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Jay's been talking about it for weeks while the seasons change from the extra humid heat of New York and back into something a little more managable. He's wanted to find some trees, real trees, in a real forest, with real waternot that New York City's trees and water aren't real. The lake at the mansion sure seems realbut he insists that there's something extra that's just missing and he is on the hunt for. A day off from work and the center and training, the young man hunts down really the only companion he has that won't absolutely scoff at the idea of leaving the city. Which works just fine by him as well aside from being his favorite individual, there's the bonus of rather than driving up, there's a possibility of convincing Daire to fly with him up there.
"It'll be fun, Ah swear. It's an adventure." Jay promises, excited and full of that sense of youthful exploration. "But not an adventure where someone ends up shot, or stung, or sliced or somehow into another country or covered in crab glitter, because that stuff doesn't come out fer weeks." Laden with a duffle bag with a strap slung over the bredth of his chest and carefully around his wings.
Daire had agreed to go on the fishing adventure to get out of the city and see some trees, breathe some fresh air, and maybe do some fishing. He has little with him aside from his gear, and it's likewise secured for flying. He's even gotten a shirt and pants that accomodate his wings and tail for when he transforms, having had a little time to prepare for the trip rather than just spontaneously attmepting to dodge adamantite claws in Iceland.
Yeah that's definitely a perk to having things planned out ahead of time. Plus less threat to one's physical person. No stranger to home made clothing alterations, Jay beams when he notices, chortling appreciatively as he reaches over to experimentally tug at one of the holes in Daire's shirt.
Meeting and taking off from the school just seems smart, to be honest. Daire can transform there without worrying about anyone giving him second glances, and it's already a little northward, so it's not at all out of the way. Jay waits as patiently as he can for Daire to get himself in order and go through the process of transforming, still wincing sympathetically while he watches his muscular and skeletal structure change; half awe, half wince. Still, Jay reaches out to squeeze Daire's shoulder in solidarity and … okay maybe a little concern. The shift isn't common place to him yet. "Still the best lookin' guy on the block. You ready? Ah sort of know where Ah'm goin', but really no solid plans. If ya see a good spot, just yell on over or clip me or somethin'." He smiles and shrugs, excitement bubbling over.
There are slits cut in the shirt for his wings to push out through while still leaving the shirt almost entirely intact looking otherwise. The jeans as well have a slit for the tail to go poking out the back. It makes things a little less uncomfortable. This time, he also has a change of clothes in his bag just in case. The truth is that the transformation isn't something that Daire does unless he needs to, not walking around in that form most of the time. It is painful as it always is, but is over relatively quickly. He shakes his head with a little grin that reveals those elongated fangs. Then he nods and says, "Ready when you are."
Jay reflects that grin back at Daire when he sees those elongated fangs, wings ruffling and fluffing up behind him in an accurate shiver of excitement. "Fantastic. Tag, yer it." Definitely in one of his high moods, Jay pats lightly at that curious tail, like a sportsmanlike butt pat, really. Honest. Striding past, there's an audible unfurling of those soft feathers and Jay works on his take offs from ground, kicking up a breeze as he goes, heading northward into the air, sort of lollygagging, even with his gear dangling off him like a pendulum. "C'mon, slowpoke!"
Daire flicks his tail out and whacks Jay in the leg with it with a smirk after that tag and says, "Tag-backs," and then he launches himself into the air with a flap of his powerful wings and sudenly he's rising and taking off across the skin, winging his way northward and doing a little circle to wait for Jay to figure out where they are going. He has no idea, and so is mostly following along. "Slowpoke," he mutters good-naturedly.
Jay barks a laugh when Daire tags him back with a whap of his tail, grinning with a surprised look written all over his face. "Oh, man, don't make me make you regret that! Flyin' circles around me yathink, huh?" To say that he's in a playful mood is an understatement as Jay beats his wings to catch up with the circle-gliding gargoyle fellow. Laughing mildly and under his breath, he takes a steep climb upward on a near collision course and cuts his wings hard to one side, purposefully to skim just past Daire, his soft laughter just /barely/ audible over the wind disruption. Banking to the side and coming around in a half circle, Jay's a little distracted finding a proper direction, busy jerking around. It's rare he gets to fly /with/ someone!
