Popslash: Faith, part I
Title: Faith
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris Kirkpatrick / Kevin Richardson
Prompt: 055. Spirit
Word Count: 10,058
Rating: PG and only because I think AJ swears a couple of times.
Summary: Kevin has a strange visitor in his hands.
Author's Notes: This particular plot bunny has been dancing around my head since February, when turps33 posted some pictures of Chris during a golf tournament. In one of them, he looked as if he was shining. So I started going through it moving it, tossing it around and seeing how it would work. Unfortunately for my creative process, the bunny took on three very different shapes depending on whom I paired Chris with. Even worse, the three possibilities sounded intriguing. So I wrote Heaven's Eyes for milosflaca's birthday, which was possiblity #1, and started working with this that is possibility #2. There's possibility #3 in the works, but that will be left alone until I've written something else that doesn't include wings. Many, many thanks to milosflaca who read enough drafts of this to learn some of the lines by heart, and to otherdeb who kindly went and picked up every single instance where I said 'on' when I meant 'in' (Which was, btw, every single time in the fic) as well as all those pesky little details of writing style.
Oh, my BDT is here
Kevin Richardson didn’t cry when his father’s casket was lowered to its final place.
He was 19 when his mother called him home from Orlando, to tell him that his father’s health had taken a turn for the worse.
He spent many nights in church with his mother, with his brothers, praying for a miracle that never c and ame. Kevin managed to say a final goodbye to his father, to hold his hand while sssitching his body wither away in pain.
He remembers the service before the funeral, when the priest talked about the eternal reward, about how his father was now away from all pain. His mom was silently crying behind him, but Kevin couldn’t cry. He could only think that the situation was unfair. His father, who was a nice, honest man who had never done anything wrong to anyone, who had gone to church every Sunday, who had raised his children with love, who respected his wife and helped his neighbors, had died in terrible pain. His father didn’t deserve that pain.
There wasn’t a reason for that suffering. Why would anyone allow his father to suffer so much? His father had taught him and his brothers that God’s love would take care for them, as long as they took care of each other. God would never leave them alone, no matter what. But God hadn’t eased his father’s pain. God hadn’t listened to his mother’s prayers.
The day his father was buried was the day Kevin Richardson realized that there was no God, and that he had no more use for blind faith.
* * *
May 29, 1993.
[The room is a mess]. That is Kevin’s first thought upon entering the place he has been calling home for the last month. Transcon has been good to them, despite all the problems they’ve had to keep a five member group, renting a small house so they could be ready for rehearsals and studio time all the time. Kevin’s room is on the second floor, and it has a window that faces to the small garden on the back.
The window is now broken, small pieces of glass scattered across the floor. It has been raining, and half of his stuff is soaking wet. The carpet is going to be hard to save. His bed is unmade, but it’s not empty. There’s something lying on the bed. No, someone…
It looks like a guy, although Kevin can’t say how old. The guy’s unconscious, and there’s a deep gash on his forehead, a clean wound that somehow doesn’t bleed. He has long, brown hair, small, delicate features, and is dressed in a wet white tunic that leaves nothing to the imagination. He’s lying on his right side, as if he had fallen through the window, even when Kevin can’t figure out how he managed to do that. His body is covered with glass --all of his body, including the part that Kevin doesn’t want to believe he is seeing.
The unconscious guy has wings. Long, beautiful, white wings that shine under the cold light of the full moon that illuminates the room. They look almost ethereal, like a dream or a shower of glitter and smoke. The right one is bent backwards, and it is obvious that it is not only because the guy, thing, whatever it is, is lying on top of it. Even from the door, the wing looks broken.
Not sure of what to do, Kevin walks closer to the bed, careful not to step on the glass. Half convinced it is a dream, he touches the left wing, the one that looks healthy. It’s real: soft and solid. It doesn’t feel like it is made of feathers, though. It feels like silk, if he just brushes his fingertips against it, and like his mother’s favorite angora sweater if he keeps his hand on it. As he moves his head to try and see the wings better, the feathers change color slightly, from white to pale blue, to pastel violet, to misty gray, to soft cream. They also have a faint smell like blueberries and honeysuckle. Very carefully, trying not to disturb his impromptu guest, Kevin cranes his neck, trying to see where the wings join the guy’s back, hoping to see a harness, even when he can see the guy’s chest through his tunic. The tunic has a very low back, practically going all the way down to the guy’s buttocks, and the wings come out right from the guy’s back, from between his shoulder blades.
Scared, but still wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery, Kevin reaches out to touch the place where the wings come out from. It’s hard as bone, but somehow, Kevin can’t help guessing that those bones are very fragile. He follows the arc of the broken wing with his eyes, and he can see the actual wing bone, exposed. Even so, it’s not bleeding. Kevin flinches, because even when it can’t be real since human beings do not have wings, it looks painful.
He remembers when he broke his arm. He had been seven or so at the time, and sometimes, he can still feel that pain. If those wings are connected to the guy’s back, and to his nervous system, it’s not difficult to imagine why the guy is unconscious. The guy probably fainted from the pain, not to mention the cold. Even though they’re in Florida, that flimsy tunic he is wearing cannot be a good protection from the rain.
Kevin is about to get up, maybe to call for help or to ask if anyone had put anything in his coffee when the strange creature opens his eyes.
It has the most beautiful brown eyes Kevin has seen in his whole life. They are the color of maple leaves, without a hint of black, and they remind Kevin of his childhood days.
In them, Kevin can see shock, surprise, but above all, immeasurable sadness.
* * *
“Holy fuck,” that is AJ’s voice.
“What the hell?” then comes Howie.
“No way,” that is Nick’s voice..
“Holy Mother of God,” and, finally, comes Brian. Kevin barely registers their voices, finishing a very improvised bandage on his visitor’s injured wing. After the winged guy had opened his eyes, he had flinched in pain. His right wing is broken, and although Kevin guesses that it will heal with time as long as it is set properly, he isn’t sure about it. He has nursed birds to health but a guy with wings is another matter completely. Kevin is pretty sure the situation isn’t covered in any medical text.
His visitor has been calm enough to allow him to finish the bandage, but when the others arrive he flinches, nervously, and starts flapping his healthy wing, as if trying to fly away like a scared parakeet. Before Kevin can stop him, he scrambles out of bed and corners himself in the space between the wall and the closet. It is only now when Kevin realizes how short his visitor is. He looks even shorter than Howie. In the corner, looking at them with his big expressive eyes filled with fear and confusion, his winged visitor reminds him of a scared kitten. Or a very big kid.
“It’s ok, they’re my friends,” Kevin says, very slowly. He doesn’t even know if the strange guy speaks English, but he doesn’t have a better idea. “Don’t be scared.”
“Kevin… is that what I think it is?” AJ asks, not moving from his spot at the door. Kevin can’t blame him. It isn’t every day that you see a winged man, injured or not - he refuses to think the other word, the word he knows AJ is thinking, the word he knows Brian has on the tip of his tongue. What is trembling like a kitten in his room is a winged man, a freak of nature, nothing more
* * *
“We can’t let anyone find him,” Howie says, a couple of hours later. Kevin hasn’t been able to get the winged man out of the corner, but at least the strange guy has stopped flapping his wings every time someone other than Kevin looks in his direction. “They would, like, try to cage him or something.”
“Maybe he could tell us where he coame from?” AJ proposes, still standing by the door, leaning on the wall. Although he has volunteered to carry garbage bags filled with glass to the trashcan, he still hasn’t come into the room. Kevin finds it somewhat amusing that AJ looks as scared as the winged man. But then, Kevin knows that AJ was as religious as his cousin, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“I think it’s obvious where he comes from,” Brian shakes his head. “The question would be how is he going to go back.”
“The same way he came here?” Nick is mesmerized by the wings. Kevin doesn’t blame him. They are beautiful, and now that there is sunlight coming in through the window, they look as if they are shining, creating a faint rainbow that Kevin can see out of the corner of his eyes. “I mean, when he’s healed.”
“And what are we going to do until his wing heals?” Kevin asks them. He is not going to accept that his visitor is an angel. Angels don’t exist. “Someone is bound to notice him even if he stays in that corner.”
“Lock the door then,” Nick shrugs. “You can always say you want privacy or something”
“We have a tour starting next month.” It is useless to point that out, and Kevin knows it. The end of it is that he has an injured, winged man in his room and that he can’t, in good conscience, leave him to his own devices, even though the existence of a winged man is freaking him out.
“Well then, we better pray for him to get well before that,” Howie says, as if that is the answer to the problem. During all the exchange, Kevin feels the eyes of his visitor on his back. It is weird to be the focus of someone’s attention like that. He knows that if the group manages to lift off and get enough fame, they all will be the focus of cameras and fans, but he still doesn’t know if he can live with that. At least, he knows he can’t live with that so close to home. “Maybe we could bring him something to help his wing heal faster.”
“Like what?” AJ rolls his eyes. “Anything stronger than iodine is a bad idea if we don’t know what he is.”
“We need to call a doctor,” Howie says. “What if Kevin messed up and his wing doesn’t set properly?”
“A doctor or a veterinarian?” AJ quips. “Because I doubt there’s someone at the ER experienced enough to deal with this.”
“Do you think he has a name?” Nick interrupts, looking at them. “We can’t just call him ‘hey you’.”
“We are not naming it,” Kevin says. “If we name it, we’ll get attached to it.”
“It’s not a puppy, Kevin,” Howie protests.
“It is not an it!” Brian says. “I mean, he is not an it.”
“I’m going to get something to drink,” AJ tells them from the door, walking away. “But I think they’re right, Kevin. We really can’t call him ‘hey you’.”
Kevin sighs. Apparently, his friends’ common sense had flown out of the window when their visitor crashed through.
* * *
Despite Nick’s best attempts, Kevin’s visitor doesn’t tell them his name. In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, and Kevin isn’t sure if it is because he is afraid, or because the wound on his head is worse than it looks, even if it’s not bleeding. Brian, on the other hand, apparently has seen The Little Mermaid a lot of times, since he tries proposing many names to the winged man to see if one of them is his name. To Kevin it doesn’t even look as if the guy understands what is going on. He just keeps staring at them, eyes wide open in fear. It looks to Kevin as if he’s not focusing on them, but on the wall behind them, and Kevin decides that the creature is probably in shock.
“Gabriel?”
The creature shakes his head, and Kevin starts to lose his patience. They have been at it for at least half an hour.
“Michael?”
“Brian, are you going to go through all the biblical names you know?” Kevin asks, interrupting his cousin. He is tired; he wants to go to sleep. And since Brian knows a lot of biblical names by heart, Kevin fears this naming session will go on for hours.
“Do you have a better idea?” Brian asks, obviously not happy at the interruption. “Jeremiah?”
“Maybe he can write us his name down for us?” Kevin suggests. “I have pen and paper somewhere around here.”
The creature lowers his head, as if ashamed, and Kevin realizes that he does understand them.
“And what if he doesn’t speak English? Or if he doesn’t know how to write?” Nick points out, missing the way in which the winged man jumps a little when he hears them, startled. Nick is carrying a bunch of his old comic books. “It wouldn’t help at all. We could call him Warren.”
“Warren?” Kevin repeats at the same time the creature shakes his head no. Apparently, he likes the name even less than Kevin does. “Why Warren?”
“You know, like Warren Worthinghton III, the Archangel from X-men,” Nick says, sitting next to the winged man and handing a comic book to everyone. “You don’t like it? We can pick another one. I have a ton of comics, and we can look for different names in case he doesn’t like the ones Brian knows.”
The winged man shakes his head again, more vigorously, making Nick laugh. Then, cautiously, he grabs one of the comic books on the floor, while Brian keeps listing biblical names.
“Uriel? John? Joseph? Moses? Abraham?”
“This is stupid,” Kevin sighs, opening the comic that Nick has handed him.
“Can’t you help?” Howie asks, offering him a can of soda. He and AJ have volunteered to bring up refreshments. “Between the five of us, we might find a name he likes.”
