concealing ➸ tomlinson

xvii

 | "the devil is real. but he's not a little red man with horns. he's a fallen angel, and he used to be god's favorite."- violet, ahs season one |

the sleep was disrupted by a strange, strange dream.

kris was placed in a countryside covered in snow. it was night, and one couldn't nearly see anything except for faint shadows. where was this?

then, suddenly, she heard the crunching of shoes on the snow. kris turned to see a small figure stumbling along the road. totally unaffected by the weather, kris started to hurry towards the person. she made it two steps before she just... stopped. it was as if her legs just decided to quit working on her. so she just waited for the figure to come to her.

it was a little boy, maybe eight or nine years old. the closer he got, the more horrorstruck kris became. there was a large bruise on the child's forehead, and a small line of blood dried down the side of his face. his big blue eyes stared straight ahead.

kris watched the boy, wearing a thin hoodie and jeans, stumble through the snow until just inches away from kris. then he sat down and started crying. his chest shook with sobs; weakly, he pounded at the ground with his fists. kris wanted to comfort him, but her voice was unable to work. all she could do was spectate.

the little boy used his sleeve to wipe away the blood from his nose. he murmured something that sounded like “stop crying, stop crying”. the wind howled, flinging snow into the child’s face. he barely flinched.

suddenly, kris heard another voice. she turned around. a beam of light cut through the storm. another small figure hurried towards the boy, appropriately dressed for the weather.

“holy cow, are you trying to catch frostbite?” the kid asked, shining the flashlight down at the first boy.

he squinted into the light. “no. i can’t.”

“you cant? what are you, jesus or something?”

“no?”

the boy glanced over his shoulder, then back at the child on the ground. “look, my mom’ll kill me if i don’t get back inside soon. now you might be okay with becoming a popsicle, but i’m not. now c’mon."

he held his flashlight between his shoulder and neck, took off his jacket, and put it around the smaller boy. after helping him onto his feet, they began walking back to where the second boy had come from.

"god, you're insane. and you look like someone beat you up with a frying pan. who'd you tick off?"

before either young boy could continue, kris felt the cushioned seat pressing into her side. reality.

the plane was shaking again, rather violently so, and the first thought that came to her mind was that they were crashing. but crashing would've meant screaming and chaos, of which, of course, there was none.

kris finally opened her eyes and lifted her head up. zayn, madison, liam, courtney, and niall were all still sleeping. louis was awake, though he didn't look like he had been so for very long. harry was flipping through a tan folder, feet propped up and hanging off the side of his seat. it felt uncharacteristically quiet.

slowly, the plane shaking intensified. there was an unnerving bump, a more shaking, and the plane began to slow before finally stopping. harry closed the file, stood up, and whistled painfully loud.

zayn was the first to react; he groaned, picked a shoe up from the floor, and blindly chucked it. "fuck off."

"morning sunshine." harry walked over and ruffled zayn's hair. "okay guys," he addressed the growing grumbles and groans. "we're landed. we have twenty minutes to wake up fully and get socially presentable." he handed louis the folder. "lou, you're in charge of filling everyone else in as we change."

louis rubbed his eyes. "sure, whatever."

as harry walked off, kris then smiled sheepishly at louis. "he's a bit of a morning person, then?"

"unfortunately."

liam sat up, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. "alright, so what's the plan?"

louis's eyes flew over the text. "alright, our lead building is near the other side of town. estimated that there are twelve of our kind- so to speak- there. all we need to do is sneak in and sneak out without getting caught; i don't know, maybe break for a margarita." he shrugged. "and all we're supposed to do before sundown is get used to our surroundings."

"and if we can actually get shit done," harry cut in, coming back from the bathroom while putting his arms through the sleeves. "we might just be able to get back before breakfast tomorrow."

kris didn't have a solid piece of information about this entire endeavour. all she could seem to gather was that people like them were being held in a building by people in the government- for some reason- and this meager group of eight was supposed to do something about that.

simple, yet hopelessly complicated.

"so, where first?" kris asked, finally sufficiently awake enough to ask a relevant question.

louis double-checked the file in his hands. the cut across his cheek was still bluntly obvious, but no one seemed to be asking questions.

"the source of our problem." he answered, "secret government building number one."

hi not dead sorry for not updating lmao