock
Phil’s voice was strained, a low and familiar vocalization of longing clashing with his spoken words. “Maybe we’ll just leave him to rest, then, I can make it to my own-”
Tommy was out of the nest the second Phil had suggested leaving, pushing past Wilbur’s translucent body to nearly barrel into Phil, only just managing to stop short with his wings flapping wildly behind him to pause his momentum. flock flock flock flock. “You’re here,” he choked out, hoping his eyes weren’t as swollen as they sort of felt.
Phil laughed, reaching out with one hand and cupping Tommy’s face, wiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb. Tommy couldn’t even find it within him to be embarrassed about the tears as he heard the trilling that was coming from the back of Phil’s throat, a sound of safety and home. “Oh, come on, you didn’t actually think a storm like that would be able to keep me down, right?”
“It very nearly did,” Wilbur said from behind Tommy, though his sharp tone wasn’t quiet enough to disguise the fondness lingering in it. “Though I suppose that’s beside the point, isn’t it.”
Tommy only heard Phil’s response as a rumbling in his chest as he folded himself in Phil’s arms, pressing the side of his head to the older man’s chest and listening to his heartbeat, gripping Phil’s arms with just enough force to be sure that flock he was here flock he was safe flock he was home.
He didn’t even realize he was chirping until Phil responded with a chirp of his own, pressing a ghost of a kiss to the crown of Tommy’s head. He smelled of healing potions and golden apples and the lingering scent of a fresh rainstorm, and it was all familiar and right and good. Instinct called Tommy’s body to move on its own, untangling himself from Phil’s embrace to tug at the grip around his wrist, letting out another chirp toward the direction of the nest.
“Oh, I don’t know about that, mate,” Phil said hesitatingly. When Tommy turned back to him, fighting to keep the instinctual hurt out of his eyes, Phil shook his head and extended his wings with a slight wince, and Tommy saw.
He could see bright green leaves and darker pine needles poking out from within the misaligned feathers, nearly all of which he could assume had been blown asunder by the wind outside. Mud caked sections of his wings, and Tommy’s fingers fell from Phil’s wrist to twitch at his sides, a question leaving his lips before he could form it in Common tongue.
“Yeah, Jack dried off my wings, but they’re still a dirty fuckin’ mess, I’m afraid.” Apparently having not quite caught his question, Phil shifted his wing a bit around himself. “If you want to go to sleep, Tommy, I can join the nest in a few hours, alright? Does that work for you?”
Tommy’s face darkened in frustration. He had been waiting for a while and didn’t really feel much like waiting any longer. “No, I want-” he bit the inside of his cheek, shaking his head once to work out the right words. Still, embarrassment at asking held his tongue, and all he managed to get out was a slightly strangled, “Can I just-” with one hand twitching toward Phil’s unpreened wings.
Phil’s eyes rounded in surprise. “I- I mean, if you want to, that’s alright,” he started. “I didn’t-”
“I want to,” Tommy decided, snatching a few loose pillows from the nest and tossing them at Phil before he sat. “I’m going to do this for you.” It was incredibly blunt, and Common would never replicate the subtle vocalizations or the shared instinct of flock reciprocating for flock, but Phil seemed to understand his words well enough. The pillows were moved to the right spots, and Phil sat.
“You fuckin’ birdbrains,” Wilbur scoffed, form flickering. “Alright for me to leave, then?”
Phil looked at Wilbur briefly, shrugging as he opened up one wing. “Honestly? I doubt Tommy’s going to be able to preen my wings all on his own. You’re welcome to help, Will, if you want.”
“No, I will,” Tommy said determinedly, sitting down at the back of Phil’s left wing and instantly beginning to work at the patch of mud-coated feathers that had been bothering him from the moment he had set eyes on them.
Wilbur’s hands rose up apprehensively. “Oh, I don’t know, Phil. Isn’t that just… a bird thing you guys do? I mean, I know I have these.” He extended his arm out, the phantom membrane that made up his wings rising with him. “But they’re not exactly wings, they’re just-”
“It’s not just for birds like us, idiot,” Phil said, tired and fond. “Preening is a flock activity, not just a bird one.”
Wilbur made a strangled, confused sort of noise. “And I’m- flock?” he asked, sounding touched.
Phil laughed gently, and a breath of relief seemed to steal his next words as mud flaked away with old feathers.
“Obviously,” Tommy answered for him, eyes focused on the dark gray feathers before him. “Obviously you’re flock too, idiot. You can do the right one of his wings, I suppose, even though I’ll definitely be able to get through these all no problem.”
“I- alright, yeah, I can-” Voice still tight, Wilbur made his way over to Phil’s right wing, and Phil’s instructions on how to preen faded into a pleasant hum as Tommy continued to work through the feathers of his flock, flicking out dirt and leaves along with loose feathers and carefully righting misaligned ones. His hands grew weary, but the pleasant buzz filling his head made it all worth it. At one point, his hand mindlessly brushed over the next portion of Phil’s wing and pulled back instinctively a shocked and concerned warble leaving his throat as he found no feathers, only rough, blemished scar tissue.
