Clipped Wings and Cold Showers

He held her shivering body against his own, trying to force some of his own heat into her. If that was only as simple as it sounded. Her eyes were closed and her body threatened to sway away from him, but his iron grip kept her anchored. He would be damned if he let her fall to the tube’s floor.

You would figure seeing a hooded boy holding a seemingly drunken girl upright on the subway would raise a few red flags, yeah? Not this time of night, luckily for him. The underground was home to the prostitute and the destitute once the sun went down. People huddled in the stairways standing beneath ratty looking man with their arms raised in begging, hoping for some mercy and their next hit. Just waiting for the salvation of their druggie messiah. Women paraded around in nothing more than their knickers, waiting for someone to offer money in return for the warmth of their bodies.

She would still be out there doing so, if he hadn’t grabbed a hold of her. Just walked up behind her, threw his long coat around her, and pulled her in the open, waiting doors of the last train heading out of the city. Nothing sketchy. At least she was clothed, if that’s what you could call it. The metallic tank top she had pulled down to try and cover her hips had tears through the back, her flesh showing signs of bruising. She still had some decency buried in her that was evident enough.

It was his job to protect her in the first place, and he could see just how well he had done at that. He had expected the failure would reel it’s ugly head sooner or later, but he had never imagined this. He would have never thought, for a second, it would get this out of control. That she would be reduced to this. He couldn’t even bring himself to look down at her.

His hoodie rustled as she shifted against him, eyes still not opening. Their stop was coming up soon, and he would have to basically carry her to his flat. Her weight just burdened him, but he could feel her heart beating and that somehow made it better. He was sure he had seen a ghost when he had first laid eyes on her.

He shook the feeling off, the robotic voice of the train announce they had reached the Calvert Street station. The doors opened, and he willed her feet to move while he half dragged her through the deserted station. Unlike in the heart of London, debauchery didn’t run rampant in this place. Everyone was either too old to take up the pipe, or just starting a family. He and his flat mate were the only two in the eighteen to twenty-one age bracket for miles. Well, now there was three if you added the girl.

She seemed to be conscious enough to make herself walk, but he still had to support most of her weight. The wind howled around them as they walked. The clear English night showed no signs of clouds, and yet the wind held the promise of snow. He pulled his jacket closer around her, trying to cover as much skin as possible. The night was too cold for him, even with his multiple layers. He couldn’t even begin to fathom what she was feeling, if anything at all.

The stars winked overhead, the pretty little pinpricks going unnoticed as he struggled to keep her upright and shielded from the cold. As he helped her to walk, he couldn’t help but remember something from his childhood. It always seemed so funny to him, what he remembered and what he didn’t about the time. But this memory came in clear as day as he pulled the girl along.

When he was younger, he had lived next to what he believed was a true angel. A little girl, only a year behind him, who was as bright and sunny as a day at Luskentyre Beach. She believed whole heartedly that she had the power of flight, that at any moment wings would sprout from her back and she would take off. She always said that when it finally happened, she would use her wings to visit her father, who she claimed “lived on a cloud.”

He was infatuated with her, thinking she was the best neighbor he had ever had. As a young boy, he felt that she had fallen from Heaven specifically to be his friend. It was the best feeling in the world, knowing she was only a hop and a skip away from him at any time. The only bad thing was, he never got to see her wings. Whenever he would ask, she would always give him the same excuse. “Don’t you know it’s too cold in London? Angel’s need warmth and happiness to fly. This place is just too gloomy and chilly.”

I wish I had the power to fly now, he thought, I could just scoop her off the pavement and be to the flat in seconds.

The wind continued to attack them, and he knew he was being useless at keeping her warm. Luckily, they had finally reached his apartment block. Unfortunately for him, a long staircase stood between them and the door to his apartment. He cursed softly, and looked down at the girl hanging off of his neck. Her head rolled to the side and her eyes sat in at half slits. If it wasn’t for her breathing, he wouldn’t even know she was still alive. With a sigh, he brace his knees and swept her off her feet. Maybe swept was too graceful of a word, it would more like his arm rammed into the backs of her legs and she stumbled back into his arms. Either way, he lifted her up and began the painful ascent up the stairs.

“George! Get your ass in here and help me!” He called trying to pull the young girl up. His hold had slipped while he climbed the stairs and she was dangerously close to hitting the floor. His one arm held her by her waist while the other held open the door. Her legs dragged against the carpeting, and the rest of her hung off his arm like a limp ragdoll.

