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thrashff · 7 years

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30 Days of Therapy

Pairing: Min Yoongi x OC (female)

Synopsis: Min Yoongi has a lot of issues, but doesn’t everyone? Fortunately for him, it only takes thirty days of therapy to fall back in love with the world—and maybe even a girl while he’s at it.

Warnings: Depression, angst, anxiety, dissociation, depersonalization disorder—basically a lot of mental health issues and coping mechanisms and everyone tries to deal as best as they can. If you’re triggered by any of this, please please please don’t read this. Also, cursing.

Word Count: 20k (ish, please don’t hate me)

A/N: Istg this wasn’t meant to be so long -___-; I was possessed, possessed I tell you!

Disclaimers: Canon compliant, takes place around October 2017. I know that the official schedule says they’ll be in Japan and Taiwan, but this is a fanfic. Let’s suspend reality for bit, yeah?

The words at the beginning of each segment are from Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby. Plot has nothing to do with the novel, but they touch on a few of the same themes. Apart from that nothing really, except the quotes felt like they fit.

Enjoyyy~ <3

#ProtectMinYoongi

[“We’re the culture that cried wolf.”]

Day 0

Anger fucking management.

Yoongi has turned the idea over and over in his head countless times and it still doesn’t sit well with him. He doesn’t even have anger management issues; what he does have an issue with is stupid fucking Jungkook thinking it was a good idea to bait him into a game of chase by taking one of his external hard drives as hostage.

How was Yoongi supposed to know that pushing that chair out of his way would break the entire mirrored wall of the dance studio? He wasn’t, that’s how. Because it had been an accident—one of those freak of nature things that tended to just happen as an accumulation of bad luck and maybe even worse karma, which Yoongi was now of the personal belief he had a lot of.

But, of course, no one had believed him. Nope, not Yoongi; not the moody, unstable problem child in their already strange pseudo-family. If it had been Namjoon no one would have batted an eyelash, instead saying something about the “god of destruction” fondly and letting it slide. If it had been any of the maknaes, people would have petted them on the head and sent them off with a stern warning. Of course, Seokjin would never break anything he could see his own reflection in, and Hoseok was far too superstitious to be anything but careful around mirrors. That left practically everyone thinking the worst of him, sending him to a month-long crash course in anger fucking management.

The mere idea makes him angrier than Jungkook’s stupid stunt.

[“Until you deal with your real personal issues, you’ll never be able to control yourself.”]

Day 1

A long week later, their crazy schedule finally winds down enough to be adjusted. Enough to free up most of his evenings from 8-10PM for 30 days of therapy that he’s 100% sure he doesn’t even need. But still, here he is, trudging into the function room of a university office building on a Thursday night he could be spending at the Genius Lab instead, black facemask over his nose and mouth and bucket hat pulled low over his eyes, Manager Sejin frowning as he trails after him.

Yoongi tries to soothe himself with the fact that he’s lucky to have talked himself out of one-on-one sessions. Yoongi would dance, wear make-up, preen in front of the cameras, put on animal ears fans brought him—hell, he would even make a fool of himself on national television; but the one thing he would not do was talk about his feelings to a stranger for two hours every night.

Group therapy wouldn’t be so bad, he tries to convince himself, albeit a little half-heartedly, as he walks through the empty halls, leather shoes clacking on the polished linoleum. At least he won’t be the only problematic one in the room—if his problems are even that bad to begin with. For fuck’s sake, doesn’t everyone have issues?

He lets out a little scoff at yet another double standard that it seemed only applied to him, pausing right in front of the double doors with “Dr. Kim Yejun” taped on the front. He takes a deep breath to steel himself and finally pushes them open. Thirty days. It’ll be over before he knows it.

[“The story behind the story.”]

Yi Jihoon is six foot five and built like a brick wall, broad shouldered and barrel-chested, but he’s already in tears as he introduces himself and explains that he hadn’t meant to trash that bar when he caught his girlfriend cheating on him. He’s a good person, honest. He can’t even remember the incident, blacking out with rage. That doesn’t count, does it?

Nae Minjun looks like a rat and is just as twitchy, all of 19 years old and constantly flicking his fingers over a battered, gunmetal Zippo lighter that has seen better days; flick, flare, snap. He’s in therapy because he’d thought breaking into a garbage dump and starting a 25-foot bonfire there had been a good idea. He also doesn’t look the least bit repentant about it.

Dong Gunwoo looks like an average, middle-aged, stressed-out businessman, still dressed in an exquisitely tailored suit from the office. Indispensable to his company, they’re sending him to therapy because no one is willing to work with him thanks to his tendency towards violent outbursts over the smallest infractions.

Sam Lee is the only girl in the group. She looks like she’s in her mid-twenties, same as Yoongi, but in South Korea it’s always hard to tell. When it’s her turn to introduce herself, she merely shrugs and tells them she’s here to make the rest of them look sane and normal in comparison. Yoongi smirks behind his facemask at that. Dr. Kim doesn’t look entertained.

Then there’s Yoongi, the idol with the “unhealthy coping mechanisms.” Manager Sejin cuts in then; they won’t mind signing this non-disclosure agreement, would they? Of course not. A standard contract, they can spare ten minutes to read through it. Yoongi is fine. Yoongi is normal. He’s just been under a lot of pressure lately and is eager to learn how to deal with his feelings in a healthy manner.

Yoongi doesn’t know why he had even bothered to speak at all. His management team would take care of it. He’s already half hoping that Manager Sejin will attend all of his sessions with him.

By the time all the documents were signed (it took Minjun three attempts before he gave back a copy that wasn’t burnt at the edges) and Dr. Kim had finished his introduction speech on how anger was normal, healthy emotion, forty-five minutes had passed and they were allowed to take a twenty minute break.

Yoongi stands, stretching his sore legs (the new DNA choreography was no joke). Interrupts Manager Sejin and Dr. Kim’s hushed conversation to ask if the perimeter is safe, if he can step outside for some fresh air. Manager Sejin nods—no, he doesn’t need to take security, they’re the only ones in the building. Yoongi bows, taking his hat off and slicking his silver-blue hair away from his forehead. A quick glance around the room tells him Jihoon is attacking the stale donuts with a vengeance, Gunwoo is talking heatedly to someone on the phone, and that Minjun and the Lee girl have disappeared.

He sighs and makes his way to the exit, pulling his facemask down to take in a couple of deep lungfulls of the crisp fall air, the feel of it enough to calm the constant stream of complaints he’s muttering in his head. He loves this time of year—leaves changing, the world slowing down to make way for winter, the scent of cold heavy on the air.

Although he doesn’t quite remember it smelling so sweet and… pungent?

He scrunches his nose, frowning, already following the odd smell. He turns the corner of the building to find Lee leaning against the chain link fence lining the building’s perimeter, her hands shoved into the pockets of an oversized knit cardigan the color of snot, a cigarette dangling from her lips. She raises an eyebrow at him, and Yoongi stops in his tracks. Of course he isn’t used to the smell of cigarettes—none of the Bangtan boys smoke them. And if anyone on the production team does, they do a good job of hiding it.

He makes a face. “Those are bad for you,” he tells her bluntly.

She laughs, and it’s an odd sound that stays ringing in his ears afterwards; somewhere between a chortle and a cough and a bark all at the same time. He doesn’t know if he likes it or hates it. “You could say that about anything,” she points out. Her hair is ragged at the ends and several different shades of brown under a black bowler hat; heavy vintage eyeglasses on the tip of her nose, catching the lamplight.

Yoongi decides she could be pretty, if he squinted a bit and looked past the baggy clothes. They weren’t even oversized in a fashionable way—she looked like she had gotten dressed in the dark in a thrift store that carried nothing but the worst of the 90s.

“Besides,” she continues, seemingly oblivious to his scrutiny, the unkind thoughts in his head. “We’re all here because we’re bad for society. Don’t fit the status quo. Measured and found lacking. What’s one more bad habit they need to fix?”

Her tone is balanced, even. Like she’s telling him something she’s said a million times before. Yoongi can tell—he’s used to reading from a script.

He probably shouldn’t, but the smell of the smoke she’s exhaling smells sweet to him and he walks over, leaning on the fence and mimicking her posture. Lord help him, but it’s nice to be around someone who isn’t falling all over herself, asking to take a selca together. Someone who isn’t perfectly polished, the way everyone is these days. She isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine, but he finds he doesn’t quite mind. Neither is he.

Lee just watches him from the corner of her eye, smoking her cigarette in silence.

“So what are you really in for?” he finally asks, unnerved by the quiet. His studio is always full of music and home is always filled with people. There are always so many things to do and not enough hours in a day to get them done and he tries and fails to remember the last time he’s simply stood and done nothing—not even speak.

She lights another cigarette, taking a deep drag. They both watch the smoke dance in the heavy air for a few moments, until Yoongi chances a glance at her face. Her expression is almost entertained, as if he had made a joke that only she was in on. “Like I said, I’m here to make the rest of you look good.”

He snorts and turns back to watching the empty concrete parking lot in front of them. “Yeah, like you’re worse off than the sociopath or the pyromaniac.”

“Everyone has problems,” she laughs. “You’re only here because you forgot to be perfect for five minutes and actually let yourself feel something.”

Yoongi starts at that. He’s used to being the one doing the psychoanalyzing, not the other way around. If anything, he had expected it to come from Dr. Kim—not one of his fellow fuck-ups. He won’t admit it, but she’s right. It had felt good to throw that chair out of his way, to hear glass breaking; it had felt even better to chase Jungkook down like prey, a growl in his throat and his limbs pumping to chase after him. The thrill had been different from being on stage, which was all carefully calculated and choreographed down to the twitch of his lips and the movement of every finger, but it had been a thrill nonetheless. It had been the first honest thing he’d done instead of said in ages.

He’s so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice she’s been watching his expression change, his emotions dancing on his face in a way that he isn’t used to showing around people, especially strangers.

She laughs again, starling him. That odd, barking laugh that slides into the empty space between their bodies like a bridge, like something familiar and warm and alien all at the same time. She ditches her cigarette butt and crushes it under a booted heel.

“Weird, isn’t it, when you realize being alive and feeling alive are two different things?”

She pushes her glasses back up her nose, throws him one last look over her shoulder as she makes her way back towards the doors.

“See you inside, popstar.” She says the last word in English, her accent clean without any hint of Korean.

Yoongi stares after her, wondering why his heartbeat is suddenly loud in his ears.

[“The story of how we met. How we got here.”]

Jungkook is the one to pull the door open when the van returns to pick them up. Grinning wide from ear to ear, slightly oversized front teeth prominent, an apology in his eyes.

“Hello, hyung! I’m here to treat you to dinner!” he greets, leaving Yoongi with no other option.

The older boy narrows his eyes at him, but he’s too spent to give him a full-on glare. “You’re a little shit, you know that?” He hasn’t quite forgiven Jungkook yet, but after spending two awkward hours opening up to a bunch of strangers, he has to admit he was glad to see a friendly face. Even if it does belong to the person who had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

Jimin’s head appears over Jungkook’s shoulder, eyes wide. “Was it that bad, hyung?”

Yoongi glances behind him, watching as the rest of the group filters out into the night. Dr. Kim is standing in front of the doors talking to a still sobbing Jihoon, Minjun is sitting on the steps on his phone, fire flaring between his fingers every few seconds, Gunwoo is powerwalking to his parked sedan and Lee is leaning against a pillar, already smoking another cigarette. Watching him.

Manager Sejin places a hand on the small of his back, urging him to continue on towards the van. Two people from his security detail trails after them.

Yoongi shakes his head, irrationally annoyed all over again at all the fuss the situation has caused. He pushes Jungkook’s head back inside the car with one hand. “It’s fine,” he huffs. “But if you’re treating, I want lamb skewers.”

Jungkook’s smile returns, and he lets out a little sigh of relief at Yoongi’s lack of threats as he makes room for the new passengers. “Sure, hyung. All the lamb skewers you want.”

Yoongi tries to listen to him and Jimin’s conversation, but his chest is tight and he can’t help thinking back to Lee’s words. Mostly because they don’t make any sense. What the hell had she been talking about? He is alive, therefore he feels alive. Doesn’t he?

[“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up.”]

Day 5

“I listened to your music,” Lee tells him, sitting cross-legged on a concrete parking block behind the building.

It’s a Wednesday evening, and over the last couple of sessions it’s become a habit, him following her out back and keeping her company as she smokes. Yoongi likes habits, likes patterns. He finds comfort in knowing that when they take a break, he’ll be able to follow her out back and stand or sit in companionable silence for twenty minutes out of a normally hectic day—starts looking forward to it, even. The quiet is strange, but a good kind of strange. Like an empty house full of old memories.

In any case, it’s a welcome reprieve from always being ushered from one thing to another.

Her dogeared, worn copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s Lullaby is sitting heavy in his jacket pocket. He’s already halfway through since she lent it to him over the weekend, despite it not being translated into Korean. She hadn’t said a word when she’d tossed it to him on Friday night, simply smirked and disappeared into the evening.

He pulls himself from thoughts of dead people on television laugh tracks and how unreasonably small that makes him feel. He stares down at her, slightly surprised by the admission.

Lee isn’t normal. Well, none of them in the group are, per se; it’s why they’re all there to begin with. But she’s a different kind of not normal. She has a strange, roundabout way of saying things, if she even bothers to talk at all. Instead she minds her own business, keeps her nose stuck in a book and smokes cigarettes the way other people breathe oxygen.

And if he thinks he’s plagued with indifference, Lee takes it to a whole other level. It isn’t that she doesn’t care about a lot of things, the way Yoongi more often than not found himself unable to—it’s that she cares about the strangest things to almost an obsessive extent. Over the course of their sessions everyone has opened up about their pasts and personal histories, thanks to the sharing segments led by Dr. Kim—even Yoongi. But Lee would sit there and talk passionately about a book or a movie that had been, in her words, transformative. The manipulation had been so subtle that not even Dr. Kim had caught on yet. She would talk about things she likes, not about herself or who she was. Never about that.

Yoongi should have found it exhausting, should have considered it unfair that he was playing by the rules and she was playing a completely different game. Instead he’d found it entertaining.

Most importantly, she has no idea who or what BTS even is. His pride had felt a little rankled when he realized she wasn’t just trying to be cool; that she really had never heard of them. But he was mostly just relieved. It’s nice to have someone who doesn’t expect anything from him, not even small talk.

“Yeah?” he finally mumbles into the collar of his jacket. He stops himself from asking for her opinion, reminds himself that she’s still virtually a stranger. Her opinion doesn’t matter; their position on the charts does. That mentally settled, he doesn’t know why he’s still watching for her reaction.

She nods thoughtfully, taking a drag of her cigarette. “You have a habit of using your name in your verses.”

The observation startles half a laugh from him, his eyes going wide. “I do. Huh.”

She smirks, still staring at the side of the building like there’s a message hidden in the concrete cracks. “It’s… cute.” She scrunches up her nose, and Yoongi pokes her shoulder with his knee in retaliation. ‘Cute’ wasn’t his favorite word. “No, really!” she says, almost defensively, pushing his leg away with one hand as she glances up at him. It’s the first time they’ve made physical contact, but the moment goes by unremarked upon. “It’s like, if you say your name enough times, people will remember it. Remember you. It’s very subtle conditioning. I’m impressed.”

He shakes his head, fringe falling into his eyes. “Nah. My name just rhymes with a lot of things,” he admits, the corners of his mouth tugging into a small smile.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?” He reaches a hand to the back of his neck, stretching out a kink there. He’s tired, and when he’s tired he’s distracted. He doesn’t know why she’s so talkative tonight but doesn’t complain. He thinks it might be because he enjoys the sound of her voice, but that would be weird, so maybe he just enjoys a conversation that has nothing to do with work. Yeah, that sounded about right.

“Being three people at once,” she huffs, pulling herself to her feet and turning to face him, shoulder propped against the fence he’s leaning on. It’s the first time he pays attention to her face, and he realizes he’s never seen her wearing make-up before. Her raggedy hair is pulled into a knot on top of her head, cat-eyed liner behind thick frames, artificial blush coloring her cheeks. Almost pretty, he thinks absently, but not quite. He’s used to being around idols, after all.

“What do you mean?” he prompts, unable to stop an eyebrow from going up.

“Min Yoongi, Suga, Agust D,” she rattles off, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “Which is the real you?”

He scoffs, staring up at the clear, cloudless night sky. “Different versions, same person—just like everybody else. You adapt depending on who you’re talking to, and I adapt depending on the situation.”

“Nah,” she says, staring up as well, as if she’s looking for whatever’s gotten his attention. “I’m only ever just me. It’s exhausting.” She gives a heavy, dramatic sigh. “You have it so easy, being a popstar.”

A muscle in his jaw ticks in annoyance. “Stop calling me that. I’m a rapper.”

“You’re a rapper in a seven-strong boy group that performs choreographed dances to the squeals of teenage girls. You’re a rapper and a popstar,” she corrects. He can hear the smirk in her voice, can feel his hackles raising at the mocking tone he swears he hears there.

He huffs, crosses his arms in front of his chest. Feels his face twitch with annoyance. “Thanks for clearing that up for me. And here I was, having a mild existential crisis over it.”

She laughs, and he wonders if the sound has become the third person in their conversations because she’s the only one who ever does it. “Pleasure to be of service.”

“Do you get off on psychoanalyzing everyone you come into contact with? Or should I feel special?” he asks, knowing he’s being short with her but not caring. Something about the whole conversation is just rubbing him the wrong way. He isn’t out here for her candor, he’s out here for the silence. At least, that’s what he tells himself.

Suddenly he hates her, just a little, for not understanding. For not picking up on his tone and understanding that he doesn’t want to talk about it. For taking a sudden step into the space he wants from her.

Suddenly he hates her, just a little, because he doesn’t know which is worse: her silence or her opinion.

She scrunches up her nose again, making her glasses slide to the end of it. It annoys him, how she doesn’t adjust them immediately, like a normal person would. “Nah, just you.” And she’s grinning like it’s meant to be a compliment instead of slightly creepy.

“It’s fascinating,” she continues, a hint of excitement coloring her normally flat tone. “How much you must go through in a day. At what point do you push back? At what point are you like, stop, I don’t want to be this product anymore, I want to be a person again. How does it feel to be part of mass brainwashing? Perpetuating this impossible standard of being? Have you ever over-compartmentalized to the point that you lose track of the boxes, like you’ve lost against a street magician’s sleight of hand?”

Yoongi’s fists clench at his sides, his limbs shaking as she speaks. She’s rambling. Rambling as if he isn’t standing right there, listening to her talk about him like a specimen under a microscope. As if she’s known him for more than six days, as if she knows anything about how much he’s sacrificed to get to where he is. Who did she think she was, to pass judgment like this? To even talk about him when she had no idea who he even was two days ago?

“You don’t know shit,” he hisses, cutting her off. She turns to him, open-mouthed. He doesn’t realize that he’s looking that closely, but he can see that her pupils are blown, eating up what’s left of the brown in her eyes. “You don’t know fuckall about me, so don’t talk about it like you do.”

“I wasn’t talking about you,” she responds, voice low but still clear as a bell between them. “Just, you know, the idea of you.” She waves a hand through the air distractedly, as if that were sufficient explanation.

“I’m not an idea!”

“Everyone’s a concept.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Invention.”

“Look, Lee.” He spits her name like a curse. “I don’t know where you get off, but if you’re going through some weird bullshit existentialist crisis, don’t pawn it off by psychoanalyzing me.”

She hunches her shoulders as he takes an angry step towards her, a look of hurt passing over her eyes. She shakes her head. “I just-” She glances at the corner of the book, poking out of his jacket pocket. “I thought you got it. My mistake.”

Without another word she rushes back inside, leaving him shaking with anger, his heart thudding painfully in his chest.

What the fuck had just happened?

[“We’re all of us haunted and haunting.”]

Day 6

It isn’t until Yoongi is lying in bed that night, starting at his ceiling in the dark and replying their strange argument over in his head, that he realizes he might maybe understand what she was trying to say. He’s tired—so tired that the last thing he wants to think about is conditioning and concepts and the capitalist machine he’s found himself a cog in, but here he is, thinking about it. All because some strange, possibly insane girl had said it was fascinating. That he was fascinating. Like all of it wasn’t just how things were, like they meant something more than plain old reality.

Sure, his reality was very different from a lot of other people’s. But he had worked hard for this. Any recognition at all was better than where he was seven years ago, physically, emotionally, artistically. He loves it, every crazy, impossible, unreal minute of it. What was she seeing that he couldn’t?

Sure, half of it is a construct, but isn’t that a given in the entertainment industry? With media in general?

And yeah, if he’s being honest with himself the line between Yoongi and Suga has been getting blurrier and blurrier with each passing day, but doesn’t that just lend authenticity to the stage persona? Suga had been his idea to begin with, a way to cope with having to market a polished, desirable version of himself instead of just, well, himself.

Suga is just Yoongi on overdrive. Suga is confident, self-assured; he doesn’t have time to listen to haters and their criticism, doesn’t care if they thought he was a sell-out. Suga hits his marks 110%, never misses a cue, mugs for the cameras and makes good music. Suga is consistent. Suga had struggled, beaten his demons. Suga’s better now. The best. Suga has the fans, the recognition, the spotlight. Suga knows who he was, what he stands for.

And Yoongi is….

His train of thought stalls, careens to a full stop. Who is he these days? Where the fuck were the lines drawn anymore? Are they still even there?

He knows Suga’s story by heart because it’s his; the underground rapper from Daegu who starved and worked his ass off for his dream and made it big despite it all. But thanks to the years of constant exposure, he realizes that the little things that make him Yoongi—how he curls up into a ball to sleep, his habit of biting his pens whenever he writes, the way he slips into satoori when he isn’t paying attention, every mannerism and every detail that make up who he is—somewhere along the line, all of those things have become Suga’s characteristics instead of his.

What is left of Yoongi? Suddenly something inside of him snaps, like a twig in a flame, and he understands. Suddenly, he gets it, what she had been trying to say in her weird, roundabout way. Being three people at once, she’d said. People expect certain things from two of the personas, Suga and Agust D. But does anyone really expect anything from Yoongi anymore?

Maybe the boys? They do, after all, know him best after all these years. It’s a dance as meticulously choreographed and practiced as any of their stages, coexistence and dealing with everyone’s individual quirks. But Yoongi is just Yoongi—boring, broken, and a little bit battered by life. It’s why Suga and Agust D were created in the first place, because people don’t want to know about him at all.

They don’t want normal, they don’t want real. Nobody wants average. They want him magnified by a hundred, the kind of gigantic presence to be expected from an idol. Hell, even his problems are always blown out of proportion, from how he deals with his depression to his sexual preferences.

Except her. Maybe. All she’d asked was which version was real, as if there was no possible way all three could thrive, let alone exist, in one body. She’d wanted to know about Yoongi himself. Not about Suga or Agust D.

The thought is slightly terrifying.

Almost as terrifying as it is frustrating, because he isn’t sure he can answer the question. Suga and Agust D had taken up so much of his time, so much of who he was, that he isn’t sure there’s much left outside of it all. And that’s okay, isn’t it? It’s not like he even really cares about much beyond his career anyway—why would she?

Yoongi doesn’t want to think about why, he’s just trying to survive what and how. Trying to balance where and when without failing everyone around him, without losing sight of his goals. Trying to stay in form without burning himself out. He doesn’t need to understand how he’s keeping his shit together—the only thing that matters is that he does.

He doesn’t want to understand at all, he just wants to be.

Which version of himself, he isn’t sure. He tells himself it doesn’t really matter to anyone else but him in any case.

No one but him and, apparently, the weird girl in his therapy group.

He groans and rubs both hands over his face, knowing that his thoughts are circling back and if he doesn’t stop them now, they’ll keep wearing him down until he wants to scream. A cursory glance at the alarm clock, glowing an eerie green on his bedside, tells him he’s been thinking for two hours straight now, leaving just four left before he needs to be up for a full day of shooting.

He scowls. He doesn’t need to be thinking about this shit. He just needs to play nice, keep his head down, clear therapy and things will go back to normal. Normal, where thoughts like this don’t keep him up until the wee hours of the morning. Normal, where he isn’t constantly daydreaming about running until his heart wants to beat out of his chest, laughing like there aren’t cameras trained on him at all times, screaming until his throat is sore.

He grabs a pillow and burrows his face in it. If he wants normal, the answer is simple. He needs to stay away from Lee.

[“The best way to waste your life is by taking notes. The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch.”]

“How’s therapy going?”

Yoongi looks up to find Hoseok standing over him, a small, mellow smile on his face in contrast to his usual hundred watt one. Yoongi grunts, continues his futile attempt at trying to stretch and touch his toes without pulling a muscle.

“Eloquent, as usual,” the taller boy quips, dropping down and spreading his legs, soles propped against Yoongi’s as he takes his teammate’s hands and pulls him towards him to help stretch him out. “It’s not that bad, is it?”

“You sound like Jimin,” Yoongi complains, slightly breathless from being bent over. “It’s not. The doctor’s nice. He makes sense, anyway.”

“How are the other people in the group?” Hoseok asks, starting to go into his own stretching routine.

Yoongi shouldn’t feel annoyed, really. He knows Hoseok is just checking in, being a good friend and seeing how he’s doing, but after tossing and turning the entire night with thoughts of before and after and who and what going through his head, the last thing he wants to think about is going back to therapy that evening.

“Mental,” Yoongi decides, satisfied with it as the most accurate word to describe them, the entire situation. They have about half an hour left before rehearsals start, so he kills the time by telling Hoseok about Jihoon, laughs at ever being driven that insane over a girl, how Jimin should take it easy with flirting with fans before he falls for one. About Gunwoo, unable to filter his own mouth, and they laugh about how thank god Taehyung has learned. About Minjun setting fire to everything he touches, how Yoongi is getting a little paranoid and now wants to keep matches away from Jungkook, since they’re about the same age.

He doesn’t tell him about Lee. He doesn’t feel ready to talk about her just yet, doesn’t know where to even begin explaining what she’s like and how she’d sent his brain into overdrive. He’s closest to the rap line out of the entire group; there’s no need to worry Hoseok, who has a tendency to fret about the smallest things.

“Is it helping?” Hoseok asks, rising to jump up and down on the balls of his feet.

“Helping what?” Yoongi mumbles, getting onto his own in a much less energetic fashion.

“All the talking you must be doing.” Hoseok looks around the rehearsal space distractedly. “You won’t admit it but you’ve been kind of distant, hyung. Like you haven’t been all here lately.”

Yoongi scoffs at that, pulls his facemask back over his mouth. “I’ve been here the whole time, Hobi. And it’s not like I’m going to spill my life story to a room full of strangers.”

“But it’s so liberating!” At the confused look in his teammate’s eyes, Hoseok begins to laugh awkwardly. Yoongi remembers then, that the younger man has been to dark places, too. “You’ve never done that? Just sat next to someone and unloaded whatever was bothering you? It’s liberating. You walk away one problem lighter and they’ll just think you’re a weirdo.”

“You are a weirdo,” Yoongi deadpans, but Hoseok sees the fondness in his eyes when he says it and just grins.

“We’re all mad here,” he cackles, then claps a heavy hand on Yoongi’s shoulder, making the slighter man stumble forward a step. “All I’m saying is, try talking. If you’re going to be there, then be there. Don’t just sit around waiting for it to be over. We miss you. We want you back. A hundred and ten percent.” He flashes him another grin then saunters off to join Seokjin and Namjoon in the corner, acting like he hadn’t just dropped a bomb of feelings on his teammate.

Yoongi stares after him. Takes a deep breath, lets it out. Repeats this four more times before he’s calm enough to move, before he manages to make Hoseok’s words small enough to slip into the box in his head clearly labelled “Think About Later”.

The camera crew is entering, adjusting their lens and already the maknaes are preening in front of them. He shakes his head, clearing the leftover cobwebs, finally moving to join them. He doesn’t have time for this, he reminds himself. No time for thought, no time for an existentialist crisis. That could wait. It could all wait.

[“In a world where vows are worthless. Where making a pledge means nothing. Where promises are made to be broken, it would be nice to see words come back into power.”]

Lee is late. She’s late and it’s strange because every time Yoongi has come in for a session, she’s already sitting in the back, her nose in a book. She’s late and she slides into the room, rubber soles squeaking on the flooring in a way that has him cringing, fifteen whole minutes after they reconvene after break. She mumbles an apology to Dr. Kim, plops herself down in a chair and doesn’t even bother pushing the hood of her army green jacket from her head.

Yoongi rolls his eyes. If the label can move their entire schedule around to make time for these sessions, surely she can manage to at least be on time. He’s tired and he’s hungry and in the foulest mood he can remember being in. And because she wasn’t there, he hadn’t been able to spend the break outdoors. Sure, he could have walked out on his own, but she was part of the ritual. Her and her cigarette smoke and her awkward, borderline offensive presence.

Sure, he promised himself he’d stay away from her, but he was supposed to do it first, goddammit, not the other way around.

Yoongi hates her for being late. For making him wonder if anything bad had happened to her. For making him worry that something had.

He hates her for making him feel more than he already has to.

“As I was saying,” Dr. Kim continues. “I want to see how you’re able to relate and communicate to the people around you, so we’re going to split off into pairs. No pressure, just a regular conversation. Start off by telling your partner three things about yourself that they don’t know yet, then you can talk about anything else from there. At the end I want you to tell the rest of the group what you’ve learned about them.”

He folds his arms, cupping his chin between his thumb and index finger as he considers them. “Let’s make this easy, yes? We’ll divide by peer group. Minjun, with me. Jihoon with Gunwoo, and Yoongi with Lee. You have thirty minutes.”

Yoongi opens his mouth to complain, but Dr. Kim’s back is already turned, making a beeline for Minjun’s scrawny form.

He scowls, glaring at Lee from across the room. She hasn’t moved, hasn’t even looked up from playing with the frayed sleeves of her jacket. What the hell is she waiting for? He isn’t going to get up and go to her.

The sound of a throat clearing draws his attention, and Dr. Kim is staring at him pointedly. Yoongi sighs and gets up, dragging his feet and his chair towards the other end of the room.

“Hey.”

Lee finally looks up, her face bare and pale and a little green around the edges, odd and small under that ridiculous hood. “Hey back.”

Yoongi drops his chair, sits down with the back between his legs as he folds his elbows on it. “Are you going to take this seriously?” he asks her tiredly, trying to overcome his overwhelming need to take a nap.

“I don’t know, are you?”

His head snaps up at that, grey-black eyes taking in the challenge on her face. The rest of her looks ill, like she dragged herself out of bed to be here, but her eyes are still alight with something he can’t quite pinpoint. Well, now he was awake at least.

“I don’t like you,” he tells her bluntly, unmindful and uncaring of how the words will cut her. “There, that’s one thing you didn’t know about me.”

If she’s surprised by the information, she doesn’t show it. It’s a little heartless, even for Yoongi, but he can’t help but want to lash out, especially when she’s just staring at him. Like the words don’t hurt. Like she’d actually expected them. Yoongi doesn’t like the idea that he’s predictable.

Finally, she opens her mouth. “I’m on medication,” she admits, her voice subdued and distant, as if her mind is somewhere else. Suddenly her eyes are everywhere but him, but he can’t stop looking. “They, um, kind of make everything feel fuzzy, so it calms me down. But I tend to say stupid shit when I’m on it. Ask stupid questions. All the wrong things.” Her fingers continue to pick at her sleeves as she speaks. “I know that sounds like a copout, but I just started new ones this month and I’ve been trying to get used to them.” She meets his eyes then, finally. “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”

Yoongi just stares at her, unsure what to say, tongue shoved into his cheek as he bites down on it, trying to think.

“I was out of line,” she continues, sparing him from a response for the time being. “I have no idea what your life is like. No idea what you’re like. I was just, um, guessing. And I’m sorry,” she repeats, eyes downcast, her voice getting fainter as she goes on. “It’s stupid, but my brain makes up stories whenever I see something interesting and last night I just… you’re interesting and I got carried away and I’m sorry.”

His eyes narrow, studying her to see if he can tell if she’s telling the truth. She’s fidgety, that much is certain. Her eyes keep darting from one thing to another, as if she can’t focus on one thing for too long. Her lips are pale and there’s still that odd intensity in her eyes that wasn’t there the night before. It’s also the most words she’s spoken to him combined.

“Are you on them now?”

She laughs, and for the first time he’s glad to hear it. Doesn’t realize he maybe even missed it, a little, since last night. “No. No, I- um, I didn’t take them this morning so things are….” She gestures tiredly in front of her before bringing her hand up to massage the bridge of her nose. “Everything’s a little loud. A little, um, much. Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really,” he admits. He has no idea what being on medication for anything was like outside of the strict regimen of vitamins and minerals their nutritionist has them on, except that they were supposed to make someone better, or at least something to that effect. Yeah, he’d gone to see a doctor as a teenager, but all he’d done then was talk. He still has no idea what he’s supposed to say, how he’s supposed to react, so he says the first thing he can think of.

