“Sehun! Sehun!” Kyungsoo’s frantic call echoed through the trees. “Sehun! Oh no, boy, no! Sehun!” he yelled, sounding absolutely terrified as Sehun ignored his warnings and took a flying leap off the branch of one tree to land precariously on another close by. Kyungsoo shrieked Sehun’s name again, this time sounding quite put out. Sehun figured the wizard was just annoyed that Sehun had managed a safe landing even though he hadn’t listened, so Sehun simply grinned. The glee on his face was quickly replaced with trepidation, though, as the branch began to crack under his slight weight, soon giving way and tossing Sehun toward the forest floor. Luckily, he was somehow able to catch himself on a lower branch by the tips of his fingers, and Sehun counted himself very fortunate for the quick save—until Kyungsoo’s goading voice decided to comment, that is. “What did I tell you? Always look before you leap!”

“Well,” Sehun countered defensively, “I made it, didn’t I?”

Kyungsoo looked aggravated at the challenge, inching cautiously across the branch Sehun had just vacated in order to continue lecturing his pupil at a closer range. “Yes, yes,” he agreed in a tone that made Sehun feel like a complete idiot—despite the fact that he was right—“You made it. But that was just luck, boy!” He stepped forward a little more, muttering something about starting with the small jumps but then letting out a frightened shout when he barely made the short distance across to Sehun.

The boy raced forward to help his tutor scramble up until he was balanced more securely on the top of the branch, and Kyungsoo took the opportunity to look Sehun straight in the eyes and say, “See? Even on the small jumps you can still miss. You shouldn’t take gravity too lightly.”

Though he was used to the wizard’s strange ways and even stranger vocabulary—the man had just temporarily transfigured them into squirrels, after all—this was not a word Sehun recognized. “What’s gravity?” he asked his teacher curiously.

Placing his hand on the top of Sehun’s head so that he could force his student’s head to look far down to the base of the tree, Kyungsoo replied, “Gravity is what causes you to fall.” He had forgotten that this was still the medieval period and that Newton had yet to be born—let alone create invaluable scientific laws—but that didn’t change Kyungsoo’s stance that the future king needed as much education as possible.

Sehun, though, was still confused. “Like a stumble, or, or a trip?” he inquired, trying his best to redefine the new  word in terms that he could understand.

“Yes, yes,” Kyungsoo agreed without thinking, “like a stumble or a—oh no, no!” he said suddenly, startling Sehun and causing the boy-squirrel to almost fall off the branch. Once Sehun was righted again, he took off through the branches, leaving Kyungsoo to scramble after him while grumbling about how undignified it was to be a squirrel. To take his mind off it, Kyungsoo continued his explanation. “It’s the force that pulls you down.” Finally deciding it wasn’t worth his energy to chase a much younger Sehun around, Kyungsoo settled himself comfortably against a branch of a tree to watch his student and make sure nothing too dangerous happened.

Yet danger has a funny way of being relative, so Kyungsoo merely kept lecturing on about gravity, even as he noticed another squirrel running in Sehun’s direction. “The phenomenon,” he said, eyes glowing with interest, “that any two material particles or bodies, if free to move, will be accelerated towards each other!” He finished his explanation with a flourish before laughing loudly when the other squirrel nearly collided with his distracted student and took a small step back in order to consider Sehun’s squirrel form appreciatively.

From his vantage point, though, Sehun could see none of what had Kyungsoo doubling over in laughter. Instead, a button nose and warm brown eyes filled his vision and made Sehun wonder if it was weird for a normally-human boy to think that a squirrel was kind of adorable. He was able to rationalize the faint attraction with the thought that some humans did find squirrels cute, though he chose to overlook the fact that the cute in that situation was more of an “Aww, look, a squirrel. It’s so fluffy!” and less of a “Wow, I want to get to know you better.”

Chatter from the squirrel in front of him pulled Sehun from his thoughts. “Hello!” the squirrel said excitedly, and Sehun was surprised that Kyungsoo’s transfiguration abilities apparently included a built in translator. That hadn’t been the case when they’d been fish in Sehun’s moat the other day, but Sehun didn’t have time to waste on wondering about the magical specifics because the squirrel’s communication didn’t stop with merely a greeting. “You’re cute!” the other gushed. “I like you!”

