After scouring Reddit on the theory of aerodynamics applied to the very hypothetical idea of humans with wings, Milo begrudgingly helped me experiment with my noble quest to take flight in my back yard.
"What if you're an emu or penguin, C," Milo grumbled, biting his lip as he did when he was nervous. "They're birds but they can't fly."
"Yeah, well I'm a magpie, Milo. If you saw how that magpie bastard swooped at me, you'd know that magpies can fucking fly," I said, climbing onto the top of the ladder, Milo gripping onto the base with white knuckles, looking up with apprehension written all over his face. "Hold the ladder steady, yeah? I'm gonna jump on the count of three."
"I don't think this a good idea, C..." Milo said, muttering something under his breath as he steadied the ladder, body rigid.
"Okay. One... two... three!" I leapt from the top of the ladder, my thighs and calves catapulting my body in to the air. The sky was azure blue, clouds light and fluffy, and I screamed triumphantly. I was... I was...
On the ground.
The sky disappeared from my vision as I landed face down into the grass, which was a little spiky under my bare chest.
"Fuck, C!" Milo swore, kneeling down beside me, rolling me over. Woah, there are two Milos. Nice. Waving his hand in front of my eyes, Milo was frantic. "You okay, C? Can you see me? What's my name?"
"Oh, I can see you alright," I giggled, grabbing at Milo's hand and apparently missing the mark. "All two of you." After a beat, I smirked cheekily.
"Hey, I must be an angel," I said, another giggle bubbling away in my throat as the two Milos morphed into one, my eyes focusing on the dark brown eyes that stared at me so intensely. "Because I think I just fell for you."
"I think you broke something in your head when you fell," Milo groaned, helping pull me to my feet. When I sat up, everything went dizzy again before clearing.
"Aw, but I thought that was a good one!" I said, laughing. "I mean, it's thematically appropriate now."
"You're a duck, not an angel, ducky," Milo said, holding my chin between his fingers as he moved my head side to side, inspecting for any injuries apart from my apparently terrible ability to choose pick up lines.
"Well, I'm all good now so, let's try again?" I said, getting up to dust my pants off, grimacing at the grass stains on the knees of my tracksuit pants.
"You're joking, right? It's clearly not working," Milo said, gesturing to the angel-shaped patch of flattened grass beside us.
"Maybe you're right," I sighed, Milo's shoulders relaxing. "I clearly need more height. Let's try it from the roof!"
"C!" Milo yelled, flabbergasted. "You can't be serious."
"Oh, come on. It worked in X-Men: First Class with the screaming dude, and also in Shazam. Who better to trust with superhero shit than Marvel and DC, Milo!" I said, giddy. "And it's not like it's the first time I've jumped from a roof. I mean, first time jumping from the third storey, but details, details. You've seen my insta, I've got heaps of parkour vids there, some of them way more ballsy than jumping from a roof. Come on."
"You're not a superhero, C! And no, I'm not going to let you kill yourself!" Milo said, shaking his head firmly, wrapping his arms around my waist as he tried to tug me back down the stairs, but to little success as I beat my wings twice, knocking his hands off me. Racing up the stairs, making sure to keep my wings high as to not get them caught on the banisters, I ran towards the balcony. Leaping up onto the roof gutter, I hoisted myself up, Milo unable to follow. Despite being tall and strong from working out in the gym, he didn't quite know how to use his body like I did.
Thank God for parkour.
"C, please," Milo begged, watching with wide eyes as I scrambled onto the roof, grinning as I felt the wind wrap around my wings, caressing my feathers. "Don't do this, you're going to hurt yourself and I-"
"Have a little faith, baby," I grinned, taking a few step back on the tiles. "Count to three for me!"
"C!"
"Did I hear 'three'?" I smirked, crouching down slightly as I prepared for my leap. "Let's go!"
"F-Fuck! C! Don't jump- oh my fucking God," Milo stammered, watching as I ran forwards, flinging myself off the roof. "Culver!"
There was a rush of wind and my wings jerked outwards. I felt the wind snag on my feathers, my body jolting as I frantically flapped. Crisp air assaulted my eyes, which I closed as tears stung them in an effort to keep them from drying out.