“But I liked it better when you weren’t saying sorry every five seconds.”

It was meant to be a joke, but instead she cringes, hunching in on herself under the oversized clothes. “Yeah. Yeah, that happens when I’m actually, like, all here.” She gestures at herself awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“Stop,” he groans, holding up a hand. He thought he would know how to deal with her, but now that she was like this, he was back to where he started: clueless and slightly annoyed. He chews on the corner of his mouth, trying to think. “It’s fine.” And it was. “You just have a weird way of asking questions, you know?” Because she did.

She smirks a little at that and taps her temple with her index finger. “It’s the voices. Can’t think with all of them sometimes.” His eyes go wide, and she giggles. Actually giggles, like a normal girl would. “Kidding,” she says quickly. “No voices. At least, not yet.”

He manages a small smile, then. God, this was so strange. “You’re kind of a mindfuck.”

She nods, eyes back to scanning the room. “I’ve been told. By countless mental health professionals, actually.”

“I figured it out,” he tells her, the words tumbling free before he can stop himself. She tilts her head at him, a question on her face. “Your question, I mean. I think I figured it out, anyway.” He shifts his weight, awkwardly casting his eyes around the room.

“I asked quite a few yesterday. And everything’s…”

“Much?” he suggests.

“Much,” she agrees. “Right now, at least. Which question?”

“You technically only asked one.” He can’t help but smile then, and her eyes suddenly look present, as if she’s finally able to focus on one thing and he’s it. It makes him feel a little special, because he likes to think she’s focused on Yoongi—not Suga or Agust D.

“Yeah?”

There challenge is clear and Yoongi feels his blood warm, rising to meet it. “Yeah.” She leans back into her chair, one leg bent and the other stretched out in the space between them, hanging on to his every word. “You wanted to know if I was still whole.”

“Whole,” she repeats, as if she’s tasting the word on her tongue for the first time.

“Whole.” He nods, unable to keep from smirking at the little victory. “I haven’t figured out the answer. But when I do, I’ll let you know.”

She grins, finally reaching up to fix her crooked glasses. “That sounds promising.”

“I don’t make any I can’t keep.”

“Three.”

“Mn?”

“That’s three things already.” She holds up three fingers again. “You don’t like me, you figured out the question, and you don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“Only two are true.”

“The truth is subjective.”

He should feel guilty, still, but he’s pretty sure she means that he’s forgiven so he nods, leaning his cheek on his arm as they settle into the conversation more comfortably, awkward apologies out of the way. “What’s your version of it, then?”

“My life is boring,” she laughs.

“I highly doubt that,” he says, contradicting the almost-compliment with a roll of his eyes. “C’mon, hit me with your best shot.”

“Was that a Pat Benetar reference?”

“No, it was a BTS joke. Bulletproof?” She blinks, and he sighs. “My comedic genius is wasted on you. Who’s Pat Benetar?”

Her eyes go wide. “You’re kidding, right?”

“You’re not allowed to judge me, Miss I-Don’t-Listen-To-Min-Suga-Rap-Genius.”

“Is being a fangirl a prerequisite to being your friend?”

“We’re friends now?”

“God, I know right. Never bet against the universe.”

They stare blankly at each other for ten seconds before cracking a smile simultaneously. Yoongi knows he’s doing that thing again where his upper lip curls too far in, is using the smile that shows his entire upper row of front teeth and gums. He hardly uses it these days, but for some reason right now it seems appropriate.

“Go on,” he says. And she starts talking.

The rest of the session passes by with relative ease. He learns that Lee is a year older than him (“No, I’m not calling you noona”) and that she lives with two other girls in an apartment downtown. She grew up in the States, but moved to Korea when her parents cut her off. It was the cheapest flight somewhere far away, she explains. Now she works as a freelance translator. No contact with family, a handful of friends. Her time is mostly spent with books and music because according to her, “art is easier to deal with than other people.” Korea isn’t exactly the best place for someone with mental health issues, she adds.

Her life makes Yoongi feel sad for her, just a little, because it sounds so small compared to his, but her self-deprecating humor about it is enough to chase the feeling away.

He tells her about his own life, what growing up full-fledged Korean is like. About Daegu and how the world hadn’t made any sense until he first heard hiphop—how music is still the only language he can understand, can communicate in, even now. About his childhood piano teacher, and how he had such a huge crush on her (“Are you sure you don’t want to call me noona?”). About his failed attempt to learn to beatbox when he was fifteen. His family, and how good it felt to finally prove them wrong. About finally being able to bridge the gap and have them back, even though nowadays he could only manage to see them twice a year. About his new family, the people who have had his back when it’s really mattered.

About how fame was just another uphill battle, but at least this time he had people pushing him towards the top instead of dragging him down.

She smiles at that. “You’re good with words,” she tells him. The first compliment, and she doesn’t try to buffer it. Gives it freely, making his mouth turn upwards.

He shakes his head, brushing it off. “I fight with a pen, not a sword. I damn well better be good with them, or I’m screwed.”

He never was one for false modesty.

[“This is the arms race of sound. You don’t win with a lot of treble.”]

Day 7

When he finds himself three compositions deep in the studio later that night (rather, early that morning), he realizes it’s the most alive he’s felt in weeks. That it’s the most himself he’s felt in even longer.

He wonders if this is what it feels like, to be seen.

[“Even absolute corruption has its perks.”]

Day 11

Yoongi likes habits, likes patterns. He finds comfort in knowing that when they take a break, he’ll follow Lee out to the back of the building and keep her company while she smokes. He likes knowing that when he makes a snide, sarcastic comment, Lee will just laugh at him, never taking it personally. Likes knowing that when he isn’t in the mood to talk, Lee will fill the space between them with talk of art and music and life, things that have nothing to do with his reality. Likes knowing that he can be himself without having to explain, without having to make who he is palatable. Likes not having to sell an amped up version of himself. Likes being Yoongi. Just Yoongi.

He likes knowing that the fire in her eyes still hasn’t dimmed, that her pupils haven’t been blown in days. Likes thinking that maybe it has a little to do with him.

For twenty minutes out of his normally hectic day, he has this. Cigarette smoke and a strange girl sitting next to him on a pile of dead lives in an empty parking lot. The conversation is strange. Her presence is strange. How he’s been feeling lately is strange, but a good kind of strange. Like waking up in the house he grew up in with the furniture all rearranged, ready for him to make new memories in it.

In any case, it’s a welcome reprieve from always being ushered from one thing to another. He’s happy to be in one place instead of in between.

[“No detail is too minor to note.”]

Day 12

“Someone looks happy today,” Jimin muses, smirking at Yoongi as he sits beside him at their make-shift lunch table.

“We’re at MNET. I don’t see any long faces here, do you?” Seokjin jokes, elbowing Jungkook in the ribs.

Yoongi doesn’t bother rolling his eyes at his teammates, simply returns to his bowl of noodles.

“No, I agree! Hyung was really good at rehearsals earlier, too!” Taehyung quips, talking around a mouthful of his own food. That, Yoongi quirks an eyebrow at, and Taehyung takes a nervous swallow. “Not that hyung isn’t always good at rehearsals!” he corrects himself quickly.

“Energy,” Hoseok jokes in English, eyes going comically wide.

“He’s been coming home before 2AM, too,” Seokjin realizes, his pert pink lips pursing into a small “o” of surprise. “And he hasn’t threatened anyone in a couple of days!”

“Speak for yourselves,” Jungkook mumbles. “He told me he’d string me upside down by my pinky toes if I used his body wash again.”

Everyone laughs at that.

“You are, as always, the exception to the rule, Jeon Jungkookie,” Yoongi tells him, snapping his chopsticks threateningly in the air between them.

“The last couple of songs you sent over were really good, Suga,” Namjoon tells him, voice low. “Have you been insfired lately?” The taller, gangly man chortles at his own joke, but even Seokjin, sitting next to him, shakes his head and pats him consolingly on the knee when no one else reacts.

“I don’t know what you guys are talking about,” Yoongi deadpans, reaching over for another piece of chicken.

“Yah, hyung has returned!” Hoseok lifts himself out of his chair into a dramatic pose, waving his bowl in the air. Jungkook and Taehyung chuckle, both their cheeks puffed up like chipmunks.

“Maybe we should all start going to therapy,” Namjoon jokes. Yoongi coughs, food going down the wrong pipe, and Jimin pats him on the back, quietly sliding a bottle of water in front of him.

It isn’t out of the ordinary, the whole scenario. It was normal for them to tease each other, but right then Jimin’s thoughtfulness, Namjoon and Taehyung’s compliments, Seokjin and Hoseok’s insight and concern—hell, even Jungkook’s reluctant acceptance, is overwhelming, and he can feel the emotion start to lodge in his throat.

He swipes the bottle hurriedly from the table, guzzling it down as he tilts his head back, willing the tears to retreat to where they came from.

“Poor thing,” Seokjin whispers to Namjoon as they all return to their meals and other topics of conversation.

“Eh?” Namjoon asks, oblivious to anything but his meal. Seokjin rolls his eyes and wordlessly hands him a napkin.

“Yoongi-ah,” he explains patiently, voice thrown low to avoid being overheard. “We should do something nice for him. Cheer him up. He doesn’t even need to be in that class, but he’s doing it anyway.”

Namjoon nods, realization dawning in his eyes. “Yeah, family dinner or something. Great idea, hyung.”

Seokjin smiles to himself. “I know.”

[“I need to rebel against myself. It’s the opposite of following your bliss. I need to do what I most fear.”]

“Yah, Lee.”

Yoongi jogs after her, catching up with her halfway down the main entry hall of the building. She takes out one of her headphones, pushes her glasses up her nose and pauses midstride, a now-familiar half-smirk on the corner of her mouth as she regards him.

“Yoongi. What is it?” she asks in English.

“Stop showing off,” Yoongi huffs at her, and they fall into step together the rest of the way.

He’s almost halfway through the classes, now, and the first night the studio trusts him enough to attend without security or an escort from the management team. It’s a strange sort of relief—he hadn’t appreciated being treated like a child, and it was mortifying that they knew him well enough to know he would skip them if no one was paying attention.

Granted, a car was still being sent to pick him up and take him back to the dorm, but he supposed he had a little time until then.

They push through the main doors, and Yoongi hands her back her copy of Lullaby. She accepts it with an incline of her head, sliding it into the pocket of her jacket. The days were getting even colder now. He loved it.

“Did you like it?” she asks him, already sliding another cigarette from her pack and putting in between painted lips the color of dried blood. Yoongi doesn’t realize he’s staring. “Yoongi,” she says, both eyebrows going up. “Earth to Min Yoongi,” she repeats in English, waving a hand in front of his face.

Yoongi automatically reaches up and grabs her wrist, catching it in midmotion. His hold is a little rougher than he intends, used to roughhousing with other boys, but her face just breaks into a grin, canines bared.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, realizing what he’s done and dropping her hand gracelessly. As usual, she doesn’t seem to mind and merely tucks it back in her pocket, fishing around for her lighter. “Anyway.” He huffs a warm breath into the cold air, watching it dance before ultimately dissipating. “It was confusing.”

“Was it because of the English?”

“I’m not that bad at it,” he says, a little too defensively, and she chuckles, clearly waiting for him to continue. “I didn’t know who was who for most of it.”

“Kind of a metaphor for life, though, don’t you think?” she quips in what he refers to as her Wise Mage voice in his head. “Do you wanna talk about it? Or if you have Friday night plans, that’s cool, too.”

He thinks quickly, glossing over their schedule in his head. He owes Namjoon a verse for a song, but that could wait until the following afternoon and they aren’t due to shoot until Sunday, so he shakes his head. “Yeah, I do.” He catches sight of a van pulling up into the driveway, knows it’s his ride. “Want to talk about it, I mean. There’s a coffee shop near our dorm. Let’s go.”

Her laughter follows him down the steps, and he pauses right before climbing into the car.

“It’s cute how you assume I’m going to follow you everywhere.”

He smirks, turning to find her right behind him despite her words, watching as she tucks her unsmoked cigarette behind an ear. “You’re already here, aren’t you?” She shrugs, scrunching her nose at him. “Might as well.”

She huffs a breath, glancing back at the building behind them where Dr. Kim is watching them from the open doors. “Yeah. Yeah, might as well,” she mumbles.

He rolls his eyes, grabs the front of her jacket and pulls her into the van after him, surprising a series of giggles and half-hearted complaints from her. He decides he likes this sound more than her laugh. Likes her more when she’s off her meds than on them, even if it means she’s just as sarcastic and snide and moody and melodramatic as he is. The driver slides the door shut and she twists to face him, smacking him lightly on the shoulder.

“Min Yoongi! I never had you pegged for a kidnapper!”

“I have been practicing the culling song in my head,” he grins, code-switching.

She merely rolls her eyes at him, and they spend the rest of the ride talking about Streator and the morality of murder, the curse of power, and the strength of media. They’re both too engrossed in the debate (Yoongi, of course, in on Streator’s side, but Lee is adamant that he’s an unreliable narrator—that that was the entire point) to notice when they finally pull up to the back of his building.

“We die a thousand deaths a day,” Lee is saying. “But just because you can doesn’t mean-”

Yoongi never finds out the end of her sentence, because just then the van door slides open to reveal Taehyung beaming his signature rectangular smile at them.

“Surprise, hyung! I came to pick you—oh!” The younger boy falters, brow furrowing as he tilts his head at Lee. “Hello! We didn’t know you had a friend with you!”

Yoongi frowns and leans over Lee at the mention of ‘we’ to find Jungkook behind Taehyung, a surprised, wide-eyed expression on his face. “What are you idiots doing?” he complains.

“Seokjin-hyung made us family dinner!” Taehyung explains, the first to overcome his initial surprise. “Hello, I’m V!” he says to Lee, taking a step back to let her slide out of the van.

Lee bows, a look of pained awkwardness clear on her face as she took in the strangely dressed man in front of her. “Hi, I’m Sam Lee.”

“Are you a friend of Suga’s?” Jungkook blurts out, seemingly unable to stop himself. When Lee’s gaze lands on him he takes an automatic step behind Taehyung, using the older boy to shield him.

“She’s my groupmate from therapy,” Yoongi explains, still confused as to what the fuck was happening as he joined them.

“You never mentioned her!” Taehyung says excitedly, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he grinned at the unfamiliar girl.

“You never asked,” Yoongi deadpans, glancing at Lee to find a look of subdued amusement on her face. “We were just going to grab coffee-”

“But Seokjin-hyung made dinner!” Taehyung complains.

“Who gets coffee at 10PM,” Jungkook mutters under his breath, and Yoongi glares at him.

“I do, that’s who.”

“We have coffee upstairs! It’s Bangtan dinner, hyung, and it’s for you. You can’t not go!”

“It’s fine,” Lee says quickly, catching sight of the pained look on Yoongi’s face. “We can talk about the book another time.”

“But I dragged you all the way here, and the car just left.” Yoongi gestures at the space the van had just vacated, looking apologetic.

“Join us!” Taehyung suggests, puppy-dog eyes in full force. “We don’t have company often, but any friend of Suga-hyung’s is a friend of Bangtan’s!”

Lee scratches awkwardly at the back of her neck, eyelids fluttering closed as if she was willing herself elsewhere. Yoongi’s heart clenched painfully in his chest, this being the first time he had ever seen her around other people. She had been doing better and better throughout the week, but if their conversations about it were anything to go by, the two maknaes’ presence was undoubtedly overwhelming for her. He felt fully responsible, guilty, even, for putting her in this position.

He forgets to wonder why he’s so invested.

“It’s fine,” he says quickly, wanting to spare her. “I can help you get a cab and-”

“It’s fine,” Lee echoes, interrupting him. “It’s fine,” she says again, a little more forcefully. A little more resolved. “I can take a bus,” she informs them, attempting a reassuring smile that, sadly, came out as more of a grimace that was mirrored clearly on Jungkook’s face as he watched her.

Yoongi snaps at that, grabbing her arm and pulling her aside. “I’m not letting you commute home this late at night.”

“It’s fine,” she says again, looking a little dazed at the steel undertone to his words. “I’ve done it a million times before, it’s really not a big deal.”

“It is to me,” Yoongi tells her, finally releasing his grip on her arm as he mentally ran through his options. He really should have thought things out before dragging her across town. He can’t help but think that this was why it was so hard to have friends outside of his career. “Can you stay for 30 minutes? Just long enough to eat. Then I’ll ride a cab home with you. Or I can ask Manager Sejin for a car and drive you myself. Just….” He runs a hand through his hair. “Just give me a little time to figure something out, yeah?”

“But it’s Bangtan dinner,” she mumbles, looking unsure at what that was supposed to mean but still understanding that it was important. “I don’t want to intrude.”

“You’re not,” he snaps, glaring at her. “Don’t do it. Don’t hide. Not now.”

She smirks a little at that, the corner of her mouth curling. He shouldn’t feel so relieved at the sight of it, but he does. “I won’t if you won’t.”

“Might as well,” he responds, the clench in his chest loosening the tiniest bit at the resolve in her eyes.

“Might as well,” she echoes, staring blankly at him as he slid the cigarette behind her ear free and tucked it back into her jacket pocket.

“Come on,” Taehyung calls, his patience seemingly at an end as he shoved Jungkook playfully towards the building. “Seokjin’s been cooking since 8 o’clock, and I’m starving.”

“Yah,” Yoongi complains, glaring at their backs. “We’ll be up in a second.” He turns back to her, an eyebrow quirked up in question. “Thirty minutes. You only have to deal with them for thirty minutes and I promise I’ll get you home,” he repeats, more to soothe himself than her.

She nods. “Try not to sing the culling song over dinner,” she jokes.

Yoongi laughs. The first real laugh she’s able to startle out of him, and finally, the smile on her face reaches her eyes at the sound.

“I’ll do my best. But no guarantees.”

[“Are these things really better than the things I already have? Or am I just trained to be dissatisfied with what I have now?”]

“We have a guest!” Taehyung announces, almost tripping over himself as he stumbles out of his sandals in the doorway. “Attention!” he calls, cupping his hands around his mouth to magnify the sound. “Make yourselves decent, we have a guest!”

Hoseok pokes his head out of his bedroom, bare shoulder visible from the doorway. “Eh? What do you mean, a guest?”

“Suga-hyung has a friend,” Jungkook informs him, pushing past Taehyung, a look of panic on his face as he scans the living room for anything embarrassing his teammates had left out in the open. “Put a shirt on, hurry!”

Hoseok gives a little squeak and disappears back into his room just as Jimin emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam, bare chest glistening with drops of water as he runs a towel through his hair. “What are you talking about?” he asks Taehyung, laughter bubbling around his words. “Hyung doesn’t have any friends…does he?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Jiminie,” Namjoon chides, having overheard the loud conversation. He tosses Jimin a shirt as he passes him. “Of course Suga has friends. We just… haven’t met them?”

“This one’s from therapy,” Taehyung singsongs, throwing himself into an armchair and propping his bare feet up on the coffee table. “She’s cute, too!”

Jungkook makes a face, shoving books back onto shelves. “Sort of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jimin asks curiously, slipping the proffered shirt over his head and dumping his towel back in his bedroom. “What does she look like?”

“Don’t be mean, Kookie,” Taehyung frowns, kicking a leg out at the younger boy as he walks past. “She looks like a cat,” he tells Jimin.

The blonde’s eyebrows draw together. “But Suga doesn’t like cats.”

The clatter of pans and plates echoes through the apartment, coupled with an exasperated groan from Seokjin in the kitchen. “Namjoonie, I know you mean well but I swear to god if you don’t get out of my kitchen I’m going to-”

“Okay, okay!” Namjoon emerges from the kitchen doorway, pouting as he holds both palms up in surrender. “Yah, you try to help someone…” he mumbles, plopping onto the couch and hugging a throw pillow to his stomach. “Everyone, be nice. And Jungkook, stop trying to tidy up. You’re making me dizzy.”

Jungkook slams the closet door closed, having just pushed a pile of dirty laundry in it. “But it’s a girl, hyung!” he whines, looking far younger than his twenty years.

“Is she a fan?” Hoseok asks, finally joining them fully clothed.

Taehyung shrugs. “Maybe?”

Hoseok hums, taking a seat on the couch next to Namjoon. “He didn’t mention a girl in his therapy group.”

“Maybe he wanted to keep her all to himself,” Jimin points out, waggling his eyebrows.

“None of that,” Seokjin chastises, finally emerging from the kitchen to set a pot of stew down at the table. “If Yoongi has a friend over, then we’re all going to be on our best behavior.”

“Yes, mom,” Taehyung, Jimin, Hoseok and Jungkook respond in unison.

“Thank you,” Namjoon mouths, sharing a look of mutual exasperation with Seokjin.

There’s a warning knock at the front door, and Yoongi’s husky drawl filters through. “All of you better have clothes on,” he says. Another few seconds, and the door opens slowly. “Thank god,” Yoongi sighs, eyes travelling over each of his members as if mentally approving of their state of dress. “Everyone, this is Sam Lee. She’s in my therapy group. Lee, this is, uh, everyone.”

Namjoon, ever the leader, is the first to rise to his feet, cheeks already dimpling as Yoongi moves out of the doorway to let her inside. Automatically, everyone crowds behind him. “Two, three. Bangtan! Hello, we are Bangtan Sonyeondan!” they say in unison, giving their customary bow and greeting.

Yoongi’s heart warms at the sight, however unnecessary he feels it is. He glances at Lee, who’s just staring at them, looking shy of overwhelmed.

“I’m Kim Namjoon,” their leader introduces, extending a hand for her to shake.

“I’m J-Hope!” Hoseok beams next, flashing her a wink.

“I’m Park Jimin!” the dancer says, eyes already in crescents as he shoots Yoongi a smirk.

“Jungkook,” their youngest mumbles, giving a small wave from the other end of the living room.

“I’m Jin,” Seokjin introduces, smiling warmly at her. “Now get out of your coats and out of the doorway! The food is getting cold!” he calls over his shoulder, already bustling back towards the kitchen.

“He’s our mom,” Taehyung whispers conspirationally to Lee, smiling vacantly as he follows his teammates to the dining area.

“Nice to meet you all?” Lee says to their retreating backs, voice faint.

“You okay?” Yoongi asks her, slipping his coat off and leaning over her to hang it on his peg.

She seems startled by the question, but nods after a few seconds. “Uh, do I have to take this off?” she gestures at her jacket, and Yoongi realizes he’s never seen her without her oversized layers.

“It’s warm inside,” he points out, eyes narrowing at her. “What do you have on under it?”

“Clothes,” she responds. “Never mind, it’s fine.” At the incredulous look on his face, she shoves him in the shoulder. “It’s fine,” she repeats.

“You’ve said that twenty times in the last fifteen minutes,” Yoongi teases, watching her slip off the jacket. He’s a little surprised to find that she’s actually… attractive, underneath it. She’s wearing a black and white striped sweater dress, still two sizes too large for her frame, but it manages to drape nicely over the curves he hadn’t realized she’d been hiding the whole time. The way her black jeans hug her legs also doesn’t go unnoticed. It wasn’t a body that belonged to an idol, just…it belonged to a normal girl. Same as the countless other coordi-noonas they worked with on a daily basis. Still, Yoongi can’t help but stare.

“Help me,” Lee pleads, jolting him from his thoughts. “I didn’t catch everyone’s names.”

He laughs again at that, remembering that she had no idea who Bangtan was. He fills her in quietly on their short walk to the dining table, entertained at the odd situation. “Namjoon is the tall one with dimples. He’s a rapper. Likes to read. Seokjin is the eldest. Singer. Likes to cook. Jimin, the blonde one. Dancer. Don’t listen to anything he says. Hoseok, or J-Hope, but we call him Hobi. The one with the red hair. Dancer and rapper, occasional ray of sunshine. Taehyung, you met him downstairs. Singer. Don’t listen to anything he says either. Jungkook, official pain in my ass. Singer, dancer, rapper, golden child.”

She nods, looking a little green around the edges as they finally reached the table. Two empty seats were sandwiched on the far side, with Seokjin on one end and Hoseok on the other. Yoongi shoots Seokjin a grateful look at the obvious manipulation of their usual places, which the older boy just smiles knowingly at in return.

“Let’s eat!” Jimin cheers as the two finally settle in.

“Ready to be entertained?” Yoongi mumbles to her, and she shoots him an amused look.

“Everything looks delicious,” Lee says politely to Seokjin, who beams.

“It tastes better than it looks,” he winks, ladling food onto her plate.

“Except the rice,” Taehyung announces, making a face. “Who made the rice?”

“I did,” Namjoon says meekly, looking pale as he stares down at the bowl.

“How on Earth do you screw up rice?” Hoseok laughs.

“Namjoon, how many times to I have to tell you to stay out of my kitchen?” Seokjin complains, waving a spoon threateningly across the table.

Yoongi rolls his eyes at the display. Bangtan dinners were usually loud and chaotic, but it was clear that everyone was making an effort just by the fact that no one, not even Jimin, was on their phones. He makes a mental note to do something nice for all of them the following day. Maybe order breakfast or something.

He had to admit to himself that it was strange seeing all of his teammates around a new person without cameras pointed at them. At this point in their careers, slipping into the personas was almost second-nature, but after getting up before dawn to film and a dance practice shoved into their usual dinner hours, he was sure that they were all too exhausted to put up much of an act.

So when Namjoon starts asking Lee about her hobbies and the two start discussing their favorite books, Yoongi knows he’s genuinely enjoying the conversation. When Lee automatically gets up to help with the dishes after dinner, heaping compliments onto Seokjin, Yoongi knows their eldest is completely enamored with her. When she asks Taehyung what kind of music he listens to as they dry dishes and the two start belting out in unison to a Western song he doesn’t know, he knows that Taehyung will be asking to have her over again soon.

As they settle into the living room for tea and coffee and Lee asks Hoseok to show her videos of him dancing, Hoseok flushes but gives in, appreciating the interest shown in one of his passions. After watching the trailer for Boy Meets Evil, she admits that she’s never seen a BTS music video before, the team eagerly complies, to Yoongi’s inexplicable disdain.

When the first words out of her mouth when they show her Blood Sweat & Tears is “Park Jimin!”, he knows that Jimin’s going to be gloating about it for the next three days. And when Jungkook’s phone rings and she asks if he plays Overwatch (how she had been able to recognize the otherwise generic crescendo of notes, Yoongi has no idea), Jungkook spends ten entire minutes gushing to her about his favorite game—a complete 360 turn from the distance he had kept from her all throughout dinner.

But most surprising of all is Lee herself. She’s good at reading people, that much Yoongi could admit, but she isn’t that good. Not good enough to skillfully charm the pants off all his teammates without them even realizing it. He feels a bit cheated, if he’s being honest with himself; if he had known she would do this well around new people, he wouldn’t have bothered acting so concerned.

He feels like he had wasted precious energy making her feel comfortable when she was clearly getting along with everybody better than anyone else in recent memory. Why do I even bother, he thinks as he makes his way to the door to receive the car keys to a black sedan that Manager Sejin had sent over for his use. It’s only when he returns to the living room and finds her in the middle of the couch surrounded by six men avidly watching her go pink at their music video for Dope that he realizes just how inexplicably annoyed he is by the entire situation.

“How is this allowed on television!” she exclaims, the most emotional he’s ever seen her as she presses her sweaterpaws to her face, watching the first dance break. “Oh my god,” she breathes in English as Hoseok, dressed as a racecar driver, jumps on screen. “This is lewd! No, this is just outright rude. How are you not walking around with R ratings on your foreheads?”

“We should use that as a line in the next cypher,” Namjoon jokes, passing his bag of chips to Taehyung, who happily munched on them as he sat on the floor.

“There’s hip thrusting!” Lee cries, still fully immersed in the video, looking close to tears as she completely covers her face with her hands. “I could have lived my entire life without this torture,” she whimpers.

“Is it bad?” Jimin, ever anxious about their performances, asks worriedly from beside her.

Lee finally emerges from behind her hands, looking at him incredulously. “Park Jimin, you wash your mouth out with soap.” When the blonde simply blinks at her, she realizes she had slipped into English again and translates to Korean, explaining the phrase. “It is the farthest thing from bad!” she continues. “It’s just....” She finally looks around the room, at all of them watching her intently, and Yoongi can see her physically fight for composure. “It’s…very good. Very, very good. I feel kind of ashamed now, that I hadn’t heard about you guys sooner,” she admits, looking genuinely sorry for the fact.

“We’re happy to introduce you to the awesomeness that is Bangtan Sonyeondan!” Taehyung quips. “Does anyone else find it strange to introduce ourselves to someone?” he whispers loudly, leaning over to Jungkook.

“Your ego is getting to your head, V,” Jungkook laughs, pushing the other boy’s weight off him.

“We’re glad you like our music, Lee,” Seokjin grins, patting the back of her hand soothingly.

“Wait until we make you listen to RapMon’s Expensive Girl,” Hoseok grins. Namjoon promptly throws a pillow square at his face.

“None of that, or I’m asking for an earlier deadline for your mixtape,” their leader warns, which prompts a tirade of complaints from Hoseok about him abusing his power.

“I thought you said you listened to our music?” Yoongi asks, more than a little fed up as he knees Jimin out of the way to take a seat on the couch next to her.

“I listened to Agust D and your songs for Suran,” Lee replies, picking up on his bad mood. “And, um, War of Hormone, I think. I’m sorry?”

“Tch,” he huffs, turning back to face the television. He doesn’t know why he’s gone from feeling warm and fuzzy about the situation to being outright aggravated. He wants her to listen to his music. He was proud of his career. He just hadn’t counted on her listening to BTS in front of all of them, with matching music videos to boot. Hadn’t counted on how awkward it would make him feel, how hungry for validation. How hurt that she hadn’t paid him a bit of attention or a single compliment when she had given them generously to everyone else.

Besides, she was here to talk to him. He already had to share everything else with everyone, did he really have to share her too?

“Is Suga-hyung your bias?” Jimin asks playfully, leaning around Yoongi to look at Lee.

“Bias?” the girl repeats, looking clueless.

Namjoon rolls his eyes just as Seokjin shoots Jimin a look of warning. “It’s a kpop fandom thing,” he explains patiently. “Like, out of a group, who your favorite is. It’s nonsense, really. You aren’t required to have one. Hell, you aren’t even required to be ARMY just because we’re friends now.” Lee’s expression doesn’t change, so he explains their fanbase, the fondness in his tone evident.

“It’s Suga-hyung,” Taehyung whispers loudly again to Jungkook as Lee asks Namjoon about he deals with being the leader even though he isn’t the eldest. “I bet you 50,000 won on it.”

“Deal,” Jungkook replies immediately. “My money’s on Hobi-hyung.”

“Behave, you two,” Seokjin reprimands, throwing a pillow at the pair. “Besides, it’s clearly me,” he adds, settling back beside Lee and stealing her attention from Namjoon with a wink.

“Why is no one betting on me?” Jimin demands with a pout.

Lee turns to him, looking a little lost in the conversation. “Well, Jin is the main dancer,” she says carefully. Everyone stares at her open-mouth for a few seconds before bursting out laughing.

“Oh my god,” Hoseok wheezes in English. “My heart!” he exclaims, falling on top of Jimin, who had slid to the floor in his fit of laughter.

Lee just blinks at Yoongi. “Did I say something wrong?”

He rolls his eyes and wearily gets to his feet. “Enough fun and games. I’m taking Lee home now. Say goodbye.”

“Boo!” Taehyung complains, throwing a handful of chips at him. “Can’t you guys stay a little longer?” he whines. “I haven’t even gotten to show noona my tie collection!”

“I’m sure Yoongi-ah will bring Lee over again,” Seokjin says, ever the mediator. He blows her a kiss as she gets to her feet after Yoongi. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Sam Lee! Let’s eat again soon!”

She gives each of them a deep bow in turn. “Thank you for having me over, Bangtan Sonyeondan,” she says seriously. “And thank you for sharing your work!”

Hoseok flashes her a sappy smile from the floor. “Does everyone else feel warm and fuzzy? I do.”

Lee turns pink, and Yoongi tugs at her sleeve, jiggling the car keys in front of her face. “Let’s go,” he repeats.

“I have my key,” he says to Namjoon. “Don’t stay up.”

“Oooh,” Jimin singsongs, already climbing over Hoseok to stare after them, bellydown on the floor with his chin cradled in both palms. “Drive safe, Suga-hyung!”

Yoongi just rolls his eyes, tossing Lee’s jacket at her as he slips into his own. “Yeah, yeah,” he mumbles.

“Sorry that took longer than thirty minutes,” he tells her as they stand in opposite corners of the lift. “You looked like you enjoyed yourself, though.”

