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Haru grows up with tales of wanderlust burrowing in his bones, licking fires under his skin that fuel the heat between his shoulder blades until the tender age of six. His mother sits with him at night, when the flames are at their worst and the stars wink down at him with promises of a future he will one day come to posses, and she whispers the tale of Icarus into the shell of his ear like a prophecy.
Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun with wings made from wax, who fell from the sky and drowned in the sea.
She runs her fingers through his growing feathers, her touch as cool as he imagines the waters of the ocean to be. It is a welcome relief to the flames that curl their way around his new limbs, a constant reminder of Icarus’ fate and Haru’s resolve to not be so foolish.
“Will your wings be made from wax, Haruka?” his mother asks into the stillness of his room where the stars watch from his window.
He shakes his head, eyes half-lidded as he leans into her ministrations, aching for an end to the heat.
“What will your wings be made from then?”
Haru thinks of what he knows of fire, what it devours hungrily and what it leaves untouched, what helps it burn and what puts it out.
He thinks of Icarus, falling to his death.
“Wind,” he says. Because fire cannot burn the wind, and it will always be there to catch him if he falls.
He can feel his mother’s smile as she presses her lips to his brow, her dark hair pooling on the pillow next his head, wings draped over them both. The stars disappear for a moment, replaced by brown feathers that he reaches out to touch with the tips of his fingers, smiling as she kisses him again.
“Goodnight, Haruka. May the wind in your wings carry you far and fast someday.”
She leaves him then, and the stars wink down at him once more. And in their lights, Haru sees himself soaring.
He flies for the first time when he’s seven.
His wings have stopped burning, his feathers have grown in, and the new muscles respond to his will without faltering like so many other fledglings. While they flounder nearer to the earth, some plummeting back to solid ground after only moments spent hovering, Haru takes to the air like he’s been flying his entire life.
“It’s the wind in your wings,” his mother tells him with a soft smile.
He spreads them wide, feathers gleaming white in the sun that warms them, but he welcomes the heat because he knows that fire cannot burn the wind. He glides and dives, banks sharply and climbs higher and higher until he can look down upon the world and its shape and colors and know what the stars see.
He embraces the sky and the air and the wind, lives for it, breathes for it.
When he’s not flying, he dreams of it.
Some nights he climbs high enough to sit amongst the stars and flit between them, spending his time watching the world move and grow and change under him.
Other nights he dreams of Icarus, with his wings of wax and the heat of the sun that becomes unbearable as it melts feather and bone. He dreams of falling into the sea, and the cold water engulfing him to steal the air from his lungs.
He wakes from all of his dreams with the familiar flames of wanderlust creeping under his skin.
Haru is sixteen when he leaves his home high in the mountains, the wind in his wings carrying him far and fast until his muscles ache and force him to land. He takes shelter within the trees, curling his wings around himself to straighten what feathers he can reach on his own.
Sometimes he flies high enough that forests become smudges of dark green on the landscape, giant lakes glinting like tiny pinpricks of light. Other times he skims so low that he need only extend an arm to feel the blades of grass brush against his fingers as he passes.
He’s lost track of how long he’s been flying when he sees the ocean for the first time.
No matter how high he climbs, it never grows any smaller. It stretches past the horizon endlessly, never changing except for its color. On cloudless days it shines a crystal blue, catching the sun on its faceted waves and glinting golden. On days when the sky is dark, the ocean is black and roiling with anger for there is no sunlight to melt the wings from the backs of fools.
It is on a cloudless day when Haru first meets him.
He is lounging in the shallows of a tide-pool when Haru passes, wings barely stirring the air but he still earns the attention of the other. He hovers above the pale sand of the beach, staring at the bare back of the stranger who regards him with wide eyes that flicker with each beat of Haru’s wings.
“You’re flying,” the stranger says in a hushed whisper, lips curling back in a smile to reveal pointed teeth.
“Where are your wings?” Haru asks, equally quiet, because not even the scars are visible on unblemished skin.
The other laughs, low and melodic, and Haru blinks when the lower half of his body lifts from the water, revealing a tail that’s as grey as a stormy sky and as white as Haru’s feathers.
“I’m not a bird like you,” he explains. “I live in the ocean.”
He introduces himself as Rin.
“Haru.”
Rin grins, feral and wild and dangerous, the points of his teeth flashing. “How fast can you fly, Haru?”
