Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/6101344.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      EXO_(Band)
  Relationship:
      Kim_Jongin_|_Kai/Kim_Joonmyun_|_Suho, Park_Chanyeol/Zhang_Yi_Xing_|_Lay,
      Kim_Joonmyun_|_Suho_&_Park_Chanyeol, Byun_Baekhyun/Do_Kyungsoo_|_D.O
  Character:
      EXO_Ensemble, Kim_Joonmyun_|_Suho, Byun_Baekhyun, Park_Chanyeol, Kim
      Jongin_|_Kai, Do_Kyungsoo_|_D.O, Zhang_Yi_Xing_|_Lay, Wu_Yi_Fan_|_Kris
  Additional Tags:
      Were-Creatures, Alternate_Universe_-_Werewolf, Werewolves, Werewolf
      Mates, Mates, Rape/Non-con_Elements, Alternate_Universe_-_High_School,
      Alternate_Universe, Smut, Shameless_Smut, Gratuitous_Smut, Sex_Toys, From
      Sex_to_Love, Barebacking, Blow_Jobs, First_Time_Blow_Jobs, Anal
      Fingering, Fisting, Anal_Fisting, Rimming, Intercrural_Sex, Thighs,
      Mating_Cycles/In_Heat, Werewolves_in_Heat, Mildly_Dubious_Consent,
      Consensual_Underage_Sex, Transformation, Consent_Issues, Alternate
      Universe_-_Shapeshifters, Shapeshifting, Full_Moon, Full_Shift
      Werewolves, Mating_Moon, Phoenixes, Unicorns, Animal_Transformation
  Stats:
      Published: 2016-02-24 Words: 36053
****** Don't Be Scared (and Let Out the Beast) ******
by cairistiona13
Summary
     Joonmyun was always warned that there were monsters in the woods
     behind the school, but he thought they were just tales his friends
     made up to scare him. They weren’t.
Kim Joonmyun is not a person who anyone would call “reckless”.
In their circle of friends at school he’s watchful, patient, diligent, and,
above all, a model student. He’s the person who makes sure everyone is behaving
well and doing what they’re supposed to be doing. He’s not Byun Baekhyun, who
is the one who dares them to walk the halls in nothing but their underpants.
He’s not Kim Jongdae, who takes great joy in refusing to do his homework and
still passing every class in first place, which shouldn’t even be possible.
He’s not Park Chanyeol, who thinks everything is a game, much like Joonmyun’s
puppy.
Jongdae is the most reckless one. He’s the one who would end up in the woods
behind their school late on a Friday night, with the moonlight shining down
upon him. He’s the one who would have left his map behind, and he’s the one
whose phone would have no signal for his GPS to show him the way out. It should
be him. It should be Jongdae.
It shouldn’t be Joonmyun, but it is.
Joonmyun would say he didn’t know how he got into this situation but it’s a
lie; he knows exactly how he got into it, and it’s not actually as foolish as
it could be.
The easiest way to explain it is to say he has an art project, and he decided
to paint the woods. It’s dark and it’s dangerous and his friends think he’s a
baby and scared of everything that moves so he’d decided that he’d do this. To
prove himself.
He is also a realist. He doesn’t believe in the rumours of werewolves and other
such monsters roaming the woods. He doesn’t believe that any place quite so
close to school could be dangerous, but his friends believe the rumours. He’d
figured that this would give him some street-cred; he’s not such a baby if he
breaks out of his shell and does something with a modicum of potential danger.
It had been an excellent idea until the sun set, the almost-full moon rising
high in the sky to light up the woods, and his stomach started growling. That
was when he had begun to realise the dangers of being alone in the woods with a
phone with no signal.
It’s after ten o’clock and he’s completely lost. His parents will be wondering
where he is. Maybe not worrying, not quite yet—they’re probably thinking he’s
at a Friday night party with his friends—but if he doesn’t contact them before
morning, that’s when they’ll start. They’ll phone his friends, they’ll phone
Kevin, they’ll phone his older brother, both of whom are at university. Nobody
will know where he is. And nobody will search the woods for him because,
stupidly, he hadn’t told anyone where he was going. Which is, quite clearly,
the biggest mistake he’d ever made.
Joonmyun tries to make his way out of the woods. He turns to face the opposite
direction to the one he’d been facing, hoping it will take him back the way
he’d come, but it’s obvious a few steps in, bag bouncing against his back, that
this was a bad idea, because he doesn’t recognise a thing.
He yawns, but he tries to keep going, picking his way through the fallen
leaves. But ultimately it’s futile, and he drops into a pile of leaves with a
sigh. He curls up with his bag under his head and tries to sleep, even as he
shivers. He has nothing to use as a blanket. He hopes it won’t get too cold or
windy. He hates the cold—would even go as far as saying that he gets nightmares
when he’s in the cold, and that's why he never has the air conditioning on
during the summer.
To protect himself, he’s picked a tree with a large overhang so it would
protect him from the worst of the elements. He doesn’t want to wake up in the
middle of the night soaking wet from a flash downpour, or worse.
Joonmyun rubs at his eyes sadly, before shutting them. It’ll be fine, he
thinks. He’s going to wake up in the morning and nothing will have happened,
and the sun will guide him out. Or he’ll discover he’s a few metres from the
school and he’ll have a good laugh about it. Nothing at all he can do about it
now.
He drifts off to the sound of wind through the trees and gentle pads of paws
through the fallen leaves.
                                     ~*~*~
He wakes up suddenly, quite without realising why he’d awoken. It’s still dark
and mostly quiet, so it’s not morning yet. He unlocks his phone, the light
illuminating his surroundings. It's just after midnight.
Joonmyun looks around, trying to work out what it was that had woken him, and
then a howl sounds through the trees. They vibrate with echoes and there’s a
rumbling along the floor, shaking the ground where Joonmyun sits. Shivers run
down his spine. Even if he doesn’t believe in monsters, a regular wolf could do
serious damage. They’d find his mangled carcass strewn throughout the woods and
it’d take them days to work out who he is.
He curls up, knees against his chest, and shakes. The full moon looks down upon
him, mockingly. It’s your fault, it seems to say. You chose tonight, of all
nights, to get lost in a wood with a dangerous creature running amok. You
deserve what you get.
Joonmyun is seventeen years old, but that doesn’t stop him from bringing a
thumb to his mouth like he’s three, because he feels like he needs the comfort
rather quite desperately, and there’s nobody around to see. None of his friends
are there to call him a baby or to laugh.
Thumb in his mouth, he curls up tighter and tighter until his head is against
his knees, trying to stop himself from hyperventilating. He’s scared. He’s so,
unbelievably scared, and cold, too.
The idea to stand up and just run occurs to him, but at the same time he
discards it. If he makes a noise, the wolf will come for him. And Joonmyun
would probably run further into the woods, further into the wolf’s path. If he
stays where he is, there’s every possibility that the wolf will miss him, that
it won’t smell him. But he doesn’t know which way the wind is going. If it’s
towards the wolf, he’s already dead.
He wonders if there is a river in these woods. If there is, he might be able to
hide there. But he doesn’t know how to get to one. So he buries further into
the leaves beneath him and tries his hardest not to make a sound. That may be
the only thing keeping him from almost certain death tonight.
He stays still for a few moments as the only sound he hears comes closer and
closer to him. And then suddenly there’s a large shape directly across from
him. Even with the full moon’s light, the shape is in shadow, but Joonmyun can
tell that it is large and dark, possibly even black, even though he knows that
wolves are usually grey.
The wolf stands still, and although he can’t see its eyes in the light, he
knows it’s watching him.
He shuts his eyes and waits to die.
Even though they’re closed, he can see a light go on, like when he tries to
sleep and his phone lights up with late-night texts and Facebook messages, only
much, much brighter.
When he opens his eyes, he thinks he must be dreaming.
A white horse stands before him, the light reflecting off it in waves which
Joonmyun would have thought was impossible, and a vibrant red and gold bird is
attacking the wolf—clearly visible now in the light from the creatures. The
wolf is a lot smaller than he had thought it was in the shade; no bigger than a
small Labrador. It looks ungainly as it tries to get away from the bird’s beak
and stumbles all over itself, and Joonmyun has the strange realisation that
this isn’t an adult wolf but a cub, a wolf pup. Of course, this doesn’t mean
that it’s any less dangerous than a fully adult wolf, but it strikes Joonmyun
as odd. Where are its parents? Don’t wolves hunt in packs?
The horse turns its head towards him, as if to get his attention, and he tears
his eyes away—only to feel like the ground’s been pulled from underneath him.
In the centre of the horse’s forehead is a long and shiny white horn. Joonmyun
shakes. It’s a unicorn. Unicorns don’t exist. Monsters don’t exist.
But the firebird attacking the wolf puppy looks rather a lot like a phoenix.
Joonmyun has no idea which way is up. He’s glad he wasn’t standing, because he
doesn’t think he’d still be.
The unicorn shakes his rump and then crouches down. It’s a clear invitation.
Joonmyun, thinking he might be hallucinating, obeys, throwing a leg over the
rump of the creature and settling down. It’s an uncomfortable sit without a
saddle; not that he’s ever ridden a horse before. He’s a golf baby, not a
horse-riding baby.
The unicorn stands quickly, before Joonmyun has settled. He grabs hold of the
creature’s mane before he falls off. The unicorn is gentle and doesn’t seem to
mind, or at least it doesn’t make a noise or a movement. It just begins to head
off through the woods, and the gentle trotting, even with the slight bounce,
lulls Joonmyun back to sleep—or maybe he just passes out.
                                     ~*~*~
This time, when he wakes up, it's to find himself indoors. He’s in a double bed
with white bedding, and the curtains in the window are light blue, and the sun
is shining through them. There’s a smart desk up against the wall, and a
cupboard, but otherwise the room is empty of personal effects. He doesn’t
recognise it.
He sits up to discover he’s still in his school uniform, although his tie, belt
and shoes have been removed, a gesture that makes him slightly uncomfortable,
but that he is also grateful for. He looks around until he finds most of his
clothing and his bag, and he redresses, trying to unrumple his shirt at the
same time.
Once he’s dressed, he picks up his bag and opens the door, looking around. The
hallway looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t remember when he last saw it.
He pads down the hallway in his socks, and partway down he notices a door that
is ajar, and curiosity sets in. He pokes his head in, and he sees a room that
is instantly recognisable as Park Chanyeol’s; covered in posters of Sandara
Park and Shin Minah. There’s a games console on the floor and a stack of racing
games beside it, almost teetering over. An acoustic guitar rests in the corner
of the room. The bedcovers are pulled back, so Joonmyun knows Chanyeol is
awake.
A second later there’s a tap on his shoulder and Joonmyun leaps about a foot in
the air. The sound of Chanyeol’s guffaws reaches his ears. Joonmyun spins to
face him and smacks him weakly in the chest.
“Cruel!” he says, trying to sound firm, but it comes out more like a whine.
Chanyeol just keeps laughing, and he wraps his arms around Joonmyun’s shoulders
and pulls him in for a hug, clapping him on the back in a way that would make
Joonmyun’s knees buckle if he weren’t already pressed face-first into
Chanyeol’s somewhat muscular chest. Joonmyun pokes him in the ribs and Chanyeol
lets him go so he can breathe.
“Morning, Hyung,” Chanyeol says cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”
“Yes,” Joonmyun replies. “I think so.” At the same time, he frowns in
confusion. He doesn’t know why he’s at Chanyeol’s house. Did the unicorn take
him there?
As he thinks that, it all comes rushing back to him. The wolf, the unicorn, the
phoenix. He decides that there’s no way any of that was real. He must have been
hallucinating. Though that doesn’t explain how he got to Chanyeol’s house from
the woods. He knows that bit wasn’t in his head.
“How…?” he begins to ask, and then shakes his head.
“Let’s have breakfast!” Chanyeol says cheerfully, and he grabs Joonmyun’s hand,
linking their fingers together, and runs down the corridor almost too fast for
Joonmyun’s shorter legs.
Joonmyun staggers into the kitchen once they reach it, and Chanyeol pushes him
gently down into a chair at the table. Zhang Yixing is there already,
chopsticks in one hand and a bowl of dark noodles before him. Joonmyun blinks
at him, because although they share a few classes together, he’d had no idea he
even knows Chanyeol.
“Yixing-hyung lives next door,” Chanyeol says, when he sees Joonmyun’s
confusion. “He has breakfast here sometimes.”
“Oh,” Joonmyun replies, and nods.
Yixing smiles kindly at him. There’s something in his eyes that seems familiar,
and familiar in an odd way. Joonmyun can’t place it.
“Noodles?” Yixing asks, and he indicates the pot on the stove. Joonmyun nods,
and Yixing stands to get him a bowl, clearly at home in Chanyeol’s house.
Once there’s a bowl of steaming noodles before him, Joonmyun ignores all the
craziness going around in his head and he attacks the food, remembering that
the last time he’d eaten had been lunch yesterday. He finishes the first bowl,
and Chanyeol refills it along with his own. The silence is more comfortable
than palpable; three people sharing a meal together. There’s no sign of
Chanyeol’s parents. Joonmyun knows Yura is at university, like his own brother.
When he’s finished, Joonmyun leans back in his chair and pats his stomach like
his father does when he’s full. “Thank you,” he says, and then thinks he should
probably phone his parents. He says so, and Chanyeol offers him the house
phone. He leaves a quick message on the answer machine so they won’t be
worried—though, considering they didn’t pick up the phone, they must think he
snuck in late at night, and aren’t yet worried.
Chanyeol is smiling in a somewhat strange way, and Yixing is picking at his
fingernails, when he turns back to face them. “Um,” Joonmyun says.
“You’re probably wondering why you’re here,” Yixing says.
“It’s more how than why,” Joonmyun corrects.
“Well…” Yixing looks at Chanyeol, who looks back at him. “Why were you in the
woods so late?”
“I got lost,” Joonmyun says.
“You know it’s dangerous!” Chanyeol shoots out. “You could have been killed.
That wolf wasn’t going to stop.”
Joonmyun blinks at him in surprise. “You saw the wolf?” he whispers.
“Yes…” Chanyeol says, drawing the vowel out.
“I didn’t see you.”
Chanyeol looks over at Yixing, who nods, smiling reassuringly.
“Yes, you did,” Chanyeol says. “You saw both of us.”
Joonmyun just looks at him, as he tries to roll it around in his head. He
didn’t see any people, and surely they’d have been in just as much danger as he
had been, what with the wolf cub roaming about. “I don’t remember,” he says.
“That’s because we weren’t in our human forms,” Yixing says.
Joonmyun suddenly has a rush through his head of, He’s actually crazy, before
Yixing turns to face Chanyeol.
“You show him,” he says. “Your clothes don’t get destroyed in the change,
unlike mine.”
Chanyeol gives him a look, one which is probably meant to be menacing, or
angry, but instead just looks like somebody kicked Joonmyun’s puppy. Then he
drags his shirt over his head in one swift move, throwing it to the side of the
kitchen, where it lands half-on the fridge. Chanyeol doesn’t look as muscular
as he’d felt when Joonmyun was pressed against his chest, but he looks defined
enough for someone who mostly only plays basketball at weekends, and the rest
of the time games or plays guitar. Though Joonmyun knows the size of his biceps
are due to the efforts he puts into drumming.
Then Chanyeol shuts his eyes, and Joonmyun waits for something to happen, hands
clenched tightly against his school trousers and the chair, as if he needs to
anchor himself for something to truly happen.
It only takes a few moments. Chanyeol seems to shimmer, and then he seems to
shrink. His trousers and pants drop to the ground as the human legs shoot up
into bird feet. His arms widen into large wings.
The phoenix flies up into the air. He’s quite large, now Joonmyun can see him
close-up, about the size of a human child. Joonmyun doesn’t think he can talk,
but he pushes himself up into a shaky standing position and staggers towards
the bird, which leans into him. Joonmyun’s fingers find gaudy golden and
scarlet feathers, and they don’t feel like chicken feathers. They’re softer and
bigger than those of any bird he’s seen personally.
The phoenix settles onto the ground and begins the transformation back to
human, and that’s when Joonmyun’s legs buckle and he passes out.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun is roused by Chanyeol’s voice next to his ear.
“Hyung? Hyung? Are you okay?” Chanyeol asks.
“Couldn’t you have put on some pants first?” Yixing’s voice follows. “He
doesn’t want to see that when he comes to.”
Joonmyun opens his eyes and what he sees first are a knobbly, white pair of
knees and a couple of very hairy legs. He moves his eyes up to Chanyeol’s face
very quickly, trying to avoid the part in the middle which is conspicuously
missing any covering—notably a pair of pants. “Please,” Joonmyun almost begs.
Despite the fact he’s just had breakfast, he sounds like he hasn’t had a drink
in years, and Yixing presses a glass of water into his hands. He gulps it down
gratefully.
Chanyeol laughs and stands up, heading over to the pile of clothes on the
floor. He dresses facing away from the two of them, giving them both a good
look at his pasty, mostly flat arse as he pulls on his pants, followed by his
jeans. Then he crosses the room to find his shirt. Joonmyun lets out a breath
he hadn’t realised he was holding once Chanyeol’s covered up, because looking
at your best friend’s dick for reasons other than locker-room showering is
never something he’d wanted to have to do.
“So,” Chanyeol begins.
Joonmyun climbs up back into his chair and waits for him to continue.
“I’m a phoenix.”
Even after what he’s seen, the words still sound surreal. Joonmyun is amazed
how his life has changed within such a short period of time. Phoenixes are
real.
“And you’re a unicorn,” Joonmyun breathes out, turning towards Yixing, who just
smiles at him and nods. “Are there … are there more of you?”
“Therianthropy is inherited,” Chanyeol says. “There are enough of us.”
Before Joonmyun can ask what on earth therianthropy is, Yixing interrupts with,
“He means shapeshifting.”
“I’m a therianthrope!” Chanyeol corrects with a frown. “Shapeshifting sounds so
uncultured and boring.”
Joonmyun almost laughs at Chanyeol using the word uncultured, but he doesn’t.
He can see Yixing having a similar problem, though he also manages to hold it
in.
“There are a group of us,” Yixing says, once he seems to have collected
himself. “We protect the woods and the school.”
“Does that mean protecting me from wolf cubs?” Joonmyun asks.
“He wasn’t just a cub,” Chanyeol says, and he frowns. “He was a werewolf.
Babies are almost more dangerous than adults, because they can’t control
themselves. That one’s killed a lot of wildlife and he nearly ripped Jongdae’s
throat out a few months back. We keep an eye on him.”
“A werewolf? So he’s human, too? Do you know who he is?”
“Yeah, and he’s not human; he’s a beast,” Chanyeol says. “I know who he is, and
I’ve made sure he knows it. He’s dangerous, and I’m not going to let him hurt
anyone. He nearly hurt you. He nearly hurt Jongdae. He should be put to sleep.”
He clenches his fists. Joonmyun frowns at the tone of his voice. It’s vicious.
“Does he have a pack?” Joonmyun asks.
“No,” Chanyeol says. “He’d probably kill them.”
“It’s just …” Joonmyun twitches, because Chanyeol probably won’t like this.
“You’ve read Harry Potter, right? Wolves need packs. They’re not solitary
creatures. Being on his own is probably what’s making him so dangerous.”
“No,” Chanyeol says. “Being a werewolf is what makes him dangerous.”
                                     ~*~*~
They change the topic for a little while to get Chanyeol’s mood back to normal;
talking about school and friends and all sorts of other things, until Yixing
brings it back.
“I’m sorry about everything we’ve piled on you this morning,” he says. “It must
feel a bit scary.”
Joonmyun smiles awkwardly. “It’s just…it’s extremely surreal. If you’d told me
yesterday you were a unicorn and Chanyeol’s a phoenix, I’d have laughed and
probably thought you had a few screws loose. Unicorns don’t exist. Phoenixes
don’t exist. I certainly didn’t believe in monsters.”
Here Chanyeol cuts in with a frown. “Haven’t you ever read Peter Pan? If you
say you don’t believe in fairies, a fairy dies.”
Joonmyun feels his heart plummet to his feet in horror. “Did I kill a phoenix?”
he asks, clutching the edge of the chair.
“No,” Chanyeol says, and he’s smiling now, thankfully. It’s weird to see
Chanyeol without a smile on his face. “It’s just…doesn’t everything need some
suspension of disbelief to work? You now know unicorns and phoenixes and
werewolves exist. You know there are other therianthropes at our school. It’s
not my place to tell you who they are, but I know that Kevin-hyung won’t mind
me telling you he’s involved as well.”
Joonmyun runs all sorts of animals, real and mythological, through his head.
“Is Kevin a dragon?” he finally asks.
Chanyeol looks at him as if he has three heads. “No. Don’t be ridiculous,” he
says. “Dragons don’t exist.”
After a moment of just staring at Chanyeol in wide-eyed disbelief, this time
Joonmyun can’t help the laughter that wracks through him, and he falls off his
chair and onto the carpet.
“What did I say?” Chanyeol asks a similarly-laughing Yixing, who can’t stop in
order to tell him.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun heads home shortly after, but not before he asks to be introduced to
the other guardians of the woods and school; the other shifters. As long as
they’re okay with it. Chanyeol promises to ask, and then Joonmyun’s off, to
play with his puppy and do his homework and hope his parents don’t scold him.
They don’t.
Monday comes almost too quickly for him. The first thing Chanyeol does, once
they’ve finished eating lunch, is drag him away from the table and from
Baekhyun, Jongdae and Kyungsoo. He leads him down corridors and corridors. “The
group says they’ll meet you after school,” he says. “First, we’re going to meet
someone.” He doesn’t sound pleased. It can’t be a friend, then.
Chanyeol leads him to a quiet classroom on the far end of the school, and he
barges in forcefully, the door banging off the wall. A boy sitting in a chair
at the back of the room, far from the door, jumps upright from where he’d been
sleeping slumped over his desk. He has dark circles under his eyes and looks
like he hasn’t slept in days. Despite the fact he seems tall, he manages to
look tiny as he curls up—tiny and young; probably no older than fifteen.
Joonmyun feels a sympathetic tug on his heartstrings.
“Jongin,” Chanyeol begins. “This is Joonmyun.” He pulls Joonmyun to stand in
front of him. Joonmyun isn’t sure what to do, so he lets him. “He’s the person
you almost killed on Friday.”
Oh. This is the werewolf. Joonmyun isn’t quite sure he feels sorry for him any
longer. Friday night was terrifying.
But Jongin doesn’t look happy. In fact, he looks sick. “I’m sorry,” he says,
softly, and bows. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Joonmyun says, at the same time Chanyeol says, “Of course he’s not
fine!”
Joonmyun looks at Chanyeol, who continues with, “You were a mess on Saturday,”
as if that answers everything.
“I’m really sorry,” Jongin says, but he doesn’t continue.
“It’s your fault,” Chanyeol says. “You should be locked up. The number of
animals in the woods that you’ve killed in the past year? It’s a wonder someone
hasn’t noticed there’s a wolf in the woods and euthanised you.” He doesn’t say
it like it would be a bad thing, but more like he’s sad he’s not the one able
to do it.
Joonmyun loves Chanyeol, but this vindictive Chanyeol isn’t one he’s at all
fond of. He thinks he might be sick. In fact, as bile rises in his throat, he
knows he will. “I need to go,” he says, and staggers out and towards the
nearest toilet, where he empties his stomach into the first one. This is all
too much for him.