Sehun didn’t need this, and he tried to tell the other that, but the squirrel ignored him, instead mirroring every one of Sehun’s attempted evasive maneuvers and making it impossible for the boy to escape. He groaned loudly, keeping his eyes on the squirrel in front of him but turning his head slightly so as to speak with Kyungsoo as the latter came scurrying over from behind. “Um, Kyungsoo,” Sehun began cautiously, “how will we get by?”

“Hmm?” Kyungsoo hummed in response, still distracted by his amusement over Sehun’s sudden problem. He grabbed onto Sehun’s tail to keep it from hitting his face before looking past his student to see that the other squirrel was still refusing to move. “Oh! Well, I suppose we better go back.” Kyungsoo turned around and Sehun quickly followed. “To a sidetrack,” the wizard elaborated further, speaking at a volume high enough that Sehun didn’t hear the other squirrel behind him until there was a light tap on his shoulder and it was too late.

“You’re leaving?” the other squirrel asked. “Where are you going? I’ll come too.”

Sehun shook his head vehemently, annoyed that the squirrel still managed to be cute even when also being so obnoxious. “Go on!” he nearly shouted, gesturing with his arms in the opposite direction so as to get his point across. “You’ve got lots of room!”

The squirrel, though, made no move to go around them or to leave. Instead, he wiggled his nose adorably as he cooed, “Won’t you take me with you? I don’t need lots of room; I just need you!” A loud chuckle burst out of Kyungsoo, but Sehun just rolled his eyes since he now knew for sure that the squirrel could, in fact, understand him and had only, until then, been refusing to listen. The squirrel inched toward Sehun while the latter was again distracted by his thoughts, causing Sehun to throw his hands out in a reflexive gesture of self-defense and land them squarely on the other squirrel’s nose. The movement would have been strange between to humans, but the squirrel didn’t seem to mind and soon reciprocated the action—apparently Sehun’s attempt at protection had become a courting game.

“It seems he won’t be sidetracked,” Kyungsoo muttered under his breath in amusement. To Sehun, he said, “That’s a young adult male squirrel. And a redhead at that!” he added with a wink in his student’s direction. Sehun lowered his hands from the squirrel’s face in exasperation, but the latter just grabbed them and put them back.

“I’m Baekhyun,” he giggled, lightly patting Sehun’s nose with his own hands once more before scurrying across the branch in a way that clearly flirted “Chase me!” When Sehun made no move to comply, Baekhyun huffed and said, “Coming?” before giving up and returning to Sehun’s side. He clearly thought Sehun was an idiot in the romance department because Baekhyun shot him a firm look—for a squirrel—as he reached forward to once again place his hands on Sehun’s face. Sehun, thought, was getting better at reacting in time, and managed to lift his hands in the air so that the shorter Baekhyun was unable to reach them. This, however, didn’t deter the other squirrel in the slightest because Baekhyun took Sehun’s evasion as an invitation to wrap his smaller body around Sehun’s and wriggle all over in his attempts to grab Sehun’s hands.

This squirrel was quite persistent, Sehun would give him that, but Sehun was growing tired of Baekhyun’s fascination with games, and he wasn’t prepared for the thought that having the latter moving around in his lap would me much more pleasant if both were human. “He sure acts funny,” he commented to Kyungsoo, glad that the still-playing Baekhyun only seemed able to understand when the human-squirrels spoke to him and not when the humans only spoke to each other.

“Well,” Kyungsoo admitted gleefully, “He likes you.”

Sehun wasn’t actually a squirrel, so the idea that another one would be physically attracted to him didn’t make any sense in his brain. “But, why?”

Kyungsoo laughed yet again—he seemed to be doing that a lot today, Sehun noticed—before he replied. “Well, that’s nature again,” the tutor said. “I’m afraid there’s no time to expla—” he started giggling as Baekhyun pounced on Sehun and both squirrels tumbled toward him before beginning to wrestle, using Kyungsoo’s body as a base. “Here, here now!” Kyungsoo shrieked in laughter, “You better leave me out of it!”