Phil crooned in reassurance, curling his wing inward so Tommy had a better reach. “A stick pierced it right when I fell,” he admitted. “But it’s alright, it’ll grow back in time.”
Tommy’s fingers lingered on the fragile scar tissue, something sorrowful welling up in his chest at the sight of the injury. “You’ll be able to fly again, yeah?”
Phil chuckled. “Luckily, it didn’t knock out any of my primaries, so yeah, I can still fly, mate.”
Tommy exhaled with heavy relief. “Well good, because it’d kind of be shit if you couldn’t fly, you know,” he said bluntly.
Wilbur laughed in the way he always did when he was planning to make fun of Tommy in the next breath, but words never came. Curious, Tommy pushed himself up on his knees to see over the top of Phil’s wing, and couldn’t keep back a snicker. Phil’s hand seemed to have found its way into Wilbur’s hair, gently scratching at his scalp and working through the dark brown tangles in a familiar fashion. Wilbur’s face had gone nearly slack at the contact, hands stuttering along the edges of the feathers he had been realigning.
Phil crooned quietly, brushing his hand behind the curve of Wilbur’s ear. Tommy couldn’t even find it in him to be jealous that Wilbur was getting attention from Phil at the moment, because before he knew it he was cooing in agreement at the shocked look on Wilbur’s face as his fingers mindlessly continued to preen the glossy dark gray feathers before him.
“I- thank you?” Wilbur asked, sounding incredibly confused. Phil laughed, humming as the three of them settled back into a rhythm.
“Flock reciprocates for flock,” he explained, and Tommy trilled in unspoken agreement.
“I don’t- I- thanks,” Wilbur stammered, still sounding baffled, but he didn’t try to move away as Phil’s hands continued to move across his hair. Comfortable silence settled around them like a blanket draped over every shoulder, and that didn’t shift until the two of them reached the end of Phil’s wings, and wordlessly moved to the other side of each, with Tommy now fixing the inner feathers of Phil’s left wing and Wilbur moving to the outer side of his right. The pleasant buzzing in Tommy’s mind returned, quelling the frantic instincts that had been running wild with the days Phil had been gone. Now it was a quiet hum, reassured by Phil’s steady presence all around him.
Time passed with steady motions brushing through feathers embedded with dirt and pine, twigs and leaves alike. A pile of loose feathers and debris was gathering, but Tommy suspected by Phil’s slowly drooping wings and his own exhausted arms that the mess would be a tomorrow problem.
Tommy’s body slumped at the unexpected, but not unwelcome, feeling of fingers running across his own outstretched wings. Phil’s carefully practiced fingers combed through the feathers that had been bristling and fluffed from his absence, and now settled easily under his touch, spreading that pleasant hum throughout all of Tommy’s body, and he let out an appreciative chirp as he pulled pine needles out from a long feather.
Phil’s wing curled as Tommy worked his way through it so Tommy didn’t need to move away from Phil’s preening, and more grateful chirps bubbled from his mouth, ones that Phil tiredly reciprocated.
“Are you alright?” he asked at one point, tilting his head back to stare with narrowed eyes at the older blond, who looked back at him with weary, clouded dark blue eyes.
“I’m alright now,” he seemed to finally settle on, and the frown didn’t leave Tommy’s face, but he supposed that was good enough for now.
And then, they were done. Phil’s wing shone smooth with glossy, near-perfectly aligned feathers, and Tommy’s arms dropped to his lap as his own wings drooped with exhaustion he hadn’t allowed himself to feel. Being preened himself had only increased the relaxed and drowsy feeling in him, and it was all Tommy could do to not go completely boneless as he leaned against Phil’s shoulder.
“You’re back,” he hummed, feathers brushing his face.
“I’ll always come back, Tommy, don’t worry,” Phil murmured, gently brushing hair back from his forehead. Tommy’s eyes shut, fatigue washing over him.
“Um- so, what now?” Wilbur asked, hushed like he thought Tommy was actually asleep.
Phil said something Tommy didn’t catch, and then Tommy was being shifted and scooped up, sturdy arms under his shoulders and knees. Tommy blinked bleary eyes open, but didn’t try to squirm from Phil as he was laid down in the nest, wings fluttering and relaxing as a great gray wing laid over him, blanketing his weary body. He felt a third presence alongside them, wingless but flock nonetheless, and a sleepy smile crossed his face as protection was felt on both sides. Tommy let out a drowsy chirp, hiding his face in Phil’s robe, and the quiet hum of flock flock safe flock safe flock home combined with the gentle rumble of Phil’s breaths finally lulled him to a heavy, safe sleep.