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“Wow how long was I out? A couple of days? Weeks? Years?” He laughs and it’s an oxymoron in itself. The sound is comforting but it does nothing to comfort at all.

“You…you shouldn’t joke about stuff like this you idiot…”

“Hey, man, I’m sorry. The disease got to me.”

“Don’t—just…don’t. You have nothing to apologise for.”

。。。。。。。。。。

“Oh my god.” Himchan says as he stares at Yongguk from his perch on the other couch, “this just went from kidnapping someone’s kitten to kidnapping one of—maybe the only successful product of one of the biggest experiments in today’s world of science. This is serious. Like this would be big if the media catches wind of it. Daehyun's existence? Mind-blowing. What if he’s the secret to world domination? The answer to many, many unanswered questions of our world? Our universe?!”

Yongguk rubs his face irritably and looks over at Himchan who is babbling away at nobody in particular. “Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

“No.” Himchan admits without a beat or semblance of shame, “But I do know that we are in possession of a very important thing and I’m just worried about what’s gonna happen to us now if anybody finds out.”

“I’m still in the room.” Daehyun says quietly, “And I’m not a thing.”

The three of them sit in the living room with the heavy atmosphere settling all around them. The weight of the situation has yet to hit them, but when it does, they know it’s going to hit hard. Yongguk sighs and rests his forehead on the back of his hand as he leans on his knees. This whole thing with Daehyun just keeps getting more and more ed up and it hasn’t even been half a year since he brought Daehyun home. Seriously, all Yongguk wanted to do was to save a kitten from the rain. That’s it. He sighs audibly and looks up, realising he must have said it out loud because Himchan is snickering and Daehyun is growing pink in the face.

"Well I guess there’s no use sitting around and doing nothing.” Himchan pipes up.

 “Then what do you suggest we do?” Yongguk shoots back. He doesn’t mean to be so snappy but the stress is starting to creep up on him and his nerves are sizzling and on edge.

“Continue like we did before.” Himchan says, grinning and leaning back into the couch, “Sit around and do nothing.” Yongguk stares at him for a moment, but then he chuckles behind his closed fist.

It’s a very Himchan thing to say, and it makes him think, of all the people in the world, he’s glad it’s Himchan going through this ordeal with him and not anybody else.

。。。。。。。。。。

After that day, Daehyun is plagued with nightmares when he closes his eyes. Or that’s what they would be if they weren’t closer to memories than anything.

It’s cold and blue and he’s suspended, floating. He can barely open his eyes and it’s hard to breathe when there are tubes in your lungs as there are in your arms and legs and spine and everywhere else. He shouldn’t be able to see his veins so clearly, should he? He can’t move. He can’t speak. But he can hear a whirring sound—perhaps of an engine of some sort, he can’t really tell. A figure approaches him, and the next thing he knows he’s on the ground, and gasping for air. The ground is stony and he slips on the blue liquid all around him, on him. His vision is blurry and his head hurts a lot and all he hears is the deafening sound of the real world beyond blue liquid and thick glass. It sounds like nothing and it sounds like everything. Someone bends down next to him. They touch his shoulder. It’s hauntingly familiar.

He wakes up.

。。。。。。。。。。

It’s probably four in the morning when Yongguk hears the bedroom door opening, ever so quietly. He cracks an eye open and sees the unmistakeable figure standing in the doorway; nobody else in their right mind would wear such a thick sweater during such a warm night like this. Yongguk is confused and tired, so he stays completely still and pretends he doesn’t notice Daehyun come in, even when the younger walks towards the bed and sits on the edge of it. His ears are pressed back and for a second he looks like he’s about to run back out again, hands pushing down onto the bed, body poised and ready to take off at any moment. But as soon as it happens, his body slackens and instead, he lies down on the bed and curls up into a ball with his back towards Yongguk, putting a fair bit of distance between their bodies.

