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Tyler keys into the room as quietly as he can. He’s back early -- he’s just not feeling the day off sightseeing as hard as Michael and Mark are -- but he doesn’t want to wake Josh, who stayed in with a down feeling they’re all hoping isn’t a case of road crud.
He’s got some Taco Bell. He’s got a six of Gatorade. He’s honestly the best friend ever, even if he’s also selfishly excited about staying in to work on some song ideas.
The door clicks shut behind him, and he practically tiptoes to the dresser-slash-television-stand to set down his bounty, then frowns. The beds are empty. He’s about to call Josh’s name when he notices the bathroom door is half-closed, light on, and hears just the smallest hint of movement. He moves toward the door to knock, let Josh know he’s here, when he hears something clatter, and Josh hiss out an exasperated ‘ah, crap.’
He nudges the door open. “Hey, dude, you goo--” then stops short, eyes wide.
Josh startles, fumbling wide-eyed away from the mirror and the door. He nearly pitches over backwards, catching himself awkwardly by grabbing the towel rack above the toilet.
There’s a pair of small, feathery wings sticking out from his back.
“Hey,” Josh says, holding perfectly still. He’s shirtless and barefoot, still wearing the battered jeans he’d had on in the lobby at breakfast when they’d raided the cereal bar.
“Hey.” Tyler’s attention flicks back over Josh’s shoulder to the wings, which he’d swear have tucked themselves closer to his body. “What’s with the wings?”
Josh raises his eyebrows. “The wings?”
“Yeah,” he says, stepping into the bathroom, reaching out to touch them. “Where’d you even get thes--whoa.”
The wing jerks back as Josh flinches, and Tyler steps back, startled.
Josh isn’t wearing wings. He’s got wings.
Josh has wings.
Josh. Has wings.
“Dude,” he says, somewhere between awestruck and terrified. “Why do you have wings?”
Josh sighs, slumps a little. “You weren’t supposed to know about them.”
“Right. Sure. You have wings, but that’s fine, because they’re a secret.” he snaps, the sensation of his heart being fully in his throat beaten down by sarcasm fully rising up in self-defense. “Okay. Two questions. One: are you an angel?”
Josh shakes his head. “Um. I don’t think so?”
“Cool. Loving the confidence.” Is he relieved? Probably, yeah. Mostly because angels in the Bible always say stuff like ‘be not afraid’ before laying something impossibly heavy on somebody, and he is not prepared for that today. Or at all. Which he’d be a little more ashamed about if he weren’t already busy dealing with the fact that his best friend has wings. “Okay. Uh. Is this a new thing, or--?”
Josh shakes his head.
Tyler inhales. Exhales. “And you stayed in the room to, like, air ‘em out, or--”
“That’s three questions,” Josh says, mostly but not quite deadpan.
Tyler blinks. Feels himself crack a smile.
Josh grins.
“Dude,” Tyler says, swatting at his arm. “You suck.”
Josh pokes back, and somewhere in the middle of the mild horseplay that ensues, Tyler realizes: this is fine. Weird but fine.
“Okay, but seriously,” he manages as he settles into this new reality where Josh has wings. “Is this wing day or what?”
“Kinda?” Josh offers. He glances over his shoulder and extends a single wing. The back of it is dark, the same color as his short mohawk, but the body of the inner wing is a soft gray, terminating in long, black flight feathers. It spans out maybe two thirds of Josh’s reach.
Too small to fly, Tyler thinks, though he guesses anything is possible.
“They get kinda funky if I don’t pick through them once in a while. I have to pull the ratty old ones loose a couple times of year so the new ones can grow in. I should probably mess with them more, but…” He folds his wing back, shrugs. “Honestly, it’s kind of a pain to reach.”
“You ever get anyone to help?”
Josh shakes his head.
“Why not?”
“Because nobody knows about them.”
Tyler frowns. “Wait, nobody? Not even Jordan? What about your mom?”
