Quentin & Tyler Jordan: Alt'verse
Characters: Quentin and Tyler Jordan
Prompt: Alt'verse (wings)
Words: 3860
Rating: R
Quentin has kestrel wings. He's the only one in his family with them. His mother's got brown sparrow wings and so does Alisha. Rishi's are crow-black, Sakura's are black-barred, Orly's are the mottled brown and grey of a turtledove, and Janet has pigeon wings. Only Quentin has a predator's feathers marking him as different, red-brown and speckled and streamlined and really the most attractive feature he's got, if he's being honest.
Tyler Jordan has gull wings, grey and black. His whole family does, but Tyler Jordan's wingspan is the widest, and the Grahams are very casual about touching each other's wings, straightening pinions and smoothing feathers, always looking well groomed.
The first time Tyler Jordan touches Quentin's wings, they're both ridiculously drunk, sprawled across the couch of the apartment they only started sharing a few days before. Quentin goes to lean over the arm of the couch to grab a bottle and Tyler Jordan sways in, burying his fingers in the soft small feathers at the base of one wing. "You have really cool wings, man," he says, and it's all Quentin can do to not hit him in the face with his wing.
"Don't touch me," he says, and Tyler Jordan makes a sad sound, combing the ruffled feathers back into place before he lets go.
"Sorry. You look like you could use some TLC, bro, your feathers are in a state."
"My wings are fine," Quentin lies, and Tyler Jordan just nods, looking like he wants to touch again. "I don't like people touching my wings ever."
"Aw, seriously? Why not? I love having my wings touched. Here, look--" Tyler Jordan stretches one wing out to brush against Quentin's shoulder, and the softer feathers underneath are too tempting for Quentin not to feel. "Mm, yeah, like that," Tyler Jordan sighs, and Quentin's slightly flushed when he looks over at his roommate's open, pleased expression. "That's nice." Quentin's fingers ruffle the feathers gently, but as soon as they brush against the warm skin of Tyler Jordan's back Quentin pulls his hand away like he's been burned. Tyler Jordan blinks at him and shrugs, folding his wing and leaning back to his side of the couch. "Just sayin', you're missing out." They change the topic, and Quentin isn't sure whether he hopes it's dropped for good or not.
There are reasons Quentin doesn't like having his wings touched. A childhood of roughhousing and having feathers pulled out, an adolescence punctuated with terrible relationships with girls who were far more likely to tweak his wings than touch them nicely, an early adulthood filled with fistfights and torn feathers and the horrible months after some guy he'd pissed off a little too much had snapped the ulna of his right wing... yeah. Quentin doesn't have a lot of fond memories of people touching his wings, and he thinks he's justified in not wanting anyone else touching them.
Tyler Jordan, though... he's so casual about it, casual but careful. He steals little touches when Quentin's too drunk or distracted to be defensive, just quick brushes of his hands straightening crooked feathers or stroking ruffled coverts into order. Stealth grooming. The first few times he does it Quentin thinks about hitting him, except it feels nice in a way he doesn't want to examine thoroughly enough to see if he's really angry about it. After they've been living together for a month, Quentin is pretty sure that he doesn't really want to hit Tyler Jordan over it.
Then in the middle of August Quentin comes home one evening to find Tyler Jordan sprawled facedown on the couch, his wings half-spread awkwardly. "What's your problem?" Quentin asks, and Tyler Jordan groans.
"Fucking... dumbass coworker thought it was funny to push me into a ditch, I landed on this one..." He moves his left wing and makes a pained sound. "Fuck. Think I pulled a tendon, definitely broke a couple primaries." Quentin makes a sympathetic sound, dropping his backpack at the end of the couch and coming closer to peer at Tyler Jordan's wing.
"If you pulled something you should go to the ER," he says, and Tyler Jordan shakes his head.
"No. It's not that bad. If it still sucks hard tomorrow I'll call my doctor. I fucking hate going into the ER."
"I don't blame you."
"Can you just look at it for me? I can't even see if it looks all fucked up."
"It doesn't look that bad," Quentin says, and he kneels next to the couch in the angle formed between Tyler Jordan's hip and the edge of his wing. "Here, let me..." The feathers are all askew, and Quentin starts setting them to rights, running his fingertips down the longest feathers gently. "Yeah, a couple snapped."
"Great. Fucking douchebag, I'm gonna make his life hell tomorrow." Tyler Jordan sighs heavily. "Do me a solid?"
"Depends on the favor," Quentin says, and Tyler Jordan looks over his shoulder to meet Quentin's eyes.
"Trim them for me? I can't reach them and they're gonna bug the fuck out of me if I just leave them." He pulls his wing in slightly, catching Quentin in that acute angle. Quentin inhales sharply and removes his hands from the soft dark grey feathers close to where Tyler Jordan's wing meets his back. "I'll owe you one," he adds quietly, and Quentin just nods silently and stands up, going into the bathroom to find his wing care kit. He takes a second to stare himself down in the mirror, long enough to tell himself not to do anything stupid, and when he comes back out he almost, almost doesn't want to rub his cheek against those soft feathers just to see how they'd feel.
