Angel Wing

FEBRUARY

THE SKY WAS WHITE, the air was thick and damp, muted grey clouds were swelling in the distance, rising like froth on the ocean's lip, and Hadley was sitting in his car.

Detention had ended some time ago, but it felt like a dormant lifetime had passed him by since then and he was heavy with the turmoil of time that never ceased, leaving him further and further behind. He was beginning to feel like a person that could only survive in the past.

He hadn't left the school parking lot. He hadn't even turned the car on. There was a wide, blank space between him and home that he couldn't remember how to fill. Haze filled his head and obscured his thoughts in a thick fog every time he tried to mentally guide himself to his driveway, and time did nothing to push him forward even though, at the edge of his sight, he could see the minutes changing on the car clock.

Not that it made a difference. Every minute was the same as the one that had come before it and there was no point to any of them. The sky remained white, the air remained damp, the clouds continued to swell and the rain was still waiting to fall. He could hear a faint, low buzz coming from the air inside the car or the inside of his head, though he could not tell which, and otherwise there was total, muffling silence. The whole world was one still moment, going nowhere.

That morning, he had woken up earlier than he had wanted to and stared at the ceiling for a long time before he was able to get himself out of bed, and he passed the day in a trance, unable to recall any of it. There was nothing that separated it from any other day— especially not since Elodie had gone— other than the way he felt.

Vague and numb and half-alive, but what struck him earlier that afternoon was that he was not just removed, but that he was sad. He wondered how long it had been festering before he had noticed it. Had it been there before Elodie or had it only been there since she'd left?

Once he realised it was there, it seemed like inseparable part of him and he wondered if he had always been that way, but that didn't seem right. There was a vague memory, a shape taking place, in the dismal sunlight, the white light glinting like a knife, of someone he had been before, of the person he had been before despair took root and grew itself into an organ.

He thought about reaching his hands inside his chest and pulling himself apart from the inside out, like unravelling a bundle of knotted strings and crossed wires. He thought about plunging his hand inside his chest and squeezing his heart until he was doubled over with the pain of it, but he worried that if he unfastened all the strings and wires, if he left his beating heart exposed then the absence of feeling would only grow stronger. He worried that there was nothing left inside himself worth pulling at so instead he sat, waiting for his sadness to burn a hole right through him.

His heart, which had felt stiff and still for as long as he could remember, suddenly felt tender, as though it was trembling inside of him, and he almost wanted to cry, but he could not remember how. Instead, he stayed in his parked car, ignoring the minutes changing on the clock because what difference did it make if they passed or not?

It was becoming clearer to him that one of the hardest things about loneliness was trying to figure out when it started, to pinpoint the second when everything started to fall away. He'd like to think that everything became that way after Elodie, that the numbness and the loneliness started immediately afterwards the way a machine completes one automated process after another, but he knew it couldn't really work like that. He knew that loneliness was not a sudden, crashing feeling, even if the realisation of it was, and that he supposed he had been that way even when she was still around. It occurred to him that he might've been that way before he even started dating her. Maybe he had always been sad. He couldn't remember. The problem with sadness was that it always felt like the start and the end of everything, tainting and blurring and mutilating.

When a closed fist gently knocked on his car window, he started, jumping slightly in his seat, and put the window down before he could even think about it, feeling dazed, as though he had been shaken awake in the middle of a deep sleep.

As soon as he turned his head, that sunlight, grim and sharp as a blade, shot towards him and stung his eyes, blinding him. He could only raise his head so high before that grey light sliced through him and he had to squeeze one eye shut, creating a shield with his hand against his forehead. There was a sudden throbbing pain between his temples that hadn't been there before and the intrusion made him feel nauseous. The knocking on the window was jarring enough and his head felt as though it was starting to spin. He had a strong sensation of shame, as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn't have been, and his body became unpleasantly warm.

The face he was trying to look at was burned out by the light. "Are you heading home?"

