The morning after such evenings always began in late afternoon. This wasn't often a problem for Chanyeol—dragon shifters were more night than day creatures anyway—but today it certainly made his silent creep into his bedmate's kitchen a little more awkward than he liked. The leopard shifter who'd taken Chanyeol home the night before was coincidentally also the chief shifter and current representative council member for all shifter species, and Chanyeol felt uncomfortably small in the other man's presence on a good day. (And depending on one's definition of good, today was not one of those days.)

Chanyeol stretched his long neck around the corner that connected the hallway to the kitchen and peered into the room, nervous anticipation making his body tense as if for battle. The first thing he'd noticed during his approach was an entwined smell of burning pancakes and something else—something that reminded Chanyeol of dragon gold in a field of violets, even though such a thing was strange even in his own mind and couldn't really be anyone's personal scent, no matter how curiously appealing.

The first thing he saw, though, once his body followed his head around the corner, was the smaller shifter, clad only in boxers, dancing around the room with a spatula held close to his mouth like a microphone as he sang along to the HOT song on the radio. Chanyeol didn't know who still listened to the music of the 90s, or even radio for that matter, but the sight was endearingly adorable. It hardly fit with the deep gouges the leopard had dragged into Chanyeol's skin during their moments of intimacy the night before, but Chanyeol's immune system was already hard at work repairing that damage and the dragon did not mind storing both images of the other man into his memories.

As if he sensed a sudden audience—and maybe he did—the shifter in question whirled around, dropping the spatula in his surprise and merely gaping when Chanyeol's reflexes caught the kitchen utensil before it reached the ground.

"Careful," Chanyeol growled, the deep timbre of his voice clashing against the other man's higher tone as the leopard murmured at the same time, "Good morning."

This kind of discomfort was painful to witness in any context, and Chanyeol caught the other man groaning a beleaguered "I'm too old for this!"

Me too, the dragon wanted to agree. But the leopard was old, far older than Chanyeol himself. Chanyeol knew that the few months from his coming of age to the uncovering of this, his soulbond, paled in comparison to the other man's near 20 years. Instead, Chanyeol took a bow apologized for the awkwardness—or his part in it at least.

"Forgive me, Council Member Kim," he requested, head bowed in respect as he tried not to remember the leopard's enthused response to the title when Chanyeol had screamed it out in ecstasy the night before. "I have overstayed my welcome."

"Junmyeon," the leopard corrected with a hush. The pancakes, already slightly burnt, continued charring on the pan behind him. "Your years on this earth do not even begin to conquer my own, but even a hatchling such as yourself can understand the gravity of our situation."

Oh yea, Chanyeol could understand. And whatever offense he felt at Junmyeon's continually expressed distaste for their (considerable) was easily ignored in light of that understanding.

"We bonded," the dragon shifter recapped bluntly. He ignored the leopard's surprised intake of air and forgot all the deference he'd displayed mere moments earlier. "And for the record, Junmyeon, ask any human outside the dome, and you know as well as I do that they'll say we're the same age." He paused, cheekily giving the chief shifter's diminutive shape an appreciative once over before adding "With your height, I might even be older."

Shifter magic just worked like that. It's victims were young until they came of age and then remained that way until a few years before death, well into their mid-200s. No one knew why. It just was.

Sort of like how soulbonds happened. They just did. People didn't really understand why an act of physical intimacy between two of the same supernatural race sometimes resulted in a connection more lasting than most lifetimes. Or why such bonds only manifested between two members of the same species.

Or why dragon shifters existed as the sole exception to that bio-magical rule, which is how Chanyeol and Junmyeon found themselves standing in the leopard's kitchen, face to face but avoiding each other's gaze, the knowledge of their newly discovered tie hanging heavy between them.

"I'm too old for this," Junmyeon repeated after a silence that lasted a beat too long. He switched off the stove, turning his back to Chanyeol just long enough to toss the skillet into his sink, pancakes and all. With a sigh, the man reached instead to a cupboard right above his refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of scotch. (No supernatural race could hold its liquor better than the shifters—with the obvious exception of trolls.)

Chanyeol took the bottle when offered and joined his soulmate in sliding into an exhausted heap into the cold, tiled floor. This time, he didn't bother keeping his thoughts to himself, and with a long look at Junmyeon as the other man took a long swig of his alcohol, Chanyeol agreed.

"Me too," the dragon told his leopard. "Me too."