“Whatever,” Kevin looks at the comic book page and starts to read names out loud. “Scott, Xavier, Stan, Jim, Chris…”
“Wait! He likes that!” Nick interrupts, and Kevin looks up at the creature.
Sure enough, he is smiling, pointing at Kevin. And it is a beautiful smile, one that makes the guy’s eyes shine even more.
“So your name is Christopher?” Brian asks, cautiously. The winged man, ‘Chris’, nods brightly.
“You understand us?” Kevin adds, and the answer is another nod. “But you can’t talk?”
This time, the answer is a blink, followed by a brief negative shake. Kevin is about to ask if that meant ‘No, I can’t talk’ or ‘No, I can talk’, when Brian stops him.
“I don’t think we should interrogate him.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we know where he comes from. You don’t question that!” Brian points to the white wings on Chris’s back.
“Brian, never mind the wings! We don’t know where he comes from!” Kevin yells. “That’s the whole point of asking!”
“Not even you can deny the evidence before your eyes!” Brian gets up from the floor and points at Chris, who retreats further back into his hiding place, looking scared. Kevin gets up from the bed too, and realizes that the yelling is scaring Chris.
“Evidence? What evidence? What I see before my eyes is a guy with wings. That’s all. A very scared guy with a broken wing, so if we’re going to help him we could probably try to keep the bible thumping to a minimum,” Kevin lowers his voice. He doesn’t want to spook Chris even more.
“Oh, come on, Kevin!” Brian follows his example and lowers his voice too, but Kevin can see his cousin is really angry. “You know, I understand why you feel this way, but you *can’t* be blind to the fact that this is a *miracle*! How can you deny it when an *angel* is on your bed?!”
* * *
Around eleven, Kevin throws everyone out of his room. They have to wake up early the next day, and he has no intention of being the one to explain to Lou why they are half asleep at rehearsal. He is pretty sure he is going to be in trouble for the broken window anyway, he doesn’t want to add insult to injury.
Chris hasn’t moved, but Kevin thinks that maybe he looks at him with less fear. Before going to bed, he gets out one of the blankets he brought from home and hands it to the frightened man, as well as a pillow. Kevin doesn’t know if Chris needs to sleep, but no one is going to spend the night cold in his room.
When the alarm starts ringing Kevin opens his eyes to find his visitor looking at him. At some point of the night, Chris got out from his corner, and is now precariously perched on the edge of the bed, knees touching his chest, covering his body with the blanket Kevin had given him. For the first time since Kevin meet him, the stranger doesn’t look frightened. He looks thoughtful. Kevin wonders exactly how is it that he can keep his balance, and he guesses that maybe the wings have something to do with it.
“Good morning, Chris?” Kevin asks, and is rewarded with a small smile. Chris raises his hand and touches Kevin’s cheek, an action that startles Kevin. “Are you asking me if I had a good night?”
The stranger nods, still smiling.
“Well, even with the broken window, it wasn’t a cold night. I was fine,“ Kevin elaborates. Chris only blinks at that, frowning slightly. “I am not blaming you for the window, although I would love to know how did you manage to fall through my window.”
Chris frown deepens at Kevin’s words. He looks sad, but Kevin is not going to apologize. There are no tall buildings around, and he has no idea how Chris got there. He refuses to believe he just flew through the glass.
Chris opens his mouth, as if to speak, but no sound comes off it. He closes it, blinks, and opens it again, looking frightened to Kevin, who is somewhat confused.
“What’s wrong?” Kevin asks.
Chris shakes his head, opens his mouth again, only to close it, as if resigned.
“You honestly can’t speak, can you?” Kevin asks. He remembers one time, when he was a lot younger, thirteen or so, that he had been sick with a cold. His throat had been raw, and he had been unable to talk for a week. Chris’s expression reminds him of that time.
Chris takes a deep breath, and shakes his head no.
“But you could talk before the accident?”
Chris looks at him, his mouth a tight line. But before he can answer, a knock on the door distracts Kevin so he doesn’t see Chris’s quick nod.
“Who is it?” Kevin asks. Chris jumps from the bed gracefully, landing on his tiptoes. He rushes to his corner, and Kevin realizes that he never felt the mattress shift under Chris’s weight.
“We bring breakfast,” Nick’s voice comes from behind the door. Chris seems to recognize a ‘friendly’ voice, since he straightens up, looking at the door with childlike curiosity. Kevin sighs. It’s going to be a long day.
“Come on in,” Kevin calls out and the door opens to let Nick and Brian in. Nick is carrying a tray with four bowls, cereal and milk on it, while Brian is helping with a bowl filled with small apple pieces. Curious, Chris follows Nick, and, with another swift jump that would be the envy of many athletes, perches himself on the back of the chair of Kevin’s desk, where Nick lowers his tray.
Brian follows Chris with his eyes, and then turns to see Kevin, raising his eyebrow as if to say ‘Well, how do you explain that?’ Kevin rolls his eyes, refusing to answer the gesture. The truth is that he can’t explain Chris’s agility, or the way in which he balances his body weight just on his tiptoes.
“I hope you like cereal,” Nick tells Chris, unaware of the looks that pass between Kevin and Brian, and Chris smiles at the kid. Kevin can’t help but smile too. At least their visitor is not going to die of hunger.
“Where are Howie and AJ?” Kevin asks, looking at his cousin.
“AJ said he wanted to have breakfast in the kitchen,” Brian answers. “Howie is there to keep him company. I think Christopher makes AJ nervous.”
“Chris makes me nervous,” Kevin says without thinking. He doesn’t notice the hurt look on Chris’s face. “How are we going to keep him a secret?”
“Maybe we could cover his wings with something?” Nick suggests, while he finishes serving a cereal bowl with milk and apple, offering it to Chris. Chris, who seems to have decided that Nick is safe, takes the bowl with curiosity, as if he has never seen one. He puts it carefully on the table again, and looks at the small pieces of fruit and cereal floating on the milk. “Maybe a trench coat?”
“I don’t think a trench coat is going to work in Florida, Nick,” Kevin looks at the wings, folded neatly on Chris’s back, and the bandage. Chris seems unaware of the conversation going behind him, since he’s busying himself by fishing the little cereal pieces with his hand, dripping milk over the already ruined carpet. “Brian, do you think he can stay for a while in your room?”
“Sure, I’ll be honored if he wants to,” Brian answers. He walks towards Chris, grabs a spoon from the tray and, carefully, and deliberately, shows Chris how to use it. Chris blinks, grabs the spoon from Brian’s hand and smiles, before imitating his movements. Kevin realizes that Chris has never used a spoon before, judging by the way he practices before actually using it to eat the cereal. “Why?”
“Lou will want to replace the window,” Kevin points out. “And if Lou sees Chris, you can bet he’ll end up in the first page of every newspaper in the country, so if we’re going to keep him safe, he’ll need to be in another room.”
* * *
Getting Chris to Brian’s room proves to be quite difficult, since the guy doesn’t seem to want to move away from Kevin’s room, but at the end, they manage to do so when Brian explains to Chris exactly what is going to happen if someone else besides the five of them saw him. Chris stays still for a moment, before cocking his head to the side, and narrowing his eyes. Kevin is sure that he is not actually paying attention to what Brian is saying, but then Chris nods and follows them meekly.
Kevin tries to function that day as normally as he can. It is hard, with his band mates theorizing about Chris every time they are alone, before their presentation of the day, before the rehearsal. Brian, Nick and Howie are convinced that Chris is an angel, because, really, what else can he be, and that there has to be a really big reason for him to have fallen down from heaven to Kevin’s bedroom. AJ doesn’t seem to have an opinion about it, but Kevin is ready to hit the library as soon as he can. There has to be an explanation for Chris’s wings, and biblical explanations aren’t going to cut it for him. Kevin believes that maybe Chris escaped from a circus, because that’s the only place he can figure a weird man with wings who acts like a bird would have come from.
Kevin also spends most of the morning worrying that someone will find Chris in Brian’s room and either start a cult or call the cops. Not that Brian isn’t halfway creating a cult around Chris. Kevin has stopped talking to his cousin because if he hears the word miracle one more time, Lou is going to have to find a new fifth since Kevin will kill his cousin and hide the body.
Although, if he is honest with himself, he has to admit that he was also worried about what can happen if no one finds Chris because Chris can’t stay with them. Lou has told them they are going to do a tour all over the States. What are they going to do with Chris when that happens?
* * *
Kevin’s worries are unfounded, since they arrive to their house to find Chris perched on top of Brian’s bed’s headboard, watching the small portable TV that Brian had brought from home. Apparently, either Chris has gotten over his fear of people, or he can recognize their footsteps because he doesn’t try to hide when Brian opens the door to his room.
He seems to be enjoying the Mickey Mouse Club.
“Hey, Chris!” Nick greets happily. “We have food!”
They stopped at a McDonalds earlier and bought Big Macs for everyone including Chris. Chris smiles, accepting the gift. At first, Chris doesn’t seem to know what to do with the bag, so Brian again teaches him to open it, and unwrap the hamburger when Chris tries to take a bite of the paper envelope.
They eat together, and Kevin has to admit that he has never seen someone eat a Big Mac with such glee. It is as if Chris has never have one, so Kevin mentally files the possibility of Chris being raised in a very closed environment, maybe a carnival or even a laboratory. And if the Big Mac was a big success, the coke is definitely Chris’s favorite, as he practically inhales his soda. Kevin, amused, gives Chris his own glass. He has never met someone who liked soda so much.
While they eat, Nick and Brian tell Chris about their day, and Kevin takes his time to inspect Chris’s wings. There’s no blood on the bandage, not that he can see anyway and he doesn’t dare to change it less than 24 hours after the accident. He is still worried because he never saw any blood. Chris’s head wound looks like an old scar now, and the wing’s skin is starting to mend, but there is no scab. It’s another medical mystery, and Kevin knows his cousin will use the lack of blood as yet another reason why they should be calling a priest. As Chris silently laughs at the things Nick is saying, Kevin realizes that when Chris laughs, he moves his shoulders and shrugs his wings, but the right one, the hurt one, barely moves.
Kevin wishes they could take him to a hospital. He’s no expert, and he had bandaged the wing remembering what his father taught him about first aid, but Kevin knows that if he set Chris’s wing wrong, Chris could end up crippled for life.
He doesn’t believe Chris could fly before the accident. His wings might look the part of every image done of angels, but they’re too small to sustain someone of his size. Still, Kevin doesn’t know what would happen to the winged man if his wing doesn’t heal properly. He doesn’t want to find out.
“He’s going to need clothes,” AJ suddenly says, pulling Kevin out of his thoughts. “He can’t go around the house like a hospital patient.”
“I still think a jacket would help,” Nick insists, sitting next to Chris, who amazingly, smiles at the kid. Kevin guesses that part of Chris’s fear the day before was due to the pain of his broken wing and the surprise of being surrounded by strangers. Now, a mere 24 hours later, Chris seems a lot more confident among them. He learns fast, Kevin realizes when Chris starts eating his ice cream with a spoon, just like Brian taught him. “Maybe a poncho!”
“I have a poncho my dad gave to me,” Howie volunteers. “I think it would cover the wings pretty well, if he can fold them completely.”
“Let’s wait a week before he tries that,” Kevin says, before Chris can try to show them if his right wing folded completely. “And maybe one of you could lend him some pants? I don’t think mine will fit him.”
Chris smiles at him, a beautiful, sincere smile and Kevin can’t help but return it.
* * *
The poncho does work, and somehow by the time the tour starts, Kevin finds himself explaining to Lou that Chris is ‘Howie’s mute cousin’ who needs to stay with Howie for a while. Kevin is sure he would have never been able to convince Lou, but thankfully Nick adored Chris, so Nick had asked his mom to talk with their manager, and there were very few things that Jane Carter couldn’t get when she wanted something for her son’s career. Kevin is grateful to her, but he knows it doesn’t matter anyway. He and the others had decided to put their money together to get Chris enough bus tickets to go with them everywhere if things got to that extreme.