"You think I can't keep up?" Daire asks with a little bit of a challenge in his voice. Though, when Jay catches up with him and nearly clips him on the way by, he pulls back short an then dips lower as he tries to catch the air currents again before rising an winging his way ahead again, chuckling a little bit. It's rare that he flies in the day. Daires are nocturnal fliers, but he doesn't seem to mind the feel of the sun on his wings, even if it's a strange sensation. He wings his way further to the north, chuckling as Jay tries to right himself once more.
Daires are nocturnal fliers, and Jays are just fliers, period, though not so much recently. A shy creature by nature despite their vibrant plumage, Jays are bashful about taking to the air. Not that you'd guess by the way he's practically glowing as he comes about and watches Daire streak ahead of him. Jay breathes in deeply, filling his chest with fresh air high above the treeline, playing with the current with a lazy up and down wave like on a roller coaster track. Grinning at the figure just ahead of him, Jay works to surge forward again, squinting while he watches Daire's body language and form when he flies. He seems to take to it a little differently than Jay, just out of physical differences in their mutation. Observing carefully, a smart little curl of his mouth touches Jay's mouth as the idiotic young man gets an equally idiotic idea. Climbing high into the air above Daire, Jay uses the momentum of a shallow dive to try to time it just right as he comes over the other man, reaching down to swipe his fingers across Daire's head, playing with dark hair with passing glance as he glides past in a whoosh overhead.
SO MUCH to go wrong with that little daredevil midair act.
Daire seems to fly with a natural sort of ease, though he doesn't fly with any kind of particular "dance" to it. His is a steady and straightforward sort of flight. It's not that he's incapable of maneuvering in the air, but he seems more accustomed to picking a destination and going rather than playing with the currents. So when Jay suddenly ascends above him, he doesn't notie at first. It's only when he is suddenly divebombed. Now, there are several things that could go wrong with that, not the least of which being getting caught up on the horns, or in one another's wings, or… but it seems that Jay manages his fly-by hair-ruffling without sending either of them careening into a tree. He does manage to startle Daire, though, who blinks and wobbles a bit, then laughs.
When nothing catastrophic happens, Jay's laughter joins with Daire's; honest, genuine laughter rather than one of his soft whispers of mirth, more breath than sound. Jay's style of flight (at least right now in this lollygagging trip for fun up north) is expressive. Like his music, when Jay really lets loose in flight, he pours his heart and soul into it through that physical activity and it brings the mild young man to life. Even when he calms down a little bit and stops playing leapfrog with Daire, there's a relaxed radiance that Jay seems to feel all through him, through the tip of each splayed feather.
One final playful move as Jay flies past in a flash of crimson and laughter, he climbs high as they sail northward, the incline steep, powerful wings beating hard in audible whooshes, gaining speed and altitude. High, high, high, Jay's body goes vertical and his wings stop for a hovering moment of utter stillness in stark contrast to the rapid pumping of activity a moment before. He takes a deep breath and drops his head back. Eyes closed and wings relaxed, each feather soaking in the warmth of the late summer sun, 'tasting' the wind in his wings, Jay waits for the tug of gravity to take back over…and drops. Euphoric, the musician holds onto the bag with one arm so it doesn't smack him in the face, but the other outstretches in a gesture of surrender.
It can only last a moment or two, turning in midair with a languid twist of his spine, then like a sail catching the wind, Jay's wings snap taut and he rights himself with a couple of equalizing flaps, gliding back down to Daire's level. Smiling, relaxed, back toward his friend after his joyful expression. "Sorry! Ah couldn't resist!" Jay calls over to Daire over the winds.