“Nobody.” Josh rubs the back of his head. “Except you, I guess?”
“Oh.” Tyler says. “So, uh. Do you want help?”
# # #
Getting out of the bathroom is step one.
Step two is figuring out how and where they’re gonna do this.
He sits Josh down on the foot of their bed -- one of two; they’ve been sleeping four to a room, minimum -- facing one of the twin mirrors that flank the television, then kneeling on the mattress behind him.
“This okay?” he asks, and Josh nods.
It’s a little awkward, figuring how to get started. It’s not like they’re not always in each other’s space. They basically live in a van together, spend time around each other in their underwear on a pretty regular basis, and so on. But it’s not like they’re out here brushing each other’s teeth or whatever. Like, sure, there’s the occasional bit of tag tucking or eyelash spotting or whatever, but--
“How do I do this?” he asks, hands ready but totally lost.
“Um. Just kinda comb through from the middle, I guess? Like, go with the grain and stuff. Don’t freak out if it’s kinda oily.”
“Oily?”
“Yeah. Especially in the middle. Birds have it, too, so I think it’s supposed to be normal?”
“Yeah, okay. Normal. Got it.”
He starts in the middle, tentatively stroking at a soft wedge of feathers that rests between where Josh’s wings root into his back and shoulders. He watches, rapt, as they twitch and fluff up, and takes it as an invitation to gently slip his fingers beneath them, then pull them through. When he does, his fingertips come back shiny.
Oil. Right.
He starts up Josh’s left wing, gently working oil through them, straightening and smoothing them from root to tip. Josh wasn’t wrong about the funkiness: there’s definitely some dust and grit in here. The ones he’s been over are glossier, almost iridescent. He makes an effort to figure out the anatomy, patiently feeling his way around until the feathers lay more smoothly into place.
It’s kind of awesome, actually.
“Um, Tyler?”
“Yeah,” he says, glancing into the mirror to make eye contact. “What’s up?”
“We should, um.” Josh swallows, squeezes his eyes shut. He looks flushed. Embarrassed? His hands are balled up crossed at the wrist over his lap. “You probably shouldn’t help me with this after all.”
He frowns, fingers still deep in Josh’s feathers. “Why not?”
Josh takes a deep breath. “Because if you keep going, I’m gonna feel like I should have bought you dinner first.”
“Oh.” Tyler, says. It takes a second but then the pieces all fall into place. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
He looks at his hands. They haven’t moved. They’re still tucked into Josh’s feathers, frozen mid-stroke. He really should move his hands so that he can figure out a way to help Josh with this without, like, making it weird.
Except there is a part of him that might like to make it weird. Really weird. A part of him that makes his heart rattle in its cage, but only gets to act out when they’re in front of a lot of people and he can be a little shit without any sort of opportunity to take it further. When it’s a joke.
“Hey Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“What if I--” Wait, no. Wrong words. “Hypothetically speaking, where do you actually stand on the whole dinner thing?”
Josh’s eyes snap up to his in their reflection, dark and serious. “Tyler, please don’t fuck with me right now.”
“I’m not fucking with you,” he says, every last guardrail in his brain screaming against the way he’s completely running up against them. “I’m just asking if, in an ideal world--”
“Would I want to have sex with you?”
“I mean, I wasn’t gonna say it like that, but--” He breaks eye contact. His face is on fire. “Maybe, yeah.”
Josh pushes up off the bed, takes about three steps away, and sucks in a shaky breath, wings folded tight against his back.
“I’m guessing that’s a no,” he says, wishing he could be a little softer in this moment. He’d like to be something that could land and absorb the shock of the fall. Tyler doesn’t feel soft like that right now. He feels like a television falling off of a balcony, headed for the sidewalk below. His vision glazes a little. His eyes find a point somewhere near the carpet and stay there as he hugs his knees to his chest. “Which is, uh. That’s fine. It’s better than fine. It’s great. Like, we don’t want to make it weird, ri--”
Josh’s mouth practically crashes into his.