She nods absently, playing with the zipper pull of her jacket. “I’m sorry we weren’t able to talk more about Lullaby,” she offers, sounding genuinely repentant. “But you really don’t have to drive me-”

“It’s fine,” he grunts, feeling a bit mollified with her apology.

“Did Namjoon mean that?” Lee finally asks him as they buckle their seatbelts.

“What?” He doesn’t even bother to look at her as he backs out of the parking space.

“That we’re all friends.”

He glances at her then, at the wistful look she has in her eyes as she stares through the windshield. Not knowing what to say, he just shrugs and continues to pull out of the lot.

“Yoongi,” she says, her hand reaching out to rest on his on the gearshift, fingertips light as they brush the back of it. “Are we friends? I mean, I know I joked about it but….” She trails off, looking nervous. “I really want to be.”

It’s funny to him how the countless small touches they’ve exchanged before pale in comparison to this one. The first one he’s ever really paid attention to, because of the way it manages to dissolve the rest of the tension and annoyance in his body at their evening. One touch and a handful of words, and he’s gone all soft like, like some sort of… soft thing.

“Yeah,” he manages to croak, pulling his eyes away from her and back onto traffic. She hums, taking her hand back.

“Good. That’s good.”

We die a thousand deaths a day, she had said. Yoongi suddenly feels like he’s dying one of them.

[“Anymore, no one’s mind is their own.”]

Day 16

He wishes they would stop talking about her.

It’s been a week, almost, and none of them will shut up about her.

Of course Yoongi knows she’s cool. Different. Innocent, even. Appreciates that she’s so far removed from their lives and how much of a relief that is. As much as he loves the recognition they’ve received with this comeback, it was still nice to be able to take a step back and not be Bangtan, even for a little bit out of every day. Hell, even Namjoon’s girlfriend had been a fan before they’d met. So had Jungkook’s, if the little brat’s bragging was to be believed. Meeting Lee had been such a novel experience for everyone, and he tried his best not to fault them for it, but she was his. His friend. His reprieve.

Not theirs.

It doesn’t help him focus, either, when Hoseok keeps asking questions about her that he doesn’t know the answers to, or when Seokjin asks when she’s coming back over for dinner. He doesn’t know. Doesn’t want her back at their dorm, wants to keep her separate from that aspect of his life.

He’s glad that Lee never brings them up. Goes back to their routine without a second thought. Back to arguing about paradigm shifts and artist motivations and whatever the hell else she usually babbled on about. Back to the cold fall air, the smell of cigarettes and laughing that strange, barking laugh of hers. Back to looking at Yoongi like he’s the only thing she can focus on, to reaching for his arm as they walk outside like he’s the only thing keeping her tethered.

Back to making him feel like he’s wholly himself and not a construct like she had asked all those days ago.

Back to being his.

[“We’re landscaping the whole world one stupid mistake at a time.”]

Day 18

“When was the last time you felt alive?”

Yoongi looks up from his half-hearted attempt at writing lyrics in his notebook, finds her sitting right in front of him, her knees touching his. Half her face is hidden by a laughably oversized knit scarf, her glasses pushed to the top of her head, deep-set brown eyes watching him.

Dr. Kim had been talking about impulse control just ten minutes prior, about taking a few seconds to consider their actions before going through with them. Yoongi already knows all about that. About biting his tongue and reigning in his sharpness, simultaneously dulling the most unappealing aspects of himself to something everyone could love. About modulating his voice just so to make an entire arena of people erupt in cheers. All about how to use every muscle in his body to convey the right message, how to curb his impulses and stay in line.

Yoongi knows all about control. There was virtually nothing Dr. Kim could teach him in regards to that.

So when Lee asks about feeling alive he can’t help but feel a little confused at the question, at the niggling feeling in the back of his head that they’ve had this conversation before.

He slowly takes the pen out of his mouth and returns the cap. Closes his notebook and rests his chin in his hand, an elbow propped on his knee. Meets her gaze full on, tongue poking at the inside of his cheek. “I literally sweat a gallon on the floor of the dance studio this afternoon. Does a heart rate of 195 count as feeling alive?” he asks her sarcastically, and she sticks her tongue out at him.

“Yeah, but did you have fun?” she huffs, reaching out and attempting to flick him on the nose.

He dodges expertly, sending her a half-hearted scowl. “Dancing is fun.”

“Work isn’t fun,” she insists. He usually hates when she refers to what he does during the day as ‘work’, even if she’s technically right. He doesn’t have much outside of his career, but he likes it that way.

“My work is fun. Just because you hate yours doesn’t mean I have to.”

“When you get paid to do what you love, doesn’t it make you love it less?”

He pretends to consider the idea for a moment before giving her a flat “no,” already uncapping his pen to write the words down before they run away from him again.

“I’m serious, Yoongi,” she complains, sliding his notebook quickly from him and hugging it to her chest as hostage for his attention. “When was the last time you had fun for the hell of it? When was the last time you took a break?”

“I have fun every day,” he snaps, trying to grab his notebook back but she just scrambles out of his reach. “Have you ever seen an episode of Run BTS?”

“Work doesn’t count.”

“Work always counts.”

“You’re impossible.” She finally tosses his notebook back into his lap, crossing her arms over her chest. “Don’t you want to take a break?”

He rolls his eyes at her. “It’s a Monday night and I can’t exactly go out to middle of Gangnam to do what, karaoke?”

“Okay, I’m going to let your outright insult of the great Korean past time that is karaoke slide.” She tucks another cigarette between her lips, lighting it expertly with a single smooth motion. “But why can’t you? Do you have to go back to the studio?” she asks, smoke trailing around the question.

He watches, wondering if he’ll ever get not be mesmerized by the sight. “Not really, but I’m not in the mood to play nice with fans.”

“Right. That,” she agrees with a little twist of her mouth. He laughs then, at the fact that she’s treating his being an idol as a secondary thing. Like the very real possibility of getting mobbed by sasaeng fans was a small inconvenience. “Well, we don’t have to go out to have fun.”

“Why aren’t you letting this go?” he whines, tossing his head back and shifting his weight to both arms as he leans back on them.

“Because I need to get out of my head for a bit, Yoongi,” she answers seriously.

He pulls his head back upright at that, tilting it questioningly at her. “Everything okay?”

She shrugs, visibly shrinking into her parka. “Yeah. It’s fine. It’s just….” She slides her glasses on with a swift nod of her head, lets out another puff of smoke. “I just want to do something fun.”

“Okay, you’re no longer allowed to say ‘it’s fine’. You say it so often the words have lost all meaning,” he reprimands, and she makes a face at him. “What do you feel like doing?”

A grin spreads slowly across her face then, and Yoongi feels his heart drop into his stomach. He doesn’t like the look of it. It looks like trouble, and trouble is the one thing, apart from going out in public, that he was definitely not in the mood for.

“How do you feel about going for a drive?”

[“The voice says, maybe you don’t go to hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to hell for the things you don’t do. The things you don’t finish.”]

An hour and some skillful manipulation later, Yoongi’s behind the wheel of a car, driving to the edge of the city. Lee’s suggestion to go for a drive had been reasonable, more so than the other possible requests he had feared, so he hadn’t hesitated to agree.

He tells himself that this was what friends did—give and take. He had relented because that was what they were. Friends. Not because he wanted her to feel better or anything like that. Not like he wanted to do something that would make her happy.

Her phone is plugged in to the stereo as she leans out of the window with her eyes closed, her brown hair whipping across her face as she sings under her breath to a Miso song, an already half-empty bottle of soju on her lap. It’s a small thing, insignificant in the grander scheme of things, but Yoongi finds that he likes this. Likes driving in the middle of the night towards nowhere with nothing but the road and music to occupy his thoughts. Likes the heat of a little alcohol in his system, enough to keep him relaxed without making everything fuzzy. He doesn’t know why he hasn’t done this before.

“If you could do anything in the world right now, what would it be?” she asks, breaking the comfortable silence they’ve found themselves in.

He glances at her, finds that she’s leaning on her arm as she smiles absently at him. He straightens his shoulders the tiniest bit under her gaze. “Play a sold-out arena,” he jokes, taking a random exit off the highway.

“Yah, you impossible thing, Min Yoongi,” she complains with a drunken giggle. “I forget that you’re famous, sometimes.”

“Good,” he responds, voice a little huskier than usual as he swipes the bottle from her lap and takes a sip.

“Good? It’s not a blow to your ego that I’m not part of the Min Suga fan club?” she teases.

He chuckles, blindly handing her back the bottle and watching her take a swig from the corner of his eye. “You’re a member of the Min Yoongi fanclub. That’s enough for me.”

“Of course!” she quips sarcastically. “Not that you’re greedy or anything, mister A to the G to the U to the STD.”

“Mister? That sounds nice. Say it again,” he grins.

“Mister Min Yoongi,” she sings to the tune of whatever song was playing. “Good with rap but sings way off-key!”

He laughs, the alcohol bubbling in his system. “Yah, I might just have to kick you out of the club for that.”

“Oh god, anything but that!” she says dramatically, rolling her eyes. “Where the hell are you taking us?” she asks, turning her face back towards the window.

“No idea,” he shrugs. “You said drive and I’m driving.”

“I love this,” she sighs dreamily a few minutes later, eyes fluttering shut against the wind. “Hey Yoongi, have you ever been in love?” she asks absentmindedly, sticking a hand out and waving it along the air current.

The question takes him aback for a second, makes him glance at her with his brow furrowed in confusion as he tries to think through his buzz. “Once. Maybe. I don’t know. Can you really call it love at fourteen?”

“Puppy love,” she giggles in English.

It’s unchartered territory for the both of them. He doesn’t know how she can still look so relaxed when he suddenly feels cold from the fall air whipping at them through the open windows. They’d talked about a multitude of other things over the last three weeks, but never their relationships. He’s always been guarded about it, used to prying eyes and overeager journalists that would jump on the slightest slip of the tongue, but he knows she isn’t fishing. Knows that she’s asking to get to know him better. He tries to calm down by reminding himself that relationships were a big deal to most people. Most people but him.

He absently wonders if there’s something wrong with him in that aspect.

“Have you?” he manages to ask, thinking it only polite to turn the question back at her if she had brought it up.

“All the time,” she admits, still smiling absently out the window. “It’s silly but I fall in love with the strangest things. The way light hits puddles of gasoline on asphalt. The way a stranger will coo over a baby in a stroller. The way someone mixes their sugar into their coffee….” Her voice trails off abruptly, as if she had wanted to say something else afterwards, but he lets it slide.

“That sounds exhausting,” he tells her, because it does. “How can you fall in love with everything all the time?”

“Because it’s easier than falling in love with just one thing,” she laughs, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. She finally turns to face him, tucking her knees up to her chest. Takes another sip of soju, handing it over to him automatically afterwards. He drains the bottle, finds that the heat of it going down is soothing, almost as much as the sound of her voice. “Besides, don’t you think the world needs more of it?”

“The world can burn,” he tells her. “As long as I can make music, I don’t care if it burns.”

“Then you’re in love, too, Yoongi. Just with a thing instead of a person.”

There’s her Wise Mage voice again. He can almost feel the knowing smile on her face as she says it, as if she’s figured out some hitherto unknown secret of the universe and is imparting it on him. As if she’s figured it all out and is letting him in for the ride.

The roads are empty in front of them, nothing but streetlights and the occasional car zooming past in the other direction. He slows the car down a bit, chancing a glance at her. “How can you even tell?” he wonders out loud.

“That you’re in love?” He hums in the affirmative, and she turns, angling her shoulders back towards the window. “You just do, I guess. I mean, it’s never like in the movies, right? Not everyone gets love at first sight, or a great love for the ages. It just is, like it’s been there the whole time. Maybe one day you wake up and just know, you know?” She laughs at herself then. “I’m not making any sense am I?”

“A little, I guess,” he offers kindly. “I just… I’ve never been so I have absolutely zero input on this topic.”

“Don’t worry, Yoongi,” she grins, reaching a hand out to rub him on the arm soothingly. “You’ll meet a gorgeous girl someday and fall head over heels. Probably another idol, or a musician whose work you love. You’ll get married and have a billion babies and ride happily ever after off into the sunset.”

He cracks a wry smirk at that. He had to admit that he’d never thought about it much outside of having to write a verse for a love song, but watching a couple of dramas and romantic comedies had been enough inspiration then. How she had pictured it just didn’t sound like anything he wants, and he tells her so. “She can burn, too. I don’t want to end up with an idol. Or with a million babies. How the hell am I supposed to pay for college?”

She laughs as he finally pulls the car over into a dirt parking lot lined by trees. “You say that now, but when it happens you won’t have a choice.”

He reaches over her, grabbing an unopened bottle of soju at her feet and cracking it open with a relieved sigh. “There’s always a choice,” he corrects absentmindedly, downing half of it in one gulp.

“That’s true,” she relents, and he cocks an eyebrow at her.

“Did you just let me win an argument?”

“We were arguing?”

“Aren’t we always?” He rolls his eyes exasperatedly at her, and she giggles, swiping the bottle from him and taking a sip.

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“It’s dark out.”

“Scared?”

He hopes she doesn’t see him gulp. “You wish.”

She grins and unbuckles her seatbelt, and in the next moment Yoongi finds himself trailing after her as she picks her way haphazardly down a dirt path through the trees, humming another song he doesn’t know under her breath, puffs of warm air trailing from their mouths as they trudge along.

It isn’t snowing, and Yoongi thanks his lucky stars for the fact as much as he damns them, because it’s cold enough out in the woods to feel like it is.

“Yah, Lee,” he calls after a few miles, pausing and propping his palms on his knees to catch his breath, a stitch in his side and the cold November air too crisp in his lungs, eating up the buzz he had managed to build on the drive over. “Hold on,” he wheezes, hating himself for getting roped into a fucking hike. He hates exercise, hates the outdoors. Hell, right now he even hates that their short trek is worth it, with moonlight filtering in through the gaps in the leaves to leave puddles of silver on the ground, making the layer of frost on the trees look like glass, crunching with every movement.

She skips back towards him, smiling down at the clutch of fallen leaves she’s collected, each the size of her face. “Look at these, aren’t they beautiful?” she calls over, holding them out proudly. The contented smile on her face quickly disappears as she takes in the way his hands are shaking, the way his lower lip is quivering, and the leaves flutter to the ground around her as she comes running.

“Jesus Christ, Yoongi,” she complains. “You’re freezing.” Without a second thought she loops her ridiculous scarf over him, tucking his hands into the pockets of her parka and covering them with her own, thumbs running over his knuckles.

“I t-told you it was dark out,” he complains, voice muffled under the fabric.

“You didn’t tell me you were so sensitive against the cold,” she reprimands, unzipping both their outer layers and taking a step closer. He leans automatically into her warmth, trying to keep his teeth from chattering.

“Suh-says thuh girl who lives in juh-jackets,” he stammers out, and he can see her roll her eyes.

“We’re guh-oing to get eaten by a wuh-wild animal,” he continues to whine, tucking his head further into the scarf while simultaneously using his hands to pull her into him, hungry for the warmth that feels like it’s coming off her in waves. “The great muh-Min Yoongi, brought down by a bear. I hope it’s Kumamon.”

“That would make for a great headline,” she agrees, humoring him as she adjusts the scarf between them. “I can see it now: Popstar dies of mascot attack in Seoul.”

He just grunts at her, hands fisting in the fabric of her pocket, and her hands move to his back, rubbing small circles into it. He’s never realized how small she is until now. What was she, five one? Five foot two? Whatever her height is, she’s tiny and hot as a furnace as she stands against him, the top of her head barely reaching his chin as she rubs her hands up and down and around, warm breath tickling his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt. He really should have dressed warmer, but it’s not like he’d known they were going to end up in the middle of nowhere.

“Is this okay?” she asks after a few moments. “Are you feeling better?”

Yoongi reminds himself that this indeed was okay. This was what friends did, right? They dragged each other out on drunken hikes in the middle of the night and used each other’s body heat to stay alive. The thought is so ridiculous he wants to laugh, but his face freezes against the wind that chooses that precise moment to pick up. He slouches further into the scarf just as she tilts her head up, temple resting against his cheek. He wonders if she has a fever, if he does and that’s why it feels so surreal to have her standing so close to him.

His reality was fucked up, in his opinion. Wasn’t he just hot and sweaty not that many hours ago, halfway to unconsciousness on the floor of the dance studio? Then he was sitting bored out of his mind, listening to Dr. Kim drone on in their therapy session, then tipsy as he drove mindlessly towards nowhere in particular. A couple more hours and he would be warm and blessedly in bed, and tomorrow he would be back in the studio, finishing the track he started the night before.

But for now… for now he’s standing in unfamiliar woods with nothing but shafts of moonlight glowing placidly on the path before him, regrettably sober in face of the cold as he considers the very real possibility that he’s going to freeze his ass off. That is, if a bear doesn’t get to them first.

Lee shifts, and he abandons the train of paranoid thought, comes crashing back to the present. The present, where he has her pressed against him, all warmth and curves and the smell of cigarette smoke and soju, rubbing life back into his torso. Where they’re just Lee and Yoongi, standing in the middle of the goddamn woods, her humming again under her breath.

Maybe reality isn’t so bad, he concedes.

He finally groans, sick of the mental battle he had just waged with himself for no reason. Be present, Hoseok had told him the other week. Like he had a choice when his present was currently freezing cold.

“If you tell me you’re falling in love with this, too, I might just have to leave you here,” he tries to joke, his jaw finally warming up enough to talk.

She laughs at that, her breath trailing across his collarbone like a caress. “Maybe,” she rasps. “But just a little bit.”

[“No matter how much you love someone, you still want to have your own way.”]

Day 25

Since their failed attempt at having a “fun night out,” Yoongi’s been paying more attention. More attention to the way more leaves are turning brown, to the way the tree behind the university building is getting more and more bare by the day. To his teammates and their unique ways of navigating through their strange world, how they slip in and out of their stage personas with ease and without giving up too much of who they are. To the way he reacts to certain stressors and how he deals with them without forfeiting his honesty with himself. To how proud he is of himself for the countless small victories he now manages in a day.

More attention to Minjun, who’s finally stopped carrying his lighter around. To Jihoon, who can finally get through a session without sobbing. To Gunwoo, who looks as stressed as ever but at least has stopped bringing his phone into the room.

To Lee, who’s the same except not. Who is, apparently, a human furnace under the oversized clothes. Who still wears the same vintage glasses, still wears lipstick the color of dried blood on Wednesdays and Wednesdays only, still smokes cigarettes like they’re the secret to a long and happy life.

Lee, who until now hasn’t caught up to the reality that he’s an idol. Who still treats him like a person instead of a popstar, like what he does is a job and like he’s whole and sane and normal underneath it all. Like he’s Yoongi. Like that’s all that matters.

And Yoongi… Yoongi is the same except not. He’s still moody and anxious and part of him still hates the stage as much as he loves it. Still as conflicted about his life and his art and still plagued with the same insecurities that have been hounding him since he had been old enough to want this life. Still Suga and Agust D and a member of Bangtan and a son and a friend and a brother. Still just as hard on himself and on his work. Still working just as fast and just as ruthlessly as the rest of them to keep the dream going.

But he’s paying more attention now. Was making more of an effort to be present. Was preening more in front of the cameras and fans as the rest, cracking more jokes and giving more input instead of letting the label make all the decisions. He’s fighting again, for the first time in what’s felt like years. To make the music he wants to, to say the things he wants to, to be the person he wants to.

He thinks he understands what Hoseok was telling him, then. What Lee has probably been teaching him this whole time. To fall in love with everything, every moment, instead of being a by-stander. To be present, no matter how overwhelming it is, no matter how much he wants to shy away from it for fear of people seeing through the façade.

He’s being Yoongi again. And for the first time, he doesn’t feel the least bit sorry about it.

[“Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.”]

Day 28

“Hello, Mr. Min. Take a seat.”

Yoongi bows a greeting towards Dr. Kim as he slips into his office, does as he’s told on the worn brown leather sofa across him.

The office looks and smells the way he expects it to, the way he’s seen on countless movies and shows; a desk on one end, a sofa pushed up against the wall, the doctor sitting on an armchair across the coffee table. It smells like old books and potpourri, and he fidgets awkwardly in his seat, wondering why he’s so nervous for their first and hopefully only one-on-one session.

Dr. Kim smiles reassuringly at him, as though he knows it will help put him at ease. It does. He doesn’t know why but it does, and he allows himself to relax a little, slouching onto the couch cushions.

“How are you doing today?”

“Good,” he answers automatically. “Thank you for asking.”

The older man hums and nods at that, as though he had expected the answer, turning to look at what Yoongi assumes is his file in his hands. “I see here you were diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder when you were fifteen. How are you doing with that?”

“Good.” Yoongi winces at the repetition. Tries again. “I mean, I still have bad days, but I’m dealing with it better.”

“You have,” Dr. Kim assures him. “We’ve made leaps and bounds over the course of our sessions.” He peers at him over his glasses then, and Yoongi feels like the man is looking straight through him instead of at him. “To be perfectly honest I was apprehensive about putting you into group therapy. I wasn’t sure you would be able to open up around other people, progress with them, but your management was adamant about it. I take it you had a lot to do with that?”

Yoongi swallows, breaking eye contact awkwardly. “I’m not good with talking about feelings,” he admits gruffly, eyes squinting to read the titles on the bookshelf.

“Because you have a lot of them?” Dr. Kim infers, and Yoongi nods meekly at his accuracy. “The sessions aren’t so much about anger management than they are about impulse control, as I hope you’ve learned.”

Yoongi nods. “Figured that out the first day. The people in the group aren’t exactly… violent. Well, except for Jihoon, but that was a fluke.”

“And neither are you,” Dr. Kim says, glancing down at the file again. “The incident with one of your band mates… Jeon Jungkook?”

He leans forward, then, elbows on his knees as he rubs a hand tiredly over his face. “That was a fluke too,” he states, hating the way his voice sounds like it’s pleading with him. “We punk each other all the time. Kookie just went a little too far and I might have reacted a little too… strongly.”

“That’s all well and good, but it still got you here. Do you understand why your management had to send you to therapy?”

“Because I’m the most unstable out of everyone,” he says automatically. At the sight of Dr. Kim’s eyebrow going up, he clears his throat. “I mean, I tend to keep a lot in. I told you, I’m not good with talking about feelings.”

“Your bandmates said as much, when they came in.”

It’s Yoongi’s turn for his eyebrow to go up.

Dr. Kim just smiles. “Your friends Kim Namjoon and Jung Hoseok came in before you started therapy. They gave me a little more background about you, a better idea of who you are and how you’d been doing before all this. Out of concern, you understand. There is, after all, only so much doctors can infer from a patient. Talking to their friends and family always gives us a better picture.”

“They….” Yoongi’s eyes dart around, unable to focus on any one thing in particular but unwilling to meet the other man’s eyes just then. Still trying to wrap his head around the fact that two of his teammates had taken time out of their impossible schedule to look out for him. “I can’t believe they did that,” he finally admits, shoulders hunching.

“Are you surprised?”

He barks a laugh. “Yeah. Fuck yeah I’m surprised. What did they say?”

Dr. Kim leans back in the armchair, elbows on the armrests as he steeples his fingers together. “Just that you hadn’t been your normal self lately. That they felt a little hurt that you didn’t feel you could talk to them, but that they were glad you were going to get the chance to in therapy.”

Yoongi shakes his head, muttering under his breath. “Idiots.”

“Far from, Mr. Min. Mr. Kim and Mr. Jung were simply acting out of concern. It’s very reassuring to know that you have a good support system behind you. I don’t see why you’re reacting to this with anger. Could you explain why?”

Yoongi just keeps shaking his head, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “It’s just… they know better. They know I’ll go to them when I really need to.”

“Ah, but Mr. Min, the key here is turning to people before you need to. Before the pressure builds up and another unsavory incident occurs. You mentioned before that music is your primary outlet for your emotions?”

Yoongi nods. “I don’t know if you listen to rap, Dr. Kim, but it’s very aggressive. It’s been the best way to deal with my anger and anxiety. At least, that I’ve found.”

Dr. Kim just hums again. “I’ve listened to your music, Mr. Min. You’re very transparent with your lyrics. Far more transparent, in fact, than you are in person.”

“I told you, I’m not good with-”

“Talking about feelings, yes. But you understand, at least as an artist, how important communication is?”

“Of course,” Yoongi scoffs. “Words are the backbone to everything I am.”

“Communication isn’t just words, Mr. Min. A message can be relayed without a single word being said.”

“Look.” He leans forward again, dipping his head down and wrapping his hands around the back of his neck, already exhausted by the conversation. “I know there’s a lot of shit wrong with me. That I don’t exactly deal with things the way I should. That I go from happy and hyper one minute and quiet and reclusive the next. It’s just how I am, how I’ve always been. I’ve been trying, listening to all your advice, but I can’t change that.”

“Nor does anyone want you to.” He finally looks up, finds a look of mild surprise on the doctor’s face. “Mr. Min, I’m not going to suggest that you see a psychiatrist and go on a cocktail of medications just to pursue a state of ‘normal’ that doesn’t exist. Everyone has their quirks, their individual personalities. You’re here because you were unhappy, and unhappiness is just as much an impulse as anger. Some people have a tendency towards it, like a default. Does this sound like this applies to you?”

His brow furrows, mulling it over in his head. He had to admit it was as accurate as he had ever heard anyone else describe it to him. And it was true—he did tend towards dissatisfaction and unhappiness as a default. No matter how many goals of his he achieves, part of him is still always waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to wake up and the dream to disappear into the cold light of morning, to find himself back on the streets with nothing to his name. No matter how happy he finds himself, he knows it won’t last—that it could all be ripped away from him the next second before he could even scream for the universe not to.

“Impulse control, Mr. Min.” Dr. Kim’s voice says, pulling him from his thoughts. “In your case, it might call for a paradigm shift. To make a conscious effort towards happiness or contentment instead of away from it.”

Paradigm shift, there were those words again. Wasn’t Lee just talking about that last week?

“Tell me what’s on your mind, Mr. Min.”

Yoongi startles, finally managing to pull his gaze back onto his doctor who’s looking at him with his eyebrows drawn together in concern. He wants to laugh, for some unknowable reason. His heart feels like a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces bouncing around in a box in his chest. He wants to dump them all on the coffee table in front of him, to find the corners and put the damn thing back together again.

“I need to talk myself into happiness instead of away from it, is what you’re saying,” he hazards, and the doctor’s face finally breaks into a smile.

“You are a writer, after all, Mr. Min. I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

He laughs, and the sincerity in it would have been startling if he wasn’t feeling so relieved. If he closes his eyes he can almost imagine the edges of the puzzle lining up, the pieces falling into their proper places.

“Good talk, doc. Thanks.”

“No, Mr. Min. Thank you.”

[“So just relax and enjoy the ride.”]

Day 30

“Last day, huh?”

If Lee’s smile is a little watered down tonight, he can understand. He doesn’t know how many meetings the rest of them have left, but he’s free now. No more uncomfortable sharing sessions, no more unsolicited advice that he’s heard a million times before, no more inconveniencing his entire team to make time for therapy.

Sure, he’d started therapy without believing he needed to, but he was also smart enough to admit it had helped. It’s why he still has Dr. Kim’s calling card in his wallet. Just in case.

Then it hits him: no more therapy means no more Lee. No more routine. No more twenty minute breaks behind the building. No more cigarette smoke. No more huddling together against the crisp winter wind. No more faux philosophical conversations about life and love that neither of them took too seriously anyway.

He wonders if she’s going to miss him as much as he already misses her. If that’s why she’s smiling so sadly, brown eyes watching him like she’s memorizing the way he stands, the way he breathes. If his own smile looks just as sad as he does the same to her.

“Last day,” he agrees, pushing the front doors open and letting them out into the late evening.

Now that he’s present, he can’t help but notice the way the glow of the streetlamps has turned the world a warm amber, the way the lights from passing cars glint and reflect off the glass windows of the building, the sheen of moisture on the concrete sidewalk from the short fall of rain while they had been indoors.

The way Lee looks in the middle of it all, chewing her lipstick off as her eyes scan the road uncertainly, looking for the car that will take him away from her for good.

He doesn’t know when he changed his mind about her, but he has. She’s still weird and possibly insane, just as unstable and unpredictable as he is. She looks exactly the same as when he’d met her all those weeks ago. There was still nothing special about her, nothing that screamed or called for attention. Just another girl with a strange way of looking at the world and an even stranger way of talking about it, but while he hadn’t even considered her pretty then, he realizes that she’s the most wonderful thing he’s seen all day. The most wonderful part about every day that’s come before this.

The thought crystalizes in his chest, fragile and firm and sharp around the edges, but it was his. She was his. And she was one routine he suddenly found himself unwilling to break.

“Do you want-”

“Give me your-”

They stare at each other, blinking in surprise as they catch themselves blurting things out at the same time. He grins, and it’s the one that shows all his teeth. The one that he only uses when he’s truly entertained by something. The one that only slips out when he’s truly happy.

“You go first,” he tells her.

She smirks, fingers already tucking a cigarette between lips that are patchy from where she’s bitten off her make-up. “Do you want to exchange numbers?”

“I was about to ask you to give me yours,” he admits, handing his phone over.

She lets out a stream of smoke into the cold night air, smiling as she takes it and saves her number. “See you around, Min Yoongi.”

“See you, Sam Lee.”

He’s halfway home when he realizes she’s saved herself as ‘Your Biggest Fan’. Halfway home, but already feeling like he’s there.

#BTS #BTS fanfic #suga x oc #min yoongi x oc #BTS fanfiction

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happycakestories · 5 years

Text

old mx fic dump pt. 4:

that one hybrid au i deleted but uhhh here it is in its unfinished form

Chapter 4: it’s so typical to say i like you (but i do) / everyday you make my heart race (but you can’t find out)

Title of series - to be young and in love

Series summary: a cheesy monsta x hybrid au

First work - hold my hand (I’ve been waiting for you)

Work summary:

“I mean what I said, you know.” Minhyuk utters calmly, finally interrupting Jooheon’s croaking laughter. “Like I don’t really see it, but you have the right to date whoever you want to at this point.”

Jooheon rolls his eyes, light pink dusting across his cheeks as Minhyuk brings up the same embarrassing topic from before. Still, the elder can’t stop himself from teasing again. “Even if he is a messy college student who orders the weirdest drink in the entire cafe. Your choice, I guess.” He shrugs lightly, purposely glancing away from the other’s progressively reddening cheeks.

-----------

The monsta x hybrid au no one asked for where honeypup find love through messy coffee dates and angry work conflicts.

Ch. 1 - coffee talk (caramel macchiato and iced americano)

Summary: Waking up late for early morning coffee warrants choking and cuddling - in that exact order.

“...on the outside I’m a bad girl, on the inside I’m a good girl-”

Jooheon awakens from the dredges of sleep to the sound of Miss A’s Bad Girl Good Girl blaring nonstop from his phone. He blindly gropes around until his fingers finally close around a vaguely solid object, and he retracts it quickly back under warm covers.

The blue glare of the call notification barely tells him anything except that it is way too early for anyone to be awake and calling him.

No one except for Minhyuk, of course.

Before the more reasonable part of his brain can stop him, he swipes the phone icon across the screen, answering the call.

“Hyung, why.” Jooheon cringes at the drag of his own voice, still rough from sleep. God, why does he sound so much like a chainsmoker?

A tinny, ever familiar voice rings through the speakers, so loud Jooheon’s ears immediately try to curl in on themselves. “Is that any way to greet your favorite person in the morning?”

“Actually, Hoseokie hyung is my favorite so you’re out of luck.” He grins to himself, already picturing Minhyuk huffing in feigned anger.

Seconds later, a burst of static rumbles through the speakers and a low mutter of “I can’t believe I put up with this level of disrespect!” floats across from the background. Jooheon turns his face into his many pillows, gasping as he muffles his giggles into the soft cotton.

The call crackles with static again before Minhyuk resumes speaking normally. “Well, I’m about to become your favorite hyung when I pay for your iced americano at 2Jae’s, so you’d better get your bunny butt out of bed! And yes I know you’re still in bed so don’t try to pretend you even have one foot out on the floor.”

“Hyung-”

“No buts, get moving before I actually come in there and drag you out by your perky ears! You do remember I have your apartment key right?”

“Yes, hyung - I was the one who gave it to you,” he sighs, a noise-induced headache already spreading through his brain.

“Ok, well - whatever, I’m going to be outside your door in 15 minutes and you’d better answer it dressed!” The call ends immediately after Minhyuk’s last syllable, and Jooheon collapses against his pillows, ears unfurling slowly when quiet surrounds them again.

He lets the phone slip loose from his fingers and slide down into whatever dark crevice that awaits it. He just needs a few moments to calm down from that rushed (and very loud) conversation.

Just five minutes. Maybe even seven. He’s gotten ready in less time than that before, so it should be completely fine. Minhyuk won’t even be able to tell whether he’s dressed up or not. Sweaters and sweatpants are acceptable, right?

