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Everything was going pretty good until the battery acid incident.

“Alright, now.” Stooping over his work, the Doc blindly flapped a hand in Marty’s direction. “Hand me a measuring cylinder?”

Marty cast about on the workbench and pressed his selection into Doc’s reaching hand.

“Thank you. Now –” Doc squinted behind his goggles. “Marty, this is a beaker.”

“You can’t measure stuff in that?” said Marty.

Doc thunked it down on the bench. “The – the tall one,” he said. “No – that’s a flask. The, that one – here, I’ll –”

Then he reached over his work for it at the same time as Marty reached for it and their shoulders collided hard and the workbench juddered – glassware tinkled – and a flask fell with an abruptly crash.

“Jesus Christ!” said Marty, leaping back as warm liquid splashed his stomach.

“Great Scott.” Doc leapt into action, grabbing him by the shoulders and stripping off his jacket. “Are you –”

“I’m okay.” Acid was dripping from the hem of his shirt to puddle on the concrete floor. It felt kinda hot. “It’s not –”

“That’s strong stuff,” said Doc and ignoring Marty’s protests he ushered him across the garage towards the tiny bathroom. There was a whoosh of extractor fan as the light came on. “Let’s look at you –”

“I’m really okay,” said Marty as Doc took his shirt by the hem, peeling it away from his skin. “It doesn’t really hurt –”

“Into the tub, now.” Doc bundled him into the bath. “And take your shirt off.”

And Marty froze.

Gripping a dry stretch of hem, he stood, frozen, in the bathtub, a sick feeling rising up in his throat. Honestly, just having his jacket off didn’t feel great, and – “Uh,” he managed. “Privacy, Doc?”

“Hm?” Doc was fiddling with the shower head. “Don’t be ridiculous – I need to see if you have chemical burns.”

“I can –”

“Will you just take off your damn shirt before you make it any worse?” Doc jabbed the shower head at him. “It’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t seen before.”

The sick feeling was spreading steadily down into his guts. He kinda wanted to puke. He shook his head.

“Marty – don’t be ridiculous,” said Doc, and juggling the shower head he made a grab for the hem of Marty’s shirt as if he meant to rip it off himself.

“No.” Marty jolted back, int the wall. “Don’t – I’ll do it.”

Doc held up his hands – and the shower head – in apology, but the look on his face was stern. He really wasn’t gonna be able to wriggle out of this one. It was his own fault for not paying attention in chem class, huh?

Sucking in a breath, he tugged off his shirt.

The change in Doc’s expression, at the sight of the harness, was subtle, but undeniable. His face dropped, just a fraction. His mouth tightened. It was a look Marty could only read as disapproval.

Silently, he offered his ruined shirt. Doc dropped it firmly in the sink. He turned on the shower. “Hold still.”

In a businesslike manner, aiming the water carefully away from the lower strap of the harness, Doc sluiced him down. The water was pretty cold and it came in fits and spurts – figured that the plumbing in the garage sucked.

When he was tone, Doc carefully ran the corner of a towel over the reddened patch of skin. “It doesn’t look bad,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s a little sore.” Marty wet his lips. “Are you gonna say anything?”

“Hm?” Doc met his eyes, face still heavy and stern. “About what?”

“About.” Marty motioned, faintly, at the wing-harness across his chest. “This.”

Doc went on dabbing at his stomach. “That thing doesn’t look very comfortable.”

“Uh.” It wasn’t the response he’d expected by a long shot. “It’s – not.”

Eyes averted, Doc ran the towel once again over the burns. Then he said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Marty shifted away. He was dry enough. “Why would I tell you?” Doc glanced at him, visibly wounded, and his shoulders sagged. “It’s – nothing personal, Doc. I don’t tell people.”

Doc set the towel aside and looking him in the eye said, “I just don’t like the idea of you feeling you have to hide bits of yourself from me.”

Standing ridiculously half-dressed in the bathtub, Marty folded his arms across his chest as if by covering up the straps he could somehow conceal his situation. He didn’t know what to say. He was beginning to think he might have badly misread the look on Doc’s face from the outset.

“I’ll, ah,” said Doc, lowering his gaze. “I’ll find you something clean to wear home.”

*

A couple of months before the battery acid incident, Marty was out back of the high school, near the dumpsters and the fence and the alley where kids went to smoke. The air smelled like garbage and cut grass from the football field beyond the fence and faintly of cigarette smoke.

He was behind the high school, getting slammed into a wall.

He scrabbled against the wall, nails scratching up dust against the elderly brick, bucking against the grip of the two guys at his back. “Let go,” he said. “Let me go – Needles, this isn’t funny –”

Needles’ hands joined the other two sets, pushing at his neck, pressing his face harder against the wall. “Who says I’m trying to be funny, McFly?” he said, a laugh in his voice. “Just show us – come on.”

“Yeah, we just wanna know if you’re a freak,” said the guy at his neck.

“I’m not,” he bit out, brick dust in his mouth. “I’m not a freak –”

“If you’re not a freak, you got nothing to hide,” said Needles. “Right?”

Hands shifted on his back, moving from holding him in place to touching and feeling and groping and at the feel of them pressing down against the bones of his wings through the layers of denim and cotton and harness, his guts lurched.

“Ohh man, Needles,” one of the guys was laughing. “There’s something back here –”

“Knock it off,” he said. “Knock it off –” Taking advantage of the way the guy’s grip had slackened to feel him up he twisted and lashed out as hard as he could with his elbow.

It hit someone’s face with a crack and behind him there was a yell and then they doubled down even as he squirmed and yelled. Hands grabbed at the collar and sleeves of his jacket, tugging, forcing it down his shoulders and off, and real panic began to rise up in his throat.

“Don’t –” he gasped out. “Don’t – get off me – get off –”

His jacket slid to the ground with a heavy thud and together they shoved him firmly against the wall. He fought, but with all three of them holding him in place all he could manage was vain squirming. “Guys,” he said. “Stop it –”

Hands ran over his back, tracing the shape of his harnessed wings, unmistakeable without a thick layer of denim to mask them, and he thought his heart might be gonna stop.

“Whoa,” said one of the guys. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s gross,” the other guy laughed.

“Needles,” he said, breathless, desperate. “Man, come on – be cool –”

“Whatcha got back there,” said Needles – and then a hand tugged at the back of his t-shirt, untucking it.

“Hey!” He struggled helplessly in their grip as Needles’ clammy hand worked its way up the back of his shirt – as Needles made a grossed-out noise at the feel of damp feathers – as a tugging back there turned into a wrenching yank that made him cry out aloud –

“Needles!”

At that barking voice, all four of them froze. Needles’ hand withdrew and almost as once they stepped back, and at the sudden loss of support his shaky legs gave out under him. He fell to the ground, his knees slamming painfully against the asphalt.

Strickland was pacing over, one of those looks of cold fury on his face. “What do you boys think you’re doing?”

“Uh,” stammered one of the guys.

“We were just fooling around, sir,” said Needles, surreptitiously brushing sweaty, downy feathers off his fingers.

Strickland tracked the uneasy movement with his eyes, considering his next move – or maybe just holding them all in suspense. Marty wouldn’t put it past him.

At length, he jerked his head in the direction of the school gates. “Get outta here,” he said. “Before I put you all in detention.”

Not lingering to question the reprieve, all three of them ran, scuffling and whispering as they went. As they rounded the corner, Strickland eyed Marty, where he knelt on the feather-strewn ground, breathing hard, clutching at an aching shoulder. He could feel the cool evening air against the exposed strip of skin at his back; the faint prickle of feathers moving in the breeze.

At length, Strickland said, “McFly, put your clothes back on – you’re exposing yourself.”

He stalked away. Marty breathed out and reaching frantically behind himself jammed his shirt back into his jeans. Then he cast about for his jacket.

“Here.”

He whipped around in the direction of the voice. A girl was standing next to him, holding out his jacket. He stared up at her, momentarily horrified. He hadn’t realised there was anyone around. But now that he was paying attention he noticed a couple of other kids, drawn in by the commotion, lingering to watch him pick himself up.

Snatching the jacket he got up off the ground with a muttered, “Thanks.”

“Are you okay?” said the girl as he shrugged it back on. “That was messed up.”

Adjusting his jacket – trying, as subtly as he could, to feel the back to make sure nothing was showing – he looked around for his fallen backpack. There were more feathers on the ground than he’d realised. No wonder it’d stung.

