Caged

“Come on, I’ll show you your room…” Brian sniffled, reluctantly, pulling up from Zack’s tight embrace. Zack smiled.

“Alright, Brian.” he spoke softly, nodding his head as his wings returned to their place, folded dormant behind his back.

Brian watched as they returned to their normal position, only longing to have them wrapped around his own shoulders once more. There was nothing better, he’d decided, than an angel’s embrace.

As the two stood and stretched their limbs, Brian stole one last glance at the soulless body of his mother. Few more tears formed in his eyes as he did, and he sighed at this.

Perhaps their relationship had been a bit stony in the last while, but Brian had loved his mother, drug addict or not.

A shattering sound broke him from his thoughts, and he jumped slightly, turning back to see Zack with his wings folded completely down, more so than usual. A soft blush set in his pale cheeks as he stared down at a picture frame, lying shattered on the ground. Brian chuckled.

“Don’t worry about it, Zack…” he smiled, kneeling down and brushing the shattered pieces into a pile. He scooped the jagged edged fractions into his palm and picked the picture up, realizing that it was a photograph of his family in its entirety.

Without realizing it, Brian stopped mid-stance, and stared into his younger self’s eyes. He had just turned nine, at the time the photo was taken.

These had been the times—playing softball in the park, swimming in the ocean, or simply having a good time together at home, as in this photograph—that his parents, as well as he and McKenna, had truly been happy.

Now, Brian realized as he stood slowly, that once-happy family was now as broken as the frame that had held its picture for so long.

Feeling a hand being placed on his shoulder, Brian turned, looking into the eyes of his friend, whose face still continued the slightest tinge of red.

“I’m sorry… my wing must’ve caught it when I was stretching…” Zack explained, following Brian’s eyes as they returned to the frozen image he held in his hand. “Is this your family?”

“Was…” he sighed, placing the picture back on the shelf it had fallen from, face down. “They’re all gone… everyone but me…”

Zack’s face fell. He hadn’t meant to upset Brian more than he already was, but instead to bring his mood up.

“What happened to them..?” he asked lightly, taking the other boy's free hand. Brian led him into the kitchen, merely so that he could toss the glass shards he still held into the trash can.

“My dad’s on the run… wanted because he attempted to rob a bank to help out money situation, even though the money troubles only got worse from that point on… and that was where my mom got into drugs so heavily, and well… you know what happened to her…” he explained, his voice becoming heavy with sorrow once again.

Again, Zack placed his hands on Brian’s shoulders, shaking his head slightly as the two locked eyes. His human friend’s warm eyes now seemed empty; cold, and full of remorse.

Taking his hand once more, Zack led the broken boy back toward his living room, taking the picture Brian had set back in its place in the hand that wasn’t clutching his friend’s. If nothing else, he would try to talk to him; comfort him.

“Where’s your room..?” he murmured, and Brian nodded, guiding him up a staircase, and then taking him into a room that contained nothing more than a bed, a small closet, a nightstand, and a guitar.

As they walked through the door, Brian’s face became warm with embarrassment. His room was blank, and empty. Just like he was.

His head hung low as he turned back to Zack, peering up from under his long
eyelashes. “This is it…”

Zack looked around, a smile plastered on his virtually perfect face. “I like it. It’s cozy.”

Brian sighed, only because he knew that Zack was saying things that he knew would make him feel slightly better about himself. “Really..?” he asked, his tone chock full of disbelief.

Still, Zack nodded, smiling at him brightly. “Everything in Aralaysia is so big, mostly to accommodate the sort of space we need… but something like this, something so small…
so intimate… it’s rare.” he explained, giving Brian’s hand a light squeeze.

In listening to Zack’s explanation, Brian’s eyes had gone wide. No one had ever described his room as intimate; he supposed it was appropriate, though only if someone else were inside of it with him.

With this thought running through his mind, Brian’s eyes widened more so than before. Had this been what Zack had been implying? That he wanted some sort of an intimate relation…

No. He cut his own thoughts short immediately, deciding once and for all that he wasn’t going to set himself to count on that, in case he was let down in the end. Not after being let down by so many others… not girlfriends—or boyfriends—of course; Brian had never had the care to let himself be close to anyone. Not until now…

Still, he couldn’t let himself flail into unwilling arms.

“I guess you’re right… it just never seemed like much to me, y’know, being here so long.” Brian countered, shrugging casually as his friend nodded in turn.

“I get it, I do… I’ve been used to massive spaces for so long…” Zack sighed, dropping his eyes from Brian’s face for the first time. However, he smiled. “Maybe that’s why things are already ending up broken.”

