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It’s four in the morning and Missa is staring at Phil’s wings.
Ever since the first time he’d seen them, he hadn’t really known what to think. At first, Phil had been casually cagey about them, not bringing it up in conversation. Missa hadn’t been sure how to even ask. So he hadn’t– they’d continued on with their lives together like two orbiting stars, caught in each other’s gravitational fields. Missa had kept the feather, and that had been that. Life went on.
And then Missa left for a while. Came back to their son missing. He left again. Came back this time to something in Phil missing, a part of him broken in a way Missa wasn’t sure he could fix.
So he stayed this time. Hanging around Phil’s house and doing little things when he could. Phil hid the broken parts of him fairly well, but it was in this time that Missa started to see the cracks. Whether or not it was intentional, he’s still not sure, but Phil started… letting him in, strangely. They still never really talked about anything, but Phil had told him that he’d needed him, and so Missa stayed.
The first time they slept in a bed together since the eggs went missing, Phil kept his shirt on. The second– not so much.
It starts with both of them coming back to the house exhausted after a late night out with a few of the other islanders. They’d fought back sleep for a while together, and Missa had stayed late with Phil because even though he knows Fit and Tubbo can handle him just fine, he worries. Phil’s twitchy these days, and with Forever missing even more so. It’s weird, being stuck together like glue when they’d spent so much initial time apart, but neither of them mind. Missa certainly doesn’t. His heart lights up every time Phil so much as smiles at him.
They get home, and Missa almost collapses on the couch before Phil grabs him– just by the arm, a casual over-the-shoulder touch, but the action makes Missa shiver a little.
“Come sleep in a proper bed, mate,” Phil insists, and Missa can’t say no.
So that’s how he ends up here, at four in the morning, staring at Phil’s wings. They’d crawled into bed together and at some point in the night, Phil had shed his jacket and shirt and had fallen back asleep without them on. Missa had woken up for no good reason at all– maybe a noise outside had startled him awake, but he’d come to in groggy stages only to find inky black feathers brushing against his arm.
He lies there, staring quietly at the shape of Phil’s back in the dim morning light of their bedroom. His shoulder blades rise and fall, a softer kind of darkness edged by nighttime. His feathers are smooth and soft and Missa, almost unconsciously, reaches out and smooths a hand down the flat edge of one. Phil doesn’t seem to wake up, and in the dark Missa can hear his breathing almost settle.
It’s nice. The lying here, together. He likes it. He wants more of it. He was such a stupid fucking fool to leave like he did, leave Phil here to deal with all of this alone. They were supposed to be partners, weren’t they? Husbands. And despite his absence, Phil still calls him his. Missa presses one of his hands to his face and takes a breath, forcing himself to calm down in the darkness behind his eyelids.
Something shuffles– feathers ruffle, the sheets shift, and then Missa feels a heavy arm on top of his own.
“You okay?” Phil asks softly, breaking the silence between them.
“I didn’t mean to wake up,” Missa breathes, his stomach flip-flopping. Phil’s bare skin is warm against his own, and the hand on his arm curls a little tighter.
“It’s alright,” Phil says, still in that soft tone, like he’s afraid to speak any louder for fear of shattering the night. “I wasn’t really sleeping anyway.”
Missa keeps his face hidden behind his hand. He knows Phil hasn’t been sleeping well lately. It’s hard not to tell, given the state of his gaunt face. He keeps his hand at the level of his eyes when he asks, “What do you dream about?”
“Hm?”
“When you do sleep,” Missa clarifies. “What do you dream about?”
He hears Phil shouting himself awake, sometimes. It’s just one of those things they don’t talk about. He’s not sure why he’s asking now.
But despite the breach of their unspoken agreement, Phil just… sighs. His hand squeezes Missa’s arm and he lowers his hand from his face, but keeps his eyes closed anyway. It’s very nearly a surprise when Phil answers him.
“Chayanne,” Phil says quietly. “Tallulah. Cucurucho. And– a birdhouse.”
Missa thinks of Phil’s wings, and the harsh cut of the primaries against their bed.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s not all bad,” Phil says. He sounds tired, his voice hoarse. He shifts his weight again and the whole bed moves with it, one of Phil’s feet poking at Missa’s. He pokes back, and he doesn’t have to open his eyes to hear the smile in Phil’s voice. “I dream about you, sometimes.”
“What?” That surprises him enough that he opens his eyes. Phil’s head is a foot or so away from his, and the smile is there, mischievous and soft in the dark. Missa blinks at him, then looks down and away, staring at the puff of black feathers over his shoulder instead. “Why me?”
“I don’t know,” Phil says. Missa can’t help himself– he looks back at Phil’s face again and finds him searching for something in Missa’s gaze, eyes intense and dark. “Usually I lose you.”
“I’m staying,” Missa says, fiercer than he feels. “I told you, I’m not leaving again.”
“No, I know,” Phil says. “In the dreams it’s not– it’s usually not your fault. But I can never… get there in time.”
“I’m sorry,” Missa says again. Phil just sighs, long and labored, and doesn’t look away from him. The hand on his arm curls, and then drags him a little closer. Missa squeaks but lets it happen, feeling hot breath on his forehead as Phil just keeps him there. Selfishly, some part of him is squealing with delight the way a teenage girl does when seeing her idol. But another part of him aches with a sadness he can’t chase away, a sadness for Phil, a want to push all the nightmares away and let him sleep peacefully for once.