Right. Ten minutes then to take a little rabbit nap.

--------

Jooheon blinks awake to the sound of his phone going off for the second time that morning.

And, of course, it is once again Minhyuk.

Who is pissed, according to the rapid stream of texts pinging into his inbox.

aka Minhyukuuu: i am literally right outside your door

aka Minhyukuuu: one minute carrot face

aka Minhyukuuu: istg lee jooheon

aka Minhyukuuu: 36 seconds and i am coming for your rabbit ass

Jooheon flails up, head spinning with vertigo as he scrolls frantically, dread building up with every pixelated word. His phone dings just as he reaches the last text, signalling another incoming message.

aka Minhyukuuu: 15 seconds

Fuck. He’s screwed isn’t he?

The phone is thrown onto the bed, bouncing away, discarded as Jooheon panics to stumble out of bed as fast as possible.

He trips over clothing strewn across the floor (sweaters, cardigans, and a suspicious pair of leather pants), and he plops down onto the carpet, pulling on whatever item is the most closely available as frantically as possible.

He’s got one leg in a pair of paint-stained jeans when an ominous thud echoes from the living room, followed immediately by pounding footsteps that roll towards his room like impending thunder.

Jooheon resumes his struggle with increased fervor, even though in the back his mind he’s already acknowledged his doomed fate. His panic grows even more when his tail refuses to cooperate, stubbornly clinging to his back instead of slipping through the specially designed hole at the waistband.

He’s about to give up and just yank it through by hand when his bedroom door slams open with bang, and he’s suddenly met with an angry, slitted stare.

His puffy tail chooses this exact moment to cooperate, and he quickly slips his jeans to his waist, buttoning and zipping up the fly before standing upon cramped legs. “Well, I’m technically ready now…” he grins weakly, faltering when Minhyuk only continues glaring, black ears twitching minutely in the morning light.

In a flash, his friend is no longer standing in front of him, and he’s suddenly flat against the ground again. He looks up to see the cat hybrid positioned over him in a hunched straddle, dangerously close with his hands caged around his head. Minhyuk’s eyes are still slitted forebodingly, but there’s a glimmer in his dark pupils that tells Jooheon he’s safe from actually being dragged out by the ears.

He pulls his ears flat against his face, pouting up at his friend with puppy, or in this case, bunny eyes. “Hyung,” he whines in his signature baby voice, “I’m sorry. Please,” he dials the puppy-bunny eyes up another notch, widening them as much as possible and squeaking out, “forgive me?”

His plan seems to have worked when the hands near his head start lifting away, and he breathes a sigh of relief, ears immediately springing upright back to their original position.

Unfortunately, he celebrated a bit too early.

Minhyuk’s hands dart back down around his face and lock on like two iron clamps, forcing Jooheon back down against the floor. Suddenly, his head is being lifted up and swung down in rapid succession, back and forth, back and forth, until all he can see is a blur of colors, like some violence induced acid trip.

When he’s finally dropped down, his ears are ringing in pain, and he folds them flat against his face, curling his hands gently over them. Minhyuk sits back (mind you, still on top of him) looking like the epitome of the cat who’s gotten the cream.

If the cream was a bunny in pain, then yep, that saying fits perfectly to the situation right now.

“Was that really necessary?” Jooheon whines, hands clenching over his still-ringing ears. Minhyuk only smirks back, lips curling up in pure satisfaction as his long tail waves lazily in and out of the corner of Jooheon’s eye.

“I suppose not…” he remarks, casually picking at a well-manicured finger, “but what would be the fun in that?” He turns a blindingly bright grin towards the rabbit hybrid trapped under him, feigning the perfect image of angelic innocence.

Jooheon splutters, and starts wriggling like a fish out of water until he displaces the man on top off him with an oomph. Fortunately, Minhyuk drops to the floor with all his grace intact (curse his cat genes) and barely bats an eyelash as he rolls elegantly into an upright position.

Jooheon huffs, disgruntled at his own messily sprawled state after their little morning tousle. Minhyuk only cocks an eyebrow at him, preening lightly through his hair as he directs a silent question towards the hybrid on the ground. Jooheon shakes it off, blinking away from the other’s stare. When he sits up, he can already feel a crook in his ear, and he reaches up to fiddle with it for a few minutes before the appendage finally straightens out on its own.

Slender hands come to card through his hair, scratching across his scalp to rest gently at the base of his ears. They start massaging smoothly at the curved bone there, caressing with well-placed touches until the bunny hybrid is a melted puddle of nerves.

Minhyuk allows Jooheon to rest against his chest, only twitching minutely when fluffy ears brush across his face. It’s a silent apology, his stubborn way of saying sorry for wrestling his childhood friend of many years to the floor and choking the life out of him.

It’s good enough for Jooheon, the event already forgotten in a hazy sea of neurons and synapses, each one after the other firing off bright signals of pleasure through his bunny brain. He makes some sort of purring sound, a rumble deep in his chest as Minhyuk’s fingers continue to work their apologetic magic up to the tips of his ears.

“Are we good?” the cat hybrid murmurs quietly, slitted pupils following the pale curve of the other’s closed lids as he awaits an obvious answer.

“Yeah,” Jooheon hums, revelling in the tingling across his scalp. “Yeah, we’re definitely good.”

Skilled hands are replaced by a soft pair of lips that plant a quick peck on the crown of his head as arms circle around his neck in a warm hug. Jooheon returns it just as affectionately, clinging to the arms around him and snuggling contentedly against them.

“Good,” Minhyuk sighs out in relief, his breath disturbing wisps of curled blonde hair in the process.

“You’re still buying coffee for me though,” Jooheon grins up at his friend, who rolls his eyes in acceptance.

“Fine,” Minhyuk grimaces, knees popping as he pulls both of them to their feet. He smooths down invisible wrinkles on his black turtleneck, re-tucking it around skin-tight jeans. “But I get to pick our orders.”

“Good enough for me! Free coffee is free coffee.” Jooheon concedes, eyes crinkling in amusement as he watches Minhyuk’s inner cat preen through his barely rumpled clothes and hair.

Minhyuk finishes smoothing down the fur on his ears, his cat side temporarily satisfied, and marches towards the door. He automatically grabs onto Jooheon, latching onto the other’s fraying sweater sleeve and pulls the bunny hybrid to his side. Jooheon follows accordingly, catching up to Minhyuk until they’re shoulder to shoulder, eye to eye, and ear to ear.

He can’t resist reaching over and giving a gentle stroke to the cat hybrid’s perked ear. It twitches slightly under his fingers, but he persists, slowly stroking the fur in long petting motions. Minhyuk raises a brow, but he’s clearly not resisting so Jooheon gets a few more pets in before reluctantly dropping his hand.

“Your fur is nice…” he mumbles by way of an explanation, immediately blushing and fiddling with the hand that had been touching those soft, soft ears.

Minhyuk looks over, watching heat stir in the other’s cheeks over something so menial, so innocent in its intent. He reaches over and pinches Jooheon’s downturned nose, eliciting a surprised yelp.

The bunny hybrid turns toward him, clutching his nose with more shock than actual pain. “What was that for?” he muffles out from behind his hand.

“It was for being too cute,” Minhyuk replies haughtily, turning his face up towards the ceiling. Jooheon laughs, used to the other’s hot-and-cold attitude, but there’s still a smattering of pink dusted on his cheeks.

This time they walk out even closer than before, arms linked as happiness buzzes warmly through them. Jooheon leans into the crook of Minhyuk’s shoulder, and Minhyuk lets furry ears tickle against the side of his neck without complaint.

----------

2Jae’s is still relatively empty when the two arrive, save for a few truly early businessmen and the bleary eyed baristas.

They enter with a light ding of the bell on the door and are instantaneously immersed into the world of coffee, indie beats, and terrariums overflowing with lush greenery.

It’s one of the best places in town.

The recommended specials are always drawn cutely with colored chalk onto a blackboard tacked behind the counter. Today they read: vanilla sweet brew, almond milk macchiato, honey lemon tea, and “full love impact.”

The last option has been on there for months at this point, so much so that it should no longer be a daily special. However, there seems to be some kind of feud between the two owners of the cafe over that drink; something about it being too indecent for the public eye and a disgrace to the cafe that it’s even available as a potential order.

(It was screamed from the back of the cafe so distinctly one day that no one could pretend they hadn’t heard it. At this point, there’s some kind of unspoken consensus for it to be ignored among all the workers and customers)

Today, it’s been rewritten in pink chalk with excessively shiny hearts doodled around it. Really, whoever has to do this everyday should be paid extra for this kind of trouble. In fact, it must be the worst waste of supplies because who even has the nerve to order a drink called “full love impact” ?

Minhyuk ignores the last option as usual and goes ahead to order his usual caramel macchiato and Jooheon’s iced americano. Their cashier smiles charmingly at a familiar face, already typing in the order before Minhyuk can even open his mouth.

“Thank you Youngjae-ssi,” Minhyuk nods his head slightly to the part-time cashier and full-time owner of the cafe. He decides to wait at the counter, seeing as no one else is up in line right now. The machines whir soothingly as Youngjae mixes the drinks, and the cat hybrid watches dazedly from his flopped position in front of them.

It’s nice enough he almost dozes off, but he catches himself just in time to accept the drinks fresh off the press. He grudgingly pays for both, Jooheon’s dimpled smile keeping the promise fresh in his mind.

With both drinks in hand, Minhyuk turns to leave before an errant thought catches him in his steps. Compulsively, he turns back to Youngjae, who glances up from the register at his return.

“Youngjae-ssi,” Minhyuk hesitates, question wildly running through his mind before he brashly continues. “Why is that last order still up as a daily special after all this time?”

He’s met with a deafening silence that seems to spread throughout the whole cafe. Even the birds outside quiet for a moment, perhaps in mourning of Minhyuk’s inevitable fate after this question.

Youngjae’s wide smile is still plastered across his face, but there’s something about it that doesn’t reach his eyes, nor the rest of his usually cheery demeanor. His half-rounded, pebble brown mouse ears have started twitching minutely, and Minhyuk thinks he can see a skinny tail slowly rising up from behind the cafe owner’s back as well.

“You’re right Minhyuk, why is it still up, huh?” The words grind out from between pressed lips, and the cat hybrid almost flinches at the suppressed rage hidden within Youngjae’s rhetorical reply.

The cafe owner’s expression immediately drops, becoming apologetic at Minhyuk’s shock. His tail relaxes slightly, but the line of his lips is still slightly strained. “Ah, I didn’t mean to take out it on you Minhyuk. It’s just been a bit of a, how would you say this, point of contention between my mate and I.”

By that he means Jaebum, a panther hybrid who makes up the second half of the 2Jae duo, resident sweetheart, and Youngjae’s husband of 3 years. Also, the apparent perpetrator of the cursed “full love impact” drink.

Minhyuk is still relatively confused, but there’s something about Youngjae’s words that prompts him to close his big mouth to any further questions. Youngjae and his husband have always been a model example of a successful marriage - complete with love and financial success - so it leads the cat hybrid to wonder what kind of divisive conflict could be behind such a simple drink.

He’s cut off when Youngjae’s apologetic mask immediately switches into one of placid professionalism when he glances past Minhyuk. It’s another early morning customer - a college student at first glance. He’s got short, choppy hair, bangs ruffled most likely from a night without sleep, and Minhyuk takes pity on him as he remembers his own schooling days.

He steps aside, reluctantly letting go of his question for the sake of being polite. He finally heads back to Jooheon with their drinks dripping wet from condensation, smiling fondly when the bunny hybrid shoots up eagerly from his previously sprawled position. He makes grabby hands at the drink, flapping his oversized sleeves in the process. Minhyuk hands over the iced americano without a moment’s hesitation.

He slides onto the high-topped stool across from the other man and starts sipping at his own drink as well. The sweet flavors hit his tongue with a gentle familiarity, and he sighs at the rush of caffeine through his system. The sun hits his entire right side at the most perfect angle, and Jooheon grins cutely at him over his own straw.

Yeah, it’s a good morning.

His “moment” is interrupted when hissed whispers arise from the counter, his sensitive ears immediately snapping towards the direction of the sound. Jaebum’s arrived behind the register, and he’s receiving the college student’s order with a tight smile on his face; all the while, Youngjae is muttering what must be insults behind his mate with fury simmering in his eyes.

“One order of Full Love Impact to go?” The college student nods noncommittally, seemingly unaware of the tense conflict taking place behind the counter.

Minhyuk is still in shock over the fact that anyone would order that drink out of their own free will, much less a sleep-deprived student who should be living off of pure black coffee at this point in his life. Jooheon’s ears have also perked towards the counter, eyes widening comically as he takes in the scene before them.

The ridiculous drink is prepared with little to no effort, and before long, the boy has the drink in hand and is sipping at it without a care in the world for the struggle he’s incited. God knows what’s in that beverage, but something about it makes his previously dead stare melt into an adorable smile, complete with crinkles at the edge of his eyes. Combine that with his tousled looks, and there’s suddenly an attractive sense of boyish handsomeness about him.

And it looks like Minhyuk’s not the only one who’s noticed this either.

Jooheon’s lips have dropped open around the straw, too distracted by the view to even remove his mouth from the plastic appendage. His eyes track the college student’s movements all the way to the front of the cafe, only blinking away when the boy is no longer in sight. There’s a high flush on his cheeks as he resumes sucking away at his drink, and his ears have started quivering down towards his cheeks.

Pink lips have pulled themselves into a pointed pout around the straw, and Minhyuk can already tell the plastic around the tip is going to be shredded silly once Jooheon decides to remove his mouth from the tube. He’s always had a bad habit of nibbling at things and this time, it’s of no exception.

The cat hybrid reaches over, gently pinching a soft cheek to get his friend’s attention. Jooheon finally comes out of his flushed trance and lifts his mouth off of a wilting straw. He looks up at his friend with innocent eyes, slowly lifting his ears away from his face as his embarrassment fades.

“You know, you weren’t being obvious at all when you were checking out that kid.” Blood immediately returns to the his cheeks, long ears snapping back down rapidly to hide his face.

“Shut up, I was not-”

“Yes, you were.” Minhyuk cuts him off bluntly with a dead stare. “Look, you’re doing that thing with your ears again-” The rabbit hybrid’s ears immediately snap upwards. “Don’t even think you can attempt to fool me at this point Lee Jooheon. Are you trying to insult our lifelong friendship?”

“No…” Jooheon quietly pouts, “but you don’t have to be harsh about it.” He glances around furtively, pupils twitching nervously as he takes in the still-empty cafe and breathes a sigh. He automatically starts fidgeting with his ears again, pulling the furry tips towards his cheek.

The cat hybrid scoffs, languished as he leans back against his seat and tipping his chin towards the ceiling. It’s decorated with finely painted wood beams that host clear, bell-shaped lamps dangling down from smooth, black cords. If he stares long enough at the soft lighting maybe Jooheon will stop being the adorable mess that he is on too many occasions - including right now.

“There’s no way anybody noticed that you had the hots for a messy college student,” Minhyuk comments, still stretching backwards. “Besides me of course.” He smirks proudly when he hears “of course you did” muttered almost indistinguishably across from him.

“But really,” he pulls himself forward, curling his tail around a chair leg to steady himself, “what did you see in that guy? I mean he was cute and all, but really, that drink choice would’ve ruined it for me.”

Jooheon sticks out his tongue, narrowing slim eyes at his so-called friend. “First of all, you’re not me. And yes -” he continues quickly as Minhyuk opens his mouth to argue, “there is a difference between knowing someone for most of their life versus actually living their life and generally existing as them, okay?”

The older hybrid huffs a breath as he pointedly looks out the window, defeat sullenly written across his face. He shouldn’t be so worked up about Jooheon’s little outburst, but something about it irks him to an indescribable degree. It’s the fact that they’ve basically known each other since birth, grew up together, and have seen each other at their absolute best and worst - shouldn’t they be close enough that Jooheon should have no reason to freak out about a little crush, even less so in front of his best friend?

He’s just a little angry is all. (Besides who was the one who paid for their drinks today?)

Jooheon watches as his friend continues glaring moodily out of the window, and he swears he can see the literal gears turning in the other’s head. The bunny hybrid has already started biting his lip nervously, regret for every word of his previous outburst coursing uncomfortably through his body.

It’s an understatement to say that Minhyuk may be a bit of a diva, but his own sharp remark was probably uncalled for. That boy though...something about him had tugged on Jooheon, pulling his gaze to him as if there was taut string between them. It was his scent maybe, a sharp, almost cinnamon tang with a sweet undercurrent of apple. It had made his head fog up within seconds of smelling it, muffling all his senses until it had finally drifted out of the cafe and away from him.

It’s been years since he’s been in a serious relationship with anyone (Minhyuk not-included), so the sudden surge of attraction he had felt shocked him to some degree. Coupled with the fact that the boy was a complete stranger and his best friend’s immediate teasing, he couldn’t stop himself from exploding a little.

Still, his lifelong friendship has lasted too long to be broken up by something like this. Besides, looking at Minhyuk’s frowning face is starting to make his insides twist pitifully. If this tense silence continues any longer he might start crying a little.

“Ah, hyung,” he starts quietly, waiting for Minhyuk to acknowledge him. The elder inclines his head, ears turning slightly towards his direction, even as he pretends to feign interest in something outside.

Jooheon pulls his sleeves to the tips of fingers, picking at the already-frayed tips and lowering his gaze to the scratched wood of the table. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles through an exaggerated pout. “It shouldn’t have been such a big deal to me. Besides...” he trails off at a sad thought before admitting it with a sigh. “It’s not like I’ll ever see him again.”

In the second it takes for him to stop picking at his sleeve and to look up from the table, Minhyuk has somehow left his seat and appeared right beside him. He can barely utter a sound of surprise before he’s engulfed in rib-crushing hug. For such a skinny guy, Minhyuk has a surprisingly immovable grip around him. Jooheon makes a few half-hearted attempts at loosening it, but his friend’s arms stay locked around him like an iron cage. Eventually, he succumbs to the hug, nuzzling his face into Minhyuk’s sleek shoulder.

He takes a deep breath, heart settling as an ever-familiar scent of cherry blossoms winds through his system, tingling pleasantly along the way like the burn of a shot of whiskey. It’s so soothingly comfortable, he could fall asleep like this.

Which is why he forces himself to pull away, tearing his face away from Minhyuk’s beautiful scent. “So,” he clears his throat, looking up through his lashes. “I’m forgiven right?”

The cat hybrid scoffs, removing his arms from the younger’s middle to run a hand roughly through unbrushed blonde curls. It only makes Jooheon’s hair puff out even more, and he whines cutely for Minhyuk to stop. It only makes the older mess it up even more, revelling at the way the other’s nose twitches with every sweep of his hand.

Of course he can’t stay mad, not with the adorable sight displayed before him. He finally removes his hand and holds it out to Jooheon instead, pulling the rabbit hybrid to his feet when their fingers interlace. He grabs both of their empty cups in his other hand, stretching long fingers around cold, wet plastic in a delicate balancing act.

Hand-in-hand, he pulls Jooheon along with him to the door, automatically tossing out the cups on the way. When they finally step into the direct sunlight, Minhyuk finally deems Jooheon’s previous question with a reply.

“Of course I forgive you.” The other boy looks over, eyes wide in surprise. When he registers what the answer is for, curved eyes crease into tiny half-moons and deep dimples form out of soft cheeks.

“Oh, that.” he states plainly even as his smile grows across his face. It’s terribly infectious, and Minhyuk can already feel the same expression mirroring across his own face.

“Yes, that!” he retorts without any bite, his grin growing so wide his cheeks ache.

Jooheon tries to muffle a laugh at the other’s feigned anger, but he ends up snorting directly into Minhyuk’s face. The elder responds with sharp pinch to his nose, cuffing it between two bony knuckles.

The rabbit hybrid jerks away, rubbing gingerly at his nose with the edge of a frayed sleeve. It hurts, but the pain is already fading away to make room for the laughter bubbling up uncontrollably in his throat. When he looks at Minhyuk, he can see the same amusement glittering in brown eyes and hiding behind tightly pressed lips.

It erupts moments later, and he’s cupping his face in sleeved palms as they both stumble down the street. There’s an occasional passerby that tosses a questioning glance at them, but the bunny and kitty are too lost in each other’s idiocy to even pay attention to any social norms.

When they’ve finally gasped out every ounce of laughter, Minhyuk attempts to adopt a serious expression as he turns to face Jooheon. It comes out more like a squinty pout, and the younger boy bursts into giggles again. The cat hybrid attempts to appear exasperated, but there’s a deep ache in his cheeks and stomach that makes him want to curl up under the sun for a long (cat) nap. It’s soothing in the most exhausting way.

“I mean what I said, you know.” he utters calmly, finally interrupting Jooheon’s croaking laughter. “Like I don’t really see it, but you have the right to date whoever you want to at this point.”

Before Jooheon’s head can explode from the amount of blood flowing to his face, Minhyuk links the pinkies of their left hands together, pulling them up to rest in the space between their cheeks.

“Just remember, I was here first.”

He curls his pinky even tighter around Jooheon’s, so tight that he can see the younger’s finger straining awkwardly to stay looped around his. It must hurt a bit, but Jooheon easily allows Minhyuk to pull his hand along. He’s still smiling - brilliant and excruciatingly bright in the dewy sunlight.

“Of course, you always will be.”

Ch. 2 - smile at me now like you did then

Summary: Often good intentions are misunderstood through the lack of nuance through text. However, the subject of selective wording is unfortunately something that is completely lost on Minhyuk.

Jooheon’s phone woke him up for the second time that week. However, rather than a deafeningly loud ringtone, this time it was a series of vibrations that he felt from his pocket that jolted him awake. Becoming more alert to his surroundings, the sleepy rabbit hybrid noticed two things. The first being the pressure of a small body crushing his left arm and the second was that currently, there were fluffy ears brushing softly against his right cheek. Blinking in confusion, Jooheon proceeded to register where he was. Looking around from his spot laid on the floor Jooheon could tell he was surrounded by brightly coloured walls plastered with crudely drawn artwork and crafts. This signified that he was at none other than Sunnyside Care: the daycare that he spent every Monday through Friday for the last two years working at. Which meant Jooheon must have fallen asleep during nap time, again, rather than helping the other teacher, Shin Hoseok, clean up the afternoon snacks and begin setup for the daily playtime until the parents came to pick up the kids. Now fully recognizing where he was Jooheon had a few ideas about the small body currently crushing his arm. Glancing to the left his suspicions were confirmed as the bunny hybrid was greeted with the sight of comically oversized fluffy ears that belonged to the young bat-eared fox hybrid known as Sanghyuk. Which meant the ears tickling his right cheek must belong to none other than Jungkook. Upon investigation Jooheon confirmed that it was indeed the small boy whose ears were slowly ghosting over his skin with every small breath that he took. This did not surprise him. Although most of the children attending the daycare tended to cling to their two teachers, Jungkook was always much worse in this regard. Hoseok had guessed before that it was due to the fact that they were the only rabbit hybrids in the young boy’s life. Suddenly, feeling his phone vibrate against his leg again Jooheon sighed remembering why he was suddenly awake. Hoping not to wake Sanghyuk, Jooheon lightly pushed the four year old off his arm. However hearing a soft whine of “Teacher Honey” he knew he had been unsuccessful. Holding his breath for a second he let out a small sigh of relief once the young hybrid’s breaths had slowed down signifying that he was once again asleep. The last thing Jooheon and Hoseok needed was a crying child waking up the whole room in the middle of naptime. (Although Hoseok loved Jooheon as if he was his own child, Jooheon knew between causing such a scene and not helping with cleanup, the other rabbit hybrid would definitely be plotting his death. Or, knowing Hoseok’s kind hearted nature, it would be more like planning to “forget” to bring Jooheon lunch one day. However, being someone who was not able to cook was a fate almost as bad, if not worse, than death itself). Feeling one final vibration against his leg Jooheon scrambled towards the door, almost tripping over their sleeping lion hybrid, Taekwoon, on his way. Once safely outside the classroom he slipped his phone out of his pocket, and from one glance at his lockscreen he could see four text notifications from Minhyuk. aka Minhyukuuu: i’m home aka Minhyukuuu: i mean at your apartment, but like technically my home anyways aka Minhyukuuu: either way you should definitely come home straight after work aka Minhyukuuu: don’t mess around with kids and stuff ok? Leaving them all on read Jooheon let out an annoyed huff as he locked his phone and stuffed it into his back pocket. As Jooheon was fuming over the demanding texts, Hoseok, who had been in the daycare’s kitchen cleaning dishes, was walking down the hall and saw the annoyed twitch of the other rabbit’s ear. The elder merely raised an eyebrow in a wordless question. “Minhyuk,” Jooheon explained in an exasperated tone. That was all Hoseok needed to hear before he was nodding in understanding and mumbling something about “young mates and their problems” as he walked back into the classroom. Not bothering to argue that he and Minhyuk were not mates unlike Hoseok (and his mate Hyunwoo) seemed to believe for some reason, Jooheon proceeded instead to walk into the classroom behind the other rabbit hybrid to finish helping set up the classroom. --------- Only a few hybrid children were left in the daycare. Most had been picked up by their parents after the deafeningly loud playtime. Now Jooheon was just reading a story to Yugyeom and Jungkook as Hoseok was sending off the children with the parents who had already arrived. As he was reading to the two of them he smiled softly seeing the young bunny hybrid cuddle into the kitten hybrid’s lap. These two best friends always reminded Jooheon of Minhyuk and himself which made him particularly fond of the two. (He hated to pick favourites, however he definitely did have a weak spot for these two). Minhyuk and Jooheon had met at around the same age as Yugyeom and Jungkook in a classroom much like this one. He just hoped that the two would have as much luck as Minhyuk and himself in staying friends for so long. However at the thought of Minhyuk the rabbit hybrid began growing bitter again due to the demanding texts from earlier. As much as he loved him, Minhyuk often managed to get on his nerves at the worse possible times. “Namjoon and Seokjin are here,” Jooheon heard Hoseok call from the hallway. Knowing that was his cue to bring the remaining hybrids into the hall Jooheon put the book away before leading the kids out by their chubby hands. Taking the bunny hybrid’s backpack and jacket off the wall hanger Jooheon helped zip Jungkook securely into his fluffy jacket. Once zipped he ruffled the young hybrid’s black hair before letting the boy run over to his father, Namjoon. After the russian blue hybrid had greeted his son, Seokjin picked the younger up as they left. Jungkook, of course, proceed to tug on his father’s antlers which caused a small laugh to escape Jooheon’s lips as he watched the scene before him. Seeing Yugyeom leaving hand in hand with his parents, Jackson and Kunpimook, the rabbit hybrid knew it was now time to start heading home himself. Collecting his bag from the break room Jooheon walked into the main hall and saw Hoseok who was now joined by Hyunwoo. “I’ll see you on Monday,” Jooheon said softly on his way out. “Do you need a ride home?” Hyunwoo questioned. The bear hybrid always offered, but he usually received the same answer as he did today that “no thanks he was fine.” Jooheon felt bad and some days he wished he would accept the ride however Hoseok and Hyunwoo already did so much for him that he did not want them going a few miles out of their way for him as well. After yelling back his usual response the rabbit hybrid promptly left the building to join the rush to get home.

---------

Jooheon’s phone vibrates continuously against his leg as he makes his way home, but he resolutely decides to ignore it just to spite his friend. Honestly, he’s a full-grown adult, so what right does Minhyuk have to demand him to do anything, especially in his own home at that?

None! He huffs angrily, stomping his way to the subway line. Nearby passengers turn to look at him questioningly, but the rabbit hybrid only plops down with a loud thump onto the nearest bench, immediately pulling his ears down to shield his face. He’s aware of how silly he looks - long white ears manually pulled down with his hands as he slouches against a pillar behind the bench. Still, he’s so on edge about Minhyuk’s stupidly demanding texts he might explode if anyone decided to confront him about his strange image.

Thankfully, the subway pulls up just as Jooheon is seriously considering chucking his phone onto the rails. He resolves to keep it in his pocket, satisfied to leave the messages unseen and unanswered.

The doors open with a woosh, and Jooheon prepares himself for the ensuing battle. A stream of passengers exit through the open doors, a conglomerate mass that eventually diffuses into separate bits once it gets far enough through the station. The amount of passengers leaving is becoming less concentrated with every second, and Jooheon decides now is the right time to strike.

He bumps his way through the crowd like a pinball, hunching over to make himself as small as possible. Still, he can’t avoid attracting a few rude looks and muttered curses, which only worsens his already dark mood. Were subway passengers always this rude?

It’s unfair, but right now he feels spiteful enough to push the blame onto Minhyuk. If it hadn’t been for his texts maybe Jooheon wouldn’t have to deal with all these assholes roughly pushing into him. It must be the law of the universe that one terrible thing has to coincide with another or else he wouldn’t be wedged into a cramped corner of the train, head spinning as a disgusting cocktail of scents settle into a thick fog around him.

(It’s usually much easier when he rides the subway with Minhyuk. The cat hybrid’s scent is so overwhelming, Jooheon can’t smell anything else but the sweetness of whiskey-tinted cherry blossoms. Besides, the older hybrid is shameless enough he’ll make his own path through a crowd, all the while towing Jooheon along securely behind him).

But no, stuck behind a mess of scents and sweaty bodies, Jooheon decides he’s fine by himself. As a full-grown adult, this is completely bearable, and he’s fully capable of dealing with it.

As the ride continues, the heat only seems to get worse as Jooheon is progressively pressed closer to the wall. It becomes bad enough that he eventually turns to his usual coping method of pulling his ears down to cover his face. It’s the only way to block out the haze of different smells invading his space. His own scent is too vague to truly do anything, but in this situation even the lightest hint of something familiar is enough to get the job done.

He spends the rest of the ride in this manner, with his ears pulled tightly around his face like some fashionable fur collar, except he’s pretty sure people who wear such things aren’t usually on the brink of a complete meltdown. Jooheon twitches uncomfortably, burying his face even deeper into soft fur when something warm and distinctly hand-like brushes up against his tail. If anyone has the nerve to grope him again, they’re definitely earning a hard stomp to the foot whether they like it or not.

Finally, his torture comes to an end when a yellow dot lights up on the eighth station of the mini-map above the closed doors. Jooheon reluctantly releases his ears from his sweaty grasp, preparing to make a mad dash the moment the subway stops. The departing rush is always the worst, and wedged in the corner of the train, he really doubts he’ll be able to make a smooth exit today.

The press of bodies becomes invariably more unbearable when the subway hisses to a stop. Jooheon can only allow himself to be dragged along as a tiny speck of dust within a roaring sea of oppressive waves, not able to even retain a semblance of personal control. He’s spit out like a single ball from a rotating bingo machine, rolling into the station at an uncontrollable speed on borrowed momentum until he’s finally stopped by a stationary pillar.

The rabbit hybrid takes a moment to hunch over and catch his breath, every inch of his skin tingling from being jostled around so roughly. He carries out a quick pat-down of his body, making sure that his phone, keys, and wallet are safely on his person. His phone stays rigidly silent in his back pocket, and for some reason that makes his insides twist uncomfortably with an indescribable mix of feelings.

(Would Minhyuk really have given up that easily?)

He shakes the stupid thought away, choosing instead to exit the underground station through a well-worn route. He emerges onto a large, bustling road, pushed to the very edge of the crumbling pavement with swelling crowds of hybrids rushing past each other with the same degree of urgency. Jooheon joins them readily, melting into the flood with the ease of a single water droplet. He’s carried away quickly by the ever-moving sea of familiar strangers, sliding down twisting streets on the crowd’s collective energy until he’s finally deposited at the mouth of his apartment.

Jooheon shivers in front of the complex, trying to shake off the ghost of clinging touches against his body. It should be mundane at this point; after all, he’s been doing this for more than two years. However, the feeling always sticks like a layer of heavy grease along his skin, and all he really wants to do is relax with a warm bath, complete with bubbles and flower petals.

But alas, he must first deal with Minhyuk’s bullshit.

Jooheon sighs, slapping himself lightly on the cheeks before marching into the apartment building with renewed vigor. He’s tired, gross, and starving beyond compare and the faster he gets through with Minhyuk’s demands, the faster he can get his aching, kid-beaten body into a soothing bath.

(Really, Jooheon loves each and every child at the daycare, but unfortunately, he’s not getting any younger these days).

He flips past the scratched honeybee keychain (courtesy of said children) to find his nondescript apartment key and inserts it into the lock, twisting until he hears a distinct click.

Inside, the rabbit hybrid immediately spots a recognizable pair of triangle black ears peeking up from above his hideous orange couch. They instantly perk up at his entrance, swiveling a quarter way towards the sound of a key in the lock. Jooheon promptly molds his face into a frown, adamant that he won’t back down from an argument today.