It’s over too fast -- just lips against lips before Josh pulls back, looking almost as startled as Tyler himself feels -- but their second kiss is longer, both of them deliberate in moving closer, Josh joining Tyler on the bed again, the two of them kneeling face to face on the mattress.
He’s not used to kissing someone with facial hair, for a start. And it’s kind of scary to kiss his best friend. But it’s not bad. It’s new.
It’s nice.
“You sure you’re good with this?” Josh asks, eyes closed, forehead rested against his.
“I am definitely up for making this weird, yeah.”
Josh huffs out a laugh and gives Tyler a half-hearted shove. Tyler laughs, swats back, and then gestures at the mirror. “Come on. Let’s finish up your wings.”
This time, he pulls his own shirt off as he draws up behind Josh. Their eyes meet in the mirror briefly before Tyler runs the tips of his fingers up the nape of Josh’s neck, toying briefly with his hair before gliding softly back to the wedge of feathers between his wings. The soft sound Josh makes as Tyler works his fingers through them is his new favorite thing, right after the way Josh’s eyelids flutter, and the way he trembles, just a little, under Tyler’s hands.
Fuck, he thinks. That’s hot.
He works carefully through the parts of Josh’s wings he’s already preened. It feels wrong just to start where they left off. Plus, he gets to watch Josh’s face in the mirror as his head rocks back a little. He tries to memorize the flutter of his eyelids. It’s a rush to know his touch could do this to anyone.
There’s no leap from moving from feathers to caressing freckled skin when the preening’s done. No reason not to give in to slow kisses, or to stop Josh from pushing him back onto the mattress or straddling his hips.
He’s beautiful from this angle, even in the generic too-warm hotel light.
“I don’t know what you like,” Josh says, flushed, sitting back on his heels.
“I like it when you kiss me.”
When Josh leans down, hands pressing into the mattress on either side of his shoulders, he rises up to meet his lips. It’s a different rush, this time: excitement, yeah, but also fear. This is new territory. Lots of things he thought he knew this morning are getting rearranged. There are so many unknowns--
“Hey, you good?”
Tyler blinks up at him, a little breathless. Josh’s eyes are soft. Concerned.
“A little lost,” he admits, “but super good.”
“Cool.”
Josh lowers himself for another kiss. And then another. When his lips move down from Tyler’s jaw to his throat, it’s another moment for the realization that this is happening. This is real. Yet another beautiful impossibility that he commits to bodily, running his hands up Josh’s thighs to grip his ass. He’s rewarded with a deep chuckle, warm breath on his skin, and a light graze of teeth just above his collar bone.
Josh looks up, eyes impossibly dark beneath his lashes. “Want more?”
He’s increasingly aware suddenly of how much more he wants. How far down his body he’d like Josh to go, for example. To judge by Josh’s expression, that feeling is more than mutual.
“Yes,” he whispers. He can hear his voice shake as he asks. But oh, Josh rewards him. He’s methodical. Almost worshipful. He practically shudders when Tyler lets out a soft moan when his teeth graze a nipple. And then one of his hands moves lower, down to Tyler’s waist.
Josh’s kisses follow, down ribs to belly, to the tender final zone between his navel and his belt. His fingers graze along that boundary, tucking tentatively under the very edge of the denim at his hips, waiting for the okay. He looks up at Tyler with eyes that practically burn, his wings fanned out behind him.
He can’t say for certain, but Tyler is pretty sure he’s never been this turned on in his entire life.
“Please,” he whispers.
Josh teases him through his jeans, scratching lightly at the fabric before dipping down to mouth along his hard-on through the denim. It’s brutal. It’s magic. He lifts his hips almost involuntarily, whimpering, glad when Josh gets the hint and turns his attention to the belt impeding his progress. A moment later, Tyler’s raising his hips again, this time so Josh can pull his jeans and underwear past them and off, leaving a pile of denim and sneakers on the floor.