Yongguk closes his eyes and listens to the sound of Daehyun falling asleep. It should lull him back to his peaceful slumber, but it doesn’t. Even in the darkness, he thinks Daehyun is beautiful, and the radiance prevents Yongguk from joining him in the realm of dreams. You can’t even see him, he tells himself. But then, he thinks, his beauty right now has nothing to do with what Yongguk can see. It's the slow breaths, the inhales, the exhales, the low purring he can barely catch onto above the sound of silence. It's the slight dip in the mattress that he can feel, coaxing him down and closer to the warmth mere inches away. None of that he can see.

He’s tired and his mind is fuzzy—fuzzy enough for him to throw away all reserve and roll around towrap his arm around the boy's small body, curled up on his side. He can feel Daehyun tense at first contact, but a few seconds in and his muscles relax.

And that is how Yongguk finally falls asleep, with his arms full of warmth, face buried in soft hair that carries the scent of green apples, and a long, smooth tail wrapped around his leg as he falls into Daehyun’s gravity.

。。。。。。。。。。

It’s unmistakeably the best sleep he’s had in days, weeks, maybe even months. The spot next to him is empty by the time he opens his eyes, but the linen is wrinkled and the fabric is still warm, evidence that last night wasn’t just a realistic dream his lovesick mind conjured out of desperation. The sound of sizzling, perhaps sausages or eggs or bacon or hashbrowns, coaxes him out of bed, even before the smell reaches his nose. It was when he heard a loud scream that he decided it was time to get up. After taking his time with his daily morning routine (brush teeth, contemplate using a comb to fix hair, decide against it, shrug, run fingers through hair, take a piss, miss the toilet, shrug, wash hands, leave while drying hands on pants) he pads into the kitchen, half and hair sticking out in angles that should be physically impossible and sees Daehyun propped up on the kitchen island swinging his legs like a child with Himchan manning the frying pan.

“Um, good morning!” Daehyun chirps, but Yongguk doesn’t fail to notice the flush tiptoeing onto Daehyun’s cheeks. Daehyun must think that his crawling-into-Yongguk’s-bed had gone unnoticed, so Yongguk decides to leave it now and bring it up later when his painfully empty stomach isn’t threatening to implode and turn into a black hole and in everything in the immediate vicinity. Because that might happen. There is a very high probability of that happening, right here, right now.

He reaches over and scratches behind Daehyun’s ear and listens for the purring while Himchan slides a plate over towards him. The eggs and bacon forms a smiley face and Yongguk resists the urge to chuck something (perhaps the fork that is so placed ever so conveniently next to his hand) at Himchan’s head because damn, that ’s horrendously cute.

“He almost destroyed the kitchen,” Himchan says as he turns back to the pan and serves up two more plates of bacon and eggs, laughing good-heartedly, “that’s why I had him sit on the island. It was safer. For all of us.”

Daehyun’s gaze drops to his hands before Himchan pushes a plate into them. He was only trying to help, honestly. It’s not his fault that Yongguk’s bottle of whiskey had been so well camouflaged amongst all the canola oils and peanut oils (in fact, that was the point—although thanks to Daehyun, its cover is now blown and Himchan is now aware of its existence), that he had ended up unintentionally flambéing the bacon. At the first blaze of fire, he screamed for Himchan’s help, on the brink of tears as the fire raged in front of his eyes and threatened to singe his eyebrows off. He had been stuck between throwing the pan out the window in fear and holding on to the offending item while Himchan laughed and leisurely made his way over to the boy shrieking in the kitchen to relieve him of the object. Somehow he managed to hold on just in time for Himchan to take over breakfast. He was still screaming even when the fire was long gone. 

“It’s only a few hours into my day-off and I’ve already prevented the burning down of our apartment,” Himchan says as he stabs at an overly-crispy piece of bacon that snaps underneath his fork, “incredible.”

Yongguk snorts and Daehyun shoves a whole egg into his mouth.

“So how was your sleep last night?” Himchan asks indifferently, after a few minutes of knives and forks clinking against china. Himchan is smirking to himself when both heads whip around to stare at him. Himchan never makes small talk like this, Yongguk thinks suspiciously. 

“It was—“ “Uhh—“

Himchan looks down at his plate and works on slicing a piece of bacon fat off, and his shoulders shake with what Yongguk presumes is laughter. He shovels in more food into his mouth, the scraping sound of fork against plate piercing Yongguk’s eardrums and making him grind his teeth in discomfort. Himchan knows he hates that sound; in fact he’s complained about it since the first day they met.

