An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
They're the best friends he's ever had. And they've been friends for a while now. He should be ready to tell them about his wings.
But Reynie isn't.
For Whumptober 2025 Day 10: Without Consent | Secrets | Lips Sewn Shut | “There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do.”
“Have you thought about telling them?” Miss Perumal asks.
Reynie tenses at her words.
It’s not an order. Not even a suggestion. His flinch is not from fear of her judgment. It’s an instinctive response, shying away from the internal turmoil inside of him.
“I have,” Reynie says, and leaves it at that.
Her fingers smooth through his wings. They’re a mousy brown, the same color as his hair. They’re more rounded than sharp, a size that suits his frame nicely for now. They’ll grow, and he will too. They would have been average-looking wings, just like the rest of him. That is, if having wings was an average sort of condition in the first place.
Miss Perumal’s hands are sure and precise. She knows how to straighten his feathers, where to pluck, where to leave alone. Yet her hands linger for longer than they strictly need to. They comb through gently, petting, as a mother strokes her child’s hair in the drowsy moments before sleep. Reynie untenses slightly.
“You’ve never had to tell anyone,” she says. “Firsts are scary. But, after all, they are your first friends.”
It’s true. He’s never needed to vocalize this. He’d simply gotten too comfortable with Miss Perumal, had sleepily gone down to breakfast one morning and taken the mug of tea she’d prepared for him before he realized he’d forgotten to hide his wings. They’d talked about it then, of course, but the cat had been out of the bag.
Then there were the others. Once he’d gotten sick, sicker than he’d ever been, and had lost the strength to keep his wings hidden. Vic had barged into the boy’s dormitory and had seen them. He’d screamed, and charged out, and had gotten around to telling half of the children at the orphanage what a freak Reynie was before Miss Perumal had nipped that in the bud.
“It won’t be like last time,” she says, as if she can read his mind. “There’s nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do that would make them turn away from you.”
He knows that’s true. He really, really does believe it. Sticky can remember every scene and word and moment from his life in perfect crystal detail. Kate could jump out of a moving rocket, fall to earth, and survive, all while calculating her acceleration in her head. Constance could pull out every secret he held close to his chest, including this one if she wanted to. They won’t think him a freak for simply being born with wings.
Something stops him anyway.
“Do you think I’m lying to them?” Reynie sighs, suddenly tired. “They don’t like when I hide things from them. And I don’t like it either. I don’t know why I am.”
Miss Perumal’s hands slow in their combing while she ponders her answer. “I get the sense it’s bothering you,” she says at last. “To keep holding this inside. Imagine it. You wouldn’t need to hide your wings anymore, not at home.”
It’s almost too good to hope for. Reynie perks up at the thought. Could it be real? And all he has to do to make it real is to be brave?
Kate would be elated. She’d ask a million questions, try to compare his feathers to Madge’s. Sticky would start yanking books off shelves by the handful and throw himself into research. Constance would probably compose some sort of insulting poem rhyming “Reynie” and “bird-brainy.”
“Not today,” Reynie says. “I can’t do it today.”
“I wasn’t asking you to,” Miss Perumal reminds him. “I’m here when you’re ready.”
“And if I need a push?”
“Then I’ll push you off and catch you at the bottom,” she says, even though Reynie can fly.
