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No one’s wings are clean on Lifesteal. It’s something Branzy had to adjust to, when he first joined — he’s never been vain about his wings, but he kept them clean and well-ordered enough.
Yeah. Not anymore.
He’s crawling around in the guts of the casino, trying to figure out which chunks of redstone Cube had rearranged. His wings itch, a burning thing that keeps dragging his focus from the disorganized lines in front of him. No matter how closely he tucks them around himself, it doesn’t go away.
An hour of inspecting wiring later, and it turns out Cube hadn’t changed much at all — just swapped some inputs, the kind of thing Branzy can redo in his sleep. Which is good, because half his brainpower is going to locking down his wings against the urge to stretch them out, to preen here.
But Cube’s coming by any minute, so this has to get done. His wings can wait. They have to.
When Branzy emerges, Clown nods at him, one of the deep satisfied ones that feels like a slap on the back. “Done? Nice job.”
“He didn’t do much,” Branzy says. “I mean — yeah, it was a feat of redstone engineering! Fear my prowess.”
“So scary,” Clown drawls. It’s odd how well his facepaint hides his real expressions. Like everything comes out just to the left of where it should be. “I’m shaking in my shoes.”
Now’s the part where he’d shake out his wings, if it weren’t Clown. He likes Clown, sure, but he likes the delicate bones in his wings more. He’s broken them before; they don’t heal well. And with Clown’s own wings, it might be a sore spot. Well. He says wings. The miserable stalks of feather and bone where Clown’s wings were ripped off at the joint, apparently non-fatal enough that they don’t come back at respawn.
Better to play it safe.
The thing is, as the days stretch on, Branzy’s not sure how much longer he can play it safe. Everything keeps… escalating. There’s never really a free moment, much less a free moment alone or with someone he trusts.
He digs sand with his wings tucked against his back, and he swears he can feel each individual grain getting stuck between his feathers. Then it’s back to laying traps, so the sticky redstone grit and stone dust can inch its way in too. Moving shifts from annoying to painful as the thin skin under his feathers gets inflamed.
It reaches a breaking point.
Clown’s been out killing people, or whatever it is he smiles mysteriously about when Branzy asks how his day’s been. There’s no one else at this secret base.
“I’m sorry for this.” Branzy takes a deep breath. “I have to preen my wings.”
Clown’s head snaps towards him. “You do?”
“Yeah.” Branzy wrinkles his brow. “I haven’t had the chance in a month. They’re in horrible shape.”
For a few seconds, Clown keeps looking at him, like he’s running calculations. “Can I help?”
It’s Branzy’s turn to be silent. “If you want. I just didn’t think…”
“I’ve kind of always wanted to know what it’s like.” Clown crosses the gap between them, and then he’s circling Branzy like a lion pack surrounding a gazelle.
“It’s nothing — nothing special,” Branzy gets out. His heartbeat is a physical thing, almost enough to distract him from the itch down his spine. “Just cleaning, and, uh, pulling the dead feathers. Making sure they’re all lined up.”
“Will you let me?” Clown’s voice is low, intimate. His breath puffs on Branzy’s temple.
Branzy swallows. “Please?”
It’s not hard to read a smile in Clown’s voice, at least. “C’mon, armor off.”
With shaking hands, Branzy strips it off. His wings feel a little more like they can breathe. In a smooth motion, he snaps them out, grit puffing in the air. They’re a dull tan instead of their true white.
“Oh, Branzy,” Clown says. His hand runs down the top of Branzy’s wing, scapular all the way down to the primaries at the very end. It doesn’t even feel good, just a shocky spark of sensation between pain and pleasure his brain refuses to parse.
Branzy must twitch, flinch, something, because Clown does it again. It feels better, this time, or it still hurts but in a way that’s so unmistakeably Clown that Branzy presses into it anyway. His head keeps wanting to tilt forward, his neck wanting to bow.
“You’re always so interesting, Branzy,” Clown says. This time he digs his fingers into the mess of feathers where his wings meet his spine. A cloud of down puffs out when he rakes his fingers down. It’s molten, a blood-hot combination of relief and a dripping kind of pain that Branzy half-wants to keep going.
“I — I thought this was supposed to be preening.” It’s embarrassing how out of breath Branzy is.
“Well,” Clown says, hands still buried in Branzy’s feathers, “I might be a little out of practice.”
“You think?” Branzy retorts. The back of his neck has to be bright red by now. “C’mon.”
Clown runs his hands down the backs of Branzy’s wings, makes him shiver. A patter of grit hits the floor. “It’s just so fun to see you squirm.”