“The you laughing at?” Yongguk grunts as he shoves Himchan’s shoulder. The sheer force of the push causes Himchan to almost fall right off his chair, but latches on to the edge of the table just in time, somehow managing to not pull on the tablecloth and drag everything down with him.

After balancing himself, Himchan reaches in the pocket of his sweatpants and chucks his phone on the table. Daehyun watches with eyes wide with panic and fear and abruptly stands up, gathers their dishes and rushes into the kitchen to esca—clean up, when Yongguk snatches the phone and he feels the familiar throb of a vein in his head when he sees what’s on the screen.

It’s an incriminating photo of Yongguk wrapped around Daehyun, covers thrown off the bed and in a messy heap on the floor to reveal their very intimate position in the bed this morning, with Daehyun’s tail curling around the arm thrown over his waist and Yongguk’s leg hooking over Daehyun’s. Yongguk’s face is pressed against the back of Daehyun’s neck and it looks so terribly romantic that the first thing Yongguk does is delete it. Himchan doesn’t bother trying to stop him and instead, titters quietly.

“I already have like ten different photos of you guys like that, all in different angles, backed up on my laptop, and” Himchan raises his voice when it looks like Yongguk is about to storm away and destroy aforementioned laptop, “on a cloud service.”

“What the …” Yongguk mutters, sitting back down, “That's...so much effort…” His tone disbelieving.

“It was cute. I wanted to preserve the moment for eternity so when you guys have little half-human half-catboy babies I can be the awesome uncle that shows them these photos and tell them how adorable you two were.”

“We’re both guys.”

“Yes,” Himchan answers, finding it amusing the way Yongguk hadn’t even bothered denying anything else but the fact that they can’t biologically have children, “but you never know. Daehyun isn’t your average dude."

Yongguk sighs. He’s given up. The almighty Himchan is undefeatable.

“True that…” He mumbles, deleting the rest of the photos from Himchan’s phone anyway. The less in the world, the better, “True that.”

。。。。。。。。。。

From: youngjae is the bees-knees wowie [10:45am]
well ur looking comfy ;)

Yongguk grips his phone in his hand so hard he can almost hear the creaking of the battery cover, mere seconds away from cracking.

“Kim Himchan.” He mutters ominously, a deranged smile on his face as he changes Youngjae’s contact name back to a simple ‘Youngbutt’, “I am going to strangle you with your own intestines.”

。。。。。。。。。。

During work, Youngjae doesn’t stop making bedroom eyes at him for the whole of his shift whenever he gets the chance, and Yongguk has to physically take himself to the opposite side of the bar so he doesn’t knock Youngjae out cold with a heavy bottle of gin.

。。。。。。。。。。

Yongguk gets home at 2:40 in the morning having stayed behind to help Youngjae with post-closing clean up and locking up the bar. When he fianlly arrives home, he tries not to open the door loudly because he’s sure that both Himchan and Daehyun are asleep and he doesn’t want to wake them up. He’s just that nice of a guy, obviously.

But when he steps in, the living room lights are still on and bright (and blinding after being surrounded by the night’s blanket) and he sees Daehyun sitting on the couch in the living room looking somewhat afraid. His knees tucked up against his chest and—is he trembling? He doesn’t seem to notice that Yongguk’s in the room, and if he does, he’s not making an effort to acknowledge his entrance. Immediately, Yongguk strides over to the sofa and crouches down to Daehyun’s eye level and places a hand on his quivering shoulder. This startles the boy, who flinches away from Yongguk’s touch.

“Hey, hey calm down.” Yongguk says as gently as possible, but he places his hands beside Daehyun on the sofa instead, and he refrains from touching the boy again, although he sorely wants to when he notices the smudged tears on his face, “What’s wrong?”