Jay flies like a bird, flitting and dodging and wheeling in the sky while Daire flies a little bit more purposefully forward, and yet it is like a harmony of motion, one outpacing the other, and then shifting so that the other seems to be in the lead. Though when Jay starts to climb, up and up above, Daire's own flight seems to shift in a wide arc, circling his friend as Daire watches with curiosity what it is that Jay is doing. When he suddenly plummets, there's a reflexive widening of the eyes and a slight dip closer, but when Jay's wings unfurl again and he catches hiself, he seems to relax a bit, laughing and shaking his head. Certain that there's no danger, he relaxes once more and says, "I bet," loud enough to be heard over the wind as they continue their travels. He then looks down toward the ground and notices what looks like a sizeable lake and gestures in that direction. "What about there?" he asks.
Jay grins with just a little sheepishness to the angle, shrugging one shoulder, apologetic over whatever scare he might've given Daire. Glancing down, Jay nods a few times. "Yeah, sure! Looks like it's pretty well secluded and quiet! Good eye!" Indeed, like a bird, Jay heads down in the direction of the puddle of blue surrounded by the slowly shifting colors of the oncoming autumn. Suppressing the urge to do any other terrifying, ill advised sort of stunts, Jay glides back down to the ground pretty straightforwardly. His landing needs work, but he's getting slowly better, just doesn't get enough use out of his wings in the city. Rather than stepping out of the air like an angellic vision as he nears the peaceful coast of the lake, Jay backwings and straightens himself upright, the drops the final foot and a half to the ground with a slight flex of his knees. Facing the lake, Jay spreads his arms wide. "Perfect."
Daire's own landing is a bit more practiced. Daire spent the better part of a few years moving from rooftop to rooftop at night on those leathery wings, perching on them very much gargoyle-like and watching the streets below. He comes to land in a bit of a crouch, but he doesn't bother to shift back. It's painful each time, and he opts to just leave his wings out in this place rather than going to through the whole process more than twice. His wings to neatly compact quite as well as Jay's do. they fold up, and can even wrap around him protectively like a bat hanging upside-down to sleep, but the tallest part of the bone structure remains up above his shoulders, with the clawed tips at the ends tucked back, but not able to be concealed beneath a shirt. Howeever, they remain out of the way enough for him to easily move about and unhook his bag, letting it drop to the ground. "This place is not bad at all." He glances around and says "I don't see any no tresspassing signs, so hopefully we should be okay here."
Jay turns back around to cast an easy smile in Daire's direction, his attention moving along the protective wrap of those leathery wings around Daire's torso. Jay's brows loft upward, features softening and murmuring before he can stop himself, "Oh gosh, that's so cool…" Reminiscent of Daire's reaction the first time he sang for him.
Jay straightens himself up and unclips his bag with a mild smile. "Uh, yeah. It looks like a good spot. The lake at the school is nice, but with summer break over there seems like there's always someone down there. Ah was tryin' some new maneuvers out in the air last week an' Ah accidentally swooped in on a couple of kids neckin'. Gave us all a start." Crouching smoothly down by his bag, Jay stays bare-foot as he pulls an older looking collapsable rod and reel out, screwing the pieces together. "Yer real straightforward when you fly. Did you ever practice maneuvers? Or just…screw around? See what you can get away with?"
Daire glances over at Jay and smiles with a little shrug at the comment about his wings, ducking his head a bit and rubbing at the back of his neck. "Gotta do somethin' with them.. they can be kind of like a coat when it's raining. Used to fold them around me when I'd sit up places and just keep an eye on things, kind of like a cloak. They keep the rain off pretty well, even the snow." Then he begins going through his bag to get out his own rod and whatnot, putting it together. To the question he says, "Sure, plenty of times. I mean, I'm not quite so acrobatic but I can catch things in the air, wrap them up in my wings, carry folks and stuff. But that kind of plumetting? That's not something that I've done."