However, when Minhyuk leaps up from the couch his plan is slightly diverted when he notices something in the cat hybrid’s hands. As he walks excitedly closer, Jooheon finally realizes it’s a pot of healthily growing lavender flowers - and a rather large pot at that.

He gently catches the pot as Minhyuk drops it into his automatically open palms, too stunned to do anything otherwise. The younger hybrid gapes down at the flowers, brain slowly processing that this is what his friend must have meant when he had demanded that Jooheon come home without any delay. Of course, only Minhyuk could have been this sweet and misleading at the same time.

Still, the plant is flourishing so beautifully Jooheon feels his stomach turn at the fact that he was originally going to completely chew his friend out for being such an asshole - when in reality, Minhyuk was just being his amazing, thoughtful self, albeit not without his usual rudeness as well.

Jooheon sets the flowers down with as much restraint as possible before letting go and pouncing onto Minhyuk with the tightest hug he can muster. The older hybrid stumbles back with a surprised oomph, but he quickly returns the embrace in full, wrapping his arms around the younger’s middle and burying his face into the other’s neck.

The rabbit hybrid breathes deeply as his friend’s strong scent settles around him like a comforting blanket, completely clearing off the tar-like mix of odors that had been adamantly clinging on from earlier. He closes his eyes for a moment and dreams of being able to stay like this forever, of being held safely in Minhyuk’s steady fingers and sweet scent for an eternity.

Unfortunately, Jooheon’s straining heel catches on the edge of the pot of flowers, and both hybrids immediately spring apart when the clay scratches loudly against the floor. It almost tips over, but not quite, instead choosing to rock back and forth dangerously like a badly made top before finally settling flat onto its bottom.

They both breathe a sigh of relief, and Minhyuk sags against the couch as Jooheon bends down to locate his newly acquired child to a safer spot than the living room floor. He settles temporarily on the nearby ledge of his kitchen table, and he gently runs a hand through the bobbing flowers before returning to the prone figure spread-eagled on the back of the couch.

“Hyung,” he steps over to the front of the couch, looking down at Minhyuk from the opposite side. “Thanks for the gift.”

The cat hybrid preens under Jooheon’s appraisal, turning his head to the side as he pointedly waits for more compliments. Jooheon rolls his eyes, but he willingly obliges. “You’re the best most wonderful hyung anyone could ask for.”

Minhyuk’s pupils glint craftily. “Even better than Hoseok hyung?”

Jooheon pouts, turning to rustle in his bag for the tupperware container Hoseok had given him earlier at work. He displays it apologetically to the other hybrid before sheepishly muttering, “Actually, gift-wise you guys would be on the same level by now.”

Minhyuk rapidly shoots up from his previous position to aggressively swipe the container from Jooheon’s hands. Of course, Hoseok manages to one-up him again by giving Jooheon the one thing he can’t: homemade food. Inside the tupperware are steamed buns that must have been made with dough from scratch and were lovingly shaped by hand into the cute round mounds he sees before him now.

He’s suddenly hit with an irrational surge of envy, but also with the immediate urge to stuff as many buns into his mouth as possible. Jooheon watches Minhyuk’s internal struggle with a quiet smile on his face, laughing at the way the cat hybrid’s pupils shift nervously between each and every bun, all lined up in pretty rows along the container.

“Why don’t we heat those up and eat?” he suggests to put Minhyuk out of his misery.

“I guess,” the older boy says, tearing his eyes away from the food. “If you’re that hungry, I suppose we have no other choice but to eat Hoseok’s buns, do we?”

Jooheon immediately scrunches his nose in distaste at Minhyuk’s wording, and he quickly snatches away the tupperware and heads to the microwave before any more innuendos can be made. Even through the constant whirr of the machine, he swears he can hear a familiar cackle trail through from the other room.

When he gets back, steam buns actually steaming in hand, Minhyuk innocently looks up with half of a chicken wing sticking out of his mouth. Jooheon stares blankly, unimpressed, as he sets the buns out onto a platter in front of the still-frozen Minhyuk.

“I was hungry okay?” The cat hybrid rushes to defend himself, spitting out a perfectly cleaned bone.

“Mmph,” Jooheon replies, mouth already stuffed full with a bun as he pointedly looks at the open takeout box on Minhyuk’s lap.

“I happened to pick this up on my way over here,” The older hybrid protests, flailing oil smeared hands in the air by way of explanation. “Also,” he wipes off a sliver of cabbage stuck to the rabbit hybrid’s cheek, “don’t talk with your mouth full.”

Jooheon mumbles something that suspiciously sounds like “not my mom,” but he finishes chewing and swallowing slowly before attempting coherent speech again. “You could have picked something up for me too,” he whines, directing a pathetic look at the glistening container of fried chicken. “You know I can’t eat meat…” he trails off, pouting at his half-chewed bun.

“Wait,” Minhyuk yanks Jooheon’s hand to him in order to inspect the ingredients of said bun. Upon closer investigation, it is indeed entirely vegetarian, filled only with various types of cabbages and dotted with sesame seeds. He should have guessed, seeing that it was Hoseok, another rabbit hybrid, who had made these. As someone who has to eat meat at least once a day, Minhyuk really has no idea how Jooheon (or Hoseok) has managed to survive this far on flimsy greens alone, but the last time he had snuck a piece of chicken into the younger hybrid’s salad he had been pointedly ignored for an entire week. So, he’s definitely learned not to judge at this point.

He goes to shrink away, sticking out his tongue in distaste at the vegetables, but not before he gets a bun shoved into his own hand. Minhyuk tries to push it back, but Jooheon widens his eyes imploringly, asking his friend to at least try it. The elder sighs, but he raises it to his mouth and reluctantly nibbles delicately at the raised tip.

Suddenly, hearty flavor explodes onto his tongue, and now it’s his turn to talk with his mouth full. He exclaims something that sounds like “meat?” as he takes another huge bite, groaning when the pungent taste of fried pork fat drips onto his tongue. Jooheon looks on happily, eyes pressed into slits as he watches Minhyuk gobble down the tiny bun.

“Hoseokie hyung made a separate batch for you too,” he comments when Minhyuk has slowed enough in his ravenous quest to fit as much in his mouth as possible.

The cat hybrid swallows the current bit in his mouth before looking over with surprise in his eyes. “He did?” He looks guiltily at the bun in his hand, appetite suddenly lost. Jooheon hums lowly, dimples still pressed sweetly into a smile.

“I guess I have no right to compete for best hyung when I can’t even cook…” Minhyuk sighs, popping the last bit into his mouth, letting himself savor the flavor one last time.

“I’ll be sure to tell Hoseok hyung he’s won then.” Jooheon replies aloofly, feigning disappointment at Minhyuk’s loss even though he knows there’s no way the cat hybrid will ever concede his own made up title.

As he expects, Minhyuk immediately protests. “No way! I totally came here today on the basis of being the best and the most caring hyung so you can’t hand that title off just yet!”

Jooheon frowns, confused at what the older hybrid means. “You mean coming over and eating takeout, like we do basically every day?”

“No, no,” Minhyuk flaps his hand dismissively, “I actually wanted to talk about something with you. Something serious.”

At Jooheon’s amused expression, he scowls, squinting his eyes and muttering, “If you say anything about me not being capable of having serious talks I’m never buying coffee for you again.”

The rabbit hybrid raises his hands in mock surrender, quietly allowing Minhyuk to continue. The older hybrid clears his throat loudly, angling his body to fully face Jooheon’s. “Your heat is coming up in about a month right?” Of course Minhyuk would know, Jooheon thinks exasperatedly, but he nods along anyway.

“I just think,” the cat hybrid hesitates, tail waving about nervously behind him, “it might be better for you to find an alpha to help you through your heat this time.” He stares, unblinking, at Jooheon, pupils wide as he apprehensively awaits his friend’s reaction.

“I don’t see anything wrong with you helping me through it again,” the younger hybrid mumbles, reaching up to pull hesitantly at a long ear. “Unless,” he pulls harder, using it cover his cheek, “you don’t want to do it anymore.”

He’s hunched over and looking downward, but Minhyuk can tell that Jooheon might just start crying, and he instantly regrets his brash words. He pulls his friend towards him with as much urgency as possible, pushing the rabbit hybrid’s face into his chest as he runs a hand soothingly through the younger’s hair. “You know that’s not true at all,” he whispers, pressing his lips to the crown of Jooheon’s head.

“Then why?” The boy in his embrace retorts with an unfamiliar tone of hostility in his voice. Minhyuk only tightens his hold, burying his hand even deeper within the other’s unruly curls.

“You know how much longer it takes to pass through heat without an alpha. Plainly speaking, with two omegas there’s just too much risk at stake,” he admits softly into a twitching ear. When Jooheon doesn’t reply, he adds bitterly, “It’s not like I really want to find an alpha either.”

“I just want to keep you safe,” he sighs, and suddenly Jooheon is reminded of all those times in highschool where Minhyuk had pledged the exact same thing with the exact same fervor burning through his dark pupils. They had somehow survived those years together, and Jooheon realizes he had always known somewhere in the back of his mind that it was all because of Minhyuk’s unextinguishable spirit and nothing else.

He buries himself into the other’s solid embrace, emotion welling up in his throat at his own selfishness. Of course, Minhyuk wouldn’t have brought it up for any other reason than genuine care for his own well-being. Just the thought of it makes him want to cry even more now. Really, what kind of friend is he?

“Do you understand now?” The cat hybrid asks, slowly loosening his grip around his still-silent friend. A muffled “yes” warms his chest, and Minhyuk can’t help but let loose a deep sigh in relief.

Jooheon gingerly pulls back, rubbing roughly at reddened eyes while avoiding Minhyuk’s gaze at the same time. He mumbles, “I’ve never been with an alpha before, and I definitely don’t know where I’m supposed to find one to pass heat with so how do you propose I even go about doing this?”

The older hybrid pulls away Jooheon’s harsh hand to replace it with his own, calmly brushing away stray tears along raw skin with his thumb. “Maybe,” he teasingly grins, “we could find that messy college student from last week since you seemed to take to him so quickly.”

Jooheon instantly stops crying to glare up at Minhyuk with watery eyes. “Don’t-”

“Agh, I got it, I got it, don’t worry okay?” The cat hybrid soothes urgently, lightly pinching a blotchy cheek. “For sure, we’re not signing you up for any of those weird online services or creepy dating advertisements.” They both think of popups announcing “hot alphas ready to fuck five miles away from your location” and simultaneously shudder at the thought of meeting someone through those kinds of advertisements.

“Then what?” Jooheon sniffles doubtfully as every possible option seems just as bad as the last.

“Well,” Minhyuk grins confidently, leaning back with his hands behind his head, “there is such a thing as a club.”

“No way.” Jooheon glowers with a red-rimmed glare.

Minhyuk pleads with big eyes and a jutting lower lip, ears folded to the side to frame his cute expression. “I’ll be with you there the entire time?”

Jooheon hesitates, especially at the other’s imploring aegyo. “You have to promise then,” he reluctantly agrees, jabbing a finger pointedly into the other’s chest.

Minhyuk makes a face at the sharp poke, but he catches the younger hybrid’s wrist, keeping him in place. “Of course, when have I ever broken one of our promises?” He grins widely, canines glinting brightly in the light.

“Fine.” Jooheon plops down against the cat hybrid’s side, resigning himself to his fate. “When are we going out then?”

Minhyuk’s sharp grin grows disturbingly sinister in the soft afternoon light. “How about tomorrow night?”

Chapter 3: the club is the best place to find a lover (so that is where I go)

Summary: A lot of times things tend to go quite smoothly with good intentions - but well, it’s a bit more complex with matters involving love. A club is definitely not the first place to work those things out at, but fate somehow makes it happen against all odds anyway.

“No,” is the first thing Jooheon says upon stepping into his apartment, not even looking up as he toes off his vans at the door.

“Oh come on!” Minhyuk exclaims from his position behind the couch, crouching over what he had thought were well-hidden potential outfits for the night. He scans over them casually, proud approval pinging warmly through his stomach because he had personally chosen every piece with the intention of making each outfit look damn good and boy do they look good now, even against the garish orange of Jooheon’s couch.

“I’m not putting my lower half into anything that could potentially cut off my circulation,” Jooheon retorts, brushing past a sulking Minhyuk to the already open door of his bedroom.

As he begins rummaging through his closet for something he would actually be able to fit into, a distant “your ass would look great in these” comes floating in from the living room, prompting Jooheon to bury his head into stuffy cotton, muffling his ears into heavy sweaters and loose sweatpants.

Finally, among all of his aforementioned sweaters and generally comfortable pieces of clothing, he finally manages to dig out the one shirt he owns that is vaguely acceptable for club wear. It’s a plain black tee that’s just tight enough to show off what Minhyuk refers to as his so-called “curves,” but not to the point of becoming a second skin. Which are, unfortunately, the majority of the clothes the older owns and has currently laid out along the couch to force him into for the night.

He grabs his favorite pair of black jeans, tossing them casually onto the bed next to the plain shirt, huffing minutely as he looks over what he personally deems a perfectly adequate clubbing outfit. The jeans beckon welcoming in all its faded, ripped glory, well-worn and stretched out from years of loving use. He also has to admit, ears twitching bashfully just at the thought, he’s gotten more than enough compliments in these, especially from Minhyuk himself.

“No way,” Jooheon jumps, jerking out of his fond reverie, to see said person leaned against the doorway, arms crossed as he bluntly stares down the younger’s outfit choice. His face is blank, lips slightly pulled into a frown as he glares at Jooheon over the rim of his round glasses with a distinct sulk. Even from this distance he can already tell how boringly conservative the other’s combination of clothing must be, and he strides forward, every part of him ready to change that.

“The shirt…” he reaches over onto the bed, fingering the hem, considering it critically as he pictures how it would look on Jooheon. It’s not bad, and at least it’s tighter than the usual baggy sweaters the younger hybrid pulls on during the week, so he moves on, grudgingly allowing the offending article to stay.

It’s a different story when he reaches the pants, though. He knows this pair of jeans well; too well as he’s the culprit for making Jooheon like them so much. He’s guilty - he admits to it, but the way the tight crease of those pants sticks to Jooheon’s already perky backside always compels his mouth to begin moving before his brain can even register what it’s saying. He sighs, slightly bashful as he confronts his own self-afflicted mistake, running his eyes over the pair of old jeans flopped sadly before him, heart twinging when he’s hit by a wave of pathetic pleading. Minhyuk acknowledges it with a minute, knowing nod, but sacrifices must be made.

It’s all for a higher cause he tells himself, averting his eyes from Jooheon’s woeful pout as he pushes the pants aside, leaving them in a rumpled pile on the darkened corner of the bed. While they do paint the rabbit hybrid’s thighs on full, glorious display Minhyuk knows they won’t even be able to compare to the view tonight when he forces Jooheon into the pair he’s already chosen and laid out against the couch. Trust him, he knows it’s going to be one of the most breathtaking views he’ll ever have the pleasure of witnessing, and his everyday job involves him literally getting into the faces of Korea’s top models so he’s speaking the plain, honest truth here.

However, when he looks over, Jooheon is anything but supportive of his genius idea, the younger man’s expression flattening in obvious distaste. Still, even as a surge of defensiveness flares through him, Minhyuk still can’t stop his heart from melting just a slight bit at the minute twitching of the rabbit hybrid’s perked nose. It’s really just an automatic movement, an appeal to the nervousness of his animal side, but the innocent worry in his eyes and the adorable wrinkle of his cheeks are part of the small list of things that are always able to make Minhyuk grow willingly weaker inside every time he chances upon their precious display.

Tonight though, he holds strong with an iron grip around his soft, fleshy heart as he forces himself to think of all the alphas who will thank him for making Jooheon wear something else besides ratty old sweaters and saggy sweatpants. Not that he can’t appreciate that kind of view on a lazy, rose-tinted Sunday morning, snuggled in layers of thick blankets-

Minhyuk flicks an ear jerkily, shaking himself out of his abruptly derailing train of thought, exasperated at his own apparent lack of focus on the situation at hand. Which is currently plopped before him, unmoving and stubbornly refusing any of his thoroughly planned out outfit choices with a pointed pout. The cat hybrid stares him down, one leg bent, tapping out a muffled rhythm with socked toes, but otherwise remaining just as still.

“I’m not going to-”

“You don’t even know how good-”

They both begin at the same time cutting into each other’s sentences with brisk surprise, but it’s Minhyuk who takes advantage of the quick pause to interject the remainder of his rushed words.

“You don’t even know how good you’d look in the pair that I picked out for you,” he argues defensively, cocking his hip to the side, black tail swishing through the air in wide, agitated circles.

“Yeah well, not when they’re your pair of extra skinny, size zero, boot-cut, leather casings of pure torture!” Jooheon protests, edging away from Minhyuk’s slowly advancing figure, fine terror bleeding into his slanted eyes.

“Wait,” the cat hybrid jolts to a stop, temporarily stunned into pausing his single- minded journey in making Jooheon fit into the aforementioned pants, because apparently he already knows which exact pair they are, down to the size and even the cut of the hem. He voices his surprise out loud, eyes widening incredulously as he asks, “How did you know which pair it was?”

The rabbit hybrid’s face immediately fills with color, blooming across his round cheeks in pink patches. He pulls his ears down to hide his blush, muffling his embarrassment into the cottony down of his rumpled fur. He breathes in and out in uneven drawls as he tries to muster up his voice, hidden somewhere in the tiny crevice of his chest, barely managing to squeak out “Because you wear them a lot and -” before looking down and gluing his eyes to the edge of the bed as he mumbles the rest of his sentence so indistinctly, Minhyuk can barely make out the jumbled bits of sounds and syllables.

“What’d you just say?” he leans forward, an undeniable sense of glee creeping into the amused curve of his lips.

Jooheon still refuses to look up, ears twitching numbly against his burning cheeks. “I said,” he starts, catching a glimpse of the cat hybrid’s mirthful expression before immediately clenching his eyes shut and letting his confession tumble out of his mouth in a runoff stream of rushed words, “that you always look really good when you wear those pants out okay?”

It’s deathly silent for a moment with Jooheon smooshing his hands over the sweaty mess of his rapidly heating face mixed with the suffocating cling of his fur. If he could choke himself into non-existence right now without any lasting pain he would gladly take that opportunity. On the other side of the wall of silence, Minhyuk is still, but for completely different reasons. There’s a kind of warm excitement tingling through him, seeping from the tips of his twitching ears to his toes as he realizes just how much of an absolutely precious being the blushing bunny in front of him actually is.

Which is why he hurriedly crosses the miniscule space left between them with no intention of letting anymore bothersome obstacles stop him in his way again this afternoon. He’s right there, feet planted firmly in front of the younger’s hunched figure, but when Jooheon finally glances up, pulling himself out of his mortified stupor, he’s suddenly gone in, knocking into the other boy with a forceful hug, pushing the both of them onto the bed with a bouncing thump and a groaning squeak. The cheap mattress quivers upon the sudden impact, and Jooheon thinks numbly in the back of his mind that this will be the day his bed finally throws in the towel and gives in to its inevitable fate after two years of very loving use.

Thankfully the creaking eventually desists, and Jooheon releases the breath he was holding into the trapped space of Minhyuk’s smothering embrace. He tries to wiggle around discretely, testing the hold around him and completely failing as the cat hybrid doesn’t even allow a semblance of movement from his position locked around and above him. Jooheon’s hands are still pressed securely between their bodies, and he wonders what is the point of cuddling like this if he can’t even return the embrace. He settles for doing what he can, nuzzling lightly into the hazy mix of Minhyuk’s shampoo combined with the sweet hint of cherry blossoms, patting awkwardly at the other’s shoulder with what limited mobility he has. A slim ear flicks slightly against his face, but otherwise Minhyuk continues on, undisturbed, with rumbling purrs and rubbing whatever inch of clothing and skin he can get his clingy cat hairs onto.

Jooheon is slowly dozing off into the snug space, coddled in the warm blanket of Minhyuk’s scent, so familiar and soothing around him. Unfortunately, his trapped arms are numbing into a state of paralysis in their awkwardly bent position, but the solid weight of another affectionate body on top of his own is all that’s needed to quickly woo him into the land of dreams. Cuddling has always been his kryptonite, and even as uncomfortable as the position is now, he gives in just as softly as every other time in the past.

His mind is detaching whimsically from his body, crawling sleepily through the melted sea of his consciousness, when Minhyuk’s deep purrs haltingly change into gently murmured sentences. He tries to pull himself out of his blurry dreams, blinking away dancing cabbages and talking cups of coffee to hesitantly push against the older man’s smothering embrace. “I can’t hear what you’re even saying,” he gasps tumbling onto his side and flailing his arms out loosely as he’s finally released from the other’s iron hold.

Minhyuk watches adoringly as Jooheon runs his fingers worriedly through the tangled length of his twitching ears, feeling his way sulkily through new knots in his already messed up fur. Minhyuk props himself up onto his elbows, still flopped against the bed as his slitted pupils track every delicate movement of the rabbit hybrid’s curled fingers.

The minute Jooheon deems the state of his long ears vaguely satisfactory, dropping his hands away from his head, Minhyuk immediately rolls into the empty space next to him and tucks their faces together, cheek to cheek, his rusty brown locks intermingling with Jooheon’s strands of blonde.

“So you admit you were looking, huh?” he sighs, eyes curled shut in lazy satisfaction as he noses into the soft skin at the base Jooheon’s ear, breathing in a sweet fog of honey and lavender.

A white ear twitches slightly against his own sharper one in vague acknowledgment, and Minhyuk giggles breathily, his laugh tickling the sensitive nerves in the furry appendage. Jooheon shivers, face scrunching and relaxing in tiny increments as he tries to not curl up into a ball at the acute prickles running across his skin.

He fails two second later, an uncontrollable snort tearing its way out of his mouth, as he jerks into a fetal position with Minhyuk’s breath still squished into the bare crook of his tensed neck. “Yes, yes, you looked great in them okay? Now let me -ah-” he gasps, words breaking as a soft puff of air is deliberately blown into the pink cavern of his poor ears. His drawn out shriek of “stop!” is futile in the face of Minhyuk’s asphyxiating smother.

“You’re so fucking adorable,” the cat hybrid mutters, pressing as close as physically possible. The erratic beating of his heart is accelerating wildly as the intoxicating smell of honey saturates the air, tinged with a bitter edge of panic. It’s the latter scent that pulls him out of his frenzied cuddling, forcing him to extricate his heavy limbs from around Jooheon’s soft body and the inviting incense of pungent lavender and rich honey.

It’s practically dripping out of the air, viscous amber weighing down the space around them with the denseness of a hot summer’s storm as Jooheon sits up with angry red cheeks and glazed over eyes. Minhyuk stands back, head spinning woozily with vertigo and something more primal as he feels heat seep through his own face. Jooheon stares up at him, open and vulnerable, smelling like he’s ready to be presented before the whole world on a lavish platter.

Minhyuk coughs shifting his gaze sharply to the side and away from the other’s lost gaze, gentle brown pools that are melting all of his hard angles and edges as they beseechingly pull him in for some kind of help. He inevitably obliges, his feet automatically dragging him to stand in front of the still sitting rabbit hybrid, presenting himself before the other’s searching gaze.

Jooheon immediately burrows his face into the tight plane of Minhyuk’s stomach, winding his arms around the other’s middle and clenching his fingers desperately into the flat fabric of the elder’s button down, hoping to ground himself in the hard familiarity of his friend’s presence. He takes a deep breath, the fire in his gut simmering low as the overpowering bite of whiskey and cherry blossom dissipates the heavy cloud of honey and lavender in the air.

The cat hybrid runs his fingers through light curls, back and forth in a slow hypnotic motions as trembling breaths shakily dampen the thin fabric plastered against his stomach. “Do you think you’re ready to get dressed now?” he hums, placing a steady hand at the back of Jooheon’s bared neck, spreading his fingers across it in a loose anchoring hold.

Jooheon nods, face still hidden in Minhyuk’s shirt, reluctantly untangling his clawed grip from around the other’s waist. He sighs, sitting back, ducking his slightly overheated face down towards the safety of his lap. The warm hand gripped gently around his neck slips away, and Jooheon immediately misses its heated imprint against his skin. He breathes in the air, finally free of his own thick, viscous scent, and runs his hand over the back of his neck, over the ghost of Minhyuk’s touch, to try and jerk himself out of his feverish haze and back to grounding reality. “I think so,” he murmurs cautiously, a trail of pink dotted in an unfamiliar constellation over the ridge of his cheeks as he begins fiddling with the curls scattered across his forehead.

“Good,” Minhyuk leans down, giving a quick peck to the younger’s fingertips as they busy themselves with untangling messy blonde strands. “I know I look good in those pants,” he laughs lightly, reaching a hand out to pull a still blushing rabbit hybrid to his feet. “But wait until we get them on you,” he murmurs, a playful light glinting through the graceful curve of his eyes again.

Jooheon’s cheeks rapidly color, honey and lavender spiking wildly in the air for a second time, but he stays docilely silent, only laying his head softly against Minhyuk’s shoulders as he allows himself to be led to the certain death of his nether regions.

After all, he sighs, returning the steadfast grip around his hand, it’s only for one night. How bad can it really be?

---------

It’s pretty bad.

Jooheon swears under his breath, already losing feeling in his tightly bound calves as he tries to pull the edge of the pants over his ass. His poor boxer briefs are doing everything in their power to shield his lower half from the world, but with every inch of the tight leather slipping over his butt, the more his underwear rides up into dark unspeakable places.

Finally, he pulls the waistband over the fullest part of his backside with an audible stretching of the seams. His puffball of a tail is just a little too big to fit through the slim back-end hole made for the long sleekness of a cat’s tail, so he manually yanks out the furry bit stuck under the tight fabric, whining loudly when bits of fur literally tear off into his palms.

By now, his underwear has rucked so far up his ass, he might as well be going commando at this point. He turns the thought over in his head, deliberating the decision as his fingers linger hesitantly over the front zipper. Sure, it might give him a slight breath of comfort in this leather hell, but he knows the second he peels off his second, much tighter layer of skin, there is now way in all the high heavens he’ll ever be able to fit himself into it ever again. Half-thong it is then, he grimaces, sentencing himself to his fate for the evening as he zips himself into his leather cage.

Just as he pops in the last button, holding his breath as he removes his hands, waiting for the inevitable moment every single stitch rips apart, a whiny “are you done?” floats in from outside the sweltering closet.

“Yeah,” he shouts back, eyes rapidly flickering back down to his waist to make sure he’s still decent and not just covered in ripped tatters of cloth. The pants stay valiantly fastened around him, the waist line squeezing painfully into the soft flesh of his stomach. There’s definitely going to be red marks later.

“Yeah?” Minhyuk mirrors his answer, loud and lilting. “Why don’t you come out then?” Jooheon gulps, his voice failing him as he looks down at his leather-clad legs again. The thing is, while he may have been able to wrestle these things on, he’s not sure if he’ll even be able to walk in them, much less grind in them at the club.

Not that he’ll be doing any of that, he panics, mortified at his own traitorous conscience.

“Jooheonie?” Minhyuk’s teasing call comes again.

“Coming,” he sighs, tugging his shirt down over the curve of his stomach, shielding it with his hand for a hesitant moment as he thinks about all the different, less revealing and actually comfy sweatshirts he could change into right now. The brisk metronome of Minhyuk’s tapping foot filters in, and Jooheon’s long ears immediately turning towards the sound, sensing the impatience in the other’s erratic rhythm. He sighs, abandoning the thought as he takes his first few waddling steps towards the closet door.

Minhyuk sits up rapidly from his lounging position against the bed, pupils growing wide and round as the closet finally squeaks open. His tail cuts through the air like a black scythe, flicking agitatedly with audible swishes as he waits anxiously for his first glance of the other hybrid.

Two white tips bob out from the dark interior, followed by a cautious head of blonde curls as shaking brown irises shift over to Minhyuk for a second before quickly attaching their gaze to the ground instead. The cat hybrid takes in a deep silent breath, not daring to make any sounds in this tense moment of hesitance. Eventually, Jooheon shuffles entirely out of his shadowed haven, reluctantly stepping his tightly clad body into the light and revealing himself before Minhyuk’s wide gaze.

When an eternity seems to pass without even a sound from the older hybrid, Jooheon resorts to pulling his ears down over his rapidly burning face, shuffling his socked foot against the ground as he muffles a silent scream of utter mortification into his tangled fur. After emptying out the full extent of his lung capacity, he peeks past the hazy edge of his ear, trying to carefully gauge Minhyuk’s expression.

The other hybrid’s gaze is hooded, eyelashes almost dipping to his cheeks as he looks over Jooheon with slow, half-lidded appraisal, a deep silence overtaking the space between them as quickly as the shadows crossing his slitted pupils. He places his chin on the edge of his curled palm, leaning his elbow on the sleek line of his crossed legs as he tilts his head minutely to the side, looking almost sleepy in his quiet deliberation. Under curved lids, though, is a look that’s nothing if not vividly awake, the silky want threading through his dark gaze making Jooheon’s poor rabbit heart jackhammer even harder against his rib cage.

“Turn.” Minhyuk utters the single word, the sound of it echoing so loudly around the room after what had only been prolonged heated silence for so long.

Jooheon hastily obeys on instinct, his body aching to move after being locked in place for what had felt like hours on end. He shuffles around in an awkward circle, still scared that the moment he steps a little too far out from his center of gravity, his ears will immediately be met by a dreaded sequence of ripping noises. He ends up finishing the turn more of a waddle than an actual spin, long ears still unknowingly pulled against his pinking cheeks as he keeps his eyes glued to the taut fabric that’s still somehow wholly intact around his bound legs.

“Damn,” Minhyuk breaths out with a soft whistle, too low to register in Jooheon’s extremely flustered mind. Forget every big-eyed, stick-thin model he’s ever worked with: the tight creases accentuating the round curve of the younger man’s ass are more impressive than all the shows he’s worked combined. Even the minute movements of shifting from one foot to the other pulls the fabric so perfectly across his thighs, Minhyuk seriously questions why he’s never gotten Jooheon to do this before, because he’s honestly having an out-of-body experience just looking at the smooth shift of thick muscle encased so tightly, so perfectly under black leather.

Yeah, he thinks, jumping to his feet, bounding across the floor with rushed steps and smug appreciation coursing hotly through his veins - this was definitely a good idea.

He reaches Jooheon, who’s still suffering with his face smothered in the furry cage of his ears, and he cups his palms over the back of the other’s unmoving clenched hands, massaging over them with slow sweeps of his slightly cooler fingers. “I’m sure you think otherwise, but holy shit,” he coos, breathlessly, reverently, “you look good enough to eat in these.” He clicks his teeth together in a playful whisper of a soft purr against Jooheon’s covered cheek.

A pair of brown irises blink up over the pink curve of two flushed moons obscured by tufts of white fluff, a myriad of emotions glistening through them with the fractioning multiplicity of a kaleidoscope. Among sheer embarrassment, confusion, and anxiousness Minhyuk can see a piece of reluctant acceptance reflecting the lazy satisfaction on his own face, He strokes his thumb over a strip of exposed, heated flesh, the edges of lips curling into a smile as the hands under his slowly uncurl, letting twitching ears spring back to their towering position atop Jooheon’s head. Minhyuk hums happily, pressing his lips to the younger’s forehead as he envisions the rest of the night illuminated in bright violet flashes of club lights and the heated fog of clamoring scents.

He can’t wait, he thinks, running his hand through loose curls, scratching distractedly at the base of the soft bone in tall ears he eventually encounters in his habitual petting session.

Jooheon shifts forward, opting to hide his face in the older hybrid’s shoulder, wrapping himself around the other’s slim figure as he pushes his head needingly into the other’s bemused touch. Minhyuk snaps out of his his dreamy daze when a head of soft fluff bobs obtrusively into his face, reminding him of the task still left at hand.

“We’ve got to style your hair too,” he murmurs, pressing long, knowing fingers to all of the rabbit hybrid’s favorite spots, blowing floating flecks of short fur like dandelion puffs away from his face.

“Wait, what -” Jooheon suddenly jerks up, dislodging Minhyuk’s pleasurable touch from his prickling scalp, vague regret pinging in the back of his mind as the soothing spark in his nerves begins fizzing away. “I thought making me put this on,” he motions to the tight line of his body, “was enough for the night?”

“I just have a feeling okay?” Minhyuk grins, eyes curving into slits as he drops his hands to grab Jooheon’s hanging pair, linking their fingers together and swinging their interlaced grips between their bodies like a playground swing.

“Does this feeling include anything else?” Jooheon squints suspiciously at Minhyuk’s innocent smile, too sweet and plain for him to not have any hidden intentions. Either way, he allows his hands to be tugged along, long fingers tangling around his shorter own, until his whole body has ended up in front of the old dressing table, spilling over with Minhyuk’s various makeup, face, and hair products.