"Yeah," Hadley replied, struggling to raise his gaze. His straining concentration worsened the dull ache in his head. He didn't completely recognise his own voice, but he recognised Spencer's.

Humming, he looked away and the halo of light obscuring his face shifted. He was biting the edge of his thumb. The lines of his face, the bridge of his nose and the shape of his cheekbones, were sharp against the glum light of the white sky. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he nodded, pressing the back of cool hand to his hot forehead. The air was humid. The rain was still waiting to fall. "Are you?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," Spencer murmured. "I was on the way to my car and I saw you sitting here. I guess I was just asking for the sake of it."

A thick, silent moment struck them. Hadley tried to organise his thoughts.

The back of his neck burned and his hands were beginning to feel clammy. The moisture in the air felt suffocating and he had the sudden, overwhelming desire to go to the ocean where the air was sharp and crisp, and he could plunge into freezing water, just to bring himself back to reality, just to feel alive again in a way that mattered.

"Hey," Spencer said suddenly, brightly. The white everything was too much to bear. "I meant to tell you, I watched the movie."

Hadley's head throbbed again. The burning light was like a needle. "Lebowski?"

"Lebowsi," he nodded, his voice was light with mirth. "It was ridiculous. I loved it." He paused. "Hadley, are you sure you're alright?"

"Yeah," he nodded, turning his head away. "Look, why don't you get in the car?"

"What?"

"Get in the car," he echoed. "I want to talk to you, but the sun is burning through my eyes."

"Shit," Spencer laughed and the smooth, clear sound of it was like a temporary balm. "I'm sorry." And he walked around the car, opened the passenger seat door and clambered inside, pulling the door shut behind him.

Angling himself so that his back was to the sun and he was half-facing towards Spencer, Hadley studied him, free from the glow of bleak sunlight: that dimple, the raised corner of his lip, the little chip in the front tooth and the wrinkles at the corner of those Derain green eyes, those full cheekbones and a little dimple in the right one that Hadley had never noticed before. Even the discolouration of his jaw couldn't quite mar the rest of him.

"There you are," he said. The tension between his temples relaxed and the dull ache began to subside.

Spencer softened and shrugged, "Here I am. You can see me now. Sorry."

"Keep talking to me about the movie," Hadley told him, finally able to relax his face out of that stiffened wince and pressing the back of his hand against his forehead.

"Is your head hurting?" Spencer asked, frowning.

"No, I'm alright," he insisted, shaking his head and moving his hand away. "Talk to me about the movie. What did you think?"

"Like I said," he continued, relaxing into the passenger seat and glancing around the car, "it was ridiculous, but I really enjoyed it. You know what I really liked about it? By the time it was ending, it kind of struck me that the Dude didn't really change at all. After all the bullshit that happened and everything he went through, he didn't become stronger or braver or wiser or anything. When the movie started, he was just some guy trying to survive and enjoy himself and, when the movie ended, he was still some guy trying to survive and enjoy himself. And I thought it was nice to just watch a movie where the main character doesn't really transform or grow or change. It's like sometimes you just have to deal with stuff for no reason other than shit happens and you're not really any worse or better for it afterwards. You're just still the same person trying to survive, right?"

When Hadley, who was watching him steadily and gently, didn't speak, Spencer smiled in that shy way he had and continued, "I don't know. I have this feeling that I'm always looking for answers on how to live or how to be the best version of myself all the time. And then sometimes you realise you don't really need to be the best version of yourself all the time. Sometimes you just need to shut up and be a person for a while. Sometimes you just need to go on a trip to the store or take a shower or eat a sandwich. Sometimes you just need to go bowling."

"Sometimes you just need to go bowling," Hadley repeated, his brow furrowing. Their eyes met and he stared into that dark, vibrant green. There was a smile in those eyes that made his heart twinge and something struck him. "I have something for you."

Reaching towards the backseat, he unzipped his backpack and dug out his copy of Stoner.

When he handed it over, Spencer turned the book around in his hands and flickered through the pages, beaming. "Thanks."

