Kris-Centric
Continuity: Chapter 4

#2: Friendly Reminder

Kris woke up two weeks before his 13^th birthday feeling utterly miserable.

He had spent the last three nights doing anything he could think of to try to stop himself from scratching his wings, which were itching fiercely, and he’d gotten at most four hours of sleep combined. He had two exams tomorrow, he hadn’t studied for either of them AND he had been told that until his wings stop itching he wasn’t allowed to fly. Even the fact that today was their day off from lessons couldn’t cheer him up at all, because he knew he would spend it in the library trying to study.

Kris dragged himself out of bed and stumbled into his clothes. He decided to head straight to the library and skip breakfast (or was it lunch now?) and just eat at dinner, not that that food in the Sanctuary was appetizing to him at all. He fought to keep his hands away from his wings and to keep from feeling too miserable. He tried forcing himself to remember how awful he’d felt a few months ago when he had broken a bone in his wing, and reminding himself that the pain from then didn’t even compare to the itching now. Kris was so caught up in his exhausted thoughts that he didn’t even realize he was being followed until he finally got to his favorite reading chair in the library and felt a tap on his arm. He turned around to see little Sehun smiling up at him.

“Here you go,” the eight year old said brightly, holding out an armful of fluffy black feathers, a few of which drifted lazily to the floor. Kris stared at them in confusion, unsure of what Sehun meant by giving him feathers.

“You dropped these,” Sehun explained, glancing at Kris’ wings. Kris looked behind him and flexed his wings out. Upon further inspection he did notice that he had lost many of his downy feathers.

“Oh,” Kris sighed. “Thank you, baby,” he said, patting Sehun on the head. “Just put them on the table then, I’ll take care of them later.”

Sehun did as he was told, and Kris expected him to scamper off again, but instead he hung off of the arm of Kris’ chair and looked up at him curiously. “Why are you dropping your feathers?” He asked.

Kris caught himself scratching his wing and mentally slapped himself. “Because I’m molting,” He muttered darkly, slumping down in his seat.

“Like a bird?” Sehun asked.

“Yes,” Kris confirmed. “Like a bird.”

Sehun nodded slowly. “Does it hurt?”

Kris froze, wondering if he should answer honestly. Did an eight year old really need to hear that yes, it hurt like a thousand little pins being stuck into his skin? Was it right for Kris to lie when he was so obviously unhappy?

“A little,” he finally said. Sehun frowned in concentration and quickly shuffled off. Kris was a bit startled by his sudden departure, but shook it off and turned back to his books, now covered in little black feathers. He was so distracted by finding a way to keep from scratching that he read the same sentence four times over a span of about ten minutes and still had no idea what it said. That was when he was interrupted for the second time. This time it was by Suho, who sat down on the armrest of Kris’ chair and gently patted his head.

“Sehun told me you weren’t feeling well,” Suho said. “Are your bones hollowing out again?”

Kris shook his head. “Molting. My old feathers are falling out and being replaced with new ones, and it ing hurts.”

He dropped the curse word without even thinking about it, and was glad that Suho didn’t call him out on it. Instead, he just asked if Kris had gone to see the healers.

“Two days ago, and they gave me some kind of cream to use but it didn’t work,” Kris sighed. “They can’t do anything for me, really. I’m just not supposed to scratch them.”

Suho looked at him nervously. “Then you might want to stop scratching now.”

Kris froze when he realized he had both hands behind his back and was raking his nails through his feathers. He quickly pulled his hands back around, only to find them covered in blood.

“Oh no,” he whispered, horrified.

Suho jumped up. “It’s okay,” he said, hauling Kris to his feet. “We’ll just go to the Healers and ask them to sort you out—”

Kris slumped back down into his chair and put his head down on the table. “You don’t understand,” he muttered desperately, “They’re going to kill me.”

“What?!” Suho demanded. “Who?”

“I made myself bleed, Suho,” Kris yelled, now close to tears. “They told me to be careful and don’t even touch them if I could help it and now I’ve gone and scratched so much I’ll probably get an infection and  they’ll kill me. Then I’ll spend the entire day in the Infirmary and they’ll make me rest and I won’t have time to study and then I’ll fail my tests tomorrow and Teacher will kill me and then I’ll probably be grounded from unsupervised flights and then I’ll kill me—”

Suho clapped his hand over Kris’ mouth. “Okay now you’re hysterical,” he said flatly as Kris started crying.