But for some reason Kevin doesn’t really understand, Lou likes Chris. Lou, who usually worries about budgets, and the group being seen with girlfriends, or acting out of their given roles, likes Chris almost as much as he likes the other guys in the group. Lou even jokes that if Chris wasn’t mute, he would have a place in Transcon as a singer, something that Chris always listens to with a puzzled expression. Lou won’t spend money for another hotel room, or even a second bus so the five and Chris can travel more confortably, but he likes Chris enough to offer him a part time job as the Boys’ personal assistant. Part of the very small crew they have. Chris’s job consists in following them around, making sure they don’t need anything. Kevin finds it funny, because the truth is that the five of them are always alert to whatever Chris needs.
While Kevin has his doubts about housing six people in a five-person bus, Chris proves him wrong because even when he should, the winged man doesn’t take much space at all. No matter where he is perched, there’s always space around Chris. Chris spends the nights perched on the couch keeping watch over them. Kevin knows because when he wakes up in the middle of the night he can see Chris looking at him. Kevin suspects that Chris doesn’t sleep at all
Within days, Chris is part of their routine. Except for the times when Chris ends up glued to the tv - besides watching the Mickey Mouse Club, Chris also seems to have a soft spot for cartoons -- the winged man is always near them and Kevin realizes that he has different quirks and habits around them.
When he is with Nick, it is as if Chris is 15 years old, too, and only the weight of his hidden wings stops Chris from being as active as the kid. Seeing him jump around, playing hoops with Nick when Brian is too tired, Kevin wonders if Chris is actually 15. Kevin wonders when Chris’ birthday is, and if he has family worried about their strange kid. Chris also accompanies Nick when Nick has to do his homework, watching him write, perched on top of the back of Nick’s chair when no one is looking.
Kevin still doesn’t know how Chris manages to keep his balance.
Chris spends a lot of time learning from Brian, something that worries Kevin for many reasons. The first reason is, of course, that he doesn’t want his cousin’s religious ideas influencing Chris. The second, and perhaps more immediate, is that Chris needs to learn everything. From holding a spoon, to sitting on a chair like a normal human being, to dressing himself - and that’s a particular experience that Kevin is not going to forget any time soon - is it as if Chris had lived away from civilization all his life. Chris is picking some of Brian’s habits, like cutting fried eggs with a knife and not just with his fork. Kevin doesn’t know what to think about that.
As the weeks pass, AJ loses his nervousness around the winged man. In just a week, he starts getting annoyed by Chris’s weirdest habit: Everytime AJ lits a cigarette, Chris will be there to pluck it out from his fingers, or even his lips. Kevin doesn’t know how Chris does it, and he applauds the winged man for his tenacity because while he agrees that AJ shouldn’t smoke, he also knows they have no right to actually do something about it. Chris doesn’t care, and he seems to have a smoke detector in his brain, because even when AJ is hidden from view, Chris will be there, ready to take the offending tobacco stick away.
Howie seems to take Chris’s existence a lot easier than Kevin and Brian. He doesn’t try to evangelize the winged man, and he doesn’t overanalyze him either. Where Brian teaches Chris about how to function in society without being discovered, Howie teaches Chris music, putting different records from every single artist he can find for the winged man to hear. Chris loves music, and he has a growing list of favorites from what Howie shows him. During those times, while Chris is listening to whatever Howie found, Howie takes his time to brush Chris’s long hair.
They also discover quickly that trying to cut Chris’s hair is an impossible task. Even when they can cut it without any problem, as soon as they finish, it grows again, so fast that they can see it move, always up to Chris’s middle back. So Howie braids it, and ties it, and brushes it, every chance he has, because he says he doesn’t want Chris’s hair to get knotted or dirty.
Kevin is sure that Howie was a hairdresser in a past life.
Sometimes, when they’re rehearsing, Kevin sees Chris nodding at nothing, as if he was listening to someone only he can see. Chris always looks sad when that happens, and sometimes, he even cries. Kevin doesn’t like to see him sad, but it helps cement his theory that Chris escaped from a carnival tent. If Chris is a freak, if he has been treated as a freak all his life, maybe he has imaginary friends. Someone to talk to, when no one talks to him. Kevin is now convinced that Chris escaped and, somehow, ended up crashing through his window. The somehow is still not clear in his theory, but it explains why Chris fixated on Kevin. Chris might see Kevin as his savior.
Chris does seem happier following Kevin. Every night, he waits until Kevin finishes whatever he is doing to let him check his wing, even when the others offer to help change the bandages, Chris doesn’t let them, flapping his healthy wing in a very clear gesture of ‘stop! Get away!’, like a mother scolding her kid when she catches him with his hand inside the cookie jar. Only Kevin has permission to take off the bandage, check the healing wing and wrap it up again.
Kevin takes advantage of that. While he doesn’t know how to react to Chris’s attention, he uses his time to try and figure out the mystery of Chris’s origins.
“Where do you come from?” He asks one day, checking the bandage on the room that Lou has gotten for the whole band. The others are outside, keeping watch so no one will try to enter until Chris’s wings are safely hidden.
Chris looks at him, his expressive brown eyes twinkling, and then he looks up, at the ceiling, smiling, just before shrugging in a way that pretty much says ‘I’m from everywhere’.
“Why are you here?” Kevin tries again, pressing on the matter. While he knows that Chris can’t answer with more detail than a yes or no, he also knows that when Chris wants, he makes the effort to communicate. When Chris doesn’t try, Kevin knows that it’s because Chris wants to hide something.
Chris finally points to the window, then to his wing that looks a lot better. He can flap it without wincing although he still moves it with visible effort.
“You’re here because you fell through my window and your wing was hurt?” Kevin guesses. Chris smiles brightly at him, nodding.
That’s not exactly a good answer, since Kevin knew that already.
“When are you going back to wherever you come from?” Kevin keeps pressing. He can’t interrogate Chris when Brian is around because Brian gets angry. Brian says that Kevin shouldn’t question miracles, but since Kevin doesn’t share his cousin’s beliefs he tries, at least once every week, to get straight answers from the winged man. He doesn’t mention the words ‘Heaven’, ‘Angel’ or ‘God’ in front of Chris, because he figures that Brian does that more than enough times. Chris is not an angel, Kevin knows, and making him believe he is could be dangerous for Chris.
Chris shrugs, moving his wing a little. ‘When I heal’, Kevin’s mind translated. The wing looks pretty healthy to him now except for the fact that when Chris moves it, the movements look hesitant. It has been three months since Chris arrived, and doing mental calculations, Kevin theorizes that it is healing a lot slower than a broken arm would. Once again, he swallows his fear that he didn’t set the wing right.
“Why do you follow me so much?”
That is the question that burns into Kevin’s mind most of the time. He could try to understand why a winged man would focus on Brian. Hell, he spent the first week waiting for some wacko to come and try to convince them that Chris was from his church and donate money for them. But every one who knew Kevin knew he was not one for myths, smoke and mirrors. Kevin is practical, rational man.
Chris simply smiles, grabs Kevin’s hand, pushes it to Kevin’s chest, then to his own wing.
“Because I helped you?” Kevin asks for some clarification. The gesture is not exactly clear and he has never been good at charades.
Chris smiles, shaking his head no. But in mid-shake he stops, and then nods once, determined. It only helps to frustrate Kevin more.
Despite the fact that Kevin finds Chris’s mere existence annoying - a man with wings shouldn’t exist - Kevin also likes Chris. Like everyone around them, he likes to see Chris smile.
Because of that, he spends quite some time watching Chris, trying to find clues to his true origin. Chris knows when he is being watched, and sometimes he does certain things that infuriate Kevin. Like shrugging his wings, under the trench coats and ponchos, in a way that they shed a couple of beautiful, unearthly feathers that then Kevin will pick up before someone else notices them. Or stay perched on chairs, headboards and practically every horizontal surface, just balancing his whole body weight on just his tip toes.
Kevin has a big wooden box, hidden beneath his bunk bed, filled with white feathers that feel like silk, smell like honey and blueberries, and shine as if they were always covered in dew.
There are a lot of things about Chris that Kevin hopes no one will notice. The fact that everyone likes Chris is one. The way in which every single animal around them seems to follow Chris, at least for a little while, is another. Birds will perch on his shoulders, the meanest security dogs will end up asleep at his feet. Once, Kevin saw a hummingbird stop on Chris’s finger for a few seconds.
It is disconcerting, like watching a Disney princess come to life, only male and without the singing.
“That’s our proof, right there,” Howie says, watching a big Doberman, that belonged to the security detail of the mall where they are going to sing, wag his tail like a little puppy while Chris scratches it behind the ears. “He can only be a creature of heaven.”
“It’s just because he is not afraid of it,” Kevin rolls his eyes as he speaks, trying to ignore the bright blue butterfly that is resting on top of Chris’s head. “Dogs only attack if you are afraid of them.”
But as good as that explanation is about dogs, it still doesn’t explain the butterflies.
* * *
Kevin likes to play the piano. He doesn’t have much time to do so with their newest schedule, going from shopping mall to shopping mall, but whenever he has some free time - and a piano nearby - he will play for a while.
The band with whom they travel knows that, and so, from time to time, they let him play at nights on the keyboard, before packing everything up for the next stop of the promotional tour.
Every time that happens, Chris is there, listening to him play.
By the middle of September, Chris’s wing looks completely healed, but Chris still moves it with extreme care. While the movements of his left wing are swift, like waves crashing on the beach, or clouds drifting in the wind, his right wing moves slowly, robotic. Like if Chris is relearning how to use it.
It is about then when Kevin discovers another of Chris’s weird habits. Whenever they are alone in the rehearsal room, when no one can see his wings, Chris takes off whatever he’s wearing that covers them, the trench coats and ponchos. He stands in front of the mirrors, and carefully, extends his left wing in a movement that reminds Kevin of warm up exercises, from the center of his back in a soft arc. Then Chris repeats the movement with his right wing, flinching at first when the wing doesn’t move, and smiling as the days pass and his wing moves more and more gracefully.
Kevin’s only guess is that he is trying to figure out if the wing is healing right. Not for the first time, he wishes that Chris had crashed through a doctor’s window, not his own. One night he realizes that he’s watching a countdown. When Chris’s wing heals, something will happen.
The problem is that he likes Chris’s attention. Even when they are starting to build a very small fanbase, even when girls scream his name while they sing, it doesn’t compare to the warmth he feels when Chris smiles at him.
He will only admit it to himself, but he has grown to like Chris. Impossible wings and all.
He isn’t the only one. The others adore Chris, who can match Nick and Brian’s energy all the time, who pays attention to AJ and Howie, who always has a smile for every person who will come near him.
As the months pass, they stop arguing about Chris’s origins. The others are still convinced Chris is an angel, and for the sake of semantics, Kevin agrees that the only thing one can call a guy with wings is ‘angel’, even when he still refuses to even listen to any metaphysical explanation and he won’t use that word out loud. For him, Chris is just Chris. He is sure that Chris probably escaped from a freakshow, a mutation that somehow has escaped the notice of tabloids and medical reports. It doesn’t really matter, since Chris is there. Kevin, despite all his original suspicions, has decided that it is better not to question from where Chris comes from. Judging by Chris’s sad smiles, maybe it’s too painful for his friend to remember that.
Now Kevin doesn’t want Chris to go. But he can’t fool himself into thinking that Chris will stay. His wing is getting better every day.
Trying not to depress himself thinking too much about it, he starts playing I believe I can fly from memory. He plays it slow, trying to remember all the notes. When he finishes the first verse, he looks up to see Chris standing next to him, without the black trench coat that AJ has gotten him that day, his wings folded.
“You can’t fly, can you?” Kevin asks. He bites his tongue as soon as the question comes out of his lips. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that he still fears that he set Chris’s wing wrong. He fears that maybe that is why Chris can’t leave.
As his answer, Chris unfolds his wings completely and flaps them sadly. Nothing happens, and Chris looks up before smiling at Kevin, resigned. His white feathers shine silver under the moonlight reminding Kevin of the night when Chris crashed into his life.