“Jesus, Cas, do you know what time it is?” George mumbled, stumbling out of his bedroom. George had the room that opened right into the living room, a great asset to Cas at the moment. George’s hair was flopping lazily across his face, and his long t-shirt and boxers were bed ruffled, but God be damned if he didn’t wake right up at the sight in front of them.

“Good God, is that… no. It can’t be.” He said, rushing over to help pull the girl back to her feet. She fell against George, much as she had done to Cas only an hour earlier. George instinctually wrapped an arm around her, all the while staring hard at Cas.

“Please, tell me I’m imagining this. This isn’t her, is it? Just some broad that looks a bit like her. This isn’t….”

Cas ducked his head, feeling uneasy. He didn’t want to give George the truth. It cut like a knife just to think about it, he knew if he spoke it out loud it would gut him like a fish. “Just help me, yeah? I don’t know what to do.”

Cas looked up, and George knew he couldn’t do anything but say yes. The boy looked like a man who had seen war. His haggard expression showed no sign of the boy who couldn’t hold a straight face to save his life. His eyes held shadows beneath them that could have put the walking dead to shame. The hoodie he wore everywhere and tried to take such good care of hung off of him, and there looked to be dark spots staining the front of it. Cas looked more broken than the girl George held in his arms.

“Alright.” George said, making the decision to act more like a responsible adult than the childish twenty-year-old he really was. “Here’s the deal, she’s obviously on something. What, I couldn’t tell you, but judging from the marks on your jacket I’m going to assume she’s been shooting up. She’s out to sea, mate, and we’ve got to reel her back in before she gets too far.”

“How do we do that?” Cas asked, his eyes cutting to the girl’s face before dropping back down again.

“I think I know something that might work.” George said, shifting the girl’s weight before turning to walk towards the back of the apartment.

“Might work?” Cas asked, hurrying to keep up with his best friend.

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

Cas begrudgingly shook his head.

“Good. Now, get the door for me.”

Cas opened the door for George, and allowed him to go in first before following.

They entered the bathroom the two shared, a fact made evident by the slight disarray of everything. Various bottles of hair gel and toothpaste littered the edges of the sink, with even more bottles threatening to fall out of the small shelving unit hanging next to the mirror. The light gray walls never had a cheery feel to them, but the situation they were in at the moment made them look even darker. George pushed the seat of the loo down, and gently sat her on it, leaning her against the back of it. He then spun around and jerked open the cupboard under the sink, ducking down to grab a towel out before tossing it onto the floor.

“I’m going to need you to hang onto her, alright? Hold her by the waist and balance her top half over the lip of the tub. Got it?”

Cas nodded, still confused as to what his friend was planning on doing. He slid her off the toilet lid and held her waist all the while trying to hold half of her over the tub. George sat the towel on the edge of the tub and pulled Cas’s coat off the girl’s shoulders, exposing her top’s straps underneath. George muttered under his breath before reluctantly dragging those down too. Cas’s stomach lurched at the realization that she wasn’t wearing a bra.

“Hold her steady now, actually take your hand and support the back of her head, like that…. There you go!” Cas moved his hand like George had asked, feeling her soft hair bundle around his fingers.

George reached around and turned on the tub’s tap, making a small adjustment to the temperature of the water. Cas watched as the water slowly covered the porcelain. The gentle movement of the clear liquid kept him from focusing on the girl in his arms. They had been together for about an hour now and he still couldn’t muster the strength to actually look at her face. She was nameless until he looked at her features, and he planned on keeping it that way. She just looked like someone he used to know, that was all.

“Alright, let’s try this.” George said, breaking through the silence.

The tub had filled up about halfway with water, and once again Cas wondered what George was planning.

“I don’t think giving her a bath is the best idea, mate. The last thing I want to do is see this girl naked.” Cas said, looking up at George.

“That’s why we’re not. Are you ready for this?”

George didn’t even give Cas a chance to answer before he reached over top of him and pushed down on the girl’s shoulders. Her head and Cas’s hand hit the water, and with jolt Cas realized how cold it was. The water was fucking freezing, a polar bear would lose his nut sack to frost bite from the stuff in the tub. George held her down, Cas trying to reel back and knock him off. The two continued to struggle, Cas desperately trying to get her to resurface. George was relentless though, determined to keep her under for whatever reason. Cas was afraid he would have to head butt his best friend. He didn’t get a chance to, however, as the girl knocked both of them back.

