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"You know what I regret?" Thomas said conversationally, as he picked glass out of Harry's bloodied wings. "I really wish I had been around to watch you learn to fly."
Harry was stretched out on his stomach, arms folded under his head, where Thomas had put him and then kept him. Thomas heartlessly ignored Harry's half-hearted protests and insistence that he could pick the glass out of his own wings, he was used to picking glass out of his wings, which somehow didn't seem to be the bulletproof end to the argument that he had thought it would be.
"Don't get all sentimental on me," Harry murmured. As always, handling his wings had a tendency to put him into a drowsy, relaxed state. There weren't a lot of people who were allowed to touch his wings. Actually, the list was like ... three.
"I'm not," Thomas said. There was a clink as another chunk of glass went into the kitchen mixing bowl that he was using for the purpose. "I just think it would have been hilarious."
"That sounds more like you."
"I'm picturing you yelling 'Parkour!' as you jump off a building, no clue how your wings even work, fluttering around like a baby bird, and getting tangled in the nearest telephone lines."
"You can stop talking anytime now."
Thomas sat back on his heels, but he kept a hand on Harry's wing, resting lightly on the gray coverts. Not all wizards grew wings, but Harry's had fledged early, with the gray uppers and banded undersides of what he had determined was a Cooper's hawk. He'd actually had them for a couple of years until they fledged enough to fly with, which hadn't stopped him from trying earlier. Not that he was going to tell Thomas that. There was no point in giving him even more ammunition.
"You gotta stop doing this to yourself, Harry," Thomas said, his voice abruptly serious. "One of these days you're going to take out a wing in a way that you can't heal."
"Then I can bill myself as Harry Dresden, the One-Winged Wonder."
"I'm serious."
"So am I."
Thomas heaved a sigh. He scritched his fingers through Harry's wing feathers on the relatively undamaged side, then got up and took the bowl of bloody glass shards into the kitchen. Harry considered getting up, but it seemed like too much effort. After a moment, just when he was working up the urge to try, Thomas came back with a couple of wet kitchen towels. He sat crosslegged beside Harry on the floor and started washing the blood off. The pain had faded by now, and what was left behind was a hazy endorphin overload.
"Don't you have places to be?" Harry asked sleepily into the crook of his arm.
"Eventually, but in the meantime some enormous winged idiot flew into a window, so here we are."
"I did not fly into a window, I heroically plummeted through plate glass to rescue a group of trapped civilians."
"Exactly how many times have you flown into windows, Harry? Besides today, I mean. I need to know for science."
"Your face flew into a window."
Thomas snorted and went to work on the other wing.
"I can do that," Harry said drowsily. "Just give me a minute."
"Nope, and if you try to get up again, I'm going to finish cleaning you up while sitting on you, so think about that for a minute. And stay there."
Harry did.