“But you could fly, couldn’t you?” Kevin asks again, and for the first time, he voices the impossible possibility that he has refused to believe since that night.
Chris nods, and there is such sadness in that nod that Kevin just has to believe Chris.
Despite that everything points to the scientific fact that it’s impossible for a man with wings to fly, Kevin can easily picture Chris soaring the sky.
“I’m sorry, I must have fucked it up somehow,” Kevin apologizes, unable to hide the guilt he feels. But Chris puts his hand on Kevin’s chest, his warm hand makes Kevin feel better, and smiles brightly. Chris flaps his wings again, and now Kevin realizes that the right one moves softer than the day before. It is slowly getting better.
“You don’t think I messed your wing?”
Chris shakes his head no, and puts his hands on the keyboard, cocking his head.
Getting the hint, Kevin starts to play again.
* * *
“I’m starting to think you like Chris.”
Kristen is the one who brings it up, and when she does, it catches Kevin by surprise. They are back in Orlando, licking their wounds after a contract with Mercury didn’t pan out, and Kristen visits them at their house once in a while.
Like everyone else in their lives, she loves Chris within minutes of meeting him.
“What are you talking about?” Kevin shakes his head, walking trough the park. Nick and Brian are playing hoops, and Chris is watching them, once again wearing the heavy poncho Howie lent him. “Every body likes Chris.”
“Oh, no, Kevin. You can’t use that excuse. You know what I mean,” Kristin insists, sadly. “Kevin, I’ve seen you looking at him. You’re always looking at him, even with that weird hump the poor dear has.”
Kevin has no answer to that, because deep down, he knows he watches Chris a lot more than he should. He rationalizes it as being that if he doesn’t keep an eye on Chris, he could do something that makes everyone discover his secret. And someone has to make sure that Chris eats something that is not made of sugar because even though Chris likes Big Macs, and the wonder that is Twinkies, he always accepts whatever new thing they want him to eat. Howie buys Chris ice cream every time he can, and Brian can’t tell Chris no. So the only one who can keep Chris from diabetic shock is Kevin. He watches Chris because he still thinks he can figure out the puzzle of Chris’s existence just by staring. Kevin can tell himself that, and a thousand other excuses, but the truth is that he likes to watch Chris, because from time to time Chris will raise his head, look at him and smile. Kevin likes to see Chris smile, and when he admits that he realizes that he is acting like a love-struck fool.
“Someone needs to keep an eye on Chris,” Kevin says, not elaborating. At that instant, as if he knows they are talking about him, Chris raises his head and waves to them.
“Whatever you say,” Kristen rolls her eyes, obviously not believing him. “You know I’m here for you, Kev. We have been friends for way too long for me to just stop talking to you because of this, and if you need someone to show the press you’re Mr. Straight, I’ll be here. But I think he likes you a little bit too, so I think you should go for it.”
Kevin doesn’t answer Kristen, his attention is focused on Chris who has turned to watch Brian and Nick play again. At this distance, it seems as if Chris has a couple of flowers stuck in his long hair, but Kevin knows from experience that they are probably butterflies. After birds, butterflies are the ones that constantly end up flying around Chris. At first, Kevin found that sickening. Now, he fears to admit, he finds it sweet.
But he’s not going to talk to Chris about that. While Kevin is still surprised at the speed in which Chris has learned all the things that they’ve taught him, he still acts like a child sometimes. It’s that childlike innocence that makes Kevin feel uncomfortable when he thinks about Chris in a less platonic way. Chris trusts them, he trusts them to teach him how to act and Kevin doesn’t want to risk Chris thinking that he has to return Kevin’s feelings because it’s another lesson. Second, and more important, Kevin still knows that they will eventually have to let Chris fly free. Kevin wants to believe that if he doesn’t talk about his feelings, it will hurt less when Chris leaves.
It’s only much after when he realizes that he never told Kristen that he wasn’t gay. It is then when he realizes that even if he isn’t gay, he really is attracted to Chris.
* * *
Kevin can’t believe his luck for Christmas.
In theory, Chris should’ve spent Christmas with the Dorough family, since he is supposed to be Howie’s cousin. However, even when Howie would’ve perfectly fine with having Chris over for a week and a half, he knows it was going to be impossible to explain where Cousin Chris had come from in the middle of a family reunion with all his uncles and aunts included. AJ’s family is planning a trip out of the States, and since Chris doesn’t have a passport, or even a legal ID, he can’t travel with them. Nick is thrilled at the idea of Chris staying with him, but Jane seems convinced that Chris should spend Christmas with his own family. In the end, though Kevin has no exact idea of how it happened, Chris ends up on a bus with him and Brian to spend Christmas with the Richardsons and the Littrells.
Brian has asked Chris, at least three times, if he didn’t have anywhere else to be on Christmas, his meaning clear. But Chris smiles at them, hugs them close, and apparently considers the subject closed.
Kevin isn’t sure what to think about the fact that Chris wants to spend Christmas with them. For a week he has nightmares of what will happen if anyone else in his deeply religious family finds out about Chris’s wings. Chris doesn’t seem care a lot about religious symbols, from any faith, which cements Kevin’s opinion regarding Brian’s theory. If angels exist, they probably would be as religious as his younger cousin, and Chris usually spends Sunday mornings with Kevin, not at church.
His mother receives Chris with open arms, something that in hindsight shouldn’t have surprised Kevin, and soon it is as if Chris is another cousin in the big family, surrounded by his younger brothers and cousins, being mothered by all the women in the house. Chris is like that, a people magnet. Kevin can’t imagine someone disliking Chris.
He knows that the others have decided that anyone who could dislike Chris is not someone they want to meet. Kevin himself figures that anyone who actively disliked Chris was probably a sorry excuse for a human being because, wings and mysterious origin notwithstanding, Chris is the most easygoing person in the world.
Kevin tries not to think what would happen if the others discover that he likes Chris a bit too much. Especially his cousin, who would probably have a couple of Bible verses ready for the occasion.
Of course, he should’ve known better than let his cousin Martha explain to Chris the tradition of the mistletoe. Just like every time he learns something new, Chris takes kissing under the mistletoe as his new purpose on life. To Kevin’s chagrin, Chris has made his personal mission to kiss everyone on the cheek at least once. Kids twice as often. By midnight on Christmas day, the only one in the whole house who hasn’t been kissed by Chris is Kevin. Whether it is luck, or Chris was avoiding him on purpose, Kevin doesn’t know. What he does know is that he feels left out.
Around three a.m, after tossing and turning and being unable to sleep without the snoring of his band mates as background noise, Kevin goes down to the living room, hoping that he won’t wake up anyone. He isn’t surprised when he sees Chris outside, wings unfolded, watching the night sky.
“Someone could see you, Chris,” Kevin says, going out. It is the warning he always give his friend when Chris opens his wings outside their bus or bedrooms, where someone can see him. Unfortunately, those times are the only ones when Chris can unfold his wings completely. This time, however, seems a bit different. He’s not flexing them as he does in front of the mirror, he just unfolded them, and Kevin frowns a little. They look bigger, somehow. He realizes that he has never seen them completely open like this. Chris turns around and smiles at him. He is wearing a pair of jeans that Howie helped him buy with his meager assistant’s salary, but no shirt. His hair is loose, falling over his shoulders, curling a little at the tips. Under the lights of the street, Chris really does look the part of an angel, one of those angels in the Christmas movies that Kevin’s mom and aunt love so much. For a brief instant, Kevin looks up, half expecting a sudden snowfall in the middle of Kentucky. It’s impossible, but with Chris around, Kevin comes to realize that the impossible could very well happen. A guy with wings, a surprise snowfall, and the only thing missing would be Scrooge yelling Merry Christmas to everyone.
Chris shrugs, as if it is not important that someone could see him, and, with a movement of his head, invites Kevin to come next to him on the porch. Kevin sighs, wondering when he had stopped denying things to Chris. Kristen was right all along, it seems, and Kevin doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge. Being gay, he can deal with. But liking Chris is something too close to dating out of his own species, because even if he will always believe that Chris isn’t an angel, he sure doesn’t look human. Kevin is busy confusing himself when something green caught on Chris’s right wing catches his attention. It’s a small branch of mistletoe, lodged between the longest feathers.
“You’ve got mistletoe on you,” Kevin says, and Chris flexes his wing, curious, to hold the little green leaf on top of his head. It’s a swift movement, as if he had just raised his arm over his head. There’s no hesitation, no flinch of pain. His wing is almost healed. Resisting the temptation to kiss Chris, Kevin moves forward to grab the mistletoe, missing the mischievous look in Chris’s eyes.
In a quick, graceful movement that takes Kevin’s breath away, Chris folds his wing back, getting the mistletoe far from Kevin’s grasp. Then, creating an arc of whiteness and silver light, he unfolds his wing, in a long arc that covers his head and Kevin’s. Kevin blinks, as he realizes he is cocooned beneath Chris’s wings. Inside, the scent of blueberries is stronger than ever, and he does feel as if he’s seeing snow fall. Everything around him is white, except for Chris’s brown hair and maple-colored eyes. Hovering over him, held in Chris’s feathers, is the mistletoe branch.. “Chris, what are you doing?”
Chris licks his lower lip, looking doubtful for a moment. Kevin is about to apologize for his stern tone - he is trying to break the habit of speaking to Chris as if he were a child, but it’s hard to stop - when the uncertainty disappears from Chris’s features. He leans forward, standing on his tip toes and carefully, brushes Kevin’s lips with a soft kiss that tastes like honey, and home, and all the things Kevin holds dear in his heart.
* * *
When they return to Orlando, things seem to go back to normal. Kevin never mentions the kiss to Chris, and it never happens again. Sometimes, Kevin figures that maybe he dreamed it all, except for the fact that now when Chris looks at him, his smiles seem brighter. Sometimes, when Chris smiles, Kevin feels again the soft brush of lips against his own.
The beginning of the year proves to be a bit of a challenge for them all, since they have to get a record deal soon, aware that if they don’t, all their hard work will be for nothing.
Later, Kevin would blame the growing sense of defeat for the way in which he begun to take Chris for granted. After all, Chris had been with them for almost seven months. They all had more or less gotten used to see Chris, sitting on the sidelines, watching them. Perched on the headboard of someone’s bed, or on the back of a chair, watching TV, eating pixie sticks and M&Ms. Smiling, and silently laughing, with his hair braided or tied up, or taking cigarettes out of AJ’s mouth. Chris is beautiful, but he is always there, and somewhere in the way, Kevin forgets that there was a time when Chris hadn’t been there.
Until one cold February morning when Nick comes into his room, the very same room where Chris crashed seven months ago, running and scared.
“Have you seen Chris?” The kid asks, nervous.
“No,” Kevin gets up from his bed, looking at the repaired closed window. “I thought he was in Howie’s room.”
“He isn’t with any of the others,” Nick says, on the verge of tears. “I can’t find him anywhere!”
Trying to remain calm, Kevin hurriedly gets dressed and goes to Brian’s room. They have a quick meeting, and start looking for Chris everywhere they can think, even missing an early rehearsal. By night fall, they all have come to the sad conclusion that Chris has gone away.
Kevin tries to repress the childish feeling that Chris could’ve said goodbye before he left. Or at least give them some warning. Kevin remembers thinking that his wing was getting better, that Chris smiled at his reflection when he flapped both wings. He wants to say Chris wouldn’t have flown away without telling them, but he knows, deep in his heart, that Chris did. He also realizes that Chris was right in not telling them, because if Kevin had known Chris was planning to leave, he would’ve tried to stop him.
Kevin really didn’t want Chris to leave, not anymore. He didn’t want to wake up and not see Chris perched on his chair, smiling at him every morning.
When he is alone, he pulls out the box with all the feathers he kept, with the pictures that show Chris smiling among them. He opens the box, and the smell of blueberries hit him hard, it is as if Chris was standing next to him, surrounding him with his beautiful, impossible wings.
Kevin starts to cry.
If he had known Chris was going to leave, Kevin would’ve kissed him one last time.
To be continued…
Fandom: Popslash.