“Hmm, I don’t know?” Minhyuk murmurs, injecting an air of questioning wonder into his steady voice. “Maybe some eyeliner,” he reveals warming up some hair gel between his palms. “Some eyeshadow perhaps,” he whispers, low, Jooheon shivering as the first cool stroke rakes back the hair across his sensitive scalp. “Then, just a touch of pink lip gloss,” the cat hybrid hums, sweeping back soft bangs with a few quick experienced flicks of his fingers, laying each blonde strand exactly where it should be.

“And then that’s it?” Jooheon sighs, dropping his gaze to his lap to watch his fingers intertwine nervously, pulling and pressing at each other as the wet gel hands finally slips out of his now stiff bird’s nest crown of hair.

“Well,” Minhyuk pauses to take in his work, a deep rumble of satisfaction rolling up from his chest to his throat. “I have a pair of boots and a jacket that I want you to try on with this outfit.”

Jooheon groans cupping his face in his hands, ignoring the uttered protest of “hey!” as his errant fingers mess up the gelled crown piled above his forehead. “Do I really need to be dolled up to this extent?” He catches a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he instantly shifts his gaze to the side before his brain can truly register the strange reflection staring back at him. “It’s not like anyone is going to be looking anyway,” he mutters faintly, obscuring his words into this cheek as he squishes his face against his palm.

Minhyuk’s ears flick sharply at the younger’s last statement, a semblance of annoyance flashing off his face as quickly as it appeared. He chooses to leave it hanging in the air, unacknowledged, preferring to fiddle meticulously with the fallen strands of Jooheon’s styled hair instead. When he finishes, personally deeming his masterpiece satisfactory, he leans his upper body over the back of the chair, sprawling his arms lazily over Jooheon’s shoulders and hooking them together in a tight embrace under the younger hybrid’s chin, forcing him to look up and meet his own reflection squarely in the eye.

Minhyuk presses the side of his head to Jooheon’s cheek, locking his elbows in stiff angles under the pretense of giving the other man an affectionate hug, intentionally trapping the rabbit hybrid’s gaze in place. “I think,” he declares, voice easy and unfaltering, directly meeting Jooheon’s shifting eyes in the mirror, “if I tell you that you look good enough to eat, then you should know just how many people are going to be noticing you at the club. Trust me,” he grins wide, long canines on show, flicking his sharp ear against a round cheek, “nobody paying attention to you is going to be the least of your problems for tonight.”

He finally extricates his limbs from around Jooheon’s body, allowing the younger to slump away from his own exhausting reflection. He steps to the front of the chair, fast and light on the balls of his feet, sweeping an eye over the pile of products before picking out a stick of liquid eyeliner from his innumerable collection. “Now,” he looms over Jooheon, tool dangling loosely but readily in hand, “let me do your makeup.”

The younger hybrid releases a long suffering sigh, but he willingly turn his face up into Minhyuk’s fluttering fingers, closing his eyes and surrendering himself to the other’s confident touch for the night.

As cool fingers line, smear, blend, and paint across his face with absolute precision, Jooheon tells himself no matter how odd, how unfamiliar he ends up looking, Minhyuk will be there with him for the entire night. That thought quiets the buzzing voice of doubt in his heart, and he takes a dragging breath, preparing himself for all that could come.

It’s just a club, he tells himself, lids fluttering as a wet line is drawn smoothly across his skin. A place for an adult like him to do adult things with other adults. He can do this, he thinks, chanting it like a mantra, envisioning the words as silent ripples in an endless sea, I can do this.

---------

“What are you looking for?” Changkyun mutters from under his hooded layer of blankets, barely glancing away from his laptop screen to actually figure out what his roommate is up to.

Sehun groans, crouched on all fours, bushy tail perked high in the air as he sticks his neck awkwardly under their bunk beds, trying his hardest to keep his face from making contact with a floor that hasn’t been cleaned for God knows how long. “My scent enhancer,” he sighs, crawling back out and collapsing onto his side when he finds nothing but dust balls and discarded candy wrappers, courtesy of Changkyun of course.

“Why would you even need that?” Changkyun questions flatly, eyes still glued to his computer screen, two blue rectangles imprinted in his round pupils.

“Unlike you,” Sehun sits up with an audible pop of his back, wincing as he ruffles the wild fur of his triangular ears, “some of us actually go out to have fun, instead of-” he collapses onto the bed with a heavy bounce, dislodging the edge of Changkyun’s blanket just a slight inch off his head as he wedges his face past the younger hybrid’s disgruntled shoulder to get a glimpse of the video that has the boy so entranced.

“-watching ‘Bang to the Up [Yongkuk x Jongup BAP] Moments’?” He reads the title of the video word for word, incredulously poking a finger at the screen to point out the unfortunate misspelling and consequently blocking out the miniscule hint of Yongguk and Jongup holding hands at the very corner of the window, forcing Changkyun to immediately drag the progress bar back by two extremely important seconds. He ends up having to watch the trail end of a previous clip, but he doesn’t mind re-examining the grainy 360p resolution look in Yongguk’s assumably gentle gaze as he takes Jongup’s hand in his own in their practice room during a V live stream.

Sehun continues watching out of sheer curiosity, chin hooked over the blanketed crook of Changkyun’s shoulder, watching the younger wolf hybrid spend at least twenty minutes (if not more) pausing and rewinding a ten minute video to stare silently at the still images, scrutinizing them for any hidden signs of affection beyond the platonic kind.

“I can’t believe this is how you like to spend your free time. Is this what you stay up to four a.m. doing on school nights?” Sehun questions after the cheesy and completely unfitting music dies down as the screen fades into a wall of recommended videos, three of which are Yongguk and Jongup compilations and the other three being various B.A.P member fancams. Now Sehun vaguely recalls somewhere in the back of his mind Changkyun had mentioned something about running some fan account that he made sure to update daily for his fellow “Bangup shippers.” Sehun’s not sure of the username, but he knows it’s definitely beyond cringeworthy.

“Actually, I’m up to four writing my lab report on school nights,” Changkyun replies, unblinking, as he hovers his mouse over the thumbnail of a Jongup fancam, ready to figure out the true extent of flexibility in the dancer’s hips. “But otherwise, yes.”

The heavy bass of Try My Luck immediately begins blasting out of the laptop speakers, and Sehun sighs, body unwillingly swaying along to the familiar beat. He admits, purely from a technical perspective, he can appreciate the way the idol dances with full control over every single muscle in his body, moving exactly as he wants to be seen without a moment of fault nor hesitation. Sehun is rightfully impressed, but the intense focus in Changkyun’s unmoving gaze contains something way beyond plain admiration. “You’re kind of scary, dude. Are you sure you’re not obsessed?” he whispers, automatically flinching back when a flat glare pierces through the pile of blankets towards his impulsive mouth.

Changkyun stares him down for a moment longer, black eyes still and emotionless as the blankets shift slightly atop his twitching ears. It lasts for a few torturous seconds more before he decides he’d much rather preoccupy himself with watching Yongguk’s Yamazaki MV for the tenth time, so he turns away from Sehun’s braced-for-impact expression to drag his mouse up to the search bar. He barely gets the first five letters in before Youtube’s drop down hint of suggestions has exactly what he’s looking for as the first item, highlighted in purple. He allows himself a victorious grin, tightening his make shift cape around his shoulders as the eerie twang of a traditional gayageum starts up, a red warning sign flashing gaudily across his screen.

“Come on,” Sehun whines, shrinking back from the intense visuals blaring brightly from Changkyun’s laptop. “Wouldn’t you rather come out and dance for one night instead of watching-” he motions shakily at the screen, “a chicken get its head chopped off?”

“You like grinding up on strangers, and I like supporting my favorite idols, okay?” Changkyun retorts shortly, tail thumping compulsively against the bed to the fast-paced beat.

The violent music video finally draws to a dramatic close, Yongguk’s handsome face stained with bloody streaks, flashing in red and black for one last epileptic moment before fading into darkness. Sehun shivers, every hair from the tip of his tail to his ears standing on end at the remnant of the low growl from the rapper in the video. He stretches his arms above his head, scooching his back willfully against Changkyun’s hunched own as he yawns loudly to try and dispel the goosebumps prickling over his exposed skin.

As a feeling of normalcy eventually settles back into his scarred psyche, he turns around only to see Changkyun’s mouse poised and ready to click on another B.A.P video. He takes in a deep, bated breath and decides, right then and there, as a fellow and older wolf hybrid he’s got to take some responsibility to get the younger boy out there and at least improve his currently nonexistent chances of finding a mate.

“Are you sure,” he stresses the last word so hard, his head bobs slightly with its strong inflection, “completely sure that you don’t want to come with me and potentially meet someone?” Changkyun nods lightly, a single eyebrow raised as if saying “are you seriously asking me that question right now?”

Sehun collapses back against the bed with a frustrated huff, blowing his bangs into a scattered fan across his forehead. He tugs on a few strands absentmindedly, reminding himself he definitely needs to style them up before going out as he grumbles casually, “Have you ever even taken interest in anyone besides your perfect idols?”

He asks that question rhetorically, more out of pure frustration than actual curiosity because he fully expects the answer to be an immediate “no.” However, when the pause that passes is a little too long for Changkyun to be rationally considering an answer, he rolls over onto his stomach, ears perked in surprised curiosity towards the younger’s blanketed figure. He scooches forward, lanky elbows digging into the mattress until he’s close enough to look up and see Changkyun’s half-cloaked face.

The younger hybrid has a completely blank look glassed over his eyes, and his hand has paused over the tracking pad, B.A.P video temporarily forgotten. What really tips Sehun off to the fact that he may have actually been wrong in his assumption is the light dusting of pink over what are usually flat, undisturbed cheekbones. Changkyun blinks, pensive and hazy, slowly slipping out of his fleeting thoughts, dazedly unaware of Sehun’s sly gaze trained on him from below.

“So,” the older hybrid prompts, casually sliding his elbows onto Changkyun’s sweatpant-clad knee, knocking the other boy’s computer off his lap in the process. “You do have someone in mind.” He grins, canines peeking out against his bottom lip.

When the younger hybrid chooses to stay silent, opting to fumble for his dislodged laptop instead, Sehun’s toothy grin only grows wider. He can already see his plan taking on a plausible form, even as Changkyun goes back to hiding behind his badly edited Yongguk and Jongup shipping videos, rapidly clicking on a random one without even reading its title to cover up his rising panic.

“So,” Sehun starts again, talking over the loud clamor of the video’s background music because he knows Changkyun is listening, despite his uninterested facade. “Do you wanna come with me to the club and potentially meet that someone again?”

“No,” the younger wolf grunts, pulling his blanket down further to cover the short, furry points of his ears. “Because there was never anyone in the first place.” He thinks silently, bitterly, to himself, what are the chances of seeing that person again tonight, at some random club, anyway? It must be statistically impossible, and so there’s basically no point of him risking that chance and potentially making a fool of himself, when he could just stay safely in his bed all night with a definite zero percent chance of embarrassing himself there.

Sehun feigns disappointment, scrunching his face into an exaggerated pout as he sits up, leaning his shoulder against Changkyun’s. “Wolf-to-wolf,” he says, voice low and silky, “haven’t you ever felt that urge our ancestors succumbed to every month under the bright moon? To chase, to hunt, to catch our mates and press them down onto the raw earth and bond with them there for life.” He slings a heavy arm around Changkyun’s shoulder, the causal weight of it pulling off the younger’s blanket hood, revealing ears alert and turned towards his direction, ears that have heard and absorbed every one of his murmured words.

“Stop,” Changkyun mumbles, immediately angling his ears downwards as he scratches at a nonexistent itch on the side of his head. “That’s so dirty…and ancient,” his protests trail off as he struggles to make one last futile comment, “and uncivilized…” He goes quiet, all kinds of explicit images flashing across his pupils, forcing the coarse hairs on his tail and ears to rise in some kind of unspoken anticipation to Sehun’s primitive suggestions.

“So,” the perpetrator suggests for the third time, looking more like a shrewd fox in the moment rather than a wolf, “you’re legal right?” He nudges his body playfully against the younger’s, gripping him roughly around his bony shoulder.

“Yeah,” Changkyun unwillingly replies, “I’m only two years younger than you, okay?”

“You certainly don’t look like it,” Sehun mutters to himself, sliding his arm off from around the younger’s shoulders and ducking under the top bunk to rise to his full slender height.

“You’re only jealous because I’m actually more mature than you,” Changkyun quips calmly, throwing off the rest of the blanket and sliding his socked feet onto the cluttered floor. He wobbles up, shuffling over to his open closet, computer screen fading to black as the Bangup video sits finished and forgotten.

Sehun narrows his eyes at the comment, pressing his lips together tightly before he says something that completely destroys his hard-won victory. He settles for a few slow, meditation-type breaths, pulling and pushing from the depths of his stomach as he searches for something calm and not offensive to say about Changkyun’s measly height out loud. He settles on a vaguely satisfied, “So you’re coming after all?” directed at the other’s turned back.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” Changkyun replies noncommittally, rifling through well worn hoodies and ratty old high school t-shirts that are somehow still a size too big on him.

Sehun keeps his mouth shut, expression flat and unimpressed as he preoccupies himself with finding his bottle of scent enhancer before he gets sassed again with more sharp words. He swears he’s searched in every plausible, and even some implausible places already, but so far, no sign of a tiny glass bottle filled up halfway with clear unassuming liquid. He rotates slowly on the spot, not exactly sure where to proceed from this standstill point.

“Hyung,” a deep voice calls from behind him, and Sehun pivots quickly, his long tail batting against his leg as he sees Changkyun fully changed and dressed with something dangling between his forefinger and thumb. He immediately propels his body into action, striding forward until he’s close enough to yank the small bottle up to his eyes and confirm that, yes, it is indeed his lost scent enhancer.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Changkyun supplies dryly, filling up the silence when Sehun only continues gawking, open-mouthed, at his weird perfume. “I’m guessing you tossed it into my closet when you came in at like three in the morning last Wednesday or something.”

Sehun’s lips form a plain o of realization as he dimly recalls getting roaring drunk at some sorority party and having to stumble through multiple campuses to get back to his dorm. At this point, he only remembers slurring something incomprehensible to the worried RA and tripping over rolled posters, presumably of Changkyun’s Korean idols, and slamming face first into his pillowless bed. At some dark, unconscious point, he assumes he must’ve used whatever little motor skills he had left to take off what he could and toss it into the vicinity of the nearest closet. Which was, apparently, Changkyun’s.

“Thanks,” he hums simply, quickly uncapping the bottle and rolling the wet tip in three small swipes over the back of his neck.

Changkyun scrunches his nose as Sehun’s musk immediately fills the air, weighing the air down with the heavy moisture of coming rain before a great storm. “I still don’t understand why you use that. I mean, you stink loud enough without it on a daily basis already.”

One of Sehun’s ears flicks sharply against his head, pulled by an exposed nerve as he tries to ignore the younger’s casual insult. “If you’ve ever even been to a club,” he pauses, pointedly stating a silent implication towards Changkyun’s unimpressed stare, “you would know just how hard it is to pick out a single scent in the mixed mess there. This,” he holds up the bottle between them, “is basically a necessity if you want a potential partner to recognize you again.”

Changkyun blinks, eyelashes flickering in a rapid sequence of understanding as he absorbs the surprisingly logical information streaming out of Sehun’s usually bullshit mouth.

“Which is why,” the older wolf smiles charmingly, suddenly stepping behind him and placing an iron grip on his shoulder to keep him from running away. “I think it would be a good idea for you to use some of it as well.”

When Changkyun only remains tensed and silent underneath his hands, Sehun tightens his grip, pressing hard with thin fingers and then completely letting go. He pats the still-raised shoulder with a gentle push, sighing with an air of defeat. “Well, if you don’t want to, I’m not going to be the one to force you out of being a stupid young pup.”

Changkyun bristles at the demeaning name, ears pressing flat against the back of his head as he rapidly turns, snatching away Sehun’s scent enhancer in one lightning strike and swiping it on in broad patches over the back of his neck. They’re both hit by the consequence of his brash actions almost immediately on the spot, both of them staggering backwards in a fruitless effort to escape the truly overpowering haze of the younger boy’s pungent scent.

“I think I put on a bit too much…” Changkyun supplies by way of an apology as the older hybrid glares at him, clear across from the other side of the room.

It’s Sehun’s turn to be blunt and sarcastic as he bites out, “Yeah, no shit sherlock, are you trying to woo every single omega in the club back to our dorm?” Even opening his mouth to talk allows the smell of bitter cinnamon to coat the entire interior of his throat, so he snaps his jaw shut with a loud click and pulls the loose collar of his shirt up to his nose.

Changkyun glares back, just as unamused, but possibly suffering even more as the charred smoke of cinnamon and apples settles slickly, like a sheen of oil, over his skin. He crumples to the flavor, dropping his head into his hands as he rests his elbows on raised knees. In a moment, he begins messing with his hair, dragging black strands away from his forehead with little success as they only curl back to their previous position, albeit slightly more rumpled.

Sehun quickly disappears into the bathroom, rummaging around with worrying clacks of various bottles against the crowded sink, before re-emerging with wet wipes in one hand and a bottle of styling gel in the other. He slowly approaches the younger boy’s hunched figure with stilted steps, breathing in and out through his mouth the entire way.

As soon as he’s close enough, he kneels down and begins scrubbing furiously at Changkyun’s lax neck until all five wipes are dirtied with the slick remnants of the pseudo-perfume. He gingerly takes a meager breath through his nose, releasing a deep breath he wasn’t even aware of holding when he isn’t immediately assaulted face first by the acrid scent of cinnamon. Admittedly, it’s still too strong for him to breathe openly, but it’s a far cry from the disaster that had filled the air just minutes ago.

Changkyun looks up, taking his own careful sniff as his ears twitch in response to the quick change in the air. Sehun meets his gaze, plain relief pooling in his eyes as he holds out a handful of crumpled wipes. “Sorry, I guess you won’t be taking home the entire club after all - you’ll just have to make do with only two-thirds of it instead.”

The younger wolf coughs out a choked laugh, rejoicing too much in being able to actually breathe clearly again to spare any thoughts to how bad the other hybrid’s joke was. Sehun rolls his eyes, a laugh bubbling up through his own throat as Changkyun throws his head back in a full on chortle, face relaxed pleasantly as he lets every snort and giggle pass freely out of his mouth. The older boy’s cheeks ache as he fights to keep his amusement contained, and he turns to squeeze some gel into his palms instead.

“Hold still,” he grits out from between clenched teeth, yanking the other’s bouncing head still between sticky palms. When Changkyun eventually quiets down and calms, he starts to style the younger’s bangs into high arches, curving them gracefully around his sloping forehead in a lifting middle part. It’s a little hastily done, but by no means rushed, and when Sehun is finished he thinks it’s not bad at all, never mind the fact that Changkyun’s hair will probably be as stiff as a marble statue’s for rest of the night.

“Let’s go,” he grunts, rising to his feet, tail swishing back and forth in agitated excitement as he yanks the younger boy up with a hard tug to the collar of his black jacket. The other wolf mumbles something indistinct disgruntledly under his breath, but otherwise he lopes after Sehun towards their dorm door.

As they toe on their respective clubbing shoes, Sehun sliding on a pair of shiny oxfords and Changkyun lacing up his scuffed creepers, the older hybrid leans over conspiratorially, whispering with feigned secrecy, “Don’t worry, I’ll definitely teach you how to twerk tonight.”

Changkyun chokes and he stands up with a hard shove to the other’s lanky back. Sehun grins, canines glinting like curved eggshells under the light, hooking an arm around the younger’s neck and hauling the both of them out the door with an already drunken stumble.

Without a doubt, it’s going to be quite the night.

---------

“Why are we skipping the entire line?” Jooheon whispers, worriedly glancing at the stretching line of mottled people, head after head turning back to look at him and Minhyuk with a mix of incredulousness and blatant anger.

“Because,” Minhyuk grins, the round apples of his cheeks red from the spring chill. “There’s a bit of a favor that I’ve been meaning to use here.” When Jooheon’s eyebrows flatten disapprovingly, bottom lip automatically drooping out in a pout, the cat hybrid’s grin only grows fondly, and he turns around to yank the younger forward by the hand, pulling him along to his own quick, stumbling pace.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Jooheon murmurs, voice low as he reluctantly follows, ducking his gaze downward and tightening his grip around Minhyuk’s. The long line of judging eyes bore into the back of his neck, making the thin hairs dusting along it rise up in an innate survival instinct. He shivers, shrinking back against the collar of the jacket Minhyuk forced him to wear, the irrational disappearing the moment his exposed skin is shielded from any piercing gazes - or from any predators, his tiny hindbrain whispers as he makes a moment of chilling eye contact with a pair of dark heavy eyes in the waiting crowd. Jooheon almost immediately trips on the spot, floundering as he’s instantly tugged forward, Minhyuk’s grasp forming an unbreakable rope stretching between their bodies and yanking him out of his frozen panic into a leather clad shoulder.

He pulls his face away, scrunching his nose slightly from the brief moment of hard impact, only to see the stiff face of an unamused bouncer and the entire line of waiting guests completely behind them. The girl at the front turns to them, round ears flicking lightly as her eyes widen just an inch in surprise at the sudden appearance of two random newcomers in front of her.

“Wha-” Minhyuk cuts her off with a blinding smile, temporarily charming enough to cart past her, pulling along an apologetically bowing Jooheon to his side. Suddenly, the situation is way too real because the stony faced bouncer is right in front of them with his sharply angled eyebrows and chiseled cheekbones, arms crossed in a thick barrier across the tight black shirt bound over his muscled chest. Jooheon automatically shrinks back, every ounce of him relieved for Minhyuk’s steadfast presence providing an unflinching shield between him and the bouncer. If it wasn’t for the older hybrid, he would have literally turned tail and run back to the nearest subway station without a moment's hesitation.

Actually, he wouldn’t have done any of this - squeezing into the tightest clothes humanly possible, going to a club and cutting the entire line there, making eye contact with random strangers - without Minhyuk’s sharp-tongued persuasion, and he doesn’t know whether he’s thankful for it or extremely regretful. Probably the latter he decides as he ducks behind the older man’s shoulder to avoid the bouncer’s blank stare.

“Xiao Xiang! How’re you doing?” Minhyuk asks brightly, shoulders squared as he stands ramrod straight in front of the glaring man, not in the least bit intimidated.

When he doesn’t receive any form of response, not even a slight tilt of the other’s head Minhyuk only strides closer, tipping up the edge of his chin without any intention of backing down. “Remember your beautiful $20,000 wedding? And how I helped save $500 of that $20,000 by agreeing to help out with your husband’s and his bridesmaids’ makeup for the day without any charge?” His phone buzzes in the skin-tight confines of his back pocket, and he pulls it out with a sly grin, unlocking it with a few quick taps of his fingers before displaying the contents of the message to the unmoving man in front of him with an air of proud satisfaction.

“Sangmin says hi,” he reads off the screen slowly as if the bouncer’s eyes weren’t already glued to the message and scanning over every word with rapid fire speed. Minhyuk then clicks on the attached file, zooming in on a blurry selca of Sangmin staring into the camera with big eyes, bangs streaked messily across his forehead as he tugs slightly on his bottom lip with the edge of his teeth. Despite all appearances, the bouncer’s proud bear ears are already drooping, a deep rumble rolling through his chest just as the sight of his mate. Minhyuk watches the hard diamond of his black eyes melt into mushy chocolate, and he knows he’s already won.

“Sangmin also says you should let us into the club first,” Minhyuk comments, casually closing his phone and tucking it into his back pocket as he yanks a bewildered Jooheon forward who lets out an audible squeak once he’s placed directly in front of the slightly disoriented bouncer.

Xiao Xiang looks down at the cowering rabbit, who’s being held tightly in place by the defiant cat, jaw set in an obvious challenge as his eyes blaze with a dark fire, just daring Xiao Xiang to refuse him. Fuck it, the bouncer decides. He technically got to see his mate before the night has even started and that leaves him sated and comfortable, a low warmth settling into a comfortable buzz inside of him. Besides, he wouldn’t put it past Minhyuk to try and get back at him somehow if he turned him and his friend away tonight. He grudgingly steps aside, his mate’s pleading eyes flashing through his mind.

“Thanks,” Minhyuk chirps, the sly satisfaction on his face demonstrating the very epitome of the cat who got the cream. He drags an incredulous Jooheon in with him, making sure to call over the back of his shoulder, “I’ll make sure Sangmin knows about this.” He finishes with a playful wink and turns away to the coat check with a spring in his step.

Xiao Xiang frowns, unable to erase the horrible image of Minhyuk winking at him from his retinas. He sighs, sentencing himself to his fate for the rest of the night, holding out a hand for the next guest’s ID. He really hates his job sometimes.

---------

“Here, I’ll take your coat - well mine technically - over to the coat check,” Minhyuk murmurs, letting go of Jooheon’s hand to turn around and silently motion for him to hand his jacket over.

The rabbit hybrid hesitates, pulling the lapels close around himself for a moment before stripping it off with slow reluctance. He gives Minhyuk the flimsy, glittering piece of clothing with a deep ache in his body, already tired before the night has even truly begun. Without the thin layer of fabric between him and the club, in his already exposed state, Jooheon can feel every brush of hot air against his body from a passing club goer, and it makes him curl in on himself, crossing his arms loosely around his tightly clad middle.

Just as he’s starting to seriously consider hiding out in the bathroom for the rest of the night, Minhyuk comes bounding back, also divested of his own jacket. The ties of the red silk choker around his neck float free behind him like the ribbons on a bonnet on a windy day, and the loose collar of his shirt has slipped down even further to reveal the smooth curve of his collarbones and just a hint of his bare chest. Jooheon feels like he should cover his eyes as Minhyuk crashes into him, pressing heated skin to the barely there fabric of his shirt sleeve and linking their arms together by the crooks of their elbows. He does it without an ounce of hesitation, guided by a familiar instinct to keep Jooheon close by his side, no concept of personal boundaries ever crossing through his mind.

The younger hybrid remembers it well from childhood, to his teens, and to now, of how much Minhyuk loved (and still loves) any form of physical affection. Really, he loved giving it, and he would always be touching Jooheon somewhere, pressing their shoulders together, absentmindedly stroking his fingers through the rabbit hybrid’s twitching ears - it never really mattered to him what he was doing as long as he could feel the warmth of the other boy’s body somewhere along his own.

To be honest, Jooheon’s gotten just as bad. He’s so used to Minhyuk’s unfiltered brand affection he finds himself feeling just a tad off whenever he’s gone too long without a casual peck on the cheek or a full-bodied hug. Even now, in such an unfamiliar environment, he can already feel his fluttering heart begin to calm with Minhyuk’s reassuring cherry blossom and whiskey obscuring his senses and his clenched but steady grip holding him grounded to this new, dizzying setting.

The other hybrid pulls him through the crowd in a winding path, dancing around flailing bodies with graceful steps, almost as if he already knows where to go. Some innate cat sense, Jooheon supposes blithely, barely avoiding being backed into by another clubgoer. He’s never been here before, and he swears neither has Minhyuk, and yet the cat hybrid has somehow managed to cross a perfect path to the bar without even taking one errant step in the wrong direction.

The bar is barely visible from over the massive crowd gathered around it, everyone jumping for a chance to start off the night with a heavy drink. Minhyuk pulls the both of them in, melding into the shifting mass with the smoothness of someone's shadow as they wait for the makeshift line to shorten. Jooheon isn’t much of a heavy drinker, really not much of a drinker at all as he would prefer a cold can of peach soda to a skinny glass of cocktail any day, but the simple tilt of the cat hybrid’s pink smile is enough for him to agree to a light beer. Besides, if he didn’t stay with Minhyuk there would be a very strong chance of him getting lost and smothered among the heat of bodies on the flashing dancefloor.

The boom of the bass drops with an electric shudder, immediately transitioning into the distinct beats of the current hit track, “you’re so beautiful” ringing out in the clear pitch of the singer’s stable voice as whoops of approval spread throughout the club. The music rises, accelerating at a rapid speed as the addicting instrumental overtakes the stuttering breakdown of “too beautiful to handle” before another stomach dropping changeover switches the song to a different loud electro-pop remix, the pulsing cadence of Beautiful still mixed rhythmically under the current beat. Even standing in line, Jooheon’s ears automatically begin twitching to the quick-paced cadence.

The track ends with a high-powered diffusion of noise, the final note falling with a shuddering roar as the DJ jams his fist victoriously into the strobing violet air. “Thank you everyone!” he yells, “This has been DJ H.One on the track for your first hit of the night. Let’s hope you won’t be Alone like Sistar for the rest of it!” High-pitched screams rise in a collective wave as the beginnings of the classic song filters through the club’s audio system.

Jooheon presses close to Minhyuk, who’s happily rolling his body along to the sensual beat, no regards to the other people around him. The rabbit hybrid loves dancing along to this song as much as anyone else, but preferably in the comfort of his stained carrot pajamas without any stranger’s eyes on his less-than-sexy dance moves. He can’t stop himself from slightly moving along though, the rhythm resonating so intimately with his inner post-breakup schoolgirl that even in the stiffly binding leather, his hips still manage to find some leeway to sway back and forth in a pale imitation to the iconic dance.

He slowly begins to enjoy himself despite the dragging process of the line and the general suffocating pressure from the collective presence of sweating bodies around him. He’s really loosening up, letting his muscles relax with the sultry crooning of Hyolyn’s high notes, laxly moving his body along in small waves as all thoughts of shame and embarrassment melt away under the flashing colored lights.

That is until something decidedly hard and warm and not accidental at all firmly brushes up against his tail. Jooheon literally jumps off the ground for a good second, a terribly high-pitched sound peaking at the top of his throat. He jerks around on the spot, all dance moves forgotten as he quickly wraps his hand gingerly around his errantly twitching tail.

The assailant in question grins, sharp and dangerous, down at him, his unfamiliar eyes glinting with unreadable intentions. From his growing scent, stinking up the air with the musk of a wild swamp after a night’s heavy rain, Jooheon is already stepping back, tensely angling his body away with as much calm as his pounding heart can muster.

Alpha flashes through his panicking hindbrain in bold, blazing red, and he clenches his teeth together to muffle the pathetic whimper trying to escape from his frozen vocal chords. It’s been too long since he’s encountered an alpha, unknown passersby on the street notwithstanding, because he spends most of his workdays with only omegas and soft, scentless children. The fact that he’s with Minhyuk on most, if not all, of his free days doesn’t help the matter either as the cat hybrid, surprisingly, also presented as the same orientation during their teenage years together.

Which is why he keeps backing away, mind clouding with a fog of incomplete thoughts as the urgent alarm of run! and danger! squashes any possibility of him forming any coherent sentences in his rapidly degenerating human brain. The unknown alpha presses closer, a solid black shape blocking out any hint of the neon lights in the club, and Jooheon unwittingly feels the low weight of his ears flattening themselves firmly to the top of his head.

Any moment now, he thinks gritting his teeth in grim preparation, some indistinct muscle in his thigh will twitch and he’ll be bolting out of there, as fast as a track runner sprinting off the starting blocks once the gunshot pierces through the air. Except this time, losing the race could have much deadlier consequences than letting down your fellow high school teammates. Something definitely much worse than that, Jooheon shivers tensely as the cold, glinting gaze of the alpha roves over his body.

He’s about to take off early because fuck it why wait around for imminent death, when another harsh grip suddenly comes down around the roundest, fleshiest part of his backside. This time he can’t control the loud squeak that tumbles out of slack lips, immediately jerking in place as he tries to identify his second assailant.

When he glances to the side of where the offending grip is coming from, he’s so surprised his eyes almost pop out of their sockets, he’s staring so hard, pupils widening hastily in that single millisecond of jaw-dropping silence.

His already hazy brain can’t take in such a quick shock to his numbed body, so he stands, melded to the spot as Minhyuk hisses up at the alpha, iron fingers digging into the soft flesh of Jooheon’s ass. “Back off,” he growls out, voice so low it’s almost a whisper, but the alpha definitely hears him without mistake because he halts with an almost audible squeal of his shoes against the floor. Minhyuk hisses again, lips curled back around his sharp canines in a feral snarl, the veins in his neck imprinted under a tight sheen of violet and blue painted over his exposed skin.

The aggressive stranger finally takes the hint and backs away, retracing his heavy steps as he melts back into the moving shadows of the dancing crowd. Minhyuk droops, mouth relaxing back into its usual flat position, and releases a drawling breath of relief as-

-Jooheon suddenly slaps his already loosening hand away from his ass with an uncharacteristic amount of force. Minhyuk can only watch, mouth gaping open, as the rabbit hybrid stumbles away, distancing his backside as much as possible, preferring to turn it to the open crowd than have it be near the other hybrid’s invasive touch again. Minhyuk automatically reaches after him, hand stretching through the dense air after Jooheon’s shadowed silhouette.