It registered that she’d asked a question. “I’m fine,” he said. It came out more brusquely than was really polite. “Don’t worry about it.” Grabbing his backpack, he moved off.

“That looked like it hurt,” said the girl, following him. “Did they hurt you?”

“It’s not a problem,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“Are you sure?”

Her hand brushed his back – and he flinched, fully jerking back and spinning around to face her. She withdrew, her eyes big, and she hadn’t meant anything by it. It’d been a thoughtless attempt at a gesture of comfort. “Sorry,” she said.

He rubbed self-consciously at his shoulder and muttered, “S’okay.”

“Marty,” she said. “Right?”

He knew her a little bit. He knew her face. They had a couple of classes together. Figured that she knew his name and he didn’t know hers. People talked about him behind his back.

“I’m Jennifer,” she said. “Jennifer Parker? We have chem together.”

“I know,” he said.

“Are you okay?” said Jennifer. “Do you want me to walk you somewhere?”

“What?” He tightened his grip on his bag, in spite of everything unable to shake off a sense of hostility at the suggestion of being walked home. “Are you serious?”

“You seem kinda shook up,” she said by way of explanation. “God. Are you sure you’re okay? That looked horrible.”

She sounded so earnestly concerned – so genuinely stricken on his behalf – that it gave him pause. He kicked at the ground, dithering, at a loss for what to do; part of him worn down by his persistence and wanting to ask for comfort, and another part, absurdly, wanting to comfort her.

The second part won out. “I really am okay.” He rubbed, bashfully, at his neck. “Sorry you had to see that.”

Jennifer nodded, though he wasn’t sure what she was agreeing with. “Are you gonna tell the principal?”

“Uh. No?” he said. “Look, I just – I wanna forget about this whole thing, okay?”

“Okay,” she echoed. She adjusted her grip on her schoolbag and said – in a tone that he just maybe, very optimistically, thought could be described as ‘coy’ – “I’m gonna go to the drugstore. Do you wanna walk with me?”

He said, “Sure.”

*

It had been a couple of weeks since the battery acid incident and things were still a little tense.

He hadn’t seen Doc for a couple of days afterwards, but eventually, following an awkward, fumbling phone call to make sure he hadn’t died or anything, he’d kinda had to. It was go back and act like everything was normal or else say he didn’t want to be friends anymore.

It wasn’t like he didn’t want to be friends anymore.

“Alright – past me the wire cutters.”

“Uh-huh,” said Marty, absently handing them over. The movement pulled at his harness and he rubbed at his aching back.

Clip, went the wire cutters. Clip-clip. Usually Doc would give him a whole lot of running commentary on what he was doing, but that evening he was pretty quiet. Whether he didn’t want to talk or he figured Marty didn’t want to talk – it was hard to say.

Shifting where he leaned against the table, Marty rubbed again at his back. He couldn’t really reach the part that was hurting. He shifted further, contorting himself, trying to get it.

Doc glanced up at him over his bundle of wiring. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Marty gritted out. “Just kinda achy – sorry.”

“You want to sit down?” Doc had stopped cutting wires.

“No, I’m okay.”

Doc lowered the wired altogether. “You wanna go home or something –”

“I’m fine,” he interrupted. “Jesus, Doc.” He rolled his shoulders, trying vainly to ease the pressure from the harness. “I just get achy sometimes. Okay?”

Nodding, Doc cut through another wire. “So, uh, what is it,” he said, tone weirdly upbeat. “Back pain or wing pain?”

Marty’s hand stilled where it had been rubbing at the back of his neck. He looked up at Doc, mortified.

“Sorry,” said Doc at his expression. “Should I not talk about it?”

His hand fell away from his neck. “No,” he said. “It’s okay.” People didn’t, generally. His mom would see him grimacing or trying surreptitiously to adjust his harness and say oh, are you sore again? You want some painkillers? She wasn’t usually so direct about it.

He gave the question a moment’s thought. “Uh. Both, I guess.”

Straightening up, the harness pulled tighter and the pain just below his shoulder blade intensified into a sudden throbbing. He winced, a soft hiss escaping him.

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Doc. “Have you pulled something?”

“What? I don’t know.” His shoulders sagged, as he considered it. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s not – uh, it’s not usually this bad.” The throbbing had faded into something less intense, but still present.

“Well, what does it feel like?” Doc was still fiddling with his wires.

“It’s this – stabbing feeling when I move the wrong way, I guess,” he said. “I can handle it.”

“Hm,” said Doc. He set aside the wiring, and said, “That sounds like a sprain. Want me to take a look at it?”

“What?” For a second the question had his mind totally blank. Doc had said it so freakishly casual, like he hadn’t just asked to see – “Uh, no?” he said. “You’re not even that kind of doctor, Doc.”

“I know the basics, and I can get a better look at the problem than you’d manage with a mirror,” said the Doc. “How about it? It’d be no trouble.”

Like that was the issue. The trouble, of all things. “I don’t, uh.” Marty wet his lips. “I can handle it, and. You don’t have to.” Doc was looking at him steadily like it was a completely normal thing for them to do and not a deeply weird suggestion, and it was so dumb. It was a dumb idea. It wasn’t like Doc could even help. For Christ’s sake. “Uh,” he said. “Well.”

Sitting on a stool by the workbench, his button-down and jacket dumped on the floor beside him, he wondered – not for the first time – how he let Doc talk him into so much weird shit. Resigning himself to whatever was gonna happen, he stripped off his t-shirt.

The sudden cold air against his back – the alien feeling of exposure, anywhere other than his own bathroom – made his guts curl up. Cool fingers touched the shoulder straps of his harness, and he tensed.

“You wouldn’t mind taking this off too, would you?” said Doc, still sounding pretty chipper about it, and Marty was abruptly infinitely glad not to have to look him in the eye.

He fingered the straps across his chest. “Harness too, huh?”

“Well, only if you’re comfortable with it.”

He wasn’t. He hadn’t had the harness off around anyone other than his doctor in years. His mom, a couple of times, when he was younger. No-one else.

But this didn’t feel so different than stripping down at the doctor’s office – and it was Doc. He’d told Doc all kinds of weird shit he’d never told anyone else. He’d crashed on his couch more times than he could count. He’d cried snotty tears in front of him once when he was thirteen and bleeding everywhere after wiping out on his skateboard. What was one more line to cross?

Besides. Doc’d already seen them.

He fumbled with the plastic buckles. The harness came loose, sliding heavy down his shoulders. With some difficulty he eased it off, the movement stiff and careful as he tried not to – ah, shit – move the wrong way.

In spite of the pain, he couldn’t hold in a shaky exhalation of relief as the pressure lifted.

Doc’s hands rested on his shoulder. “Is it any better without the harness?”

“A little,” he confessed.

“Let’s see what we’ve got back here.” Doc’s fingers prodded at the joint of a wing and his spine went rigid.

“Hey!”

“Sorry,” said Doc, hastily withdrawing. “Sorry. Did I hurt you?”

“No, I –” He hadn’t expected to be touched, but suddenly he wasn’t sure how to put that into words. “Your hands are cold.”

“Are they? I’ll warm them up.” He heard the sound of Doc rubbing his hands together, before touching the joint again. “Better?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said. He remembered himself. “Sorry – I’m probably real sweaty back there.”

“Only a little,” said Doc in a reassuring tone. His fingers worked their way down the length of a wing, the touch careful, precise. “Oof, you’ve got a whole lot of broken feathers back here.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Where’s it hurting?”

“Uh, at the – top.” He did his best to motion. “This side.”

“Let’s see.” Doc touched the other wing, fingers exploring – feeling around the joint – pressing in, and he hissed at the sudden stab of pain. “Oh, yeah, that’s pretty swollen,” said Doc. “Feels like a sprain but you ought to get it checked out – could be a small fracture.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Marty said. “It doesn’t hurt that bad.” Doc’s fingers probed at a particularly sensitive spot and he bit back another hiss of pain.

“So how’d it happen?”

He shrugged, and regretted it. “I just woke up like this.”

“That’s strange,” said Doc. “Can you move it?”

“Huh?”

“Your wing,” Doc clarified. “Can you move it?”

“Uh.” He gave it a shot. It wasn’t something he did often and his muscles protested even before he stretched them enough to pull at the strained muscles – pain seared through the joint and he grunted, his hand going reflexively to his shoulder. “Nope – that’s not going anywhere.”

“Okay – how about the other one?”

He glanced, puzzled, over his shoulder. “I don’t –”

“I can’t judge how bad it is till I see how well the other one moves, can I?” said Doc.