Characters: Chris Kirkpatrick / Kevin Richardson
Prompt: 055. Spirit
Word Count: 10,058
Rating: PG and only because I think AJ swears a couple of times.
Summary: Kevin has a strange visitor in his hands.
Author's Notes: This particular plot bunny has been dancing around my head since February, when turps33 posted some pictures of Chris during a golf tournament. In one of them, he looked as if he was shining. So I started going through it moving it, tossing it around and seeing how it would work. Unfortunately for my creative process, the bunny took on three very different shapes depending on whom I paired Chris with. Even worse, the three possibilities sounded intriguing. So I wrote Heaven's Eyes for milosflaca's birthday, which was possiblity #1, and started working with this that is possibility #2. There's possibility #3 in the works, but that will be left alone until I've written something else that doesn't include wings. Many, many thanks to milosflaca who read enough drafts of this to learn some of the lines by heart, and to otherdeb who kindly went and picked up every single instance where I said 'on' when I meant 'in' (Which was, btw, every single time in the fic) as well as all those pesky little details of writing style.
Oh, my BDT is here
Kevin Richardson didn’t cry when his father’s casket was lowered to its final place.
He was 19 when his mother called him home from Orlando, to tell him that his father’s health had taken a turn for the worse.
He spent many nights in church with his mother, with his brothers, praying for a miracle that never c and ame. Kevin managed to say a final goodbye to his father, to hold his hand while sssitching his body wither away in pain.
He remembers the service before the funeral, when the priest talked about the eternal reward, about how his father was now away from all pain. His mom was silently crying behind him, but Kevin couldn’t cry. He could only think that the situation was unfair. His father, who was a nice, honest man who had never done anything wrong to anyone, who had gone to church every Sunday, who had raised his children with love, who respected his wife and helped his neighbors, had died in terrible pain. His father didn’t deserve that pain.
There wasn’t a reason for that suffering. Why would anyone allow his father to suffer so much? His father had taught him and his brothers that God’s love would take care for them, as long as they took care of each other. God would never leave them alone, no matter what. But God hadn’t eased his father’s pain. God hadn’t listened to his mother’s prayers.
The day his father was buried was the day Kevin Richardson realized that there was no God, and that he had no more use for blind faith.
* * *
May 29, 1993.
[The room is a mess]. That is Kevin’s first thought upon entering the place he has been calling home for the last month. Transcon has been good to them, despite all the problems they’ve had to keep a five member group, renting a small house so they could be ready for rehearsals and studio time all the time. Kevin’s room is on the second floor, and it has a window that faces to the small garden on the back.
The window is now broken, small pieces of glass scattered across the floor. It has been raining, and half of his stuff is soaking wet. The carpet is going to be hard to save. His bed is unmade, but it’s not empty. There’s something lying on the bed. No, someone…
It looks like a guy, although Kevin can’t say how old. The guy’s unconscious, and there’s a deep gash on his forehead, a clean wound that somehow doesn’t bleed. He has long, brown hair, small, delicate features, and is dressed in a wet white tunic that leaves nothing to the imagination. He’s lying on his right side, as if he had fallen through the window, even when Kevin can’t figure out how he managed to do that. His body is covered with glass --all of his body, including the part that Kevin doesn’t want to believe he is seeing.
The unconscious guy has wings. Long, beautiful, white wings that shine under the cold light of the full moon that illuminates the room. They look almost ethereal, like a dream or a shower of glitter and smoke. The right one is bent backwards, and it is obvious that it is not only because the guy, thing, whatever it is, is lying on top of it. Even from the door, the wing looks broken.
Not sure of what to do, Kevin walks closer to the bed, careful not to step on the glass. Half convinced it is a dream, he touches the left wing, the one that looks healthy. It’s real: soft and solid. It doesn’t feel like it is made of feathers, though. It feels like silk, if he just brushes his fingertips against it, and like his mother’s favorite angora sweater if he keeps his hand on it. As he moves his head to try and see the wings better, the feathers change color slightly, from white to pale blue, to pastel violet, to misty gray, to soft cream. They also have a faint smell like blueberries and honeysuckle. Very carefully, trying not to disturb his impromptu guest, Kevin cranes his neck, trying to see where the wings join the guy’s back, hoping to see a harness, even when he can see the guy’s chest through his tunic. The tunic has a very low back, practically going all the way down to the guy’s buttocks, and the wings come out right from the guy’s back, from between his shoulder blades.
Scared, but still wanting to get to the bottom of the mystery, Kevin reaches out to touch the place where the wings come out from. It’s hard as bone, but somehow, Kevin can’t help guessing that those bones are very fragile. He follows the arc of the broken wing with his eyes, and he can see the actual wing bone, exposed. Even so, it’s not bleeding. Kevin flinches, because even when it can’t be real since human beings do not have wings, it looks painful.
He remembers when he broke his arm. He had been seven or so at the time, and sometimes, he can still feel that pain. If those wings are connected to the guy’s back, and to his nervous system, it’s not difficult to imagine why the guy is unconscious. The guy probably fainted from the pain, not to mention the cold. Even though they’re in Florida, that flimsy tunic he is wearing cannot be a good protection from the rain.
Kevin is about to get up, maybe to call for help or to ask if anyone had put anything in his coffee when the strange creature opens his eyes.
It has the most beautiful brown eyes Kevin has seen in his whole life. They are the color of maple leaves, without a hint of black, and they remind Kevin of his childhood days.
In them, Kevin can see shock, surprise, but above all, immeasurable sadness.
* * *
“Holy fuck,” that is AJ’s voice.
“What the hell?” then comes Howie.
“No way,” that is Nick’s voice..
“Holy Mother of God,” and, finally, comes Brian. Kevin barely registers their voices, finishing a very improvised bandage on his visitor’s injured wing. After the winged guy had opened his eyes, he had flinched in pain. His right wing is broken, and although Kevin guesses that it will heal with time as long as it is set properly, he isn’t sure about it. He has nursed birds to health but a guy with wings is another matter completely. Kevin is pretty sure the situation isn’t covered in any medical text.
His visitor has been calm enough to allow him to finish the bandage, but when the others arrive he flinches, nervously, and starts flapping his healthy wing, as if trying to fly away like a scared parakeet. Before Kevin can stop him, he scrambles out of bed and corners himself in the space between the wall and the closet. It is only now when Kevin realizes how short his visitor is. He looks even shorter than Howie. In the corner, looking at them with his big expressive eyes filled with fear and confusion, his winged visitor reminds him of a scared kitten. Or a very big kid.
“It’s ok, they’re my friends,” Kevin says, very slowly. He doesn’t even know if the strange guy speaks English, but he doesn’t have a better idea. “Don’t be scared.”
“Kevin… is that what I think it is?” AJ asks, not moving from his spot at the door. Kevin can’t blame him. It isn’t every day that you see a winged man, injured or not - he refuses to think the other word, the word he knows AJ is thinking, the word he knows Brian has on the tip of his tongue. What is trembling like a kitten in his room is a winged man, a freak of nature, nothing more
* * *
“We can’t let anyone find him,” Howie says, a couple of hours later. Kevin hasn’t been able to get the winged man out of the corner, but at least the strange guy has stopped flapping his wings every time someone other than Kevin looks in his direction. “They would, like, try to cage him or something.”
“Maybe he could tell us where he coame from?” AJ proposes, still standing by the door, leaning on the wall. Although he has volunteered to carry garbage bags filled with glass to the trashcan, he still hasn’t come into the room. Kevin finds it somewhat amusing that AJ looks as scared as the winged man. But then, Kevin knows that AJ was as religious as his cousin, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it.
“I think it’s obvious where he comes from,” Brian shakes his head. “The question would be how is he going to go back.”
“The same way he came here?” Nick is mesmerized by the wings. Kevin doesn’t blame him. They are beautiful, and now that there is sunlight coming in through the window, they look as if they are shining, creating a faint rainbow that Kevin can see out of the corner of his eyes. “I mean, when he’s healed.”
“And what are we going to do until his wing heals?” Kevin asks them. He is not going to accept that his visitor is an angel. Angels don’t exist. “Someone is bound to notice him even if he stays in that corner.”
“Lock the door then,” Nick shrugs. “You can always say you want privacy or something”
“We have a tour starting next month.” It is useless to point that out, and Kevin knows it. The end of it is that he has an injured, winged man in his room and that he can’t, in good conscience, leave him to his own devices, even though the existence of a winged man is freaking him out.
“Well then, we better pray for him to get well before that,” Howie says, as if that is the answer to the problem. During all the exchange, Kevin feels the eyes of his visitor on his back. It is weird to be the focus of someone’s attention like that. He knows that if the group manages to lift off and get enough fame, they all will be the focus of cameras and fans, but he still doesn’t know if he can live with that. At least, he knows he can’t live with that so close to home. “Maybe we could bring him something to help his wing heal faster.”
“Like what?” AJ rolls his eyes. “Anything stronger than iodine is a bad idea if we don’t know what he is.”
“We need to call a doctor,” Howie says. “What if Kevin messed up and his wing doesn’t set properly?”
“A doctor or a veterinarian?” AJ quips. “Because I doubt there’s someone at the ER experienced enough to deal with this.”
“Do you think he has a name?” Nick interrupts, looking at them. “We can’t just call him ‘hey you’.”
“We are not naming it,” Kevin says. “If we name it, we’ll get attached to it.”
“It’s not a puppy, Kevin,” Howie protests.
“It is not an it!” Brian says. “I mean, he is not an it.”
“I’m going to get something to drink,” AJ tells them from the door, walking away. “But I think they’re right, Kevin. We really can’t call him ‘hey you’.”
Kevin sighs. Apparently, his friends’ common sense had flown out of the window when their visitor crashed through.
* * *
Despite Nick’s best attempts, Kevin’s visitor doesn’t tell them his name. In fact, he doesn’t speak at all, and Kevin isn’t sure if it is because he is afraid, or because the wound on his head is worse than it looks, even if it’s not bleeding. Brian, on the other hand, apparently has seen The Little Mermaid a lot of times, since he tries proposing many names to the winged man to see if one of them is his name. To Kevin it doesn’t even look as if the guy understands what is going on. He just keeps staring at them, eyes wide open in fear. It looks to Kevin as if he’s not focusing on them, but on the wall behind them, and Kevin decides that the creature is probably in shock.
“Gabriel?”
The creature shakes his head, and Kevin starts to lose his patience. They have been at it for at least half an hour.
“Michael?”
“Brian, are you going to go through all the biblical names you know?” Kevin asks, interrupting his cousin. He is tired; he wants to go to sleep. And since Brian knows a lot of biblical names by heart, Kevin fears this naming session will go on for hours.
“Do you have a better idea?” Brian asks, obviously not happy at the interruption. “Jeremiah?”
“Maybe he can write us his name down for us?” Kevin suggests. “I have pen and paper somewhere around here.”
The creature lowers his head, as if ashamed, and Kevin realizes that he does understand them.
“And what if he doesn’t speak English? Or if he doesn’t know how to write?” Nick points out, missing the way in which the winged man jumps a little when he hears them, startled. Nick is carrying a bunch of his old comic books. “It wouldn’t help at all. We could call him Warren.”
“Warren?” Kevin repeats at the same time the creature shakes his head no. Apparently, he likes the name even less than Kevin does. “Why Warren?”
“You know, like Warren Worthinghton III, the Archangel from X-men,” Nick says, sitting next to the winged man and handing a comic book to everyone. “You don’t like it? We can pick another one. I have a ton of comics, and we can look for different names in case he doesn’t like the ones Brian knows.”
The winged man shakes his head again, more vigorously, making Nick laugh. Then, cautiously, he grabs one of the comic books on the floor, while Brian keeps listing biblical names.
“Uriel? John? Joseph? Moses? Abraham?”
“This is stupid,” Kevin sighs, opening the comic that Nick has handed him.
“Can’t you help?” Howie asks, offering him a can of soda. He and AJ have volunteered to bring up refreshments. “Between the five of us, we might find a name he likes.”
