Work Text:
It was the day after training camp, the day before the end of break, when everything had went downhill for Bokuto Koutarou. He was in the car, with his mom, his dad, and his older sister. It was a nice drive! They were going to the beach, actually, driving from Tokyo to the east where they’d be staying at a rented house on the beach.
And then the car came.
It was a minivan, Koutarou will always remember. White. A Honda. Slightly scraped front. A driver who was asleep but then suddenly woke up and tried to break as his car drove past the redlight at the intersection.
It plowed into Koutarou’s side of the car. The back of the car too, where he was sitting. He felt the car hit him, both the van and the metal of the car he sits in, glass spraying and cutting into his face, into his neck, everywhere. And there was blood and he couldn’t breathe and it hurt so much and the car was flipping over and everything went black-
And then it was white, and he was kicking, screaming, because it hurts even more , and then suddenly he’s under again.
When he woke up...he was alive. His sister was clutching his hand, sobbing. She didn’t need to say anything to know what had happened, with her being the only one in the room. He gently reaches out a hand with an IV attached to it to place it on her head, hair black just like his own, ruffling it weakly.
“I’m sorry Kou” she chokes. “I-I’m so sorry.”
It was only later that he realizes what had happened, looking at himself in the mirror with grown out hair. It had been...a month? A month he’d been unconscious. His hair, once black and streaked with white, was now the other way around, with how his roots suddenly grew white and his eyelashes and eyebrows are suddenly the same color. Trauma his sister told him, which is what the doctor told her since she’s now his legal guardian. It’s uncommon but not rare.
His sister made it out of the crash relatively unharmed. His mom died before the ambulance could come. His dad died on the way. He himself, his back had been broken. By all means he should be paralyzed, but they did something to him. He had a sprained wrist which healed while he was in a coma. No one came because his sister didn’t call anyone besides the school. He’d have a few scars now, light, on his arms and chest and back.
But he looks in the mirror, with his head turned to look over his shoulder at the mirror, at the sprouting feathers on his back. He reaches a hand behind him, feeling at new bumps on his back. His sister squeezes his shoulders with a sad look on her face, her eyes already aged so much, looking older than someone should at twenty-five.
“Magical healing” she said. Magical healing...forbidden by the government because of how few people could do it and because of how unstable it is, having all sorts of side effects, since how they heal, scientifically, is by somehow altering the genetics in that area to heal in a way humans cannot, permanently changing the person.
One week later, when he’s finally taken home, is when the wings, large and white and soft, emerge.
The government paid for him and his sister to continue living where they had been living, being close to both his school and her work. And he...experimented. Flapping them. Tucking them. Wrapping them around him and his sister when both of them would wake up due to nightmares. His phone had somehow survived the crash, albeit with a cracked screen, so he took the time to go through all the texts and voicemails, matching the messages turn from delivered to read .
“Hey, sis” he says one day, putting on his uniform. She had cut his hair back to the proper length for him, spiking it up in his usual style since he was too nervous to do so properly. There was only a few strands of black left, overtaken by the greyish-white he used to dye it, now the color of his natural hair and the wings that sprouted on his back. I’m not all human now he thinks humorlessly.
When Koutarou arrives at school, his sister taking the train with him, an earlier one so he doesn’t run into friends he can’t face so early in the morning, he walks through the gates on his own. Conversations stop and eyes turn towards him. He keeps his eyes ahead, walking up the steps to his class. He swallows. Konoha is in the same class as him-he’ll have to face him at least.
He studied when he could, since he really couldn’t do anything else. His metabolism has sped up so it made his required calorie intake much higher but also allowed him to regain quite a bit of the muscle he lost while in the coma. Less than before, but at least he isn’t just skin and bone now.
“B-Bokuto!?” He hears someone say. His wings twitch from where they’re wrapped around himself. The thing with magical healing isn’t that the subject of it is punished- only the person doing the healing is. There are a few people in his school who have been healed magically- there’s a boy with puppy ears, a girl with a dogs tail. Heck, even Akaashi! He’d apparently been blind at birth but he got his sight back, but it’s too good now so he sometimes has to wear contacts to make himself see worse.
It’s just...he got lucky with wings, according to the government agents who looked at him pitifully and made him edit his own personal information to include the fact that he’s...altered. They look nice, they’re actually useful. But his parents died. He got out of it alive and with something some would think of as a superpower.
He’s going to go to practice. To play or not to play, that’s for future him to decide, but what’s he going to do in the changing room?
“Konoha!” He grins. “Hey hey hey, how’re you doing?” Konoha takes the seat next to him, blinking. Then he punches him in the shoulder.
“One month!” He exclaims. “What the hell!? All the teachers said when we went to ask is that you were going to be gone for a while due to personal reasons. What, did your parents send you to a disciplinary camp or something?” He jokes. Mom. Dad .
Bokuto looks away. He bites his lower lip, taking a deep breath.
“Car accident” he says, hands tightly gripping his arms in a painful hold. “My parents are dead. My sister has custody now. I’m sorry I couldn’t-” he breaks off “Coma. A few weeks. But I-I’m fine now.” He takes his stuff out of his bag, laying out books and pencils and pens.
“Oh my gods, I-I’m so sorry” Konoha says. “Are...are you coming to practice?”
Bokuto nods.
At lunch, he’s assaulted by his teammates. None of them ask about what happened, which he’s happy for, and Akaashi gives him a knowing look. Konoha probably told him.
Then in the locker room….he just gets it over with.
His wings help push the shirt off after he unbuttons it, barely catching it. Feathers ruffle themselves, tendons stretching from being cooped up for so long, and he can feel eyes on him.
“My spine broke” he says without looking because he doesn’t want to see the disgust, the steps away they take, the humor because they might think he’s trying to prank them-
“Bro, that’s...that sucks but...they’re so cool” he hears one of his teammates say.
“Aw, I wish I broke my back!”
“Idiot! Don’t wish that!”
“Can I touch? They look so soft”
“Bokuto-san” he turns, looking at Akaashi. He can tell the boy has his contacts off because he can see the deep blue of his eyes, much more reflective than a human’s with little threads of white. “It seems like we match now” he says.
“Yes we do!” Koutarou proudly exclaims, running over and hugging Akaashi.
“B-Bokuto-san!” He splutters as he wraps his wings around the two of them. “But a shirt on!”