Jay watches that bashful response and smiles to himself, dipping his head to start unpacking things but still sliding looks over in Daire's direction. "You got a carry along rain slicker," he remarks with a small smile. "That's really cool. Since they're skin, do they get cold easily? Ah got feathers and down to help keep me warm, but Ah imagine naked like that it'd get cold pretty easily." If he's coming off as nosy or intrusive, Jay doesn't seem to notice while he engages Daire over what makes him so, very unique and special.
Pulling out a small tupperwear container, presumably with bait in it, Jay has a very small, battered tacklebox that he's probably had for years and still got as a hand me down and busies himself with prepping his line. "Feel free to take anything you need. Ah don't have much, but its yours." Offering casually while he listens to Daire's explanation of flying. "Yeah…It's probably not the smartest thing in the world, but Ah can't help myself sometimes. Flyin' possesses me sometimes. Like music, it wells up inside of me when Ah hit the air an'—well, you understand. We talked about this before. It's an instinctual draw." Jay smiles a little over to Daire with an apologetic angle. "Ah don't need to explain it to you."
"Ah try to practice over a lake so if Ah fall then at least Ah'm not hittin' the ground, though the water isn't a whole lot softer sometimes." Jay shakes his head mildly in spite of himself. "Ah need to get better at my agility in the air."
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"Yeah, I mean, it's cold in the winter, but my body temperature keeps them pretty warm even then. I don't go flying around as much when it gets really cold out," he admits. Daire doesn't seem to mind even if Jay were being nosy and intrusive. He just enjoys the fact that he can be free to fly on a nice day without too much worry. He wanders over to where Jay is pulling out the tupperwear and gets his own rod and things out, tipping it back against his shoulder. He brought his own small box of things as well and grins, setting himself up next to Jay so they can talk and cast at the same time.
Then he grins and says, "Yeah, I can see that, just getting all caught up in it. I just don't fly much for fun. It always hurts a lot to do, so I usually fly when I need to for some reason, not just for fun."
Jay listens quietly, tilting his head to the side while he threads a hook onto his line with an adept familiarity, tying a knot into the end around the eyelet. "Ah can understand your circumstance, since you need to transform in order to do it. It just seems … such a cryin' shame." Jay admits with a peculiar sheepishness to the angle of his words, offering a crooked smile to Daire. "Sorry. Sounds real frivlous when Ah say it that way. Easy fer me to say, Ah know. Ah guess Ah was a little surprised you avoided it so much when—Ah mean…" Jay hesitates and then stammers a little bit, his barbed hook pressed between his two fingers and arching his brows upward slightly, a gentle smile appearing. "You said you wanted to fly with me."
"I do want to fly with you," Daire says, lips quirking a little at the edges as he manages to get his own hook onto his line and baits it. It doesn't take him long, though he's not as adept at it as Jay is — less practice perhaps, but not much less. He seems to know what he's doing. Then he moves off to one side to draw the pole back and cast his line out into the water. "This, coming out here and all? Totally worth the pain it takes to transform to do it." He grins a little sidelong. "I don't mind it when there's a reason for it.. to show someone, or to do something I need to do. Just, having bone shards shoot out my back is only something I want to do so often in succession." WHich is probably why he hasn't put the wings away. He does manage to cast his line without catching them though.
Jay mocks up his line, his gaze flickering toward Daire's line as well while he works. Just in case. Not interfering but making sure he doesn't struggle. Gratified when Daire certainly seems to know what he's doing. He casts his line out with a flick of his wrist and settles in comfortably beside Daire, holding on loosely to his pole. "Y-e-a-h," Jay responds with a faint quirk of a smile in Daire's direction, his eyes following the outter lines of Daire's wings, though he doesn't reach out to touch them. "Ah wouldn't figure that's something you like to do too much for the fun of it. You don't seem like the sort who's too in love with pain." Inhaling a deep breath, relaxing by the side of the water. "Still. Ah'm happy you came." Pause. "With me. Today, Ah mean." Flickering a small smile in Daire's direction, quickly back to the water. "Ah'm still gonna get you to have a little fun while you /have/ yer wings. They're already here. May as well."