Now, Zack’s eyes weren’t on the ground or on Brian, but on the photograph he still held in his hand. Brian tilted his head. Zack seemed to have such a fascination with the old photograph of him and his family.

“Don’t worry about it… really…” he murmured, his voice dropping to a near-whisper closer to the end. “It was already broken anyways.”

A heavy sigh escaped Zack’s lungs and drifted into the air between his lips and the photograph. His wings folded themselves carefully downward behind his back as he turned towards Brian. Again, his friends had that sad, torn look in his eyes.

“Brian… hold on to what you can of the times when you know it wasn’t… When everything was okay.” Zack murmured, lifting Brian’s trembling hand, which he still held in his own, and placing the family photo face up in his palm. “Like this.”

Brian’s eyes moved from the photo in his hand back to Zack’s face as a smile spread over his features. After a moment, he nodded.

As obvious as it might have been to anyone else, Brian had never seen it this way. The
only thing he’d seen since McKenna’s death had been darkness. In fact, there had been no bright side to his life, not since his dad had gone away. Not after he’d been left with the burden of supporting both his mother and little sister as an inexperienced 16-year-old, where they couldn’t support themselves.

But now, he thought, there was nothing left for him to support; now, he was the one that needed the supporting. And that, Zack had internally decided, was the reason he was here.

Not because his parents and relatives hadn’t accepted him—perhaps that may have been an alternate reason—but because there was a boy who would stumble upon him who needed nothing but his love and support. And that was still, exactly what Zack what set out
to do.

Brian still had his eyes on Zack’s, as the angel led him toward his own bed. His eyes possessed a look of pure determination as he sat on the bed, unfolding his wings.

With the vacancy of Brian’s room, he didn’t need to worry about shattering any photographs, or breaking any vases. As little as Brian thought of it, it was really quite comfortable for Zack. “Sit please…” he smiled at the boy who still stood in front of him.
A subtle, warm blush settled into Brian’s cheeks as he Zack looked back to meet his gaze; he had caught him staring.

Giving a mere nod before taking a seat on the edge of the bed beside his friend, Brian’s face looked much more like a ripe tomato than the face of a boy talking to his close—though already more like closest, or best—friend.

Brian didn’t say a word, didn’t ask why Zacky had asked him to sit. As much as his whole being ached to look up and meet those sea-green eyes, there wasn’t a way in the world that Brian was going to chance scaring off this new found bright side to his life.

“I just want you to know- of course- that I’m going to be here as long as I can for you…” Zack mused, as one of his wings stretched, subconsciously, it seemed, and wrapped around Brian’s shoulders. Brian allowed his torso and shoulders to slump back, melting again into the soft feathers.

However, for the first time, Brian realized how impeccably strong the muscles inside that set of wings were. The back of his head rested just inside the crest, and his body acted as dead weight resting against the lower parts of the blankety limb.

Zack was supporting Brian’s whole body weight, basically, with just one wing—without even realizing it.

“Thank you…” he mused, his lips twitching at the corners to form a slight smile as some of the feathers lingering just off the crest of Zack’s wing brushed against his cheek.

Zack nodded. “Of course… you need me, and I can’t just abandon you. After all, you can’t control the things that have happened to you… not like me.” he sighed, his head hanging further.

Brian shook his head, reaching to brush the stray pieces of hair from his friend’s eyes, which were now moist.

“You couldn’t control who you are, or what your preferences were there…” he reassured him, tracing softly under the areas of his soft green eyes which tears still lingered under.

Zack sniffled, shaking his head and blinking the tears away. “But I could have… I pushed everyone there away because they wanted me to be something I wasn’t. If I would’ve just listened and tried to follow their ways…” he said, more to himself than Brian, as he trailed off.

As Zack’s wavering voice carried off into the silence, massive amounts of tears formed on the very brims of Brian’s eyes, spilling over immediately. “Then… you wouldn’t be here with me.” he half whispered, sniffling quietly. Zack didn’t want to be here; Brian had known that. But somehow, hearing it spoken to him directly by his angelic friend was more of a slap from reality than it had been before, simply thinking it.

Unable to speak any further, Brian lifted his weight from Zack’s wing even though it had tightened around him, once again hunching his shoulders as he curled back into his own personal space; his shell, in theory.

This time, however, Zack didn’t pull him back, but instead lay back against the single pillow that rested at the head of the bed.

His eyes had gone dark, and somehow, the luminous white of his wings had faded as well. Brian was quickly coming to realize that Zack’s emotions were not only apparent on his face, but on the physical features of his body as well; the ones that he wasn’t able to control.

Sighing, he pushed himself from the edge of the bed, glancing down at his friend, who now appeared to be asleep—though it was obvious that he wasn’t—and bit his lip.