The next moment there’s a hand against his spine, rubbing gently, and Joonmyun
knows it’s Chanyeol without turning to face him. This is his Chanyeol; the one
who’ll try and soothe his aches. But he doesn’t want to see him right now.
He pulls away after flushing, and takes a swig from the drinking tap, swilling
it around in his mouth and trying to calm himself down, before turning to face
Chanyeol. “Don’t be so mean to him,” he says. “He doesn’t mean it.”
“He’s a werewolf!” Chanyeol replies, after checking to make sure none of the
other cubicles are occupied. “He means it. And he’s dangerous.”
“I don’t think you can say that without checking. We should ask him if he’s
aware of what he does as a wolf.”
Chanyeol sighs. “Hyung, you’re too kind. He’ll just lie to you to make himself
look innocent when he’s not. He’s worthy of just as much blame as the wolf. I
don’t know how you can’t see that. He nearly killed you.”
“The wolf nearly killed me,” Joonmyun corrects. “And, actually, the wolf never
came near me, because you were there.”
“He would have killed you,” Chanyeol says.
“I’m not arguing about that,” Joonmyun says. “I just think you’re being too
hasty. I don’t believe that he’d lie to me. Considering you told him he nearly
killed me; if he says he remembers but doesn’t remember details, it’ll be easy
to tell.” He reaches up to pat Chanyeol’s cheek. “It’ll be fine, Chanyeol. I
know what I’m doing.”
Chanyeol opens his mouth to protest, but Joonmyun leaves the toilet before he
can say anything.
                                     ~*~*~
He doesn’t go back to see Jongin that day, because the bell rings once he
leaves the toilets. He heads to class and takes his usual seat at the front,
ignoring Yixing’s attempt at a friendly smile. He doesn’t want to be reminded
of that world right now. He just wants to study.
But once school is over, Chanyeol leads him to his house by the hand, though
not as fast as he had at lunchtime.
Only Yixing is there once they arrive, and they settle down with a bowl of
popcorn and a video game until the first ring of the doorbell.
The first person to arrive is Kevin, who tugs his boots off loudly and then
beelines straight for Joonmyun. He ruffles his hair. “Hey, kid, are you okay?”
he asks kindly. Joonmyun just nods, and Kevin settles down beside him to watch
as Chanyeol destroys them at Mario Kart. Joonmyun gives up and hands over to
Kevin, who plays with a grin on his face.
Joonmyun doesn’t really think he should be surprised when, half an hour later,
Baekhyun, Jongdae and Kyungsoo arrive.
“You’re involved in this as well?” he finds himself anyway, unable to keep the
bitterness out of his voice. All his friends were involved in something
secretive without his knowledge. It actually quite hurts.
“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, though he doesn’t sound at all sorry. Jongdae shrugs.
The only one who looks sad about it is Kyungsoo, who crosses to sit on the
other side of Joonmyun.
“Well, I am sorry,” Kyungsoo says. “But Jongdae and I aren’t like the rest. It
just wasn’t right for us to say anything about it.”
Jongdae frowns. “Rub it in, why don’t you,” he mutters. Joonmyun wonders what
they mean. He supposes he’ll find out soon enough.
Joonmyun doesn’t know the next two who arrive; two kids in first year. One of
them has white blond hair, and the other a kind of off-lavender pink. Joonmyun
thinks they must be in detention a lot and wonders how they get away with it,
without having to dye their hair back to natural colours.
The blond one is called Huang Zitao, and the other one is Oh Sehun. They greet
him and the rest politely and then move to sit in the corner together,
whispering and giggling to each other as they go. Joonmyun finds himself
absently comparing their derrières to Chanyeol’s. They’re vast improvements.
The final two are also unknown to Joonmyun. They’re both young-looking boys who
turn out to both be at university, like Kevin. They’d taken a train back here
for the meeting, apparently; their first time back in a few weeks. The one with
red hair is Kim Minseok and the other, the brown haired one, is his best
friend, Lu Han.
Once they’re all there, Chanyeol leads them to his bedroom, where there are a
ring of chairs. They all take seats as if there is a seating arrangement.
Joonmyun hovers nervously until Chanyeol pulls him over to sit beside him.
“Everyone, this is Joonmyun,” he announces. “The wolf almost got him last week,
and Yixing-hyung and I had to rescue him.”
Kyungsoo jerks forward in his seat and Baekhyun almost topples Jongdae off his
chair with flailing arms. Kevin looks angry. Clearly none of them had been
informed of this already.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kyungsoo asks, at the same time as Baekhyun’s, “Did
you think we didn’t need to know?”
Jongdae, however, smiles wryly, and goes with, “At least I’m not the only one
who nearly became a werewolf’s lunch.”
Even in his confused state, Joonmyun finds it funny, and he covers his mouth as
he laughs quietly, Jongdae joining in shortly afterwards. Joonmyun can’t really
explain it. It’s not funny that they almost died. Maybe it’s delayed onset of
hysterics.
Chanyeol begins when they’re finished, talking as if he’s the leader. “I wanted
Joonmyun to meet all of you, properly. No secrets. I wanted him to know what we
do to protect people like him every day, the three days of every full moon.”
Kevin sighs. “Understandably.” He turns to Minseok. “Oldest first,” he says,
with a smile.
Minseok rolls his eyes. “I’m a squirrel,” he says shortly. “When I transform,
it’s my duty to do all the small tasks, including getting up into tall trees
and burrowing into the ground to attack without being seen. I have excellent
eyesight.”
Lu Han is a reindeer.
“I didn’t know there were reindeer in South Korea,” Joonmyun says.
Lu Han just smiles innocently at him. “There weren’t,” he says cheerfully.
Kevin is next. “I’m a Pixiu,” he says. “It’s a mythical Chinese beast. Though
not so mythical after all.” He indicates himself, with a wry grin. “It has the
head of a dragon, the body of a lion, and the hooves of a qilin; which is like
a Chinese unicorn.”
Joonmyun just blinks at him. “I have no idea what that means,” he says
honestly.
“It’s okay,” Kevin says. “You’ll see soon enough, and it’ll make sense to you
then.”
Baekhyun follows, and Joonmyun just looks at him in surprise as Baekhyun
explains that he is a weasel, but that he was not born as one.
“I thought ther-theri-ther-shapeshifting was inherited?” Joonmyun manages,
stumbling over the word. Chanyeol frowns.
“Therianthropy,” he pauses, “is inherited. Baekhyun just had late-onset
development of it.” He looks proud of himself, and Joonmyun, somewhat unkindly,
wonders if he even knows the meaning of the words he just said.
Baekhyun shrugs. “Neither of my parents are weasels, nor is my brother,” he
says. “And my grandparents are dead, so I can’t ask if it skipped a generation.
It’s possible, but it seems more likely to me that I developed it when I got
involved with the group. Though that’s not always the case.”
Joonmyun doesn’t need to ask what he means by this, because they skip directly
to Zitao, who is a tiger, and an apparently extremely fierce one at that, and
then Sehun, who is a ram. Joonmyun absently wonders if the ram is pink. It
would certainly be interesting to have naturally pink wool.
Joonmyun turns to Kyungsoo and Jongdae last, who shrug their shoulders.
“I’m as human as you are,” Kyungsoo says.
“It sucks,” Jongdae grumbles. “Our job is to babysit or to be the lookouts.
It’s boring.” He grins. “But now we have you as well! Extra fun!”
Joonmyun presumes that he is the fun. With Jongdae, he usually is.
“So most of you are shapeshifters?” Joonmyun confirms slowly. Chanyeol buries
his head in his hands. “And there are three of us who are human.”
“Yup,” most of the group chorus.
“So, uh, what do we do now?” Joonmyun asks.
The group look at each other, and then shrug.
“Business as usual.”
                                     ~*~*~
The next day Joonmyun skips lunch with his friends and trawls through the
corridors of the school, trying to find the werewolf. He wants to hear,
directly from him, what he knows about himself and what he does during the full
moons.
He’s not in the same room he was last time. Joonmyun wonders how Chanyeol knew
where to find him, if he’s prone to moving, or if Chanyeol’s visit scared him
into doing so.
It takes him another ten minutes to find him, in the unused drama classroom.
It’s used mostly as a storage facility these days and Joonmyun had only thought
of it on a whim.
Jongin is cowering at the back of the room, knees pulled to his chest. Although
he’s tall, he looks small like this, and very scared. Joonmyun knows he
couldn’t have known he was coming, so this must be how he is every day—scared
of the world around him, maybe even of the wolf himself.
“Hi,” Joonmyun says, quietly, trying not to startle him. “Jongin?”
Jongin jumps anyway, and when he sees who it is, somehow manages to curl up
even further into himself.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Joonmyun says, and swallows down a how could I?
because he’s afraid Jongin will take it as a dig. “I just want to talk to you.”
“That’s what they all say,” Jongin whispers, and it’s bitter.
Joonmyun keeps going regardless, “It’s about what happens to you when you—you
know.”
“When I’m a wolf?” Jongin says, and that seems to rile him up, and his voice
builds. “You are just the same as the rest of them. I said I’m sorry, okay? I
can’t control him. I don’t have control like the rest of them have. I can’t
change whenever I want. I get turned, and he takes over.”
It’s just as Chanyeol suggested; that he would say he didn’t know. But Joonmyun
doesn’t feel like it’s a lie to save the wolf. He nods. “How long have you been
a wolf for, Jongin?”
Jongin looks at him for a moment, possibly assessing whether he should answer.
“Two years,” he says. “I turned the week before my thirteenth birthday. I’ll
never forget what happened.” He looks down at his hands. “I nearly killed my
mum.”
“You didn’t know?” Joonmyun asks.
Jongin’s mouth twitches, before settling back to neutral. “No. I didn’t know.
Now I do.”
Somehow the fact that the young boy before him had been turned against his
knowledge the first time tugs at Joonmyun’s heartstrings, but when he goes to
hug the boy, Jongin pulls himself behind an old table, to give himself
protection. Joonmyun stops in his tracks and holds his hands up before himself.
“I won’t move, Jongin,” he says. “Not if you don’t want me to.”
Seeing him be so scared of the world hurts. Joonmyun wants to show Jongin how
wonderful the world is. But Jongin, the wolf, is part of what scared him. The
wolf is part of the danger in the world. Joonmyun can’t.
“Could you leave me alone?” Jongin says, enough of a question that Joonmyun
isn’t offended.
“Okay. Bye, Jongin,” he says softly, and shuts the door behind him, leaving
Jongin alone in the dark of the room.
                                     ~*~*~
“He doesn’t know what happens when he’s a wolf,” Joonmyun says to Chanyeol
later that day. “I’m sure of it, Chanyeol.”
“How are you so sure?”
It was a hunch, but he didn’t want to say that. “He didn’t even know he was a
werewolf before he first turned,” he says instead.
Chanyeol frowns. “All forms of therianthropy, including lycanthropy, are
inherited, regardless of what Baekhyun says. He has to have known because his
parents would have transformed.”
“Yes, and I’m sure he would remember if he was bitten by a large dog,” Joonmyun
agrees. “That kind of thing is traumatic for small children.”
“True,” Chanyeol concedes. He has a blank look on his face as he says, “That’s
very interesting. It’s on Baekhyun levels of interesting.”
Joonmyun wonders what that means, but he doesn’t ask, and Chanyeol doesn’t tell
him.
“Please don’t go and see him again alone,” Chanyeol says.
“I can handle it,” Joonmyun says. “He’s not a wolf, he’s just a scared human.
I’ll be fine.”
Chanyeol looks unconvinced.
                                     ~*~*~
Against Chanyeol’s wishes, Joonmyun goes back to see Jongin the next day. He’s
in a different classroom this time, again curled up at the back. Joonmyun sits
in one of the chairs at the front of the room and watches him for twenty
minutes without saying anything. Jongin stays curled up and looks like he’s
going to sleep, but there’s a stillness in his body that suggests it’s an
illusion, that he’s not going to show weakness in front of Joonmyun. Joonmyun
can understand and sympathise; Jongin still doesn’t know if he’s going to hurt
him or not. He’s nowhere near trusting him. If Joonmyun were a scared werewolf,
he wouldn’t trust anyone, either.
He goes to sit with Jongin every lunchtime, after this, spending five minutes
on—pardon the pun—wolfing his food down, before taking the next five to ten
minutes searching the school for the new room Jongin has settled into. They sit
in silence together. After two days, Joonmyun brings books with him,
schoolbooks and novels alike. He offers them to Jongin. For the first three
days of books, Jongin refuses, but on the fourth he nervously takes a novel
from Joonmyun. He twitches as he reads, turning the pages painfully slowly, but
still, he reads. Joonmyun feels like he’s accomplished something.
It’s another three school days, ten days since the first day he went to find
Jongin, before Jongin begins to talk to him. Firstly, he thanks Joonmyun for
the books, and then he starts to ask about him.
“I’m seventeen,” Joonmyun says, answering various questions. “I have an older
brother at university, and a puppy who’s really cute. I like Maths, and I want
to be a teacher when I’m older.”
“Girlfriend?” Jongin asks.
Joonmyun shrugs. “Not really interested in dating anyone right now,” he says.
Jongin nods. “Why are you so interested in me?” he asks in a whisper.
Joonmyun is sitting in the middle of the room today, closer to Jongin but not
close enough to reach out and take his hand in his. He’s thought about this
long and hard, why he’s so interested in getting to know the werewolf, and he
thinks he’s finally come to a conclusion. “Everyone deserves a friend,” he says
bluntly. “And I don’t think you have any.”
Jongin shakes his head. “I don’t. Friends get injured, and then they don’t come
back. So I don’t make friends.” He lifts his head to look at Joonmyun. “I don’t
want to hurt you again, Joonmyun-sshi.”
“Call me Hyung,” Joonmyun says with a smile. “And that just means we need to
train your wolf to recognise who’s friend and who’s foe.”
“But I don’t want you getting hurt, H-hyung,” Jongin says, physically forcing
the honorific out. “Not like before.”
Joonmyun shrugs with a smile. “Don’t worry. It won’t be me doing it.”
                                     ~*~*~
The next time there is a group meeting—this time without their three
eldest—Joonmyun brings up his theory.
“Chanyeol doesn’t like this,” Joonmyun begins, looking at his best friend,
before turning to face the rest. “But I have a theory that if we send other
therianthropes”—He says the word confidently, having practised it in order to
keep Chanyeol happy—“out with the wolf, in a kind of pack, that he’ll be less
aggressive. We may even be able to train him to know the difference between a
friend and an enemy.”
Chanyeol grimaces as he says this, and Joonmyun turns away from him to look at
the rest of the group, doing his best to appeal to the four other shapeshifters
in the room.
They talk amongst each other for a few moments, considering their options. A
unicorn, a weasel, a tiger and a ram would make a rather interesting pack along
with a wolf, Joonmyun thinks. It would definitely be a sight to paint, though
he doubts he’d ever get the chance.
“I think it sounds okay,” Sehun says finally. “I mean, we can certainly try.”
“There’s no harm in trying,” Zitao says cheerfully. Joonmyun wonders if he is
an idealist.
The rest of them agree, even Jongdae and Kyungsoo, who, of course, have no
shapeshifting abilities of their own. Chanyeol slides slowly down his chair as
if he wants to hide, but eventually he says, “Okay, we’ll try it once. See if
you can make the wolf listen, but I don’t know how you’ll manage it. He’s a
beast, after all.”
Joonmyun does his best not to show his elation at this decision. They have a
chance to settle the wolf, a chance to make him less dangerous. If the wolf
isn’t as dangerous, maybe Jongin will come out of his shell. Maybe he will be
able to have friends who wouldn’t leave him.
Joonmyun doesn’t know how he’s become as attached to the werewolf boy in only
two short weeks, but he has. He wants to be friends with him. He wants Chanyeol
to like him, to stop threatening him. He wants to introduce him to their whole
group. He thinks he’d like Sehun and Zitao, who are the same age as him.
Jongin seems harmless enough. He doesn’t deserve this pressure, being alone
without friends. All Joonmyun manages to get out of him is that his home is far
away. His parents sent him away to the school when his lycanthropy developed,
and he hasn’t seen them since. He’s been at the school for two years, and
Joonmyun never noticed him, or heard anything about him.
“How come I never heard anything about Jongin?” he finally asks aloud, turning
towards Chanyeol.
“We told you the rumours about the ghosts and the wolves in the woods,” Jongdae
says, but leaves it to Chanyeol to tell his story.
It transpires that Chanyeol’s known about the wolf since the beginning, when
his family first discovered small, dead animals in the woods. It was after
Joonmyun had begun tutoring Chanyeol and they became friends, but before their
friendship group had been formed. Chanyeol had mostly been friends with Jongdae
and Kyungsoo back then, whereas Joonmyun had had Kevin and Baekhyun. It was
before Baekhyun had developed therianthropy. Before any of them knew what it
was like to be in charge of a task as important as this.
Chanyeol had known there was a wolf, and his job, even then, had been to watch
over it and see the damage it did. It wasn’t until later, when he learnt about
the first year who had managed to scare away some of his year with growling
noises and strange eyes, that he’d put two and two together.
“Jongin doesn’t have strange eyes,” Joonmyun points out.
“He does around the full moon,” Yixing says. “His eyes change colour the nearer
to losing control he is. For werewolves, there are three days that are
important, both days before and after the full moon, and the full moon itself.
They shift all three of these nights, but it’s strongest on the full moon. The
day the wolf almost hurt you was the day after. If you had seen him at school
that day, you may have seen his eyes lighten as the day went on, until they
were a brown-gold.”
“When his friends saw his eyes change colour, they got scared,” Chanyeol says.
“And they left him.”
Jongin hadn’t said anything about this to Joonmyun. Considering it wasn’t his
fault, he wonders why. “Oh,” he says. “That doesn’t sound that scary.”
“Trust me,” Chanyeol says. “In any form, he’s scary.” Even Jongdae, who doesn’t
get scared, nods his head and Joonmyun wonders if he’s right.
But deep in his heart Joonmyun doesn’t believe that Jongin, fifteen year old,
scared Jongin, is as scary as they say he is. He doesn’t say this. Instead, he
says, “I’ll tell Jongin that you’re going to try and help him.”
Chanyeol sighs. “Be careful,” he says.
Joonmyun smiles. “Don’t worry, Dad,” he teases, reaching out to pat Chanyeol’s
cheek. “I’ll be fine.”
                                     ~*~*~
The next day finds Jongin curled up in his usual chair. There’s still no sign
of food.
“Hello, Jongin,” Joonmyun says with a smile, settling in his chair two seats
away. He fishes out a boxed lunch he’d brought from home; rice and sliced
chicken pieces. “Are you hungry? I made a bit extra.”
In fact, he’d deliberately made a little bit too much, not enough to seem
suspicious but enough to fill a stomach. He’d eaten most of it and had to save
the rest from Jongdae’s beady eyes.
Jongin looks over at it and he can see the suspicion in his eyes under the
hunger. Joonmyun only feels a little saddened that Jongin doesn’t trust him
after two weeks, and he spoons up some of the rice and eats it. “I’m not the
world’s best cook, I’ll give you that,” he says. “But it’s not going to make
you sick or anything?”
Apparently those were the magic words, because Jongin says quietly, “Well, if
it’ll just go to waste?” His stomach grumbles quietly and Joonmyun smiles,
handing the box over to him.
“Oh,” he says, looking down at the spoon he’s just used, realising that he
hadn’t brought another one with him. “I’ll just go and clean this for you?”
“It’s fine,” Jongin says, and he stands and leans over to grab it. He’s tall,
when he stands, easily a head or more taller than Joonmyun. With him leaning
over like this, Joonmyun can understand why people would think Jongin was
scary, but he knows better.
At this angle, Joonmyun can see where Jongin’s school uniform hangs loosely
from his body and realises that Jongin is a lot skinnier than he should be. He
wonders how much food he gets and swallows hard.
Jongin eats like a starved animal, which doesn’t help to appease his fears. He
uses wooden chopsticks from his own bag to shovel chicken into his mouth as
quickly as he can and almost inhales rice. Joonmyun finds himself bridging the
gap between them that’s been there since the first day and taking hold of
Jongin’s wrist. “Don’t eat so quickly,” he says, when Jongin looks up at him
with fear in his eyes, like he’s going to take the food from him. “You’ll get
sick.”
Jongin nods obediently, marginally slowing his eating speed as Joonmyun returns
to his seat. “Thank you,” he whispers when he’s finished eating, placing the
box and utensils gently on the desk before him.
“It’s no problem,” Joonmyun says, though he doesn’t want to push any further,
in case Jongin seals himself off again. He stands and takes the box away from
Jongin and puts them in his bag, and then throws the chopsticks into the bin.
“I have something to tell you.”
Jongin stills, watching him with cautious eyes.
“It’s nothing bad,” Joonmyun says hastily. “I was talking to Chanyeol and the
others about the wolf.”
Jongin seems to bristle, and Joonmyun realises that he has come at this from
the wrong angle. He'd never asked Jongin’s permission.
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first,” he says. “I wanted to do something nice for
you.”
“By talking about me with my enemies?” he asks, and he’s holding himself like a
dog about to pounce.
Joonmyun feels cowed. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, doing
something good for Jongin, but maybe he was wrong. “I wanted to ask if they
would run with you in wolf form,” Joonmyun says. “I think that if the wolf had
company, maybe he wouldn’t be so violent? Sehun and Zitao said that they would.
The next full moon, if the wolf will have them, they will run with him.”
Jongin studies him for a moment. “You’re telling me that they won’t attack the
wolf, and they expect the wolf not to attack them, after all that they have
done to him?” He scoffs, sounding scornful at the suggestion.
“It’s worth trying,” Joonmyun says. “It might work.”
“You’ve read too much Harry Potter, Hyung,” Jongin says. Joonmyun blushes,
because he’s probably right.
“I was just thinking about you,” he says. “About how much better it will be for
you—”
Jongin cuts him off. “You were thinking about yourself, Hyung,” he says. “You
were thinking about how to keep yourself safe from me, from the wolf.”
And maybe under everything, maybe he was thinking about himself. But that
doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking about Jongin too.
“I’m sorry I made you unhappy,” is what he says instead. “But I think it could
really work.”
“I know what is going to happen,” Jongin says. “Either they or the wolf will
attack each other. There will be no friendship between the beasts.”
“It’s worth trying,” Joonmyun repeats meekly, but he stands. “I’ll leave you,
then.” And he picks up his bag and leaves the room.
That hadn’t gone how he’d planned it at all, he thinks sadly.
                                     ~*~*~
He doesn’t go back the next day, or, indeed, for the rest of the week. He stays
and eats lunch with his friends and talks with them about inane things like
after school clubs—Jongdae and Kyungsoo are involved in the choir, and there’s
a new music club starting—and homework, but his mind is always partially on
Jongin. He wonders whether Jongin is eating, and whether he is lonely without
him around. Then again, Jongin had been fine without him for two years; just
because they were together for two weeks, when they barely spoke, probably
wouldn’t have made much of a difference.
Joonmyun does his best to stop thinking about Jongin over the weekend as he
does his homework and plays with his puppy and avoids his friends. However, it
is difficult. The werewolf boy has wormed his way inside Joonmyun’s mind and he
doesn’t want to forget him, or give up on him.
