The Roof, Monday Evening

[wwiii]

One of these days, Warren was going to come up to the roof to do more than awkwardly stand there staring out over the island as the sun worked on setting. Really. In fact, tonight, 'more than awkwardly standing there' was essentially his whole reason for being up there.

Shocking, no?

This time, he didn't even bother to check to see if anyone else was on the roof with him. It was a free roof in a busy dormitory, he knew better by now. No, this time he was going to pull his coat off, lose the harness that was holding his wings in place, and then take a running leap off the edge before he could even have second thoughts and chicken out.

And, now that he was in the air, feathered wings flaring behind him and catching the breeze that he'd thrown himself into? He was going to laugh. It was the delirious, giddy laugh of a boy who had just rediscovered freedom. The sort of freedom that he'd only ever known those few times that he was in the air, with wind moving over his wings and nothing, not even gravity, tying him down unless he decided it was allowed to. It was still cold out, but that was fine. The chill made something as absolutely surreal as flying seem that much more real.

And, after a few laps around the dorms, it was possible that he was still completely giddy by the time he'd come to land again, too high on adrenaline to be thinking about the landing enough to flub it.

Today? Today was officially a good day.

[Open roof is open! A person could get addicted to typing about flying, omg.]

Comments

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

Marco had plans for the evening. Most of them had involved Mortal Combat, but some had also involved pizza. But after about three hours, he actually got bored and decided to go see who was around anywhere else. Which is how he ended up on the roof. Boggling a bit.

"Dude, you have wings!"

[wwiii]

"You noticed!"

Yes, Warren was still grinning. He couldn't help it. Just so long as this kid wasn't pointing fingers and yelling 'Mutie Freak!' at him, then there wasn't much that was going to spoil his mood this evening.

"Shoudln't I?"

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

Marco shook his head and started grinning. "What ever floats your boat." He informed him. "Do you fly?"

[wwiii]

"There's a loaded question," Warren replied, his smile going a little lopsided for a moment while he idly gave his wings a stretch, and then folded them against his back.

There was enough wingspan there to make hanging pictures on dorm room walls into a very risky endeavor, to say the least.

"I can fly. I haven't, much. Actually, I just did a few laps of the building before you got up here."

Which was weird to just casually babble about, but hey, this totally did float Warren's boat. So there.

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

"That is amazing." Marco said, somehow managing to keep from walking over and poking at a wing. "Where you born like that or what? And hey, flying is totally awesome." He spoke from experience there.

[wwiii]

Warren would have given Marco the weirdest look ever if he were to meander over to poke at his wings, so it was probably for the best that he exercised his restraint, there.

"I guess you could say I was. I mean... I didn't have wings my whole life, or anything. They just sort of... grew there, when I was a kid." A pause. "And flying is totally awesome. You've... actually been?"

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

Marco had some self-restraint there. Poking people in the wing was just weird.

"And all I got was a bike." Marco commented sadly. "And yeah, kinda. I mean, I'm a bird at the time? But it's still me and it's amazing."

[wwiii]

"... You can become a bird?"

Okay, Warren? You randomly grew wings when you were a kid and they wouldn't go away no matter what you tried, back then. This guy turning into a bird really isn't all that strange, in comparison.

"You mean, like a Fandom thing, then? One of my friends is stuck as a penguin right now."

[morpherboy.livejournal.com]

Marco shook his head. "Penguins don't fly. Animals are kinda my thing? Like, you've got your wings which how do you fit into cars anyway?" The sentence got away a bit from the origin.

[momslilassassin]

"Neat trick," Ben commented with a grin. "Wish I could fly that way. I need a ship, most days."

[wwiii]

"Usually, I just pay for a plane ticket," Warren admitted, trying not to look too terribly sheepish as he folded his wings across his back. "It's hard to flub a landing in a plane, considering I'm never the one piloting it, you know?"

[momslilassassin]

"Totally," Ben said. "It's a little to get the ship controls away from my dad when we're going anywhere together."

[wwiii]

"Must be a dad thing," came Warren's carefully idle reply.

Dads totally had something against their sons being able to fly. That had to be it.

"Do you have better luck around here, at all?"

[momslilassassin]

"Much," Ben said. "There's a flight simulator that you can use if you can get Professor Skywalker to give you the keys, and a friend of mine gave me a pair of wings as a gift a few months back."

He smiled and held out his hand. "I'm Ben."

[wwiii]

"Warren," he replied, smiling and accepting the handshake. "The friend you're talking about, that must be Karla, right? She'd mentioned giving out wings to people, back at the welcome picnic. You're the first I've met to mention actually having a pair."

[momslilassassin]

"That's my friend," Ben said, nodding and smiling back. "What did you think of her?"

[wwiii]

"She seemed nice," Warren admitted. "One of these days, I'll have to look her up again, I think. She'd mentioned possibly going flying together in a group, and at the time I was too busy trying to wrap my head around the idea of letting people see these," he stretched out one wing slightly, "to really jump at the offer."

[notyourpawn.livejournal.com]

Alice should wander out to the roof more often, if this sort of thing was going on.

"Oh, how wonderful," she cried, clapping her hands. "Did you change just now or do you always have wings?"

[wwiii]

... See, Warren could almost get used to people giving him receptions like this.

"Well, the wings aren't exactly a new development," he replied, offering Alice a smile. "I'm just really good at hiding them."

Like the sneaky, freakishly flexible winged boy that he was.

"Uh... Surprise?"

[notyourpawn.livejournal.com]

"That has to be dreadfully inconvenient, now and again," she noted, glancing them over with barely concealed delight. "However do you fit them under your shirts? I've never mistaken you for a hunch-back, so you must excel at binding them."

[wwiii]

"There's a little crease under my coat, if you know what to look for," Warren noted, almost humbly. "But I to tend to strap them back pretty tightly. It's not really comfortable, but it works."

Okay, seriously, if people were going to keep smiling and thinking that his wings were so awesome, he was going to develop a complex, or something.

... That was just what Warren needed. An ego to match his wingspan.

[notyourpawn.livejournal.com]

"Like an illusionist," she said. "No one thinks to examine the back of your coat, so the subtle bulges fool the eye. Quite clever, I must say. I've been a great number of things before, but I can't recall ever having wings."

Some of her memories like to overlap one another and fight for her attention. How terribly immature of them.

[wwiii]

"Trust me, if you've ever flown, it's not something you're about to just up and forget anytime soon," Warren replied. He was smiling. He couldn't help it. He was still riding the high of his flight, and the positive reception that his wings were getting was more than welcome. "It's like... Free-fall, only you're completely in control. And nothing can hold you back, because it's just you and the whole sky."

[notyourpawn.livejournal.com]

"Is it hard, learning to steer?" Alice asked. "One imagines if one had wings, it would be a simple twitch and turn this way and that, but as I haven't any, that's easier for me to say than you. I've leapt many times my own height before, but I was very small at the time, so it doesn't have the same claim on the sky."

[wwiii]

"Believe it or not, steering is the easy part," Warren replied, carefully picking at what she was saying, and storing it away for future reference. Of course she was alright with wings, if she'd ever been able to leap like that.

The extraordinary, around here, wasn't. He was learning.

"It's more complicated to explain, though. It's sort of something that you just... Do. Things like turning can be as simple as fine control over my feathers, or it might mean throwing my whole body into it."

For all the experience he actually had in this department. Come now, Warren.