When Josh moves in to kneel at the foot of the bed between his legs, Tyler feels that rush of nervous adrenaline again. He props himself up on his elbows to watch as Josh slips a tattooed shoulder under his knee.
“Still good?” Josh asks, peering up at him.
“Yeah,” he nods. Swallows. “You?”
Josh grins. “Kinda playing it by ear, but, uh. Feels right?”
He’s got to admit: Josh grazing the skin of his inner thigh with his lips between kisses feels pretty dang right to him, too. It feels even better when Josh finally -- finally -- brushes the backs of his fingers lightly up his increasingly hard cock. The sound he makes must read like an encouragement, because Josh follows up those fingers with his tongue. And then his lips. And then...
As a rule, Tyler doesn’t swear much. But not much isn’t never, and getting sucked off by his best friend, who turns out to have a very pleasant mouth, is enough to elicit the sort of soft, gutteral fuck that he saves for special occasions. His head falls back between his shoulders just for a moment, eyes half-closed, before regaining just enough coherence to realize that he wants to watch.
It’s impossible to know Josh and not realize how good-looking he is. That’s just science. But seeing him now, like this? It’s mind-blowing. Tyler reaches out and runs fingers through Josh’s hair. He wonders: does Josh like to do this? He seems to, if his half-lidded eyes and the little sounds he makes in his throat are any indicator.
“So good,” Tyler whispers. His fingers tighten a little -- it’s mostly involuntary -- but the way Josh moans in his throat when he does suggests he’s found a new thing they’re both going to like. A lot. He can feel himself getting closer. Not quite to that point where it’s inevitable, but close enough that he knows he should do something if this isn’t how he wants to finish.
He needs to kiss Josh. He needs to feel him. Maybe not, like, sex, but --
“Dude,” Tyler gasps, squeezing Josh’s arm. “Dude, come up here.”
“What?” He looks glazed, a little breathless.
“Up here. Come on. Take your jeans off.”
He does -- a little awkwardly with the jeans -- but moments later they’re kissing again, bodies pressed close, and -- oh wow -- this is what he needed. He needed to touch, to feel. He pulls Josh back up to straddle him again, runs his hands up his back, and watches Josh shudder as his fingers tease at the base of his wings, fingers working into feathers.
That’s how they figure out the rhythm: Josh’s hand stroking them both, slick with spit between their bodies, Tyler driving him on until Josh comes, face buried in the crook of Tyler’s neck, slicking them both up when he does
Josh slips back down between Tyler’s legs then, finishing him with his mouth in a display that single-handedly destroys any last vestiges of no homo that could possibly exist between them, and probably also within a ten mile radius.
Especially when Tyler kisses him afterward. Which is probably gross, but whatever. Like Josh said: feels right.
He’s not sure how long they lay curled together, naked on top of tangled covers, but it’s long enough that he starts getting cold, and maybe a little hungry...
“Ah, dang.”
Josh makes a little “Mnh?” sound from where his head is tucked against Tyler’s shoulder. His wings are hidden now, gone to whatever invisible space he keeps them, but Tyler can kind of imagine where they would be.
“I brought tacos.”
Josh raises his head. “Tacos?”
“They’re probably, like, room temperature now.”
“Okay, but they’re tacos.”
He’s not wrong. He’s right enough that Tyler gets out of bed for them, and a pair of Gatorades, and by the time he’s back Josh has their jeans and a couple of hoodies for them to snuggle up in while they eat and channel surf hotel cable. Josh eventually brings out his practice pad. Tyler digs out his notebook and lays his keyboard out on the desk. By the time Michael and Mark come in around dusk, Tyler’s getting ready to order pizza and bring out the N64.
It’s almost weird how normal it all feels.
Well, except for the part where he’s wearing Josh’s jeans, or the little bit of feather fluff in the little trash can by the fridge. But if any of the guys notice, they don’t say anything.