He tries to be businesslike about tending Tyler Jordan's wing, but it's an intimate sort of thing to do and there's nothing businesslike at all about the way he feels toward his roommate. The amount of trust Tyler Jordan is putting in him right now... Quentin chews on his lower lip as he wields the scissors, not just cutting straight across the breaks but trying his best to shape the remaining feather more naturally. "There," he says when he finishes the last one, stroking the surrounding feathers into place. "Doesn't look bad." There's definite gaps in the black edge of Tyler Jordan's wing when it's outstretched, but if he keeps it folded no one will notice at all.
"Thank you," Tyler Jordan says. He stretches his wing out further and gasps quietly. "Okay, shit, I'm just gonna keep it in for a few days. Fuck, I can't remember the last time I sprained a wing."
"You think a sprain is bad, try breaking one," Quentin says, and when Tyler Jordan sits up he takes the free space on the couch. "That fucking sucks out loud."
"You broke a wing? Jesus Christ, ow." Tyler Jordan looks at him for a moment, making Quentin sit up straighter like he has something to prove, and then he points at the right wing. "That one?"
"Yeah. Can you tell? I thought it healed pretty cleanly."
"How long ago did it happen?"
"Oh, jeez. It was broken already when I turned 23, so... sixteen months?" He shrugs.
"Q, don't take this the wrong way, but... has no one straightened your wings out since then?" Quentin takes it the wrong way anyways, bristling, and Tyler Jordan holds his hands up placatingly. "No, okay, it's none of my business. But it's easy to see where you can't reach and your right wing looks way rougher. Can I... would you let me smooth them out for you?"
"I don't like people touching my wings," Quentin says, for probably the tenth time since that first night, and Tyler Jordan smiles a little lopsidedly.
"I'm not people. I'm your friend." He pauses, looking uncertain. "I am your friend, right? Not just some guy who lives with you?"
"Yeah. Yes, of course you're my friend." The smile comes back stronger.
"As your friend, it kinda pains me to see wings as beautiful as yours in such rough shape. I swear I'm not gonna fuck with them, please let me fix them for you." Quentin stares at him silently for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and then he sighs.
"Yeah, fine. Go for it."
"Yeah! Thank you, you don't even know how bad I've wanted to do this since I moved in with you." Quentin turns and folds his arms against the back of the couch, digging his nails into the upholstery as he spreads his wings. The last person to touch his wings had been Rishi, and only because he needed help getting the binding off after the break had healed. So it's been... yeah, over a year since the last time he'd let anyone touch them, aside from Tyler Jordan's sneaky attempts to do so.
Tyler Jordan gets right to work, left wing first, starting with the primaries and secondaries, getting them in order before he works his way up to the coverts, fingers gentle as he pulls every ruffled feather into smoothness. Quentin bites the inside of his cheek and swallows down the embarrassing sounds of relief he wants to make. It feels so good to be cared for, and it's intense having Tyler Jordan being so careful and so thorough when no one's touched his wings in so long, no one's touched them sweetly in much, much longer.
"You really do have fantastic wings though," Tyler Jordan says conversationally as he works his way closer to Quentin's spine. "My whole family has wings like mine, you know? Grey and black and white. Easy to tell we're from the seaboard, ha."
"I thought you were from Chicago," Quentin says, trying desperately not to sound as breathless as he feels.
"I was born in Chicago, yeah, but my dad, my grandparents, my whole family going back to practically Plymouth, lived pretty much right beside the Atlantic."
"Must be neat being able to trace that far back."
"Yeah, it's pretty cool." When Tyler Jordan finishes with Quentin's left wing, he rests one hand on Quentin's back right between his wings, thumb and pinky both stroking the small soft feathers where wings meet skin. "There, how's that feel?"
"Fucking amazing," Quentin admits, and Tyler Jordan laughs delightedly.
"Told you, man. The other one's going to take longer, your feathers are all fucked up over here."
"I don't have anywhere else to be," Quentin says, and honestly? He's probably not going to be able to turn around for a while after Tyler Jordan's done with him because he's embarrassingly aroused by the friendly gesture. He does allow himself one long sigh as Tyler Jordan starts in on his right wing, and he doesn't expect Tyler Jordan to headbutt him between the shoulder blades with a laugh.
"How'd you break your wing, anyways?" he asks, running his hand over the top edge of Quentin's wing like he would be able to feel where it had broken. Quentin shrugs.
"Got in a fight, it got out of hand." Way out of hand. The guy had stomped on his wing. It was the most painful thing Quentin had ever experienced by orders of magnitude. "I, uh, I blacked out when it happened, woke up in the ambulance. Fucking awful night. Black eye, bloody nose, broken wing, I looked like a total mess for a couple of weeks."
"Jesus. What the fuck did you say to that guy?"
"I don't know, I was just running my mouth like I usually do. Must have hit a sore spot though." That’s a total lie. Quentin knows exactly what he said, and now he knows better than to say it again to anyone. He’s good at finding people’s sore spots. Too good at it, really. “I haven’t been in a fight since then, though.”