He gritted his teeth and tried it. The muscles were stiff – creaky, like an old door. Even uninjured, it ached as he lifted it up and out, the bones protesting at the mistreatment. After five years, it was still a weird feeling. When he glimpsed the feathers out of the corner of his eye he had to remind himself they were attached to him.

The effort burned and he dropped his wing with a gasp.

“Careful, now – don’t force it.” Doc touched the joint of the uninjured wing. “How often do you stretch them?”

“Stretch them?” Marty echoed.

“Well, you need to stretch them,” Doc said as it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You have to build up muscle and strengthen the joints – it’s no wonder they don’t move very well.”

He didn’t plan on stretching them ever. “Sure. Makes sense.”

“I wonder how you injured it.” Doc’s fingers fell away, finally, from the wings and moved to lightly touch his bare shoulders. “Are you sure you didn’t do anything to it?” Marty shrugged. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t have if you keep them harnessed most of the time.”

“I only take it off to shower,” Marty said.

“Only to –” Doc sounded kinda taken aback. “Do you sleep in it?”

He twisted on the stool to look Doc in the eye, kind of affronted at how annoyed he sounded. “Yeah. Why?”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Doc rubbed his forehead, exasperated. “That’s one little mystery solved. Did no-one ever tell you not to sleep in it?”

“Uh, no?” said Marty. “Wait, you think that’s how I sprained the joint?”

“You probably slept on it,” Doc sighed. Marty shrugged, baffled. “You – alright, let me explain. During the night your body should be able to instinctively position your wings safely, the same as it does with the rest of your appendages – if you sleep with them strapped down they’re liable to get trapped in unnatural positions for hours at a stretch. That’ll be how you damaged the joint.”

“Oh – okay,” said Marty, not convinced.

“Why in the world have you been sleeping in it?” said Doc, sounding genuinely astonished at the idea.

The question gave him pause and for a second he wondered the same thing. He hadn’t used to sleep in it but as he’d got older and they’d got bigger the alien sensation of his wings moving freely had bothered him more and more and he’d stopped taking it off to sleep even though he woke up sweaty and cramping all over.

Besides. It saved time putting it on in the morning, right?

“I don’t know,” he said. “Personal preference? It’s never mattered before.”

“It always matters.” Doc’s hand once again touched the joint of his uninjured wing. “Can I show you something?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Alright, here.” Doc eased the wing carefully upwards. “Now, this – is your wings’ natural resting position – the harness pushes them down. Over time it puts a tremendous strain on your muscles. The more time you spend with the harness on the more damage you’re doing.”

“Uh, thanks for the tip, Doc,” he said. He didn’t see why it mattered. It wasn’t like he was gonna keep them.

Doc let go of his wing and he didn’t bother to lower it. The way Doc’d positioned it did feel better. He felt Doc’s hand trace once again down the bone, followed by a gentle tug on his feathers.

“You’re really feeling around back there, huh?” he said over his shoulder.

“Do you mind?” said Doc.

Marty shrugged. If it was anyone else he’d have told them to knock it off. But then if it was anyone else, he’d never have got his shirt off.

“I’ve never had a chance to look at a set of human wings up close before,” Doc said. “It’s a fascinating trait, don’t you think? The way your body works – it’s really something.”

“It’s something alright,” Marty agreed.

“Have you ever seen x-rays of what the joints look like?”

“I’ve seen a diagram,” said Marty. There was one in his bio textbook.

“The anatomical structures involved are just incredible – nothing else like it in the animal kingdom.” Doc’s fingers once against traced the joint. “Remarkable case of convergent evolution.”

“How’d you mean?”

“Well, humans aren’t related to birds in the slightest,” Doc explained. “That we developed such similar biological features is purely coincidental.”

“I never really thought about it,” said Marty.

“Oh?” said Doc. “I have some books on the subject, if you’d like to –”

“Pass.” It came out kinda quick and a little harsh. He shot Doc an apologetic look. “I’m not really into that stuff.”

“Well, each to their own,” said Doc. He was still looking over Marty’s wings. Marty had half a mind to tell him to quit it – but on a certain level, he was kinda enjoying the attention.

Being touched like that kinda made his skin crawl – but no-one had ever said anything nice about his wings before. When his dad had seen them for the first time he’d said oh, Jesus Christ and walked out of the room. The first time they’d taken him to the doctor’s office the doctor had looked over his brand new stubby little wings and taken some measurements and said things like we’ll start you on a low dose of the medication and in about six months you can come back to be fitted for a harness. Kids at school said stuff like weirdo and freak of nature.

Yeah. He was content to sit there and indulge Doc and let him ramble on about evolution and skeletal structures. It wasn’t so bad.

“The muscular system back here is incredibly powerful,” said Doc, laying a hand between his shoulder blades – between the wings. “It has to be, you see, because a human is a whole lot heavier than a bird – takes a lot to get the appropriate, ah, physical lift – that’s also why the human wingspan is so impressive – when fully grown, of course –”

He went quiet, maybe remembering that Marty’s wings weren’t ever gonna be fully grown.

In spite of himself, though, suddenly he was curious. “You ever seen anyone fly?”

“Only once,” said Doc. “When I was very young – travelling show,” he added at Marty’s questioning look. “Not everyone like you could. Even unmedicated, the physical fitness and discipline involved is considerable, I – I gather.”

He’d never given much thought to flying. It wasn’t something people did – not anymore. In the distant and hazy past, sure. And alright, technically when Doc was a kid wasn’t the distant past, but as far as he was concerned it might as well have been.

There were still flying people in some parts of the world. Uncivilised parts, people said. Areas that hadn’t been touched by the wonders of modern medicine. Don’t be so ungrateful, his mom had told him once when he was fussing over having to wear the harness.

He had dreams about flying sometimes – but everyone had those, right? It didn’t mean anything.

“It’s a funny thing, isn’t it?” Doc had gone back to toying with the feathers, the sensation distant, like having his hair very lightly pulled. “Wings were a part of daily life for so many thousands of years – and then in the span of less than a century, gone.”

He sounded kinda wistful – kinda sad. “It’s not that big of a deal,” said Marty.

“Not that big of a deal?” Doc echoed. “It’s a whole part of the human experience – a, a unique and exceptional biological feature, vanished.”

“Big whoop.” Marty shrugged, and managed to set the sprained joint off again. He winced, clutching at it.

“Careful,” said Doc. “Oof, that swelling’s pretty bad. You ought to take better care of your wings.”

“It’s not a big deal.” The pain was ebbing again. “It’s not like I’m planning on keeping them.”

Doc’s hands rested upon his shoulders. “Oh,” he said. “You’re gonna get them amputated, huh?”

“Sure,” he said. “We, uh – don’t have the money for it right now but – someday. Yeah.”

Doc didn’t say anything.

“Sorry for vanishing them,” Marty said, though he wasn’t sorry.

“Well, it’s your life,” said Doc – though he sounded kinda down about it.

And that burned. What the hell would he know about it? They weren’t his stupid wings. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said, twisting to look Doc in the eye.

“Means what it means,” said Doc.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised at that reaction, after everything Doc had just said. Part of him wanted to say if you love them so much, why don’t you take ‘em. “Look, Doc,” he said. “I know you don’t give a shit what anyone thinks of you, and I think that’s great. I do! But, y’know, some of us do give a shit.”

“Is that why you want the amputation?” Doc said. “Because you’re worried about what other people will think?”

“I just want them gone,” said Marty. God, but he wanted them gone. He knew at the back of his mind that no amount of surgery could really fix him, but at least they’d be gone.

It was what you did. Right? Everyone who had the money got their wings amputated – unless they were genuine freaks. Normal people took their meds and wore their harness and had the damn things chopped off at the first opportunity.

He knew he ought to shut up about it, but now that he’d started talking it was hard to stop. “At my doctor’s office they have pictures of what it looks like after – there’s hardly even any scarring – if you didn’t know what to look for you might not even be able to tell – that’s really something, huh?”

“Oh, the total pteriectomy,” said Doc. Then a thought seemed to cross his mind. “Did you doctor explain to you how it works?”

“Uh, yeah?” said Marty. “A little.” His doctor had said it’s best to wait till the joints are done growing before you have the operation and some health insurance companies will cover it if the wings are putting undue stress on your body and stuff like that. “They cut ‘em off, I guess.”

“It’s – not quite that simple,” said Doc. “Do you mind if I walk you through it?”

