The Gifts -Narry Storan-
Chapter 1
Harry was the first to wake up. It was dim where he lay, and he could hear the sound of other people breathing around him. He sat up so fast he hit his head on the bed above him, and his forehead throbbed along with his chest, which was tight from the gas and the anxiety and the pressure of the events. He didn’t know what to do, so he rolled quickly, and found himself on his feet in a padded room. He didn’t realize that he was barefoot until his feet hit cold, tiled ground. He looked down at himself, and saw he was dressed in a one piece long sleeve and long pant legged green onesie. He reached up and was relieved to feel his familiar bunching curls and when he ran his hands down his face he found his small little nose and his arching eyebrows. He was even delighted to feel the little pizza face pimples that are hidden by his fringe and covered with spot cream at night.
He finally looked around him. The walls were the color of marshmallows, and the tile was the color of clouds, a kind of white like milk but not solid. In then he noticed the bunk beds. Two sets, and one set was triple layered, and every single bunk was occupied by a sleeping person. Their eyes were closed, and their arms lay atop the covers, and everything was without worry or wrinkle. Their faces were slack, and their mouths were closed, and their eyelashes lay like crescents on their cheeks. Harry stood in the middle of the room, spinning with his mouth agape and looking at the group of boys surrounding him.
“Hello, ace, where the hell are we?” A voice asked, and a blond sat up from the bunk on the far left wall, he was the top most, third bunk. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes were a little too wide and they were just a little too big for is slim face, and he was sort of pale too.
The silence was shattered, and Harry watched as the boy descended the ladder hooked onto his bunk and dropped lightly onto his feet. In then he tripped, stumbling over his own toes and Harry held out his hand without a thought. Niall stopped mid-fall, with his arms wind-milling, and to anyone looking it might appear someone had stuck out their arm and it had hit the blonds’ chest, but Harry just flexed his index finger and forced the boy back into a standing position.
Niall stood with his hands fisted by his side in a puzzled amazement, and his eyes accented the royal blue color of his onesie. It made him look thinner and willower than he was in originality, and his little stick arms looked even smaller in the too-big clothing, and Harry looked at him like he might a child.
“What’s your name?” Harry whispered, and noticed the welt on the back of Niall’s head, it was swollen and purple, but it had been cleaned up and an ace bandage taped onto it, wrapping around his whole head with a safety pin clipping it together near his left ear.
“Niall, and, you ace, what’s yours?” Niall asked, his voice a little weaker than before, his eyes scanning the bunks and the tile, and then trailing up the wall towards the ceiling and for a second a silence settled on the pairs shoulders.
“Harry, where are we?” Harry questioned, and watched the little blond in front of him with curious eyes. The blond was searching, looking at the other boys with an unreadable expression.
“I have no idea, ace.” Niall said, and his little face was just this swirl of misplaced information. “Ace, I want you to look me, right in my eyes, alright?” And when Harry gave him a strange look Niall grabbed both of his shoulders in his small hands, and narrowed his doe eyes, “Okay, please, don’t look away.” And Niall looked right into Harry’s eyes, the color of gems and grass and the ocean when the sun filters through it and mixes with the mud that coats the ground thickly. And Harry doesn’t know what’s going on, but his body is engulfed in fire, in then dunked into ice water, and his body is tingling and full of fear and hope and he can do nothing but look right into Niall’s eyes and listen to his heart pounding hard in his chest. When it stops, and he can feel Niall’s hands digging into his shoulders, a wave of relief washes over him and drowns him as he stands in front of the shorter, smaller boy and tries to pick up the pieces of what just happened.
Niall is looking at him with eyes the color of white sand, in then the color of drying cement, and all Harry can do is breathe in deeply through his nose, and out through his mouth and scramble around in his fried brain.
“You, what did you do to me?” Harry demands, stumbling backwards and hitting his back against the too soft wall and puts a hand to his chest, trying to calm his fluttering heart. His breaths are coming out in pants and he slides down onto his butt, and after a few seconds his heart calms and his breathing regulates and his mind un-clutters. But the feeling of disarray lingers in his heart.
Niall stands in the middle of the room and touches the bandage wrapped around his skull, “Well, ace, you’re like me,” His words are breathy, “All of us we’re just, we’re all just,” He looks off into space for a few seconds and his eyes are wide. In then he erupts into a series of wispy giggles and clutches his stomach and Harry staggers to his feet drunkenly, “All of us. All of us, Ace, they’ve holed us up here because we’re all…” He looks around and drops into a silence that is so thick Harry can feel the air squeezed out of his lungs..
“Gifted, individuals.” Harry decides that Niall is fairly insane. He drops in and out of conversations and his eyes are looking at you, but really they are somewhere else, and the stillness is interrupted by the sound of a drawn out groan.
Zayn Malik bolts up, covered in sweat, and with the tucked away fear of his nightmare. The blanket pools at his lap and his first instinct is to lash out with his feet because he’s so… Restricted. Instead he tosses back the thin brown duvet and stumbles to his feet. His toes stick to the cold tile, and he looks up and looks around and realizes he’s got a sleeveless onesie on, and his feathers are breathing and slick with his own sweat and there must be slits cut into the back of his shirt.
He sees’ two boys standing in a corner, shoulders touching, and one is almost not human because his eyes dominate his whole face and they’re frightening and the boy beside him has his hand raised like he’s telling Zayn to stop. But Zayn is braced and he’s twirling wildly and he’s trying to take in his surroundings and he just doesn’t… Understand.
“Where am I?” Zayn demands, “Where the hell am I?” He races forward, stubbing his toe on the ground and skipping a step as he races towards the two boys, “Tell me! Tell me, now!” The winged boy demands, and pushes Niall, bracing his hands on the younger boys’ chest and making a deep pitted animal like growl.