“No shit, I’d hope not.” Tyler Jordan’s thumb rubs against Quentin’s wing about halfway to the joint. “Is this where it broke?”
“How the fuck can you feel that? I can’t even feel it with my fingers.”
“That’s because you don’t have musician’s hands,” Tyler Jordan says, and starts straightening pinions. Quentin swallows. It’s not like he forgot that Tyler Jordan is a musician, he plays his guitar pretty much every day, but he didn’t expect to be handled with the precision of an instrument. But that’s almost what this is, isn’t it? Tyler Jordan is setting him in order like he’d tune a guitar. It’s… ridiculously hot, honestly. Quentin is trying to work out a way to get from the couch to his bedroom without getting teased for getting so worked up by this, and he doesn’t realize Tyler Jordan’s asking him a question until his hands go still and he says “Q? Did I lose you?”
“Sorry,” Quentin says, “sorry, I tuned out, what?” Tyler Jordan’s hands start moving again after a second.
“I said, I don’t think I’ve ever done this much work on anyone’s wings before. Maybe after Paul’s snowboarding accident, but that was like right after they got rumpled, not after a year and a half.” He pulls gently down the length of a primary and Quentin fights against a shiver. “You’re not gonna wait that long to let me do this again, are you?”
“You--” His voice cracks and he swallows again. “You want to keep doing it?”
“Hi, have you not noticed me trying to touch your wings this whole time? I wasn’t really subtle about it, was I?”
“No. You really weren’t,” Quentin says, and Tyler Jordan laughs. “I thought you were just appalled by how bad they looked now?”
“Well, I mean, that’s part of it, but if you trust me to fix them when they’re awful, you’ll trust me to make them look better when they’re not as bad, right?” He finishes the primaries and starts on the secondaries while Quentin measures out his courage against the things he wants to say.
“Are you…” He thinks his nails may have put holes into the couch at this point. “Are you just doing it as a friend?” He winces as the words leave his lips, unhappy with how faint his voice sounds. Tyler Jordan doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just keeps running his fingers along Quentin’s feathers, and then Quentin feels a breath against the back of his neck before Tyler Jordan rests his cheek against Quentin’s nape.
“Do you want me to just be doing it as a friend?” He says it quietly, warmly, right behind Quentin’s ear, and Quentin forgets how to breathe as he shakes his head no. “Good. Cause I don’t really just want to be doing it as a friend either.” He kisses Quentin just under his ear, and Quentin’s wings flex backwards, surrounding Tyler Jordan in speckled feathers as he gasps. “Let me finish your wing, and then I’m going to kiss you stupid, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Quentin breathes, and Tyler Jordan drags his open mouth along Quentin’s neck and gives him a playful bite before he moves back and picks up where he left off. “Fuck, do you have to finish it now?”
“Yes I do, you do not understand the compulsion. C’mon, Q, you can hang on a few minutes, can’t you?” To Tyler Jordan’s credit, he does work a little faster, smoothing out the coverts in fingerfuls instead of individually, and Quentin doesn’t even try to be steady anymore, letting himself shiver at the feeling of Tyler Jordan’s hands correcting what’s been wrong for so long that Quentin barely registered the discomfort any more, until the feeling catapulted seamlessly from bad to amazing. A few minutes is an understatement; it takes almost ten before Tyler Jordan strokes an open palm from the top of Quentin’s wing all the way to the tips of the primaries. “There you go. Sleek. How do they feel now?”
“It’s like I had a constant case of pins and needles and now I can feel them right again…” Quentin stretches them out to their full wingspan and then fans them gently. “Fuck, I didn’t realize how much they hurt until you made them stop hurting.”
“Awesome, I’m glad I helped. Glad you let me help,” Tyler Jordan amends, and when Quentin turns around Tyler Jordan is grinning and twirling a speckled feather between his fingers. “You shed a little. Can I keep one?”
“If you like, sure.” Quentin stands up, and Tyler Jordan drops the feather on the couch and curls his hands around Quentin’s shoulders to draw him closer. “Are you-- I mean, do you really--?” The question gets answered before it’s finished, Tyler Jordan’s lips pressing gently to Quentin’s in a kiss that dives right into the deep end when Quentin digs his fingers into Tyler Jordan’s hair and slips his tongue into Tyler Jordan’s mouth when he whimpers. It’s electric, feels like a circuit snapping closed with their hands on each other. Tyler Jordan’s hands slide down Quentin’s sides, backs of his fingers brushing the soft interior feathers of Quentin’s folded wings, and he pulls Quentin’s hips flush against his own. They both gasp at the contact.
“Fuck, this really got to you, huh?” Tyler Jordan murmurs, and Quentin can’t do anything but nod when Tyler Jordan presses more deliberately against where he’s straining in his jeans. “Yeah. Me too.” It’s the truth, Tyler Jordan’s just as hard in his track pants, and all Quentin wants to do is touch him, kiss him, do all the things Quentin’s been trying to tell himself he doesn’t want.