“Yongguk.” Daehyun says simply. Then a small finger brushes along Yongguk’s index finger before it curls around it, nervously, carefully, and holds it there, “I’m so scared.” His voice is a whisper and Yongguk wants to kiss those tear-stained cheeks so bad but he knows he can’t and so he doesn’t and he wants to pull Daehyun into his arms and hold him there but he knows can’t and so he doesn’t. He just passes his thumb over Daehyun’s hands in what he hopes is a soothing gesture and asks him why.

Words spill from Daehyun’s mouth then, about the blue and the glass and the humming machine and the feel of the cold hard stone as he falls onto the ground, the touch on his shoulder that is so familiar. Yongguk listens and takes it all in, but he doesn’t know what to say. He watches, concern marring his features, and Yongguk tells himself that he’s in love and it’s terrifying how deep he’s fallen without even realising. The boy is frightened and that scares Yongguk too, and he realises, this is part of what love is: sharing burdens and fears. The tears well up at the base of Daehyun’s eyes when he talks about how confused and lost he feels, because he knows he doesn’t belong here—how just a creation and so he’s not meant to be alive and that...that hits Yongguk, hard.  And when the first drop falls, Yongguk can’t help it when his hand reaches up, seemingly on its own volition, and brushes it away, and the next, and the next, and the next, until he’s cradling Daehyun’s face in his hands like he’s a doll carefully crafted from delicate porcelain—but Daehyun is so much more than that, more beautiful, more valuable, more precious, more fragile. 

“They’re going to take me away.” Daehyun chokes out and it breaks Yongguk’s heart when he hears the crack in his voice when he speaks. “I don’t want to leave.”

“It’s okay, they won’t. Nobody is coming to take you away.” Yongguk reassures him as he continues to rub away the tears, “And if they do, I won’t let them.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Daehyun repeats, quieter this time, chest heaving as he in more air, “because…” He hiccups and sniffs and if Yongguk could see himself at that moment—the way he looked at Daehyun with a gaze so tender, he would’ve seen a man so, so in love, he wouldn’t have recognised it to be the same man half a year ago.

“I love you.”

And the words hold him like a vice and crushes him between the pincers. It drowns out the rest of the world, and a rush of heat floods Yongguk’s body.

Yongguk just stares.

“I-I’m sorry.” Daehyun apologises when Yongguk doesn’t respond. “Can I…can I sleep in your bed tonight? Again?” Daehyun asks between breaths. Yongguk, still holding Daehyun’s face in his hands, nods and watches his eyelids flutter shut. Yongguk slowly, lightly pulls Daehyun into a hug, arms around his shoulders and lets the warm tears soak into his shirt as he rubs soothing circles on his back. When he calms down, Yongguk stands up and reaches his hand out and Daehyun places his hand in his and it just feels so right to be holding it like this. Daehyun was wrong when he said he wasn’t meant to be here. Daehyun belongs here, not just in the world, but here…with Yongguk.

When they reach the bedroom, Daehyun crawls under the blanket and immediately curls into himself. When Yongguk climbs in as well, Daehyun turns, hesitantly, and buries his face in Yongguk’s chest and Yongguk can feel his tail brush against his hand. Yongguk can hear his heartbeat now and he wonders if Daehyun can hear it beating for him too. It’s rapid, and it’s in love.

Yongguk presses his lips softly on the crown of Daehyun’s head and the younger’s ears twitch.

“I love you too.” He whispers, reciting Daehyun’s words back to him, before letting his arm drape over the smaller’s waist. He could say those words over and over again until they wear out, but for Daehyun, they will never lose meaning, even when his throat dries up and his tongue bleeds.

He knows this when Daehyun snuggles in closer and Yongguk feels something soft against his lips and it takes him a while to register that Daehyun is—was—kissing him. It lasts for barely a second and Daehyun is back to cuddling, leaving behind a rush of electricity through Yongguk’s veins and suddenly he’s holding his world—his universe—in his arms. It’s too dark to see anything, but Yongguk knows, always and forever, that Daehyun looks beautiful, now, always.

。。。。。。。。。。

Days, maybe even weeks pass by before they finally tell Himchan about the nightmares and Daehyun’s visions—his memories. Yongguk swears he can see Himchan stiffen when he hears it before he reverts back to his usual old self, but it’s probably because it reminds him of when Daehyun fainted in front of the t.v and that incident had traumatised Himchan, who thought he had tickled him too hard. How the would that even work anyway?