It is one week until the first full moon since everything started for Joonmyun.
One week until they see if the werewolf is capable of taking a pack, or if it
is to be a lone wolf forever. Joonmyun prays, in his heart, that it will work
out for everyone.
Selfishly, he hopes that maybe if the wolf becomes less dangerous, Jongin will
want to be friends with him. Maybe he’ll stop casting everyone out of his life.
But even so, he stays away from him that coming week, even though staying away
for two weeks is hard. Joonmyun has never had a fight with any of his friends
that lasted this long. He usually apologises quickly because he can’t bear to
be without them. This is a new record. It’s not a good thing.
Instead, he joins the new music club along with Chanyeol and Yixing. It takes
place at the same time as choir and the martial arts club Baekhyun is part of,
or they would probably have joined as well.
Being in a club gives Joonmyun a chance to unwind and relax. The first session
goes by in a blaze of campy glee glory: group a cappella singing to a western
pop song in the top 10. Joonmyun isn’t particularly good at singing but he
enjoys it almost as much as he enjoys painting.
When the end of the session comes, they’re given the task of choosing a song to
sing as a solo or in a duet. Joonmyun hates the idea of singing alone, but he
already has an idea of what he’d like to sing. He just wishes he had someone to
sing with.
                                     ~*~*~
Before he knows it, he wakes up Thursday morning, the day before the full moon.
Tonight is the first of the three nights that the wolf is going to turn, and
even though Jongin brushed off the idea of running with a pack, there’s a
bubble of excitement running through Joonmyun’s veins. He wants it to work
almost desperately.
When he gets to school, he can’t stop fidgeting. Yixing sits next to him in the
classes they share and tries to take his hands to stop them from tapping his
pen on the table. It only takes a few tugs for Joonmyun to relent, and Yixing
tries to keep him still.
“There’s no need to get this excited,” he whispers, except there is. Even
though it isn’t much, and it won’t be the end of the world if the wolf doesn’t
take to the other shapeshifters, or the shapeshifters can’t resist the urge to
attack the wolf, Joonmyun still feels like there is a lot riding on this. If
he’s right, there is the possibility they will change Jongin’s schooling
experiences forever.
“I can’t help it,” Joonmyun whispers back, but he does his best to still his
movements. He’s still bouncing off the walls internally, and there’s little
that he can do to stop that.
During lunch, they decide that it would be better for everyone involved if
Joonmyun and Jongdae go to Kyungsoo’s house for a sleepover in the evening.
It’s the furthest house away from the woods, and therefore would make it harder
for Joonmyun to find out what is happening. Joonmyun finds the assumption that
he’d endanger himself to see if the wolf likes company rather a little
insulting, but consents all the same. At least with company he’ll be less
inclined to imagine possibilities.
Baekhyun volunteers to join them. “I haven’t been to yours for a long time,
Kyungsoo,” he says. “And the rest of them don’t need me. Four is enough.”
Four is probably even too many, but they had decided that it would be safest if
Chanyeol and Yixing go with their two youngest, in case the wolf takes it
badly. Sehun and Zitao have fought the wolf before without the others, but this
is a different and new situation for everyone. They need four.
“You’re right,” Chanyeol says. “We don’t need you.” He doesn’t say it meanly,
it’s more of a tease. Until Jongin, Joonmyun hadn’t realised that Chanyeol even
had a mean bone in his body, but now he knows better. He just hopes he can fix
that. “You can do whatever you boys do when you’re together. Watch games. Eat.
Make out.”
Kyungsoo throws his metal spoon at Chanyeol and it bounces off his forehead,
falling to the table with a clang. Chanyeol clutches his hands to where it hit
and makes pained whingeing noises.
“Kyungsoo!” he whines pathetically, as the rest of them just laugh at him.
As far as Joonmyun is aware, Baekhyun and Kyungsoo aren’t in a relationship.
This doesn’t mean they aren’t actually in a relationship, it just means that
they haven’t told him.
And they don’t appear to be about to change this, as once they all stop
laughing, Baekhyun bursts out that he has a new noraebang video game that he’d
like to try out with all of them. “Together we have the best voices in the
school,” he says confidently. “I bet we’d own it.”
This effectively gets Jongdae excited. Jongdae loves everything involving
singing. Watching them be so happy, Joonmyun smiles and says it will be fun.
It’ll definitely give him something else to think about.
                                     ~*~*~
The afternoon races by, and soon school is finished. They all head their
separate ways to pack their bags for the sleepover. Joonmyun’s mother drops him
off at Kyungsoo’s after she makes him promise to do all his homework before
playing games.
Kyungsoo lets him in quickly and Joonmyun toes off his shoes next to the long
line of others, suggesting that at least one of their friends and one of
Kyungsoo’s parents is home.
“Come up,” Kyungsoo says, and leads him up a flight of wooden stairs and along
a clean, white corridor. The closer they get to his room, the louder So Nyeo
Shi Dae’s Gee gets, and Joonmyun realises that Baekhyun must already be there.
It’s only another five minutes before Jongdae shows up, and then Baekhyun
shoves them onto Kyungsoo’s bed like he lives there, before plugging four
microphones into Kyungsoo’s games console. He shares out the microphones and
starts up the game.
They cycle their way through Gee—complete with dance moves—, 2NE1’s Fire,
DBSK’s Mirotic, 2PM’s 10 Out of 10, Super Junior’s Sorry, Sorry, and many other
songs from the years before. Quite a few hours are wasted before they’re called
to dinner and Joonmyun remembers the promise he’d made his mother.
Kyungsoo’s parents are nice, and although Joonmyun has never met them before,
they welcome him like one of the family.
“It’s nice to meet some of Kyungsoo’s friends,” his mother says. “Aside from
Baekhyun here, and Chanyeol, of course. How is that boy?”
“He’s fine,” Kyungsoo assures her. “Just busy.”
Joonmyun looks out the window at the darkening sky and wonders just how busy he
already is.
                                     ~*~*~
As the moon rises, the young, naked boy, standing in the darkest part of the
woods, begins to shift. His body contorts and he screams as his bones break,
twisting into new forms which don’t agree with his human body. The screams soon
become growls as his jaw and nose lengthen into a snout, and his vocal cords
change, losing the ability to make human sounds. The human teeth, nails and
hair fall out and new ones grow in place, fur sprouting all over the wolf’s
body.
The wolf stands tall and proud, his eyes a dark gold, and he howls. His howl,
he believes, will scare away his enemies and other predators. This wood belongs
to him.
He has only been there for a few moments when he hears rustling behind him, and
he turns to face a large predator, bigger than he is, solid and furry with a
long tail. There is a smaller creature next to it. It smells of food but its
large curled horns suggest that he will not get close enough to eat it. Behind
are the flying monster that attacks him and the shining beast with the single
pointed horn.
He growls, and braces himself for attack, but none comes. Instead, the predator
crouches before him, lifting its head so its throat can be seen.
The wolf realises that this beast is submitting to him, as it rightfully
should, and he seizes the chance to rip its throat out. He hunkers down on all
fours, ready to pounce, when an object is dropped from above.
He jumps out of the way of the flying thing. When he lands, he realises that it
is food, although it is already dead. But he is hungry, and dead food is better
than no food.
He sniffs the meat to make sure it is safe to eat, and then dives in. Maybe he
will let the beast live another day.
Once he has finished his meal, the other animals are still there, resting on
the ground. None of them seem interested in attacking.
The wolf is full from its meal and it doesn’t believe that these beasts will
kill him, or they would have done so already, so he rolls onto his back to
scratch an itch. When he sits up, the large beast is grooming itself and the
strange animal next to it, rubbing its paws over its horns.
The wolf yips so that they will pay him attention. If they are here, they may
as well play with him.
He wags his tail and crouches down, yipping, and the beast pulls away from its
small friend to face him, pulling back into a similar crouch. It waves its own
long, smooth tail, and the wolf pounces.
They roll each other over across the floor, and chase each other through the
trees. The wolf yaps happily as he runs, having not had this much fun in a long
time. As a lone wolf, he never has any chance to play. The small beasts can’t
outrun him before he eats them.
They run through the night, the other two land beasts joining in after some
time, as the one with the wings watches. He barks at this beast, hoping that it
will join them, but three are as good. The winged beast refuses to join, but
stays watching. As long as it stays, the wolf doesn’t mind.
Eventually, the wolf gets tired. He slumps to the ground next to the large
beast and nips at its muzzle. The beast patiently allows the bite that seals
them as pack, and waits for him to do so for the other beasts, before rolling
onto its side so the wolf can fit next to him. Then he begins to groom the
wolf, licking over his fur the way a mother would do, if the wolf had a mother.
The wolf falls asleep.
The wolf is asleep during its transformation back into the human boy for the
first time in his entire life, and for the first time he can’t feel the pain.
                                     ~*~*~
The next day, Jongin ventures out of his classroom at lunch time.
Joonmyun is sitting in the cafeteria with the rest of them, yawning. They have
all been transferring yawns to each other for over ten minutes; Chanyeol for
obvious wolf-related reasons, and the rest of them because Baekhyun had kept
them up gossiping well into the night. Joonmyun suddenly wonders why he never
noticed that some days Chanyeol is really tired. Maybe he just hid it better.
Or maybe Joonmyun thought he spent it playing video games late into the night.
He’d never have guessed the real reason.
Baekhyun and Kyungsoo had shared the bed and Jongdae and Joonmyun were left to
the futon and the floor. Jongdae had won gawibawibwo, as Joonmyun had suspected
he would. Joonmyun’s back aches, but he’d never say so.
Chanyeol refuses to say how the previous night had gone, though his smile says
enough, Joonmyun thinks.
Suddenly the table grows quiet, and Chanyeol’s eyes widen.
“Hyung,” comes a quiet voice, and Joonmyun turns to find Jongin standing there,
tall and thin in his oversized school uniform.
“Hello!” Joonmyun says with a smile. “Do you want to join us? I think I’ve got
some extra food you could have.”
Jongin shakes his head. “I just wanted to say thank you,” he says, and then he
turns to Chanyeol and bows to him. “To you as well. Last night was…” He rolls
the words around in his mouth for a moment. “Good,” he finishes.
Joonmyun watches Chanyeol, whose face goes through a varied range of emotions,
before it settles on polite acceptance. “I’m glad you were manageable,” he
says. Joonmyun kicks him. From the sounds of pain Chanyeol makes for the next
few seconds, Joonmyun wasn’t the only one. “You’re welcome,” Chanyeol tacks on
begrudgingly.
“You don’t have to come tonight if it is a problem,” Jongin says, and Chanyeol
shakes his head.
“No, we’ll be there tonight and tomorrow,” he says. “It’s easier to keep an eye
on you this way.”
Jongin nods and whispers his gratitude, and then turns to Joonmyun. He bows.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes.
“It’s fine,” Joonmyun says, and he smiles. “Really. And you’re welcome to sit
with us any time.”
Jongin shakes his head and, with a third bow, leaves them.
“You need to learn how to speak publicly,” Baekhyun says to Chanyeol.
“I don’t like him,” Chanyeol tells him, frowning. “And just because last night
wasn’t bad doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly great. The wolf did still try to
kill Hyung and Jongdae.”
“And now he won’t,” Joonmyun says. “He’s got you to look after him. I know
you’ll do a good job.”
Chanyeol sighs. “I’ll do my best,” he says.
“As long as you stop being rude,” Kyungsoo adds, and Chanyeol rolls his eyes.
“Fine, I’ll try and hold it in next time,” he says. “You guys are so picky.”
 
They all kick him again.
                                     ~*~*~
The group meet up on Sunday along with their three oldest members, who they
fill in on the situation. Joonmyun doesn’t get to speak to any of them before
then, so he is perched on the edge of his seat, waiting for the news of what
happened during the full moon and the following night.
“We have now run with the wolf three times,” Yixing says. “He welcomed us back
as his pack like we had never left. He is young and he mostly just wants to
play, as long as we keep in line and do as he wishes, which he lets us know
quickly. If we feed him and play with him, I think we will be able to stop him
from being quite as dangerous.”
There is some kind of quiet cheer that spreads around the room. This is a
different kind of task, one that is less violent. Few of them enjoyed attacking
the wolf, but wanting to play is something most teenagers can understand and
sympathise with.
“So it worked then?” Joonmyun asks. “My idea worked, for all three nights?”
Chanyeol nods. “It did,” he says.
Lu Han and Kevin volunteer to run the following full moon with Yixing and
Chanyeol, as the youngest two already know that they have practice exams to
study for. They need all the weekends and evenings they can get.
They fall into casual discussion about shapeshifting, about schoolwork, and
about what exams the two are taking, and Joonmyun starts to daydream, imagining
how to paint a beautiful scene of a wolf playing with a unicorn and a phoenix.
                                     ~*~*~
Monday comes quickly. Soon they’re sitting together for lunch, Chanyeol and
Joonmyun discussing songs they’re considering performing for the club. Chanyeol
is thinking about asking Yixing to perform a guitar duet with him.
“Yixing-hyung likes slow things,” he says. “I think we could do something
acoustic? That would be really pretty.”
The other three are fighting over who gets the last jelly tube, when a quiet
voice asks, from behind them, “Can I have it, please?”
They all turn to face Jongin, who is standing there, looking at his feet and
shuffling in place.
Joonmyun doesn’t wait for them to agree, just snatches up the jelly and hands
it to Jongin. “Of course you can,” he says with a smile.
Jongin hovers there for a few moments, and then Joonmyun says, “Grab a chair,”
and to his utmost surprise, Jongin does, pulling one over from the empty table
next to them. Joonmyun scoots over to give him room.
Chanyeol gives Joonmyun a small, judging look, but he just smiles back.
Having Jongin there isn’t too different from not having Jongin there, as he
barely speaks. He just sucks away at his jelly slowly and nods along to what
the group says.
The only time he speaks is when Baekhyun mentions how it’s a pity the youngest
two aren’t going to be around as much, and he says, “I have exams too.” He
frowns.
“What day is the next—you know?” Joonmyun asks, in case anyone is
eavesdropping.
“It’s a Sunday,” Jongin says, at the same time as Chanyeol says, “Sunday.”
Joonmyun nods.
“Do you have any exams on Monday or Tuesday?” he asks.
Jongin shakes his head. “But I have them Wednesday to Friday,” he says, “so I
don’t have a lot of time to do any last-minute studying, so I need to revise.”
He bites his lip. “It’s a little difficult though.”
Jongdae lets out a little half-laugh and stage-whispers to Kyungsoo, “I think
we all know where this is going.”
Joonmyun ignores him. “What do you need help on?” he asks.
“English,” Jongin says. “I’m not very good at it. I’m fine at everything else,
but I need to get a B in this.”
“I can help you if you want?” Joonmyun asks.
“Called it,” Jongdae says, and then he hisses. “Ow!”
Joonmyun almost smiles at the thought someone probably kicked him, but mostly
just ignores him.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re busy,” Jongin says hastily. “I couldn’t ask you to do that
for me.”
Joonmyun rolls his eyes, and opens his mouth to argue, but Chanyeol gets there
first.
“Don’t worry, Joonmyun-hyung enjoys nothing more than to tutor people.”
“You can talk,” Baekhyun says. “He tutored you in Maths for an entire year.”
“Yes,” Chanyeol agrees. “And it helped a lot, and look where we are now.” He
indicates the table. “Without tutoring me, none of us would have met.”
“Good point,” Baekhyun agrees. “I’d still be human.”
Chanyeol rolls his eyes, but Joonmyun thinks that there’s some merit to what
they’re saying. If he hadn’t been asked to tutor Chanyeol, he’d never have met
Kyungsoo or Jongdae, or the rest of the group. Maybe he would still have been
attacked by the wolf, but he wouldn’t have had this support group to lean on in
the aftermath. He wouldn’t have known anything about Chanyeol when he woke up
in his house. It would have all been far too strange for words.
Not that it isn’t now, of course.
“Of course I’ll tutor you,” Joonmyun says to Jongin.
“I can’t pay you,” Jongin says.
“You think Chanyeol paid?” Jongdae asks, and snorts.
“Is there anything you’re good at?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Um,” Jongin says. “I don’t know. I kind of like dancing?” He says it in such a
tone that Joonmyun thinks that he means it’s his only hobby and his only joy in
life, but he doesn’t want to seem like it is. This makes Joonmyun feel quite
sad. At least he has his painting and his music.
“Teach Hyung how to dance,” Kyungsoo says, “until you’ve done your exams.”
“Okay,” Jongin says. “I can do that.”
It’s settled. Joonmyun will tutor Jongin after school three times a week, and
once they’re finished, Jongin will run through some dance routines with him.
It’s a perfectly equal relationship. Joonmyun smiles warmly at Jongin and gives
him a box of leftovers to take home with him, just because he’s so happy.
                                     ~*~*~
Their first session is a few days later. They sit in the library together, in a
corner far away from the eyes of the other pupils, as Jongin is still shy.
They work through his homework together first, focusing on what he’s weakest
at. Once they’re finished and Joonmyun has a better idea about what Jongin
needs help on, he starts on the easiest thing to explain, and they take a full
hour to go through it until Jongin understands where he was going wrong.
“Okay,” Joonmyun says, looking at his watch. “I think that’s enough for today.”
Jongin drops his pen and leans back in his chair, and he stretches. “Thank
you,” he says. “You’ve helped me a lot today.”
“It’s no problem,” Joonmyun says. “I’m glad I’m able to help you.”
They pack up their belongings and then Jongin leads them out of the library and
down the hallways, getting further and further away from the main body of the
school.
Finally, they reach a set of darkened corridors. “Nobody comes to these music
rooms,” he says. “We won’t be disturbed.”
The rooms are empty of any furniture, except for a CD player that is plugged in
opposite a wall of mirrors. Jongin turns the CD player on, adjusting the
volume.
“We’ll do something easy,” he begins, and then he moves slowly, carefully,
controlled. It’s a movement that Joonmyun is positive he’ll never be able to
make, regardless of how easy Jongin thinks it is, but he tries anyway.
During the next thirty or so minutes, Jongin shows Joonmyun how to do easy and
simple moves that look good, and suddenly Joonmyun wishes there would be an
occasion where he could show them off. Some kind of dance or club with his
friends. It would be completely worth it.
When they finish, Joonmyun flops onto the ground, sweating profusely, but
Jongin seems perfectly fine. “How are you not a puddle on the floor, like I
am?” Joonmyun asks stupidly. He knows the answer; Jongin does this a lot.
“Used to it,” Jongin confirms. “But also being a werewolf helps. I have a lot
more stamina because of needing to move for hours on end. It passes over from
the wolf to me.”
Joonmyun nods, and drops his head back to the ground. “I don’t want to move,”
he says.
Jongin laughs, for the first time since Joonmyun met him, and it’s not what he
had expected Jongin’s laughter to sound like. Although he had expected Jongin’s
voice to be low, it’s high-pitched and halfway to a giggle. Jongin laughs with
his whole body, almost overbalancing as he bends himself in half to laugh at
his knees.
“It’s not that funny,” Joonmyun says, but there’s only mild annoyance in his
tone.
“It is though!” Jongin says, and he chuckles, before collecting himself. “We’d
better go then, Hyung.” He turns the player off mid-song, the room falling
silent except for Joonmyun’s heaving breath.
He reaches out to grab Joonmyun’s hand and pulls him up easily, in one smooth
movement, like Joonmyun weighs no more than a three year old. Joonmyun has to
stop to press one hand against his forehead as the dizziness subsides, and once
it’s gone, he links his fingers with Jongin’s.
Jongin looks at their entwined hands for a moment with wide eyes.
“We’re friends now,” Joonmyun says cheerfully in explanation, and he pulls them
out of the room with a happy lift in his step.
                                     ~*~*~
School resumes like normal.
Joonmyun has lunch with the same gang, with the addition of Jongin and, on
occasion, even Yixing, which is a strange but welcome surprise. They joke
during lunch together like normal boys. Normal boys with strange secrets.
A few days later, Joonmyun, Chanyeol and Yixing have their first performance
session at the music club.
Joonmyun has prepared Super Junior’s It’s You, because it’s pretty but it’s
also not too slow and his voice doesn’t tremble too much when he belts out the
chorus.
He’s followed by a boy he doesn’t know who sings 2PM’s 10 Out Of 10 in a
somewhat shaky voice; and that boy is followed by a haunting acoustic guitar
duet of Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars sung by Yixing and Chanyeol, which the whole
club agrees is one of the most beautiful things they’ve ever heard. Nothing
following them is quite as good.
The next week’s task is a dance, and Joonmyun’s face pales as Chanyeol leers at
him and teases him to participate. He had asked for an occasion to show off,
but he doesn’t think he’s ready yet—maybe he’ll just sit this one out.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun and Jongin continue to revise and practise as the week goes by, and
then the next. Joonmyun begins to look forward to the snippets of conversation
they have during the walk from the library to the practice room.
He learns little things about Jongin, like how his favourite colour is sky blue
and how he wishes he had dogs. Joonmyun finds himself absently inviting him
over to play with Byeol. He also likes Pirates of the Caribbean, but he hasn’t
seen it in years.
“I don’t watch much television anymore,” he says.
Joonmyun doesn’t ask him why he doesn’t. “Where do you live?” he asks instead,
and Jongin waves his hand indistinctly in the direction of the woods.
“Near the woods,” he says. “Small place. My parents pay for it.”
Joonmyun nods, and wonders if he’ll ever get to see this place. Jongin’s
getting skinnier each day and he never seems to bring lunch with him. Joonmyun
just doesn’t understand.
“Okay,” Jongin says, before Joonmyun can ponder too long. “Let’s see how far
you’ve got.”
                                     ~*~*~
Chanyeol corners Joonmyun one day after school.
“I think I’ve worked out why Jongin didn’t know he was—you know,” he says.
“Come home with me.”
He leads Joonmyun home by the hand. Yixing isn’t there when they get back,
which is a change. Yixing always seems to already be there these days.
“I wanted to keep this between us,” Chanyeol says, presumably noticing
Joonmyun’s surprise. “Nobody else needs to know yet.”
He brings up a page on his laptop, a news article dated September 1994.
“It took me ages to find this,” Chanyeol tells him, and he manoeuvres Joonmyun
into a chair so he can read the screen better.
It’s a story about two wolves who were killed when scavenging food from a
village. Apparently a baby was found nearby and taken to the hospital, but
nobody claimed the baby, and they were put up for adoption later.
“According to the hunter newspaper,” Chanyeol says when he’s sure that Joonmyun
has finished reading, “they were werewolves and the baby was their child. The
baby was adopted before the hunters could get to it.”
“He was just a baby,” Joonmyun says. “One year old. What were they going to do
to him?”
“Lycanthropy is inherited,” Chanyeol says. “Once a werewolf, always a werewolf.
That’s the hunter code. The baby was always going to be dangerous.”
Joonmyun feels chills run down his spine.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun agrees not to mention it to Jongin until they know for sure. They
don’t know if he is the baby in question, although Chanyeol seems to think it’s
unlikely that he isn’t.
Chanyeol goes back to researching Baekhyun and Jongin’s histories and Joonmyun
goes back to performing and practising and homework and video games at the
weekend and life passes by peacefully like that.
The closer it gets to the full moon, the more playful Jongin gets. Joonmyun
wonders if it’s a side effect of the wolf just being a puppy, or if he just
gains excess energy near to the full moon.