She landed on top of Cas, her face buried into the front of his shirt. George had been knocked against the wall of the bathroom, breathing heavy from his struggle with Cas. Her breath came out in quick, short pants. She had thrown herself forward, nearly knocking Cas in the teeth in the process. Her nails dug into his shoulder, where they had come to rest when the two of them had fallen over. His back smarted from hitting the cold tile, and he knew her knee had slammed into the toilet when she fell. But she was awake, showing more movement than he had seen out of her all night.

“I saw it in a movie once! It worked then!” George cried, dropping his face into his hands.

“It might have worked in the movie, but I think we just gave her a bloody heart attack!” Cas hugged her tightly to his chest and sat the both of them up, not even caring that he was getting wet. He just needed to heat her up, to try and keep her from dying of hypothermia while sitting on his bathroom floor. He could imagine the morning headlines already, “Young prostitute killed at the hands of two bumbling idiots.” Oh, how he would make his mother proud.

Cas remembered the towel, and blindly felt behind himself for it. She didn’t let go, just clung to the front of him. Cas felt the soft, fluffy material and pulled it over to him, wrapping it around her. He rocked a little then, trying to sooth the quiet whimpers that she emitted. He rubbed her back in a circular motion, and she relaxed against him. She must not have seen him as a threat, she let him hold her while she was awake. The state she was in earlier, she would have let any random man grab at her. The thought made his stomach roll.

“It’s alright, you’re okay. We’re not going to do anything.” He murmured into the top of her head. He felt her shift.

“They always say that.” She rasped, sounding eons beyond her own age.

He looked down, ready to refute her statement. It was his fatal mistake.

The young woman in his arms looked up into his face, and his worst fear was confirmed in an instant. He would have recognized those stormy gray eyes and the strong face anywhere. Even broken down and practically half-dead, this girl still looked ready for battle. Her features held a determination and a hidden power that he had always envied, even when they were children.
Recognition slowly began to draw itself across her features, and it took everything in Cas’s power to hold back the sob that built up in his chest.

“Avery, what have you gotten yourself into?”

He sat on the floor, his back leaning against the side of the bed. As much as he would have loved to crawl into it and burrow down into the downy comforter, he respected her space. She had still wanted him in the room though, still wanted him within close proximity. Avery had clung to Cas’s hand ever since he had helped her off the bathroom floor. George had given them their space, going back to bed after Cas had gotten Avery changed and into bed.

She laid in his bed now, snuggled beneath the blankets for the most part. Cas had wanted to leave the room when she changed, but she begged him to stay in the room with her. He had just faced the door as she casted aside the ratty tank top in exchange for one of his t-shirts and a pair of his old football shorts. Her hand stuck out, the only sign there was a body under the dark purple fabric. Her fingers were loosely intertwined with his, and no matter how bad his arm felt from the awkward angle, he couldn’t bring himself to let go. He had made that mistake once already, and wasn’t about to do it again.

As he sat there, butt numb from too many hours sitting and back begging him to shift, he couldn’t help but trace the hand he held. He had once felt a love for this young woman, a young love. It was stupid and hit him too fast, and too hard, and left him willing to do anything to keep her tied to him. He followed her around like a puppy, indulged in all of her silly ideas. When she was fourteen and he was fifteen, he helped her try and build her own set of wings. He could still remember bending the plastic piping that formed the outline of the damned things. She would search craft stores for the perfect shade of white, constantly complaining that nothing was right.

“These look too much like bird wings!” She would hiss in frustration.

It was his job to put an arm around her, pull her close, and promise her that the wings would turn out fine. He worked long and hard, fixing and readjusting each feather to make it perfect. He put so much effort into an idea that should have just stayed in her head. Instead, he brought it to life, simply to make her smile. And for a time, it did. She would pull them on, the things barely covering her shoulders, and dance around the backyard. When her mother got worse, she would wear them into the hospital. Her mother loved them, or maybe she just loved the fact that her daughter had some small happiness.