He’s only pushed away again, his touch batted down with the same desperate force, however with considerably less intensity as the younger hybrid ducks his burning face to the floor. Blotchy red is mixing with the neon blue of the club to make a dark maroon splotch of humiliation splatter over Jooheon’s cheeks that Minhyuk can still easily make out even as the younger man tries to hide his face in the flickering shadows of passing strangers.

“Why are you so mad?” he questions urgently as he hunches over to try and look the fuming rabbit in the eye.

Jooheon finally looks up with a glare, glistening and wet, threatening to spill over at any moment. The scare of the brooding alpha is still rushing with nervous adrenaline through his veins, and on top of that, Minhyuk’s infuriating actions only make it pulse that much faster. “You - you didn’t have to do that,” he grits out, struggling to flatten out the rough tremors in his voice.

“And what,” Minhyuk states flatly, brows furrowing, “let you bolt out into the dark where he could corner you against the wall, where no one else would be able to see you?” His voice rises, raw fear bleeding into the quick anger of his biting words. Maybe what he did was a little extreme, but that alpha was not going to back off until he staked a visible claim, even if it was a fake one. “It was for your own good,” he finishes, mouth pressed into a line of decisive silence.

“No,” Jooheon retorts immediately, rubbing his palm roughly along a flushed, twitching eyelid, pressing down until he sees dotted stars as he tries to stop his body’s jerky twitching. “Don’t you understand? I was already so scared, doing that only made it worse…” he sniffs, covering both of his welling eyes with shaking hands.

“I don’t want to be touched like that,” he adds, a soft broken murmur drifting out into the ignorant clamor of the club.

Minhyuk heart breaks, but the line is steadily moving up without them, so he tries settling his hand on Jooheon’s hunched shoulder, gifting him with a familiar touch. “Let’s go, the line’s already moving, we have to stop holding it up,” he mutters, hushed and tense.

Jooheon jerks away, as if he’s been burned by the other’s touch, eyes flashing in a blazing arc of vulnerable anger. He stumbles back, and back, and back, until he’s left an empty hole beside Minhyuk. “You can stay in your precious line then,” he bites out, before careening away on jittery legs, letting the thriving crowd swallow up any traces of blonde curls and white ears.

Minhyuk watches Jooheon disappear, choking on his own tender heart, but he doesn’t chase after him. For once, he lets him go alone.

---------

“Sorry,” Jooheon mutters, blundering past solid bodies that only seem to move more into his direct path the harder he tries to avoid them. He doesn’t take a moment to pause though, not when his heart is still pounding from the bleeding panic of the black-eyed alpha, from the feral glint of Minhyuk’s needle-point fangs.

He can’t think, can’t see clearly, not with the mosaic of images piecing themselves together in the high-strung web of nerves in his brain. Each colored block takes a turn plastering itself over his flickering irises, pulling him over and over into a torturous trance as he relives each and every scarring detail from the rapid-fire exchange from just a few minutes ago.

He bumps into each and every writhing mass on his unknown route through the club without Minhyuk’s instinctual grace to guide his stumbling pace. He grimaces, swiping the heel of his hand over a ruddy cheek, surely smearing the painstaking effort that was put into lining the slim edge of his burning waterline.

Minhyuk’s painstaking effort of course.

He internally chokes on the name, eyes watering with the most acidic intensity as his jittery hindbrain, on reflex, pulls up gentle images of Minhyuk smoothing color lovingly over his cheeks with the soft pads of his fingers, of his pink tongue poking out just barely as he had directed wide bright eyes over the plain palette of Jooheon’s face, and after all that, how he had, naturally, finished with a habitual peck to the younger’s exposed forehead, free of its usual entrapment of tangled curls.

Not now, he repeats in a mantra, over and over in his head as a telltale lump wedges itself into the inside of his throat. Crying is never a particularly good boost to his already wilted pride, but there’s something especially unredeemable about doing it in a club, in the view of adults who are doing adult things as he whimpers away in the corner, like one of the three year olds in his daycare. Something wet bubbles up, tickling surreptitiously against his lower lashes, and he quickly tips his chin towards the inscrutable ceiling, opening his eyes wide enough that he can feel the rush of hot muggy air flowing past his sockets and temporarily drying up the welling liquid there.

He drops his head back down, lolling it this way and that as he stands frozen trying to peer through his unfamiliar surroundings. It’s a complete wall of heated flesh around him, a mottled splattering of hybrids of every species writhing and grinding up on one another in a shared attitude of careless abandon. Jooheon squirms in place, watching anxiously as his invisible ring of no-touching, personal space is progressively encroached on by wayward feet, elbows, and unfortunately, butts.

As the chances of him magically finding the door in the three seconds it will take before a bobbing tail can come into contact with his arm are practically zero to none, he prays to whatever god that’s out there to open up the ground and swallow him whole right here. He’s never really considered the possibility of hell, but now the option of falling into Satan’s raging inferno is a much preferred alternative to the disgusting, musky heat of the club slowly seeping through his goosebumped pores.

Sadly, Satan doesn’t instantly drag him down onto a steaming pile of skeletons at his desperate plea, but what does happen is that in his distressed searching he happens to spot a path, completely unobstructed by any bodies, to a wall occupied by a few chatting bystanders, but otherwise devoid of any sweaty, grinding persons. If he can’t leave through the front door or his own convenient portal to hell, a dark filthy corner in the wall of the club will suffice.

He sidesteps the stranger’s bobbing tail by a literal hair's breadth and bolts for the open path, the edge of it already beginning to blur with the formless shadows of mindlessly dancing clubgoers who have no idea that their indecent flailing is cutting off his only road to safety. For once, his animal genes come into play and he finds himself weaving through the crowd with a light step, tilting forward on the balls of his feet with speed he hasn’t used since racing down the dusty red track around his high school's turf field.

It’s more of a workout than he needs at the moment, but he makes it the wall just as the writhing black mass closes up around his one clear trail with the finality of a flood. There’s a possibility he’ll have to fight his way through those waters when he leaves this blasted place, but he maintains the mindset that he’ll deal with the panic only when it comes inevitably later tonight.

For now, he feels his way along the wall, fingertips sliding over months of congealed dust and grime as he waits to hit a dead corner. Finally, he slips into a sharp indent, pressing his shoulder into the hard stone of a protruding wall, perpendicular to the one currently pressed against his back, and he knows he’s managed to successfully back himself into the corner.

Perfect, Jooheon sighs, letting himself slump into the skinny space, all according to plan. Now, just to wait out the rest of the night here, hopefully unnoticed, until-

Until Minhyuk comes to get me, his brain follows through without a second’s pause, even as everything within Jooheon comes to a screeching halt before the thought can finish completing itself. His heart aches, and it’s only now that he realizes how truly alone he is.

In a club with people everywhere, the affection in the air so heavy it’s practically oozing, he’s without anyone even remotely near his side. There’s no never-ending buzzing from his back pocket, no shoulder nudging against his side, and no suffocating arms winding fast and spontaneous around his unguarded throat. Screw it, he blurts out into the stubborn space of his own mind, why go looking for some alpha when all he wants is for Minhyuk to hold him in his demanding, desperate way again.

Alphas suck anyway, he sniffs quietly as he recollects all the knobby-kneed, braces-bound teenagers that had taunted him for the soft curve of his barely developed, adolescent’s waist and the uncharacteristic sweetness of his scent in the torturous, age-old locker room. His childhood opinion had only gone stale after being immersed in the extremely omega-friendly environment of his workplace, with Hyungwoo being the one exception to his bland distaste of alphas.

Today’s experience has only brought the terrible prejudices of his youth back in full force, and so, huddled tensely in a shady corner of the club, he has no problem promising himself he’ll never willingly seek out anything to do with alphas ever again - not even for the risk of heats. He’s still alive and functioning relatively well without ever having been with one for the last twenty-four years, so he doesn’t know why he can’t just continue on for the rest of his life with toys...and Minhyuk.

Minhyuk, god, he misses him so much. If Jooheon hadn’t rushed away like a hot-headed idiot, they’d be dancing together without a care in the world by now, and he would be cushioned in the sharp, comforting familiarity of Minhyuk’s cherry blossoms with a mild shot of whiskey.

Now, he tries to recall the complex, beautiful nuances of that scent, but all he inhales are dust mites and the flat musk of his own sweat. Despite the layers of ancient cigarette ash and ticket stubs cemented into the ground, his pathetic self-pity is whispering very persuasively into his inner ear about how good of idea it would be if he slid to the floor, leaned his head onto his knees, and spent the rest of the night sighing his heart out into the curved space of his constricted chest. Jooheon admits, it’s the best idea he’s had all week.

He’s about to readily follow that tiny voice, knees slowly buckling in their leather confines as he voluntarily lowers his gaze to the ground, when the sense of lazy pity is suddenly replaced by every hair on his body and head standing straight and electrified by a blue lightning strike of fear. He raises his head with aching difficulty as if weighed down by a clanking bowling ball, each joint in his neck creaking at the forced movement, and he freezes halfway when his gaze meets the looming presence stopped in front of him.

It’s the same alpha from before, his bowling ball brain supplies with a devastating knockout of all ten metaphorical pins. Jooheon recognizes him with immediate horror, recognizes those black eyes and terrible white fangs glinting through the dark haze in a wide smile meant just for him. His thoughts begin to fall into plasters again, buildings razed into thin pieces that fly without abandon out of one ear and disappear upon contact with the hellfire of the club’s burning atmosphere. Out of the raining dust and cement bits flickering behind the sheen of his lids, he’s barely able to pick out one short, complete thought.

Wolf, the rabbit in him cries, and the man’s furry ears perk minutely as if they somehow picked up on his internal panic. They’re sharp, a blunt triangle shape, almost dog-like, but undeniably belonging to its wild brother from the woods instead - the mark of a predator. His pale crescent moon grin grows, and Jooheon bolts, cutting through the sliver of space between the man’s right side and the wall, hoping to make a break for it.

Hope isn’t strong enough because an iron chain fastens around his wrist, slamming him back against an equally hard wall of flesh with breathless intensity. Literally, he’s gasping for air as a rough hand wrenches his arm backwards, forcing him to relax against the rising chest behind him if he doesn’t want anything potentially damaged or broken. Another hand slithers around his middle, tucking its fingers with the intent of bruising into the supple curve of his waist.

Something hard and undeniably warm grinds past the twitching fluff of his puffy tail and into the thong-like seam of Minhyuk’s borrowed pants. He squeaks upon the intrusive contact, thrashing in the other’s hold as he tries to separate his lower half from the alpha’s front, clawing at the veined arm around his waist without a hint of fighter’s grace, but definitely with all the ferocity he can muster from his soft body. It’s raw animal panic, and with every red line that cuts into the stranger’s skin, the more Jooheon realizes his wild flailing is doing absolutely nothing.

“Where did you think you were going, pretty bunny?” A wet swamp breath blows across his fear-flushed cheeks and Jooheon only holds his breath in silent defiance. Suddenly, he cries out in pain, almost a scream, as his captive wrist is forced beyond its usual capacity for movement, bent to the very limits of the joint’s elasticity. He goes limp from the vivid stream of pain coursing from his arm through the rest of his body, shuddering as the alpha presses up to him in a skin-tingling line from chest to thigh.

Hysterically, he realizes in his messy hindbrain, from any random passerby’s perspective, it’d look like two people willingly grinding up against each other for a dirty night of heated passion. His panic kicks into overdrive, struggle beginning anew as the true severity of the situation he’s gotten himself into dawns upon him with a bleeding orange sun of absolute horror.

The alpha only chuckles, dark and disgusting, into the pink fold of his ear, cutting off his resistance with one hard dig of his thumb into the racing pulse point of Jooheon’s bent wrist.

Christ that hurts, the rabbit hybrid shudders, clenching his eyes closed and tensing up every fiber of his muscles at the new wave of pain. He just needs some help from someone, from anyone - he doesn’t care whether it’s an alpha or not, please, anything would work, just, someone find him before he’s irreversibly swallowed up and forgotten in a dusty, barely-lit, shadowy club corner.

---------

“Fuck,” Changkyun swears lowly under his breath as Sehun climbs onto a nearby table and pulls his shirt up with inebriated confidence to flash the screaming crowd of women and men already gathering around him. There goes his chance of having someone to spend the rest of the night with, drunk and stripping on top of a stained club table.

He sighs, turning away from Sehun’s pasty abs and slouching with a disappointed but expectant shuffle to his lazy step. Unless he joins the currently half-naked wolf hybrid on top of the chipped table or starts grinding up against complete strangers, of which he’ll definitely do neither, what he had predicted pessimistically will completely follow through without fault for the rest of the night.

First, he’ll wander through the club without aim nor direction, bump into some people, apologize, maybe take a gross shot or two, smash into some more random clubgoers, be too drunk and rude to apologize by that point, get whisked home by one of the invariable friends Sehun will somehow end up making by the end of the night, and finally collapse face first into his unmade bed with the epic beginnings of B.A.P’s Noir album on perpetual shuffle. He runs through the tentative schedule through his head once more, angling his body into the narrowing gaps of the crowd, and decides that, yep, everything sounds about right.

Might as well get the night started now, he decides with the form of someone who’s already resigned himself to the inevitability of his gloomy mindset. He edges into the mishmash of indistinguishable bodies, dragging the soles of his creepers past intruding feet without any real idea of where he’s currently heading to. For a moment he stills, pulling languidly at some loose fur on his ears as he tries to remember the exact reason for why he was at least vaguely willing to come here, when standing here, alone, like a complete loser, he has no clue as to what he actually wants to do.

His ear twitches, ticklish and sensitive from the overheated environment, and Changkyun decides, hazily, that again, he really has no idea. The wall to the close left of the room, though, is appealingly bare of any frenzied grinding, and it seems to be the perfect place for him to contemplate the welling self-pity in his heavy heart and also how much money he could potentially burn on B.A.P’s next comeback album. (Spoilers: it’s a lot).

He pulls on his flattest, don’t-talk-to-me expression that Sehun calls his “old-man bitch face” (he’s only jealous) as he begins pushing his way to the beckoning wall with the barest semblance of courtesy. These people could stop attempting to twerk for one second, he thinks huffily as a pointed tail flops without shame into his path, slapping audibly against his leg.

Changkyun dusts the back of his hand over the numbing spot, breaking his passive mask with a curl of his lip in vague disgust. He’s not really a germaphobe or anything; anyone could see that from the current state of his room, but he has half a mind to immediately incinerate these pants the moment he can get his hands on some alcohol and a burner in the chemistry room. Trust him, it won’t be hard at all.

He jots a mental reminder in the back of his mind as the throng of swaying clubgoers finally clears up enough for just the moment he needs to cross to the sliver of empty space between the nebulous edge of the crowd and the wall. Changkyun hikes to his feet and strides into the parted sea, eyes set only on the flat, shining wall glimmering and beckoning before him. He reaches it with an echoing thump of his foot on the ground, internally cheering for his one small victory of the night: finally, he’s alone.

Well close, at least, he corrects himself grudgingly because off to the side is a couple grinding awkwardly up against each other in the same empty space Changkyun has currently taken up residence in for the night. If the twerking from before had seemed awfully cringy, the scene in front of him is infinitely worse. It’s so bad he can’t even qualify the broken movements as anything close to the relative definition of dancing, and that’s coming from someone who may or may not have dislocated his hip attending his first and very last free dance class with an eager Sehun. (He’s never going to attempt a body roll that hard ever again).

The twin bodies suddenly jolt, breaking from its unified black mass into two twisting lines in an almost violent manner. Changkyun is horrified, but strangely drawn to the frantic wriggling that’s taking place, completely lacking in any attempts at rhythm nor romanticism. Really, what’s going on, he wonders, magnetized as his legs unwillingly pull him closer through the shadowy haze for a closer, curious look.

He’s five steps away, still leaned unassumingly against the wall, when the taller man appears to yank his partner back, melding them back to front again with such intense force the smaller one quickly loses his footing and slips in place. He shuffles fruitlessly, trying to regain his lost balance with a dragging scratch of his heels over the ground. It’s strange, because, Changkyun narrows his eyes, peering through the neon purple strobes - it almost looks as if he’s trying to get away.

The other hybrid holds him captive, crushing him into the hunched cage of his thick upper body, until all Changkyun can see of the smaller man are the swaying white tips of what he assumes to be his ears. In a surprising show of agility, the white-eared hybrid lunges forward, tight legs kicking out with a volatile snap as he finally shifts just a fraction out of his partner’s shadow and into Changkyun’s blurred view.

He whips around frantically, as if he was trapped, lashing a pale arm out past the heavy blackness of the body behind him. Something happens out of Changkyun’s range of sight, and he hears an audible intake of breath, piercing dry and sharp through the catchy electropop as the smaller hybrid throws his head back, letting it fall against the other man’s shoulder with a loud thump.

Changkyun turns his head, looking over on an unspoken impulse, and their eyes meet with an electric jolt of lightning, magnetized in a moment of indescribable recognition. Jooheon freezes in his sudden struggle and Changkyun does as well, taking a moment to catch his own breath at the soul-deep sensation.

Bunny, is the first barely coherent thought his muddled mind conjures up on the spot, the rest of the sentence lost to the glassy pools of the other’s fixed gaze. The second full thought that follows is a loud exclamation of oh shit, because the other hybrid is obviously in need of some help.

Even in the flickering neon shadows of the club, the wet desperation glinting in slim eyes is only accentuated by the flashy lighting, highlighted into two bright streaks that pull Changkyun in with the most magnetic urgency. He follows their distinct call, hazily tracing his feet over some unknown path on complete mindless instinct.

It’s like he’s watching someone else operate his body because it’s practically unbelievable when he somehow places firm, unshaking palms on the tensed bodies of the two hybrids and rips them apart with a forceful locking of his elbows, to the speechless surprise of all three people present, himself included. He’s not sure if the steady thrum of noise pounding through his head is the never-ending bass of the club or his own internal panic taking form in high-pitched screaming and incoherent babbling.

It’s the club’s music, he tells himself as the cottony static begins dying down to the slow steadying drawl of his breaths. He still feels like he must be dreaming because there’s no way, he, Im Changkyun, avid B.A.P fanboy and unassuming biochemistry major who’s worked out for a total 0.1% of his life, somehow managed to go up against some guy twice as wide as him and come out of it completely unscathed. Sure, he might’ve had the element of surprise, and the guy’s back was kind of turned to him, but this is coming from someone who seriously thought he had osteoporosis the minute his back started hurting from staying hunched up in bed for more than two days. Given the circumstances, Changkyun counts it as his second firm victory of the night.

It becomes less surreal and extremely real when he realizes he’s somehow latched his hand around the rabbit hybrid’s slim wrist and has pulled him to rest slightly behind his left side, enough so that the hulking creep glaring down at them would have to push past Changkyun first in order to get to the softly shaking bunny. He’s slightly taller than me, the younger boy observes thoughtlessly as a warm breath wavers past the top of his cheek. He tightens his grip, an unspoken message of reassurance, and subtly angles his body even more between the looming alpha and the trembling rabbit behind him.

“Leave him alone,” he grits out as the stranger steps forward, insides jumping at the strange timber of his own voice. He gently pushes his palm back against the other man’s stiffened wrist, motioning slightly for the both of them to begin backing away.

“He’s mine,” the man growls, eyes flashing, and Changkyun is hit with the stink of a swamp on a hot summer’s day, rotting with dead fish and sewage. Even a sweaty, post-dance class Sehun smells ten times better than the muck currently forcing its way through his nose and coating his tongue with the taste of vomit. He considers covering his face with his jacket sleeve, but a light tug to the hem of his shirt and a practically indiscernible whimper stops him in his impudent actions, waking the wolf in his hindbrain with a loud, possessive rumble instead.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Changkyun bites out, rigid and short, each word twitching jerkily against his clenched jaw.

“And you would know?” The other man’s eyes flash a sick yellow, and he steps imperceptibly close, close enough Changkyun is too surprised to push the terrified rabbit behind him away and out of reach. He stills, so frozen in silence even the minute palpitations of his breath turn to ice. Up close, lit by violent strobes, he realizes he’s up against another wolf - it’s an issue of a plain challenge for dominance. The stranger’s grey ears are pressed back, flat against his head, and Changkyun mirrors the same expression with his own identical black pair. He bares his canines, snarling only with the haze of red-blooded victory in mind.

“More than you ever would,” he utters, each syllable ripping so gutturally through his throat he can feel the echoes of the vibrations of the words in the pit of his stomach. He pulls the rabbit hybrid close, pressing their linked arms together in a searing line of bare flesh against heated leather. A honey-sweet scent slyly wafts up from behind him, so inexorably familiar, Changkyun almost immediately drops to his knees from the way it strikes him so pleasurably in the gut.

He forces away the heat creeping into his mind with a deep shuddering exhale, holding his breath quietly as he turns back to the task at hand. Namely, the alpha in front of him, paused in his advances with his head tilted to the side like an innocent young pup, something unnamable wavering in his dark gaze. Changkyun growls, low in the back of his throat, the action making his stomach twist with a strange sensation.

“Back off,” he bites out, the scent of lavender rapidly bleeding and mixing viscously with honey already floating through the air. Changkyun almost chokes on his spit, and this time, he can’t stop his knees from wobbling just the slightest bit.

Somehow, between his dead glare and the weakening of his legs, the other alpha appraises his false claim and somehow deems it convincing enough to let them go, melting back into the crowded shadows of the club with the deadly silence of a snake.

Changkyun turns slowly, hesitating as some sort of jittery wave of anticipation begins building up within his body, overtaking his body with a sea of nerves. When he’s finally fully facing the other hybrid, their eyes meet in a flash of understanding, the same idea clicking alight between them with the volatile flick of a lighter in the midst of a cloud of methane.

Before a single second has ticked by, their hands come to fumble together, fingers slipping and pressing with frantic urgency into the waiting space between each other’s curved knuckles, hands interlacing with a slightly sweaty, heated kiss of palms.

It’s not apparent who sets the first foot forward, but all of a sudden, they’re jilting into action, moving unsteadily with one will as if cooperating in a perfectly timed three legged race towards some vague finish line neither of them have any knowledge of at the moment.

At some point, they’re both outright running, sprinting with reckless abandon through the pulsing dancefloor, all logical regard for manners and appearances thrown away to the fire burning in their shared touch and the same thought sparking alight through the neurons in their brains. It must be animal instinct, some dormant sixth sense that’s come to life now and has somehow led them without a single false turn to a backdoor and out into a deserted alleyway.

The cold night air delivers a sudden shock to their bodies, dousing the liquid heat in their veins with the effectiveness of sticking your head into a bucket of ice. Their hands separate with a harsh rip, every burning feeling of shame and embarrassment returning with the realization of who are you and how are you doing this to me that floods into them from the ashy, cigarette-laden air.

A dull emptiness immediately sets in upon the loss of each other’s touch, an emptiness filling up Changkyun so entirely it makes him want to reach out and touch again without the intention of ever letting go. He chances a glance to the side and loses his breath for the second time that night.

The bunny is actually a full-grown rabbit, mature, with two long white ears sprung proudly upright from atop a head of wavy blonde locks. A few bright strands have fallen loose, the wind stroking them gently across the curve of his bare forehead. The other man tucks them back with a careless backwards combing motion, and Changkyun’s attention is irrationally caught on how small his fingers seem, the tips curved like the delicate petals of a lily in its short-lived prime.

A night draft whistles through their desolate alleyway, and the rabbit hybrid ducks down with an unexpected sneeze, his small squeak promptly grabbing Changkyun’s otherwise distracted attention. Without even a moment’s thought, he strips off his jacket and drapes the warm leather over hunched shoulders, letting the cold air wash over himself instead.

He gets his first direct look at the other’s face in return, and the same weak feeling in his knees returns in all its full, destructive glory. Changkyun discretely leans casually back against the brick wall, propping himself there with folded arms and a cool, detached attitude. Internally, of course, the high pitched screaming has also made a comeback.

The other man’s sleek eyes slope over the full curve of his cheeks with all the sophistication and elegance of a finely painted line of Chinese calligraphy, making him look more like a fox than anything else. However, the minute twitching of his sloped nose and the natural pink of his heart lips give him away as only a bunny (besides the obvious pair of ears), but it seems from the soothed rumbling emanating from deep inside of him, Changkyun’s wolf wouldn’t have it any other way.

It doesn’t make much sense, but on first instinct he wants to say the other hybrid reminds him of the moon: supple and full in sky as it watched over him and his worries with such an unspoken understanding he had pledged to pluck it out of the sky in order to take it with him to school as a pup. Now, his hand twitches in the the confines of his elbow with the same phantom yearning.

The surprise from slim eyes eventually fades into a childish pout, lips perking with the ripe sheen of summer cherries as the other man attempts to pull the leather jacket fully around his body. The piece of clothing attempts to stretch further, pulling past every seam with one-hundred percent effort, but there’s just not enough give. Jooheon gives up and leaves it to flap loosely around his shoulders, tucking the bare edges of his arms into the silky interior to the best of his ability. “It’s a little small,” he admits, hastily meeting the other hybrid’s silent gaze.

Changkyun’s stupid mouth moves too fast for his brain to even process the words coming out of it. “What, no ‘thank you?’” he asks in a tone that is entirely too rude to use with beautiful strangers who remind him of his first rocky, inanimate, outer space love.

Instead of reacting as people, namely Sehun, usually do to his automatic snark, the rabbit hybrid’s cupid lips only form a perfect o before softening into a small, genuine smile, the curves of his mouth still fully accentuated in the sloping dip of his shapely upper lip. “Thank you,” he replies hesitantly, his own embarrassment forcing his face into a nervous grin on reflex.

Changkyun barely registers it in the muted static of his thoughts because all he can focus on at the moment are the two deep welts forming on either side of the other hybrid’s shy smile. Dimples, he repeats brokenly to himself, he has dimples, and they’re deeper than anything he’s ever seen in his meager twenty years of existence on this Earth. Forget the moon’s sea-razed and comet-scarred craters, this guy’s dimples could fit the entire Milky Way into their creamy folds. His fingers twitch wantonly, and Changkyun jams them painfully into his arm before he does something terrible like reach out and poke one.

“I’m - I’m Changkyun, Im Changkyun,” he stutters out brokenly, disconcertedly determined to keep the nonexistent conversation alive - also to keep those pretty imprints in the other’s cheeks from fading back into smooth obscurity.

“Lee Jooheon,” the rabbit hybrid offers quietly, still too absorbed in the slurred timbre of the boy’s deep, cavernous voice to introduce himself with all his attention and manners intact.

“Like honey?” Fuck, there goes his mouth again. Changkyun is entirely too ready to lock himself into a muzzle and dump the key into a landfill without any intention of ever retrieving it the hypothetical day he gets his brain-to-mouth filter under control. He’ll probably look like he’s into some weird stuff, but at least that way he can stop himself from offending a real life cherub.

“Agh,” splotchy heat blooms lightly across Jooheon’s cheeks, “I’m too old for those kinds of jokes anymore.” Minhyuk has made that one too often in regards to his scent, and just the thought of the cat hybrid makes his heart pang sorely with homesickness.

Changkyun notices the minute drooping of the other’s ears, and he automatically opens his mouth to let it run its natural course, praying that something hilarious and vaguely reassuring comes out. “What are you, like eighteen? Actually wait, seventeen?” Well...that works he supposes; at least it’s not outright rude.

Jooheon’s ears perk again, and he looks up, the corners of his slight eyes crinkling in incredulous disbelief. This kid, he thinks, strangely fond and exasperated, attempting to suppress the whisper of a giggle from escaping his mouth. “Twenty-four actually,” he replies, voice a little wobbly from the choking laugh threatening to spill over at the boy’s frozen expression of pure surprise.

Oh wow, Changkyun was only playing, but damn, he was way off. Twenty-two at most had been his guess. “I guess you’re my hyung then because I’m only a twenty year old suffering college student,” he sighs sagging slightly against the rough brick wall.

Jooheon scans his gaze lightly over the other’s lax figure, taking in the slight sallowness of the younger boy’s cheeks, the bruised bags under his eyes, and decides sadly, college hasn’t changed at all since he last graduated only two years ago. Despite all that, the student is still very handsome, from the slim line of his legs stretched out before him in an accidental display, to the sharp angle of his finely drawn jawline.

Jooheon tries to blink away the heat rising behind his eyelids, attempting to skip over that clear-cut fact, throwing it behind a pile of junk cardboard boxes in the deep recesses of his mind. He forces himself to focus on an innocent topic instead, something he’s sure that he and Changkyun have in common, determined to wipe away his embarrassing moment of utter denial. “So, is it still 2Jae’s coffee that gets most of the sleep-deprived college students like you through the day?”

Changkyun perks up, a small voice of suspicious suggestion lilting into his ear and through his mind. It can’t be...because really, what are the chances? He takes a cautious step off the brick wall, mind and body on complete alert now. He decides to test his miniscule doubts, injecting a tone of innocent curiosity into his casual question. “I’ve only started going there last week, but so far it’s done for me than any of Starbuck’s shitty frapuccinos ever could.” He slips his hands into his pockets, only the light forward slouch of his back betraying his intense interest in Jooheon’s answer. “So, do you go there often?”

The rabbit hybrid smiles in nostalgic reminiscence as Youngjae and Jaebum’s muffled bickering starts playing like a vintage record in the back of his mind. “Yeah, I’ve been going there almost everyday for…” he pouts cutely, trying to grasp a number out of the immutable stars glimmering in the night sky, “at least a year and a half now? Seems about right.” He nods minutely, re-confirming the answer with himself.

Ah, Changkyun’s heart aches at the sight in front of him; it’s so adorable. The fact that Jooheon has started mumbling lowly as he tries to count the years on his fingers proves that, yes, it’s indeed the most precious thing Changkyun has ever lain his eyes on. (The picture he has of Jongup wearing a flower crown at a fanmeeting is rightfully excluded from judgement).

He forcefully shakes himself out of the pure fluff-induced daze to analyze and evaluate Jooheon’s answer. No doubt, it does bring him closer to confirming Changkyun’s suspicions, but - it’s just not enough, not if he wants to wipe away every mark of doubt in his mind.

There’s only one option left, and in his current state of mind, with Jooheon open and unsuspecting in front of him, Changkyun feels emboldened enough to blurt it out.

“I know this is sudden,” he begins gingerly, taking a step closer, then another, until Jooheon blinks up in surprise to see Changkyun standing directly in front of him. The younger hybrid holds his hand out in front of him, palms up in plain honesty as if delivering an offering of trust. “But could I scent you?”

The words take a bit of time to sink in, not because Jooheon was preoccupied by the blunt thickness of Changkyun’s long fingers or anything, but as he slowly comes to comprehend them his face erupts into a rash of color, spreading so uncontrollably it feels like a pandemic disease, forcing him to press freezing palms to red cheeks in an attempt to calm the overheating flesh there. At this point, he thinks on the edge of delirium, he might as well just die from a heat stroke before he can ever get out of here alive.

Changkyun fumbles, flustered at the other’s multiple shades of mortification and his own mistake as he realizes the terrible implications of his request. “No, I meant, uh-” he waves his hands in front of him in what he hopes is an innocent and placating manner, “-like, platonically, kind of?” When Jooheon’s face remains steadily covered, he injects a light plea, maybe even a whine, into his voice. “It’ll only be on the wrist, I promise.”

The only response he receives is a bare wrist shoved into his general space, and his wolf rolls onto its haunches, sitting at attention with its ears pointed in sharp anticipation.

Jooheon’s proffered wrist is much like the rest of him, terribly soft and unmarred by any possessive bonds, delicate and innocent before Changkyun’s greedy eyes. He’s almost scared to touch, as if somehow a light tap of finger could immediately scar the translucent flesh in front of him and cause the rabbit hybrid to be whisked away in a sudden, blazing storm of electricity and ions in order to shield him from Changkyun’s abundant, not-at-all-platonic thoughts.

He absentmindedly rubs a thumb over a thin vein just to make sure, regretting his actions the moment Jooheon jumps a little, almost twitching his hand out of Changkyun’s tingling grasp.

The wolf hybrid holds the other’s wrist straight before him as clinical and technical as a piece of laboratory equipment before letting his base instincts take over. His eyes naturally fall closed as he presses his nose to a fragrant, warm pulse, nuzzling into tender skin - and then, he breathes-

It goes black for a second, his mind, his vision, his senses, before he blinks slightly and realizes he’s in the café he stopped by in last week. His body begins moving on its own, legs carrying him to the door with an already ordered cup of coffee, before he promptly stops in place. This time, in the metaphysical universe of his own mind, he looks around, mouth slightly opened because he swears he can literally taste the vivid scent of honey and lavender in the air and against his palate; it could only be a hair’s breadth away.

