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Akira had just slipped below the bedsheets when he heard it.
Crashing, a few surprised yelps, and a lot of cursing.
That kind of noise was not abnormal for the neighborhood that he lived in. Being an avian, he naturally couldn’t afford to live in the most… luxurious of areas. These sorts of things happened all the time (just now he could hear some people having an extremely drunken argument down the street, and in the opposite direction some police cars were wailing out in the distance), so there was no real reason he would want to, or need to check the noise out.
But it sounded like it was right outside his window, and Akira couldn’t find himself falling asleep, and also he kind of just wanted to know what it was. (What was the saying again? Curiosity never killed the cat, right-? That was definitely it.)
So he got out of bed, opened his window, and looked down.
And there, right below his line of sight, was a man on the ground.
He was crumpled up on the ground and seemed to be holding one of his jet-black wings in pain.
Despite himself, Akira yelled out, “Hey! Are you okay?”
The man flinched and looked up at him. Akira struggled to make out any of his features in the darkness of night.
The stranger didn’t say anything. Instead he propped himself against the wall and began to stand up, only to collapse down to the ground again.
“You’re hurt,” Akira kept addressing him as he grew more concerned by the second, “You won’t be able to get far on your own. I can help you.”
“Get away from me,” The man hissed back, but this simple action seemed to make him double over in pain again.
That was convincing enough for Akira. Jumping out of his window, he flew down to the injured man, who, although seemed a bit reluctant to go with him, surprisingly didn’t give much of a fight when Akira led him back into his home.
Both of them were silent for the rest of the night. Akira tended to the man’s wounds; a few scratches here, some bruises there. He suspected the man might have a bruised rib as well, but decided that there wouldn't be much he could do about that.
Akira decided not to ask the man about why one of his crow’s wings was very obviously growing back after being clipped. Maimed wings were unfortunately very common among avians (whether they be self-inflicted or done as an act of violence), and Akira knew it was not his place to ask this man’s story.
While this all happened the man avoided eye contact, choosing to shield his face with his long brown hair instead.
They’re around the same age, but to Akira this other man seemed to be a lot more put-together than he would ever be. Regardless of the dirt and injuries littering his body, the man had a sort of effortless elegance and beauty about him. The way his hair fell perfectly around his face even though it had just been violently swept around by the wind, how his skin appeared so smooth and soft (what the hell was this guy’s skincare routine?), or how he sat up straight with a confidence that demanded attention from anyone who happened to be nearby. All of these things came together to create the image of a person who seemed leagues better than anyone who should ever be caught in a neighborhood like this, wings be damned.
(One thing contradicted this image the man had put up, though. Whenever Akira managed to catch a glimpse of his red eyes, there was a certain sadness, or helpless anger held within them that made him seem infinitely smaller, like a little boy rather than a grown man. But then every time Akira would catch this, those red eyes would quickly make contact with his and reinforce themselves behind a steely wall, and the feeling would go away.)
Akira managed to convince the man to sleep on his bed, while he himself took the dingy couch in the living room.
When he woke up the next morning, the mysterious man was already gone.
The second time the man came by was a few weeks later.
Akira was awoken by a sharp knocking at his bedroom window. All the sleep was knocked out of his system when he opened the blinds and saw the man hovering near his window, eyes wide in panic.
Akira quickly swung the window open and the man practically dove inside.
“Shut it!” He yelled, and who was Akira to disobey?
He ushered the man into the (windowless) bathroom to hide while Akira closed the blinds and stayed in the bedroom as a lookout.
He didn’t know whether a few minutes or a few hours had passed by when the man finally decided to emerge from his hiding place.
“You didn’t need to save me,” He said.
“Are you kidding?” Akira responded incredulously, “You were in trouble! And anyways, you came to me first.”
The man huffed, “You’re insufferable.”
Just like last time, Akira gave the man his bed to sleep on.
And just like last time, his guest was gone by the morning.
The man wasn’t in danger when he visited Akira for the third time.
A soft, almost tentative knocking came from his bedroom window. Akira curiously opened the blinds, and was shocked to see the face staring back at him.
“Sorry,” the man said as he entered the room, “I don’t fly all that often, so I needed a place to rest. I hope you don’t mind.” He was breathing somewhat heavily but otherwise seemed to be much calmer than Akira had ever seen him. The man shot him an almost-too-perfect apologetic smile.
Akira only shrugged in response, “Well, I guess it doesn’t bother me too much,” he said jokingly, “At least it doesn’t seem like you’re in any sort of mortal danger this time.”
A moment of silence passed between them as they stood there looking at each other. The man shifted his weight to his other foot.
“So,” Akira spoke up again, “Want some coffee?”