He remembered how the woman would look over her daughter’s head, and meet the eyes of the young boy who stood in the doorway. Cas had a hard time with hospitals, mostly it was he just had a hard time with death. Someone who gave birth to someone so full of life, should not end up in a place like this. Alas, that was her fate. Avery’s mother would always give him this grin, one that held a thousand words that she would never get the chance to say. A secret she could never tell. In her own unspoken way the woman had bound Cas to her daughter.

“Thank you for bringing my guardian angel to me, Caspian. I was fearing she had forgotten about me.” She would murmur, her voice never reaching above a whisper.

“Of course, Mrs. Jameson. Mom would have come too, but work called her in.” Cas would say, staring at his feet.

“I’ll never be able to thank you both for taking in Avery.”

“Please, Mum! Me and Cas spend so much time at each other’s houses, it was simply a matter of moving the rest of my wardrobe.” Avery laughed, patting her mother’s right hand as to not disturb her IV.

Avery then glanced back at Cas, shooting him her own signature smile. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.”

It was his job to fix everything that was wrong in her life- not having a father, her mother being sick, not being able to fly. No one gifted him with these duties, not anyone earthbound anyway. Cas just knew from the first time he saw this girl, he was destined to be a part of her life. That short, fine hair and strong jaw drew him in when they were just kids. She looked so much like a boy when they had first meet, he was convinced they were of the same gender. And then she had opened her mouth and revealed a voice like bells. She was the perfect mix of hard and soft, dark and light, or at least he thought so.

He pushed the blanket aside a little, revealing her face and the rest of her arm. She still slept using her arm as a pillow, just as she had when they were younger. Her dark hair now ran long, laying across the sheets behind her to make a dark halo. Her eyes had circles residing under them that were nearly as dark as her hair. She had a bruise half hidden by her hair on her temple, he didn’t even want to know where that had come from. Her arm was what really brought him pain.

Her face made it hard to see just how translucent her skin was, probably due to the makeup that had refused to come off. You figure being dunked into water would take care of the mess, but apparently this was the extra strong stuff. Her skin was this shade of white that shouldn’t exist on the human body. Compared to his own tan skin, hers was almost painfully too white to look at. Underneath the snowy landscape of her skin, thin blue rivets of ice cut jagged lines. They ran up and down, he could trace their paths right up to the silver dollar sized bruise in the crook of her elbow. Little pin pricks sprinkled across her skin here and there, but the purple of the bruises stuck out the worst.

He hated it, maybe even hated her a little, for what she had become. Cas wanted to swear it wasn’t her fault, but he felt it was, in a way. She had left him, choose to leave his home and move into the city go to some little progressive college. Him and George had moved only a few blocks from Cas’s childhood home, and took the metro into the city for university. The two of them never stayed in the city long, with the exception of tonight. The first few months of freedom, she would spare him a phone call every now and then. They slowly begin to dwindle and he lost touch with her after only three months away.

They could have seen each other, made time for each other. But Cas’s fear of the big city got in that way, as did her constant having of plans. She never wanted to come home, even if home was only a thirty minute ride away. He supposed it got to be too much, coming round the boy that reminded you constantly of the death of your mother. When she passed, something in Avery snapped. She got a more wild and reckless, but she was living in a small town, not enough sky for her to spread her wings. London held everything she wanted, with the exception of Cas. She could never ask him to move though, all those people would have drove him insane. And yet look at her, she hadn’t spread her wings in the city, she had let herself be dragged down. The girl who had once wanted to fly so badly, was now chained to the very streets she walked.

She sold her body, she had told him that much before falling fast asleep. College was expensive, and the money her mother had put away for classes had gone instead to medical bills. Avery was foolish enough to believe she could survive on whatever minimum wage job she could get. Money was low, and the college was threatening to ask her to leave if she couldn’t pay tuition. She was absolutely hopeless and had resigned herself to living life without the degree she so badly wanted. She couldn’t even apply for any loans, thanks to her credit. She was all but ready to throw in the towel when a supposed “friend” from one of her classes approached her.

The job was simple- make love, make money. Didn’t matter who it was to, as long as they had cash on hand things were golden. Working just around the campus, she could make four times what she was earning behind the counter of some dingy coffee shop. Things were great, for the first four months. Then her “friend” suggested she start working the underground, dressing a little more provocatively. It was keeping a roof over her head, so she figured she had no choice but to do it.