Joonmyun does his best to help out; their dance sessions get longer, even
though Joonmyun ends up absolutely exhausted, but Jongin also gets tired the
longer they dance for. That’s a bonus, because otherwise he says he can’t
sleep. He needs to be tired out, like a puppy, before he’s able to rest.
The Friday before the Sunday full moon, Jongin is particularly boisterous, and
Joonmyun imagines that if he had a tail, he’d be wagging it like Byeol does
when he gets excited.
When their dance session is over, Jongin is still exuding energy. Joonmyun pats
the ground next to him. “Sit down,” he says.
Jongin goes to crouch next to him, but he doesn’t sit. Instead, he bowls
Joonmyun over.
It’s been a long, long time since Joonmyun play-fought with anyone. He’s too
old, too mature, too straight-laced. But something strikes a chord within him
and suddenly he’s pushing Jongin over, tumbling with him.
They scrap like small children, or like puppies, rolling each other over and
trying to push their weight down to hold the other down. Joonmyun gets the
upper hand a few times, but due to being tired, he’s easily beaten.
Jongin eventually flops down onto Joonmyun’s body, dropping his head into the
gap between Joonmyun’s neck and shoulder. “Tired now,” he says. “Going to
sleep.”
Joonmyun pushes at him weakly. “You’re heavy,” he complains. “Roll over.”
Jongin growls deep in his throat. His teeth scrape over Joonmyun’s shoulder as
a warning. “Stay,” Jongin says, his voice different from usual. It’s warmer,
syrupy. “Stay with me, my sweet. Stay with your Alpha.”
Alpha?
Joonmyun gulps, and tries to carefully pull himself out of Jongin’s reach,
because suddenly he’s scared. But by moving he’d disobeyed Jongin’s orders. All
he can feel is pain. He distantly feels himself scream in a rather unmanly
fashion.
“My sweet,” he hears distantly, through the rush of blood in his ears. “That
will teach you to step out of line again.”
Jongin, who is squishing him down, jerks, and then suddenly he’s on his feet
and Joonmyun can breathe again. Jongin’s mouth is smeared with red and his eyes
are partway between his usual dark and gold.
“I—” Jongin begins, and his eyes return to their normal colour, although they
are frozen wide in horror. He doesn’t continue, just turns and runs from the
room.
Joonmyun slides across the floor slowly to the mirror and moves his shirt aside
so he can see the damage.
He can’t really see due to the blood staining his shirt and drying across his
shoulder, so he forces himself to his feet and staggers out to the nearest
bathroom. His shoulder burns as he tries to clean it with a wet tissue and he
smears his tears with his sleeve, but he keeps it up.
There’s a ring of teeth marks in his shoulder, but they’re not like any human
teeth he’s ever seen. He thinks they might be animal teeth, but he can’t
imagine how Jongin the human was able to have such teeth. He can’t believe that
Jongin’s jaw was so strong he was able to rip through skin, flesh and tissue,
though thankfully not bone as well. He’s going to have a hard enough time using
his shoulder in the near future.
Walking home seems impossible, so Joonmyun fishes out his phone with his good
hand. “Chanyeol,” he says, when Chanyeol picks up, and he sniffs. He refuses to
cry. “Chanyeol, something happened.”
It takes Chanyeol and Yixing less than ten minutes to get to the school.
“What—?” Chanyeol begins, and then he stops in his tracks, eyes transfixed on
Joonmyun’s shoulder.
“Jongin bit me,” Joonmyun says. When he sees Chanyeol’s expression turn from
worried to murderous, he tries, “It’s okay—”
“It’s not okay,” Yixing says, and he presses his hand to Chanyeol’s back
carefully, holding the taller boy up. “We don’t know what that means.”
The blood comes rushing back around Joonmyun’s ears and he feels faint. “What
do you mean you don’t know?”
“Well it’s…it’s possible that he turned you into a werewolf,” Yixing says.
Joonmyun passes out.
                                     ~*~*~
“You’re going to have to stop doing that,” Chanyeol jokes half-heartedly once
Joonmyun’s woken up. “You’re quite heavy.”
Joonmyun pouts at him. He doesn’t think he’s that heavy.
They’re at Chanyeol’s house, sitting in front of Chanyeol’s laptop and waiting
for a Skype call from their oldest members. Chanyeol says that their families
have been around werewolves a lot longer, and they might know what the bite
did.
“Hopefully nothing,” like Joonmyun had said before, is apparently not likely.
It had to have done something.
It comes ten minutes later.
“Hyung,” Chanyeol says, focusing on Minseok. “Hyung, the wolf bit Joonmyun-
hyung.”
“Jongin bit me,” Joonmyun corrects. Chanyeol waves him off.
They make Joonmyun show him the bite mark, and he struggles to pull the clean
t-shirt that Chanyeol had given him out of the way so that they can see it.
Only after washing the skin in warm water and antibacterial ointment, did they
realise just how bad the bite is. It’s deep, each tooth leaving a puncture
wound, and Chanyeol’s father had told them it would probably scar. It’s already
bruising, and Joonmyun finds it difficult to move his arm, though Yixing had
done his best to alleviate the pain by wrapping unicorn hairs around the bite.
Unicorns are healers by nature.
The three eldest gasp in horror at the state of Joonmyun’s shoulder.
“That’s bad,” Lu Han says.
“But do you know what biting a human does?” Chanyeol asks. “Is he—?”
“I’ve never heard of a werewolf in human form leaving a bit like that,” Kevin
says. “There are different kinds of bite in wolf form, but never human.”
“Do you remember how it happened?” Lu Han asks.
Joonmyun explains what happened to them as he wraps the hairs back around his
arm and covers it up again.
“That’s interesting,” Lu Han and Minseok chorus.
“What was? Do you know what it means?”
Minseok shakes his head. “It’s curious, but we’ll do some research. In the
meantime, I think you’d best treat Joonmyun like he will turn. I’m sorry,
Joonmyun. He’ll have to keep you indoors and lock you up. It won’t be very
nice.”
Joonmyun turns to Chanyeol with wide eyes. “Really?”
Chanyeol nods. “I’ll do my best to keep you comfortable,” he assures Joonmyun.
“You’re my best friend, and anything that happens isn’t your fault.” He turns
back to the other three. “We’ll do it,” he says. “And I’ll report back to you
once this full moon weekend is over.”
Once the Skype call has ended, Joonmyun curls up into a scared ball,
anticipating whatever will happen to him over the weekend. He just prays that
whatever it is isn’t as life-changing as becoming a monster.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun gets permission from his parents to stay at Chanyeol’s for the whole
weekend, and then everything starts.
Joonmyun doesn’t feel any less human than he usually does, but he’s not sure
how one feels if they’re about to become a wolf.
They spend most of the day doing their homework and playing video games
together, trying to put off the inevitable discussion about that night.
When he comes over, Yixing promises to watch over the Jongin-wolf, along with
Baekhyun. Sehun and Zitao are both studying for their exams and can’t make it,
so they are all hoping that two will be enough.
Chanyeol refuses to leave Joonmyun’s side, which Joonmyun is grateful for. He’s
too scared.
When it hits mid-afternoon, Chanyeol’s family lead Joonmyun down to the cellar,
where they have a stone room with a large door.
“We built this in case we ever caught a werewolf,” Chanyeol’s father says.
“It’s for emergencies. I’m glad we have it.”
The inside of the room is soft, everything a kind of spongey material.
“It’s impervious to wolf claws,” Chanyeol’s mother explains, noticing him
looking at it. “But it’s to protect the wolf from hurting itself.”
Joonmyun nods and watches as they exit the room, leaving him in it. Chanyeol
hovers in the doorway once his parents have gone.
“We’re not going to tie you up,” Chanyeol says. “And I’ll be right outside.
I’ll be here if you need me. If you—if nothing happens. Knock three times if
you’re fine, five times if you need my help. If you lift that floorboard,
there’s a book and a torch in there, for when you’re still—” He breaks off, his
voice cracking.
Joonmyun nods again, and heads over to the floorboard indicated. He takes out
the items and Chanyeol leaves, shutting the door behind him, dropping Joonmyun
into darkness. Joonmyun hears the click of a lock, and then three clunks as
bolts slide into place.
Joonmyun clicks on the torch and begins to read. It’s a fantasy novel, one he’s
read before, but it’s good and it will pass the time.
He doesn’t notice it at first, too engrossed in the story, but eventually he
notices how hot he’s becoming.
He’s sticky as well, his clothes sticking to his skin, and for some strange
reason he’s getting hard, his jeans constricting. He puts his book down and
looks down at his crotch.
He checks his watch first. It’s late, well after sunset. If he was going to
turn into a werewolf, he’d have done it now. So clearly the bite didn’t turn
him.
Joonmyun knows that he could knock to be let out. His stomach rumbles with
hunger, and he wouldn’t mind getting something to eat.
His cock swells even more.
Even though he’s extremely embarrassed, Joonmyun realises that he can’t go out
without getting rid of the problem first. He just hopes that there are no
cameras in here, and that Chanyeol won’t be able to hear him.
He works his jeans and underwear off over his ankles, freeing his erection and
hot legs, and then goes to sit in the corner where he can see the door.
He has nothing to use as lotion, so he spits into his good hand before wrapping
it around himself and trying to work out this hard-on. He doesn’t imagine
anything in particular, just does his best to stroke where it feels good,
trying to come as quickly as possible.
He comes rubbing his thumb across the head of his cock and he catches it in his
hand, although he doesn’t know where to wipe it. He blushes with embarrassment
when he comes down from his high, and then he realises that he’s still hard.
This has never happened to Joonmyun before. He comes, he grows flaccid. That’s
what happens to all boys. But it’s erect, plain as day, sticking out before
him.
And he’s hotter still, body burning up. He tugs his t-shirt off, leaving him
naked in the room, and wipes his hand in it, before beginning to jack off
again.
His body doesn’t complain of oversensitivity, which worries him. Usually if he
so much as holds his cock after he’s come, it hurts for at least a few moments.
But he feels fine, just hard and hot.
He strokes again until he comes a second time, body shaking and sweating all
over. He feels like he has a fever and his cock throbs, still hard as a rock.
Frustrated tears leak from Joonmyun’s eyes as he realises that he’s going to
have to ask for help, because his erection refuses to leave.
Being seen in this state is embarrassing, and Joonmyun knows he must be a
smelly, sweaty mess, but he can’t help himself. He trembles as he stands, cock
solid before him, and he makes his way slowly over to the door.
He bites his lip and knocks five times.
“What is it?” Chanyeol’s voice asks. “Are you okay?”
“I need your help,” Joonmyun says, trying to stop his voice from cracking. “I’m
so sorry.”
Chanyeol opens the door, and then stops. “Look mate, I know we’re friends and
all, but I don’t like you like this,” Chanyeol says, frowning. Joonmyun can see
him try not to let his line of sight drop down.
“It’s not—” Joonmyun wants to press the heels of his hands to his eyes, but he
can’t. He presses his good hand to his stomach instead. “I’ve come twice,” he
says.
“That’s nice,” Chanyeol says, in a voice that says it’s not at all, and he
frowns, wrinkling his nose.
Joonmyun lets out a laugh that’s more a sob than anything else. “It’s not—it’s
not going down. Chanyeol, please. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t necessary.” He
raises the back of his good hand, covered in drying come, and smudges away his
tears, leaving a sticky mess behind.
Chanyeol watches the movement and he gulps. “What do you need me to do?” he
asks, sounding resigned.
“Just—just help, please,” Joonmyun begs.
Chanyeol steps into the room and shuts the door behind himself, leaving them in
darkness except for the light of the torch on the floor. He walks over to
Joonmyun and places a hand on his waist. There’s a little bit of relief from
the heat, but not much.
“You’re burning up,” Chanyeol says in surprise, and he steers Joonmyun over to
a wall, before pressing his hand to Joonmyun’s forehead.
“I think they’re connected,” Joonmyun says. “Maybe if the heat breaks, this
will stop—you know.” He doesn’t want to say it aloud.
“Alright then,” Chanyeol says, and then a second later there’s a hand on
Joonmyun’s dick. He doesn’t ask how Joonmyun likes to get off, just strokes
briskly. He removes it for a moment to spit into his own hand like Joonmyun
did, before wrapping it back around, and it causes momentary relief, cooling
Joonmyun down a little.
Joonmyun clings onto Chanyeol’s shoulders, doing his best to stay upright, as
the heat takes over his whole body and threatens to make him collapse.
“You’re so lucky I’m such a nice friend and I can’t bear to see you cry,”
Chanyeol says. “If you were Baekhyun or Jongdae? You could fuck yourself for
all I care. I’m not touching either of their dicks, no matter how close they
get to blue balls.”
Joonmyun makes little muffled noises of thanks as his hips buck into Chanyeol’s
hand, the pleasure building up slower unlike the pace of Chanyeol’s hand.
“Can’t you come already?” Chanyeol asks, and he strokes even faster. Joonmyun
loosens one hand from around Chanyeol and slides it down his sweltering body
until he reaches his balls, and he rubs his thumb over one, coaxing it, and
then it’s upon him, and he comes fast, strings landing over Chanyeol’s fingers
and shirt.
Joonmyun can feel his cock relax, and he slides down the wall when Chanyeol
lets go of him. “Thank you,” he breathes.
“Right,” Chanyeol says. “Glad I could help you with your dick problem. Let’s
never speak of this ever again. Promise?”
Joonmyun nods his head absently, although he’s mostly wondering why he even got
hard in the first place.
“If you put some clothes on and wash, you can come up for dinner, and then
you’d better air-freshen this place out. It’s not a sex chamber,” Chanyeol says
airily, and then he turns and leaves, presumably to change his own clothes.
Joonmyun dresses like he’d been told, and hopes that that was a one-time thing,
because he’d hate to go through it all again.
                                     ~*~*~
It’s not a one-time thing.
The night of the full moon he gets hot and hard again, though this time he’s
already in bed at home. Hand over his mouth so his parents don’t hear, he gets
himself off—once, twice.
His body is still flush and hard and he feels uncomfortable, like there is
something he is missing, something he needs to help fix him. His thighs clench
as his body rocks, searching for something to fill a gaping hole inside him.
It takes another two times before he softens, by which point all he wants to do
is curl up and sleep for a week.
He drifts off with fingers crossed that that would be the last of it.
                                     ~*~*~
It’s not even a two-time thing, for partway through one of his classes Monday
morning it happens again.
As a teenage boy, Joonmyun is no stranger to random erections during school,
and usually he just slides further under the table and waits for it to go away.
But it doesn’t go away, because this isn’t a normal erection. His teacher even
asks if he has a fever because he’s sweating so much.
He finds himself in a toilet cubicle at lunchtime, stuffing his tie into his
mouth so he won’t make a noise as he hastily jacks off.
He sends a text to Chanyeol once he’s softened—It keeps happening. Please find
out what’s wrong with me.—and gets an extremely disgruntled agreement. Chanyeol
hadn’t wanted to talk about it, after all.
When Joonmyun reaches the lunch table, missing Jongin for once, Chanyeol
studiously ignores him. After a while, Joonmyun stops talking to him and
instead talks to the rest, frowning to himself.
“Ooh, are Umma and Appa fighting?” Jongdae teases. At his words, Chanyeol
freezes, makes a grimace, and turns so his back faces them.
Joonmyun shrugs at Kyungsoo’s confused and asking expression. He knows that
Chanyeol is angry, but he doesn’t really understand why he’s angry with him.
“Where’s Jongin?” Joonmyun asks, and Chanyeol explodes.
He stands up, looming over Joonmyun. “Why do you care?” he asks, too loud.
People at the nearby tables turn to look over at them and Joonmyun cowers in
his seat.
“Shh!” Joonmyun hisses, somewhat frightened that someone will overhear. “You’re
too loud.”
“Shut up, Joonmyun,” Chanyeol snaps, but thankfully he’s quieter this time.
“Nothing to see here,” he tells the other tables, and the other students turn
away again. Chanyeol clearly takes this as a sign to continue, for he says, “I
would have thought you’d have known better after what he did to you, but I
guess you’re still just a bleeding heart.” He turns and storms out of the room.
Joonmyun stands to follow him, eyes wet, but Baekhyun tugs him back down.
“Don’t,” he says. “Let Yixing-hyung.”
Not a minute later, Yixing leaves his separate group of friends and follows
Chanyeol out.
Joonmyun bites his lip. He thinks he might start crying, and tries to force the
urge away, because he doesn’t want to show weakness in a room of school
students who will never let him forget it. “I don’t understand,” he says
quietly, when the urge leaves him. He just feels numb. “Why is he so angry?”
“What did Jongin do to you?” Kyungsoo asks.
Joonmyun had forgotten that they don’t know. “He bit me,” he says. When they
hiss, loudly, he hastily tacks on, “It was a mistake, and I’m fine.” Well, fine
is the wrong word to use. “I’m not a—he didn’t turn me. Don’t worry.”
“You know for definite?” Jongdae asks, worry clear over his face. They all look
worried. Joonmyun thinks that the other tables probably think he’s told them
the worst news in the world, and hopes nobody talks to him about it.
“Yes,” Joonmyun says. “I’m positive. The bite didn’t turn me.”
“What do bites do then?” Baekhyun asks. “They must do something.”
Joonmyun doesn’t want to bring up his suspicions about the bite making him
horny at the full moon because he doesn’t want anyone else to know about
it—especially not if they’ll react the way Chanyeol did. “I don’t know,” he
says. “We’ll find out, I suppose.”
“Chanyeol wouldn’t be that rude if it was over nothing,” Kyungsoo says.
“Defensive, sure, but rude? There must be something he knows that he’s not
telling you.”
This sends a shiver down Joonmyun’s spine—the idea that Chanyeol knows
something about his predicament but is refusing to tell him for some twisted
reason.
“I’m sure Yixing-hyung will fix him for you,” Baekhyun says. “Though I hope
that he fixes him with a kiss.”
Joonmyun blinks at him.
“I forgot you weren’t around since the beginning,” Baekhyun says airily.
Kyungsoo scoffs, loudly, though when Baekhyun turns to look at him, he pretends
to be examining his lunch. “They have a thing.”
“A…thing?” Joonmyun asks.
“It’s a will-they-won’t-they thing,” Jongdae agrees.
Joonmyun blinks again.
“Those two have been betting on when they’re going to hook up for about a year
now,” Kyungsoo explains. “Yixing-hyung is somewhat obvious but Chanyeol is
blind.”
“Wait,” Joonmyun says, “they like each other?”
“Yes,” the three of them chorus.
“Oh,” Joonmyun says, somewhat dumbly. That explains why Chanyeol didn’t really
want to touch his dick.
“Anyway,” Kyungsoo says, “before we forget why Chanyeol got mad in the first
place, Jongin’s studying. For his exams. That you were tutoring him for.”
“Oh!” Joonmyun says, and smacks himself on the forehead. “I totally forgot,
what with everything that happened.”
His friends stare at him. It takes him a moment to realise they’re waiting for
an explanation—one he’s not willing to give.
“Er,” he says. “They thought I was going to turn. It was stressful.” It’s not a
lie, at least.
They nod. “And you didn’t,” Kyungsoo says.
“I didn’t,” Joonmyun agrees shortly.
He wonders what’s going to happen in the future. He wonders why he gets hot and
horny. He wonders when Chanyeol will forgive him.
He just doesn’t understand.
                                     ~*~*~
The next day there is no uncomfortable horniness, and Joonmyun realises that he
was right; it only affects him during the full moon. For some reason, this
doesn’t make him feel any better.
Nor does the fact that not only does Jongin not show up to lunch all week,
unsurprisingly, neither does Chanyeol. It is the longest that Joonmyun hasn’t
spoken to Chanyeol since they first met.
But Joonmyun doesn’t want to push things. He doesn’t want to push Chanyeol
before he’s ready, so when Kyungsoo suggests he try to accost Chanyeol after
one of the classes they share, Joonmyun shakes his head. “I’ll give him as much
time as he needs,” he says. “That’s the least I can do.”
And it works out in his favour when he opens his front door on Saturday to
Chanyeol standing there looking sheepish.
“Sorry,” Chanyeol says. “It wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have shouted at you.
Yixing-hyung told me that I upset you, and I didn’t mean to.”
Joonmyun doesn’t reply, just tugs him down for a hug, because although he
wanted to be strong and allow Chanyeol his space, he did really miss him.
Once they’re settled in Joonmyun’s bedroom, Chanyeol says, “I’ve done some
research, and I think I’ve worked out what was wrong with you. But you’re not
going to like it. I don’t like it.”
“What is it?” Joonmyun asks, sitting forwards with his hands on his knees. This
is it.
“He—” Chanyeol swallows. “I think he—” He shakes his head. “It’s so hard to
stomach.”
“What?” Joonmyun asks eagerly.
“I think he made you his mate,” Chanyeol rushes out.
Joonmyun does what he does every time he learns something strange and horrible
and new—he passes out.
But not for long. He wakes up moments later to Chanyeol fanning his face.
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Chanyeol repeats. “I can’t catch you every
time you faint.”
“Sorry,” Joonmyun says. “But—mate? How am I supposed to cope with that?”
Mate. It’s a strong word that implies a life with the other person, like the
human concept of soulmates. Joonmyun isn’t even eighteen yet. He hasn’t yet
worked out what appeals to him in a partner. He doesn’t even know what
sexuality he is.
But all kinds of choice have been removed from him. He’s going to be stuck with
Jongin for the rest of his life.
Chanyeol shrugs. “All I know is your body—it’s reacting.”
“Can’t I just…ignore it?” Joonmyun asks quietly. He’s still holding out that
there’s a chance that if he ignores it his body will forget.
“That will happen to you every single full moon if you don’t try to do
something about it,” Chanyeol says. “You’ll get hot and sweaty and hard and
it’ll happen at any time of the day all three full moon days. Do you want
that?”
Joonmyun shakes his head mutely, because that would be so much worse. “How do I
make it stop?” he asks, but he already has a vague idea, remembering how his
body had clenched, how he’d felt wrong somehow.
It takes Chanyeol a few moments to get the words out, and that’s confirmation
enough. “He has to mate with you, during the day of the full moon,” Chanyeol
manages at last. “The wolf is dominant,” he adds.
Joonmyun curls up into himself, head against his knees. What Chanyeol is saying
is that Jongin needs to fuck him for this to stop.
Joonmyun may be a teenage boy but aside from the few short relationships he’s
had (with girls) he doesn’t have a lot of experience with love, and he’s never
had sex before. The idea of his first sexual experience being getting fucked in
the ass by a werewolf somewhat frightens him.
“I didn’t choose this,” Joonmyun says, into his knees. “This isn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair,” Chanyeol says. “I told you we shouldn’t have been friends
with him.”
“I’m a bleeding heart, I guess,” Joonmyun grumbles. He doesn’t intend to throw
Chanyeol’s own words back in his face, but he feels Chanyeol curl up next to
him.
“I said I was sorry,” Chanyeol says. “I didn’t mean what I said, I was just
lashing out. You’re not a bleeding heart.”
“I am, though,” Joonmyun says, as Chanyeol’s words sink in. “You were right. I
was too nice, and Jongin—he misunderstood, and he took advantage of me. I
shouldn’t have been so nice.”
