They can tell just by looking at me.
Sometimes I hang out with too many people like me. Too many Faunus. They make me feel some sort of way, like it's okay to look like this. So I ease off my tailcoat and hang it on the wall, undo the straps of my bindings, and stretch my wings. They ache, but they can finally breathe, and it feels so good and so normal.
I hate binding them, you know? Hours at a time, it's constant tension that I can feel. Because it's not just having wings that makes them painful, it's how they always want to move. Flaring out when I'm anxious, as if urging me to fly. There aren't feathers anymore, only the porcupine shards where they should be. They ruffle in the breeze, digging into the tender skin. My joints constantly ache from being held back, cooped up.
But the scary thing is when they're bound, when they're wrapped up, and somehow people can still tell. I mean, I'm not sure if they know that it's wings they're looking for, but they know that I'm sloppily hiding something.
Nobody else at the meeting wore a tailcoat. Instead they wore light summer outfits, showing off the smooth skin of their backs. One complained about the heat of her windbreaker, how work was cold and the room is sweltering. I kept my mouth shut; it didn't feel that cold to me. I was used to the warmth.
My roommate is...barely a Faunus. She's got double ears, small enough to hide under a well-placed hat--or in her fashion, a bow. It's weird, cause she always passes for human, so she really gets treated like one. And yeah, it must suck, I'm sure. God, it's rude of me to say that she's barely a Faunus. She is a Faunus, she can just hide it that well.
It makes me mad, you know? That she can just wrap it up in a bow and that's all. Sure, her hearing feels muted, whatever. My back hasn't stopped aching in years.
She figured out that I'm a Faunus pretty quickly. She was kind about it. I don't think that's going to last very long, to be honest with you. It feels like one of these days, she'll notice that she can blend in with humans, and once I take these bindings off, I can't.
I already can't fit in too well. They see the way I'm anxious around heights, the way my animal instinct kicks in and I want to fly away. Fight or flight, what the hell is a bird going to do?
I don't want to do that to her. Ask her to associate with me for more time than she's contractually obliged to. Not when I'm like this. It's not just looking like this that's an issue. Looks can be repaired. No, it's the fact that it's a part of me. These instincts are as natural as breathing.
I just wish I was human. You can't meet Faunus here, and when I do, there's no guarantee they'll like me. No guarantee that they won't prefer being around humans, or lock me out because they only like Faunus that can be hidden, that can be fixed.
You know, I kind of hate the way she looks at me. She treats me like, like she can't even see me the way that they see me. Like my wings aren't even visible. I come home and shuck my coat to the floor and she can see the mangled, reddened skin, and the cracked beginnings of feathers pushing through it. She can see how ugly they look, and it's like it means nothing. Like she couldn't picture me without them.
I guess I hate it because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that it's going to hit her one of these days. That I'm a Faunus above all else, and I just happen to be faking being human enough for her to think highly of me.
It confuses me. She sat across the floor from me today. Gleaming green eyes trained on me, as if she was fully taking me in, as if she'd never seen me before. Why? How can she look me in the eyes, knowing full well that my eyes are unlike hers, that they can see every detail from a great distance, even things she's not aware of. The darker strands of hair on the back of her neck, the way she doesn't quite fit into a crowd because her gait is slightly faster... doesn't she know that I'm looking? Doesn't it creep her out?
Why is she nice to me when I am so inherently repulsive? I don't give a good first impression, and she's met me day and day again, impression after impression, rewriting the story of us until we're in this weird sort of middle ground where I'm bursting at the seams wondering if she likes me at all, and all she does is treat me like I exist.
Are people so unkind to me, that treating me with the respect one would give a human feels like love? Sometimes I think it's impossible that she doesn't love me in some regard, with the way she talks to me for hours at a time, pushing aside her work so she can see me, reminding me again and again that she likes talking to me, as if it's a dizzying feeling welling up inside of her and all she can think is to say it aloud.
Maybe that's just how humans treat humans. Maybe she treats me with the same respect that one would give to someone who's meant to be here. Though neither of us are quite humans. She's been raised like one, and I guess that's close enough.
