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The Beach, Sunday Afternoon

Technically, Gray wasn't really supposed to fly unsupervised, but it was more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule. There might be an emergency that required he fly, after all, and what was the worst that could happen? He'd fall asleep and do an Icarus into the ocean? He couldn't drown, so he'd just wake up and self-rescue after a while. And Raiden was away across the causeway on some boring pizzeria business Gray hadn't really paid attention to, and he wanted to fly.

So he was, and anyone happening by the beach today might spot a shirtless Nephilim with black feathered wings, up there in the sky or possibly napping on the sand.

(Open beach is open!)

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Arden was on her way back from J,GoB, just enjoying the beach, when a shadow passed overhead. Instinctively she glanced up, expecting to see some kind of bird and--

Nope. Not a bird. That definitely wasn't a bird.

Did she know Gray had wings? She was pretty sure she hadn't known that Gray had wings.

They weren't usually visible, if that helped?

Gray called down as he swooped overhead, "Oh, hey, Arden! How's it going?"

"Hi!" Arden called, waving at him. "Not bad! Your wings are so cool!"

It needed saying, it really did. She looked up at him with a wistful expression. Unfair to baby Elementals to make they feel a huge kinship to birds and not let them fly ~~that she knew of~~. Though, on the other hand, how terrible would it be to be able to fly and knowing that she didn't dare?

"Getting a chance to stretch them out now that it's warm?"

"Thank you!" Gray called, and then came in for a landing, as light as he could make it but probably still with quite a bit of downdraft, because wings big enough to carry even an undersized Nephilim were pretty darn big.

If Arden looked closely in the moments before Gray's wings disappeared into his back, she might see light blue feathers amongst the black, because apparently the curse of the deadly sins came with signature colors. "That's the idea," he said. "But Ray's out of town today so I'm flying solo. Literally, ha."

Arden raised her arms over her face to protect it from sand. She was tempted to use a little bit of wind magic to keep it all away from her but--no. It was just sand, she could handle it. No reason to risk getting caught just because she envied how open Gray got to be with his wings.

"Ha!" she replied, dusting the sand off her shoulders and grinning back at him. "I don't think I knew you had wings. Raiden either. All your brothers?"

"Well, yeah," Gray said. "We're all Nephilim, so...the wings come standard. One of the better perks, I think." The immortality was also pretty good. He could have done without the curse. "Sorry about the..." he gestured vaguely to indicate the sand.

Arden shrugged. "No big deal," she assured him. "Getting all sandy is a hazard going to the beach anyway. And if it's gonna happen, it's way cooler because I was watching someone fly around than anything else. How's tricks?"

"They're good," Gray assured her. "Do you maybe wanna..." he gestured vaguely towards the ocean and the sky then remembered Wait, no, bad. "Uhhhhhh never mind, probably shouldn't do that unsupervised, huh? Unless you're a really strong swimmer? I-I mean, I wouldn't drop you on purpose! Just...yeah." The Sloth of it all.

Arden hesitated, she was a decent swimmer, but she didn't know if that would count as strong...but the desire to fly was much larger than her common sense.

"I'm willing to take that risk if you are," she said, looking at at the sky with something wistful and yearning.

[And feel free to drop if you wanna! Arden can figure it out!]

Edited 2024-04-07 19:18 (UTC)

"Really?" Gray asked, a mix of surprised someone was actually willing to go flying with the avatar of Sloth and delighted. "Okay, great! So, uh, can I pick you up?" This was going to be kind of difficult if she said no but autonomy: important. It occurred to him to let her know, "I can't put my shirt on, or, I mean, I could but then I can't get my wings out without destroying it."

"I can handle a little bit of skin," Arden promised with a smile. Now that it wasn't That Week, she was comfortable in assuming that her reaction to that would remain within comfortable limits. Like, obviously, Gray was hot, she wasn't blind (sorry Professor Scientia), but the whole, 'very, emphatically gay, will never be into you' really helped in keeping her from acting like an idiot. "So like, is this gonna be uppies where you kinda hoist me up by my waist? Or like a princess carry kinda deal? And if I sling an arm around your neck, that shouldn't mess with your wings, right?"