“Yeah! Me too!” Sehun shouted at Baekhyun in agreement as the other squirrel continued chasing him and saying, “What’s your name? I like you. This is fun!” Sehun rushed forward to hide behind his teacher before glaring at Baekhyun. Feeling much safer now, Sehun turned around to run to a different tree and away from his ardent admirer. Much to his chagrin—and Kyungsoo’s continued amusement—Baekhyun had a different idea and yanked Sehun’s tail toward him so that Sehun not only tripped, but also started sliding back in Baekhyun’s direction. “Kyungsoo!” Sehun yelled desperately. “Kyungsoo!”

Kyungsoo, however, had returned to his front row seat against the tree, and instead of helping his student remove himself from Baekhyun’s overeager clutches, the wizard reached up to pluck a delectable looking acorn from where it hung above his head. “You’re on your own, lad,” he told the future king. “I’m afraid magic can’t solve this problem.”

Trying to regain Sehun’s attention, Baekhyun fluttered long eyelashes at him before cooing a deceptively demure, “Yoohoo.”Sehun nearly growled his frustration at them both, but found that, as a squirrel, such a reaction was physically impossible, so he settled for baring his teeth instead. “Look,” he said around a mouthful of Baekhyun’s tail which had somehow wound it’s around Sehun’s body to caress the latter’s face. “I’m not a boy,” he tried explaining to Baekhyun with a shake of his head. “I mean,” he corrected himself, embarrassed that the sensual curl of Baekhyun’s tail around his body was still affecting him so much, “I’m not a squirrel. I’m a boy!”

“I’m glad,” Baekhyun flirted, moving closer and nuzzling at Sehun’s neck as the other gulped.

“I’m a boy!” Sehun tried again, blushing when Baekhyun muttered, “Just my type,” in muted vibrations against Sehun’s skin—err, fur. “No!” Sehun grumbled, angry at himself for being unable to communicate coherently. “I mean I’m a human boy. Not a, not a real squirr—”

Before he could finish, though, Sehun felt the strangest sensation against his mouth as warm lips met his own to kiss him three times in quick succession. Baekhyun pulled away, blushing as a flustered Sehun turned bright red and pushed the former off so he could scramble away. “Leave me alone!” he declared, trying to sound forceful but mostly just coming across as shocked.

“You don’t mean that,” Baekhyun said confidently, coyly hiding behind his tail while continuing to flutter his eyelashes prettily.

“Kyungsoo,” Sehun begged, “what do I do? He won’t leave me alo—oof!” Baekhyun had come up behind him and pushed him forward teasingly, probably thinking the two were playing yet another game. The squirrel started chattering incoherently, mirroring Sehun’s frowning face and grumbling words back at him before tugging lightly on the boy’s tail and hiding his face again.

“So grumpy,” Baekhyun pouted. He looked up at Sehun with a sudden grin, “But also cute!”

Still cradling his yummy acorn, Kyungsoo nearly choked on a piece of it when he started laughing again. “Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck, lad,” he explained with a wink. “When a squirrel chooses a mate, it’s for life!”

Sehun groaned and Baekhyun echoed him almost exactly. “But I won’t be a squirrel tomorrow,” the boy-squirrel pointed out to Kyungsoo.

“That’s true,” his teacher agreed. “But Baekhyun doesn’t know that. He only knows one simple fact: that he’s a him and so are you!” Kyungsoo laughed as Baekhyun tried to get Sehun to flirt by placing his hands on Sehun’s nose once more and giggling teasingly before scurrying away. Sehun saw his chance and flew toward his teacher, quickly hiding himself view under the generous fluff of Kyungsoo’s tail as the latter continued. “It’s a natural phenomenon.”

This was another new word to Sehun but he didn’t want to risk being found so he remained silent and hoped Kyungsoo would err on the side of caution and define it. “Hello?” Sehun heard Baekhyun chirp cheerfully, “Where are you?”

“It’s a state of being,” Kyungsoo said, amusement evident in his voice as he pointed hintingly toward his tail and Baekhyun quickly pulled Sehun out of hiding. “A frame of mind. It’s a most befuddling thing.”

