Chapter Text
Saparata wipes the sweat from his brow as the sun sets distantly over the ocean. His vacation home was practically complete, save for the roof and the interior. Saps looks over his shoulder at his companion who is finishing up placing a couple of blocks on the walls of the pantheon. The white-haired man turns his attention back to the sunset and takes in a deep breath, savoring the serenity of the view. The ocean wind ruffles his white feathers while he takes in the refreshing, albeit salty, air. Lost in the moment, he almost forgets his surroundings to the repetitive thrum that is the tides, the sounds of the seagulls, the warmth of the setting sun-
“Saps”. A quiet voice says beside him. Saparata lets out a loud yelp as he jumps from the sudden noise. Fluixon laughs beside him as he recovers from the scare.
“What the HELL dude?!” Saps yells as he playfully smacks Flux in the arm.
“What? Did I scare you?” Flux teases, looking at Saps with delight in his eyes. The winged man huffs with something like fond contempt and turns back to gaze at the still-setting sun.
After a few moments of silence, Flux speaks up again with a quiet “What’s on your mind, Sap?”. A pause passes between the two men before Saparata speaks up.
“I just wish we could stay in the moment forever.” Saps says softly. A look that almost seems remorseful passes over Fluixon’s face before it’s replaced with a light smile “Yeah.. Me too.”
The moment is interrupted by a slight itch in saps wings that he attempts to shake out, a few feathers falling with the jostling motion. When the itch still persists, he tries to stretch his wings out to their fullest span in order to satisfy the annoying irritation, but alas, it still remains. Frustrated, he groans and drags a hand down his face.
“What?” Flux asks in confusion.
“It's my wings. I haven’t preened since I started working on my house, and with all the sand and dirt I’ve had to dig through, it seems my wings have taken the brunt of the damage.” Saps groans with a sigh.
Looking at the wings more closely, Flux notices that the usually bright white feathers seem abnormally dull and quite a few of them look out of place and/or broken. Flux whistles at the disrepair of the once stunning feathery appendages.
“Yeah that doesn’t seem quite right now that I look at them.” he winces.
“God. This will take hours to do myself. I don't have time for this!” Saps whined as he leaned against his friend dramatically.
Flux laughs and lightly pushes saps away “Oh c’mon! It can’t be that bad” muses the dark-haired of the two. Saps turns to his friend with an ‘oh yeah?’ look written all over his face.
“What?? How long does it take? Like 2 hours?”
“Try 5.”
Flux looks at Saps with an absolutely flabbergasted expression.
“FIVE?????” he yells, making the others’ wings poof up with surprise. “Yes, five.” came his calm reply.
“Literally how. How can that take five hours?” Flux questions, disbelief lining his tone. Saps sighs before responding “Well when getting the feathers in the back near my shoulder blades it gets kinda hard to reach and I have to set up this whole mirror contraption to actually see what I’m doing… It’s just a whole thing.” Flux hums in understanding and the pair turn back to face the almost-gone sun, where just a tiny sliver of golden-orange light is just barely peaking over the horizon consumed by water.
“I could help, y’know?” Flux says, nudging Saps’ hand with his own.
A slow heat blooms in the avian’s face, traveling down his neck with slow progression.
“What?”
“Y’know, like I could get the feathers you can’t reach, and maybe it won’t take as long?” the amethyst eyed man asked, his hand reaching out to intertwine with Saps’. This action didn’t help the evergrowing blush that blossomed across the white-haired player’s skin. ‘Clearly’, Saparata thought, 'Flux does not know what preening is supposed to mean among avians.’ And he was completely right in this statement. Fluixon had no idea the weight of what preening, even touching, an avian’s wings meant among the hybrids.
“I don’t know..” Saps said slowly, his eyes looking off to the side, attempting to avoid looking Flux straight in his enrapturing eyes. Knowing that if he did, he wouldn’t be far off from caving to his offer. Hell, he’s pretty close to giving in without the added influence of Flux’s charming features. It would feel nice. He hasn’t had someone else preen his wings in.. who knows how long. He’s almost forgotten the feeling. On the downside, this seemingly simple act could be the thing that cracks away at the very fine line between friendship and something else entirely that the two men had been toeing for a while at this point. But maybe that’s what Saparata wanted. Maybe he wanted to just fuck up his relationship with his best friend for the slight chance that maybe. Just maybe, the messed up tangle of emotions that he held for the man beside him could be returned.
And then. Oh. Those eyes. That face. What was he supposed to say?
“Yeah. Ok yeah you can help.” Saps said, his internal battle giving way. Flux smiled at him, that charming, heart-aching smile, and took his hand, yanking him towards the unfinished building.
