Summoning Love

Chapter Two: Flight

Somewhere on the other side of the city lived another boy. He too was sat on his bedroom window contemplating. Thinking. Daydreaming.

You wouldn't have thought by looking at him that there was anything particularly out of the ordinary. Except perhaps the unusually placed holes in the back of his jumper.

Holes that looked like they couldn't possibly have been made by accident.

He was quite a pretty boy. With his curly hair, wild and untamed falling over his eyes. His tall skinny frame making his clothes hang from his body in such an elegant way. And a look on his face that seemed to signify that he hadn't a care in the world.

The boy's name was Dan. And quite frankly he did have quite of lot of cares in the world.

His parents had abandoned him at a young age and left him to find another home. Which he quite thankfully had. Until that family had disowned him too. As had the next family, and then the one after that.

He didn't really like calling any of the people he lived with 'family' because he really didn't think of them that way. He didn't feel like he belonged with them.

Dan was pretty sure he'd lost count of the amount of families that had kicked him out now.

There'd been his parents, of course, who had left him since they'd never really wanted a child.

His second family who'd said that they couldn't afford to provide food for an extra person.

His third family who had turned him out after finding out he was gay.

And his fourth family, the last family he'd had before his current one, who had kicked him out for another reason.
A reason that was a little well... strange. But Dan honestly wasn't surprised anymore. He was used it it.
-

Dan was also the kind of kid at school who always went unnoticed. He would sit at the back most of the time, not even bothering to acknowledge his teachers since they never bothered to acknowledge him.

Some students might have taken that as an opportunity to slip under the radar and cause havoc. But not Dan. Dan wasn't attention seeking like that.

Due to the lack of people caring he'd received in his life he often found it quite intimidating when people actually paid attention to him. Which was also the reason he never raised his hand to answer questions in class.

Luckily for him, Dan had always found school quite easy. He could quite easily take a backseat (literally) and just let everyone else answer questions and ignore his existence while he got on with the work himself.

He'd thought, for the longest amount of time, that he was he only one in his class being ignored. But he soon realised he'd been wrong. There was another boy in Dan's class, not too dissimilar to him, who people avoided like the plague and Dan couldn't for the life of him figure out why.

Dan was the only one who ever noticed the other boy. And he noticed him possibly a bit too much, not that he'd ever admit that. He often found himself distracted in class, gazing at the mysterious boy.

It got to the point where he became obsessed with this boy. He could stare at him for hours if he had the chance. Only from a distance though, never up close.

There was just something Dan found fascinating about him.

And it might have sounded cheesy or cliche, especially to Dan who had always believed that no such thing existed, but you might say that Dan was in love with this boy.

This boy with his jet black fringe.

This boy with his piercing blue eyes.

This boy who went by the name of Phil Lester.

Dan often felt the desire to go and speak to Phil, to become his friend or at least acquaintance.

But Phil seemed too normal to ever want to be the kind of person who would want to associate with Dan. Dan who was gay. Dan who had been with five different families. Dan who had a secret...

-

Dan sighed, blowing his brown curly hair out of the way and gazing out of the window. He got to his feet, stood on the wide windowsill and twisted the handle.

The cool city air outside felt comforting. Dan opened his window some more and sat back down, dangling his legs over the ledge.

It would have scared most people, being as high up as he was right now, with the tips of skyscrapers at eye level and the cars and people mere dots below him. But Dan just felt a thrill, an urge to go out there and feel the wind pierce his cheeks.

He felt a tingling feeling in his back, right where the holes in his jumper were.

Suddenly, and rather peculiarly, two elongated pole like things sprouted out of the holes and spanned out behind him. The pole like structures then seemed to expand, not outwards but downwards.

It was like they were growing leaves. But they weren't leaves, they were feathers, cascading down the span of Dan's back and creating

Wings.

Dan kept his eyes shut through this process as the whole thing always felt very strange. He stood up again slowly, looking down at the city before him.

'Mrs Evans!' Dan called.
'Yes darling?' A voice called back to him.
'I'm going out'
'Where are you going?'
'Out'
'Yes but wh...'
Footsteps sounded from halfway up the stairs.

'I'll see you later' Dan said hurriedly.

The bounding footsteps reached the top of the stairs.
'Wait, Dan! Where are you...'
The owner of the footsteps thrust open Dan's door, only to see an empty bedroom and an open window, wind blowing the curtains around violently.

Mrs Evans sighed. She wasn't Dan's mother so therefore she didn't have control over him. But she did care about him, she cared very much.
'Stay safe' she muttered to herself.