“No, Joonmyun,” Chanyeol says, forgoing honorifics once again. “It’s not your
fault. The wolf took over and it bit you. And I hate to say it, but Jongin
probably didn’t intend to bite you. Maybe. Who knows what’s going on inside his
head. But the most important thing is you didn’t ask him to bite you and
therefore it’s not your fault.”
Joonmyun sniffs, but he nods his head. “This is scary,” he says. He’s
comfortable enough around Chanyeol that it isn’t awkward to admit it. “I don’t
know if I’m ready for this. I’m too young.”
“I’m sorry,” Chanyeol says. “I wish there was a way to make it all go away, or
to mean that you never had to see him again after the first time, but it might
happen every full moon. Though it’ll definitely settle down after the first
time you, y’know.”
Joonmyun and Jongin might have to have sex together for the rest of their
lives. The idea of this is rather quite terrifying at first. Joonmyun wonders
if he’ll enjoy sex. He’s sure he will; it’s sex, what’s not to like? But will
he enjoy it with Jongin, a werewolf two years younger who has never had a real
friend, let alone a relationship? Will he learn to enjoy it? He’ll have to.
Joonmyun lifts his head from his knees and tries to still his nerves. He needs
to learn more about what will happen. “Are there…are there other things that
will happen if we’re away from each other?”
“I’m not sure,” Chanyeol says, and he shrugs. “I couldn’t find much because
human mates aren’t that willing to talk. Usually they wanted to be mated
together because of love, and mating is the only way to truly be with a
werewolf. There was one who talked to some wood-protector therianthropes after
her mate died. She only really talked about the heat, and getting pregnant, and
missing him. I know you’re not a girl so the babies bit doesn’t count, but the
rest seems to be the same.”
Joonmyun drops his head back against the wall and stares at the ceiling.
“Great,” he says. “And now I have to tell him.”
“Good luck with that,” Chanyeol says, sincerely. “And I won’t run away next
time. If you need me, I’ll stick around.” He pauses. “As long as my boyfriend’s
okay with it,” he says thoughtfully.
It takes a moment for it to filter through to Joonmyun, but when it does it
shoves away his fears about this long relationship. “You got together?” he
asks, with a smile. “I’m glad for you, you deserve this.”
“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, and he grins. “I’ve liked Yixing-hyung for years. I
never knew that he liked me too.”
They fall into conversation about how the two of them got together, but always,
at the back of Joonmyun’s mind, is the idea that he is basically now in a
relationship that’ll last the rest of his life, and he’s still not sure what to
make of it.
                                     ~*~*~
During Monday lunchtime nobody mentions that Chanyeol and Joonmyun have made up
like they never fought in the first place. Chanyeol just sits there and chats
like he’d never left.
Partway through lunch Jongin shows up, somewhat shyly, hovering nervously like
they’ll reject him.
The rest of their group turn to Joonmyun to see his reaction. He’s had a lot of
time to think over the weekend about everything, and he hasn’t quite got used
to anything. But he shrugs all the same.
Jongin sits down next to Kyungsoo, though, rather than by Joonmyun like usual.
Joonmyun thinks that’s probably a good idea. He’s not sure if he’ll manage to
keep quiet if he sits by him.
“I’m watching you,” Chanyeol says to Jongin, but it’s not as nasty as it once
would have been. Jongin nods his understanding.
“How did you do on your exams?” Kyungsoo asks.
“Well enough, I think,” Jongin says. “Not going to be first place, but still
good enough. Thanks to Hyung for helping me.”
Joonmyun nods, but doesn’t say anything.
They chat through lunch until the end. “Hyung,” Jongin says, catching up to
Joonmyun. “Do you…do you still want me to help teach you to dance? Now my exams
are over?”
This gives Joonmyun the opportunity he’s been looking for, to get Jongin alone
and away from prying eyes and eager ears. “Sure,” he says.
“Let’s do it earlier, when we used to study,” Jongin says, and it’s settled.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun waits until his dance lesson has finished before bringing it up. He
thinks that this way he still got to spend time with Jongin if he explains it
wrong by mistake and Jongin wants to leave.
“Um,” he begins. “You know when you bit me?”
Jongin freezes. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I never intended to hurt you.”
“Well,” Joonmyun says. “It—it kind of did something.”
He can see the fear in Jongin’s eyes as he says it, and he realises that to
Jongin, turning someone else into a werewolf would be one of his worst
nightmares. He is well aware of the fear of thinking he’s now a werewolf, but
at the same time, he thinks it must be different, and still very hard, for
Jongin.
“Not like that,” he says, hastily. “I’m still human, don’t worry. I’m not a
wolf.”
The relief exuding from Jongin is palpable. “I’m glad,” Jongin says. “But what
did I do to you?”
“We—um.” He’s practised in the mirror, but it doesn’t make it any easier. “You
marked me as your mate.”
“Oh,” Jongin says quietly, and he looks at Joonmyun with wide eyes. “I—I didn’t
know I could do that, I’m so, so sorry.”
Joonmyun shrugs. “It just means that we…” He shakes his head. Now it comes down
to it, he can’t say it. The words catch in his throat and no matter how he
tries to cough them up, he’s too embarrassed to say them aloud.
“It’s okay, I can find out,” Jongin says. “Don’t say it if you’re
uncomfortable.”
Joonmyun just nods his head mutely. It’s all too much for him.
“I’m so sorry that biting you caused you pain, Hyung,” Jongin says. “And I do
understand if you don’t want me to sit with you at lunch.”
“We’ll have to get used to each other,” Joonmyun says softly. “That’s what
happens with mates. They live together, breathe together. So it’s fine.”
“It’s not,” Jongin whispers, but he doesn’t protest.
                                     ~*~*~
Their conversation resumes several days later when Jongin has done his
research.
“I understand why you didn’t want to talk about it,” Jongin says, shuffling his
feet and doing his best not to look at Joonmyun. “Us…doing it.”
“Yeah,” Joonmyun says. “It’s just a bit…much to think about.”
“I have some bad news,” Jongin says, and this time he looks up. “Mating is
linked directly to the wolf attributes.”
This alarms Joonmyun. “Does that mean I’ll have to—to do it with the wolf?” He
shudders.
“No, no,” Jongin reassures him, a look of disgust on his face. “Nothing like
that. But, um, it can’t be done until the wolf is sexually mature.”
Joonmyun furrows his brow in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“I…can’t have sex until the wolf becomes sexually mature,” Jongin says, his
voice slightly stronger.
“And…when is that?” Joonmyun asks, because he still doesn’t understand the
issue.
“January,” Jongin says. “When I turn sixteen, the wolf matures.”
It’s October.
“So…I have to deal with this heat until January?” Joonmyun asks, all but
throwing his hands up in the air in despair.
“I can help you, if you want?” Jongin asks quietly. “We can’t, you know, but
there are other things I could do to help you. It should calm the heat down if
I help.”
Joonmyun nods quickly, because coping with it on his own had been almost
unbearable. It would be embarrassing, but he’s going to have sex with this boy
eventually, so he may as well allow him near his dick if it will help. He just
hopes that it does help.
Thankfully there’s another three weeks before he will have to test it, and he
is particularly grateful for those opportunities to get used to the idea,
before anything actually happens.
                                     ~*~*~
Despite being a five-week month, October passes by in a daze of music club,
homework, group gaming sessions, several therianthrope group meetings, dance
practice, and a lot of school. Joonmyun feels like he’s aged months in these
three weeks.
As it draws nearer and nearer to the first full month day of November, Joonmyun
tries to prepare himself for what is about to happen to him.
The proper full moon is a Monday, which means that the first day is Sunday.
Joonmyun has to prepare weeks in advance to make sure he’s allowed out during
the day. Jongin had said that the first session had best be at his place, in
case it happens during the day and Joonmyun’s parents are around. Neither of
them particularly wants to explain to parents what they would be doing.
Most of Joonmyun’s preparation comes in the form of getting his brain used to
the idea that Jongin’s going to be helping him to get off. He’s got plenty of
time to get used to that before any actual sex happens, and he appreciates that
steady build-up, because he knows he will need it.
He doesn’t know what Jongin’s preparation is, but he hopes it involves learning
how to make everything feel good for Joonmyun, because he’s the one who will be
feeling it.
All-too quickly, Sunday comes, and Joonmyun makes his way to school, where
Jongin had said he’ll meet him. They’re planning on doing their homework
together until the heat hits. Jongin had brushed off any other suggestions.
“My home is really small,” Jongin says when he arrives, and he doesn’t look at
Joonmyun when he says it, just watches as his feet scuff against the pavement.
“Sorry about it.”
He leads Joonmyun down the road to a brick building that is separated from the
rest. It’s two storeys high, and Jongin leads him through the gate and punches
the entrance code into the access code box beside the door. It clicks, and
Jongin heads in and up the stairs. Joonmyun follows hastily, so that he won’t
get locked out.
Jongin lives on the top floor, at the far end of the corridor. He lets them in
with a key he fishes out of his pocket.
Jongin’s flat is smaller than Joonmyun could ever have imagined, just two
rooms. The main room is a kitchen, sitting room and bedroom all in one, with a
sofa-bed doubling as a couch. There’s a small table in front of it that
Joonmyun presumes is also his breakfast table, and a slim wardrobe for Jongin’s
clothing.
Joonmyun remembers how Jongin had called it his home, and he can actually see
it. The place looks lived-in, if neat. There’s a shelf of books above a tiny
television, no bigger than a tablet screen, that sits on the breakfast table,
and a large and old laptop resting on the floor beneath it. The walls are white
but there are a few posters stuck up, mostly of Michael Jackson, though there
is one of Han Yeseul, one of someone called Musiq Soulchild, one of Shinhwa,
and one of a large red flower. The one thing the place is lacking is any sign
of family. There are no pictures of Jongin and his parents—or adoptive
parents—anywhere.
Jongin kicks his shoes off in the doorway and crosses to sit on the sofa bed.
He gets his homework out and places it on the table before him, and then pats
the bed beside him. Joonmyun nervously follows suit, toeing off his shoes and
perching next to Jongin.
He’s on Jongin’s bed. He can’t believe this is happening, even if all they’re
doing is working on their homework together.
Maybe it—whatever it is—can sense Jongin there next to him, a warm and
unobtrusive presence, because it’s only an hour before the heat starts acting
up. His entire body flushes, and there’s a steady pressure building up in his
crotch.
“It’s happening,” he says, and he’s sure his face must be tomato red by now, a
combination of the hot flush and the blush from the embarrassment he’s feeling
at admitting it.
“Okay,” Jongin says slowly, and then he puts his pen down and turns to face
Joonmyun. “How do you want to do this?”
“I was hoping you would know,” Joonmyun whines. “But can we do it before I burn
up? I’m so hot.”
“I won’t stop you if you want to take your clothes off,” Jongin suggests,
though his tone is full of mirth.
But Joonmyun doesn’t think this is that bad an idea, and he tugs his long-
sleeved t-shirt off. The moment it’s off, even though his body welcomes the
cool against his skin, he suddenly feels self-conscious. He isn’t as well-built
as Chanyeol is, though he does work out sometimes, but he feels like maybe he
should look better if they’re going to be in this arrangement. He didn’t feel
like this when Chanyeol saw him naked.
Jongin doesn’t comment, however, he just waits patiently as Joonmyun sits with
his hands on his belt, thinking. His trousers are going to have to come off
eventually, he decides, and he stands and undoes them, kicking them down in a
smooth motion. This leaves him in his underwear, plain and non-holey blue
briefs. It pains him to admit that he had spent an uncomfortably long time that
morning trying to find nice underwear, because he doesn’t want Jongin to think
badly of him if he shows up in old ones with holes in them.
Jongin rustles around his bedding and finally extricates a large, unopened
bottle of lubricant from under one of his pillows. Joonmyun gulps as Jongin
rips the plastic off the bottle top, knowing that the whole bottle is to help
him. He absently wonders where Jongin got the bottle from.
By this time, the head of Joonmyun’s cock is pressing solidly against the
material covering him and he feels extremely uncomfortable. He makes the
decision to stand and shove his briefs down, kicking them off into his jeans on
the floor. Now free, his cock curves solidly up towards his stomach. Joonmyun
takes a sneak peak over at Jongin’s crotch, to find that there’s not a vague
sign of interest there. He feels put-out. Does this mean Jongin has little
interest in him?
Jongin squeezes lubricant into his hands and rubs them together, before he
reaches out and wraps his hand around Joonmyun’s dick. Joonmyun moans and bucks
his hips up immediately at the sensations. Part of him feels cooler at Jongin’s
touch, and he appreciates it.
“Sorry if this is bad,” Jongin mutters, “I can’t exactly practise on myself.”
And Joonmyun can tell that Jongin is inexperienced, but the experimental
strokes and the way his thumb rubs over the head certainly show that he’s
either researched or he’s willing to try to make it feel good. And it does.
“Faster,” Joonmyun moans, and Jongin obeys, his hand moving up and down at a
quicker rate, until Joonmyun comes ropes of white over his hand, with a quiet
cry. His cock doesn’t soften, although Joonmyun doesn’t really know why he’d
thought, hoped, it might this time.
Jongin looks at his cock as if perplexed.
“It does that,” Joonmyun says. “It’s usually three or four times before it
stops.”
Jongin furrows his brow. “Okay,” he says, and he begins to stroke Joonmyun
again. Even though Joonmyun is still shaking from his orgasm, it doesn’t feel
uncomfortable that Jongin is stroking him so soon after he’s come. In fact,
it’s almost welcome, like he can’t get enough of the buzz rippling through him.
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
“No,” Joonmyun says. “It doesn’t even feel like normal. Usually it would feel
too good to try again, but this just feels…pleasant. Keep going.” His breath
comes out in little moans as he says it, and he reaches a free hand down to cup
his balls.
“Oh,” Jongin says, and then his other hand is against Joonmyun’s balls as well,
cupping them and rubbing the surface gently. If there’s one thing Joonmyun can
say about Jongin, he’s a very quick study.
Jongin gets him off less like it’s a duty and more like he actually wants to.
Joonmyun relishes in the feeling of almost being cared for. It’s Jongin’s fault
he’s in this state after all, so he’s glad that Jongin is taking
responsibility. Jongin could have just done the least possible; got it over and
done with in the shortest amount of time necessary, but he’s taking his time
and allowing the feeling to build up. He barely removes his hand from around
Joonmyun’s erection during the whole time.
It takes three times for Joonmyun’s cock to go soft again, and the third time
he comes loudly, so loudly that later he will worry that the neighbours may
have heard, when Jongin’s finger passes under Joonmyun’s balls and skates over
his hole. His body clenches like he’s trying to suck the finger inside, and
it’s the first time he’s ever wanted something like that, to feel something
inside him. He’s not sure if it’s the heat making him desire this, or if it was
a latent need he hadn’t awoken until now—the desire to be fucked.
When it’s over and his body has cooled, Jongin shows him to the bathroom, which
is a tiny wet-room with the shower squished in next to the toilet. It’s
definitely not big enough for two people, although Joonmyun doesn’t understand
why he’d even had that thought.
Joonmyun has a quick shower, not wanting to use all the water, and then dries
off with the towel left outside. He dresses, feeling rather embarrassed now
it’s over. He knows it was necessary, but it doesn’t help him feel any better
about it.
It’s heading on into the afternoon, so Joonmyun packs his things and starts
home, knowing that Jongin has to have enough time to get to the woods before
the moon rises and he turns, and Joonmyun wouldn’t want to impede on that time
in any way. He’s still afraid of the wolf.
Once he’s home, though, he wonders what tomorrow will be like, and if it will
be better. He thinks that months of handjobs may not be enough for him—he’s
sure he needs more than that, but he doesn’t think he knows how to say so.
                                     ~*~*~
The heat strikes during lunch of the full moon day, and Joonmyun scrambles to
his feet hastily. “Just forgot, I have to do something,” he says, and holds his
bag over his crotch so that his friends won’t see how hard he is.
He makes his way to the toilets at the furthest point of the school, down by
the dance rooms where he and Jongin usually practise. This way people are less
likely to walk in on him.
He locks himself in one of the cubicles and once again shoves his tie in his
mouth as a makeshift gag, before working his erection out through his fly and
jerking himself off once.
He’s just come when Jongin arrives. “Hyung? You in here?” he whispers, and
Joonmyun lets him in, locking the door behind him.
Jongin sinks to his knees once he’s in. “Never done this before either,” he
breathes, and then his mouth is on Joonmyun’s dick.
Joonmyun has no frame of reference for blowjobs, so he can’t say if it’s
particularly good, but he knows that Jongin is giving his all, and it feels
great. Jongin alternates sucking and licking, and his head bobs, and to be
honest just the warmth around Joonmyun’s dick is more than good enough, and
everything else is just a warm and delightful bonus. His orgasm builds upon him
far too quickly, though there is just enough time to breathe an “I’m coming!”,
allowing Jongin enough to get out of the way and catch it before it stains
their clothing and makes it obvious what they were doing.
He’s still hard, so Jongin uses his spit as lube to get Joonmyun off a third
and final time. “Is it always three times?” he asks, and Joonmyun shakes his
head.
“It’s been four before,” he says, as he cleans himself off with toilet tissue.
“Maybe, once we finally get to, you know, it might even just be once.” He
pauses. “Thanks.”
“It’s no problem,” Jongin says. “And we can only hope. I can’t blow you
repeatedly without my jaw hurting.” He sighs. “We should do research on other
things you can do, other ways of—” He nods down.
“Okay,” Joonmyun says, and he buttons himself back into his trousers. “There’s
still tomorrow.”
Jongin nods. “Let’s hope it’s at a better time tomorrow,” Jongin says. “Do you
want to do our dance practise tomorrow, if it hits in the afternoon?”
Joonmyun nods hastily. “That would be the best solution. Those rooms don’t have
cameras, right?”
“No,” Jongin agrees. “It’ll be okay back there. I’ll make sure it’s good for
you.”
Joonmyun is learning that Jongin really means what he says, and that he’ll do
his absolute best to make sure that Joonmyun enjoys it.
Joonmyun is already looking forward to tomorrow.
                                     ~*~*~
Luckily for both of them, it hits during their dance practice.
“I’m so glad,” Joonmyun says, feeling strangely relieved at the sight of his
erection. He’d been worried it wouldn’t come when he’s still at school, which
is a weird fear to have. “Last month it hit late one night. There was no way
you would have been able to help me, as you would have been in wolf form then.”
“That makes no sense,” Jongin says, with a frown. “Maybe we should get you some
kind of tool to use, if I’m not around or already in wolf form?”
Joonmyun gapes at him. “Are you…are you suggesting we get me a dildo?” he
hisses. He can’t believe they’re already talking about this. This is the third
day and they haven’t even started yet.
Jongin shrugs. “Whatever will help you,” he says. “If you need a dildo, we’ll
buy you a dildo. Where do you think I got the lube from?”
Joonmyun drops backwards onto the ground and covers his face with
embarrassment. “You seem to be taking this very well,” he grumbles.
“I’m taking it responsibly, I hope,” Jongin says. “I bit you, and it gave you
this reaction. If I have to go out and buy you a dildo so you can get yourself
off at home, then I will. I’m good at looking old enough.”
Joonmyun isn’t surprised in the least. He thinks that if Jongin were to dress
up and hold himself without any fear or shyness in him, he’d look much older
than his fifteen years. He could probably pass for nineteen or twenty; old
enough to visit a sex shop without being noticed. “I could just hope it never
happens again?” he suggests, but he knows better.
“I’ll go and buy you one as soon as I can,” Jongin promises, as if he hadn’t
said anything.
“Now we’ve finished this embarrassing conversation,” Joonmyun says, moving his
hands away from his face to indicate his swollen crotch, “can we fix this?”
Jongin laughs and helps Joonmyun tug his trousers and underwear down to his
knees.
“I looked something up last night,” he says, and he gets a tiny bottle out from
his bag. “You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”
“What is it?” Joonmyun asks, body clenching with nerves.
“Putting my fingers up there,” Jongin says, nodding down, and Joonmyun
swallows. His body is already saying yes without him even being conscious of
it, and he nods quickly.
“Please,” he begs.
Jongin gently spreads his legs so he can fit between them, and he coats his
fingers in lube. “This will be interesting,” he says aloud.
Joonmyun suddenly starts panicking about this, because what if he’s all gross
down there and Jongin never wants to help him again because of it?
But then there’s a finger against his hole, warm pressure but not pushing
inside, and when Jongin asks if it’s okay, Joonmyun nods almost desperately.
The first finger hurts, even with the lubricant. Jongin goes slowly for him,
pushing it in carefully until one finger is in fully, and pulling it out to do
it again. After a few moments, it’s bearable, and Joonmyun accepts another
finger, feeling the burn a bit more with two pressed inside. Jongin feels
around for something and then a jolt of pleasure rushes through Joonmyun, and
he moans. Jongin does it again, consistently running long fingers over that
part of Joonmyun until he comes almost explosively over the both of them with a
shout, his hips bucking and his back arching with the movements.
Jongin doesn’t pull his fingers out, but this time he leans down and takes
Joonmyun in his mouth again. From the day before he seems to have gained an
idea of what gets the biggest response from Joonmyun, and he focuses on doing
that, sucking wetly, making sure that the room echoes with the sounds of
Joonmyun’s moans. Joonmyun is so grateful that there’s nobody around to hear
the noises he’s making, because they’re positively obscene.
Jongin pulls off him just as he starts to come a second time, Jongin’s fingers
pressed gently against his prostate. This time, Joonmyun goes soft immediately,
and he lets out a sigh of relief. He’s grateful that it didn’t take too long,
even if he does enjoy it.
“Well, that’s the first full moon down,” Jongin jokes, and he pulls his fingers
out carefully. Joonmyun feels empty without them, and his hole clenches around
nothing. He misses the feeling of being somewhat full, but he already knows
that what he really needs is a cock to sate these desperate urges. “Second for
you, I suppose. Did it live up to your expectations?”
“Aren’t you cocky,” Joonmyun says, arm over his eyes again, but his tone is
light. “It was good.”
“I’ll try to see how to make it better for you,” Jongin assures him. “There are
two full moons in December. That will give us more time to see what’s good
before the one at the end of January, when I’m mature. I hope it will be worth
it for you.”
“I’m sure it will,” Joonmyun says, and he yawns. Jongin laughs.
“Maybe you should go home and get some rest? It’s been a hard three days for
you, but it’ll be normal again until this time next month. You can relax now.”
Joonmyun nods, and carefully gets himself to his feet. He pulls his clothes
back on properly and grabs his bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow then? Though I’ve
got music club. You should join!”
“I’ll think about it,” Jongin promises him. “Bye, Hyung!”
Joonmyun heads home thinking that for only three days of his life, that was
pretty good. Short of them actually having sex, he can’t think of ways that he
could have made it better.
His porn searches later in the week beg to differ. There are a lot of things
they could have done, and he looks forward to experiencing some of them with
Jongin in the future.
                                     ~*~*~
It’s nice waking up knowing that he won’t have to deal with the heat today.
He revels in the day, answering more questions in class than normal because
he’s in such a good mood. During lunch his friends pick up on it.
“Someone’s unusually happy,” Jongdae says. “What’s the cause of this?”
“Probably got an A+ instead of an A on one of his essays,” Kyungsoo says with a
laugh.
“That’s probably it,” Baekhyun agrees.
Joonmyun tries not to catch the eye of either Jongin or Chanyeol.