“Can I--?” Quentin kisses him again, hooking two fingers in Tyler Jordan’s waistband and tugging down slightly, and Tyler Jordan’s response is to pop the button on Quentin’s jeans, nonverbal but clear in his intent to do this together. Quentin doesn’t want to stop kissing him, but he can’t help looking down as he pulls Tyler Jordan free, the heat and weight of his cock in Quentin’s hand, the blood-dark skin between Quentin’s pale fingers. “Wow,” he breathes, and Tyler Jordan giggles, thrusting into Quentin’s grasp.
“Yeah, c’mon.” Quentin shivers at the feeling of Tyler Jordan dragging down the zipper, and when Tyler Jordan actually gets a hand inside Quentin’s shorts the feeling of his guitar-calloused fingers is too much for Quentin to take and he shivers even harder as he comes, dropping his head to Tyler Jordan’s shoulder to hide his flushed cheeks and stifle his moan. Tyler Jordan doesn’t stop moving his hand until Quentin’s gone still, panting into the bend of Tyler Jordan’s neck. “I didn’t realize I was that good,” he says with a laugh in his voice, but he’s not making fun of Quentin and Quentin loves him a little bit more just for that.
“Well, I mean…” Quentin’s voice sounds wrecked, throaty and breathless. “After a wing job like that, what did you expect?” He tightens his hand around Tyler Jordan, strokes him slowly, and Tyler Jordan just hums, a warm pleased sound as he nuzzles against Quentin’s hair. Quentin thinks of all the other things he could tell Tyler Jordan, you’re gorgeous, I like you better than anyone, please never stop touching me… He stifles the words with kisses on Tyler Jordan’s neck, and when he bites down where neck meets shoulder that’s when Tyler Jordan loses it with a sound that’s half curse and half music, clinging to Quentin until he sighs, a deeply satisfied sound.
“Damn. Wow. That… can we keep doing that? Like on the regular? Is that cool?” Tyler Jordan looks hopeful when Quentin finally lifts his head from his shoulder, and Quentin nods quickly. Tyler Jordan grins at him. “Awesome. I, uh…” He extracts his messy hand from Quentin’s pants and tips his head toward the bathroom. “Just gonna wash up.”
“Yeah, right…” Quentin slumps down onto the couch, boneless with at least three different kinds of relief, and he touches one dirty finger to his tongue just out of curiosity, deciding that it’s not awful and that he probably wants to try sucking Tyler Jordan off next time because he’s thought about it kind of a lot. He feels better than he’s felt in a really long time, all the way to the tips of his wings. Not just physically, either-- he feels happy.
When Tyler Jordan comes back out, he’s swapped his contacts for his glasses, and he sits at the other end of the couch, a little smile on his lips. “So hey, after you wash your hands, you think you could rub my sprained wing for me? I bet that would help.”
“Yeah, of course.” Quentin pauses halfway through the bathroom door and says, “You should come to bed with me tonight,” then closes the door behind him, too nervous to even look back at Tyler Jordan first. He washes his hands, splashes water on his face, and by the time he comes back out Tyler Jordan is sitting there expectantly.
“When you say come to bed, you mean…”
“To sleep, mostly but not exclusively.” Tyler Jordan nods, flashing a thumbs up.
“Stellar. Big fan of not exclusively sleeping in beds.”
“Didn’t you say you’re a virgin?” Quentin asks, amused, and Tyler Jordan waves a hand.
“There are things to do in beds besides sleep and sex, you know. I can think of a few I’d like to do with you.” Quentin sits up on the arm of the couch and Tyler Jordan settles down in front of him, left wing unfolding until he gasps and stops. “Damn, ow.”
“Well, don’t do that.” Quentin settles his hands on Tyler Jordan’s wing, warm against white feathers, and starts rubbing gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever touched someone else’s sprained wing before, tell me if I’m doing it wrong.” Tyler Jordan just hums in response, leaning against Quentin’s leg and tracing his fingers around Quentin’s ankle. “Stop, that tickles.” He wraps his hand around the ankle instead and Quentin really doesn’t want to complain about Tyler Jordan’s hands on him. He drags a finger down the borderline of wing and back, right where the smallest feathers are, and Tyler Jordan flinches with his whole body.
“Okay, no, that tickles and don’t tickle me,” Tyler Jordan says, and Quentin flattens his hand between Tyler Jordan’s wings. “I really fucking hate being tickled, please don’t.”
“All right, I won’t.” He goes back to massaging the strained tendon, and Tyler Jordan goes back to his relaxed slump, and it’s a quiet, peaceful moment that Quentin is indescribably glad he gets to experience. All he can think about is the texture of Tyler Jordan’s wing under his hands and the heat of his mouth that’s going to get kissed a lot more tonight and how wonderful his own wings feel now that they’re properly cared for. “Tyler Jordan?”
“Mm?”
“Thank you for insisting.”
“Oh, no problem. I’m an insistent person. I hope you won’t get tired of that.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Quentin says, and leans down to kiss the nape of Tyler Jordan’s neck. He really, really won’t.