“Sure.” It was best not to argue when Doc wanted to explain anything science-related. “Knock yourself out.”

“There’s – two kinds of pteriectomy,” Doc said, fingers lingering once again on the uninjured wing-joint. “The traditional operation cuts – just around here.” He squeezed, gently, carefully, high up on the joint, and Marty shivered at the sensation. “It’s relatively non-invasive, but it leaves visible, ah, stumps – which is why it’s fallen out of use in recent years of the total pteriectomy.”

“Yeah?” said Marty. “It goes deeper, right?”

Doc’s fingers pressed just under the wing. “The total pteriectomy is a complete removal of the wing joints,” he said. “It’s a much more dramatic surgery.”

“I figured,” said Marty.

Then Doc said, “Did you talk to your doctor about possible complications?”

“Uh, no?” Marty said. “I guess we didn’t really get to that.”

Doc huffed. “It’s a very impressive procedure, medical speaking, but it’s not without risk.” He traced a line across Marty’s shoulder blades, just above his wings. “It’s as I said – this is a very complex structure. Everything inside here is – thoroughly enmeshed, if you get my meaning. You can’t remove the wing joints without damaging something else.”

Semi-consciously Marty touched his bare shoulder. “Like what?”

“Your shoulders – your spine,” said Doc. “The best case scenario is some amount of nerve damage. Most people experience long-term pain and reduced movement in their arms – worst case scenario you could be paralysed –”

Turning fully on the stool to face him Marty said, “Are you trying to talk me out of this or something?”

Doc’s face dropped. “I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do,” he mumbled. “I just think you ought to have accurate information about what you’re getting into –”

“You know I have a real doctor to talk to about this, right?” Marty snapped. “Get off my case.”

Doc muttered an apology; but as he spoke Marty processed what he’d been saying and felt a hot flare of – something, in his chest.

Once two years in he’d asked if he could go back to lower dose of the meds, cause the full dose was making him feel so shitty, and got a lecture about the long term consequences of not taking the medication properly and how if they dropped the dose his wings might start growing again and if that happened it’d be harder to keep them hidden and there’d be no taking it back till he was old enough to get them amputated.

Nobody had said a word about consequences when they’d shown him the surgery pictures.

“You ought to see your doctor about that sprain,” said Doc. “Did you tell him you’ve been getting wing pain?”

“Sure,” said Marty. He’d stopped bothering to mention it after the first few times.

“Oh?” Doc perked up, interested. “What did he say?”

“He, uh.” Marty’s shoulders sagged. “He told me it was normal and to take some Tylenol.”

“Of course he did,” Doc sighed, as if that was just what’d he’d expected to hear; and anger once again flared in Marty’s chest.

“What the hell would you know about this, anyway?” he said. “You’re not even a real doctor.”

“Marty –”

“I’ll get them cut off however I want.” He grabbed for his shirt, tossed aside on the table. His harness, tangled around the legs of his chair. “It’s none of you – goddamn business what I do –” He furiously tugged the harness back on, the familiar straps twisting and tangling in his hands. “I’m gonna – just –”

“Here.” Doc reached for the twisted strap. Mary resisted him, but he tried again. “Here – let me.”

Silently, Doc eased the strap around, helping him adjust it. It still wasn’t sitting right, tugging painfully at the injured wing, but he pulled his shirt back on anyway.

Doc was eying him, tracking his rigid movements. “You know, I’m not sure you should be wearing that thing while you’re injured –”

“Oh, go to hell already!” Marty snapped, and at last – at last – Doc actually shut up. “You have no idea, okay?” he said. “You have no clue what it’s like. Just leave me alone.”

Voice low, Doc said, “You’re right. I’m sorry, I overstepped.”

“Yeah, you did.” His eyes stung, and he wiped at them. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

“I understand.” Doc’s hands found their way once again to his shoulders. “Do you – want some Tylenol?”

He breathed out. “That’d be nice,” he confessed.

He downed the Tylenol. He put his jacket back on over his shirt and began to feel almost normal, sitting on Doc’s couch in front of the TV, legs drawn up to his chest. He picked at the cuffs of his sleeves, trying to ignore the still-throbbing joint at his back.

Doc settled down on the couch beside him, and sighed. “Can I tell you something?”

He plucked at a loose thread on his jacket. “Sure.”

“I spent some time in South America when I was younger,” Doc said.

Marty shot him a look, not sure where he was going with this. “Oh, yeah?”

“Argentina, to be specific,” Doc said. “I was there almost a year, for – well, it’s not really important what for. This was about, oh, 1960?”

He wiped at his nose. “You going somewhere with this?”

“I’m getting there.” Doc changed the channel on the TV from commercials to a chat show and lay back on the couch. “One of my colleagues was a woman – her name was Elena – she had wings.”

Marty tensed in his already tense huddle.

“This was twenty-five years ago, of course,” Doc went on. “The medication wasn’t as widespread as it is now. She’d had no medical intervention at all. They were grey and black, like a pigeon’s – beautiful – really beautiful.” Leaning over with a sigh, he set aside the TV remote. “That was the first time I got to know someone like you.”

“Do you have a point?” said Marty sourly.

“Only two per cent of people in the world have red hair, did you know that?” said Doc. “Less than one per cent have heterochromia – different coloured eyes,” he clarified at Marty’s puzzled look. “About one per cent have wings. It’s all part of the genetic diversity of the human species – it’s a beautiful thing.”

Marty breathed out, digesting that statement. He unfolded himself from his awkward ball and sitting forward said, “Yeah, whatever, Doc. It sure doesn’t feel that way when it’s you.”

Doc nodded, not disputing him. “How’s the pain? Tylenol doing anything?”

He shifted, stretching, and winced as the harness tugged in about four different uncomfortable places at once. “Better,” he said. “Yeah.”

But his discomfort must have shown in his face, cause Doc said, “You know, if – if you ever want a break from wearing that thing, I don’t mind if you don’t.”

God, but for a second the idea of it was almost intoxicating. When he was younger he used to wear it as little as he could get away with. He’d come home from school and go to his room and rip it off so fast the buckles would snap and rattle and stand there almost breathless with relief. Those first few months, back when the harness hurt every second that it was on and pinched and pulled and tugged every time he moved.

He’d got used to it eventually.

Marty huffed. “I do mind, Doc,” he said. “I don’t wear it for other people, It’s just a preference.”

“Well,” Doc sighed. “If you ever change your mind.” He reached for the remote. “You want to watch Jeopardy or something?”

*

Later that night, alone in his room after showering he stood half-dressed, fastening up his jeans, and turning the wrong way he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. There was no-one else up – Dave at work late, Mom and Dad in bed, Linda out – so he hadn’t bothered to harness up in the bathroom and suddenly there they were.

Usually when he accidentally caught sight of them in the mirror he’d cringe and turn away and try and forget it had happened as he tugged his harness back on; but that night, he lingered.

Turning to the side, even as his guts churned, he studied his profile in the mirror. Feathers still dark with water from the shower, clumping together against his back.

He grabbed his shirt from the floor and tugged it on. Like all his shirts it was loose enough to fit over a set of wings. The feel of the cloth moving against them with no harness was foreign and intimate, but it wasn’t bad.

Shifting, he checked himself out from the side again. With the harness on, he looked pretty much normal in a t-shirt – so long as you didn’t know what to look for. Without it there was no mistaking the shape of them.

He adjusted the sit of his t-shirt. He breathed in, and out, staring at his reflection. Well, he thought. Okay.

*

That first day he met Jen, they ended up in the park and lying on the cool grass under the sun, being shoved up against the wall felt a million miles away. They’d been talking about normal stuff – music and schoolwork and last night’s episode of Dynasty – and the tension in his chest had eased.

Jen had taken off her jacket and stretched it out on the grass. He was kind of overheating in his, but it was staying on. She’d flopped down on her back so he was doing the same, even though it was getting pretty uncomfortable. He was trying not to let any of it put a damper on his good mood.

It was going pretty well, till in a lull in the conversation she said, “Can I ask you a question?”

He guessed from her furtive tone what kinda question she meant. Rolling onto his side, easing the pressure on his back, he said, “Is it a wings question?”

Jen’s mouth twisted. “Maybe. Is that okay?”

He shifted on the grass, trying to get comfortable, eventually settling for rolling fully onto his stomach. “Can we please talk about something else?”

“Aw, c’mon.” She nudged him, and her tone was so playful that in spite of everything he kinda had to laugh. “I never met anyone with wings before.”