Baekhyun pecked Sehun twice more—once on the nose and once on his lips—but Kyungsoo ignored them both and kept talking. “To every being—of every kind!—it’s discombobulating. You’re wasting time resisting,” he told Sehun as the latter scurried past with Baekhyun hot on his heels, “because the more you do, the more he’ll keep insisting that his him has got to be you!” Kyungsoo sounded so pleased that Sehun wanted to hit him for it, but he was a little busy being chased and he wasn’t sure his tiny squirrel fist would do a lot of damage anyway.

“Leave me alone!” he shouted to Baekhyun, forgetting Kyungsoo’s warnings and attempting a long jump without first seeing where he was going. Sehun began to fall and he could hear a whimpering Baekhyun high above him, but Kyungsoo kept chuckling and rambling on about love and other such nonsense, so Sehun figured he’d land eventually and be okay. He was right for no more than five seconds later he was falling hard onto a much lower branch and rolling forward into the trunk of the tree to regain his balance. Baekhyun let out an audible sigh of relief, but Sehun didn’t hear it because he’d just happened to land right on top of Kyungsoo’s very grumpy, very verbose pet owl who had no problem lecturing Sehun about all his wrongdoings.

“What?!” Kris hooted, annoyed that his master’s bratty student had woken him from his peaceful nap in the afternoon sun. “Now go on! Find your own tree!” he ordered, taking full advantage of the fact that he was temporarily bigger than Sehun and could bully the boy to his heart’s content. “Shoo! Skedaddle!”

Sehun scrambled backward as fast as he could, turning away only to leap a short distance from the owl’s tree to another before taking refuge inside the trunk as Kris continued to shout at him. When he glanced up at the tree’s higher branches, there was no sign of either of the other two squirrels. His sigh of relief was premature, though, because Baekhyun suddenly popped up next to a startled Sehun and giggled an elated, “I found you!” before kissing Sehun once more and telling the boy, “I win!”

There didn’t seem to be any winning for Sehun, though, because in his haste to escape Baekhyun, he managed to collide with Kris again. “Oh, you squirrely squirrels!” the owl hooted in anger as both Sehun and Baekhyun trampled over him on their way back up the tree.

“Ah ha!” Kyungsoo shouted, emerging from where he’d apparently been stuffing his face with more acorns. “He’s gaining on you, Sehun!” he warned his student with a wide grin. Kyungsoo reached up to pick another acorn before adjusting his glasses—sometimes Kyungsoo’s magic went a little wide, so this time they’d shrunk to squirrel size, too. He watched as Sehun leapt from branch to branch, silently cheering for Baekhyun while entertaining himself by tossing the acorn back and forth and continuing to mutter on about discombobulation.

Much like Sehun had been when he first met Baekhyun, Kyungsoo was too distracted to notice the approach of a new squirrel, not pausing in his explanation or his juggling until the other was nose to nose with him. Kyungsoo shivered as he took in the stranger squirrel’s round cheeks, slight smile, and adorable little ears. This one was a red head too, and Kyungsoo knew instantly that the flirty look of determination on the squirrel’s face was Kyungsoo’s karma for making fun of Sehun. The squirrel reached out to pinch Kyungsoo’s cheek with a wink and an “Oo!”, backing the wizard into the trunk of the tree and grabbing his face with his hands.

“Now, mister,” Kyungsoo started, gasping when the other squirrel tugged his tail playfully. “Sir!” he declared indignantly, wondering if this is how Sehun had felt when Baekhyun was all over him.

“Minseok,” the other squirrel corrected with a low purr, and Kyungsoo didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that his ears were likely turning pink from their close proximity.

“You’ve got it all wrong!” Kyungsoo ground out, still trying his best to convince Minseok that he was no suitable choice for a squirrel mate. Minseok ignored him—he was a lot like Baekhyun, this one—and pulled Kyungsoo’s tail again.

“Sir. Sir!” Kyungsoo shouted once more, bringing his tail toward him protectively and using it as a shield.