---
The two boys sat inside the unfinished pantheon on some sleeping bags and pillows that they had brought in case they were too tired to leave after building, and Flux had lit a small lantern to fight off the evergrowing darkness that was the nighttime in the jungle.
“Ok I think I’m ready to start.” Saparata said into the quiet space as he unfolded his still-dirty wings, stretching the appendages out into a relaxed position. Fluixion’s hands moved out towards his friends’ wings, hesitating slightly before gently brushing his fingers against the soft, yet dirty feathers. Once again, redness appeared on Saps’ face, feeling Flux’s hands against his wings.
“Ok so. How exactly do I do this?” Flux asked, nervous to mess up the feathers more than they already were. Saps smiles at his friend’s concern, a blush still dusting his face. “It really is pretty simple, just run your fingers through the feathers and fix any crooked feathers back into place and pull out the broken ones. Don’t worry about hurting me when you pull them out, trust me it’s better to have them out than to leave them alone.” Flux mutters a small hum of acknowledgement before starting to actually run his fingers through the feathers, already starting to brush out the flecks of sand and dirt in between the soft marginal covert feathers.
Immediately, Saps melts into the feeling, soft chirps threatening to spew out from his throat. His muscles lose their tense stance as Flux continues to lightly brush through his feathers, moving on to his secondary and primary coverts. The stress from the day slowly starts to flee from his being and his eyes begin to droop slightly. He lets out a small shudder as Flux plucks an especially nasty broken feather, and he hears a small fond chuckle from somewhere behind him. Somehow, Saps had forgotten how he tends to get when someone else preens his wings, probably due to the long amount of time it had been since he’d experienced anything like this.
The world around him seemed to slow the longer that Flux had his hands on his wings, and it wasn’t too long before small chirps were bubbling up deep from Saps’ chest. With the new sounds added to the preening session, Flux paused momentarily, an amused smile tugging at his lips. The small chirps slowed and more insistent ones started up at the slowing of the preening.
“Ok, ok! I get it..” Flux chuckled as he got back into his rhythm, moving on to the avian’s primaries, and eventually, his secondaries. The space around the men was filled with content chirps and somewhere along the way, Flux had started humming a simple tune to fill the otherwise empty space.
Finally, Flux finished off by fixing up the scapular feathers, which is really where the chirping picked up the most. The scapulars is where most of the tension was being held, and with Flux’s gentle hands carding through, Saps was a total goner. That part of his brain that he had been trying to push down, the part ruled solely by instinct and nothing else, whispered to him. Flock. And that was where the floodgates completely broke. He was completely gone, chirping as if there was no tomorrow, and Flux, Flux was enjoying every bit of it. He smiled as Saps leaned closer to his touch, glee shining in his eyes.
Unfortunately, the preening was coming to an end as Flux finished off with Saps’ scapulars. Once he was done, the dark-haired man lightly grabbed the others’ shoulders and softly tugged him down into his lap.
“Hello there birdie..” Flux whispered, brushing his fingers along Saps’ cheek. The white-haired man only answered with light chirps as he snuggled closer to Flux’s touch. His brain only supplied him with words of Flock and Safe as Flux brushed his hands through his hair. It would be so easy to just let everything go and close the short distance between their faces, to finally feel those sweet saccharine lips against his own and melt into the gentle, quiet night with nothing on his mind except Flux, sweet Fluixon. His Flock to keep and adore.
And that’s how the rest of the night went, the two men embracing each other’s presence, one being noticeably more loopy than the other, much to Flux’s enjoyment. Somehow, the pair ended up laying on the floor, wrapped in each other’s arms as they enjoyed each other’s company deep into the night, the crickets and other jungle creatures sounding around them, and only the dim moonlight and small lantern to keep them from the darkness.Saps had finally regained control of his brain and was able to speak normal words once again.
“Thank you, Flux.” he murmurs into his companion’s ear as they lay together. Flux hummed a small acknowledgment instead of responding.
“Can I ask you something, Saparata?” Flux spoke, shocking Saps with the use of his real name instead of his nickname.
“Yeah.. Of course.”
“Preening means a lot more to avians than people would normally assume, correct?” He questioned quietly. Saps stays quiet for a moment, mulling over his response.
“I think..” He started, not quite sure if he wanted to take the leap into dangerous territory. “I think we should go to sleep.” He finishes, hand resting on Flux’s face, thumb brushing against his temple. Something akin to disappointment flickered through the dark-haired man’s eyes, almost as if he was expecting something else to be said, before he nodded and pulled Saps closer to him.
“Goodnight birdie. Sweet dreams.” Flux hummed in Saps’ ear as the couple drifted closer towards sleep, the stars gleaming over them, and the ocean providing a comforting thrum off in the distance.