“As far as you know,” he reminded her.

“Huh.” Her brow creased. She looked away as she thought that over, the breeze catching flyaway strands of hair. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well.”

Jen shifted onto her side. “So are you the only kid with wings at school?” she said. “Or –”

“If there’s anyone else they’re doing a better job of keeping it under wraps,” he said, unable to keep a trace of bitterness out of his voice. Jennifer bit her lip and he guessed at what she wasn’t asking. “You miss a whole month of school when you’re the right age,” he explained. “And then you come back and act kinda cagey about where you’ve been. People guess what’s up.”

“Damn,” she said.

Looking away, he picked at the grass. “I don’t know anyone else like me,” he admitted.

“Really?” she said. “Is your whole family –”

“Yeah,” he said; then hastily he corrected himself. “Kinda. No.” She looked puzzled. He resigned himself and explained it. “My mom was like me,” he said. “She, uh. You know.”

“Amputation?” she guessed.

“Uh-huh.” He rubbed at his face. “Wedding present from my grandparents. They didn’t have the money to pay for it a second time, I guess.”

“Damn,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

He shifted on the grass, overheating in his jacket and trying to get comfortable, and didn’t say that he hadn’t even known it ran in his family till he was almost thirteen and didn’t say that his dad’s medical insurance covered the meds but not the surgery and he didn’t say that even once he was old enough to get a real job it’d be years before he could scrape the money together, because he didn’t want to say any of that. He didn’t.

Anyway, he wasn’t about to dump it all on Jennifer when they’d just met. Jennifer was nice. Jennifer was pretty. For all her probing she wasn’t looking at him the way other girls at school would sometimes. It was nice talking to someone who knew what he was and didn’t act like he was a zoo animal or something.

He breathed deep, tried to calm down his squirming insides, and told himself that if he didn’t at least try he’d never forgive himself. “Hey – listen,” he said, scooting in closer. “Do you wanna maybe – do something sometime?”

“Like what?” she said.

She was smiling but for a moment he was sure she wasn’t getting it and he thought you idiot, that’s not what she’s here for, she just wants to grill you about you-know-what, no shit, no way does she actually like you – but he couldn’t back out now, right?”

He said, “Like a date?”

Jennifer propped her hand up on her elbow and said, simply, breezily, “Sure.”

His breath left him. “Wait, really?”

“I’m free Friday,” she said. “We could go see a movie or something.”

She was smiling at him. Damn, he thought, I want to kiss her.

*

The door of the garage slammed, rattling in its frame, and from across the room Doc called out, “Careful!”

Marty dropped his skateboard heavily to the floor. “Sorry,” he said. “Shit. Sorry.” He didn’t bother to shut the door properly.

It’d been a couple of months since the incident with the battery acid. His wing injury had healed up just fine. One of the straps of his harness had got twisted up at school and it’d been bugging him all afternoon and as he dumped his backpack heavily on the couch it tugged and twisted still further and he grunted in discomfort. “Shit.”

“Everything okay?” Doc called out from where he was busy with – whatever the hell it was he did when Marty wasn’t around – at his tiny dining table. “You’re late.”

“Detention,” Marty grumbled, shrugging off his jacket.

“What’s that?”

“Detention! Doc,” he called out. “I got detention again.”

There was a huff of laugher. “Oh, yes? What’d you do this time?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” He fumbled his suspenders down his shoulders. It’d involved skipping class and if he fessed up Doc would counter his what the hell am I ever gonna need to know trigonometry for with a whole lecture about how important math was to understanding the universe and he didn’t have the energy for that. It had also involved getting caught, and a whole lot of backtalking.

He stripped off his shirt and dumped it on the couch together with his backpack and jacket – and then suddenly hesitant he breathed out, rubbing at his stiff neck.

A chair creaked and Doc’s head appeared, leaning out from behind the shelves. “You sure you’re okay? You sound a little tense.”

“I’m fine,” he spat, acutely aware of how not fine he sounded. He motioned at his chest, the straps hidden underneath his shirt. “Do you mind –”

“Oh – no – go right ahead.” Getting up from his chair Doc ambled over to the fridge. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“You wanna know what the worst part was?” He went to tug his t-shirt off and wrestled with it, teeth gritted, as it caught and snagged on his wings.

“Enlighten me,” said Doc.

“When I got there, he –” His t-shirt came loose and he pulled it the rest of the way off. “Strickland – he pulls me aside and goes this is your third detention in a month, McFly. Someone with your unique challenges ought to be more careful. What the hell does that mean?” He threw aside his t-shirt and reached with suddenly unsteady fingers for the straps of his harness. “Unique challenges. Jesus Christ.”

“He sounds like a piece of work,” Doc remarked, ambling back over.

“He’s an asshole.” He tugged open the buckles with a snap and yanked the whole thing off, dropping it on the couch with the rest of his clothes.

The harness was one of those things where sometimes you didn’t realise how much it was bothering you till it was gone. He sheer relief of the pressure easing was so intense it hit him like euphoria. His knees almost buckled. He swayed on his feet, raking his hands up through his hair, all the anger leaving him in a rush.

“Hey.” A gentle hand touched his shoulder. He looked up. “Here,” said Doc, proffering one of his own shirts.

Doc’s shirts were real big on him – big enough that he could swim in them. Big enough not to press down or tug anywhere. He flopped down on the couch next to his clothes, breathing out, tension finally beginning to ease.

“Easy, now,” Doc said, pressing a can of soda cold from the fridge into his hand. “Remember you won’t have to deal with him for much longer.”

“That’s real easy for you to say, Doc.” He stared up at the ceiling, the soda icy cold in his hand, and said nothing. Beside him Doc shifted and nudged at him with a questioning hm? “I’m just,” said Marty. “What if he’s right, Doc?”

“Right? About what?” said Doc.

He rubbed at his face. “I’m such a screw-up.”

“Oh, Marty –”

“I’m already a freak,” he said before Doc could talk over him. “I don’t need to be a screw-up on top of it.”

Lips pressed together, Doc shoved aside his discarded clothes and sat tentatively on the couch beside him. “You’re not a screw-up, and you’re certainly not a freak,” he said. “Two more years and you never have to see that man again. And then –” He patted Marty firmly on the shoulder. “You’re going to do something great with your life. Trust me.”

Marty huffed a laugh. “Thanks, Doc.” Sitting forward on the couch, hunching in his borrowed shit, he opened the soda. “Whatcha working on?”

“Oh – ah,” Doc stammered. “Just – making some adjustments – very tedious – you wouldn’t be interested.”

“Uh-huh,” said Marty, who’d only been mildly interested in the first place. He sipped his soda. “Need any help?”

“Not tonight.” Doc eased himself off the soda. “Sit tight – get hydrated – and do your stretches,” he said over his shoulder, a touch sternly.

Marty rolled his eyes. “Yeah, whatever.”

Doc busied himself at his workbench. “You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to.”

“Nah.” He flopped fully down on the couch. “The sooner I go home the sooner I have to explain to my mom how I wound up in detention again. Hard pass on that.”

*

When people asked about his mom he’d always shrug and say we just don’t get on – never have but that wasn’t really true. The truth was he could track it back.

It tracked back through years of where have you been – why are you always sneaking around – why won’t you talk to me? – through stop slouching – sit up straight – will you quit whining? – and all the months and months of I know the medicine makes your stomach hurt, it makes everyone’s stomach hurt, stop complaining, it’s part of getting older and why aren’t you wearing your harness? Put on your harness. I always wore my harness when I was your age.

There’s no-one here but us – I hate it – why do I have to wear it when no-one’s even here?

Someone might come to the door. Someone might see you through the window. Don’t you know someone might see you?

It tracked back five years, to a night maybe a week after he’d woken up sweating and burning all over with bone-grinding pains. They were in the bathroom. It was after midnight. Everyone else in the house was asleep so it was just the two of them, him sitting on the toilet seat, tearful and shaky from the last bout and in too much pain to sleep, her kneeling on the linoleum dutifully weathering through it.

His nose had been blocked. He’d been wearing his underwear and one of Dave’s hand-me-down t-shirts that tugged uncomfortably at the stubby, mostly bald joints on his back.

She’d been wiping at his hands. They were covered in tiny pinfeathers, clinging stickily to his sweat-damp palms. His body just kept making more of them, horribly itchy needles that got all over his clothes and his bedsheets and his skin.

“You won’t have to deal with these for long,” she’d been saying. “After a couple of months you’ll fledge properly and then it won’t itch all the time.”