The drugs made it easier, she claimed. She would just check out for a few hours while she worked, the man that pimped her out making sure she got where she needed to go. She would wake up, wrapped in the arms of a man she didn’t know, and feel nothing at all. She would take her money and leave, stopping by her dorm to clean herself up. No one noticed the bags under her eyes, or the tiny scabs that freckled her skin. She kept it hidden, separating her “work” from her social life. The paths hadn’t crossed, until Cas had found her that night.

Cas had found her after a particularly nasty hit, apparently. She had been feeling bad all night, and could barely find the strength to stand. When he had thrown his coat around her, she had figured he was a customer and had let herself be dragged to wherever. The dress she had tugged on did little to cover her, leaving her entire back exposed to the elements. He had wanted to curse her for not wearing something a bit more decent, but if she had, he may not have recognized her.

The Avery he knew was buried beneath damaged skin and oily makeup, but the one thing that caught his eye was the young girl’s back. He thought he had been dreaming as he had crossed the platform, positive what he was seeing wasn’t real. He saw the black ink that stained her pale skin and something just clicked. In that moment, every second he had spent with Avery filled his mind, and he knew he had found the girl he was unconsciously searching for. He had to get her out of there, hence his rash actions.

Looking at her now, his heart throbbed painfully. He didn’t want it to be the girl with the harebrained schemes and the easy smiles. Cas wanted the girl in the bed to be someone who was just down on their luck, a faceless girl who he could send on her way when she woke up. Momentary insanity had caused him to take her, but his better judgment knew he would have to keep her here. This wasn’t just some random hooker off the street, this was his Avery. If he even doubted it for a second, all he would have to do was turn her over to see the set of inked angel wings that spanned across her back.

He thought she was crazy, the day she came to him with the design for her first tattoo. Four days after she had turned eighteen, a year after her mother had passed on, Avery had decided she needed her wings to be a permanent, visible fixture. So, she commissioned Cas to be her ride to the local tattoo parlor armed with the money she had saved from her job. It was meant to be a travel fund, but a higher calling was found. Cas had to help an angel get her wings.

She had cried, he could remember the tears rolling down her face as the burly man with his our artwork decorating his arms traced a needle over her back. He covered up freckles and tiny childhood skins with ink as dark as shadow, staining her pale skin. Cas feared they were too big, taking up the top half of her back as they did. He didn’t have time to learn to appreciate them though, she had left soon after having them finished.

Now he could see them easily if he wanted to. Her grasp had fallen, and she had rolled over into a ball. The blanket bundled in front of her, exposing her back. He imagine he could almost see the outline through the fabric. It sealed the deal for him, the jagged black lines that made up the only pair of angel wings the girl could see herself owning. And after everything she had done, he couldn’t find the courage to doubt the statement. She lived in a world of sin, even someone like Cas could see that. What God could forgive her for tarnishing her mother’s memory by selling the very body the woman had worked so hard to bring into this world? She would be rolling in her grave, no doubt.

What God could forgive either of them really? Hadn’t he sinned by letting the promise he had made break a thousand times over? Every man she had slept with, every substance she had injected into her veins, was another notch on Cas’s conscience. He had done wrong, he had failed, and in some twisted way this was all his fault. If he could have just got her to stay, if he could have just held on to her. Of course, who can stop a girl who is so sure of her own ability to fly through any situation, unscathed?

And yet, somehow, she had found her way back to him. Here she was, in his bed, for the first time in two years. There was multiple things wrong with the picture, the one bothering him the most was the time he had let slip from his fingers. Nights spent wondering where she was, what she was doing.

When in reality she was only a train ride away. Two years of avoiding each other for what? To end up right where they had always been, just in worse shapes than ever before. Him, a nervous wreck, fearing that his best friend had really taken the plunge off the deep end. Her, trying to overcome the shakes and internal winter that come with coming down from a high. They were together though, and wasn’t that all that really mattered?

If she was with him, she wasn’t out there being catcalled by men twice her age. She wasn’t getting high on some cocaine, baby powder concoction that could kill her. She wasn’t worrying about the money, about being kicked out of Cas and George’s home. She was safe, she was cared for. A thought began to emerge in Cas’s head as he sat there, watching her shoulder blades expanded with a breath.

He stood up and brushed the back of his shorts off. He squeaked when he caught sight of himself in the mirror on his dresser. She steadily slept on, not noticing even when he quietly closed the door behind him. He padded down the hallway to George’s room and gently rapped on the door. It was about time George was roused to greet the day.