Prompt: Alt'verse (wings)
Words: 3860
Rating: R
Quentin has kestrel wings. He's the only one in his family with them. His mother's got brown sparrow wings and so does Alisha. Rishi's are crow-black, Sakura's are black-barred, Orly's are the mottled brown and grey of a turtledove, and Janet has pigeon wings. Only Quentin has a predator's feathers marking him as different, red-brown and speckled and streamlined and really the most attractive feature he's got, if he's being honest.
Tyler Jordan has gull wings, grey and black. His whole family does, but Tyler Jordan's wingspan is the widest, and the Grahams are very casual about touching each other's wings, straightening pinions and smoothing feathers, always looking well groomed.
The first time Tyler Jordan touches Quentin's wings, they're both ridiculously drunk, sprawled across the couch of the apartment they only started sharing a few days before. Quentin goes to lean over the arm of the couch to grab a bottle and Tyler Jordan sways in, burying his fingers in the soft small feathers at the base of one wing. "You have really cool wings, man," he says, and it's all Quentin can do to not hit him in the face with his wing.
"Don't touch me," he says, and Tyler Jordan makes a sad sound, combing the ruffled feathers back into place before he lets go.
"Sorry. You look like you could use some TLC, bro, your feathers are in a state."
"My wings are fine," Quentin lies, and Tyler Jordan just nods, looking like he wants to touch again. "I don't like people touching my wings ever."
"Aw, seriously? Why not? I love having my wings touched. Here, look--" Tyler Jordan stretches one wing out to brush against Quentin's shoulder, and the softer feathers underneath are too tempting for Quentin not to feel. "Mm, yeah, like that," Tyler Jordan sighs, and Quentin's slightly flushed when he looks over at his roommate's open, pleased expression. "That's nice." Quentin's fingers ruffle the feathers gently, but as soon as they brush against the warm skin of Tyler Jordan's back Quentin pulls his hand away like he's been burned. Tyler Jordan blinks at him and shrugs, folding his wing and leaning back to his side of the couch. "Just sayin', you're missing out." They change the topic, and Quentin isn't sure whether he hopes it's dropped for good or not.
There are reasons Quentin doesn't like having his wings touched. A childhood of roughhousing and having feathers pulled out, an adolescence punctuated with terrible relationships with girls who were far more likely to tweak his wings than touch them nicely, an early adulthood filled with fistfights and torn feathers and the horrible months after some guy he'd pissed off a little too much had snapped the ulna of his right wing... yeah. Quentin doesn't have a lot of fond memories of people touching his wings, and he thinks he's justified in not wanting anyone else touching them.
Tyler Jordan, though... he's so casual about it, casual but careful. He steals little touches when Quentin's too drunk or distracted to be defensive, just quick brushes of his hands straightening crooked feathers or stroking ruffled coverts into order. Stealth grooming. The first few times he does it Quentin thinks about hitting him, except it feels nice in a way he doesn't want to examine thoroughly enough to see if he's really angry about it. After they've been living together for a month, Quentin is pretty sure that he doesn't really want to hit Tyler Jordan over it.
Then in the middle of August Quentin comes home one evening to find Tyler Jordan sprawled facedown on the couch, his wings half-spread awkwardly. "What's your problem?" Quentin asks, and Tyler Jordan groans.
"Fucking... dumbass coworker thought it was funny to push me into a ditch, I landed on this one..." He moves his left wing and makes a pained sound. "Fuck. Think I pulled a tendon, definitely broke a couple primaries." Quentin makes a sympathetic sound, dropping his backpack at the end of the couch and coming closer to peer at Tyler Jordan's wing.
"If you pulled something you should go to the ER," he says, and Tyler Jordan shakes his head.
"No. It's not that bad. If it still sucks hard tomorrow I'll call my doctor. I fucking hate going into the ER."
"I don't blame you."
"Can you just look at it for me? I can't even see if it looks all fucked up."
"It doesn't look that bad," Quentin says, and he kneels next to the couch in the angle formed between Tyler Jordan's hip and the edge of his wing. "Here, let me..." The feathers are all askew, and Quentin starts setting them to rights, running his fingertips down the longest feathers gently. "Yeah, a couple snapped."
"Great. Fucking douchebag, I'm gonna make his life hell tomorrow." Tyler Jordan sighs heavily. "Do me a solid?"
"Depends on the favor," Quentin says, and Tyler Jordan looks over his shoulder to meet Quentin's eyes.
"Trim them for me? I can't reach them and they're gonna bug the fuck out of me if I just leave them." He pulls his wing in slightly, catching Quentin in that acute angle. Quentin inhales sharply and removes his hands from the soft dark grey feathers close to where Tyler Jordan's wing meets his back. "I'll owe you one," he adds quietly, and Quentin just nods silently and stands up, going into the bathroom to find his wing care kit. He takes a second to stare himself down in the mirror, long enough to tell himself not to do anything stupid, and when he comes back out he almost, almost doesn't want to rub his cheek against those soft feathers just to see how they'd feel.