This isn't the first time Daire has gone fishing. He used to fish back home, and he'd fished earlier in the summer with Remy and Lorna as well. Josh might be the city boy but Daire's from upstate where there's plenty of rural to go around. "Yeah, not really," Daire chuckles. "I mean, it's something I just accept as part of it… but that doesn't mean I particularly enjoy it." He grins over to Jay and gives him a little shoulder nudge, which is kind of more of a wing nudge. "I'm glad, too." He grins and says "Who says I'm not having fun already?"
Which is the only reason Jay asked him. He knows where Daire's from. He knew that he went fishing that once. It seemed a natural progression. Though he had no idea how proficient he would be, just trying to be attentive just in case, though it was nice.
Jay nods his understanding, smiling mildly over Daire's chuckling while he scoops a hand through his hair a couple times, watching his line. The nudge catches him by surprise, wobbling very slightly and grinning as he leans back to nudge Daire seamlessly in return, leaning his shoulder into one of those wrapped up batlike wings. "Ah didn't say that you weren't havin' fun. Fishin's /always/ fun. Ah meant Ah was gonna get you to have a little fun in the air while you still got yer wings." A soft hand dares the contact since Daire has never been particularly shy with him, reaching out to slide his hand down the surface of Daire's webbed wing while he refers to them. "Make the most of the moment."
It was nice, and Daire appreciated it very much. Part of him wants to impress Jay, show him that he can keep up, maybe even catch something. He grins at the counter-nudge, seeming in good spirits as he glances out toward his line and the water. No nibbles yet, but then they just started. "Sure, we can try. Maybe after we've caught something," he grins. He doesn't shy away from the touch to his wing. It's warm, and the fine but strong bones within end in hooked claws, but the membrane itself, stretched between the bone is thick enough to be mostly opaque except when fully stretched and extended, a soft dove grey, the same cast as the rest of his skin in this form. He extends his wing just a little bit so that Jay can see it, and touch it if he wants.
Certainly mark Jay as impressed behind that small smile and his sidelong glances toward his companion, or at least reassured that the fancy city college boy can hold his own. "High hopes, do ya?" The feathered of the two fliers flashes a quick grin, quickly quieting the expression with a glance downward of those dancing green eyes. "How about a wager?" Jay peers toward Daire and waggles his eyebrows if glanced at, offering to make it interesting. He hooks his finger around his line, feeling it dance and tug against the currents so he can tell when he gets a nibble.
He's trying not to grope all over Daire's wing, but taking in the details he can soak up from that touch. How /warm/ and fascinating they are. So drastically different but also similar in an odd fashion to his own. It's /delightful/. For as sheepish as he has been his whole life over his own mutations, the joyful awe that Jay feels about others' is not often something he tries to hide. The things that makes them each unique. When Daire stretches the extra limb out, Jay smiles, apologetically, his gaze jumping up to meet Daire's. "Ah'm sorry. Ah don't mean t'make ya feel like a dog at a show or nothin' like that. Yours are so different from mine. Yer just gorgeous—ly amazin'." The young man winces at his own epic failure of a catch, sucking in a breath through his teeth as he squints at Daire. "That…wasn't convincin' at all. Sorry."
Daire glances over and grins, "I wasn't saying that.." But then, Jay is offering a wager and both brows go up a little bit as he asks, "What sort of a wager?" He's curious, but not quick to jump right in. There's a little bit of the cautious to Daire, not quite the daredevil who is quick to take a bet. But he doesn't seem entirely against it either. He tugs a little at his line and lets it out again, paying attention but not overly so. He laughs a little bit and says, "As long as you don't poke your fingers in my mouth to check my fangs, I think we're good." Because there's a line, man. There's a line. He blushes a little at that not-quite-catch and grins a bit, which only makes him seem more fangy. "Nothin' to apologize for."