Marty sucked in a breath. He was twelve, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what was happening to him and he knew why it was happening. It wasn’t the first time she’d said something like that – something so obviously from experience.

He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Overhead, the strip light hummed and the extractor fan whirred. She went on wiping at his hand, her gaze fixed on his trembling fingers, and didn’t answer the question. “Does it hurt very badly?”

“Mom.” It did hurt, but he was starting to be able to think around the pain. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Sighing, slouching her shoulders, her hands stilled. “I guess,” she said. “We were hoping we wouldn’t have to.”

She was, unfathomably, mad at him. It was a new kind of mad that he hadn’t seen in her before. Not the kind of mad where she’d yell at him or ground him. The whole week, she hadn’t raised her voice or criticised him or been anything other than gentle. But she was mad. She’d been mad at having to call out of work to take care of him. She’d been mad at being woken in the night by him crying out for her. She was mad at having to sit in the bathroom in the dead of the night, cleaning up after him.

Later – much later, when he was older – he’d look back and realise that she hadn’t been mad at him but rather mad at the whole awful situation. She’d been mad because after her surgery she’d hoped beyond hope that all her kids would luck out and she’d never have to deal with it again. She’d been mad because she’d been exhausted and stressed out and she was stuck taking care of him all by herself. She’d been mad because he was hurting and it was, on a certain level, her fault.

She must have known, he’d reflect, that as cruel as his own body was being to him, the world was about to be a whole lot crueller.

He was twelve. He couldn’t grasp any of that. All he knew was that she was made at him for causing her so much trouble, and all he could do was hate her for it.

Turning over his hands, she inspected them and judged that he was clean. Then taking them loosely in her own, she rubbed her thumbs across his palms and heaved a sigh.

“Well,” she said. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

*

They were in Jennifer’s bedroom, the door shut tight and the music on the stereo turned up loud, and he had no plans of letting up any time soon. Jen’s mouth was soft and yielding and tasted of bubble-gum and her hands were in his hair, fingernails skating against his scalp in just the way he liked, and he’d kissed girls before – of course he had – but he could do this all day.

He tilted his head to the side and slipped his tongue back into her mouth the way she liked and at that she made one of those noises low down in her throat that never failed to make his insides go all gooey. Her hands slipped from his head down to his shoulder, along his spin, pressing him in closer, and he had the presence of mind to shift his hips out of the way so she wouldn’t notice how tight his jeans had got.

He was so distracted, he almost didn’t notice when her hand drifted to his side – when her fingers stroked the exposed skin where his t-shirt had ridden up – when she slipped her hand under his shirt and her fingers brushed feathers.

“Mmph,” he said into her mouth. Grabbing her by the wrist he guided her hand firmly away and broke the kiss long enough to say, “No, thanks.”

He thought that would be the end of it. They went back to trading sloppy kisses. His thumb brushed her cheek, cupping her face. She drew back, nuzzling at him, and laughing shoved him over onto his back. His insides swooped as she climbed on top of him, running her hands down his chest, but before he could really enjoy it she said, “You know, you’re gonna have to let me see them sooner or later.”

“Nuh-uh.” He curled his fingers in her hair and tugged her down for a kiss – and another.

“Mm – no,” she said into his mouth. “No! I don’t care how cute you are, you’re not gonna – distract me with kisses – not again.”

“I am pretty cute, though,” he said. She was giggling, so he was pretty sure it was working.

But after a second, as he was mouthing at her neck, she sighed and pulled away, and taking his wrists pinned his arms squarely above his head. “So, what, are you just never gonna take all your clothes off in front of me?”

He stared up at her. He plastered on a half-smile and did his best to shrug with her pinning his hands. “Looks that way.”

She pouted. “Seriously?”

“What,” he said. “You can have a bunch of fun with your shirt on.”

“You can have a lot more fun with it off.” She released his hands and toyed thoughtfully with the hem of the offending item of clothing. “And a whole lot more fun if you don’t wear like eight of them all the time.”

“I don’t wear eight shirts.” He wriggled, trying to find a polite way to extricate himself from a position he was no longer enjoying. Then her hand slid all the way up under his shirt to toy with the straps of his harness and he stopped caring about being polite.

He squirmed insistently out from under her and sitting up on the edge of the mattress, breathed out. The music was still blaring from her stereo.

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t do that.”

For a long few seconds, he sat there on the bed, acutely aware of her shifting and breathing behind him. The mattress twanged. Abruptly, her hands were on his shoulders. She draped herself over his arm, hands sliding down his chest, breath warm against his neck. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t answer. Reaching up, he took her by the wrist.

Jennifer kissed his cheek. “What are you so afraid of, anyway?” she said. “It’s not a big deal. I’ve seen wings on TV.”

“Mine don’t look like that,” he said. His were – stunted. Stiff and unwieldy. Marked with bald patches where the straps of the harness had rubbed away feathers. Perpetually kinda sweaty from being trapped under his clothes.

“It cannot be that bad,” she said against his ear. “C’mon. I’ll take off mine if you take off yours.” He pressed his lips together. She gave him a squeeze. “You’re tempted,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “Huh?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “No.”

“Oof,” she said. “You’re really serious about this, huh?”

He breathed in, and out. He let go of her wrist. “I just can’t shake the feeling that one day you’re gonna realise what a freak I am and you’re not gonna want to be around me anymore.”

At his back, he felt Jennifer stiffen. She shifted, kneeling up, no longer draped so affectionately over his body. “I wish you wouldn’t say stuff like that,” she said, sounding wounded. “It makes me feel like you think I’m secretly a massive bitch or something.”

His chest went tight. “No,” he said, turning to face her. “No, I don’t think that, I just –” He floundered, not sure how to explain himself.

Jennifer let go of his shoulders and bouncing slightly on the mattress, shifted around to sit next to him. “I’m really not,” she said. “I wasn’t raised to treat people like that.”

He felt – as he did sometimes – a twang of jealousy, for Jennifer’s parents. Jen had parents who didn’t change the channel whenever there was someone with wings on TV and probably didn’t laugh along when her grandparents made snide comments and sure, they didn’t like him very much but he was pretty sure it was because of him and not because of what nature had given him. What did she need with parents like that. She was normal.

He breathed out, running his fingers through his hair. “Sorry for making things weird.”

Reaching for his hand, she said, “Don’t be.”

*

Months after the battery acid incident he wandered into the kitchen one night and blinked, heavily, at finding the light already on, strip bulb flickering overhead, and his father sitting at the table.

As he stood in the doorway, wondering whether to go on in and act like everything was normal or turn tail back to his room Dad looked up and said, “Oh – hey, son.” He put his hand over the glass he’d been drinking out of, nudging it out of sight. “You’re up late.”

It was Friday – no particular reason he should be in bed. He mumbled something about not being tired and went to the refrigerator.

As he was getting out the fixings for a late-night sandwich, behind him there was a clink as Dad fiddled with his empty glass. “No harness tonight, huh?”

He froze in the act of opening up the bread bag. It was an excruciating three or four seconds before he managed to unfreeze himself and reply.

“Is that a problem?”

“No – no,” said Dad behind him. “Of course not.”

He began putting his sandwich together, ears pricked up for every breath and shift behind him. Minutes dragged by, before either of them spoke again.

“We never really,” Dad’s chair squeaked, “talked about this. Did we?”

“No,” he agreed. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d had an actual conversation about anything.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.” He smacked his knife down on the counter and went to open the mayo. It was a new jar. The lid was stiff.

Dad waited a couple of seconds for him to change his mind, then soldiered on. “Does the harness bother you?”

“The harness is fine,” he said, patiently prying at the lid of the mayo jar.

“I know your Mom’s used to bother her,” Dad went on, with a hint of a laugh in his voice, like it was funny.

“Yeah, well,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“That’s real good.” The chair creaked again, and he said, “How are the meds?”

God, he really wasn’t letting up, huh? “The meds are – fine, Dad.” The mayo lid came free with a pop. “Everything’s a-okay.” He thunked the jar down on the counter and splashed mayonnaise onto his bread.

“Well, you know,” said Dad with a sigh. “A couple more years and you’ll be done.”

He could stop taking the meds when he was twenty-one. By then the effects would be irreversible. A voice nagged at the back of his mind, as it did sometimes lately: only four more years till you can’t ever take it back.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s how it works.”

He went on putting his sandwich together and Dad sat silently behind him and for a blissful few seconds he thought maybe it was over.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

Dad breathed out. “I worry about you, you know.” Marty didn’t answer him. “We never talk these days.”