He tries to be businesslike about tending Tyler Jordan's wing, but it's an intimate sort of thing to do and there's nothing businesslike at all about the way he feels toward his roommate. The amount of trust Tyler Jordan is putting in him right now... Quentin chews on his lower lip as he wields the scissors, not just cutting straight across the breaks but trying his best to shape the remaining feather more naturally. "There," he says when he finishes the last one, stroking the surrounding feathers into place. "Doesn't look bad." There's definite gaps in the black edge of Tyler Jordan's wing when it's outstretched, but if he keeps it folded no one will notice at all.
"Thank you," Tyler Jordan says. He stretches his wing out further and gasps quietly. "Okay, shit, I'm just gonna keep it in for a few days. Fuck, I can't remember the last time I sprained a wing."
"You think a sprain is bad, try breaking one," Quentin says, and when Tyler Jordan sits up he takes the free space on the couch. "That fucking sucks out loud."
"You broke a wing? Jesus Christ, ow." Tyler Jordan looks at him for a moment, making Quentin sit up straighter like he has something to prove, and then he points at the right wing. "That one?"
"Yeah. Can you tell? I thought it healed pretty cleanly."
"How long ago did it happen?"
"Oh, jeez. It was broken already when I turned 23, so... sixteen months?" He shrugs.
"Q, don't take this the wrong way, but... has no one straightened your wings out since then?" Quentin takes it the wrong way anyways, bristling, and Tyler Jordan holds his hands up placatingly. "No, okay, it's none of my business. But it's easy to see where you can't reach and your right wing looks way rougher. Can I... would you let me smooth them out for you?"
"I don't like people touching my wings," Quentin says, for probably the tenth time since that first night, and Tyler Jordan smiles a little lopsidedly.
"I'm not people. I'm your friend." He pauses, looking uncertain. "I am your friend, right? Not just some guy who lives with you?"
"Yeah. Yes, of course you're my friend." The smile comes back stronger.
"As your friend, it kinda pains me to see wings as beautiful as yours in such rough shape. I swear I'm not gonna fuck with them, please let me fix them for you." Quentin stares at him silently for a long moment, eyes narrowed, and then he sighs.
"Yeah, fine. Go for it."
"Yeah! Thank you, you don't even know how bad I've wanted to do this since I moved in with you." Quentin turns and folds his arms against the back of the couch, digging his nails into the upholstery as he spreads his wings. The last person to touch his wings had been Rishi, and only because he needed help getting the binding off after the break had healed. So it's been... yeah, over a year since the last time he'd let anyone touch them, aside from Tyler Jordan's sneaky attempts to do so.
Tyler Jordan gets right to work, left wing first, starting with the primaries and secondaries, getting them in order before he works his way up to the coverts, fingers gentle as he pulls every ruffled feather into smoothness. Quentin bites the inside of his cheek and swallows down the embarrassing sounds of relief he wants to make. It feels so good to be cared for, and it's intense having Tyler Jordan being so careful and so thorough when no one's touched his wings in so long, no one's touched them sweetly in much, much longer.
"You really do have fantastic wings though," Tyler Jordan says conversationally as he works his way closer to Quentin's spine. "My whole family has wings like mine, you know? Grey and black and white. Easy to tell we're from the seaboard, ha."
"I thought you were from Chicago," Quentin says, trying desperately not to sound as breathless as he feels.
"I was born in Chicago, yeah, but my dad, my grandparents, my whole family going back to practically Plymouth, lived pretty much right beside the Atlantic."
"Must be neat being able to trace that far back."
"Yeah, it's pretty cool." When Tyler Jordan finishes with Quentin's left wing, he rests one hand on Quentin's back right between his wings, thumb and pinky both stroking the small soft feathers where wings meet skin. "There, how's that feel?"
"Fucking amazing," Quentin admits, and Tyler Jordan laughs delightedly.
"Told you, man. The other one's going to take longer, your feathers are all fucked up over here."
"I don't have anywhere else to be," Quentin says, and honestly? He's probably not going to be able to turn around for a while after Tyler Jordan's done with him because he's embarrassingly aroused by the friendly gesture. He does allow himself one long sigh as Tyler Jordan starts in on his right wing, and he doesn't expect Tyler Jordan to headbutt him between the shoulder blades with a laugh.
"How'd you break your wing, anyways?" he asks, running his hand over the top edge of Quentin's wing like he would be able to feel where it had broken. Quentin shrugs.
"Got in a fight, it got out of hand." Way out of hand. The guy had stomped on his wing. It was the most painful thing Quentin had ever experienced by orders of magnitude. "I, uh, I blacked out when it happened, woke up in the ambulance. Fucking awful night. Black eye, bloody nose, broken wing, I looked like a total mess for a couple of weeks."
"Jesus. What the fuck did you say to that guy?"
"I don't know, I was just running my mouth like I usually do. Must have hit a sore spot though." That’s a total lie. Quentin knows exactly what he said, and now he knows better than to say it again to anyone. He’s good at finding people’s sore spots. Too good at it, really. “I haven’t been in a fight since then, though.”