Jay doesn't seem to expect Daire to jump at the offer to make things interesting. He doesn't strike the southern fellow as one who's leap before looking after all, and they do have some very interesting lines drawn in the sand. Instead, he smiles a bit and forget the bet for a moment to exhale a barely audible laugh instead, flashing a brief grin, his eyes turning into little green crescent moons of shining humor. "No fingers in yer mouth, Ah promise. Ah want to keep them, after all. If Ah wanted to get a better look at yer fangs, Ah'll just make you smile a little more." Jay shrugs and smiles back at his companion. Eyes flashing toward his cheeks while Daire flushes with a little color and draws a little more light into Jay's eyes. Grateful for the forgiveness. His voice softens a little and wings shake themselves out mildly, "Good." Jay smiles a little bit at the fangy grin and nods, dropping his hand away from Daire's wing in order to point mildly to the smile. "Yeah. Just like that." Utterly endeared, a lingering glance pulls away, looking down at his line, pulled across his index finger.
Jay remains leant in close while he comes full circle. "How about…if you catch the first fish, Ah'll show ya what song Ah've been workin on so far, an' if Ah catch the first one, you show me yours?" He suggests with a playful, but light air. Starting the stakes low. A smile cast toward Daire with a perk upward of one eyebrow in challenge.
"That's a much better way to go about it," Daire agrees with a grin that does in fact bare more of his fangs for the eyes to see before he looks back out to his line, giving it another little wiggle, but nothing as of yet. Then he glances back toward Jay and that grin remains. He chuckles when Jay points it out and shakes his head, but it doesn't vanish at all. Though at the offer of the bet, he nods then, considering that acceptable. "Okay then, first catch gets to hear the other's song." He offers out a hand to shake on it then.
"Well, Ah like to see you smile, an' yer fangs are" Jay stumbles a moment as descriptive words fly through his mind, trying not to make the same ridiculous 'save' as before. "nice. I mean, they suit you. In…the way that they don't look weird, I mean, not insinuating anything about you." He takes a quick, deep breath and exhales it in a huff, then grins briefly. "Man. That wasn't any better." Shaking his head in spite of himself, Jay groans and stretches his legs out in front of himself on the grass, bare toes wiggling.
Offering a hand over to shake when Daire agrees to the bet, Jay's all smiles. "As it is, yeah? In progress, so promise ya no judgement on my part." Presuming he gets his handshake to seal the deal, Jay nudges up against Daire's shoulder again afterwards.
Daire's brows creep higher and higher as Jay tries to find the words, and it only manages to make him grin a little more broadly until finally he says, "I definitely give you an A for effort, though." He does shake for the bet though and then leans his shoulder against Jay's. And then he falls quiet for a while, just enjoying the company and the quiet, the water that ripples and laps at the shore, and the lazy bobbing of the fishing pole and the line stretched out into the water.
Jay laughs, openly this time rather than smothering the sound in breath when Daire grins at him. A little heat coming into the fair man's face, flushing with color rather helplessly, giving a likewise shrug of his shoulders. Good-natured, Jay smiles to Daire. "Well thank you for your kindness. Ah'm trying, you know?" Scrubbing the back of his neck with one hand briefly, Jay smiles out at his line where it vanishes into the water.
The sweet pressure against his shoulder is comforting. Jay tilts his head in the grey-shaded gargoyle seeming man's direction, bowing it to rest against Daire's shoulder for an elongated moment of peace. Careful of the interesting digit that curls from the peak of Daire's wings. The quiet is lazy and relaxed; natural rather than tense between the two. Jay lightly tugs at his line, letting it send ripples of movement through it to the hook. Listening to the sound of the wind and the birds in the trees, a few whistling back and forth to each other. The sound of the water against the shore. Jay pulls his knees up a little bit, planting his feet down into the grass to nestle his toes in.
Jay's attention turns toward Daire's feet then, smilng a little bit to himself. Up to Daire's hands, secured around his pole. When he does break the peace, it's quiet. "So…how did it start? Can Ah ask that or is it rude?"