These days. When had they ever been in the habit of talking. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said. “What’s to talk about?”

The chair creaked. He heard Dad heave a sigh. “Well, so long as you’d doing okay,” he said. “It’s – it’s real good that the meds are helping you.”

And at that, the fragile thread of his patience snapped. Slamming his knife down on the counter he said over his shoulder, “The meds make me wanna throw up, Dad!”

At the wounded look on his father’s face, his chest seized and he kinda wished he hadn’t said anything. He grabbed his knife and firmly, stuntedly, cut his sandwich in half.

After a long few seconds, Dad said, “Really? Still?”

He mumbled something reassuring about how it wasn’t as bad as it used to be. Cause it wasn’t. It wasn’t like he was twelve and waking up in the night to puke in a bucket anymore.

Dad said, “I’m sorry – I didn’t know.” He sounded kinda shaky. He didn’t sound like he really meant it.

Marty grabbed his plate. “I’m going back to my room.”

*

It was safe to say things had got pretty weird.

Waking up in a darkened room, his head filled with hazy memories of gunfire and moon shoes and wide open spaces where his house should be, he knew he wasn’t alone, and by some semi-conscious instinct he knew just who was there.

“Mom?” he groaned, into that dark haze. “Is that you?”

She touched his forehead and told him to relax and for a few brief seconds, as she let him babble about time travel, it was almost like being a little kid again.

Then she turned on the lamp.

His first, stammering – frankly embarrassing – thought as he breathlessly took her in was wow, she’s pretty. In spite of knowing exactly who she was it seemed barely believable that she was gonna grow up to be his mother, of all people. Bright-eyed and fresh-faced and innocent.

His second thought – as with a plunging sensation he took in the wings rising from her back – the delicate brown and white feathers – his second thought was oh God, they’re just like mine.

“My name is Lorraine,” she said. “Lorraine Baines?”

“Yeah, he breathed, too flabbergasted to do anything but agree. “But you’re so –” He queasily cut himself off before he could say hot; his eyes went again to those wings. He settled for, “Thin.”

It was only as he tried to get off the bed that he realised, to his horror, that his pants were gone; only a moment later he registered that, maybe more pressingly, he wasn’t wearing his goddamn harness. He hadn’t bothered to put it on before going to meet Doc. It’d been the least of his problems all day but stripped down to his t-shirt there was no way she wasn’t gonna notice and he had no idea how to feel about that. He had no idea how she’d react.

He had no idea what he was gonna do.

A couple of minutes later, numbly, head still aching from the accident, he went downstairs to meet her parents.

“Ah, Lorraine,” sighed his grandma in exasperation, hands on her hips. “Where’s your harness?”

“Aw, mom.” Lorraine breezed past her to the dining table. “I don’t see why I gotta wear it at home. There’s no-one here but us.”

“That’s what I kept saying,” he muttered to himself.

“What was that, Calvin?” said his grandma.

“I, uh,” he stammered, but she’d already lost interest.

Sitting at that table, studying the faces of those decades-younger versions of his grandparents and aunts and uncles, his eyes fell once again on Lorraine’s wings. He’d been wondering how she was just walking around with them out; her dress was made to accommodate them, two big slits at the back. He was trying to work out how you’d get it on when she caught him looking and gave him one of those shy smiles and he turned quickly away.

Suffice to say, he hightailed it out of there at the first opportunity.

*

In all honesty, being in the fifties wasn’t so bad.

So long as he didn’t think about the unbelievable weirdness of having a seventeen-year-old version of his mother coming onto him – provided he didn’t focus on the encroaching existential dread at what would happen if he didn’t fix his mess – if he could ignore the clench like a fist around his heart whenever he wondered if the Doc would still be there when he got home – so long as it was only for a week – it was actually kinda neat.

Doc took him shopping for what he described as some decent clothes and since he still didn’t have a harness the sales rep clocked him pretty much immediately and slightly to his surprise started talking with a sense of palpable eagerness about how they could have his shirts tailored to accommodate. It cost a little extra, which he figured explained the reaction.

It turned out there were a lot more people like him than he’d thought.

In 1955 you’d still see the occasional old person on the street with unmedded wings, out and big and bold. On the way back from the department store a guy caught him staring and gave him a filthy look and he felt like a dick.

Back at the house, he tried on one of his new shirts. He had to fight with it a little, cursing and complaining, till he could figure out how a person was meant to get their wings through the damn slits, but once it was on it didn’t feel so bad.

He buttoned it up and looked at himself in the mirror. He turned to the side and studied his profile. His wings were looking a little better, these days. It didn’t look so bad. He shifted his shoulders, testing the feel of it – the weight of his wings, moving freely.

“Damn,” he said to himself. “That is comfortable.”

Under normal circumstances he’d never have dared go downstairs like that, but these weren’t normal circumstances and anyway, it was only Doc. Doc was about the only person he’d feel comfortable enough with to –

As he wandered into the living room Doc looked up from where he was bent over a book and did a pretty shameless double take at the wings, and Marty’s heart sank. In all the mixed-up weirdness of the past couple of days, Doc was the one constant left to him. It didn’t feel great being reminded that he was looking at a virtual stranger.

Doc cleared his throat. “Good to see you looking more respectable.”

And like that, the moment was over. Coming closer he leaned his elbows on the table and said, “You got a problem with the way I dress?”

“Hm.” Doc turned over a page in his book. “I’m sure it’s perfectly presentable by the standards of 1985.” Marty drew breath to comment on that, but Doc waved him off. “Don’t tell me. Remember, even the slightest knowledge of the future –”

“Yeah, I remember,” said Marty. “Whatever.” He shrugged and winced at the unfamiliar sensation of his wings shifting with the movement. “I, uh. Don’t have my harness.”

He didn’t have his harness, or his meds. It’d been the best part of two days since his last dose and already he could feel them wearing off. The absence of the steady, rolling nausea that had been background noise for the past five years felt a little weird.

“I was wondering about that,” said Doc, eyes on the book. “I had hoped those contraptions had gone out of fashion in the next thirty years.”

“No such luck.” Marty rubbed at the back of his neck. “Where do you get them in the fifties? Cause mine came from the doctor’s office.”

“Oh.” Doc looked up from the book, brow furrowing. “You know, I’m not actually sure.”

“Never been your business?” Marty guessed.

“I might be able to rig something up for you –”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ll deal. It’s only for a week, right?”

There was a heavy pause. Doc didn’t meet his eyes, as he paged through the book. “Well,” he said after a second. “We can cross that bridge if we come to it.” He stole another look at Marty’s wings.

They were shy, curious looks and weirdly he couldn’t help smiling. “I’m the first person like this you’ve met, huh?”

“Well, I –”

“You told me,” said Marty. What’d Doc said? Argentina? Nineteen sixty-something? Whatever. “Some – stuff. Before. I know I am.”

“Ah – yes,” Doc admitted. “Yes, you are.”

“Well.” Marty straightened up and rocked back on his heels. “Quit staring. It makes me feel weird.”

*

“You have wings?”

For a split second, Mart’s blood ran cold. He didn’t have them out – he wasn’t quite so shameless – but with no harness there was no mistaking them and he hadn’t thought anything of slipping his jacket off. It was kinda warm out. It was just the two of them.

He couldn’t speak, but George didn’t seem to notice. His tone had been one of breathless excitement. He darted round Marty to look at his back, unfazed by his attempts to dodge. “That’s amazing,” he gushed. “I never met anyone with wings before – not properly – well, ex-except Mrs O’Sullivan at the grocery store but when I asked her about them she said I was being rude –” As Marty twisted firmly away from him, his face dropped. “Am I being rude?”

Marty held up his hands. “Little bit, George.”

“Sorry,” said George, finally letting up. “I don’t mean to be, I – I just get excited sometimes.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that about you,” said Marty, smiling in spite of himself.

This was not fun, he reminded himself. Nothing about this was fun. It was all deeply, deeply weird and he wasn’t enjoying it.

“Can I – see them?” said George.

He had on one of the wing-shirts they’d got at the department store, with his wings pointedly tucked inside. You could probably glimpse feathers through the slits. That was about all George was getting – for now.

Marty thought over the question. “Uh, one day,” he said, nodding. “Yeah. For sure.”

George accepted that answer pretty readily. “So,” he said, sounding vaguely awed. “What’s it like?”