"It's a little messy," he warned with a solemn gaze, fixing his eyes on the book. "It's covered with pencil marks and ink and stupid annotations and whatever. You can just ignore those."

"I don't mind a little mess," he assured, his eyes darting towards Hadley as he scanned various pages. "You're sure you're cool with lending this to me?"

"Yeah," he shrugged. "No one ever really asks to borrow any of my books so if you want one, take it."

Spencer glanced towards him. "What are you gonna read now?"

"I don't know," he frowned, trying to picture the bookshelf in his bedroom. "There's tons to read. I'll find something."

He bit the inside of his cheek. "Well, what are you looking for?"

"I don't know," Hadley grinned, "but I rarely ever find it."

Smiling, he glanced around the car again. "It's funny," he said, sweeping his gaze over the chargers, the change, the packets of gum, the old movie tickets stuffed and tossed in the cup-holder. "If someone saw us together in your car, I can't even imagine what they'd think. Especially because I still have the bruise you gave me."

"I don't give a shit about any of that, anyway," he muttered, his eyes darting curiously towards Spencer's. "Do you?"

"No," he said, offering one of his small, private smiles. "It's not really anyone's business, is it? People are always looking for ways to entertain themselves. They'll talk about it until they make themselves sick of it and find something else to latch onto the week after."

Hadley thought about Tristan, about sharing bread sticks with him in the kitchen. "People devour whatever you put in front of them," he agreed quietly.

"Yeah," Spencer nodded, glancing at him thoughtfully. He had opened the book and was reading a random page in the middle of it. "People devour. And they're fucking insatiable. After you first punched him, people I've hardly ever spoken to kept asking me all these questions about you and Elodie. It was unbelievable."

"I don't think it was ever that bad for me," he remarked curiously.

"They probably think you're going to punch them," he teased, his smile playful and eyes glittering.

Hadley swallowed thickly and tried to smile. "Good."

Spencer shook his head, grinning.

He cleared his throat. "Sorry if I caused you any harassment."

"It's not a big deal."

"I just hope you know that I don't have anything against you," he said swiftly. "I don't resent you or anything. In those first few weeks, I felt like I couldn't stop comparing myself to you because I had this unshakeable feeling that you had something that I didn't, but I don't hate you." He half-smiled. "I didn't mean for you to get devoured. I just wanted to hit you."

With surprising earnestness, he said, "I don't have anything that you don't have."

"Yeah, you do," Hadley murmured, reaching out a loose fist and ghosting the bruise with the back of his curved fingers. He pretended not to notice how Spencer winced, how he almost seemed to shiver. "You have that."

He flushed. "Which I can thank you for," he replied lightly, softly, as Hadley took his hand away. He studied the book one last time and glanced towards him. "Thanks for the book. And for Lebowski. It was great."

"It's alright," he said, staring through the windshield at the white sky. "And I'm glad you liked the movie."

"You should probably get home," Spencer remarked, watching him.

"Yeah," he agreed, glancing at him. "I probably should."

He could see— could feel— Spencer's hesitation. "You're okay to drive, right?" He asked, fixing his gaze on the side of Hadley's face. "Because I can always give you—"

He shook his head, offering a small smile. "I'm fine."

"Okay," Spencer nodded, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Good. I need to get going, anyway. Thanks again."

When Hadley looked at him, he caught Spencer looking down at his hands, a graceful movement passing through his throat. His green eyes darted up and they looked at each other, and, for a long time, he did not move— Hadley never asked him to. Instead, he waited, silently, and, when he was alone, he turned the car on.

Rain had begun to fall. 

note
hello and thank you for reading!! I'm sorry for the missed update last week, I had an exam and an essay due in the same week, and decided I needed to spend a little time catching up on uni work.

 I hope this chapter is okay! I'm already excited to start working on the next one and in the meantime I would love to hear any thoughts :')

thank you again for being here. hopefully I see you again next time <3

originally published
29 / 03 / 2025