“Whatever,” Kevin looks at the comic book page and starts to read names out loud. “Scott, Xavier, Stan, Jim, Chris…”
“Wait! He likes that!” Nick interrupts, and Kevin looks up at the creature.
Sure enough, he is smiling, pointing at Kevin. And it is a beautiful smile, one that makes the guy’s eyes shine even more.
“So your name is Christopher?” Brian asks, cautiously. The winged man, ‘Chris’, nods brightly.
“You understand us?” Kevin adds, and the answer is another nod. “But you can’t talk?”
This time, the answer is a blink, followed by a brief negative shake. Kevin is about to ask if that meant ‘No, I can’t talk’ or ‘No, I can talk’, when Brian stops him.
“I don’t think we should interrogate him.”
“Why not?”
“Well, we know where he comes from. You don’t question that!” Brian points to the white wings on Chris’s back.
“Brian, never mind the wings! We don’t know where he comes from!” Kevin yells. “That’s the whole point of asking!”
“Not even you can deny the evidence before your eyes!” Brian gets up from the floor and points at Chris, who retreats further back into his hiding place, looking scared. Kevin gets up from the bed too, and realizes that the yelling is scaring Chris.
“Evidence? What evidence? What I see before my eyes is a guy with wings. That’s all. A very scared guy with a broken wing, so if we’re going to help him we could probably try to keep the bible thumping to a minimum,” Kevin lowers his voice. He doesn’t want to spook Chris even more.
“Oh, come on, Kevin!” Brian follows his example and lowers his voice too, but Kevin can see his cousin is really angry. “You know, I understand why you feel this way, but you *can’t* be blind to the fact that this is a *miracle*! How can you deny it when an *angel* is on your bed?!”
* * *
Around eleven, Kevin throws everyone out of his room. They have to wake up early the next day, and he has no intention of being the one to explain to Lou why they are half asleep at rehearsal. He is pretty sure he is going to be in trouble for the broken window anyway, he doesn’t want to add insult to injury.
Chris hasn’t moved, but Kevin thinks that maybe he looks at him with less fear. Before going to bed, he gets out one of the blankets he brought from home and hands it to the frightened man, as well as a pillow. Kevin doesn’t know if Chris needs to sleep, but no one is going to spend the night cold in his room.
When the alarm starts ringing Kevin opens his eyes to find his visitor looking at him. At some point of the night, Chris got out from his corner, and is now precariously perched on the edge of the bed, knees touching his chest, covering his body with the blanket Kevin had given him. For the first time since Kevin meet him, the stranger doesn’t look frightened. He looks thoughtful. Kevin wonders exactly how is it that he can keep his balance, and he guesses that maybe the wings have something to do with it.
“Good morning, Chris?” Kevin asks, and is rewarded with a small smile. Chris raises his hand and touches Kevin’s cheek, an action that startles Kevin. “Are you asking me if I had a good night?”
The stranger nods, still smiling.
“Well, even with the broken window, it wasn’t a cold night. I was fine,“ Kevin elaborates. Chris only blinks at that, frowning slightly. “I am not blaming you for the window, although I would love to know how did you manage to fall through my window.”
Chris frown deepens at Kevin’s words. He looks sad, but Kevin is not going to apologize. There are no tall buildings around, and he has no idea how Chris got there. He refuses to believe he just flew through the glass.
Chris opens his mouth, as if to speak, but no sound comes off it. He closes it, blinks, and opens it again, looking frightened to Kevin, who is somewhat confused.
“What’s wrong?” Kevin asks.
Chris shakes his head, opens his mouth again, only to close it, as if resigned.
“You honestly can’t speak, can you?” Kevin asks. He remembers one time, when he was a lot younger, thirteen or so, that he had been sick with a cold. His throat had been raw, and he had been unable to talk for a week. Chris’s expression reminds him of that time.
Chris takes a deep breath, and shakes his head no.
“But you could talk before the accident?”
Chris looks at him, his mouth a tight line. But before he can answer, a knock on the door distracts Kevin so he doesn’t see Chris’s quick nod.
“Who is it?” Kevin asks. Chris jumps from the bed gracefully, landing on his tiptoes. He rushes to his corner, and Kevin realizes that he never felt the mattress shift under Chris’s weight.
“We bring breakfast,” Nick’s voice comes from behind the door. Chris seems to recognize a ‘friendly’ voice, since he straightens up, looking at the door with childlike curiosity. Kevin sighs. It’s going to be a long day.
“Come on in,” Kevin calls out and the door opens to let Nick and Brian in. Nick is carrying a tray with four bowls, cereal and milk on it, while Brian is helping with a bowl filled with small apple pieces. Curious, Chris follows Nick, and, with another swift jump that would be the envy of many athletes, perches himself on the back of the chair of Kevin’s desk, where Nick lowers his tray.
Brian follows Chris with his eyes, and then turns to see Kevin, raising his eyebrow as if to say ‘Well, how do you explain that?’ Kevin rolls his eyes, refusing to answer the gesture. The truth is that he can’t explain Chris’s agility, or the way in which he balances his body weight just on his tiptoes.
“I hope you like cereal,” Nick tells Chris, unaware of the looks that pass between Kevin and Brian, and Chris smiles at the kid. Kevin can’t help but smile too. At least their visitor is not going to die of hunger.
“Where are Howie and AJ?” Kevin asks, looking at his cousin.
“AJ said he wanted to have breakfast in the kitchen,” Brian answers. “Howie is there to keep him company. I think Christopher makes AJ nervous.”
“Chris makes me nervous,” Kevin says without thinking. He doesn’t notice the hurt look on Chris’s face. “How are we going to keep him a secret?”
“Maybe we could cover his wings with something?” Nick suggests, while he finishes serving a cereal bowl with milk and apple, offering it to Chris. Chris, who seems to have decided that Nick is safe, takes the bowl with curiosity, as if he has never seen one. He puts it carefully on the table again, and looks at the small pieces of fruit and cereal floating on the milk. “Maybe a trench coat?”
“I don’t think a trench coat is going to work in Florida, Nick,” Kevin looks at the wings, folded neatly on Chris’s back, and the bandage. Chris seems unaware of the conversation going behind him, since he’s busying himself by fishing the little cereal pieces with his hand, dripping milk over the already ruined carpet. “Brian, do you think he can stay for a while in your room?”
“Sure, I’ll be honored if he wants to,” Brian answers. He walks towards Chris, grabs a spoon from the tray and, carefully, and deliberately, shows Chris how to use it. Chris blinks, grabs the spoon from Brian’s hand and smiles, before imitating his movements. Kevin realizes that Chris has never used a spoon before, judging by the way he practices before actually using it to eat the cereal. “Why?”
“Lou will want to replace the window,” Kevin points out. “And if Lou sees Chris, you can bet he’ll end up in the first page of every newspaper in the country, so if we’re going to keep him safe, he’ll need to be in another room.”
* * *
Getting Chris to Brian’s room proves to be quite difficult, since the guy doesn’t seem to want to move away from Kevin’s room, but at the end, they manage to do so when Brian explains to Chris exactly what is going to happen if someone else besides the five of them saw him. Chris stays still for a moment, before cocking his head to the side, and narrowing his eyes. Kevin is sure that he is not actually paying attention to what Brian is saying, but then Chris nods and follows them meekly.
Kevin tries to function that day as normally as he can. It is hard, with his band mates theorizing about Chris every time they are alone, before their presentation of the day, before the rehearsal. Brian, Nick and Howie are convinced that Chris is an angel, because, really, what else can he be, and that there has to be a really big reason for him to have fallen down from heaven to Kevin’s bedroom. AJ doesn’t seem to have an opinion about it, but Kevin is ready to hit the library as soon as he can. There has to be an explanation for Chris’s wings, and biblical explanations aren’t going to cut it for him. Kevin believes that maybe Chris escaped from a circus, because that’s the only place he can figure a weird man with wings who acts like a bird would have come from.
Kevin also spends most of the morning worrying that someone will find Chris in Brian’s room and either start a cult or call the cops. Not that Brian isn’t halfway creating a cult around Chris. Kevin has stopped talking to his cousin because if he hears the word miracle one more time, Lou is going to have to find a new fifth since Kevin will kill his cousin and hide the body.
Although, if he is honest with himself, he has to admit that he was also worried about what can happen if no one finds Chris because Chris can’t stay with them. Lou has told them they are going to do a tour all over the States. What are they going to do with Chris when that happens?
* * *
Kevin’s worries are unfounded, since they arrive to their house to find Chris perched on top of Brian’s bed’s headboard, watching the small portable TV that Brian had brought from home. Apparently, either Chris has gotten over his fear of people, or he can recognize their footsteps because he doesn’t try to hide when Brian opens the door to his room.
He seems to be enjoying the Mickey Mouse Club.
“Hey, Chris!” Nick greets happily. “We have food!”
They stopped at a McDonalds earlier and bought Big Macs for everyone including Chris. Chris smiles, accepting the gift. At first, Chris doesn’t seem to know what to do with the bag, so Brian again teaches him to open it, and unwrap the hamburger when Chris tries to take a bite of the paper envelope.
They eat together, and Kevin has to admit that he has never seen someone eat a Big Mac with such glee. It is as if Chris has never have one, so Kevin mentally files the possibility of Chris being raised in a very closed environment, maybe a carnival or even a laboratory. And if the Big Mac was a big success, the coke is definitely Chris’s favorite, as he practically inhales his soda. Kevin, amused, gives Chris his own glass. He has never met someone who liked soda so much.
While they eat, Nick and Brian tell Chris about their day, and Kevin takes his time to inspect Chris’s wings. There’s no blood on the bandage, not that he can see anyway and he doesn’t dare to change it less than 24 hours after the accident. He is still worried because he never saw any blood. Chris’s head wound looks like an old scar now, and the wing’s skin is starting to mend, but there is no scab. It’s another medical mystery, and Kevin knows his cousin will use the lack of blood as yet another reason why they should be calling a priest. As Chris silently laughs at the things Nick is saying, Kevin realizes that when Chris laughs, he moves his shoulders and shrugs his wings, but the right one, the hurt one, barely moves.
Kevin wishes they could take him to a hospital. He’s no expert, and he had bandaged the wing remembering what his father taught him about first aid, but Kevin knows that if he set Chris’s wing wrong, Chris could end up crippled for life.
He doesn’t believe Chris could fly before the accident. His wings might look the part of every image done of angels, but they’re too small to sustain someone of his size. Still, Kevin doesn’t know what would happen to the winged man if his wing doesn’t heal properly. He doesn’t want to find out.
“He’s going to need clothes,” AJ suddenly says, pulling Kevin out of his thoughts. “He can’t go around the house like a hospital patient.”
“I still think a jacket would help,” Nick insists, sitting next to Chris, who amazingly, smiles at the kid. Kevin guesses that part of Chris’s fear the day before was due to the pain of his broken wing and the surprise of being surrounded by strangers. Now, a mere 24 hours later, Chris seems a lot more confident among them. He learns fast, Kevin realizes when Chris starts eating his ice cream with a spoon, just like Brian taught him. “Maybe a poncho!”
“I have a poncho my dad gave to me,” Howie volunteers. “I think it would cover the wings pretty well, if he can fold them completely.”
“Let’s wait a week before he tries that,” Kevin says, before Chris can try to show them if his right wing folded completely. “And maybe one of you could lend him some pants? I don’t think mine will fit him.”
Chris smiles at him, a beautiful, sincere smile and Kevin can’t help but return it.
* * *
The poncho does work, and somehow by the time the tour starts, Kevin finds himself explaining to Lou that Chris is ‘Howie’s mute cousin’ who needs to stay with Howie for a while. Kevin is sure he would have never been able to convince Lou, but thankfully Nick adored Chris, so Nick had asked his mom to talk with their manager, and there were very few things that Jane Carter couldn’t get when she wanted something for her son’s career. Kevin is grateful to her, but he knows it doesn’t matter anyway. He and the others had decided to put their money together to get Chris enough bus tickets to go with them everywhere if things got to that extreme.