“No shit, I’d hope not.” Tyler Jordan’s thumb rubs against Quentin’s wing about halfway to the joint. “Is this where it broke?”
“How the fuck can you feel that? I can’t even feel it with my fingers.”
“That’s because you don’t have musician’s hands,” Tyler Jordan says, and starts straightening pinions. Quentin swallows. It’s not like he forgot that Tyler Jordan is a musician, he plays his guitar pretty much every day, but he didn’t expect to be handled with the precision of an instrument. But that’s almost what this is, isn’t it? Tyler Jordan is setting him in order like he’d tune a guitar. It’s… ridiculously hot, honestly. Quentin is trying to work out a way to get from the couch to his bedroom without getting teased for getting so worked up by this, and he doesn’t realize Tyler Jordan’s asking him a question until his hands go still and he says “Q? Did I lose you?”
“Sorry,” Quentin says, “sorry, I tuned out, what?” Tyler Jordan’s hands start moving again after a second.
“I said, I don’t think I’ve ever done this much work on anyone’s wings before. Maybe after Paul’s snowboarding accident, but that was like right after they got rumpled, not after a year and a half.” He pulls gently down the length of a primary and Quentin fights against a shiver. “You’re not gonna wait that long to let me do this again, are you?”
“You--” His voice cracks and he swallows again. “You want to keep doing it?”
“Hi, have you not noticed me trying to touch your wings this whole time? I wasn’t really subtle about it, was I?”
“No. You really weren’t,” Quentin says, and Tyler Jordan laughs. “I thought you were just appalled by how bad they looked now?”
“Well, I mean, that’s part of it, but if you trust me to fix them when they’re awful, you’ll trust me to make them look better when they’re not as bad, right?” He finishes the primaries and starts on the secondaries while Quentin measures out his courage against the things he wants to say.
“Are you…” He thinks his nails may have put holes into the couch at this point. “Are you just doing it as a friend?” He winces as the words leave his lips, unhappy with how faint his voice sounds. Tyler Jordan doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just keeps running his fingers along Quentin’s feathers, and then Quentin feels a breath against the back of his neck before Tyler Jordan rests his cheek against Quentin’s nape.
“Do you want me to just be doing it as a friend?” He says it quietly, warmly, right behind Quentin’s ear, and Quentin forgets how to breathe as he shakes his head no. “Good. Cause I don’t really just want to be doing it as a friend either.” He kisses Quentin just under his ear, and Quentin’s wings flex backwards, surrounding Tyler Jordan in speckled feathers as he gasps. “Let me finish your wing, and then I’m going to kiss you stupid, okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” Quentin breathes, and Tyler Jordan drags his open mouth along Quentin’s neck and gives him a playful bite before he moves back and picks up where he left off. “Fuck, do you have to finish it now?”
“Yes I do, you do not understand the compulsion. C’mon, Q, you can hang on a few minutes, can’t you?” To Tyler Jordan’s credit, he does work a little faster, smoothing out the coverts in fingerfuls instead of individually, and Quentin doesn’t even try to be steady anymore, letting himself shiver at the feeling of Tyler Jordan’s hands correcting what’s been wrong for so long that Quentin barely registered the discomfort any more, until the feeling catapulted seamlessly from bad to amazing. A few minutes is an understatement; it takes almost ten before Tyler Jordan strokes an open palm from the top of Quentin’s wing all the way to the tips of the primaries. “There you go. Sleek. How do they feel now?”
“It’s like I had a constant case of pins and needles and now I can feel them right again…” Quentin stretches them out to their full wingspan and then fans them gently. “Fuck, I didn’t realize how much they hurt until you made them stop hurting.”
“Awesome, I’m glad I helped. Glad you let me help,” Tyler Jordan amends, and when Quentin turns around Tyler Jordan is grinning and twirling a speckled feather between his fingers. “You shed a little. Can I keep one?”
“If you like, sure.” Quentin stands up, and Tyler Jordan drops the feather on the couch and curls his hands around Quentin’s shoulders to draw him closer. “Are you-- I mean, do you really--?” The question gets answered before it’s finished, Tyler Jordan’s lips pressing gently to Quentin’s in a kiss that dives right into the deep end when Quentin digs his fingers into Tyler Jordan’s hair and slips his tongue into Tyler Jordan’s mouth when he whimpers. It’s electric, feels like a circuit snapping closed with their hands on each other. Tyler Jordan’s hands slide down Quentin’s sides, backs of his fingers brushing the soft interior feathers of Quentin’s folded wings, and he pulls Quentin’s hips flush against his own. They both gasp at the contact.
“Fuck, this really got to you, huh?” Tyler Jordan murmurs, and Quentin can’t do anything but nod when Tyler Jordan presses more deliberately against where he’s straining in his jeans. “Yeah. Me too.” It’s the truth, Tyler Jordan’s just as hard in his track pants, and all Quentin wants to do is touch him, kiss him, do all the things Quentin’s been trying to tell himself he doesn’t want.