The boy pushes himself out of the tide-pool and into the blue of the ocean, arms extended to either side as he looks back at Haru where he hovers above the sand.
“My wings are made from wind,” Haru says by way of reply, and Rin nods as if he’s satisfied.
“Prove it. Race me.”
His head dips under the waves, and for a moment Haru thinks of cold water stealing the air from his lungs, but Rin doesn’t seem panicked as he waits just below the surface. Red eyes watch from beneath the waves, glinting in the sunlight, and reluctantly Haru flies out until his shadow is cast over the other boy.
With a flurry of movement, Rin takes off.
Haru has raced against the other flyers his age, knows that he is by far the fastest among them. He follows Rin as he swims parallel to the shore, body twisting gracefully just beneath the waves as Haru skims over them, wing beats echoing his own heartbeat held trapped and fluttering behind his ribcage.
When Rin stops, lifting his head from the water so that he may speak and Haru may hear, he’s grinning with a fire behind his eyes, painting them with glowing sparks.
“You weren’t lying,” he says, laughter bubbling from his chest as he looks up.
Haru tilts his head to the side as his wings flap lazily to keep him from plummeting into the vast waters below. “Why would I lie?”
Rin just laughs harder and shakes his head, and Haru lets it go. He doesn’t understand the grey-tailed boy with the red hair and fire eyes, and for a moment Haru is left wondering if Rin even knows what fire is.
He doesn’t, Haru discovers in the following days when he flies down to the beach and hovers in the air above the tide-pool that Rin favors. Rin doesn’t know a lot of things about the world, but it turns out that Haru knows just as little about the ocean.
“Starfish?” Haru echoes, gaze instinctively looking towards the sky though the sun’s glare hides all of the stars from sight.
“I’ll find one and bring it for you tomorrow,” Rin offers with a nonchalant shrug, tail idly flicking the water. But then his eyes are on Haru, burning in their intensity, the tips of pointed teeth flashing in the sun when he speaks again. “Can you show me fire?”
He follows Haru’s pointed finger and begins to laugh. “That’s the sun. I meant-“
“It’s made of fire,” Haru insists, and Rin falls silent, lips pressed tight and brows drawn together.
“Have you ever flown to it before?” Rin asks eventually, the wonder in his voice doing little to mask the jealousy as his eyes flicker to Haru’s wings where they stretch and retract behind him with every beat against the air. His tail flicks at the water again.
Haru shakes his head and recites the story of Icarus over the sound of crashing waves, his words vibrating in the air between them like an omen.
Icarus, whose wax wings melted in the fires of the sun when he flew too close, who fell to his death in the cold clutches of the ocean.
“I wouldn’t let you drown,” Rin says, and Haru knows by the sincerity of his words that Rin isn’t lying. “I’ll teach you how to swim in case I’m not here someday and you decide you want to see the sun for yourself.”
But Haru is shaking his head even before the words have finished leaving the other’s mouth. “I only fly. And only fools fly close enough to the sun to burn their wings away.”
Rin smiles and shrugs and doesn’t press the issue. Instead, like every day since the first time they met, he climbs out of the tide-pool and into the ocean.
“Race me, Haru,” he says, and doesn’t bother to wait for a reply before darting off. Great white wings beat against the air and Haru catches up in moments, never passing over the other with his shadow for fear that the next day, Rin won’t be at the beach waiting.
It doesn’t mean he lets Rin win. But when the red haired boy surfaces beneath him he is always grinning, his eyes always bright.
Haru loses track of how much time he spends by the seashore. The wanderlust he’s known his entire life that licked flames around his bones and itched to just make him move is nothing more than a pile of scattered ashes now. Every morning he dives down from the home he’s made for himself high in the nearby forest, skimming low to the ground to run his fingers through the grass and dirt and coarse sand before he spots Rin in the distance. He hovers nearby, close enough that their words aren’t lost in the mist that rises every time the waves crash against the rocks, and when Rin suggests they race, Haru doesn’t hesitate.
“Do you ever stop flying?” Rin teases one day, but Haru knows by the tilt of his head and the curious smile that the other wears that Rin is serious.
“Sometimes,” Haru replies. “When I need to.”
Rin points to the rock next to his shallow pool, covered in a layer of algae that’s dried in the sun. “Sit,” he insists, but Haru shakes his head.