“So, maybe you should do a solo today,” Chanyeol says, trying to change the
topic quickly.
The music club is that afternoon and they’re doing more performances; of what
they’re good at. Joonmyun has already decided to sing SHINee’s Love Like Oxygen
because he’s pretty good at imitating Jonghyun in it.
“Someone should dance along,” Chanyeol says.
“Are you offering?” Joonmyun and Kyungsoo ask in synchrony, and Chanyeol shakes
his head rapidly.
“You know what I’m like when dancing. Someone with actual skills should
perform,” Chanyeol says, rolling his eyes.
They all turn to Jongin.
“Uh,” Jongin says, “maybe next time? I’m not sure I’m ready to perform in
public.”
Joonmyun nods. “I understand,” he says. “When you’re ready.”
The others tease Joonmyun for his choice of words, but mostly they understand,
and they don’t want to force Jongin to do anything he doesn’t want to do.
The rest of the day passes without a hitch. Joonmyun’s voice only cracks once
mid-song, and he’s pleased with himself for managing it.
Once music club is over, the last two days of the week fly by. It’s a little
awkward when Joonmyun and Jongin are alone together during their session, but
Joonmyun tries not to focus on that and instead dances as well as he possibly
can, making sure he can hit the steps.
“You’re getting really good at this,” Jongin praises, and Joonmyun thinks that
the next step is learning to sing whilst dancing, much like a K-pop idol. At
the moment he definitely can’t manage that.
But hearing praise from Jongin makes his heart swell, and he realises that he
just wants to make the younger boy proud.
                                     ~*~*~
The next week is unexciting except for the school assembly midweek.
They file into the hall and take their seats in their classes. Joonmyun doesn’t
have this lesson with Yixing, so he looks around to see where he and the rest
are. Yixing is only a few rows in front, and the rest are scattered around the
hall. Jongin is much closer to the front of the hall, and he appears to be
ignoring his classmates entirely.
“Good morning everyone,” the Headmistress says, coming to stand at the front of
the hall.
Joonmyun rises with the hall to bow to her, before settling back in his seat.
“We have several announcements to make,” she continues. “There are two school
trips in the next two months. One is a zoo trip taking place next week, and the
other is a camping trip in December for three days.” There is quiet applause
around the room, though Joonmyun bets that the students want to cheer. The
Headmistress waits for them to stop, before she says, “The camping trip is to
help everyone warm up and give time to study properly for their exams. Remember
to study hard. Your teachers will give you the permission slips to give you
your parents when you’re back in class.”
The other announcement is the New Year Festival, which is held in late January
every year. This year it is holding a talent show, and the teachers would like
people from the various clubs to show their talents in recitations, music,
dance and martial arts.
“For those students who do better with a pen or a paintbrush, there will also
be various stalls put aside to showcase their work,” the Headmistress states.
Joonmyun feels excited. He’s proud of the art he makes. He enjoys the feeling
of putting pencil to paper and showing the world something of himself,
something uniquely him, and he already knows that he wants to paint a wolf. It
would be meaningful to him and it would look beautiful. His fingers itch with
the chance to sketch out his design. He could even merge it with his incomplete
art project; his painting of the woods. He could end up with a picture of a
wolf prowling through the woods.
Once they’re out of the hall, his friends talk about how they should do some
kind of musical performance, showcasing Chanyeol and Yixing’s abilities to play
instruments and Jongin’s ability to dance and the others’ singing talents, but
Joonmyun is still mostly thinking about his painting.
                                     ~*~*~
His parents sign the forms for him without questioning them too much. They do
worry if he’ll be able to study away from home, but Joonmyun assures them that
he is capable of studying anywhere.
“We never had study trips in my day,” Joonmyun’s father grumbles. “This is some
new-fangled nonsense, if you ask me.” His wife swats him gently on the arm and
chides him for being jealous.
Joonmyun absently wonders who is going to sign the forms for Jongin, due to the
fact his parents aren’t around. In fact, he wonders how Jongin is even able to
live on his own, but he knows Jongin’s parents pay for the place he lives in.
He doesn’t have a job so they must pay his bills as well.
Surely someone must have signed his forms, though, because he seems just as
excited as the rest of them. “I’ve never been to a zoo before!” he says at
lunch the next day, body vibrating with excitement. “I wonder what it’s like?”
“It’s a place full of animals,” Jongdae says. “That’s all.”
This doesn’t seem to make him any less excited. Joonmyun wonders if it’s the
prospect of seeing animals when in a form that doesn’t scare them, or if it’s
just that he gets to go with them. For the first time he gets to do something
with people who don’t hate him.
The rest of the group seem to operate on a principle that if Joonmyun likes
him, even after he bit him, he must be alright. And he is.
                                     ~*~*~
It has been years since Joonmyun was last at the zoo, and the feeling of the
place hasn’t changed, that idea of excitement and desire to run around like a
small child and draw all the pretty animals.
The teachers keep them outside the entrance as they discuss the point of the
trip. It’s cold and the students huddle together for warmth. Joonmyun finds
himself pressed into Jongin’s side.
“During this trip, there will be talks on wildlife and conservation and
rehabilitation. We would like you to go to one of these talks, and then to make
a project on what you learnt. It doesn’t have to be an essay. You can give a
presentation describing what you learnt, or describe it during images. You can
even, if you so wish, write a song or a poem.”
“Once inside, you may walk around on your own. We will give you maps. Meet us
back at the café for lunch at one o’clock.”
They swarm through in single file, and they get handed maps once through the
payment desk. Joonmyun meets up with his friends once in the zoo.
“Where does everyone want to go?” Chanyeol asks.
“I bet Joonmyun wants to see everything cute,” Baekhyun says instantly, and he
laughs, not unkindly.
It’s no secret that Joonmyun likes drawing fluffy animals, because they look
good on paper and people tend to prefer drawings of cute things.
“We can go to the children’s petting zoo,” Jongdae says, with a shrug. “Let him
get it out of his system.”
The seven of them make their way there, to the side of the zoo specifically for
children.
Once inside, Joonmyun purchases a bag of feed for the animals from one of the
vending machines. They navigate the petting zoo, greeting the small rabbits
first, and then the goat kids. There’s a particularly inquisitive kid that
follows Joonmyun around the zoo, trying to chew on his clothes with its lips.
Joonmyun gives it a big handful of feed and a stroke, but it doesn’t stop
following him.
Joonmyun settles down after he’s greeted all the chicks, the pot-belly piglets
and the llama crias. The kid comes over to sit beside him. He lifts a lop-eared
rabbit into his lap and gets out his pad of paper and begins to draw the scene.
Meanwhile, Chanyeol has found a duckling and is playing with it, Yixing is with
the chicks, and Baekhyun has a Shetland pony to feed. Kyungsoo and Jongdae have
a cria each; Kyungsoo’s an alpaca.
Jongin sits down at the side of the zoo, looking around him with wide,
frightened eyes. He’s been there a few moments when a tiny pink teacup piglet
trots up to him and nudges him. Jongin looks down in wonder.
“Pick him up,” Joonmyun tells him, and he smiles. “He likes you.”
Jongin nervously picks up the little creature and settles him on his lap like a
dog. The piglet is very interested in exploring him, but he seems happy, and
before long he settles down for a nap, like the rabbit in Joonmyun’s lap.
Jongin smiles down at the creature, and he seems content to just remain there
as Joonmyun works through his drawing.
When Joonmyun’s finished, he turns the page and begins to sketch Jongin, his
content smile, and the baby piglet in his lap. As he draws, he thinks that
seeing Jongin smile like this was the best gift he could receive today.
As much as Joonmyun would like to, they can’t stay there forever. They leave
after a good forty minutes with the animals. Joonmyun’s kid and Jongin’s piglet
don’t want them to leave, and both try to follow them out before the zoo
attendants spot them and gently pull them back to play with a pair of young
children. Joonmyun waves goodbye to the kid as it is led away, and finally
they’re out.
They head to the talk on conservation first, stopping to look at flamingos and
tigers. Absently, Joonmyun is reminded of Zitao’s animal form, and wonders if
he’ll come to see the tigers himself.
Just round a few more corners is a lone wolf.
The wolf is in a large cage on its own. There is grass beneath its feet and its
habitat has water and natural-seeming objects and obstacles for the wolf, like
a tree stump and a long rock, but the wolf seems miserable. Jongin stops still
beside it, looking in with a sad look on his face.
“Hey there,” he says to the wolf, who stops pacing its cage to look at him.
“Don’t be sad, it’s not that bad in here. I know what it’s like to feel
trapped. It gets better.”
He stops talking to watch the wolf, almost like he’s having a conversation and
listening to the response. The image is sad, a miserable-looking boy and a
miserable-looking wolf sharing an experience, and it makes Joonmyun feel sad as
well.
He almost can’t bear to pull Jongin away from his kindred animal, but they’re
still five minutes from the lecture hall, and the talk starts in only a few
minutes. He links his arm with Jongin’s and slowly pulls him away, giving
Jongin to say goodbye to the wolf.
As they walk towards the lecture hall, Joonmyun loosens his arm from Jongin’s,
dropping his hand down by his side. Not a moment later, he feels Jongin link
their fingers together, and he sneaks a look down at their conjoined hands,
entwined for only the second time. His long and thin fingers are dwarfed by
Jongin’s larger, stockier ones, and Joonmyun thinks they match rather well.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun writes his project when he gets home from the zoo, talking about the
ways that conservation zoos protect animals, and the few conservation trusts
around the world that keep endangered animals and put them back into the wild
when they’re no longer in danger of becoming extinct. He annotates the project
with his own drawings, showing the cycle of conservation life.
When he’s finished his project, he takes out the drawings he did. He gets his
drawing tablet and begins to re-sketch the scenes.
It takes him a good hour or more to work on the drawing of Jongin with the
piglet, capturing Jongin’s smile perfectly. He colours it with the appropriate
amount of light and shading and then saves the drawing.
Later that night he prints off a copy and rolls it up, wrapping an elastic band
around it, to take to school the next day as a gift.
Jongin, when he receives it, doesn’t seem to have any words to give Joonmyun
except, “Thank you.” He cradles the drawing, as the rest of them coo over his
shoulder about how skilled Joonmyun is, and won’t let any of them touch it.
He catches Joonmyun once the rest have left for class. “This is amazing,
Hyung,” he breathes. “I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
“It’s just a drawing,” Joonmyun says with a smile. “You looked so happy, and it
was very cute. I like cute things.”
Jongin’s blush rises up his face, and Joonmyun reaches up and ruffles his hair.
For a moment Jongin’s just a cute boy, not the one who sucks Joonmyun’s dick
until he comes, and Joonmyun is thankful for that.
                                     ~*~*~
It takes them another week of discussing ideas of what they can do for the
January festival before Jongin meekly suggests that he join the music club, to
the group’s delight.
“Wonderful!” Yixing says, with a smile. “Would you like to dance for us?”
“Can you sing?” Baekhyun asks over him, and then he makes a noise of pain.
“What did you do that for?” he hisses at Kyungsoo, who just smiles back at him
innocently.
“I’m not good at singing but I can try,” Jongin says. “I can sing back-up for
you?”
“You can just dance if you want to,” Yixing assures him. “Don’t listen to
Baekhyun. He’s not even in our music club.”
Jongin joins that week, coming along with Joonmyun as he heads to the music
room. He’s made to do a performance on the spot to prove his worthiness to join
late. He throws himself into the chorus of Sorry, Sorry followed by a quick
freestyle and wows the room with his ability to sing and dance at the same
time. He was wrong when he said he can’t sing—he’s no Jongdae or Kyungsoo, but
he’s certainly passable.
Joonmyun had known he could dance already, from the weeks of learning, but it’s
different to sit there and watch as he performs to the best of his ability, and
he feels a kind of pride that he found Jongin first.
“I thought he was just a weirdo, but he’s really talented!” he hears one girl
whisper to another at the end of the club meeting.
“Yeah, and isn’t he cute? Do you think he’s got a girlfriend?” her friend
replies.
Joonmyun swallows down the urge to say he’s taken, and sticks to clapping
Jongin on the shoulder instead.
                                     ~*~*~
They spend the last week before December starting to rehearse as their newly
formed unit. Chanyeol is on the drums, Yixing on the guitar. Joonmyun sings
along with Baekhyun, who is doing his absolute best to overshadow Joonmyun with
all his vocal prowess. Jongin dances to the music as their centrepiece,
occasionally singing backup when required. Kyungsoo and Jongdae have their own
choir performance, and therefore are both unable to take part in their band.
Joonmyun loves them but part of him is happy that their band is so small and
that he’s not relegated only to standing and singing harmonies for the more
talented singers.
He enjoys the practices more than he thought he would, what with them taking
time away from his art and his homework. He gets to spend time with most of his
favourite people doing something they love together, where there’s no animosity
between Chanyeol and Jongin. Joonmyun thinks that Chanyeol even becomes
grudgingly accepting of Jongin, so much so that, if Jongin’s five minutes late,
he starts wondering where he is. He always claims it’s because they’ll have to
start over again when he comes, but Joonmyun knows it’s because he’s worried.
Without one member, they’re incomplete, and it doesn’t have the same feeling as
with all of them.
It’s also fun to joke around and relax at this time of year, especially with
the way Joonmyun’s life has gone.
However, that means that December’s full moon sneaks up on Joonmyun before he’s
really aware of it.
                                     ~*~*~
It strikes during morning classes. Joonmyun is sweating profusely by the time
he gets to leave, trying to conceal the signs of his affliction from his
teacher and classmates. Yixing, thankfully, is in the same class as him and
Chanyeol seems to have informed of him of what happens, because he does his
best to draw attention from Joonmyun. Joonmyun has never realised how his calm
personality reflects his unicorn nature until now. It’s almost like he has
calming pheromones, and they work wonders, even calming himself in the process.
But once he’s out of the classroom the panic hits him and he doesn’t even have
the presence of mind to get himself to the furthest away toilets. He just needs
to find Jongin, now.
He’s very lucky in that Jongin always spends breaks in his classroom, unlike
the other students who leave to get midmorning snacks. This means he’s able to
run to Jongin’s class. “Now,” he pants when he gets there, and Jongin grabs his
bag and is out of the room in seconds.
They weave through the school together, until they find the old and abandoned
drama room that Joonmyun had found Jongin in so long ago. Once inside, they bar
the door with heavy tables. There are no cameras in here, which Joonmyun is
once again grateful for.
Jongin presses Joonmyun up against the wall on the inside of the door. He drops
his bag to the ground and allows Joonmyun to do the same, before undoing
Joonmyun’s trousers and pulling them down.
“Not a lot of time,” Jongin says, mouthing against Joonmyun’s hard cock. “We’ll
have to hope it doesn’t take too long today.”
Joonmyun drops his head back against the wall, panting. His fingers clench into
fists either side of his body.
“There’s so much I want to do, but there’s no time,” Jongin mumbles before
taking Joonmyun into his mouth.
He sucks like there’s a race going on, utterly too quickly, tongue laving
saliva onto the skin of Joonmyun’s cock. One hand plays with Joonmyun’s balls
as the other rummages around in his bag and comes out with lube. He coats his
fingers and Joonmyun braces his body for the inevitable satisfying entrance
into his body. His body welcomes the intrusion, two fingers and then three, and
Joonmyun wishes, for a moment, that he could see the fingers disappear into his
body.
Jongin probes around until he touches Joonmyun’s prostate, stimulating it
gently until it’s too much for Joonmyun and stars explode across his eyelids.
Jongin doesn’t pull back in time and when he does it’s with a grimace, saliva
and semen strings attaching his mouth to Joonmyun’s still-hard dick.
“I bought you this,” Jongin says, and his fingers slip out of Joonmyun. Out of
his bag, he brings out a thin white dildo made of silicone.
It’s probably a bit longer than Joonmyun is and he swallows at the thought of
introducing it into his body, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head at the
thought.
“It doesn’t vibrate,” Jongin says. “But we can try it?”
Joonmyun slips down the wall and onto the floor, trying not to get tangled up
in his trousers. “Please,” he says.
He watches as Jongin coats the dildo liberally, and then he feels it press
against his entrance.
“We can still stop,” Jongin says. “It might be better to try it when we’ve got
more time to spare?”
But Joonmyun feels like his cock is going to explode, and he impatiently
presses back against the silicone, feeling it start to slide past the ring of
muscle at his entrance.
It’s thicker than two of Jongin’s fingers but not three, and as such it doesn’t
burn all that much as it slides further into his body. It is, however, longer.
With it inside, he feels much fuller than before, and lets out a moan that is
far too loud to be made at school. He stuffs his tie into his mouth a third
time, trying not to make it too obvious.
Jongin thrusts the toy in and out of Joonmyun probably slower than they have
time for, but Joonmyun thinks that being late for one class is worth it if this
is the cause. He rocks back in time with the thrusts, the toy brushing
constantly against where Joonmyun needs it most.
It doesn’t take long before his breath comes quickly in pants. Jongin thrusts
the toy faster, sensing his desperation, and he comes all over the floor with a
high-pitched moan, his dick softening once more.
He doesn’t have time to come down from his high, because Jongin moves him out
of the way to clean his come up from the floor and tuck him back into his
clothes. “We’ve got to go,” he says. “We’re late for class.”
“Too tired,” Joonmyun whines. “I just want to go home and sleep.”
“Maybe you can go to the sick bay,” Jongin suggests. “I could take you?”
The double entendre is unintentional but Joonmyun’s still thinking with his
dick and he moans without meaning to. Jongin smacks his buttocks.
“Stop that,” he says. “Come on now, we’ll clean up in the bathroom first.”
They do so, cleaning the toy as well and sliding it into Joonmyun’s bag for
emergencies, and then Jongin takes Joonmyun to the sick bay, where he collapses
into a bed.
“You do have the remnants of a fever,” the nurse agrees, pulling the quilt up
around him. “Sleep until lunch.”
Joonmyun proceeds to do just that.
                                     ~*~*~
Just typically, it doesn’t occur the next day until late at night. Joonmyun had
already expected that once music club had begun and nothing happened even after
they’d finished. Jongin had wowed them all once more, despite not being the
most talented of singers, and even Chanyeol had had a good go at singing.
He lies in bed with a small bottle of lube and kicks his pyjama bottoms off and
onto the floor, and experimentally strokes around his hole with lubricated
fingers. Doing it to himself is different from Jongin doing it, and he takes
his time sliding in one finger, then two. He stretches himself, feeling the
burn and the sensation of his inner walls. His fingers aren’t long enough to
reach his prostate, so once he’s fully stretched he lubes up the toy and slowly
slides it inside himself, pausing to enjoy the girth inside himself again.
He thrusts the dildo in and out, bucking his hips up towards it and trying to
do his best to remain as quiet as he possibly can so that his parents won’t
hear and come to investigate.
After the first time he comes, catching it in a towel he’s laid out just in
case, his arm feels tired and he positions himself so he’s kneeling, and he
slides down onto the toy, holding it into place. From this angle the dildo hits
better, splashing stars over his eyelids as it hits just right. He comes a
second time, and this time he waits a few minutes before lying on his back
again and finishing himself off for the night with a few quick jerks of his
fist. After three orgasms all he wants to do is fall asleep, but he hides the
evidence and opens a window first, before collapsing into bed.
                                     ~*~*~
On Thursday, Joonmyun quietly mentions to Jongin that it works on his own.
Jongin seems delighted by this, and invites Joonmyun over to his house after
school.
This turns out to be excellent news, as it hits partway to Jongin’s house. They
rush to get there before it’s too noticeable.
Inside, they make short work of Joonmyun’s clothing, and he ends up on Jongin’s
bed, face down with his bottom in the air.
“I’m going to try something else,” Jongin says, and he presses open-mouthed
kisses to the base of Joonmyun’s spine and then travels down, placing a kiss on
each of his buttocks. “You can say no to anything. It’s all about you.” There
is a rustle of a condom, even though Joonmyun knows it isn’t for Jongin.
“If you’re willing to try, so am I,” Joonmyun assures him, though somewhat
confused. A moment later there is something pressed against his bottom, and
then there is hot wetness swiping up his crack and he realises what Jongin is
doing. This might be the strangest experience of his life. He thinks it must be
up there for Jongin too. Who decides that at fifteen they want to stick their
tongue in someone’s bottom, even with the aid of a condom? Jongin, apparently.
“Oh—” he breathes. “You want to do this?”
“Yes,” Jongin says. “I do.”
He breathes against Joonmyun, and his whole body jerks. He then licks over the
puckered hole and the sensations vibrate through Joonmyun, resulting in a loud
moan.
Jongin clutches his hips tighter and then, with the aid of lube, noticeable as
wet fingers trail along Joonmyun’s body and balls, his tongue slowly slips
inside.
The feeling is different from being fingered or from having a toy inside him.
There’s an overwhelming feeling of warmth, and also the knowledge that Jongin
trusts him enough to do this, and likes him enough. On top of already being
turned on by the heat, he feels like this is the kind of thing that could make
him fall for a person properly, and the idea scares him. Everything is
happening much too fast. The problem is, he doesn’t mind it.
Jongin licks and sucks on Joonmyun’s rim until it becomes too much to bear and
he comes all over the bed. Then Jongin slips his fingers inside as he kisses
his arse and breathes over his entrance, skating over his prostate, two more
times.
Joonmyun feels apologetic that he’s coated Jongin’s bed in his come and
probably screamed loud enough that the whole building knows what they were up
to, but Jongin doesn’t seem to mind.
When Jongin goes to get a cloth to clean Joonmyun with, Joonmyun relaxes on the
bed, looking around the room for the first time since they got there. His
drawing of Jongin and the piglet is up in a new frame, pride of place above the
bed, and Joonmyun smiles with absolute delight. It looks perfect.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun has come to realise he likes sex as much as any teenager who is
getting it somewhat regularly (debatably), but it’s nice to wake up and know
that if he wants to get himself off in the near future it’ll be because he
wants to, not because hormones directly linked to the lunar cycle are telling
him to.
This means that once again he is the happiest person at the lunch table,
revelling in his newfound peace.
“You’re happy,” Kyungsoo comments, with a laugh. “It’s nice.”
“You mean he’s here, Soo,” Baekhyun says. He turns to Joonmyun. “You’re not
going to run off again and have a quickie today?” He indicates Jongin and
laughs. “You guys are cute boyfriends, trying to conceal it.”
He says it teasingly, without much seriousness to his tone, but Joonmyun feels
his face heat up at the idea that they are aware of what happens between him
and Jongin behind closed doors. “It’s not—” he squeaks, but he can’t finish his
sentence. It’s exactly what they do, except they’re not boyfriends. They’re
mates. There’s a difference, or at least he thinks there is one.
“It’s none of your business what they do or don’t do,” Chanyeol says, and his
tone is warning.
“Oh, c’mon,” Baekhyun says, turning to Jongdae for moral support. Jongdae
shrugs.
“I dunno,” he says. “Not worth it to get up in love drama. I’m still trying to
work out how you hooked Kyungsoo.”
Baekhyun lets out a completely unmanly shriek and dives for Jongdae, who
scrambles out of the way and runs behind Joonmyun. Chanyeol guffaws happily and
Kyungsoo alternates between glaring daggers at him and at Jongdae via Joonmyun.
Joonmyun just stares at Baekhyun in surprise. He’s thought it before, but when
Baekhyun hadn’t told him he’d brushed it off. But apparently he was right all
along.