“Can I--?” Quentin kisses him again, hooking two fingers in Tyler Jordan’s waistband and tugging down slightly, and Tyler Jordan’s response is to pop the button on Quentin’s jeans, nonverbal but clear in his intent to do this together. Quentin doesn’t want to stop kissing him, but he can’t help looking down as he pulls Tyler Jordan free, the heat and weight of his cock in Quentin’s hand, the blood-dark skin between Quentin’s pale fingers. “Wow,” he breathes, and Tyler Jordan giggles, thrusting into Quentin’s grasp.
“Yeah, c’mon.” Quentin shivers at the feeling of Tyler Jordan dragging down the zipper, and when Tyler Jordan actually gets a hand inside Quentin’s shorts the feeling of his guitar-calloused fingers is too much for Quentin to take and he shivers even harder as he comes, dropping his head to Tyler Jordan’s shoulder to hide his flushed cheeks and stifle his moan. Tyler Jordan doesn’t stop moving his hand until Quentin’s gone still, panting into the bend of Tyler Jordan’s neck. “I didn’t realize I was that good,” he says with a laugh in his voice, but he’s not making fun of Quentin and Quentin loves him a little bit more just for that.
“Well, I mean…” Quentin’s voice sounds wrecked, throaty and breathless. “After a wing job like that, what did you expect?” He tightens his hand around Tyler Jordan, strokes him slowly, and Tyler Jordan just hums, a warm pleased sound as he nuzzles against Quentin’s hair. Quentin thinks of all the other things he could tell Tyler Jordan, you’re gorgeous, I like you better than anyone, please never stop touching me… He stifles the words with kisses on Tyler Jordan’s neck, and when he bites down where neck meets shoulder that’s when Tyler Jordan loses it with a sound that’s half curse and half music, clinging to Quentin until he sighs, a deeply satisfied sound.
“Damn. Wow. That… can we keep doing that? Like on the regular? Is that cool?” Tyler Jordan looks hopeful when Quentin finally lifts his head from his shoulder, and Quentin nods quickly. Tyler Jordan grins at him. “Awesome. I, uh…” He extracts his messy hand from Quentin’s pants and tips his head toward the bathroom. “Just gonna wash up.”
“Yeah, right…” Quentin slumps down onto the couch, boneless with at least three different kinds of relief, and he touches one dirty finger to his tongue just out of curiosity, deciding that it’s not awful and that he probably wants to try sucking Tyler Jordan off next time because he’s thought about it kind of a lot. He feels better than he’s felt in a really long time, all the way to the tips of his wings. Not just physically, either-- he feels happy.
When Tyler Jordan comes back out, he’s swapped his contacts for his glasses, and he sits at the other end of the couch, a little smile on his lips. “So hey, after you wash your hands, you think you could rub my sprained wing for me? I bet that would help.”
“Yeah, of course.” Quentin pauses halfway through the bathroom door and says, “You should come to bed with me tonight,” then closes the door behind him, too nervous to even look back at Tyler Jordan first. He washes his hands, splashes water on his face, and by the time he comes back out Tyler Jordan is sitting there expectantly.
“When you say come to bed, you mean…”
“To sleep, mostly but not exclusively.” Tyler Jordan nods, flashing a thumbs up.
“Stellar. Big fan of not exclusively sleeping in beds.”
“Didn’t you say you’re a virgin?” Quentin asks, amused, and Tyler Jordan waves a hand.
“There are things to do in beds besides sleep and sex, you know. I can think of a few I’d like to do with you.” Quentin sits up on the arm of the couch and Tyler Jordan settles down in front of him, left wing unfolding until he gasps and stops. “Damn, ow.”
“Well, don’t do that.” Quentin settles his hands on Tyler Jordan’s wing, warm against white feathers, and starts rubbing gently. “I don’t think I’ve ever touched someone else’s sprained wing before, tell me if I’m doing it wrong.” Tyler Jordan just hums in response, leaning against Quentin’s leg and tracing his fingers around Quentin’s ankle. “Stop, that tickles.” He wraps his hand around the ankle instead and Quentin really doesn’t want to complain about Tyler Jordan’s hands on him. He drags a finger down the borderline of wing and back, right where the smallest feathers are, and Tyler Jordan flinches with his whole body.
“Okay, no, that tickles and don’t tickle me,” Tyler Jordan says, and Quentin flattens his hand between Tyler Jordan’s wings. “I really fucking hate being tickled, please don’t.”
“All right, I won’t.” He goes back to massaging the strained tendon, and Tyler Jordan goes back to his relaxed slump, and it’s a quiet, peaceful moment that Quentin is indescribably glad he gets to experience. All he can think about is the texture of Tyler Jordan’s wing under his hands and the heat of his mouth that’s going to get kissed a lot more tonight and how wonderful his own wings feel now that they’re properly cared for. “Tyler Jordan?”
“Mm?”
“Thank you for insisting.”
“Oh, no problem. I’m an insistent person. I hope you won’t get tired of that.”
“No, I don’t think I will,” Quentin says, and leans down to kiss the nape of Tyler Jordan’s neck. He really, really won’t.