And, of course, it takes them a little longer than that to muster up the courage to also inform him of their now established relationship. Well, it's not like they asked each other to be their significant other but after their confessions that night, Yongguk likes to consider them official. Sorta. After all, they had to explain why Daehyun had been sleeping in Yongguk’s bed almost every night since the day Himchan took those terrible photos and sent them to everybody and their mothers, and they were running out of excuses and threats when the morning lark kept sneaking a few snapshots before they woke up.

“Aww, so you do chase away his nightmares?” Himchan coos, leaning over the counter and placing his chin on his laced fingers. Daehyun coughs a little before he looks at Himchan nervously.

“Actually…yeah. I don’t get them when…he’s there…”

Himchan grins so widely Yongguk wants to tell him to stop before he splits his own face in half. He doesn’t want that to happen. It would be disturbing and messy.

“Well would you look at that. Big ol’ womanising tough guy, Bang Yongguk, falls in love with cutie-patootie, shy and innocent catboy, Jung Daehyun.” Himchan says theatrically, clapping his hands together and looking forlornly into the distance (or more accurately, the wall of the living room), “When’s the deflower—“

“Himchan that’s enough.” Yongguk barks, as Daehyun attempts to wear his most scandalised expression as his face gradually reddens, “There’s no deflowering happening to anyone, okay…holy ...”

“Well, I’m glad you guys got that out of the way.” He says, dropping his hands back onto the table, “It was getting frustrating watching you two. Your life will be so much easier now that this hurdle has been conquered.”

“—yeah, something high-school Himchan never accomplished—“ Yongguk mutters under his breath.

“Sh!” Himchan silences him, “Nobody talks about athletics day at high-school. Nobody.”

。。。。。。。。。。

Himchan is right. Life is easier and much more pleasant too. It’s hard for him not to smile when he knows he can now steal kisses and watch with amusement as Daehyun turns a delightful shade of pink (Yongguk had grown to love the colour of pink on Daehyun’s skin), or give him backhugs when he has his back turned and press kisses to his temple. Youngjae had elbowed him playfully in the ribs at work after mentioning that he seemed a lot livelier and pretty much radiated happiness. He could practically see the flowers floating around his head.

“It’s that boy right?” Youngjae mentions out of nowhere when business slows down.

Yongguk whips around and stares at Youngjae. How the …?

Seemingly reading his mind (or his expression) Youngjae laughs. “Himchan.” He says simply and that answers Yongguk’s question, all too well.

“That guy…” He groans, rubbing his temples, “I swear to god I will rip his tongue out and break his fingers so he can’t talk or text or just—communicate, with anyone ever again. Ever. Even if it’s the last thing I do.”

Youngjae just laughs and hands him a tea towel and directs him to the rack of wet glasses, patting his back on the way.

“Well, I’m happy for you, man.”

。。。。。。。。。。

Himchan makes gagging noises every time Yongguk leans into Daehyun’s space and plants little kisses on his cheeks or holds his face and presses his lips to his forehead, to his nose, to his mouth. Yongguk doesn’t care for Himchan’s acting though, and neither does Daehyun. Yongguk just smiles into Daehyun’s skin and listens to Daehyun’s laughs as Himchan groans about their PDA, even though they’re technically not in public and it’s just Himchan who’s “unfortunate” enough to witness such displays of affection. Yongguk claims it’s jealousy and if he can’t stand it he can move out because it’s his apartment “and that means this ’s gonna happen on a daily basis”, he throws out when he and Daehyun stumble into the bedroom, tangled in each other’s limbs.

“It’s our apartment goddammit.” Himchan argues back to himself as he picks up the remote and changes the channel from the ty drama playing, but Yongguk’s attention has been stolen by the young boy with the cat ears and tail, who presses himself against Yongguk’s chest and his hands against his shoulders and nibbles at his jawline.  

Himchan sighed and shook his head. 

"I guess I just have to deal and learn to live with it."