But for some reason Kevin doesn’t really understand, Lou likes Chris. Lou, who usually worries about budgets, and the group being seen with girlfriends, or acting out of their given roles, likes Chris almost as much as he likes the other guys in the group. Lou even jokes that if Chris wasn’t mute, he would have a place in Transcon as a singer, something that Chris always listens to with a puzzled expression. Lou won’t spend money for another hotel room, or even a second bus so the five and Chris can travel more confortably, but he likes Chris enough to offer him a part time job as the Boys’ personal assistant. Part of the very small crew they have. Chris’s job consists in following them around, making sure they don’t need anything. Kevin finds it funny, because the truth is that the five of them are always alert to whatever Chris needs.
While Kevin has his doubts about housing six people in a five-person bus, Chris proves him wrong because even when he should, the winged man doesn’t take much space at all. No matter where he is perched, there’s always space around Chris. Chris spends the nights perched on the couch keeping watch over them. Kevin knows because when he wakes up in the middle of the night he can see Chris looking at him. Kevin suspects that Chris doesn’t sleep at all
Within days, Chris is part of their routine. Except for the times when Chris ends up glued to the tv - besides watching the Mickey Mouse Club, Chris also seems to have a soft spot for cartoons -- the winged man is always near them and Kevin realizes that he has different quirks and habits around them.
When he is with Nick, it is as if Chris is 15 years old, too, and only the weight of his hidden wings stops Chris from being as active as the kid. Seeing him jump around, playing hoops with Nick when Brian is too tired, Kevin wonders if Chris is actually 15. Kevin wonders when Chris’ birthday is, and if he has family worried about their strange kid. Chris also accompanies Nick when Nick has to do his homework, watching him write, perched on top of the back of Nick’s chair when no one is looking.
Kevin still doesn’t know how Chris manages to keep his balance.
Chris spends a lot of time learning from Brian, something that worries Kevin for many reasons. The first reason is, of course, that he doesn’t want his cousin’s religious ideas influencing Chris. The second, and perhaps more immediate, is that Chris needs to learn everything. From holding a spoon, to sitting on a chair like a normal human being, to dressing himself - and that’s a particular experience that Kevin is not going to forget any time soon - is it as if Chris had lived away from civilization all his life. Chris is picking some of Brian’s habits, like cutting fried eggs with a knife and not just with his fork. Kevin doesn’t know what to think about that.
As the weeks pass, AJ loses his nervousness around the winged man. In just a week, he starts getting annoyed by Chris’s weirdest habit: Everytime AJ lits a cigarette, Chris will be there to pluck it out from his fingers, or even his lips. Kevin doesn’t know how Chris does it, and he applauds the winged man for his tenacity because while he agrees that AJ shouldn’t smoke, he also knows they have no right to actually do something about it. Chris doesn’t care, and he seems to have a smoke detector in his brain, because even when AJ is hidden from view, Chris will be there, ready to take the offending tobacco stick away.
Howie seems to take Chris’s existence a lot easier than Kevin and Brian. He doesn’t try to evangelize the winged man, and he doesn’t overanalyze him either. Where Brian teaches Chris about how to function in society without being discovered, Howie teaches Chris music, putting different records from every single artist he can find for the winged man to hear. Chris loves music, and he has a growing list of favorites from what Howie shows him. During those times, while Chris is listening to whatever Howie found, Howie takes his time to brush Chris’s long hair.
They also discover quickly that trying to cut Chris’s hair is an impossible task. Even when they can cut it without any problem, as soon as they finish, it grows again, so fast that they can see it move, always up to Chris’s middle back. So Howie braids it, and ties it, and brushes it, every chance he has, because he says he doesn’t want Chris’s hair to get knotted or dirty.
Kevin is sure that Howie was a hairdresser in a past life.
Sometimes, when they’re rehearsing, Kevin sees Chris nodding at nothing, as if he was listening to someone only he can see. Chris always looks sad when that happens, and sometimes, he even cries. Kevin doesn’t like to see him sad, but it helps cement his theory that Chris escaped from a carnival tent. If Chris is a freak, if he has been treated as a freak all his life, maybe he has imaginary friends. Someone to talk to, when no one talks to him. Kevin is now convinced that Chris escaped and, somehow, ended up crashing through his window. The somehow is still not clear in his theory, but it explains why Chris fixated on Kevin. Chris might see Kevin as his savior.
Chris does seem happier following Kevin. Every night, he waits until Kevin finishes whatever he is doing to let him check his wing, even when the others offer to help change the bandages, Chris doesn’t let them, flapping his healthy wing in a very clear gesture of ‘stop! Get away!’, like a mother scolding her kid when she catches him with his hand inside the cookie jar. Only Kevin has permission to take off the bandage, check the healing wing and wrap it up again.
Kevin takes advantage of that. While he doesn’t know how to react to Chris’s attention, he uses his time to try and figure out the mystery of Chris’s origins.
“Where do you come from?” He asks one day, checking the bandage on the room that Lou has gotten for the whole band. The others are outside, keeping watch so no one will try to enter until Chris’s wings are safely hidden.
Chris looks at him, his expressive brown eyes twinkling, and then he looks up, at the ceiling, smiling, just before shrugging in a way that pretty much says ‘I’m from everywhere’.
“Why are you here?” Kevin tries again, pressing on the matter. While he knows that Chris can’t answer with more detail than a yes or no, he also knows that when Chris wants, he makes the effort to communicate. When Chris doesn’t try, Kevin knows that it’s because Chris wants to hide something.
Chris finally points to the window, then to his wing that looks a lot better. He can flap it without wincing although he still moves it with visible effort.
“You’re here because you fell through my window and your wing was hurt?” Kevin guesses. Chris smiles brightly at him, nodding.
That’s not exactly a good answer, since Kevin knew that already.
“When are you going back to wherever you come from?” Kevin keeps pressing. He can’t interrogate Chris when Brian is around because Brian gets angry. Brian says that Kevin shouldn’t question miracles, but since Kevin doesn’t share his cousin’s beliefs he tries, at least once every week, to get straight answers from the winged man. He doesn’t mention the words ‘Heaven’, ‘Angel’ or ‘God’ in front of Chris, because he figures that Brian does that more than enough times. Chris is not an angel, Kevin knows, and making him believe he is could be dangerous for Chris.
Chris shrugs, moving his wing a little. ‘When I heal’, Kevin’s mind translated. The wing looks pretty healthy to him now except for the fact that when Chris moves it, the movements look hesitant. It has been three months since Chris arrived, and doing mental calculations, Kevin theorizes that it is healing a lot slower than a broken arm would. Once again, he swallows his fear that he didn’t set the wing right.
“Why do you follow me so much?”
That is the question that burns into Kevin’s mind most of the time. He could try to understand why a winged man would focus on Brian. Hell, he spent the first week waiting for some wacko to come and try to convince them that Chris was from his church and donate money for them. But every one who knew Kevin knew he was not one for myths, smoke and mirrors. Kevin is practical, rational man.
Chris simply smiles, grabs Kevin’s hand, pushes it to Kevin’s chest, then to his own wing.
“Because I helped you?” Kevin asks for some clarification. The gesture is not exactly clear and he has never been good at charades.
Chris smiles, shaking his head no. But in mid-shake he stops, and then nods once, determined. It only helps to frustrate Kevin more.
Despite the fact that Kevin finds Chris’s mere existence annoying - a man with wings shouldn’t exist - Kevin also likes Chris. Like everyone around them, he likes to see Chris smile.
Because of that, he spends quite some time watching Chris, trying to find clues to his true origin. Chris knows when he is being watched, and sometimes he does certain things that infuriate Kevin. Like shrugging his wings, under the trench coats and ponchos, in a way that they shed a couple of beautiful, unearthly feathers that then Kevin will pick up before someone else notices them. Or stay perched on chairs, headboards and practically every horizontal surface, just balancing his whole body weight on just his tip toes.
Kevin has a big wooden box, hidden beneath his bunk bed, filled with white feathers that feel like silk, smell like honey and blueberries, and shine as if they were always covered in dew.
There are a lot of things about Chris that Kevin hopes no one will notice. The fact that everyone likes Chris is one. The way in which every single animal around them seems to follow Chris, at least for a little while, is another. Birds will perch on his shoulders, the meanest security dogs will end up asleep at his feet. Once, Kevin saw a hummingbird stop on Chris’s finger for a few seconds.
It is disconcerting, like watching a Disney princess come to life, only male and without the singing.
“That’s our proof, right there,” Howie says, watching a big Doberman, that belonged to the security detail of the mall where they are going to sing, wag his tail like a little puppy while Chris scratches it behind the ears. “He can only be a creature of heaven.”
“It’s just because he is not afraid of it,” Kevin rolls his eyes as he speaks, trying to ignore the bright blue butterfly that is resting on top of Chris’s head. “Dogs only attack if you are afraid of them.”
But as good as that explanation is about dogs, it still doesn’t explain the butterflies.
* * *
Kevin likes to play the piano. He doesn’t have much time to do so with their newest schedule, going from shopping mall to shopping mall, but whenever he has some free time - and a piano nearby - he will play for a while.
The band with whom they travel knows that, and so, from time to time, they let him play at nights on the keyboard, before packing everything up for the next stop of the promotional tour.
Every time that happens, Chris is there, listening to him play.
By the middle of September, Chris’s wing looks completely healed, but Chris still moves it with extreme care. While the movements of his left wing are swift, like waves crashing on the beach, or clouds drifting in the wind, his right wing moves slowly, robotic. Like if Chris is relearning how to use it.
It is about then when Kevin discovers another of Chris’s weird habits. Whenever they are alone in the rehearsal room, when no one can see his wings, Chris takes off whatever he’s wearing that covers them, the trench coats and ponchos. He stands in front of the mirrors, and carefully, extends his left wing in a movement that reminds Kevin of warm up exercises, from the center of his back in a soft arc. Then Chris repeats the movement with his right wing, flinching at first when the wing doesn’t move, and smiling as the days pass and his wing moves more and more gracefully.
Kevin’s only guess is that he is trying to figure out if the wing is healing right. Not for the first time, he wishes that Chris had crashed through a doctor’s window, not his own. One night he realizes that he’s watching a countdown. When Chris’s wing heals, something will happen.
The problem is that he likes Chris’s attention. Even when they are starting to build a very small fanbase, even when girls scream his name while they sing, it doesn’t compare to the warmth he feels when Chris smiles at him.
He will only admit it to himself, but he has grown to like Chris. Impossible wings and all.
He isn’t the only one. The others adore Chris, who can match Nick and Brian’s energy all the time, who pays attention to AJ and Howie, who always has a smile for every person who will come near him.
As the months pass, they stop arguing about Chris’s origins. The others are still convinced Chris is an angel, and for the sake of semantics, Kevin agrees that the only thing one can call a guy with wings is ‘angel’, even when he still refuses to even listen to any metaphysical explanation and he won’t use that word out loud. For him, Chris is just Chris. He is sure that Chris probably escaped from a freakshow, a mutation that somehow has escaped the notice of tabloids and medical reports. It doesn’t really matter, since Chris is there. Kevin, despite all his original suspicions, has decided that it is better not to question from where Chris comes from. Judging by Chris’s sad smiles, maybe it’s too painful for his friend to remember that.
Now Kevin doesn’t want Chris to go. But he can’t fool himself into thinking that Chris will stay. His wing is getting better every day.
Trying not to depress himself thinking too much about it, he starts playing I believe I can fly from memory. He plays it slow, trying to remember all the notes. When he finishes the first verse, he looks up to see Chris standing next to him, without the black trench coat that AJ has gotten him that day, his wings folded.
“You can’t fly, can you?” Kevin asks. He bites his tongue as soon as the question comes out of his lips. He doesn’t want to acknowledge that he still fears that he set Chris’s wing wrong. He fears that maybe that is why Chris can’t leave.
As his answer, Chris unfolds his wings completely and flaps them sadly. Nothing happens, and Chris looks up before smiling at Kevin, resigned. His white feathers shine silver under the moonlight reminding Kevin of the night when Chris crashed into his life.