Later, Joonmyun thanks Jongdae for it, and he shrugs. “It’s not my place to get
in between you guys and your boyfriends.” He pauses. “Plus he deserved that.
You haven’t seen how mushy they get when they think nobody’s paying them
attention. It’s worse than Chanyeol and Yixing-hyung.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Joonmyun says, and it’s only later that he
realises that at no point did he or Jongin say that they aren’t dating.
He wonders if that means they are and Jongin just hasn’t said anything, and
then, if they’re dating, that means kisses. He’d quite like to kiss Jongin, he
thinks. He’s just not yet sure if he’s allowed or not.
                                     ~*~*~
It seems like Joonmyun just blinks and then it’s the big camping trip.
Everyone is understandably really excited. Jongin’s never been to a place like
this so he doesn’t know what to expect, and it’s been years since Joonmyun was
away from home. It’s the first time their school is trying this out, seeing if
this strange rest works out. Joonmyun hopes it does, and that nobody messes it
up.
They travel to school with their overnight bags on the Friday morning. The
students whose parents didn’t give permission remain behind for a normal day of
lessons, whilst the rest crowd into school buses.
Joonmyun ends up sitting across the row from Yixing, who convinces the boy next
to him to swap so that Joonmyun can sit there. They make small talk during the
journey, sharing little titbits of history about Chanyeol. Yixing seems very
happy with him, if his obvious fondness is anything to go by. Joonmyun wonders
if he seems as fond of anyone, of Jongin, as Yixing is of Chanyeol.
They get to their holiday destination at around eleven that morning. It’s a
large grassy site, partway up a mountain, with wooden cabins all around.
Joonmyun realises that the girls must have been taken elsewhere when he notices
that there don’t seem to be any, when he knows they got into buses.
“This is where we will be staying until Monday morning,” one of the teachers
says, before launching into the rules; no going near the girls’ camp, no
wandering off alone, no wandering off without informing one of the teachers
first, always turn up to meals on time, remember to study.
“There is a hot spring for those who want to relax,” another teachers says.
“You will have a two hour period each day in which to enjoy it. The rest of the
time is your own.”
The cabins each have multiple double rooms, and they’re allowed to choose their
roommate. Joonmyun watches as Chanyeol places his hand on Yixing’s shoulder,
and Baekhyun and Kyungsoo stand closer together. Joonmyun looks around the
group of male students to see who to pick, and then nearly gets knocked over as
a body slams into him. He turns, once steady, to face a sheepish and
apologetic-looking Jongin and, behind him, a grinning Baekhyun.
“Boyfriends!” Baekhyun mouths, and then beams as he gives Joonmyun two thumbs
up.
Joonmyun rolls his eyes—of course.
But he doesn’t protest the room assignment, because it makes sense. He then
wonders who Jongdae will share a room with, seeing as he’s the only one of
their group not in a relationship.
He doesn’t get to see who Jongdae gets or chooses, because Jongin links their
arms together and drags Joonmyun away to receive their cabin key.
They dump their bags inside the tiny wooden room with its bunk-beds, bedside
table with lamp, and absolutely nothing else, before leaving to explore.
There are multiple cabins, and it takes them a long time to work out that
although most are for sleeping in, there are also a few bathroom cabins, the
dinner cabin, and two hot sauna cabins, which are currently full of students
trying them out. Joonmyun shakes his head at how full both saunas are, because
it can’t be comfortable to sit in a room full of so many sweaty boys.
Joonmyun and Jongin keep wandering around, bumping into Chanyeol and Yixing as
they go. They decide to head up the mountain path to the hot spring. Chanyeol
wants to go straight up there, but Joonmyun and Yixing insist they tell a
teacher first.
Once their duty is done and they’re given permission to look, they begin the
slow climb up the rocky mountain path. Soon all of them are panting, even
Jongin.
“Why are we doing this again?” Joonmyun asks, wiping the sweat from his
forehead with the bottom of his t-shirt.
“Hot spring!” Chanyeol manages to sound excited even through the panting and
the sweating. Yixing pats him on the shoulder in a somewhat patronising way,
but Chanyeol doesn’t seem at all bothered.
The hot spring itself, once they finally get there, is a steaming natural pool
in the surface of the mountain, with a constant flow of water from a thin
waterfall over to one side, and a thin stream leaving it to trickle down
towards the camp. The steam coming from it causes Joonmyun to sweat again, and
he thinks that it would be nice to come here at night, when it’s cooler, and
relax in the water before heading back down the mountain in a better, cleaner
state for dinner.
They sit beside the hot spring for a few moments to relax, and end up drifting
off in the heat of the morning.
They wake up with only a few moments until lunch and all end up running down
the mountain, arriving at the bottom wet and sweaty. Nobody sits at their table
for lunch, not even Baekhyun, Kyungsoo and Jongdae.
Joonmyun doesn’t entirely care.
                                     ~*~*~
They don’t go back to the hot spring that day, they just spend the afternoon
studying, and after having showers, throw themselves into bed.
Jongin’s breath is loud in the room and Joonmyun stares up at the bunk above
him, trying to drift off, but his brain is awake with all sorts of thoughts. He
wishes he could read, but he doesn’t want to turn the lamp on in case it wakes
Jongin up.
But Jongin isn’t asleep either. “Hyung?” he whispers, too loud in the quiet
room.
“Yeah,” Joonmyun replies.
“I—” Then there’s a creaking sound as Jongin climbs down the ladder.
“Jongin?” Joonmyun whispers. His eyes adjust to the sight of Jongin, who sits
on the edge of the bed and looks down at him. Joonmyun pushes himself up into a
sitting position, feeling uncomfortable lying down.
They stare at each other in the darkness for a moment, neither of them moving,
and then Jongin’s moving towards him far too quickly.
Their noses bump, though not painfully, before Jongin’s soft, warm lips brush
against his own.
It’s both a surprise and not a surprise at all, because Joonmyun wants to kiss
Jongin, has wanted to for days, but hadn't quite realised that Jongin did as
well.
Jongin pulls back after a moment and Joonmyun can’t help fisting Jongin’s shirt
and pulling him back.
Their second kiss is fiery and powerful, and leaves Joonmyun weak-kneed and
breathless. He’s grateful for the support of the bed beneath him; if he’d been
standing, he would have collapsed.
Jongin pushes him back down into the bed and they kiss until they need to
breathe. Then there are no words that need to be said, as Jongin slides under
the quilt and wraps an arm around Joonmyun’s waist.
Joonmyun is able to sleep like this, with the sound of Jongin’s soft breathing
in his ear, and his warmth against his skin, and he realises that this is what
he’s needed all along.
                                     ~*~*~
They play football the next day, collecting Sehun and Zitao and some of
Yixing’s friends to have a good game.
Joonmyun isn’t very good at it. He’s fairly fit, especially with all the
dancing, but he doesn’t entirely understand the rules of the game. He prefers
basketball, but he’s been told far too many times that he’s too short for it.
He’s not too short for football, because nobody is too short for football.
Running across the grass is fun, and mixing with new people is fun, but
everything has to come to an end. Joonmyun’s team lose spectacularly, and
Joonmyun thinks it’s probably his fault, although nobody overtly blames him.
Most of the group peel away, leaving the original seven.
They relax for some time before someone suggests a game of Truth or Dare.
Chanyeol dives straight in, when the bottle they use lands on Kyungsoo,
instantly daring Baekhyun and Kyungsoo to prove their relationship before
Kyungsoo is even able to answer with dare.
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “You’re so transparent,” he says, whilst Baekhyun just
laughs.
“I was expecting that from Jongdae,” he says, “actually.”
But they seem perfectly willing to kiss, if Baekhyun is just a little too
handsy with Kyungsoo. Joonmyun thinks it’s sweet, but Jongin, Jongdae and
Chanyeol are all jokily gagging.
“You can stop now,” Chanyeol says gruffly, and they reluctantly draw apart from
each other and settle back down with a giggle.
Truths and dares get sent around the circle. Jongin gets asked whether he
enjoys being a werewolf (no). Jongdae is asked if he likes anyone (yes).
Joonmyun is asked, by an overly inquisitive Jongdae, whether he’s had sex yet.
Joonmyun can’t bring himself to speak, because, for a few moments, all he can
feel is pure embarrassment. He’s not one of the boys who easily chats with his
friends about how much he gets off.
Joonmyun shakes his head silently and is surprised that they don’t laugh too
much.
“You should probably get in there,” Jongdae teases, patting Jongin on the back,
and then has a laugh at his own word choice.
Joonmyun just blushes and spins the bottle. It lands on Baekhyun, who instantly
demands a dare.
“Um,” Joonmyun says, trying to come up with something. “Sit on Kyungsoo’s lap.”
Baekhyun does so easily, sliding over and into Kyungsoo’s lap. “For how long?”
he asks, a little brattily, as he wriggles around. Kyungsoo bites his upper
arm, seemingly in protest, before flushing with embarrassment and pulling away
with a jerk.
“Sorry!” he almost squeaks.
Joonmyun shrugs, although he notices Jongin curl up into himself a little.
“Until you get dared to do something else,” he says.
Baekhyun asks Yixing if Chanyeol is romantic (he has his moments), and the next
few rotations seem to miss Joonmyun entirely.
And then Jongdae has control again, with the bottle pointing at Chanyeol.
“I dare you to make out with the person you like most out of all of us, except
Yixing-hyung,” Jongdae says, and he looks proud of himself.
Chanyeol blinks at him for a moment, before turning to Yixing, who smiles at
him.
“I have no issue with this,” Yixing says with a smile and a shrug.
Chanyeol looks at all of them slowly, as if deciding. For some reason, Joonmyun
finds his heart pounding in his chest. He considers Chanyeol his best friend,
but he isn’t sure if the feeling is mutual. Though he remembers Chanyeol’s hand
around his dick and the words he’d said, and thinks that he may very well be.
“It’s not me is it?” Baekhyun jokes. “I know I’m perfect, but I’d rather not.”
Kyungsoo smacks him. “Of course it’s not you,” he says, sounding completely
doubtless. “Don’t be like that.”
Chanyeol’s eyes do eventually reach Joonmyun. “Sorry,” he mutters, as he pulls
himself the few feet across the circle to reach him. Joonmyun isn’t sure if
he’s saying it to him or to Jongin, who seems overly still next to him,
watching with extreme focus.
Chanyeol is gentle, touching behind Joonmyun’s neck and pulling him in close.
Their lips don’t touch for a moment as they both stare at each other.
Joonmyun has never thought about kissing Chanyeol before, unlike with Jongin.
Chanyeol is his best friend. Maybe he was the only one he’d shared his dick
needs with, but Joonmyun has never wanted a romantic relationship with him
before. Everything about this is far too strange.
But it’s a dare, and they have to kiss. Chanyeol bridges the gap between them,
pressing their mouths together and instantly licking for access. Joonmyun opens
his mouth because he knows he has to, but he doesn’t enjoy the kiss, because
he’s too busy thinking about Jongin and Yixing to focus on it, even if Chanyeol
is talented, and this is likely to be the only time in his life that he gets to
kiss him.
It clearly doesn’t look like a fake kiss, if the catcalling from their friends
is anything to go by.
Their tongues fight from necessity rather than fun, and then Joonmyun can
breathe again, as he’s pulled away by the back of his shirt. “Stop kissing my
boyfriend,” Jongin grumbles to Chanyeol, who backs away with his hands up in a
pacifying gesture.
The word boyfriend sends shivers of warmth up Joonmyun’s spine and he blushes,
feeling warmth rise up his cheeks. He covers them with embarrassment and
Baekhyun coos.
They keep the game going. Yixing is dared, by Baekhyun, who declares Jongdae’s
idea of a dare to be the best thing ever, to kiss the person he finds most
attractive—not including Chanyeol. Yixing instantly crosses the circle to
Jongdae. Chanyeol twitches during the entire momentary kiss, clearly doing his
best to stop himself from pulling Yixing away. Joonmyun grins at it.
“I dare Baekhyun to go over to the girls’ camp and bring something back,”
Chanyeol says, abandoning all pretence of the game.
“Can I shift?” Baekhyun asks cheerfully, and Chanyeol nods.
Baekhyun doesn’t bother undressing, he just stands from Kyungsoo’s lap and then
his body shrinks down into a brown weasel.
Jongin stares wide-eyed at him, and Joonmyun realises that it’s the first time
that Jongin has seen a transformation happen, let alone a painless one. He
reaches over to take Jongin’s hand, hoping to be comforting, as the weasel
rushes up the mountain. They’ve recently worked out that the girls’ camp is on
the other side of the mountain, and therefore easy to get to, if they wanted to
try.
They joke around until he gets back some time later, and he spits something out
of his mouth. Joonmyun looks at it for a moment, two circles of material
attached with a bar, and some straps, before he realises that it’s a bra.
“Well that’ll do,” Chanyeol says admiringly, poking the bra with the tip of a
finger. “Strange thing, this.”
They play with the bra for a few moments, examining it, until they realise that
it’s close to dinner. Kyungsoo scoops up Baekhyun’s clothes and the bra, before
wrapping them around Baekhyun, still in weasel form. They head back to their
cabins first to wash up.
“Did you mean it?” Joonmyun asks quietly. “When you said we’re—? That I’m—?”
Jongin looks worried for a moment. “Should I have asked?” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“It just surprised me a little,” Joonmyun says. “But mostly I’m happy.”
“Then yes, I meant it,” Jongin says, and he kisses Joonmyun gently. “You are my
boyfriend.”
Joonmyun couldn’t feel happier.
                                     ~*~*~
They wake up on the final day to an announcement from the teachers.
“One of the female students lost one of her personal belongings last night,”
the teacher says. “I have been led to believe it’s very important and
expensive. If any of you know where it is, or who took it, please take it back
to her this morning, and you won’t be punished.”
Joonmyun turns to glare at Baekhyun, who sheepishly nods.
Joonmyun supervises as Baekhyun shifts back into weasel form to return the bra.
He comes back looking particularly ruffled, and throws himself into Kyungsoo’s
arms entirely naked.
“Kyungsoo!” he almost cries. “It was horrible! They—they tried to—”
“Did they try to catch you?” Kyungsoo asks, sounding worried. Joonmyun can’t
tell, because he’s busy not looking at Baekhyun’s nakedness (his bottom is
rather more shapely than Chanyeol’s, at the very least).
“They tried to hug me!” Baekhyun wails, and Joonmyun can’t help himself from
bursting into laughter. “It’s not funny! It was really scary. They cooed over
how I’d got myself tangled up in the bra and then they tried to pick me up. I
lost some of my fur!”
“Poor thing,” Kyungsoo coos. “I know just the thing to make you feel better.”
Joonmyun gets out of there as fast as he is able.
                                     ~*~*~
The final day is the day they first get to swelter in the saunas for ten
minutes before peeling themselves out to study, and they finally get to use the
hot springs in the early evening.
They all sit in the water in their swimming costumes, sharing scary stories as
the sun sets.
They start off fine, stories about ghosts that don’t make anyone except
Joonmyun scared, even though he tries not to show it. But then Baekhyun tells a
strange story about a young wolf who lives in the woods behind a school and who
impregnates lots of animals until there are tons of half-wolf babies about the
place.
“They will one day band together and kill their father,” Baekhyun says. “And
then they will be unstoppable.”
Jongin rolls his eyes, but this means that they all decide that werewolf
stories are fair game. There’s a slightly creepy retelling of Little Red Riding
Hood, and then a story about a wolf who is in love with a human who he can’t
have, and how he can hear her crying for him at night time. Joonmyun thinks
this story is romantic until he realises that the human the wolf wants is dead.
Then it stops being nice anymore and just sends shivers down his spine.
The last story is about a basically Bambi, only werewolves. The parents are
killed off by hunters.
It makes Joonmyun uncomfortable, and clearly also Chanyeol, because he says,
“No, stop, we can’t have this story. It’s too close to home.”
“What do you mean?” Jongdae asks.
“Well, I mean—Jongin’s parents,” Chanyeol says, as if it’s obvious, and then he
freezes, a look of horror spreading over his face. “Oh,” he says.
“What do you mean, my parents?” Jongin asks quietly.
“Um,” Chanyeol says, and he looks sheepish. “There was—it’s nothing, I’m sure.
It’s just that there were a pair of werewolves killed. And they left a child
behind, who was adopted out.”
Jongin looks like he’s going to be sick. “They were my parents, weren’t they,”
he says, rather than ask.
“I think they might have been,” Chanyeol says. “We can’t know for sure.”
“It makes sense,” Jongin says. “My parents didn’t know I was a wolf.” He raises
his head to look at Chanyeol, and the anguish in his eyes is enough to hurt
Joonmyun, too. “Were you ever going to tell me?” he asks.
“I…” Chanyeol says, and he doesn’t finish.
“I thought not,” Jongin says, and then he stands and climbs out of the spring.
“I’m going.” He grabs his clothes and a towel and begins the long walk back
down the mountain without even drying off.
Joonmyun only hesitates a moment to put shoes on before he chases after him.
Jongin becomes a wreck, when they get to their cabin. He curls up on Joonmyun’s
bed and starts to cry. “My parents were murdered,” he says. “I never even knew
them.”
“I’m sorry,” Joonmyun says, and he tries to wipe Jongin’s tears away. “I’m so
sorry.”
“Chanyeol-hyung,” Jongin says, the first time attaching an honorific to
anyone’s name but Joonmyun’s, “wasn’t even going to tell me.”
“I’m sure he didn’t want to hurt you,” Joonmyun says, thinking back to when
he’d been told too. “And he wanted to be sure it was your family. He’s still
not sure.”
“I’m sure,” Jongin says, and then he reaches out to Joonmyun. Joonmyun goes
willingly, wrapping his arms around Jongin and holding him until his tears
subside.
“Please don’t keep secrets from me, not if it’s about something so important,”
Jongin whispers, once he’s calmed down. “I know you knew. Chanyeol-hyung tells
you everything.”
Joonmyun can’t lie. He nods. “I knew his suspicions,” he says. “And I won’t. I
promise. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Jongin kisses him. “I know you didn’t want to hurt me,” he says, once they draw
apart, “but I need to know. I need to know.”
Joonmyun doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he kisses Jongin once again,
hoping to share some kind of comfort physically that he can’t express with
words. He hopes it helps ease the pain a little, because he doesn’t know how
else to help.
                                     ~*~*~
The next morning Jongin seems to be feeling better. He lets Chanyeol hug him in
apology without shoving him off and smiles at some of Jongdae’s jokes.
The teachers make a statement about how the personal belonging of the female
student was found, though there’s no mention of it being brought back by a
weasel.
They file back into their buses after breakfast, and Joonmyun and Jongin get to
sit next to each other. The bus lulls them back to sleep, heads resting against
each other and hands entwined.
It was a nice break, Joonmyun thinks, just before he falls asleep, even if they
didn’t do much studying. He got to spend time with his friends and his
boyfriend and he no longer has any secrets from the younger boy. And he likes
that.
                                     ~*~*~
After their break, December gets busy with revision, band practice and practice
tests.
Joonmyun works his socks off, dancing, singing, painting, drawing, studying and
everything else that comes with being a seventeen year old just before his
final year in school.
They get Christmas off from school. His family, who are strictly Buddhist,
don’t celebrate Christmas, so Joonmyun spends it painting pictures for his
friends as gifts for the new calendar year.
It’s only a few days after that that the last full moon of the year happens,
before 2010 is ushered in. Helpfully enough, the actual full moon is on New
Year’s Eve, and they have New Year’s Day off from school.
“It’s going to be a partial lunar eclipse,” Jongin says on the Monday before.
“They tend to be easier, though total eclipses are the best, no matter how long
they take. I usually end up with fewer scratches and scars after full moons.”
Yixing and Zitao are the only ones who are allowed out during the New Year, so
they send for reinforcements. Lu Han and Kevin come back from university to
join them, though Joonmyun doesn’t get the chance to see Kevin. This is a
shame, but he knows there will be other opportunities, as long as he waits.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun wakes up on the first day of the full moon with the realisation that
this is the last full moon before Jongin’s wolf becomes mature and they’re able
to finish this properly—though, he thinks they won’t be doing any permanent
finishing, the way this is going.
Heat hits mid-afternoon, just before their afternoon dance practice. Joonmyun
manages to last until they’re in a room on their own before yanking his
trousers and underwear down in his haste to get Jongin’s hands on him.
Jongin helps him down onto the floor so he’s lying on his back and then wraps
his hand around Joonmyun’s dick, stroking it slowly and steadily. But Joonmyun
needs faster, and so he knocks Jongin’s hand away to stroke himself. Jongin
watches with wide eyes as Joonmyun gets himself off, as he moans and pants, as
he contorts, body lifting from the ground, as he comes, ropes of white
splashing over his stomach where his shirt has lifted.
Jongin shakes his head at it, eyes wide in wonder, before dipping down to kiss
Joonmyun, licking into his mouth.
Once he’s calmed down from his high, Joonmyun nudges Jongin, quite needy once
again. Jongin pulls away from the kiss and heads to his back, pulling out the
lubricant.
“Would you like to try something different?” Jongin asks. “I saw this last
night. It’ll involve a lot of patience and it’ll hurt if you get scared and
your body clenches.”
Joonmyun feels worried at the description. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to see how many fingers I can fit inside you,” Jongin says, no
embarrassment audible in his voice. Joonmyun swallows.
“I’m not sure you can fit many,” he says, “but okay.”
Jongin dribbles a lot of lubricant into his hand, before slowly teasing one
finger around Joonmyun’s hole. He’s had three fingers inside before but no
more, and he’s a little nervous at what it’ll be like. But he’s grateful for
the entrance of the first and second fingers, and then the third is able to fit
with extra lube and stretching.
Even more lube, and Jongin’s little finger presses past the rim. Joonmyun moans
his loudest yet today, eyes feeling like they’ll roll back into his head. Four
fingers is so warm and so tight, and they’re deep inside and are pushing gently
against his prostate.
“I’m not sure I can take five,” he pants.
“Shhhh,” Jongin says, soothingly. “Of course you can.”
But he lets Joonmyun get used to four for a few minutes, stretching and
spreading them and then pulling them out only to thrust them back in. Joonmyun
feels himself get looser as he stops tensing and allows this.
When he seems pliant, Joonmyun feels the pad of Jongin’s thumb brush up against
his rim and he moans loudly once again. “Ohhh,” he breathes.
“Easy does it,” Jongin mutters, pouring extra lube onto his thumb before slowly
pushing it inside, up to the base of the knuckle, pushing his fingers more
firmly against Joonmyun’s prostate.
It’s like this that Joonmyun comes the hardest he’s ever come in his life, with
a shout that physically lifts him from the floor, intense stars flashing across
his eyes, and a thick streak of white splattering over them.
He softens and Jongin pulls his hand out slowly. He allows Joonmyun to rest for
ten minutes, and then stands up. “So, dancing?”
Joonmyun groans and rolls over.
                                     ~*~*~
New Year’s Eve is another late job. It strikes barely before midnight. The wolf
will be sleeping now, he thinks. It’s a partial eclipse.
Joonmyun’s parents are out celebrating the New Year and Joonmyun stayed in
because he wanted to study, so he is alone, and is able to moan uninhibited.
He is studying, he thinks, as he stares at the porn site he has open, watching
two boys fuck each other as he thrusts his dildo in and out of himself.