"Princess carry is gonna be the most secure," Gray told her. "You might sort of get more of the vibe if I hold you by the waist, but then you've gotta worry about what your legs are doing." Most people were not up for planking in the air, which was weird to Gray. Proper flying posture came naturally to him. "And yeah, holding on to my neck or shoulders is good. And don't worry. I'm stronger than I look."

"I have enough trouble knowing what to do with my hands sometimes, never mind what I should be doing with my legs," Arden laughed. "Hell yeah, princess carry. And will try not to flail too much with excitement."

She believed he was strong. But she didn't wanna wiggle out of his grasp entirely because she was so excited about the opportunity.

Gray laughed. "I get it, but resist the urge to flail? I really don't want to drop you!" He didn't provide any scary facts like, 'From far enough up hitting water is basically the same as hitting concrete,' because he wasn't going to go that high anyway. But he still didn't want to drop her! "You ready?" he asked, and went to scoop her up.

"Let's do this!" she said, very maturely not clapping her hands with excitement. Gold star for Ardens.

Was this the part where he called her a spider monkey? Ahahahaha just kidding. He drank blood, but he didn't sparkle. Also, the whole gay thing. "Shut your eyes on takeoff unless you want sand in them," Gray warned her. "But once we're in the air you can open them again."

Edited 2024-04-07 23:01 (UTC)

Alas, she would just have to contain her disappointment that this was a purely platonic flight, along with the fact that it was also completely sparkle-free. WOE.

"Good looking out," she said, and dutifully shut her eyes. Were they talking off yet? No. But she was excited, okay?

Gray launched them into the sky with the predicted spray of sand, then told her, "You can open your eyes now."

Arden did and immediately gasped with happiness. She was flying! Even still just climbing in the air was awesome and she tried to balance 'staying still' and 'craning her head around in every direction,' but it wasn't easy - and staying still was losing out. "This feeling is amazing!" she said. "And I'm not even the one with the wings!"

Gray wasn't going to argue with her, but he also wasn't going to tell her it was totally better when you were the one flying. It just seemed mean. He was going to check in about, "No sudden onset fear of heights?" though.

It would be so mean.

"Nope!" she said, still looking avidly around, and yes, even down at the rapidly distant ground. "Still pretty much the best thing ever! You can just...do this whenever? Ugh, winter must be so miserable when it's too cold to fly!"

"I mean, I still can, and I definitely have, but I don't like being cold, so..." Yeah. Gray was meant for sunshine. Specifically, napping in it. "You wanna do a roll? We can do a roll."

Arden's eyes got very big, but not with fear. "Oh goddess, fuck yeah I wanna do a roll!"

With that level of enthusiasm, Gray was going to go for a full-on barrel roll and not the lazy spin he might have executed otherwise.

If Arden ever said 'no' to the question, do you wanna do a roll while flying, that was an excellent sign that there was a BDE happening and she'd been replaced by a pod person. It was that or she was being held hostage and trying to signal that she needed help. Only two possibilities.

"Eeeee!" she squealed in delight as they spun, her laugh following a moment later as earth replaced sky and then was replaced by sky once more. "Can you do other things? Like loop de loops or whatever?" Normally she'd feel guilty about making requests since he was already carrying her around flying, but maybe she'd just left her manners down on the ground. "How fast can you go? This is so fucking awesome, Gray!!"

Gray responded by casually doing a loop-de-loop. "I don't know like airspeeds or whatever," he admitted, "but the fastest I can go is in a dive...but I don't want to go really high right now because if Sloth got me and I dropped you, higher would be worse. Sorry. Responsible is boring, I know."

"You're really harshing my vibe, not letting me end this with a broken neck," Arden sighed. "But I guess I can respect precautions so that keep me from ending up in traction. Very magnanimous of me, I know."

She was pretty sure that with her balcony, she'd still have her accelerated healing even in Midnight, but she was not sure that all the fresh air in the world would be able to do jack shit about, like, a broken spinal column or a shattered hip or whatever.

"I can heal minor things," Gray told her. "But I can't fix it if I break your leg or something." He wasn't even going to put any worse options into the universe, thanks. "But we can go a little higher. For the views."

"Yessssssss," Arden said, punching the air above her head - carefully, so she didn't punch Gray in the face by accident. "This is the best day of my life!"

...Not hyperbole, actually, but if Gray wanted to assume that, it'd be fine for Arden's ego.

"Woooooooo!"

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The Beach, Sunday Afternoon

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