。。。。。。。。。。

However, nothing could prepare Himchan for when Daehyun suddenly went into heat. Don't even get Himchan started on heat week. If he was to describe it in one word it would be really-mothering-traumatising-please-get-me-a-knife-to-stab-my-eardrums-with-and-a-vat-of-acid-to-dunk-my-head-in. 

It started when Yongguk was at work and so Himchan was left with Daehyun in the apartment. Now usually, nothing happens when it’s just him and Daehyun alone in the apartment. Things are normal—Daehyun does his own thing, Himchan does his own thing, and there would be the odd conversation here and there, a few hours of gaming and that’s it. Normal.

What was not normal, was seeing Daehyun curled up on the bed, red-faced and breathing heavily like he was stuck in a sauna wearing a trench-coat and thermals.

“Oh my god.” Himchan said when he walked into the room to see if he was up for a round of Left 4 Dead 2 with a couple of friends from work. One look at Daehyun and he could tell that the boy was definitely not up for a round of Left 4 Dead 2 with a couple of friends from work. "Are you okay?" The boy shook his head weakly and his ears flopped around on the pillow as his tail lay limp on the bed as if it weighed a hundred tons.

“Do you—do you need anything? Oh my god what’s going on are you sick? Please don’t get sick under my watch Yongguk is going to skin me alive.”

“I’m—I’m not sick, Himchan.” Daehyun said, and his voice sounded dry, like he had just woken up and was in desperate need of water. Himchan stared at him, with his inability to move and heightened temperature. ‘Not sick’ would be the last words Himchan would use to describe his appearance right now, next to “a one-legged tyrannosaurus rex” and “Bill Cosby”.

“You look like you need a drink of water. Do you want a drink of water? You need me to get you a drink of water? Because I can get you a drink of water.” Himchan spat frantically. The boy nodded and Himchan lifted two hands out in front of him as he slowly backed out of the room, “Okay. Stay here—not that you can move or anything, but don’t die and I will be right back.” Then Himchan turned and sprinted into the kitchen, filled a glass up with cold water and speed-walked (as to not spill anything) with the aggression of a hundred enraged rhinos back to the bedroom, powered by the thought of Yongguk coming home to a dying Daehyun and a Himchan allowing the Daehyun to continue with his dying. He does not want to be killed, young and beautiful, by the hands of his best friend. He glances at the clock and holy it’s ten past two in the morning and Yongguk is going to be home any moment.

When Himchan bent down to give him the cup of water, instead of bringing it to his lips, Daehyun had dumped the whole thing on himself.

“What the ?!” Himchan yelled as his mouth dropped open and his eyes widened. “Daehyun! What the are you doing that is not how you drink you’re supposed to drink with your mouth not your entire body you are not a sponge you do not—”

And when Himchan reached out to push the wet hair out of Daehyun’s eyes, he was suddenly cut off when Daehyun's sudden outburst.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Dude, you have like water all over you at least dry off.” Himchan said as he picked up the towel draped across the back of Yongguk’s desk chair and proceeded to wipe the water off Daehyun’s face and neck. The moan that followed made Himchan freeze on the spot.

“Holy , what was that?” Himchan asked, eyes wide and fearful. After that, he was too afraid to move his hand so he just kept it there, awkwardly, with the towel pressed against Daehyun’s skin. He’s hot, Himchan realised, as he could actually feel the heat radiating from his skin through under the towel.

“Listen carefully to me.” Daehyun said, forcing the words out through his teeth, “I’m…I’m in heat right now.” He muttered quickly and quietly, like tearing off the band-aid. To be honest, it was just as embarrassing for Himchan hearing it as it is for Daehyun to say it.

“Oh.” Himchan scratched his head, “Well this is unexpected.”

“I need you to not touch me for the next couple of days, okay? Or at least until this whole thing is over. It’ll probably be a few days but I’m—oh my god.” Daehyun whines as he shudders underneath Himchan’s touch when Himchan accidentally moves his hand, rubbing the rough towel against Daehyun’s overly-sensitive skin. And it’s just at this perfect time, when Daehyun’s making ually-charged noises, that the door behind him opens.