A nod, “That would be pleasant.”
The two of them were in Akira’s kitchen. Akira had just finished making the stranger a cup of coffee, the smell now permeating the room.
He set the cup down in front of his guest, heart beating quickly as the man took his first sip.
A pause, “It’s good,” he said, “It’s… really good.”
Akira smiled, “I learned from the best.”
While the man continued to down his drink, Akira went to pour himself a cup as well.
“Well,” Akira began, leaning back against the kitchen counter, “Do you want to tell me your name? Or am I gonna refer to you as ‘the weird guy who keeps coming to my house at night’ for the rest of my life?”
He meant it sort of as a joke, but Akira noticed the way the man hesitated when he said this.
“For what it’s worth, my name is Akira,” he chose to introduce himself first.
“...Goro,” the man– Goro– said quietly, almost as if he were unsure of his own name himself.
“Goro,” Akira said to his new friend one night, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Hmm?” the other man responded, sipping from a cup of Akira’s coffee. He seemed to have taken a liking to Akira’s coffee recently, now that he’s been visiting regularly for a few weeks now.
“A while ago you said that you didn't fly often. And even before that, on the day we met… your wing wasn’t functional. But now it seems like you can fly just fine. What’s with that?”
Goro took a deep breath, “I’d rather not disclose all of the details to you, but, to summarize it… most people do not know that I’m an avian. If they did, then I would lose a lot of things that are important to me. I used to be okay with suppressing my flight because it reminded me of things I would rather forget, but,” he gave Akira a small smile, “I guess I’ve been enjoying it lately.”
Akira noticed how Goro didn’t mention his previously clipped wing. He was okay with this, though– Goro had never opened up before as much as he did just now.
“Akira,” Goro said as soon as he entered through Akira’s window that night, long brown hair blowing softly in the breeze, “There’s something I want to show you.”
Akira only had time to give his friend a tentative nod before a gloved hand clasped his own and dragged him out the window.
The two of them flew in silence for a long time. This was the longest Akira had flown in a while, and he didn’t quite know where he was going– they were headed in a direction he didn’t often go to– but he trusted Goro to lead the way. As time went on the crowded lights of the city turned into the more spread out ones of the countryside, and later on even those disappeared from view as well.
Eventually, a cliff came into view. Goro dove down and landed on its edge, turning to look at Akira who not long after arrived beside him. Then, Goro turned his gaze past Akira and pointed upwards.
“Look,” Goro said. There was a smile on his face.
Akira turned and looked. And he gasped.
Up in the sky, without any lights of the city to drown them out, were millions of stars blinking down at him.
Beside him, Goro sat down on the ground, patting the space next to him as if motioning for Akira to do the same, “I found this place not too long ago and I… I thought I would show you, too.”
Akira plopped down beside him and laid down, staring in amazement at the sky above him, “I’m glad you did. This is amazing.” It was like– no, it was better than the night sky he would see in his small town as a kid.
Goro laid down too, humming in response.
The two of them stayed like that for a while, talking about random things or pointing out stars that they noticed or simply just laying there in silence. As it turned out, Goro knew a lot about astronomy (Akira figured it fit for a nerd like him).
“Akira,” Goro said after a time, “Not too long ago, you asked about my clipped wing when we first met, and how I couldn’t fly.”
Akira stayed silent; this was the first time Goro ever addressed this, and he knew that it was best if he simply let the other man say what he needed to say.
“Well in truth… It was my father who clipped my wings. He’s a bit of an important figure, you would say, and so he forced me to hide them. My mother is gone, and they reminded him too much of her, I guess. But I would go out to fly in secret when I could. He found out, though, and clipped one of my wings. It was a long time before I could fly properly after that, which you saw the process of.”
Akira didn’t didn’t respond for a few seconds, instead opting to trace lines between stars with his eyes, “Why didn’t you leave?” he finally asked.
Goro only sighed, “I knew you would say that. It isn’t so easy. He… he controls every aspect of my life. He paid for my education while making sure I didn’t have a dollar to my name. And when I became an adult he already had jobs automatically lined up for me. It’s suffocating, but… it’s probably my fault it’s gotten to this point, too. If I hadn’t been so–”
“Don’t say that,” Akira said immediately, “None of that is your fault at all.”
“But–”
“No ‘buts,’” the two of them could– would talk about this later, but for now Akira just wanted to give Goro a moment of peace, “You’re away from all of that now. We’re here, under the stars, and the sky is reaching all around us. You have no problems here.”
Goro took a deep breath, “...Yeah, you’re right.”
Akira didn’t know who fell asleep first, but when he finally slipped away into a peaceful slumber the two of them were still next to each other.
And when he woke up, for the first time, Goro was still there.