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“These are beautiful, Freddie.”
“They’re really not,” says Percy. There’s a wry twist of self-deprecation to his words. Vax can’t see Percy’s face with the way they’re sitting – his back to Vax’s front, Vax with his hands hovering over the half-ragged primaries of his wings – but he assumes there’s an equally wry, self-deprecating smile on Percy’s lips, too. “You don’t have to lie to me, Vax’ildan, I’m perfectly aware of what they– ow!”
Vax pokes him in the side, and then again, harder, for good measure. And also just because he can. Old habits, namely winding Percy up, die hard. “Shut it, you. They’re gorgeous. Sure, they’d be a little more gorgeous if you didn’t muck all the feather up by hiding them under that coat of yours all the time, and if you actually preened them, but…”
He’s not lying. The wings are– well. They’re beautiful, pale, ghostly, the same shade as Percy’s hair. There’s the faintest of gradients from shoulder to tip, though, the silvery edge to them where they meeting skin fading away to pure and solid white at the tips.
They’re undeniably damaged, though. The scars that cut through them are mostly only visible by faint ripples in the way the feathers sit, but a half-dozen of the larger feathers are missing entirely. They don’t look like they’ll be growing back in again.
But dozens more, smaller feathers are missing in a way that suggests an awkward moult, or a broken quill, or simply too much friction. The ones remaining are dusty, or dirty, or crooked, bedraggled from long weeks on the road. It makes Vax wince just to look at, but he has to assume that, for Percy, it itches something awful.
Which means that the primary problem here, to Vax’s inexpert eye, is not even remotely the scarring. It’s simply an entirely mundane lack of self-care.
“Yes, well,” says Percy, stiffly, and fails to actually follow up his half-hearted objection with an argument. “Luckily for me, you’re apparently going to see to– mmh. Oh. Yes. Th-there we go.”
Vax has finally set fingers to wings – starting gentle, carding through the primaries and secondaries, adjusting the corresponding coverts a little. He knows how easy it is to get overwhelmed, if you’ve not preened in a while. It’s taken weeks to coax Percy into this. The last thing Vax wants to do is scare him off.
After a minute, two minutes, Percy sighs. It’s a soft sound, a heavy sound. More importantly, though, it’s accompanied by the relaxing of his shoulders. The tension eases out of the line of his spine, inch by inch. He leans back into Vax’s hands, ever so slightly, and Vax can’t help but grin.
Success.
Not that he’d ever doubted it would be, though. The fingers that make him such a good pickpocket also make him very deft at setting feathers in order. He’s never had any complaints – and has, in fact, had quite a few compliments.
“…They used to be brown, you know,” says Percy, after a while. His voice is half-dreamy, and Vax has the sudden conviction that his eyes are closed. That he’s made himself vulnerable. The thought sends warmth up from Vax’s stomach to his chest. “Like a hunting hawk’s. All different shades of it… Strong wings, my father used to say. The sign of a good leader, whatever that means. …They changed when my hair did, of course. She didn’t leave anything unscathed.”
Vax lets that sit, for a moment, in the space between them.
Then– “Stop living in the past, Freddie,” he says, tender, full of hypocrisy. And then, before Percy can point that out, “I, personally, think that they’re fine just as they are. They’re not hers. They’re still yours, just… different, a little. Besides. They’re very striking, like this. I bet all the boys go crazy over them, hmm?” He grins. “Lucky me.”
There’s a noise like a forming argument from the back of Percy throat – but it’s drowned out almost immediately by something between a whine and a moan, his body half-collapsing back into Vax’s hands.
Vax has finally abandoned caution, and let himself sink his fingers into the soft, downy scapular feathers right where wing meets shoulder blade. The skin there is shot through with scars that crawl up onto the wings themselves, leaving deep valleys in the feathers. But, judging by the noises Percy’s making, they’re still every bit as sensitive as anyone else’s scapulars.
“There we go,” says, Vax, with the half-edge of a laugh to the words, content in the knowledge that Percy is far too busy melting beneath his hands to call him out on it. “That’s it. Stop reminiscing, and just relax, Freddie. I’ve got you.”
And, unbelievably, for once in his life, Percy de Rolo does as he’s told.