“Ace, would you mind waving that little hand of yours?” Niall asks, teetering backwards as Zayn persist in his veiled rage. Harry does nothing but raise his hand and twitch his fingers, and Zayn is thrown back with such a force his back slams against the wall a good fifteen and a half feet away. He wheezes a few times, in then collapses onto his knees and unfurls his wings to the best of his abilities. They stretch out, and the massive thirteen foot wingspan from tip to tip makes his beautiful wingtips touch both walls, the top feathers brushing the pads on the far walls. He flutters them a few times, a zing of pain shooting through his sensitive wing tendons as they strike the wall with too much force.
“Oh, oh my god he’s got…” Harry says, sinking to his knees and cradling his face in his hands. “Bloody hell he’s got wings!” Harry cries, and runs a hand through his thick, mahogany curls, pushing the fringe out of his eyes and hunching his shoulders.
“Yes,” Niall whispers bluntly, advancing, crouching in front of Zayn and saying, “Wings, look up, look up at me, and look into my eyes.” Harry stares at the two, and closes his own eyes, the familiar tingle running up his spine in remembrance of the way it felt to look into Niall’s eyes. “Don’t be scared, and whatever you do, don’t look away.”
Zayn does, and his feathers seem to ruffle when brown meets blue and he does nothing but stare with his jaw unhinged and falling to the floor. When you’re watching, it seems like nothing but an intense staring match, and Harry finds himself hypnotized by the way Zayn withers and makes muffled whimpers and Niall remains still as a statue, crouched and poised on his toes. When the process is done Zayn puts his palms on the tiled floor and breathes in deeply, his chest rising and falling unevenly as he recovers.
“How did you know?” Zayn huffs, and tries to gulp in the air of the room and Harry wonders if there’s enough air to live on in the semi-large space. “How did you know about my sisters?” This time his voice is a bit more frantic, and his eyes are a bit more wild in the fluorescent lighting of the room.
“How did he know what?” Harry trills, finding his voice and finding his feet. He holds out his arms to steady himself and a gust of air blows Niall’s hair back.
“Nothing, ace, nothing.” Niall says, and watches Zayn with his eyes as he stands up and towers over the smaller boy. “Now, Wings, what is your name?” Niall’s voice is soft, and his eyes are collecting information and Harry feels a chill because now the boy knows everything about Harry and the boy with the wings and feathers.
“Zayn, Zayn Malik.” The winged boy states, and rises to his feet, letting his wings roll up like a rug and tuck into his spine as he does so, and when he stands up straight he reaches out his bare arm and pumps Niall’s hand.
“Well, Wings, this here is Harry, and I am Niall.” Zayn nods and looks at Niall, walking over to stand on the balls of his bare feet beside Harry. Niall stands in the middle of the room, and bows his head, and for a few minutes no one speaks because Niall’s power is frightening, even though it is not physical, and before Liam even begins to shuffle, Niall is padding over to his bed and standing beside him. And when Liam’s eyes open, and he lays eyes upon the blond in the royal blue onesie, and the brunette in the green onesie, and the raven haired boy in the sleeveless brown onesie, he almost laughs because this has… just got to be a dream, right?
In then he looks into Niall’s eyes and nothing else matters except blue, blue, blue and the fire swallowing his whole body and when it’s done he’s sitting up and standing up and looking at the threesome of people and trying not to cry. Liam climbs to his feet, and his knees are visibly knocking together.
“Where am I?” He puts a trembling hand to his head, “The last thing I remember is putting on my gloves and..” He looks down at his hands and everyone but Niall notices the leather gloves for the first time. Niall had already known they were there. “Then someone put a bag over my head and why am I, why am I here?” His voice pitched at the end and he dropped heavily onto his butt, bracing his elbows on his knees and cupping his cheeks.
Niall kneels down in front of him, and it seems like he’s official greeter, and he takes Liam’s hands in his own and looks right into those eyes of his, and when you compare Zayn’s jumper color to Liam’s, you notice Zayn’s are about three shades lighter.
“Ah, lads, look, our jumpers match our eye color, how exciting!” Niall says clapping his hands together in glee because god, he’s got to be psychotic, and looks at Liam again.
“Please, let me go home, where am I?” Liam begs, and looks sort of like a kicked puppy with his pink lips and brown eyes.
“Mate, I think this might be home.” Niall says, and he stands up and helps Liam to his feet, and they can hear the creak and groan of springs as Louis wakes up for the first time. You can see Louis head before you can see his face, because he must’ve shifted to his stomach and all you can see is an awful cowlick and a head of brown hair, and when he lifts his hands to rub away the sleep in his eyes everyone can see the sparkle and shimmer and Harry feels this drop in his stomach because they’re all here for a reason.
“Wait..” Louis begins in a voice that is almost comical, “Mum? Stan? Where am-?” In then he’s leaning over the side of the bed and takes in the sight of the four strangers beneath him and he begins to cry.
Niall walks forward and climbs the ladder up to Louis bed and kneels in front of him, and Louis meets his eyes and he looks so surprised that he jerks his face away.
In then he collapses onto his back and shouts out in pain three times, before going completely limp on the bed.
“And that’s why, lads, you don’t look away.” Niall says in then climbs down to the floor and Harry avoids his gaze at all costs. “Ace, bring him down.” Niall demands, and sits on the ground with his legs folded underneath him and watches as Harry lifts his hand to bring the unconscious boy on the second bunk down.
“My name is Harry!” Harry says as he sets Louis on the cold tile, and watches as a line of drool hooks at his chin and drips onto the floor beside him.
“Whatever you say, Ace.” In then Niall looks away and is asking Zayn about his wings and Harry is left with this feeling in his gut and the need to look right into Niall’s eyes again.