“Kim Himchan," the voice snarled, "do you have a death wish?”

。。。。。。。。。。

As soon as Yongguk takes a step into the room, he’s hit with a wave of heat and he notices the air is heavy with a lingering scent of tropical flowers. It throws him off for a while and it takes a few seconds for him to refocus as his sight becomes muggy from the atmosphere. He glances over at Himchan who looks as guilty as if he’d been caught red-handed stealing the crown jewels, and Daehyun himself who is lying on the bed, hair matted onto his forehead. There’s an empty glass beside him on the pillow, and Yongguk gathers that it had something to do with why Daehyun’s face and his pillow are now soaked in water.

After having heard the less than coherent Himchan explain to him as to why he was in his room with a Daehyun (“help me holy he’s in heat oh my god he’s in heat what do we do?!”), Himchan excuses himself and scampers out the room, leaving Yongguk and Daehyun in a room thick with pheromones. Daehyun was exuding them like a cat and the fact that he was now human meant that the amount proportionate to his size was now sufficient to affect other humans. Humans like Yongguk. The scent alone was hindering Yongguk's ability to control himself and it took him all of his strength to not take Daehyun right there and then and slam him against the wall and him just like that. Because Daehyun looked extremely tantalising: flushed, panting, pliant and subdued.

“Daehyun, are you...are you oka—”

Yongguk's question is interrupted when Daehyun suddenly grabs him by collar and violently yanks him onto the bed. Yongguk lands on his back and Daehyun is immediately on his lap, straddling him and rubbing himself against him, eager for any sort of friction on his skin, and , loud and unabashed. Daehyun leans down and kisses Yongguk.

His kisses are dainty: pecks on the lips and to the underside of Yongguk’s jaw and down his neck. It’s Yongguk that first deepens their kiss, his way into Daehyun’s mouth and enjoying the way the other whimpers. He selfishly swallows every moan that spills from those pretty pink lips, determined to keep them all to himself. Daehyun does the same and Yongguk tightens his hold on Daehyun’s hips before flipping them over so that Daehyun is on his back looking up at Yongguk with lust-glazed eyes from under a fan of thick lashes.

When one of Daehyun’s hands slide up Yongguk’s shirt and across his abdomen, while his other hand slips under the waistband of his jeans, panting heavily and needy as he arcs his body against him, spilling hot breath across his collarbones, Yongguk can’t help the growl that escapes into Daehyun’s warm, soft skin as he listens to the rush of blood at his jugular. Being able to graze his teeth against Daehyun’s pulse shouldn’t turn him on as much as it does but now he’s mewling into his ear, small keening noises, and choking out soft, wanton noises of pleasure with that beautiful voice of his when Yongguk bites down on the pale column of his throat and god help him if he doesn’t want to hear that same voice screaming his name, over and over again.

。。。。。。。。。。

“Oh for ’s sake!” Himchan yells from the couch and chucks his spoon at the bedroom door when he hears Daehyun’s muffled moan from behind the door. There’s a brief moment of silence and Himchan rejoices in his victory, albeit much too early. Because then there’s a thud on the wall followed by a loud high-pitched, distinctly-Daehyun scream and yeah, that must be Yongguk’s way of retaliating and yeah, it definitely works.

He wins.

The almighty Himchan accepts defeat.

He shuffles, beaten, into the kitchen to grab a new spoon to eat his muesli with and walks into his own room and sits himself in his cupboard. He hopes that maybe from here he won’t hear anything.

He does.

。。。。。。。。。。

There is also that one (less traumatising) time in the kitchen when Daehyun chucked half-cooked noodles at Yongguk and Himchan had to remove himself from their presence because the two started chasing each other around the kitchen, calling each other by their pet names (“you piece of ”, “fatass”, “dickwad”). Daehyun was wielding his wooden spoon like a weapon trying to fend Yongguk off and Yongguk was laughing as Daehyun tried to escape from the kitchen, but his socks were too slippery and the lack of friction meant that Daehyun was slipping around looking really, really stupid and the lack of friction also meant that for every step he took forward he slipped back two.