My body spun in an uncoordinated spiral, tumbling downwards in a jagged zig zag as I beat my wings, trying to keep myself airborne. I could hear Milo yelling after me, but his voice was soon drowned out as I crashed into a large oak tree. The air was knocked out of me as the branches and dying leaves clawed at my body and wings, which bore the brunt of the fall as they wrapped around me instinctively to minimise the impact. The branches slowed me down as I fell, ultimately crashing onto the dirt with a pained groan.
I rubbed my teary eyes as I sat up, muscles creaking. My wings had leaves, dirt and sticks stuck between their feathers, and I'm sure my body was very much the same. My tracksuit pants were caked in dirt, my chest sporting a few new scratches, mainly along my ribcage. After inspecting myself, apart from looking like a hot mess and a few scratches, I wasn't doing too badly at all.
"Huh, no broken bones. Nice," I mumbled to myself, slapping my forearm, impressed. "Maybe they mutated as well. If I could get an X-ray of something, that would be dope. Maybe they're hollow and pneumatised, or maybe reinforced with other fibres or something." Suddenly, a stroke of lighting hit my brain. "Super bones. Super boners. Fuck yeah." I cackled to myself just as Milo ran towards me.
"Dude, did you see that?" I asked, getting up as he approached. "How awesome was oof-"
"You bloody fucking idiot!" Milo yelled, his larger body crashing into me, arms wrapping around my shoulders. His body was shaking as he buried his head into the curve of my shoulder, breath hot on my skin as he took in trembling, uneven breaths. Instinctively, I tugged him closer, my arms wrapping around his waist and fisting the fabric of the back of his top.
"M-Milo... Relax, it's totally fine-"
"It's not totally fine!" Milo growled, pulling back to look me in the eye. "It's anything but fine! You could have died. If you got hurt, if you died, do you know what I-" Milo's mouth suddenly clamped itself shut, his eyes dropping form my eyes as he groaned, stepping back as he ran his shaky fingers through his dark hair.
Milo bit his lip, shaking his head in a minute movement, seemingly more for himself than for me.
"You're my best friend, C. I don't want to see you... hurt yourself, so... please don't do something like that again," Milo mumbled, his voice cracking slightly towards the end, which he covered with a rough cough. Looking at Milo, who rarely looked so shaken, my heart itched, fluttering like my wings.
"Well, you always were the smart one out of the two of us," I said slowly, giving Milo a sheepish look when he looked up, eyes stormy. "I'll be more careful next time, okay? I'll at least have a mattress waiting to catch my fall. And maybe a helmet, and elbow pads. I've got a life vest lying around somewhere too, I think."
"You're killing me here, C," Milo grumbled, looking up to the sky in either a prayer or a curse, I couldn't quite tell. When he dropped his gaze back to me, Milo had a small smile on his face.
"We'll start from the first storey, okay? But after lunch."
"See? I knew it!" I squealed, blowing Milo a kiss as I skipped towards the house. "You're the bestest, Milo."
***
Let's just say that flying was not my forte. Funny, considering I literally have wings growing out of my back, but they were apparently useless for anything more than knocking over vases and lamps, and occasionally keeping Milo dry from the rain.
It's not that I made zero progress, it just wasn't a... zero to hero moment, as per Hercules who over the course of a musical number became a hunk who actual knew how to use his rockin' bod. I, on the other hand, managed to control my wings enough to make it from the roof of the backyard gazebo to... the middle of the fish pond about 15 metres away from it.
Superheroes in movies made it look so easy, like Angel from X-Men Apocalypse, but it just didn't work like that in real life. No, to fly, I had to hold my body and muscles in a certain position, to have balance but be aerodynamic at the same time. It also didn't help that my eyes kept getting wind-beaten and dried out, making me have to drain Milo's eye drops into my pupils. We had figured out how to deal with that problem, though, and Milo hadn't been able to stop laughing for a good ten minutes the moment I had put the swimming goggles on.
Because swimming goggles, a life vest (strapped on backwards to accomodate my new appendages), tracksuit pants and elbow pads was real Vogue-level fashion.
It has been a week since the whole swooping-growing-(badass/beautiful)-wings incident, and while Milo and I had been quick to adapt to the existence of my wings and other apparent powers, like 320 degree pigeon vision, an uncanny navigational ability which means Google maps has become obsolete, resistance to environmental extremes and bird call mimicry - but that last one was just because I was good at imitating animals. With the wings themselves, though, the only thing I had mastered was retracting and manifesting them.
