Months ago Scar had determined himself to learn what Grian's wings said. He'd heard the phrase “the eyes are the windows to the soul” many times, but when you had someone like Grian, an excellent liar with eyes like the void, they were rather unreliable when it came to secrets of the soul. But Scar had a theory: the wings were the real windows to the soul. See, Grian could lie and manipulate to his heart's content, words and body language perfectly poised to throw people off his trail, but his wings were always doing Stuff.
So Scar got to thinking about it. In order to lie, you had to know what tells to avoid. It took observing bad liars and carefully monitoring everything you did because any wrong word or subconscious head tilt could give you away. However, they only gave you away because almost everyone knew how to read those little tells. The shifting of eyes, the positions of hands, the hesitations in a voice, people knew how to spot these things because almost everyone had these things.
Very few people had wings though. Very few people even knew somebody with wings. So, theoretically, if there were little cues of body language given by wings, most people wouldn't know how to read them. And that meant, Grian would have no reason to try to hide them. And that meant they were basically open books if only Scar could learn how to read them.
Thus, the watching and learning. Scar even had a special book he was keeping notes in, covered in drawings of wings and half coherent theories. Slowly, he was starting to piece together a pretty good picture of what the wings meant. Many of them made sense.
Droopy wings were usually a bad sign. When he was tired they were droopy constantly, hanging low like the weight of them was too much. When Scar said or did something particularly annoying, they drooped momentarily, but usually perked back up. Those were easy. Scar was pretty sure the slight droopiness while the wings were close to the body was signs of sadness or upset, but that was harder to prove when Grian was determined to pretend like he was totally not upset that you ruined days worth of work.
Fluffy wings were harder. Scar initially thought fluffy wings were a good thing, but after careful observation, he has come to the conclusion that actually, fluffy wings can be both good, and bad, and neutral. Very confusing, but he was learning the small differences. When Grian was calm and resting, they got fluffy and came up around his shoulders, very cute. When Grian was startled they puffed up along with the classic wing flare. When Grian was angry they fluffed up but he held his wings further from his body. However, that one was confusing because sometimes Grian did the same thing when he spotted something he really wanted but wasn't able to get to it immediately. Also cute, but makes documentation on wing language harder.
Scar's biggest discovery was that when Grian's wings got really still, frozen stiff, it was because he was waiting for you to look away so he could do something. Learning that had already saved Scar on multiple occasions, to a very frustrated Grian's chagrin.
Speaking of frustrated: wing flaps. Wing flaps were diverse and often confusing. There were so many kinds that Scar had to break them down into three categories: big wing flap, the kind that almost made him look like he was about to take off, eh wing flap, smaller versions of the big wing flap, and wing twitches, which were anything that didn't fit into the first two categories.
Big wing flaps were almost always warnings, pretty easy. The eh wing flaps could mean frustration, excitement, boredom, and on occasion, hunger, though that one still needed more observation to confirm. The wing twitches were just too many to count. From the times they twitched upward when something caught his interest, to the little curl twitches that Scar was upset to realize meant Grian was uncomfortable, to the asymmetrical twitches that accompanied Grian while he was deep in thought planning something. Half of Scar's notes were dedicated to wing twitches.
All in all, he was getting pretty good at reading the wings. Far better than most of the hermits, which Scar took great pride in while watching the others get conned by a Grian who was giving very clear 'I'm conning you’ wing signals.
However, there was still one wing thing that Scar had yet to figure out. It was especially confusing because Grian only did it around Scar. See, most of Scar's notes were possible because he watched Grian interact with others. It was easier to pay attention and connect dots that way, but Grian didn't do it with anyone else. It was a specific kind of wing droop, but instead of looking like he just wasn't holding his wings up, it looked very intentional, slightly flared out and lowered. The bottom part of the wing flared out wider but the top remained curled.
Worst of all, it seemed like Grian just did it at random. At first, Scar thought it was a greeting, as Grian did it a lot when he first saw or spoke to Scar. But he also sometimes did it in the middle of conversations, usually while teasing Scar. Sometimes he did it while he wasn't talking to Scar at all. Scar would look over and find Grian looking back at him with an unreadable expression and his wings doing the droopy flare thing.
Grian did it while showing off stuff, he did it while he was beating Scar at a game, he did it when they were hiding and being sneaky and shared one of those looks that caused them both to choke on barely concealed laughter. He did it all the time but there was no real pattern to it besides Scar himself. It was driving Scar absolutely insane.
No matter how many theories he came up with, nothing held. He simply could not pin down what it was.
That was, until one day as he and Joel were watching Tango and Jimmy. The two of them were bickering about something, poorly smothered smiles twitching at their lips, and Scar saw Jimmy doing the thing. The wing thing. Which just made everything more confusing to Scar because why would Jimmy do the wing thing while arguing with Tango. Grian didn't do it while arguing. Grian certainly didn't do it while arguing with Tango.
Scar was knocked out of his baffled thoughts by Joel laughing. “Aw, look at 'em go. They're so obvious.”
Scar tilted his head. “Obvious about what?”
Joel looked over at Scar, “Come on, you know what.”
Scar just glanced back and forth between the couple and Joel, “Uh, the- eh, the flirty argue thing?”
“Yes!” Joel laughed again, gesturing at the two. “I mean, Jimmy is doing the flirty wings and everything! Literally everyone can-”
Whatever Joel said after that was lost on Scar as his thoughts rang in his ears along with Joel's words on repeat. Flirty wings. Flirty wings. A dozen memories of Grian flashed through his head as the realization sank in. On one hand, it felt hard to believe but on the other, it made so much sense Scar was almost embarrassed to have missed it. “Oh my god.” He muttered as the pieces clicked.
Joel looked over at him inquisitively. “What, you didn't notice?”
“No, no, I noticed! Them! I mean. I noticed them but-, did you say flirty wings?”
Joel shrugged. “Yeah. I mean, that's not like, exactly what they are but you know, it's the thing avians do when they're interested in someone.”
“Avians.”
“Yep.”
“Like Grian?” Scar's voice was coming out more and more strained.
At that Joel seemed to catch onto what Scar had realized, and his face softened into something both amused and pitying. “Yeah Scar, like Grian.”
Scar raised a hand to his mouth, muttering another “oh my god.”
Joel just laughed once more and patted him on the back. “Yep. Congratulations, you figured it out.”
Scar's hand slid up to cover his eyes. “Oh my god.”
I need everyone to look at me. Look me dead in my eyes.
Cleo, the real human person who will be face revealing next weekend, is, by their own definition, a heavyset White femme presenting nonbinary person who is in their early-mid 40s. That's what they will look like. I need you to get that in your mind right now so that I don't see any dumb as shit comments about Cleo not looking like fanart or a cartoon or their anime style V-Tuber. They will look like a real human person. You will be normal about this.
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