They lie there for a while, saying nothing. It takes Missa almost five minutes of working himself up to shuffle his arms around and bring them up around Phil in turn, caging in his torso and laying gently and unobtrusively on the rough skin that runs a valley up the middle of his wings. The musculature of Phil’s back is unfamiliar, avian-like, but warm. In response, Phil just hugs him a little closer.
“I wish I could do more,” Missa breathes out on a whim, tucking his chin down and closing his eyes. “To help.”
Phil laughs, the movement rustling between them. “You’re helping plenty, mate.”
“Like this?”
“Yeah, this is… nice.”
“You didn’t think it’d be nice?” Missa is pretty sure he’s thought about hugging Phil every damn day for the past three months.
“No, I did, I guess I just…” Phil trails off, “Actually. There is something you could do to help me, if you, uh. If you wanted.”
Missa’s stomach leaps into his throat. He licks his lips to make sure they’re not as bone-dry as they feel. “Sure,” he says. After a second, Phil pulls away from him and Missa is left cold for a moment as he sits up. A second later, the lantern switches on and now he’s cold and blind. “Ah,” he says, bringing a hand to cover his face. “Warn a guy!”
“Sorry,” Phil says, laughing. Missa blinks, eyes adjusted to the light after a moment, and sits up to look at Phil. He’s got his back to Missa, one wing pulled around in front of him, fingers carding through his own feathers. “Take the other?”
“The other?” Missa asks, sitting up and blinking a few more times.
“My wing,” Phil says, giving the feathers a fluffy shake. “The island is constantly springtime. I can’t tell my shedding cycle for shit, but it’s been itchy lately.” The way he speaks is so casual, so bland, but Missa can see the anxiety behind his words. He’s too focused, too careful about how nonchalant he’s being. For a second Missa hesitates, hands ghosting over Phil’s too-short feathers, but then he internally slaps himself and shouts PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER, PENDEJO . He can do this. Phil is asking him to do this.
“Okay,” Missa says a few seconds too late. Phil is looking at him now over his shoulder, and Missa gently takes his wing in hand. “How do I…”
“Look for loose feathers. Tug, but not too hard. If they’re ready, they’ll come out,” Phil tells him, and Missa starts to gently tug. “It feels nicer when they lay flat and aren’t so messy, too.”
“How come I never see you do this?” Missa mutters, carding his fingers absently through the feathers. They’re soft– he knows the texture, has spent hours of his life running the feather from the first time he’d seen Philza’s wings through his hands.
“It’s not something I show off,” Phil says quietly. “Not with the fucking Feds lurking around.”
Missa plucks a sheared feather and scowls at it. That, he can understand.
“So why show me?” he asks. He knows why, he thinks– honestly, he just wants to hear Phil say it. A weird little part of him is greedy for Phil to admit why Missa gets to see.
“I trust you,” Phil says. Missa picks a piece of grit out from between his feathers, and delights in the way Phil’s shoulders relax minutely. He does it again, and again, and smiles when he hears Phil sigh.
“I want to see you fly someday,” Missa says, and Phil lets go of his other wing and stretches it out wide, the muscles flexing and feathers shifting. Then he sets it behind him, and Missa understands both of them are now his job. He doesn’t mind. Not one bit. Phil leans forward and braces his arm against the wall, holding himself there.
“Sure,” Phil says. “Once my primaries grow in again, whenever that happens to be.”
“What do you do with the loose feathers?”
“Throw them out. Or you can keep them, if you want.”
Missa looks at the small pile of plucked feathers he has beside him now, and imagines keeping all of them. A special backpack, just for Phil’s feathers. He holds one up in front of his eyes and commits the shape and color of it to memory– a smooth, silky indigo, with a sharp quill that bends a little to the left towards the end of it.
They sit in silence for a while after that, Missa systematically working his way through Phil’s wings and getting better and better at the job as he does. It’s not often he feels useful around Phil. Usually, Phil is the one doing things for him. But here, Missa is the one doing the work while Phil relaxes, tension slipping from his shoulders like rainwater off a duck’s back, his eyes closing a few minutes in and not opening for a while after. The bed is soft beneath them, Phil is warm in front of him, and Missa’s chest feels so full. It’s not perfect– their children are missing, and that ache never disappears, but right now in the early morning light with Phil golden in front of him, Missa thinks he feels okay.
The love bubbles in him and almost without thinking, Missa cards his fingers through the feathers and leans forward– presses the lightest, softest kiss against the middle of Phil’s back, near the top of his spine and just below his neck.
He sees the way Phil’s muscles twitch and shiver, watches the progression of the movement down his bare back and the way the downier, softer feathers puff up. He feels, for a moment, powerful.
“Let me do this more,” Missa says, riding that wave while he has it. He’s still close to Phil’s back, and tips his head so he’s speaking by Phil’s ear now. “Yeah?”
Phil laughs– his eyes are still closed, his face half hidden in his arms, but he looks better. Not perfect, but better. His laugh sounds just a little bit brighter.
“Yeah,” he says, turning to smile at Missa with an expression like the sun. “Yeah, I don’t think I’d mind that.”