“It’s –” Whoa, that was one of the big questions, huh? Marty crossed his arms as he mulled it over. What was it like. “It’s,” he ventured. “A lot better than I expected.”

*

“You know, I never met a guy like you before.”

They were sitting in the front seat of Doc’s car. He still didn’t have a harness but his jacket was pretty snug and it was pressing his wings into his back. Doc had tied his tie for him and he was starting to think he must have done it too tight, cause it was way too tight. He tugged at it.

“Uh, well,” he said, in a tone that was aiming for breezy but arrived somewhere more like choked. “There’s lots of guys like me.”

Lorraine gave him an encouraging smile. “I mean I never met a guy like me.”

Without meaning to, he met her eyes. She had her wings tucked into the back of her dress. It wasn’t really built to accommodate them and the joints were pretty visible and it was hard not to keep looking. “Oh,” he managed. “Okay.”

“Have you ever met a girl like you before?” she said, still in that encouraging way.

How the hell was he supposed to answer that? Truthfully, he figured. He shook his head.

She smiled still more brightly and to his horror scooted in closer. He pressed himself against the driver’s side door. “That’s why I wanted to go to the dance with you,” she said. “I figure folks like us have to stick together. Right?”

He plucked once again at his tie. He didn’t like what she was implying. C’mon, Lorraine, he wanted to say. Think of the children.

Actually, scratch that. Do not think of the children. Do not picture – that.

“Marty – why are you so nervous?”

He tried to think how to explain. “Lorraine, uh –” He sucked in a breath. “Have you ever –” To his horror, her hand was creeping onto his thigh. He jerked it hard out of reach.

“What’s the matter?” Her smile was playful, as her fingers brushed his knee. “Don’t you want to?”

“Lorraine, I – ah –” He stumbled to a halt. At a loss for words, he took her hand by the wrist and guided it away. Her face sank and his insides twisted up. “Sorry,” he said, uselessly.

“I guess you don’t,” she said.

Shit. Shit. This wasn’t how the evening was supposed to be going. “No, I – I do.” He sat up straighter in the driver’s seat. “It’s just –”

“It’s the wings, huh?” she said, and she didn’t even sound all that upset about it, just resigned, and he felt like he was gonna throw up.

“No, it – it’s not that,” he protested, but she wasn’t about to believe him.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m used to it.” Her tone was light – she was trying to keep it light – her voice was strained. “I thought maybe you’d be different from the others.”

Something in his chest clenched tight. “It’s not that,” he managed. “It’s – something else, okay?”

“Sure,” she said, suddenly, inescapably bitter. “It’s okay. I guess even a guy with wings doesn’t want a freak like me.”

And at that, he couldn’t take it anymore. “It’s not that,” he said. “You’re not a freak, Lorraine, okay? You’re –” He breathed out. “You’re not.” He raked a hand through his hair. “So we’re different,” he said. “That doesn’t have to be a bad thing, right? Things that are really rare and different can be beautiful. Right?” He looked at her. Her eyes were bright in the darkened interior of the car. “You’re beautiful,” he said, and meant it.

He really shouldn’t have been surprised when, a couple of seconds later, she kissed him on the mouth.

They’d been having a moment, a detached part of him thought sourly. It’d been a pretty nice moment, maybe. And now this. Mostly, though, his mind blanked out with shock and skin-crawling revulsion and he lay pressed against the driver’s side door too stunned to even try and stop her.

Mercifully, after a couple of seconds, Lorraine drew back. The look in her eyes was about as mortified as he felt. “This is all wrong,” she said. And really, he couldn’t have put it any better himself.

“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “But when I kiss you, it’s like – I’m kissing my brother.”

He blinked at her.

She must’ve taken his reaction – or lack thereof – for confusion, cause she said, “I guess that doesn’t make any sense.”

Finding his tongue, he levered himself back up into a sitting position. “Believe me,” he said. “That makes perfect sense.”

For an uncomfortable moment, neither of them spoke. Then on the edge of his hearing there were footsteps, and to his undying relief, someone yanked him out of the car.

*

He’d been planning on sneaking out, but to his surprise, as he made his way downstairs still high on adrenaline and the thrill of performance, his parents were waiting for him.

“Lorraine,” he said. His eyes went, once again, to her wings. He was startled to see that somewhere over the course of the evening she’d made an adjustment; she had ‘em out. He was struck once again by how much they looked like his.

“Listen,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, but George asked if he could take me home.”

Did he mind. Jesus. “Good – great,” he stammered. “You know, I had a feeling about you two.”

Lorraine’s smile was uncharacteristically shy. George had his arm around her. He didn’t seem to be fazed by her wings – of course he wasn’t fazed. She said, “I have a feeling too.”

“Listen, I gotta go,” he said. “But I wanted to tell you it’s been –” He sought the right word. “Educational.”

*

Waking up face down in his bed, bleary and kinda sweaty and feeling like he’d been unconscious for about a week, he actually managed to convince himself that maybe he’d dreamed it.

But then venturing out of his room, it was as if he was still dreaming. The whole house re-arranged. Dave in a suit – in a suit? And mom and dad –

The real kicker didn’t come till he was struggling up from the floor where he’d fallen, stammering, and his mother casually, breezily, shrugged off her jacket.

His throat went tight. “Mom,” he said. “You – your –”

“Huh?” She glanced at him. “What’s that, sweetie?”

“Your wings.” His eyes tracked them. He couldn’t help staring.

“What about them?” she asked. She sounded maybe a little bemused – certainly not offended.

He bit back the million and one things he could’ve said. “Nothing,” he managed. “They’re – really great.”

She smiled at him – a real genuine smile, like he hadn’t seen since – well, since 1955. “Well, thank you,” she said. Closing the distance between them, she kissed him on the cheek. “Good morning, sleepyhead. Don’t forget to eat breakfast.”

*

“You know,” he said to Doc, more than a year after the battery acid incident, a few months into the almost-normal they’d settled back into since everything got weird. “I think maybe I’ll keep them.”

“Hm?” Doc glanced up from his work, eyes wide as if with confusion, like he didn’t know exactly what Marty was talking about.

“You know.” Marty inclined his head back, at his own wings. “I think maybe I’ll keep them after all.”

It was pretty hard to miss the way Doc’s face lit up. “Oh,” he said, sounding almost breathless. He ducked his head back to his notes. “Well, you know. Whatever you decide.”

“Yeah,” Marty agreed, already breathing easier for having said it out loud. “Thanks.”

Doc glanced at him. “For what?”

You know damn well what, he didn’t say. “For being here,” he settled for.

Months before that conversation – a little while after he finally made it home – surrounded by darkness and soft grass and the soft water lapping against the shore of the lake, he and Jennifer were having a real nice time.

“Mm.” Pulling back, with deep reluctance, from her mouth, he kissed her cheek and said into her ear, “I think I wanna do this.”

“Well, I sure hope you wanna do it,” she said underneath him, her tone teasing. Her toes crept up the exposed skin of his calf where his jeans had ridden up, and he shivered.

“No,” he said. “I mean –” Sighing, he extricated himself, kneeling up. His eyes almost brushed the roof of the tent.

“Marty?” She pushed herself up into a sitting position. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He probably didn’t sound fine. “I’m good,” he said, meaning it. “I’m really, really great, Jen.”

“Oh.” She reached for his arm. “Then why’d you stop?”

“Cause I wanna do this,” he said. And breathing out, summoning his nerve, he slid his suspenders down his shoulders and made to take off his shirt.

Jennifer caught his wrist. “Wait,” she said. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to –”

Slipping his hand out of her grip, he said, “I really want to.”

He pulled his shirt the rest of the way off and reached for the hem of his t-shirt. Getting it off was a lot less dignified than he’d hoped – he had a whole lot of stuff back there for it to snag on – but after a not totally humiliating amount of wriggling, it came off; and there he was.

 She was looking at him and in the semi-darkness of the tent it was difficult to make out her expression and clutching his t-shirt in his hands he was struck by a sudden burst of nerves. He plastered on a smile. “Okay?”

Kneeling up, Jennifer reached for him, hands tracing softly, ticklishly across his abdomen, not daring to move further back, and that skin-to-skin contact had him breathless. “Can I –” The question dangled but he knew what she was asking.

“Yeah,” he said. “Go on.”

Not waiting for any further invitation, she kissed him, her mouth soft and wet against his; and as they kissed her hand found its way back to his wings and the feel of her fingers trailing through feathers was firm, and new, and grounding, and he thought yeah. This is gonna be okay.