Milo had been staying over almost every night now, to the point that he had essentially moved into the guest bedroom next door to my room. He still had dinner with his mum and brother almost every night, but otherwise he was glued to my side, trying to help me figure out how to use my wings.
We hadn't revealed my new powers to anyone else, not even to our small group of friends from high school. Or, our other friend from high school. Singular.
There was only one other person who hadn't been scared shitless by Milo in school, and that was Geoffrey Go. Australian-born Chinese kid who was always bubbly and positive yet actually harboured master-level skills in multiple forms of asian martial arts. Kung fu, karate, taekwondo, aikido, you name it, and he's mastered it.
He hadn't been scared of Milo because even if Milo had tried to kill him, Geoff would have Mortal Kombat his German ass. But it was also because his mother scared the living daylights out of him more than any other person in the world - the ultimate dragon lady, fresh of the boat, rice paddle in hand ready to meet Geoff's black belt ass.
Unluckily for us, she hated me. Dragging her son from the books and dojo to throw himself off rooftops in the name of parkour, introducing him to the wonderful world of pot. Not to mention, I was apparently a sexual deviant, because my pansexual ass didn't just like girls.
But, luckily for us, she loved Milo. Top of the class, effortlessly intelligent, on the fast track to a good career, aesthetically pleasing Milo. Not to mention, he was apparently not a sexual deviant, because his ass liked girls but he had the decency to not hook up or have... relationships with people. Period. Frigid king? Maybe. Gentleman? Most definitely, according to Mrs Go.
She loved Milo so much, in fact, that she kept throwing her oldest daughter at him; Gianna Go. Gianna was a year older than us and obviously didn't go to our all boy's school, but we had hung out together enough to be good friends. Now, Gianna was definitely a kindred spirit. A respectfully rebellious, creative soul who decided to become an artist rather than a doctor and making sure she didn't look anything like the good Chinese daughter her mother wanted her to be.
Apparently Mrs Go thought that if Gianna dated Milo she would straighten out. But, unfortunately, Gianna thought Milo was too stuffy, and Milo... just wasn't interested in her.
His loss, to be honest.
I watched Milo as he sauntered into the living room, hair a little damp after showering. He lowered himself onto the couch beside me, moving one of my wings to make space on the seat. He barely even batted an eye at my appendages now, more curious about the messages he was receiving on his phone.
"You should put those away soon, C. Geoff just said that they'll be here in 5," Milo said, turning his head to look at me, before frowning. "Why aren't you changed? You just gonna hang out with them in your underwear with your wings out?"
"It's uncomfortable," I whined, pouting. "Clothes and sucking in my wings."
"It's only for a few hours, or until whenever they decide to leave. You know their mum has a curfew," Milo said, flicking at my wing that had come to rest behind him, stretching out over the backrest of the couch, flapping lazily.
"Fine, dad. Jeez," I said, rolling my eyes. I quickly went to my room to pull on a pair of black cargo pants, grabbing a worn band T-shirt and hoodie off my bed and bringing them downstairs and plopping myself back on the couch next to Milo, my wing clocking him in the head. Milo gave me a withering look which I returned with a bat of my lashes, before I turned around. "Help me get them back in, please."
"You can get them back in yourself, idiot," Milo snorted. "Why do I have to help you?"
"It's faster when you help me! And it's also more comfortable when you help put them in me. I always seem to snag my shoulder blades when I try to cram them in myself and it itches." Turning my head, I pushed my lips out. "Pwetty pwease?"
"You're such a child, honestly," Milo sighed, but waved his hand for me to turn back around. I smiled happily as I felt Milo's hands grip my wings, comfortable and familiar on my feathers. His hands knew exactly where to push and pull to tuck my wings in, always gentle as they slid over the two puckered scars when the last feather had been pushed through. Sometimes his fingers would linger there for a little, almost as if he were in a trance, but that wasn't surprising considering I literally just had wings sucked into my body.
"Thanks baby buns," I said sweetly, Milo rolling his eyes. The intercom on the wall across from us buzzed as I pulled on my T-shirt and hoodie, Gianna and Geoff's faces showing up in the screen.
"Don't try to itch so much, C. You look so suspicious," Milo warned me, a sheepish grin on my face as I dropped the hand from my back.
"I'll just say I have mad allergies or something," I shrugged. "And anyway, it's not like they'll actually notice anything is weird, right?"
A/N: Thank you for reading, and I hope you're enjoying the story so far :)