“Would you like something to eat, Zack?” he murmured, fiddling with his hands as he always did out of nervous habit. When the smaller boy’s eyes opened, Brian nearly gasped; the soft, sea green color of his irises had faded to a stony, nearly-black gray, all in just a few seconds.

“Mmm… what do you have?” he mused, keeping his eyes on the ceiling.

“Well… not much. Things for sandwiches, there’s TV dinners, there’s… well…
oatmeal?” he said carefully, attempting to come up with things that actually sounded pleasant to eat.

Zack bit down on one of his lip rings softly. “Anything but oatmeal…” he murmured, furrowing his brow.

“Why do you say that..?” Brian wondered aloud, and then blushed at how nosy he must’ve sounded. Zack didn’t seem to pay any mind.

“That’s all the people in my home eat… ever. There’s nothing else they trust.” he sighed, and Brian watched in awe as his eyes darkened down further. At times, he wasn’t sure if Zacky missed his home-world, or if he dreaded the thought of it.

“Oh… okay. Sandwiches, then?” Brian suggested, and Zack merely shrugged. Supposedly, Brian thought, that meant yes, and so he made his way into the kitchen.

Again, as soon as he left the angel’s sight, tears gushed over the boy’s cheeks. This
he found odd; he’d never had so much of an emotional reaction to anything, not since McKenna’s death.

As he began collecting the ham, mayonnaise, and mustard he planned to top the bread with from the fridge, the thoughts and feelings he’d had towards Zack just before they’d left the alleyway pushed their way back into his mind. The emotions he’d felt were alien to him; and he knew that he’d never once felt intimate love of any sort toward someone.

After all, what else could it have been? It seemed to him that he’d felt every other emotion in the book: Hate, grief, anger, numbness, happiness at some points… what else was left, but love?

Brian sighed as he smeared the mayonnaise over a slice of old wheat bread and slapped it onto the opposite piece, completing the sandwich. The only thing he knew for sure that he was feeling was confusion.

After wiping away his tears and attempting a few times to wipe the expression of utter rejection from his face with them, Brian came to the conclusion that he wasn’t hungry anymore, despite the fact that he hadn’t eaten in hours. He would simply take Zack his sandwich and
make some effort to talk with him.

However, as he strode back into the bedroom, Brian came to realize that Zack was curled up, his wings bound up around his body; they acted as the blankets that they were.

A soft smile spread across his lips as he watched the angel sleeping soundly; it truly was a beautiful sight.

Turning as a slight sigh escaped his lips, Brian caught sight of the clock on his wall, realizing that it was nearly 2am. Zack must have been exhausted anyhow, with the night’s events.

He set the sandwich down on the small nightstand beside his bed, reaching over top of his friend’s slight body and pulling the thin sheets over him.

Then, after making sure his bedroom light was turned out, Brian retreated to that extra bedroom that he’d been about to introduce Zack into, longing for a bit of sleep himself. After so much emotional distress in one day, he was quite exhausted as well.

However, as he crossed down the hall and reached for the doorknob, something that Brian hadn’t taken into consideration before stopped him in his tracks and slapped him clean in the face. This was McKenna’s old room.

He’d never once thought that over in offering it to Zack; perhaps because he’d never once set foot inside the room since losing his sister. His heart thudded in his chest now, at the thought of giving the room over to someone else… someone who wasn’t his sister.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Zack; that was hardly the case. It was simply because he was still having a hard time letting go of the things that he felt were still hers. If he had the choice now, if his mother’s body wasn’t still there, he would have slept on the couch rather than in his sister’s room.

But now there wasn’t a choice, unless he wanted to sleep in the hallway.

Sighing, Brian closed his eyes and turned the brass doorknob slowly, pushing open the
door and stepping inside the room he’d locked himself out of a year and some months ago.

Tears raced, uncontrollably as soon as he opened his eyes. Her possessions were gone, the only thing remaining being the bed—but he still saw them there. He still saw the photographs of her with her friends, and of the two of them together tacked to the wall above her bed. He saw the stereo that he’d given her for her 13th birthday—her last birthday—with the stack and stacks of CDs he’d loaned her.

His chest began to heave as more tears flooded his raw cheeks. He held his hands to his chest, looking around few more times before turning, practically diving under the sheets of the bed, hiding from the room itself.

He felt rather foolish, hiding from the blank, soft blue-painted walls; but he couldn’t
control his reaction to the surrounding, the memories, and the vacancy. It was hard for him to come back to this, something he hadn’t seen in several months. He laid there for what felt like hours, clutching the sheets to his face, stifling the soft whimpers that eluded him.
After a few more moments though, his breathing calmed, even as tears still came in a steady flow, and he fell into an exhausted, though rather unnatural slumber.