Rin whines and teases and bribes with promises of more creatures from the deep – like the starfish, he offers, because Haru’s sure he knows about the little white corpse he keeps in his tree – until Haru draws close enough to extend one leg down, bare toes brushing against the ragged surface of the rock. He lets his weight settle onto both feet before he shakes his wings out and folds them carefully against his back.
“I should take you swimming sometime,” Rin says with a grin.
“I only fly,” Haru murmurs, making a show of ruffling his feathers and eying the ocean warily.
“I wouldn’t let you drown.”
Still, Haru shakes his head and wraps his wings around himself, shivering at the thought of the cold water grabbing at his feathers and dragging him under.
In the pool beside him, Rin shifts, tail sliding along the rocks with a wet scrape as he looks up at Haru. One arm braces against the algae-slick stone beneath him, the other half-curled in the air, extended towards Haru with fingers bending and clenching into a fist.
“Can I touch them?” he asks, focused solely on Haru’s wings, red eyes wide and for a moment Haru can see his own reflection in them. A tight bundle of snow-white feathers silhouetted against a cloudless sky, eyes as blue and cool as he imagines the ocean staring back at him.
With a hesitant nod Haru holds his breath and extends one wing outwards just enough for Rin’s fingers to brush against his primaries. He jolts at the feeling, unused to anyone but himself touching his wings since his mother stopped just after they’d finished growing. Rin notices and smirks.
“They’re soft,” he says before withdrawing his hand, muscles flexing and twisting until the tip of his tail is draped on the rock beside Haru. He waits, expectant.
Haru would be lying if he said he wasn’t curious. He reaches out, feeling the rough skin under his fingers that twitches at his touch, traces where the grey fades to white, the elegant curve of the fin.
“It’s,” he pauses, searching for the right words before he finally settles on, “not what I expected.”
Rin laughs, the sound mixing with the waves that break against the rocks and the sea spray that dances in the air. Haru’s lips twitch upwards, just a ghost of a smile.
The next day, when he dives out of his tree and meets Rin at the tide-pools, he doesn’t hover in the air above the rocks. His wings fold elegantly across his back as he tucks his legs under him and sits, just close enough for Rin to reach out and trail a finger down his feathers.
“What’s flying like?” the red haired boy asks.
Haru pauses to consider, brow furrowing as he worries his bottom lip. “It’s like being free,” he muses quietly after a moment. His eyes catch Rin’s. “What’s swimming like?”
Rin’s lips curl in a soft smile as his fingers dip between primaries, eliciting a shiver that runs up Haru’s spine. “It’s like being free.”
They race farther and faster than ever after that, Haru’s reflection dancing across the waves as Rin surges forward just underneath them. And then without warning there is a splash, Rin’s shout of laughter breaking through the air as he arcs up and out of the water, twisting until Haru can see his fire-lit eyes and the sharp points of his teeth as he grins open-mouthed before his body completes its arc and dives back into the ocean.
It startles a laugh out of Haru, loud in the roar of the wind and the waves. Rin breaks the surface again, their breathless amusement mixing in the air and red eyes widen at the sound. But then he’s diving back beneath the waves, tail flicking water up at Haru who banks sharply with another laugh escaping from between parted lips.
When Rin stops Haru is there above him, his feet hanging dangerously close to the calm waters as his wings stir the air in a gentle breeze. They’re both still grinning, chests fluttering as one takes the wind into his lungs, the other the cool ocean water, and their eyes meet from two separate worlds.
Haru isn’t sure how it happens, how his body tilts and wings fight the pull of the earth as he reaches out one hand towards the surface of the water, stopping just short of the clear blue. But then Rin is there, fingers reaching up and wrapping around Haru’s own, linking them together, his touch as cool as Haru imagines the waters of the ocean to be.
With a powerful flick of his tail Rin pushes upwards and his lips brush against Haru’s. It’s chaste and he can feel of the sharp points of Rin’s teeth as he smiles against his mouth, the two of them slowly sinking toward the waves, and something feather-light and cold slips along Haru’s fingers.
Rin pulls away just enough for Haru to see his hand, still intertwined with the red haired boy’s, submerged in the ocean. And Rin is grinning, wild and feral and dangerous like the day they first met, the sparks in his eyes blazing hotter than the sun.
“I won’t let you drown,” he says, and Haru knows by the sincerity of the words and the tilt of his head and the press of his lips against his own that Rin isn’t lying.