Chapter Text
Kris is bored.
Asriel had checked his watch and told them it had only been 10 minutes sitting in the pews listening to the pastor droning on, but Kris knew he was wrong. They knew it had been 5 years, maybe 10. Kris thought god was a little boring to be honest. Who was so cool you could talk about them for 15 years straight?
Kris, instead of staring at the unchanging popcorn ceiling of the church, turned their attention to the family of deer next to their papa on the stiff benches. The Christmas’? It didn’t particularly matter to Kris, as long as they were more entertaining to stare at than the crosses over all the doorways.
There was a blond boy around Kris’ age that came in with the family, clearly part of it from his snout and wide doe eyes. Where was he now? The only kid sitting by them was an older girl, who kept trying to tug at their tight collar despite her mother’s insistence in slapping her hand away. Kris tugged at their own tight collar, and momentarily thought about just taking the whole shirt off before thinking better of it. Mama would be mad.
As the time dragged on, not even the Hanukkah family could keep them entertained. As they slowly lost patience for the man dragging through his words at the front of the room, they considered just asking to use the bathroom. Mama wouldn’t be mad about that, right?
Kris tugged on mama’s sleeve, and she turned to them.
“Yes Kris?” She whispered. Why whisper? It wasn’t that interesting anyway.
“I need to go.”
She tilted her head. “Do you know where it is, baby?”
They didn’t. “Uh huh.”
Mama must have believed them, as she tucked her knees in and shifted back on the pew to give them space to move past.
“Alright. just be quiet on your way, ok?” She requested.
Kris nodded, shuffled past Mama's legs, and made their way down the hall where they assumed the bathrooms were. Not like they really cared where they ended up anyway.
…
Somehow, the hall was even more boring than the main room. Just a bunch of closets, and any bigger doors that surely led to something were locked (read: too heavy for a six-year-old).
They were just about to give up and head back the way they came when they heard a sniff down the hall. Then another. Was someone crying?
As they followed the sound, they spotted a little sign on the wall next to the door: three figures, one plain, one in a dress, and another sitting on a ball(?). Huh. They had found the bathroom after all.
As they pushed open the door, much lighter than the others, the crying got louder. They wandered toward the stall at the end of the line, and found the door unlatched and swinging with the subtle wind from the vents. And- oh. It was that deer boy they had seen earlier. He was sitting in his high-collared button up and crying on the floor of the stall, interrupting himself with hiccups and sniffs. They should pat themself on the back for being an awesome detective. They would have to tell Asriel.
The deer boy eventually glanced up from where he was crumpled on the floor in front of the toilet. He flinched when he realized he was being watched, wiping his wet eyes on his sleeves in embarrassment.
As he stared at Kris like a deer (hehe) in headlights, they suddenly realized they should probably say something. What should they say? What would mama tell them to say in this situation? Ask what happened? Ya, mama would tell them to ask that. They also happened to reeaaally want to know, but that wasn’t the point.
“What happened?” They finally blurted through their indecision.
The question seemed to reignite his tears, and Kris started to regret asking as the volume of the room increased, but he calmed himself rather quickly this time.
“Mommy keeps- she keeps calling me ‘he’ a-and I’m n-not a he!” He(?) stuttered through their sentence, voice quaking and finally breaking as they finished and curled back into a ball.
What were they then?
“What are you then?” Kris asked, scuffing their shoes against the tile floor.
Their ear flicked, and they finally seemed to uncurl. As they trained their gaze back on Kris, a smile broke onto their damp face.
“Can I tell you a secret?” They ask, and who’s Kris to say no to a secret?
They close the distance between the two and and crouch down in front of the blond.
The deer child cups their hands over their mouth and, not very quietly,whispers to them.
“My name is Noelle, and I’m a girl.”