“Hey!” It’d be a better retort if Branzy’s neck hadn’t decided that the best place for his chin was tipped against his sternum. His eyes slip half-lidded. He can’t help letting out a tiny sound as Clown reaches over to rake his hands through the down at the front of his wings. It’s hard to distinguish between the sting and the pleasure, the way both make his legs tingle.
Clown lets out a breath of a laugh. His hands move out to Branzy’s coverts, pet over them a few times before he concentrates just on the left. He’s gentler, here, pinching each feather from root to tip. It doesn’t sting, and the ache of it fades into the rush of relaxed endorphins.
Branzy startles when Clown speaks. “Do you have any oil?”
His throat doesn’t want to cooperate. “Yeah, yeah, here.” He almost fumbles the bottle from his inventory as he passes it to Clown.
“Good.” There’s an obvious note of satisfaction to Clown’s voice. “I always wondered what it’d be like to have a pair.”
“More annoying than anything.” Branzy’s voice shakes to a stop as Clown’s hands return to his wings, slicking over the aligned feathers. If anything, having one part of his wings clean and glossy makes the rest feel worse by comparison. “Thank — thank you, though. For doing this.”
“My pleasure,” Clown says. It might be a coincidence that he takes that moment to pull out one of the loose feathers, trying to molt but not quite there. Branzy’s wing twitches at the pinpoint stab of pain, but it never even occurs to him to try to get away. Clown strokes over the feather underneath it, soothing.
The combination makes Branzy’s brain dissolve into something syrupy. He hadn’t realized how little he’d been relaxing, and now his body seems to be making the choice for him. There’s nothing but his wings, and Clown, and the unpredictable sensations his body keeps failing to process. His breathing is ragged, much slower than normal. Clown’s hands dance a little further down his wings, just the right side of too rough, too much.
“Keep going,” Branzy whispers. He can’t tell if it’s audible or not. His other wing isn’t pleasant or unpleasant, just a cloud of indistinct sensation without Clown to ground it. The muscles in his back keep loosening as Clown works his way out.
“One of your primaries is loose,” Clown says. “Do you want me to pull it?”
Branzy doesn’t think he could lift his head if he tried. It’s a flight feather; pulling it will hurt more than anything Clown’s done so far. “Do it. I —“ his voice gives out.
Clown presses a hand to his back, where his neck peeks out from his shirt, and pulls the feather. Hurt isn’t the right word for it, but Branzy can’t help letting out a high-pitched sound like a whine of pain. He wants to press into it, and get away from it at the same time. It’s almost like a regen potion, the sharp ache of a pain disappearing. A gasp tears its way from his throat as the pain melts from knife-sharp to a blunt ache.
“Yeah?” Clown asks. He presses his fingertips into the base of Branzy’s neck. There’s a curve to his voice, not delighted but in the same neighborhood.
Branzy’s chest rises and falls. He doesn’t expect his own voice. “Yeah. Yeah, do — you’re doing great.”
“Always nice to hear,” Clown says. “Other side, now.”
Halfway, and Branzy’s head feels like it’s been filled with falling sand. If someone walked in, there’s no way Branzy could fight them off, not with limbs that feel like blackstone and mud.
It’s impossible to tell if it goes faster the second time around, or if Branzy’s sense of time has dissolved along with the rest of him. A cloud of feathers puff in the air, and Branzy can tell that a sound pushes its way out of his throat, but it never seems to reach his ears. Clown’s hands smooth along his feathers and his nails dig under at unpredictable intervals, but Branzy’s forgotten how to flinch. Forgotten how to do anything but let Clown use his wings.
The world feels hazy, by the time Clown finishes with the last of his feathers and makes his way around to where Branzy’s head has been hanging.
“Branzy,” he whispers.
It takes too long for Branzy to lift his head. He can’t seem to coordinate folding his wings back in, not when they sting with pure relief.
Clown may be hard to read, but Branzy thinks it would be impossible to hide the joy on his face. The satisfaction. Like he’s just taken six hearts and feels resplendent with it. Again, he says, “Branzy.”
“Yes?” Branzy says, or maybe just makes the shape of the word with his mouth.
Clown touches Branzy’s elbow, haphazard, like he can’t stand to not be touching. “Can I kiss you?”
Branzy blinks, his brain trying to catch up through the slow fog of his thoughts. “Yes. Please.”
A grin breaks over Clown’s face like radiation, like a creeper exploding, like the sun rising. He leans forward, and his eyes close, and Branzy gets to see him — wing stubs, and greasepaint and soft-sharp hands and all. In the syrup of his thoughts, nothing else exists.