Dream-him takes a step forward, and someone at the nearest table turns, blonde curls blazing like a halo in the imaginary morning sun. Changkyun’s eyes widen-

-and they snap open, face to face with the blank skin of Jooheon’s tensed wrist, nerves and tendons rising up like hardened pottery molds under an opaque layer of flesh. Changkyun closes his eyes and breathes in deeply again.

He can smell the ever-present lightness of sweet honey and strong lavender, but there’s so much more - the petrichor of the musky rain on fresh, wet earth - the raw clearness of the air on the night of a full moon - the wolf in his blood sings and howls of home. There’s no doubt about it: it’s the same scent that had whispered to him you’re mine, I’m yours, and we were made for each other from the moment of the universe’s conception the day he had made his brisk exit from the café he had visited on a random whim last week.

Changkyun slowly looks up from the wrist below him, an odd heaviness in his mouth. Somehow, he’s lost his breath again for the nth time this night. When he meets Jooheon’s lilting gaze, there’s the same exhilarated, terrified, heart-pounding recognition in those brown, glistening, bottomless pools. He opens his mouth, jaw popping and creaking from the strange weight of his unfathomable desire. He wants to throw himself into those gentle waters and drown himself in their never ending seas.

“Oh-”

“-it’s you.”

---------

Minhyuk slides into the edge of the bar, friendless, and very much in the mood for a strong shot or two. Maybe even three - just enough for him to forget the way Jooheon had flinched away his touch as if he had hurt him more than any stranger ever could.

They’ve been together, through every momentous occasion and even through most nondescript, forgettable ones, for so long Minhyuk wonders, idly pushing at the tiny glass in front of him, sloshing the amber liquid inside it, if he’s lost his sense of reasoning entirely. Being with Jooheon, it makes his heart ache with the uncontrollable urge to protect, and he contemplates the intense feeling as he slowly swishes a gulp of searing whiskey against his heavy tongue.

If only he had been born an alpha instead, he considers, letting the bitter liquid slide down his throat and coat his insides with thick soporous oil. After all, that is what they had originally come here for, and at his own urgent suggestion too. Well, it’s going so well he’s somehow gotten himself ditched and drinking alone, while Jooheon is probably off fending away crowds of alphas with flushed cheeks and perpetually pink lips.

Minhyuk feels the same flush seep through his own face, and he frowns, squinting lightly when a face begins to appear in the glimmering puddle staring up at him from the concave bottom of the shot glass. He thinks it’s Jooheon’s wobbly visage for a moment, painted with liquid amber into a look of teary betrayal, but when he puts his eye to the rim, there’s only the blankness of the hazy liquid.

He raises his head up from his scrutinous examination and promptly decides he’s not drunk enough. If the shame from acting like an absolute idiot is still burning under his skin, then he needs more vice flowing through his veins to flush it out.

By the time he’s nursing his sixth shot, he’s begun nipping at the already minute amount of liquor as if he was partaking in the finest of wines. In truth, he’s nearing that point of the night where his thoughts are turning into fine mush, along with the disappearance of his already barely existent inhibitions. The alcohol suavely washes away all his worries about Jooheon, glibly dulling the large part of his brain that’s wholly dedicated to his unflinching sense of protectiveness over the younger hybrid, and he begins to wonder, cheerily, why isn’t he out there on the dance floor enjoying himself yet?

The masochistic cat in him unfortunately jumps to attention, reminding him with a sly swipe of its paw past lazy ears, it’s because he would rather not see possessive hands running themselves all over Jooheon’s soft body, squeezing him out of Minhyuk’s trembling reach. He’s never seen it, but the obscene imagery conjured up by his overreaching, unbound mind is more than enough to cause an unpleasant churning to rise from his empty stomach, turning the taste of his mouth sour. He glances at the glowing amber liquid, and suddenly, it doesn’t seem quite so tempting anymore.

He’s about to discretely hide his still very full shot glass behind the growing collection of already drained, clear ones, when the stool next to him screeches aside and a lonely shadow slips into the now-empty space. Minhyuk jolts to a minute standstill, whiskey shot poised in the loose hold of his sluggish fingertips as he watches the stranger with shifting pupils. For most of the night, he hasn’t had any silent drinking partners, and he was more than okay with that - well, up until this guy had shown up of course.

The lighting in the club alternates between neon blasts of color and a cheap kaleidoscope of swinging lasers from a myriad of free lightsticks. Minhyuk’s slurring brain hisses against the random flashes of offensive brightness, but he has no difficulty mapping out the solid silhouette of the man next to him, pupils automatically dilating to eclipse the dark suns of his irises as he takes in the view before him. His seat partner pays him no attention, gaze unmoving and silent, even as he sets down the shot glass with a disruptive clank.

Instead, the other man tips slight fingers under his chin in a terribly sober move, lips pursed into a small point as he waits for the bartender to arrive with his drink. He looks like the fussy type, Minhyuk observes with a sense of vague annoyance. Definitely the fussy type, he confirms, narrowing his eyes as the guy huffs out a short breath, reaching back with his pale, pink-tipped fingers to smooth back a few perfectly neat strands of ink-black hair.

A crisp movement draws Minhyuk’s attention to the top of his head, where two triangular ears stand tall, mildly twitching against the invisible flow of air traveling throughout the club. They're actually almost oval, Minhyuk decides, sliding his eyes up from their rounded bases to the black needle-point tips.

He scooches minutely closer, unspeakably drawn to them through some kind of loose curiosity. Through further observation, he can see how polished they are, sleekly matching the smooth color of their owner’s gel-styled hair, differing only by a ruffle of rusty brown inside their barely curled interiors. He’s a domestic puppy, Minhyuk realizes with a surge of irrational glee. One that likes to take care of himself too, he scoffs internally as the dog hybrid smooths his fingertips along the finely shaved sides of his head.

The drink finally comes, to expectant alertness of both men, and Minhyuk watches eagerly as his neighbor takes it politely with outstretched palms. It’s in a tall, clear glass, the drink sloshing around lightly with no discernable color to speak of. For a moment, Minhyuk is convinced it’s a mojito from the fresh bite of citrus floating through the sweaty musk of the club, but a neon ray of yellow passes over them, and sees with a start this guy only ordered a simple mint soda.

The proof of his realization fans tauntingly at him from over the edge of the dripping glass with a searing green pungency. Sure, there’s a slice of lemon stuck at the bottom of some ice cubes, but the drink itself is tinted with a deep shade of emerald, and Minhyuk blames his failing sight on the whiskey drugging his system with the tempting promise of a limitless high.

For some reason, the fact that this guy got all dressed up, all dolled up, only to come out this entire way just to order a plain soda irks him beyond all logical thought - so much so, he gropes for his once-forgotten shot of half-drunken whiskey and upends the rest of it into his waiting mouth with an audible gulp. When he sets down the glass this time, even louder than before, the other man’s eyes are finally on him, straw perched loosely against a lush bottom lip. Minhyuk begrudgingly wonders if he’s wearing lip gloss.

“So, what’s a guy like you doing here ordering that kind of drink?” he asks impulsively, lolling his head slackly against a propped palm as he shifts his gaze pointedly to the offensive glass of mint soda.

The guy takes a long sip from said drink, pursing his delicate lip-gloss lips around the tip of the straw in slight surprise. “I’ve got an early day of work tomorrow,” he replies lightly, but he tips the non-alcoholic beverage just an inch away with a graceful shove of two small fingers, as if primly saying I’ve had enough of this for now anyways.

“Then what are you even doing here tonight?” Minhyuk accuses bluntly, nevermind the fact that he has a five a.m. shoot to work tomorrow morning. This guy doesn’t doesn’t need to know that.

“I’m actually friends with the DJ,” the dog hybrid sighs, throwing a furtive glance towards the source of the pounding bass pulsing through the club. He turns back to Minhyuk, arched almond eyes focusing precisely onto the other’s blurry gaze. “He said he would come find me once he’s switched out for the night, but well…” he glances towards the booming DJ station again, “looks like the other guy still hasn’t arrived yet.”

“So what,” Minhyuk hums, tone lilting and light, tracing his finger around the wet rim of his emptied sixth shot, “you’re just going to here all prim and pretty and let some handsy alpha come claim you for the night?” He can’t stop the words from tumbling out of his mouth, nor the teasing indignance from bleeding into his tone. The whiskey has made being rude objectively hilarious, and when he gets like this, all he wants to do is mess with the impassive masks of people like this frowning guy before him.

“I’m an alpha, actually,” the other man answers, taciturn and calm, only betraying a sense of clinical distaste with a slight raise of a single neat brow.

Minhyuk blinks once, twice, hazy and languid, showing no surprise at all. He had suspected as much; at first glance, the dog hybrid had seemed tiny, almost delicate in stature, but there was something undeniably proud and compact in the set of his narrow shoulders, giving him the sleek presence of someone twice his size. Minhyuk won’t admit to it out loud, but unconsciously he does the same thing, albeit for entirely different reasons.

He feigns light surprise, just vaguely pulling his brows up past his bangs before pursing his lips into a flat line of easy acceptance. “Certainly wouldn’t stop them,” he throws out, casually giving the other man a very noticeable once-over.

“Certainly isn’t stopping you,” his drinking partner replies, eyes finally flashing with an emotion that isn’t exasperation or unimpressed-ness, if those even qualify as valid forms of human expression. Minhyuk thinks he can hear a faint growl in the other’s clipped tone, and he shivers with an odd sense of exhilaration.

He pulls himself forward, heated attraction making the air unbearably thick between them. He isn’t even thinking in full sentences anymore, only recognizing and following the red pulse of tease and provoke in the back of his mind. “So,” he breathes, knocking his knees into the open v of the other man’s spread thighs, “the puppy has some bite, huh?” He smirks, popping his canines into full view, ready for a challenge.

What he isn’t ready for are the dog hybrid’s eyes suddenly streaking with an intense burst of heat, a black hole burning hotter than the largest sun in the galaxy as he yanks Minhyuk forward with a punishing grip around his choker, muttering, “I’ll show you puppy.” This time there’s a definite growl, rumbling past his lips as he crashes their mouths together with a raw clack of teeth ripping over skin.

Minhyuk’s cry of surprise is swallowed by a demanding tongue that licks urgently into his slack mouth, pressing past his lips without a moment of courtesy. Liquid fire sears through his stomach, and he drags the stranger to him with a rough hand cupped to the back of his head, intentionally yanking on the neatly styled locks with unrestrained violence. Another growl rolls out of the stranger’s mouth, this time melding into the heated cavern of his throat as his mouth is thoroughly explored and invaded with implacable dominance.

He hisses, asserting his own control, tightening his grip on the other’s head to the point of yanking out a handful of fine black hairs and biting down into the dog hybrid’s glossy bottom lip none too gently, pressing with the harsh edge of his canines. The groan he swallows down only sets the lowly simmering heat in his stomach ablaze with the subtlety of a bomb, and he lunges forward, using his height to his advantage to force the unyielding stranger into temporary submission.

It’s been so long, an eternity almost, since he’s made out with someone to this extent of ferocious violence, neither of them providing a shred of care for the other’s pleasure as they each chase after their own, only dumping gasoline onto the catching wildfire in each other’s veins. Minhyuk can’t even tell if he’s breathing anymore, the tight ball in his chest growing more grand with each moment of wet, willing suffocation as their teeth meet with a painful click. He’s never had it like this before, this rough, this good, not even through his shared heats-

(his shared heats with Jooheon. Jooheon who’s so soft, too soft, ever since childhood, and Minhyuk just left him, forgot him, to the cavernous beast of the club, where there’s no way he could ever fend for himself, not against all those alphas no-)

He rips his mouth away from its tangled, intimate embrace, spit-slicked lips parting in a desperate gasp for air. The other man frowns up at him, the same wetness staining his bruised mouth, body tensed and braced in feverish pleasure against the bar. His hair is artfully mussed and parted messily with a few thin strands tickling his half-lidded gaze of hooded want. Minhyuk shivers, ears pressing back against his head as he takes a few slow steps, backing out from between the dog hybrid’s splayed legs.

“I-I have to go,” he stutters, ducking his gaze down to a pair of polished dress shoes. Before his mistake of the night can reply in that steady, sharp voice of his, Minhyuk turns tail and runs, far, far away, without a single glance backwards to the mess he’s left stunned behind him.

He clenches his eyes shut, dodging around wayward bodies with wobbling, but still intact grace. His only consolation for the night is that he’ll never have to see this delicate, domineering stranger ever again. Minhyuk runs away and pretends that it doesn’t hurt at all.

---------

“Ah-” Jooheon gasps, breathily, breathlessly, when Changkyun noses down the fine line of his twitching pulse, hot exhales of Saharan wind stripping across the flat plain of his wrist. The younger hybrid’s eyes have slipped closed again in a translucent fan of hazel eyelashes, fluttering, trance-like, against the hard edge of his cheek.

Jooheon watches, caught in his own flushed stupor as Changkyun traces over his proffered arm with a sense of slow, shaking reverence, carefully patient in his holy quest to memorize every subtle nuance of the scent arising like a breath of warm perfume from the fragrant wrist before him. He inhales again, another long drawl, dragging the breath harshly against the roof of his mouth, tasting the scent of pure sweetness as it dissipates in a mind-numbing fog through his nose and into the rest of his body. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to think in coherent sentences after introducing his brain to this opioid. He sighs, tireless, and takes in another deep impassioned drawl of pungent lavender and lavish honey.

Jooheon reddens, heart shaking, heat spreading when Changkyun shifts his captive hand over a smooth cheek, cradling his twitching palm to the curve of his own face with the gentility of a long-lost kitten. He tucks himself into the soft flesh of the older hybrid’s palm, yearning to bury himself into the very depths of the velvet aroma emanating from cotton-cream skin.

Jooheon deliberates, hand twitching, unbidden, at the other’s unfathomable expression. He’s just a kid - a pup, the jittery rabbit in his mind supplies, and yet here they are: complete strangers, pushed together in this affectionate, deeply implicating position in plain view of an open alleyway. Changkyun noses into the delicate folds of skin under his cheek, huffing out a ticklish exhale, and Jooheon’s poor heart jumps so hard he starts to see the bright stars of the sky begin flying past the dirty yellow light of the street lamps and embed themselves into the black crown of the younger man’s bowed head.

It’s all a dream, a heat induced hallucination, he tells himself, the fire from Changkyun’s prolonged touch melting him into a frenzied pile of mush. Still, when a soft cheek presses insistently to his stiffened palm, the better part of his brain is too ruined to stop his hand from reaching back and reciprocating with a gentle swipe of a thumb to the delicate ridge of a high cheekbone hidden under a set of glimmering, flickering lashes. They brush, so light, so frail, against his finger, and suddenly, Jooheon is all too aware of the same pink heat trailing itself across the slender edge of Changkyun’s slack face.

Oh, he stills, thumb paused mid-way in its affectionate ministrations. He doesn’t quite know what to make of that realization nor what he should do with it.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), he never manages to consider any potential options because a heavy force is crashing into him, dragging, pulling, and squeezing with the unstoppable will of a six ton truck ramming into an unsuspecting deer at its full violent velocity.

“Minhyuk hyung,” Jooheon breathes out with trembling lungs, hands twitching uselessly at his side, arms pinned in the other’s unrelenting embrace.

“You dummy!” Minhyuk immediately leans back, frantically scanning blown black pupils over Jooheon’s face and body for any sign of harm or assault. All he finds are pink cheeks, and in a moment of cold, exhausting calm, he hastily attributes it to the night chill.

The sudden appearance of Minhyuk’s terribly familiar brand of merciless affection, complete with sharp words and lovingly oppressive touches - it sends a surge of desperate relief through Jooheon that he had never even realized was trapped inside of him, fluttering in erratic beats in the cage of his heart. He falls a little now, knees buckling as he throws himself into Minhyuk’s steadfast embrace with a crying whimper of “hyung.” His eyes finally slip closed, and the heat in his veins simmer down as the fresh, cooling scent of cherry blossoms with a biting hint of whiskey once again surrounds him in a protective cloud of safety.

Minhyuk never lets their bodies separate, only rearranging his arms around Jooheon’s quivering self in order to squeeze around him even tighter. He strokes one hand in a slow rhythm down the swaying curve of the younger’s back, while the other grips tightly at the base of his neck, fingers alternating between scratching through the outcropping of fine hairs there and just pressing at the soft flesh under them, spreading open to their full length in order to encompass and feel the entire span of Jooheon’s neck. He presses his nose into the crook of the younger hybrid’s mellow jaw, taking in a deep breath as he reassures himself with the very loud and very fast pounding of the other’s pulse.

The entire time he doesn’t allow his gaze to wander from the solitary figure who has been staring at them with such unblinking focus, it only makes Minhyuk hold Jooheon to him that much closer.

He doesn’t break eye contact with the boy, staring him down with slitted pupils even as the other hybrid slowly kneels to pick up a discarded jacket. Even in his bent position, he still manages to glare up at Minhyuk with the same strange intensity, crouched and ready as if waiting for a fight. The cat hybrid compulsively buries half of his face into Jooheon’s neck, who automatically makes room for him, tilting his head to the side in an accidental show of vulnerability. Minhyuk watches with his one unobstructed eye as the boy’s expression of gloomy placidness immediately darkens into one of unmistakable jealousy, and he decides on the spot that he doesn’t approve of him one bit.

Eventually, the silent battle between them fades, too tense to be continued as Jooheon shivers in the cold night air, so Minhyuk pulls the younger man back with a firm but gentle hold at the scruff of his neck. “We should go,” he states with quiet aplomb, and without even lending him a moment to reply nor to protest, he yanks Jooheon to him with a crushing grip and begins marching the both of them out of the whistling alleyway.

He’s completely aware of it when he passes by the silent boy, feeling the unsettling chill of the other’s unshakeable glare on him, but he resolves to walk past with his head held high, no intention of conceding even a bit at the tail end of this impromptu battle.

When the pale edge of the boy’s slim face slides out of view, his heart surges with a loud pitter-patter of triumph, that he’s gotten out of here with everything he needs intact (pride, victory, Jooheon), until he’s jerked to a stumbling stop, knees knocking, feet shuffling into the broken gravel.

He whips his head around, teeth furiously bared in a ready hiss, before he jolts to a frozen pause to observe the scene before him. The kid has somehow managed to grab Jooheon’s free hand with his scrawny arms and is currently holding it captive with both hands in a way that is entirely too familiar and intimate for someone Minhyuk has never met before, let alone someone he’s ever seen Jooheon hang out with.

The boy looks up, whispering something inaudible and clandestine, jealousy melting into the recognizable tenderness of the beginnings of loving infatuation. The edges of his mouth perk up in a crooked smile, and Minhyuk grudgingly admits it’s a good look on him. The nameless stranger finally breaks his lovesick eye contact to rummage for something in his skin-tight pockets, skinny hand emerging seconds later with a simple sharpie twisted between his fingers.

He hunches over, spreading Jooheon’s fingers open gently as he scrawls out what Minhyuk assumes to be his number in bold strokes of black, pressing each line without hesitation into the pale impression of the rabbit hybrid’s skin. Minhyuk sees himself ripping his frozen friend away, entirely aware of how loose the strange boy’s soft hold must be, and ruining the looping numbers with a jagged streak that would cross out any last remnants of his meager existence in their lives.

He stops though, compelled by some nameless impulse to at least wait for the other to finish his yearning, desperate task. Common courtesy is what he’ll call it for now.

However, the moment the wet felt tip of the pen lifts from Jooheon’s palm, Minhyuk is turning on the spot, resolutely dragging the younger man away, unwavering in his decision of never seeing this stranger’s slender, crookedly grinning mug ever again.

Jooheon stumbles along, heart aching with a deep, deep reluctance, and he raises his head back above his shoulder for one last farewell look. Changkyun is sliding on the small jacket he had lent him earlier with a casual shrug of his narrow shoulders, smoothing down one of the leather lapels with a blunt grip between his forefinger and thumb.

There’s something indescribably confident about it, something that makes it so undeniably attractive, that all Jooheon can do is let a flush overtake his face and raise his hand in a weak attempt at an innocent goodbye.

Surprisingly, Changkyun returns his wave with full fervor, and this time, Jooheon definitely isn’t hallucinating the tilted handsome smile that glints across from the far side of the receding alleyway. The burning embarrassment abates just enough for him to shoot back his own bright grin and enthusiastic wave, much to Minhyuk’s irked chagrin.

---------

“So do you forgive me yet?” Minhyuk grunts lowly as he focuses on lathering organic, herbal-scented shampoo into Jooheon’s plastered, wet hair. The “all-natural, vitality enhancing” label is really just some sly advertising tactic, a money trap for gullible omegas because of course rubbing some unknown flora into your scalp somehow works the wonders that your biology can’t. Minhyuk doesn’t believe that bullshit for one second, but for some reason Jooheon seems to be taken with how pungent and aromatic the smell of the cheap shampoo is.

Personally, he suspects the younger uses it as a makeshift scent dampener for the overwhelming sweetness that emanates from him in every possible manner - but that’s really neither here nor there; not when Minhyuk considers the bare fragrance of the other’s neck, softened by the healing morning light after a long night of heavy rest, free of any bitterness from the artificial scent of soap or body wash, but sweetened just so from a natural sheen of sweat from being coddled up under warm blankets and an even warmer embrace - it’s undeniably his favorite thing in the world.

“Hmm,” Jooheon hums, tipping his head back into the Minhyuk’s impromptu massage, completely unaware of the gentle ramblings going through his head right now. Skilled fingers deliver a particularly hard dig to the flat plain between the two ridges of his dripping ears, and he can’t suppress the groan that flies out of the deepest part of his chest, melting into the steamy air with a resonating rumble that fades into something akin to a slight purr.

“Yeah, yeah you are until the end of time if you do that- “ Another circling stroke presses into the exact same spot again, and Jooheon sighs contentedly, letting the last word slip out fruitlessly in an attempt to complete his thought, “again.”

Minhyuk obliges silently, putting his elbows into the work as he goes through a systematic process of digging with the tips of his fingers here, kneading with the hard bone of his knuckles there, until Jooheon’s head is lolling loosely in his smooth hands, complete mush in his open palms. He cradles the rabbit hybrid’s slippery nape with a tight, secured hold, groping to the side of the tub for the pump bottle of “lush, skin-softening” body wash.

Again, Minhyuk believes none of it. Besides, Jooheon is already too soft on his own to need this kind of commercial exploitation. He pushes down on the flat top of the bottle anyway, squeezing the gelatinous liquid into his cradled palm and pushing it around with messy strokes of his fingers inward to try and warm up the cleanser. The scent of some indistinct plant floats into the humid bathroom to join the similar aroma of the shampoo, and Minhyuk suspects Jooheon of shopping for toiletry supplies with a very limited perspective.

It’s terribly precious, he decides with an aching tug in his gut, subtly tightening his grip on the younger’s nape as he gently urges with a push of his fingers and a press of his palm for Jooheon to sit up. The rabbit hybrid obeys, albeit with dragging reluctance, flopping his spine forward into a hazy slump the moment his upper body slumps out of the foamy water.

“Hey,” Minhyuk reprimands, slapping his open palm over the hunched back in front of him with a resounding smack. The dozing rabbit immediately snaps up, whipping his head around with a few flying droplets of water to glare at the older hybrid. “Don’t fall asleep on me now.” Minhyuk ignores the other’s indignant stare and begins lathering up his back, starting another impromptu massage. Jooheon’s expression quickly fades into sleepy complacency again, dewed eyelids drooping as warm fingers soothe away the tenseness under his skin.

“You,” Minhyuk promptly notices and pinches the loose skin of the rabbit hybrid’s curved neck with a stinging pull. “Stop falling asleep - I still have to take off your makeup, okay?” He gives one last harsh pinch to Jooheon’s spasming nape, soothing a palm of body wash over it immediately afterward as a quiet apology.

When the only answer he receives is a slightly straightened bare back, he assumes the younger hybrid has vaguely comprehended his instructions and busies himself again with the task at hand. He’s so fixated on lathering up the translucent curve of Jooheon’s back, he almost misses the muted whisper that floats back from the haze of soap, bubbles, and lukewarm water.

“What about you hyung?” the other hybrid murmurs, voice filmy with the cottony down of oncoming dreams. In a lower tone, softer, but no less subdued, he offers with a jerky stutter, “I could - help you-” He falters, pausing at his own raw vulnerability, quickly tacking on an “ if you want” at the end to make his request seem less desperate.

Minhyuk’s wizened heart skips a beat, and his hands still for a moment in their tender ministrations. He wobbles back into action seconds later, resuming his cleaning with slow circles of a damp towel. “I don’t know Jooheonie,” he breathes out in an unsteady whisper, “you know the whole wet cat in water thing, not the biggest fan of sitting in a pool of my own filth for too long.”

The glimmering back in front of him slumps, and he can already see the childish pout forming over the other’s pink cheeks. He sighs, long and inevitable, and against all rational thought, he supplies apprehensively, “But a bath once in awhile couldn’t hurt, especially tonight I suppose.”

Before the last syllable has even left his lips, two dripping wet arms have fastened themselves around his neck, a slippery cheek pressing against his own frozen one, heated flesh bunched up in round apples of pure joy. Minhyuk immediately draws in one himself, fur shocked straight into the air as generations of animal instinct imbedded into him screech in fierce protest.

There’s already soap-laden water tickling down his neck, seeping into the collar of his ruined silk nightshirt as Jooheon tugs eagerly, without a hint of malice, at the drenched fabric. “Come on in hyung,” he exclaims, fingers frantically making quick work of of tiny, slippery buttons. Minhyuk can only sit back and allow his shirt to be jerked this way and tugged that way until a soothing touch slides the silk off from around his pointed shoulders. Despite the humid bathroom air, he finds himself shivering as a draft of nerves pass through him.

Fortunately, Jooheon backs off after divesting him of his shirt, waiting with a watchful gaze as Minhyuk slithers out of his pajama bottoms. His apartment is the typically overpriced and cramped dream of desperate millennials with one exception: the bathtub. It’s a plain, round, pool-shaped structure with a removable shower handle that can fit up to two people, three for a tight squeeze, and Jooheon has never been more thankful for his off-handed choice of a particular living space until now. Minhyuk rarely, if ever, subjects himself to prolonged contact within water, so he looks forward with inordinate glee to the moment he can dump a fistful of the offending liquid over the older man’s flattened ears.

“Don’t even think about it,” the cat hybrid bites out, sucking in a breath as he lowers himself into the rippling surface inside the bathtub. His tail, upon dipping a hair into the water, arches high into the air, dampened fur pressing itself to the straight, rigid line of his spine in a futile attempt to avoid the indefinite fate of being completely drenched.

“Hyung,” Jooheon sticks out his bottom lip, raising his hands up in an act of innocent surrender. His fingers are twitching, tips wrinkled and slightly pink from the steam, and Minhyuk has a moment of a terrible premonition, of him sopping and pathetic, ears drooped and dripping with the promise of a cold the next day.

“Fine,” he grits out, teeth grinding as his bones reluctantly creak and groan, shifting to expose his bare, goose-bumped back to Jooheon’s keen and ready hands.

Surprisingly, thank god, he isn’t immediately doused with a lukewarm wave, but instead with a rough towel that gingerly acclimates his clenched insides to the sensation of having a perpetual layer of liquid dripping across his usually dry skin. Jooheon cleans him in this slow, careful way, making the least of his discomforts with inaudible murmurs of reassurance and the soft, warm press of ethereal, airy fingers.

He moves on in the same manner to the elder’s scalp, taking special care with the other’s flicking ears. Even as they twitch at the unfamiliar cold wetness pooling inside sensitive caverns, the lathering hold of delicate strokes around the thin flesh surrounding his fragile bones almost relaxes Minhyuk enough for him to begin nodding off. Yeah, he concedes with a sigh, feeling the shampoo balloon into suds as affectionate fingers scratch the lather rhythmically in short strokes against his scalp. He can definitely see how Jooheon almost fell asleep multiple times to this kind of heavenly treatment.

After pushing his foamy head under the beating spray of the shower head, keeping him still there with a steady grip on his hunched shoulder, it’s finally Minhyuk’s turn: his turn to clean Jooheon’s supple complexion of all its smudged remnants of teary eyeliner and sticky patches of lip gloss and leave him glowing in all his bare-faced glory. He’s not going to lie, warming up a quarter of milky face wash in-between poised palms, he’s been looking forward to this.

The younger hybrid closes his eyes calmly, lashes fluttering and sticking in silken strings to each other as he entrusts himself entirely to other’s primed and ready touch. Minhyuk goes through the motions of this everyday with tight, emotionless professionalism for himself, for others, but it’s always been different with Jooheon. He takes his time, reserving all the clinical meticulousness for models on the rush of the runaway, leaving him only with a slow, aching tenderness for dreamy moments like these.

The flick of light lashes, clean of all drudging traces of mascara, the slow press of his fingers into the easy give of malleable cheeks, and the plumpness of peach-pink lips as he wipes away every last bit of gloss, thumb mild and soft in its careful touch - it’s all more than enough to make his heart twist with the most pleasurable ache.

He’s too entranced, vision blurred, mind hazy, to notice Jooheon’s lilting whispers playing like the relaxing crackle of a fiddling radio in the background of his consecrated ritual. It’s only when a strong murmur of “Changkyun,” injected with a burst of excitement, brushes past his cheek, does he snap out of his trance.

“Who?” Minhyuk questions snappishly, rubbing off the last layer of facial cleanser and internally mourning the inevitable end of his silent worship.

“The guy with me in the alleyway?” Jooheon replies, already slipping out of the tub and cinching a spare towel around his waist. The wet curve of his exposed hip glints above the rough white texture of the flimsy fabric, and Minhyuk wonders if it would be an appropriate time for him to saunter over there and pinch the supple flesh on innocuous display. From the other’s waiting glare, he supposes not.

“Oh, you mean that random kid slobbering all over your hand in the alleyway? Yeah, sure I remember him,” Minhyuk replies lightly, wrapping his plastered hair in a loose turban of cotton. The bath was vaguely fun while it lasted, but he’s entirely ready to never do that again, the provided exceptions being if his legs are literally broken and he physically isn’t able to stand up for a shower or if Jooheon simply asks him again. The chances of the second option, are unfortunately, quite high.

“He saved me in the club earlier from that creep in line, okay?” The rabbit hybrid protests, words muffled into the worn fiber of an old college t-shirt that he slips on over his head. “It was the least I could do in return - besides it was just some light scenting on the wrist,” he reasons, fiddling with the loose edge of hem so that it falls over his flushed collarbones.

“Sure, that’s obviously the thing you let an absolute stranger do to you when you’re out in an abandoned alleyway,” Minhyuk mutters under his breath from the next room over, rummaging around for a suitable shirt to replace his ruined pajama top. By the time he’s found one rumpled up under a pile of fallen bedding and blankets, his mood has considerably soured. Sleep deprivation is kicking in, along with the dread of working a five a.m. shoot tomorrow, and just thinking about the infuriating stranger from the club tonight is rapidly causing the onset of an ear-splitting headache to begin. He soothes a hand over the damp fur of his disgruntled ears in a cautionary preventative measure.

Jooheon pads over from the bathroom, barefoot, shuffling the tender skin of his inner thighs together as he leans a clothed hip against the door frame, gazing over at Minhyuk with bright eyes yearning to tell a story. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow,” the cat hybrid throws out decisively from his curled position on Jooheon’s meager twin-sized bed, eyes glued to his blank phone screen.

“Yeah, I’m going to text him tomorrow,” Jooheon throws back, interpreting Minhyuk’s excuse to suit his own purposes. He grabs his phone, the bunny charm hooked on the edge tinkling sweetly against his marked hand, the black numbers still stark and bold over his skin. There’s already a small smile perking over gloss-free lips as he plops down on the occupied bed, resting his back against Minhyuk’s stretched out figure. He saves the new contact with a nervous tapping of his fingers, spelling out changkyunnie after a moment’s deliberation.

Unbeknownst to him, Minhyuk has not been editing aesthetic shots for instagram the entire time, but he’s actually peeked over the length of Jooheon’s arm and taken down Changkyun’s number in his phone for his own indefinite plans that are rapidly taking form at this very moment. Strange alleyway sniffer is definitely receiving a text from him tomorrow as well.

Unaware of his friend’s plan, Jooheon sets his phone down with a content flutter of his inner schoolgirl’s heart and rolls over, pressing himself to Minhyuk’s drowsy heat. The cat hybrid slips his own phone under their shared pillow, five a.m. alarm already ticking down to his eventual shoot of actual death, and turns to tuck the younger’s soft, swollen, half-asleep face to his chest. Jooheon breathes in the fresh spring of cherry blossoms with a hint of whiskey, Minhyuk noses into clean curls of honey, wrapped in the sharp fragrance of lavender, and they both fall asleep intertwined in and around each other’s bodies and scents, all plans and schemes put off until the next dawn.

In the warm solitude of the night, they hold each other close, and that’s all they need for now.

#happycakewrites

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