The last straw was when Yongguk finally caught Daehyun and pulled him back against his chest and mushed a handful of spaghetti in his face, making Himchan faux-vomit and reprimand them before yelling at them to take care of the spaghetti themselves (“and make sure it’s al dente or we’re going to have oily Chinese takeaways for the rest of the week!”) because he couldn’t watch them waste all the noodles and he just couldn’t handle those two being gross and cute, not now, not ever. Daehyun tried to squirm out of his hold, but Yongguk dotted kisses along the back of his neck and the other suddenly became soft and pliant in his arms. That’s right, he thought, it must have something to do with cats and their scruff.

“I love you.” Yongguk had mumbled into his hair, suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to do so in the spur of the moment.

And Daehyun had turned around said it back, punctuating each word with a kiss on the lips, ending with a punch on the arm when Yongguk’s guard was down for getting noodle up his nose. It left a bruise for almost an entire week, but that was okay.

。。。。。。。。。。

Yongguk discovers that Daehyun likes to sing in his free time, and so he occasionally asks Daehyun to sing for him. Yongguk’s ears feel like they’re being drenched in honey and his heart feels like it’s being wrapped in silk—a gift for Daehyun. There are no words to describe how he feels when Daehyun sings. He’s on clouds, he’s in heaven, he’s flying—they’re all too over-used and cliché.

He’s happy, though.

He discovers that Daehyun prefers videogames over books and so they spend most of their time playing co-op games together when Himchan is at work or asleep (because they don’t want him to feel left out when only two player mode is available).

Daehyun loves horror movies but he doesn’t have the heart for it—which is perfect, Yongguk thinks, because that means cuddling. At first Yongguk thought he could sneak a couple of kisses in, but he learnt it was probably not a good idea because Daehyun is very jumpy and had once headbutted Yongguk in the mouth when he tried to lean in and kiss him and all he got out of it was a split lip.  He never tried it again.

Daehyun prefers indie over heavy metal, which Yongguk reckons is understandable because heavy metal is just all screams and messy guitar with a backdrop of crazy drumming and it hurts Yongguk’s ears as well. He had been told his hearing was always a little sensitive so he guesses that’s part of why he doesn’t particularly like the sound of heavy metal over say, the smooth sound of indie and Daehyun is the same. Ears are sensitive, he says. Yongguk agrees.

The spark, he thinks, is there and it’s ignited and it burns in Yongguk’s ribcage, a flame searing in his heart and roaring through his veins.

。。。。。。。。。。

On the nights he comes home particularly late, Yongguk whispers apologies to Daehyun who’s lying in bed and gripping the corner of the blanket with sweaty hands and white knuckles, because he knows the other can’t sleep soundly without him. It’s not only for the fact that he’s late, and robbing him of the good sleep that he could be having, but because he can’t fully eliminate the nightmares like he truly wants to. He can only keep them at bay and he’s sorry that’s all he can do.

He would then collect him in his arms and reach up to card his fingers through the brown hair that smells like green apples and tell him to relax, because Yongguk’s here now, and he’s going to be okay.

He promises, he’ll be okay.

。。。。。。。。。。

It won’t be until a couple of months later that Yongguk will regret those very words. 

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A/N: Laughs forever at my pitiful attempts at sort-of-. I will never be able to write . Ever.

I feel like this story is progressing too fast yet too slowly at the same time??? What do you guys think? Am I just being too picky or is the flow of my story actually ed up for some reason?

And also random trivia about me you most likely don't care about: although I wrote that both of them prefer indie music over metal, I'm actually the opposite! I love heavy metal so I wasn't sure how to write metal as something unenjoyable hahahaaaaaa.

Oh yeah, although I usually update every day, I won't be updating this time tomorrow because I'm going to be hitting the clubs and hooking up with cute boys tonight until the early hours of the morning to celebrate the coming of 2014!! So I will either be too drunk or too hungover to function in my own body let alone update the story. Or I might not crash at all and pull an all-nighter instead which will end up in me being dead for the next 24 hours or so, also resulting in no update!

Sorry my lovelies! I will be back the next day though. 

Happy New Year beautiful people!! ♥