“It’s Minseok,” came the cooed reply. “You’re so dignified,” Minseok added coyly, “so attractive. I like that in a man.” Kyungsoo was trying to minimize conversation, so he didn’t correct the other that both were squirrels and neither was a man at all.

“Look here!” Kyungsoo said, once he realized that not speaking to Minseok wasn’t going to make the squirrel leave. “I am not a boy.” He scrambled backward as Minseok inched closer. “I mean, I am not a squirrel; I’m a boy—man.”

Minseok did the squirrel equivalent to waggling his eyebrows and pursed his lips to send an air kiss in Kyungsoo’s direction. “I noticed,” he said hotly with another wink. He reached out his hands to pull Kyungsoo closer, accidentally hitting a sensitive spot and tickling Kyungsoo until the wizard ended up right where Minseok wanted him: in his arms. Kyungsoo struggled but Minseok was bigger than him—if only slightly—so his efforts were in vain. Realizing this, Kyungsoo decided on another tactic and turned around in Minseok’s arms to try and reason with him.

“No,” he maintained, “I’m a human man. Leave me be!” His protests were silenced with a resounding smack of Minseok’s lips to Kyungsoo’s own and Kyungsoo experienced the strangest sensation as his fur stood all on end as his body reacted to the intimate contact. When Minseok pulled away with a satisfied smirk, Kyungsoo yanked himself out of the other’s arms and shouted, “Go away! Shoo!”

Minseok backed up a little, but his giggling did not bode well for Kyungsoo. The wizard was a smart man, though, so he took off running, shouting for Sehun and beginning to gather his transfiguration magic as he did so.

“Kyungsoo!” Sehun’s response came quickly as his little squirrel body shot out across the branch and followed his teacher down the trunk to the forest floor. “I’m tired of being a squirrel!” he told his tutor as they ran. “It brings nothing but trouble.”

Indeed, Sehun was right, for though Kyungsoo and the future king both reached the bottom of the tree without their romantic counterparts, both Minseok and Baekhyun were not far behind.

“Caught you!” Baekhyun giggled happily as he latched onto Sehun in a snuggling hug. Minseok was less cuddly about his excitement, but Kyungsoo could tell by the strong grip around his waist that Minseok was pleased to have caught up. The wizard grumbled, thinking of how difficult it would be for him to work his literal magic while attached to a squirrel and worrying that his glasses might not survive the process if something went wrong.

A grumpy Kris was soon startled from his nap yet again, this time by a flash of bright light and a startled shout of “Kyungsoo!” Ready to complain heartily to anyone who would listen that tutoring bothersome human boys was so not his style, Kris flew down to where his master was once again a human. The owl was surprised, though, to see a stranger with his arms wrapped possessively around Kyungsoo’s waist.

“Who, who, who is that?” Kris hooted at his master.

“I,” Kyungsoo started to speak, frankly as shocked as his owl about the unknown man. Something occurred to him, though, and he turned his head so as to look up at the man who had yet to let him go. “Minseok?” he asked tentatively, taking in the still round cheeks, the pink lips, and the adorable ears, and wondering how he’d missed something so obvious.

A few steps away, Sehun was attempting to deal with the sudden transition back into human boy. It had been his voice that shouted for Kyungsoo right after they’d retransfigured, partly because Sehun liked to be warned when someone was about to perform magic on him, but mostly because there was a smaller boy nestled in Sehun’s lap and nuzzling his neck like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The boy looked up at Sehun, who was again struck speechless by the chocolate brown of his eyes and the vibrant red of his fur—now hair. Baekhyun stretched his neck upward so that the two boy’s eyes met more evenly, before placing a quick kiss to Sehun’s mouth with his now very human, very soft, and very inviting lips. “Another game?” he asked, excitement bleeding into his words as he took in his surroundings and realized that though Sehun had in fact been serious about being a human boy, Baekhyun was now the same.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sehun admitted thoughtfully, tightening his arms around Baekhyun almost subconsciously and groaning a little when the smaller boy wiggled even closer. He placed a chaste kiss against Baekhyun’s forehead, his nose, and finally his lips, marveling at the miracle of magic that could make a cute squirrel a handsome boy. “But I think I win.”

It's unedited; sorry. But other than that, how was it?