“I’m dead,” he mumbled against Suho’s hand.

“No you’re not,” Suho insisted, taking his hand away and pulling Kris back up. “Now come on, I’ll take you to see the healers.”

“No,” Kris whined even as he let himself be dragged along. “I just said I’ll be in major trouble for this!”

“No you said they’d kill you, not that you’d be in trouble,” Suho corrected. “Neither of which is true by the way.”

Kris very much doubted that but he didn’t say so because he was too tired and upset to argue further. He didn’t say anything either when they got to the Infirmary, let Suho do all the talking while he stared at his feet and let the tears gather in the corners of his eyes.

The senior healer took him over to one of the beds and gently helped him out of his shirt before she started examining his wings, moving the feathers aside and clucking her tongue when she saw the blood.

“Well it’s probably not infected,” she assured him, “We just need to clean it up a bit. Have you been using the cream we gave you?”

Kris nodded, afraid that if he tried to talk all he would do was sob. He wanted to go curl up under his blanket and sleep for the whole day, or even better he wanted to go home.

Another healer stood behind him and started to clean the blood away, using some kind of medicated liquid that smelled like dirt.

“Is this a feather?” She muttered, tugging it a bit to see if it was loose. Pain shot up Kris’ wing and he cried out, startling everyone.

“That was not a feather,” he gasped through fresh tears.

“Is that skin?” The senior healer muttered, now hovering over him. Kris shut his eyes and braced himself for more pain. Blindly he reached out to grab the sheets and found himself clutching Suho’s hand.

“You can squeeze really hard if it hurts,” he told Kris. “Chanyeol does it a lot, so I’m used to it.”

Kris actually remembered Chanyeol saying something similar when his bones had been hollowing, and he was sure the connection was no accident.

“Well,” Kris heard the senior healer say, “This is an interesting development.”

“What’s wrong?” Suho asked. “Is Kris going to be okay?”

The senior healer knelt down and wiped the tears from Kris’ face. “You’re fine,” she said softly. “You’re going to be just fine. You have special wings, that’s all.”

“How so?” Suho asked.

One of the secondary healers brought out an old book and gave it to the older woman, who flipped to a page of various wing diagrams. “It turns out that your wings aren’t actually Ave-like as we had originally thought. They’re much closer to Dragon wings.”

“How does that matter?” Kris asked, finally finding his voice.

The senior healer gave him a sympathetic look. “Well, it means that the skin on your wings is going to have to toughen up, and that can be an irritating process, as you’re finding out. We’ll probably have to keep you here for a few days to make sure everything goes accordingly.”

Kris groaned and fell on his side, burying his face in his pillow. “I’m doomed,” he muttered.

The other healers brought him some kind of drink which was laced with sedatives, and even though he had a thousand things to do Kris drank it without complaining, because he knew that there was no arguing with these women when they had a patient to deal with. He was knocked out for a better part of the day, and when he finally woke up it was because Suho sat on him.

“Oomph,” he said as the air rushed out of his lungs. Blinking sleepily, he tried to wriggle away from the other boy. “Ge’ off me.”

Suho shoved at Kris’ shoulder. “Scoot over, I’m tired too.”

Kris shuffled an inch or two to the side and Suho flung himself at the mattress, landing on Kris’ arm as he did so.

“I think we’re a little big to be sharing this bed, don’t you think?” Kris asked dryly. Suho huffed and shoved him.

“Is that anyway to talk to someone who spent the entire day running around for you?”

Kris gave him a puzzled look and Suho ruffled his hair. “I talked to Teacher, he said that under the circumstances he agrees that you deserve an extension on your test date. It’s two weeks from now, which should give you plenty of time to heal. Then I went to the library and collected all the books you’ll need, but you can only have them when you’re better! Oh, and just before I came here I got Tao, Kai and Sehun to go to sleep.”

Kris stared at Suho in amazement. Suho grinned at him and tugged the quilt up over the pair of them.

“You know Kris, don’t have to do everything on your own,” Suho told him gently. “We’re in this together.”

“Yeah,” Kris agreed, laying his head on Suho’s shoulder. “Thank you for reminding me.”

In this AU I picture Kris as the leader who stresses over everything and who winds up pushing himself too much, and then Suho has to pull him back and remind him that there's two leaders for a reason :)