“But you could fly, couldn’t you?” Kevin asks again, and for the first time, he voices the impossible possibility that he has refused to believe since that night.
Chris nods, and there is such sadness in that nod that Kevin just has to believe Chris.
Despite that everything points to the scientific fact that it’s impossible for a man with wings to fly, Kevin can easily picture Chris soaring the sky.
“I’m sorry, I must have fucked it up somehow,” Kevin apologizes, unable to hide the guilt he feels. But Chris puts his hand on Kevin’s chest, his warm hand makes Kevin feel better, and smiles brightly. Chris flaps his wings again, and now Kevin realizes that the right one moves softer than the day before. It is slowly getting better.
“You don’t think I messed your wing?”
Chris shakes his head no, and puts his hands on the keyboard, cocking his head.
Getting the hint, Kevin starts to play again.
* * *
“I’m starting to think you like Chris.”
Kristen is the one who brings it up, and when she does, it catches Kevin by surprise. They are back in Orlando, licking their wounds after a contract with Mercury didn’t pan out, and Kristen visits them at their house once in a while.
Like everyone else in their lives, she loves Chris within minutes of meeting him.
“What are you talking about?” Kevin shakes his head, walking trough the park. Nick and Brian are playing hoops, and Chris is watching them, once again wearing the heavy poncho Howie lent him. “Every body likes Chris.”
“Oh, no, Kevin. You can’t use that excuse. You know what I mean,” Kristin insists, sadly. “Kevin, I’ve seen you looking at him. You’re always looking at him, even with that weird hump the poor dear has.”
Kevin has no answer to that, because deep down, he knows he watches Chris a lot more than he should. He rationalizes it as being that if he doesn’t keep an eye on Chris, he could do something that makes everyone discover his secret. And someone has to make sure that Chris eats something that is not made of sugar because even though Chris likes Big Macs, and the wonder that is Twinkies, he always accepts whatever new thing they want him to eat. Howie buys Chris ice cream every time he can, and Brian can’t tell Chris no. So the only one who can keep Chris from diabetic shock is Kevin. He watches Chris because he still thinks he can figure out the puzzle of Chris’s existence just by staring. Kevin can tell himself that, and a thousand other excuses, but the truth is that he likes to watch Chris, because from time to time Chris will raise his head, look at him and smile. Kevin likes to see Chris smile, and when he admits that he realizes that he is acting like a love-struck fool.
“Someone needs to keep an eye on Chris,” Kevin says, not elaborating. At that instant, as if he knows they are talking about him, Chris raises his head and waves to them.
“Whatever you say,” Kristen rolls her eyes, obviously not believing him. “You know I’m here for you, Kev. We have been friends for way too long for me to just stop talking to you because of this, and if you need someone to show the press you’re Mr. Straight, I’ll be here. But I think he likes you a little bit too, so I think you should go for it.”
Kevin doesn’t answer Kristen, his attention is focused on Chris who has turned to watch Brian and Nick play again. At this distance, it seems as if Chris has a couple of flowers stuck in his long hair, but Kevin knows from experience that they are probably butterflies. After birds, butterflies are the ones that constantly end up flying around Chris. At first, Kevin found that sickening. Now, he fears to admit, he finds it sweet.
But he’s not going to talk to Chris about that. While Kevin is still surprised at the speed in which Chris has learned all the things that they’ve taught him, he still acts like a child sometimes. It’s that childlike innocence that makes Kevin feel uncomfortable when he thinks about Chris in a less platonic way. Chris trusts them, he trusts them to teach him how to act and Kevin doesn’t want to risk Chris thinking that he has to return Kevin’s feelings because it’s another lesson. Second, and more important, Kevin still knows that they will eventually have to let Chris fly free. Kevin wants to believe that if he doesn’t talk about his feelings, it will hurt less when Chris leaves.
It’s only much after when he realizes that he never told Kristen that he wasn’t gay. It is then when he realizes that even if he isn’t gay, he really is attracted to Chris.
* * *
Kevin can’t believe his luck for Christmas.
In theory, Chris should’ve spent Christmas with the Dorough family, since he is supposed to be Howie’s cousin. However, even when Howie would’ve perfectly fine with having Chris over for a week and a half, he knows it was going to be impossible to explain where Cousin Chris had come from in the middle of a family reunion with all his uncles and aunts included. AJ’s family is planning a trip out of the States, and since Chris doesn’t have a passport, or even a legal ID, he can’t travel with them. Nick is thrilled at the idea of Chris staying with him, but Jane seems convinced that Chris should spend Christmas with his own family. In the end, though Kevin has no exact idea of how it happened, Chris ends up on a bus with him and Brian to spend Christmas with the Richardsons and the Littrells.
Brian has asked Chris, at least three times, if he didn’t have anywhere else to be on Christmas, his meaning clear. But Chris smiles at them, hugs them close, and apparently considers the subject closed.
Kevin isn’t sure what to think about the fact that Chris wants to spend Christmas with them. For a week he has nightmares of what will happen if anyone else in his deeply religious family finds out about Chris’s wings. Chris doesn’t seem care a lot about religious symbols, from any faith, which cements Kevin’s opinion regarding Brian’s theory. If angels exist, they probably would be as religious as his younger cousin, and Chris usually spends Sunday mornings with Kevin, not at church.
His mother receives Chris with open arms, something that in hindsight shouldn’t have surprised Kevin, and soon it is as if Chris is another cousin in the big family, surrounded by his younger brothers and cousins, being mothered by all the women in the house. Chris is like that, a people magnet. Kevin can’t imagine someone disliking Chris.
He knows that the others have decided that anyone who could dislike Chris is not someone they want to meet. Kevin himself figures that anyone who actively disliked Chris was probably a sorry excuse for a human being because, wings and mysterious origin notwithstanding, Chris is the most easygoing person in the world.
Kevin tries not to think what would happen if the others discover that he likes Chris a bit too much. Especially his cousin, who would probably have a couple of Bible verses ready for the occasion.
Of course, he should’ve known better than let his cousin Martha explain to Chris the tradition of the mistletoe. Just like every time he learns something new, Chris takes kissing under the mistletoe as his new purpose on life. To Kevin’s chagrin, Chris has made his personal mission to kiss everyone on the cheek at least once. Kids twice as often. By midnight on Christmas day, the only one in the whole house who hasn’t been kissed by Chris is Kevin. Whether it is luck, or Chris was avoiding him on purpose, Kevin doesn’t know. What he does know is that he feels left out.
Around three a.m, after tossing and turning and being unable to sleep without the snoring of his band mates as background noise, Kevin goes down to the living room, hoping that he won’t wake up anyone. He isn’t surprised when he sees Chris outside, wings unfolded, watching the night sky.
“Someone could see you, Chris,” Kevin says, going out. It is the warning he always give his friend when Chris opens his wings outside their bus or bedrooms, where someone can see him. Unfortunately, those times are the only ones when Chris can unfold his wings completely. This time, however, seems a bit different. He’s not flexing them as he does in front of the mirror, he just unfolded them, and Kevin frowns a little. They look bigger, somehow. He realizes that he has never seen them completely open like this. Chris turns around and smiles at him. He is wearing a pair of jeans that Howie helped him buy with his meager assistant’s salary, but no shirt. His hair is loose, falling over his shoulders, curling a little at the tips. Under the lights of the street, Chris really does look the part of an angel, one of those angels in the Christmas movies that Kevin’s mom and aunt love so much. For a brief instant, Kevin looks up, half expecting a sudden snowfall in the middle of Kentucky. It’s impossible, but with Chris around, Kevin comes to realize that the impossible could very well happen. A guy with wings, a surprise snowfall, and the only thing missing would be Scrooge yelling Merry Christmas to everyone.
Chris shrugs, as if it is not important that someone could see him, and, with a movement of his head, invites Kevin to come next to him on the porch. Kevin sighs, wondering when he had stopped denying things to Chris. Kristen was right all along, it seems, and Kevin doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge. Being gay, he can deal with. But liking Chris is something too close to dating out of his own species, because even if he will always believe that Chris isn’t an angel, he sure doesn’t look human. Kevin is busy confusing himself when something green caught on Chris’s right wing catches his attention. It’s a small branch of mistletoe, lodged between the longest feathers.
“You’ve got mistletoe on you,” Kevin says, and Chris flexes his wing, curious, to hold the little green leaf on top of his head. It’s a swift movement, as if he had just raised his arm over his head. There’s no hesitation, no flinch of pain. His wing is almost healed. Resisting the temptation to kiss Chris, Kevin moves forward to grab the mistletoe, missing the mischievous look in Chris’s eyes.
In a quick, graceful movement that takes Kevin’s breath away, Chris folds his wing back, getting the mistletoe far from Kevin’s grasp. Then, creating an arc of whiteness and silver light, he unfolds his wing, in a long arc that covers his head and Kevin’s. Kevin blinks, as he realizes he is cocooned beneath Chris’s wings. Inside, the scent of blueberries is stronger than ever, and he does feel as if he’s seeing snow fall. Everything around him is white, except for Chris’s brown hair and maple-colored eyes. Hovering over him, held in Chris’s feathers, is the mistletoe branch.. “Chris, what are you doing?”
Chris licks his lower lip, looking doubtful for a moment. Kevin is about to apologize for his stern tone - he is trying to break the habit of speaking to Chris as if he were a child, but it’s hard to stop - when the uncertainty disappears from Chris’s features. He leans forward, standing on his tip toes and carefully, brushes Kevin’s lips with a soft kiss that tastes like honey, and home, and all the things Kevin holds dear in his heart.
* * *
When they return to Orlando, things seem to go back to normal. Kevin never mentions the kiss to Chris, and it never happens again. Sometimes, Kevin figures that maybe he dreamed it all, except for the fact that now when Chris looks at him, his smiles seem brighter. Sometimes, when Chris smiles, Kevin feels again the soft brush of lips against his own.
The beginning of the year proves to be a bit of a challenge for them all, since they have to get a record deal soon, aware that if they don’t, all their hard work will be for nothing.
Later, Kevin would blame the growing sense of defeat for the way in which he begun to take Chris for granted. After all, Chris had been with them for almost seven months. They all had more or less gotten used to see Chris, sitting on the sidelines, watching them. Perched on the headboard of someone’s bed, or on the back of a chair, watching TV, eating pixie sticks and M&Ms. Smiling, and silently laughing, with his hair braided or tied up, or taking cigarettes out of AJ’s mouth. Chris is beautiful, but he is always there, and somewhere in the way, Kevin forgets that there was a time when Chris hadn’t been there.
Until one cold February morning when Nick comes into his room, the very same room where Chris crashed seven months ago, running and scared.
“Have you seen Chris?” The kid asks, nervous.
“No,” Kevin gets up from his bed, looking at the repaired closed window. “I thought he was in Howie’s room.”
“He isn’t with any of the others,” Nick says, on the verge of tears. “I can’t find him anywhere!”
Trying to remain calm, Kevin hurriedly gets dressed and goes to Brian’s room. They have a quick meeting, and start looking for Chris everywhere they can think, even missing an early rehearsal. By night fall, they all have come to the sad conclusion that Chris has gone away.
Kevin tries to repress the childish feeling that Chris could’ve said goodbye before he left. Or at least give them some warning. Kevin remembers thinking that his wing was getting better, that Chris smiled at his reflection when he flapped both wings. He wants to say Chris wouldn’t have flown away without telling them, but he knows, deep in his heart, that Chris did. He also realizes that Chris was right in not telling them, because if Kevin had known Chris was planning to leave, he would’ve tried to stop him.
Kevin really didn’t want Chris to leave, not anymore. He didn’t want to wake up and not see Chris perched on his chair, smiling at him every morning.
When he is alone, he pulls out the box with all the feathers he kept, with the pictures that show Chris smiling among them. He opens the box, and the smell of blueberries hit him hard, it is as if Chris was standing next to him, surrounding him with his beautiful, impossible wings.
Kevin starts to cry.
If he had known Chris was going to leave, Kevin would’ve kissed him one last time.
To be continued…