There’s a video he likes the look of, where one boy smears a mixture of
lubricant and come over the thighs of another and fucks him like that. Joonmyun
wants to do that with Jongin, and he comes the second out of four times
watching that. He also comes imagining Jongin giving him another blowjob, the
dildo mostly out of himself at that point.
Finally he fingers himself into an orgasm just imagining that the fingers are
Jongin’s, and he wonders when he got in so deep.
                                     ~*~*~
New Year’s Day is a day off from school.
Joonmyun goes to Jongin’s house early on in the morning and they play around,
almost having a date at home. Joonmyun attempts to bake them a cake in the
microwave and proves to them both how he can’t cook when it falls apart.
Otherwise they attempt to dance together and just generally have a good time,
until the heat starts.
“I have something I want to try too,” Joonmyun says. “I was watching a video
about how to have sex without actually doing it. This guy used the others’
thighs.”
Jongin looks surprised, although Joonmyun isn’t sure if it’s because he’s
surprised that Joonmyun wants to do something or because it’s so dirty. But
Jongin doesn’t say anything, just stands up and begins to unbutton his own
trousers.
He peels them off his body, revealing his naked lower body to Joonmyun for the
first time. Joonmyun gulps at the sight. Jongin’s cock, even soft, is bigger
than his own, and the idea of it inside him is enough to turn him into a
drooling mess.
But today isn’t about Jongin fucking Joonmyun, but rather the other way around.
They smear lubricant up Jongin’s smooth thighs together, trying not to get any
on his dick and only mostly succeeding.
The first slide of his cock through the wetness at Jongin’s thighs is amazing,
the pressure squeezing in as Jongin clenches hard. The slip and slide is a
feeling unlike any other, and Joonmyun wonders why they hadn’t thought to do it
before. He wonders what it’d be like to fuck into Jongin, but knowing that that
will come later, once Jongin is mature and can enjoy it.
“Is this okay?” Joonmyun asks, even though he knows that Jongin can’t feel any
sexual pleasure from it.
“It’s fine,” Jongin says. “As long as it’s helping you, it’s great. I just wish
I could enjoy it. But my birthday’s in two weeks, and then it’s only another
two before we can fix this for you for good.”
He sounds far too eloquent for someone who is being fucked, which makes
Joonmyun a little sad. But it’s not Jongin’s fault.
Joonmyun speeds up steadily as the pressure builds up inside his balls, and
then he shoots his load all over the inside of Jongin’s legs, his cock, and the
bed. Slipping through the mess left behind, Joonmyun just keeps going, making
sure that he can properly sate himself.
It only takes another, this time quicker, fuck of Jongin’s thighs before he’s
coming again, with a shout, and spilling until he softens.
Once done, Jongin heads into the bathroom to sponge himself clean and Joonmyun
collapses onto the bed and stares at the ceiling. “I hope we can do that again
one day,” he says aloud.
“Definitely,” Jongin says. “And I’m sure you’ll want to do it, too? With me?
We’ll get there.”
“I can hardly wait,” Joonmyun breathes, ripples of excitement and want running
through him. But it’s not time yet.
                                     ~*~*~
It’s only two weeks until Jongin’s birthday.
Joonmyun spends a small portion of each day, after school, painting Jongin a
portrait of the boy, with the wolf standing next to him, two halves of a whole.
He wants to show Jongin that these past few months have taught him that Jongin
isn’t fully whole if he doesn’t accept that he is part wolf. The two entwined
shape Jongin’s experiences and his future. He wouldn’t be Jongin if he weren’t
a werewolf. And he certainly wouldn’t be Joonmyun’s mate.
During school time they do more studying and hold more practises. The festival
is the week after Jongin’s birthday, a week before the most important full moon
of Joonmyun and Jongin’s lives. After the full moon is the end of year exams,
and Joonmyun wants to make sure that he does his absolute best.
Alongside his gift to Jongin, Joonmyun hand-paints a large piece to submit to
the festival. It’s a picture of a wolf in the woods behind their school. It’s
painted to be both beautiful and creepy, the wolf seeming to move closer to the
painter every time you look at it, and Joonmyun is more proud of it than
anything he’s painted in his life.
The day of Jongin’s birthday, he runs to school, finding him in his classroom.
“I’ll give you a gift after school,” he says, and leans in to give him a
kiss—their first in school. “Happy sixteenth birthday.”
He’s not the only one who’s given Jongin a gift. Baekhyun gives him a collar as
a joke, though Jongin rolls his eyes and seems to take it well. The rest of
them put money in for a pair of new dancing shoes.
They’re shiny and beautiful and even Joonmyun is touched that they thought to
do that for him, especially as they didn’t ask Joonmyun what to get, they just
went and bought them.
Jongin, himself, nearly cries. Joonmyun knows that he’d never have had the
money to buy them himself. He’s been using the same shoes for years as far as
he can tell, and they’re beginning to fall apart, even though Joonmyun hasn’t
said anything.
“Thank you, Hyungs,” Jongin whispers, breath shaky as he tries to hold back his
tears. “This means so much to me. You have no idea.”
Chanyeol does the unthinkable then—he gets up and hugs Jongin, wrapping arms
around his shoulders from behind. “We’re just glad you like them. You deserve
it.”
Joonmyun feels his own eyes mist with tears at this, and he smiles at all his
friends with as much love as he can muster. He has the best friends in the
world.
After school, he takes Jongin aside and gives him the painting, rolled up.
Joonmyun thinks it ended up beautiful, paint strokes blurring the two figures
together where they’re connected, showing that they’re one being.
Jongin unrolls it and stares at it for a moment.
Joonmyun starts talking quickly because of his nerves, his desperation for
Jongin to see what he sees and to like it. “I just wanted you to know that you
and the wolf both—you’re special to me, and you’re my boyfriend and my mate and
you’re one, and I wanted to tell you that I respect and care for you both
because of it, because of how you’re one—”
Jongin kisses him, tugging him up to meet him and his mouth. Joonmyun tries to
talk through the kiss for a moment before he realises, stops, and kisses back.
“I love it,” Jongin says, when they separate. “And I understand what you mean.
I think I’m starting to see, with the rest of the shifters keeping me safe,
that the wolf isn’t as fearful and dangerous as I once thought he was. With
them around, I’ll never injure anyone again.”
He gathers Joonmyun into his arms and Joonmyun presses in close, holding his
head in Jongin’s shoulder, and feeling perfectly content.
                                     ~*~*~
The closer they get to the festival talent show, the more nervous Joonmyun
gets.
He’s not nervous about the painting that he finally finished and handed in to
be shown with the rest of the artwork from students, because he knows it’s
amazing. But he’s not a good singer, and he’s beginning to wonder if their
performance will be at all accepted by the public and—more importantly—by the
judges. They’ve worked too long and too hard to find out that it’s rubbish and
nobody likes them.
Zitao, who does martial arts, is participating as well. Apparently he tried to
get Sehun to join as well, but Sehun believes that his purpose in life is to be
a beautiful pink ram and look bored.
“You should have joined to model,” Joonmyun tells him, and Sehun rolls his
eyes.
The choir isn’t taking part in the talent show, but they’re singing the
introductions and the intervals, and watching them rehearse the day of the show
makes fear rise up Joonmyun’s throat, and he has to grip Jongin’s hand tightly
and focus on Jongdae and Kyungsoo to make himself settle.
“Breathe,” Chanyeol says, once the choir is finished. “You’ll be fine.” He
takes Joonmyun’s other hand and rubs it between his own. “He’ll be fine,
right?” he asks the rest of their band, who nod in agreement.
“Just remember how cute you are,” Baekhyun says. “You can make anything work.”
“Not helping,” Chanyeol says. “Kyungsoo!” he calls over to the stage. “Can you
come over for a moment and hit Baekhyun for me?”
Baekhyun smacks Chanyeol.
The strange thing is that the normality of the situation is doing more to calm
Joonmyun down than the reassuring words. Baekhyun offering bad advice and
bickering with Chanyeol, Chanyeol doing his best to be the father figure before
he remembers he’s supposed to be a young comedy genius, Yixing thinking
intensely about whatever Yixing thinks to keep himself focused, and Jongin next
to him, a warm and comforting presence. Jongin squeezes Joonmyun’s hand and
Joonmyun realises that he can definitely do it.
When it’s their turn, EXO go on stage and they rock it.
Jongin dances harder than he’s ever danced in his life, hitting the
choreography perfectly. Yixing and Chanyeol turn their playing up to eleven.
And Baekhyun hits notes that are almost too high to be pleasurable. Joonmyun
himself goes from bearable to melodic, sounding the best he’s ever sounded in
his life.
They finish their performance feeling amazing and Joonmyun knows that even if
they don’t win, he doesn’t mind at all, because that was one of the best
feelings of his life.
They go to mingle in the crowd during the interval. Joonmyun finds his parents
with his older brother and Kevin, and leads Jongin over by the hand.
“You were so good!” Joonmyun’s mother coos. “Both of you were great!”
“It was okay,” Joonmyun’s brother says with a shrug. “You were pretty good
though,” he adds, turning to Jongin, who looks proud and happy at the
compliment.
“I agree,” Joonmyun says. “You were great.”
Jongin blushes.
Kevin just smiles at him. “Hey squirt,” he says, when they get a chance to
break away from Joonmyun’s family. “How’s everything?”
“Great!” Joonmyun says, still riding his adrenaline high. “I feel on top of the
world.”
“I see you two are doing well,” Kevin says, nodding down at Joonmyun and
Jongin’s entwined hands, and it’s Joonmyun’s turn to blush.
“Yeah,” he says, “we are.”
They head back to watch the rest of the performances when the interval is over.
Zitao is amazing, flying through the sky as he kicks and flips in a perfectly
choreographed routine. The other performances pale in comparison after he does
his bit.
Neither EXO nor Zitao win, although Zitao comes second and gets himself a shiny
silver trophy. The winner is a student who is able to contort herself into a
tiny box, which Joonmyun thinks is well-worth first place. At least it wasn’t a
girl with a dancing dog.
He moves away to look at the art table. There are so many beautiful paintings;
of people, animals, their school. There are photographs and drawings and even a
collage of photographs spelling out “Happy New Year”. Joonmyun doesn’t see his
painting and worries that it wasn’t posted.
And then he turns, feeling dejected, and sees his painting, in a thick white
frame, standing pride of place on a table all its own.
It looks majestic, like it’s the most important piece, and Joonmyun feels both
proud and upset, like he’s lording over the rest of the pupils like he’s better
than them. Some of the other art is just as good as his painting, but his is
the one that gets preferential treatment, the one that gets shown off.
His painting is surrounded by adults, and he sneaks closer to hear their
discussion.
“This is amazing,” a man, talking to Joonmyun’s art teacher, says. “It’s
beautiful.”
“Look at how the wolf comes closer,” a lady says. “It takes great skill to make
a painting come to life. You said this is a student’s work? I could have sworn
this would be by a famous painter. It’s astonishing.”
Joonmyun blushes at their praise. He’s proud of it, and it’s one of the best
things he’s ever painted, but he had never thought that it’s worthy of such
commendation and compliments.
“I would like to buy this painting,” the man says, “but I think it would be
better in his portfolio. There is not an art university in the world that would
not accept a student with this amount of talent.”
“Oh, there you are,” Joonmyun hears, and he turns to see Jongin and Chanyeol.
They come to stand behind him.
“That’s amazing,” Jongin says. “Who painted it?”
“I did,” Joonmyun says, and although he says it quietly, the man and the woman
turn to face him quickly.
“You’re the artist?” the man asks. Although his Korean is impeccable, Joonmyun
realises that he is non-native, possibly American.
“Yes, Sir,” Joonmyun says. “I’m Kim Joonmyun.”
“This is a fantastic painting. I very nearly asked your teacher how much it
would be to buy it,” the man says, turning back to admire it.
“Lee-Seonsaengnim invited my husband and I to look at your painting as we were
in the neighbourhood,” his wife, who is Korean, says. “He said we’d want to see
this. Young man, you have an amazing gift.”
“How old are you?” the man asks.
“Seventeen, Sir,” Joonmyun says. “I’ll be eighteen this year.”
“Well, Joonmyun-sshi,” the man says. “I work for the New York Academy of Arts.
When you’re finished school, submit an application to us and I’m sure we can
see what we can do. Your talent is amazing and I would like to see to it that
we are the ones to hone it.” He hands Joonmyun a card.
Joonmyun stares at the card for a moment in absolute shock, before bowing
frantically to the man. The man offers his hand to shake and he does so. “Thank
you so much, Sir,” he says.
“I’ll be waiting to hear from you in a year,” the man says with a smile. “Along
with your portfolio.” And then he leaves with his wife.
“I can’t believe that just happened,” Joonmyun breathes.
“Please don’t pass out,” Chanyeol jokes. “You wouldn’t want to destroy the
art.”
Joonmyun waits until Mr Lee isn’t looking before kicking Chanyeol.
                                     ~*~*~
The last week before the full moon is spent doing nothing but studying.
Joonmyun barely even sees his friends, let alone Jongin. They have no time to
dance and no time to chat. Even during lunchtimes Joonmyun eats in his
classroom over a textbook. Now he’s been given an offer to study at a
prestigious arts university, he doesn’t want to do anything to mess up his
chances. Starting from now, he’s going to be dedicated to passing exams and
doing his best.
Though that doesn’t mean he can’t have fun at the weekends, and, as the first
day falls on Friday and the actual day—The Day; D-Day—happens on Saturday, he
thinks he’ll manage.
Friday starts as it always does. Joonmyun spends the day studying, though he
makes an effort to see his friends at lunch for the first time that week.
Jongin squeezes his hand and smiles when he looks, and Joonmyun is flooded with
excitement. Today is the last day before Jongin is mature. Today is the last
day that Jongin’s dick won’t get hard watching him pleasuring himself or
helping him himself. Today is the last day before the last puzzle piece falls
into place.
Heat begins spot on three o’clock. Joonmyun can hardly make it to another room
and he tugs Jongin into the closest toilets, which is blissfully empty. They
lock themselves in a cubicle and after a quick kiss, everything gets underway.
Jongin sucks Joonmyun off briskly, knowing they don’t have a lot of time before
someone else comes in. Joonmyun isn’t sad. They’ll have all the time in the
world tomorrow, to break Joonmyun’s heat, hopefully for good.
Once Joonmyun’s come once, Jongin slips his fingers into Joonmyun and brushes
over his prostate until he comes a second and third time. Jongin swallows it
all down and holds Joonmyun steady so that he won’t fall to the ground on shaky
legs.
“Tomorrow,” Jongin promises, “tomorrow it won’t just be my fingers.”
Joonmyun almost gets hard at the thought alone.
                                     ~*~*~
Joonmyun heads over to Jongin’s house Saturday morning with a spring in his
step. This is it. This is the day. It’s D-Day.
He doesn’t think he’s ever been quite as excited for anything before in his
entire seventeen years of life.
He vibrates with excitement as he and Jongin watch a film together, some
ridiculous comedy called Attack on the Pinup Boys by Super Junior that tries
too hard but is nonetheless entertaining, knowing that anything except some
kind of escapism will cause Joonmyun to think too hard about what’s coming.
“At least this will take your mind off it,” Jongin had said when they started
the film.
“How are you not excited?” he’d replied, and Jongin had laughed.
“Of course I am, I’m just better at hiding it than you.”
The film does its job, getting Joonmyun focused on the absurdity of the plot
and not on the idea of later having full-on sex with Jongin for the first time.
It’s as they’re discussing the plot after lunch over a shared pizza that
Joonmyun feels the tell-tale tickle of heat sweep up his body.
Jongin notices a second after he does. “Well, this is it,” he says. “Can’t back
down now.”
“I don’t want to back down,” Joonmyun pants as he hastily removes all his
clothes and settles back on the bed, hand fisting his dick. “I want you in me.
I need you.”
Joonmyun watches as Jongin swallows, a reaction that he’s never seen Jongin
make before. He smiles and takes the lubricant, pouring some over his fingers.
He then slides them down his sweating body, leaving a trail of coolness behind
for a moment, before swirling them around his hole. He makes sure that Jongin
can see as he slowly presses them inside himself—in, out, in, out. He pushes
his fingers up inside and moans, body lifting off the bed.
“Whoa,” Jongin breathes, “that’s really hot, now I can feel something. My dick
agrees.”
And Joonmyun can see it if he looks directly at Jongin’s crotch, he can see as
Jongin’s cock swells and hardens, pressing up against the material.
“I feel like a twelve year old who’s just realised their dick gets bigger when
they think about naked ladies,” Jongin says in wonder. “This is great. This is
really great.”
He quickly undresses and his cock, now free, curves up towards his stomach,
thick and pink and beautiful, and Joonmyun can’t help crawling across the bed
towards him. He takes the cock in his hand, heavier than his own, and leans
down to lick the tip.
“Oh wow,” Jongin says, “that feels amazing.”
It’s like introducing to a world that Joonmyun’s already been privy to, the
idea of sexual pleasure. He takes Jongin into his mouth and tries to share his
joy and ecstasy with him. He sucks and he licks and he hollows his cheeks so
they brush against the side of Jongin’s dick.
When he reaches down to play with Jongin’s balls, Jongin pants, “Stop, or we
won’t get to finish.”
Joonmyun reluctantly pulls away with an obscene pop, mouth and cock connected
by saliva trails that snap as he lies back and gestures Jongin to come closer.
His cock glistens with saliva and Joonmyun feels happy.
They don’t use a condom, neither of them feeling the need to. Jongin slicks
himself up with lube and then positions himself at Joonmyun’s entrance.
Joonmyun can feel the head bluntly pressing up against him and he moans.
“You ready?” Jongin asks.
“Yes,” Joonmyun breathes, and then Jongin’s pushing inside.
It’s not as painful as he’d thought it might be. He supposes that being
stretched so much has helped, as has the one time Jongin had fisted him,
filling him up with his fingers. Because even as Jongin seats himself inside as
far as he can, there’s only a little discomfort, but mostly pleasure.
Jongin pauses to let them both get used to it. “I was wrong,” he pants. “This
feels amazing.”
“Move,” Joonmyun breathes, and Jongin does, pulling out to thrust back in. He’s
going punishingly quickly for their first time and it’s absolutely perfect.
Joonmyun holds onto Jongin, arms around his shoulder, as Jongin brushes against
his prostate constantly. Already stimulated from fingering himself, it doesn’t
take long for him to come, painting both of their stomachs and moaning loudly.
Jongin keeps going, not giving Joonmyun time to come down from his high and
this time he does feel the over-stimulation burning through him, and it feels
so good that he drags Jongin down for a kiss.
“I’m close,” Jongin pants into his mouth. “Come with me.” He wraps a hand
around Joonmyun’s cock and strokes in time with his thrusts, getting faster as
he hits his orgasm. He thrusts erratically through it, releasing into Joonmyun,
who comes a second time with a moan that’s almost a scream, body shaking so
much that Jongin looks worried for a moment. He slips out of Joonmyun. “Are you
okay?” he asks.
“I’m perfect,” Joonmyun says, feeling himself soften, and he pulls Jongin down
for another kiss. “I’m absolutely perfect.”
Wrapped together in each other’s arms, they drift off for an afternoon nap, and
Joonmyun dreams that he’s asleep next to the wolf, who seems perfectly happy to
lie there with him, because this is his mate. This human is his. His human to
love—such an unusual concept, for a wolf—and protect. There will be no pups
from this one, but that’s not what the wolf needs. He needs companionship,
apart from his pack—the single-horned shiny beast, the winged beast, the large
furry beast, the curled horned beast, and the others he’s run with; the two
little animals he doesn’t want to eat, the beast with the tall and spiky horns
and the other with wings—and love, and this human can give it, will give it,
for the rest of their lives. He moves closer to his mate.
In his sleep, Joonmyun smiles.
                                     ~*~*~
Epilogue
A few years later, when they’re both in college in New York, Joonmyun having
finished his first two years at New York Academy of Arts and Jongin in his
second year at Juilliard, Joonmyun realises that they’ve really made it.
Spending two years away from Jongin had been hard, although his heat had never
acted up again after the first time they mated, despite Chanyeol’s fears. It
had been hard because Joonmyun loved Jongin, and being away from the love of
his life had been a challenging experience. But with Skype calls every day
between Korea and America, they had been able to make it work—and video sex had
been great, too.
But now they don’t have to do that anymore. They have a flat together in New
York, paid partially by Joonmyun’s parents—who’d welcomed Jongin into their
family with open arms and open hearts, seeing how happy he makes Joonmyun—and
by the money he earns painting portraits for people. Jongin, too does his part,
being a frequently requested dancer for public events. So that’s how they pay
their bills.
They still see their friends, Jongin’s pack. Once most of them had finished
school, Sehun and Zitao had stayed with him, running with him until they’d all
finished school as well. It’s harder to run over here, but Joonmyun thinks
they’ve worked out a scheme; during the weekend moons, they go away to a cabin
near the woods, where the wolf is allowed to run free—with Chanyeol and Yixing,
who have moved nearby, to guard him. But for the work days when they can’t
leave, Chanyeol’s family built a chamber in their flat like the one Joonmyun
had stayed in so long ago, a safe place for Jongin to sleep. Just having his
mate nearby seems to calm the wolf a little, but only sometimes.
Jongin insists he be caged, though it seems humiliating, in order to protect
Joonmyun and anybody else that he can. It hurts Joonmyun every time he bolts
the door, but it’s for the best. It means that if they get any visitors,
nothing will happen to them. The wolf can’t get out. Best scenario if the wolf
did get out would be that he destroyed the house running around. Worst scenario
could be anyone ending up with teeth in their throat. It’s better to be
prepared for the worst.
Chanyeol and Yixing had stayed together throughout the years, and moved to New
York once Chanyeol finished school. Yixing is at university to become a nurse.
Chanyeol works with animals, which is something fitting. Jongin and Joonmyun
see them every weekend, and sometimes even more often.
Baekhyun, Kyungsoo and Jongdae are at university back home, but they Skype
regularly, keeping in touch. They’re the same as always, teasing each other and
Joonmyun every time they talk, and Joonmyun finds that he doesn’t miss them so
much when he can see their faces. Baekhyun has recently been doing his own
research into Therianthropy, trying to work out why he gained his ability so
late in life. Joonmyun wishes him the best of luck.
Sehun and Zitao are well. Zitao is at a martial arts university and Sehun
nearby as always, though Joonmyun still isn’t sure whether he’s at university
or not. They never seem to be able to be apart from each other for very long.
Joonmyun finds it cute. He’s heard from the others that their animal forms are
even closer, the large tiger bathing the smaller ram like he’s his own child.
The eldest two of their group, Minseok and Lu Han, the ones with all the
knowledge, seem to be doing well, living together in China, and Kevin—well,
Kevin takes great joy in trying to hold conversations over Skype in fantastical
Pixiu form; the beautiful and kingly mythological beast managing to be far less
graceful as it tries to work out a computer mouse with its hooves. Joonmyun
knows he does it to make him and Jongin laugh, but he also thinks that Kevin
just enjoys showing off.
Their lives are underway. They live together, and Joonmyun’s best friend isn’t
too far away, always ready to come if they need him. Their other friends and
his family are at the other end of the phone. Aside from some kind of potion to
help Jongin with the pain of the changes, Joonmyun doesn’t think he would
change anything at all.
Life is good.
FIN
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