2, 290 words

When people talk about Easter Bunnies, they really don’t understand… Sehun thinks, grumpily.

Visions of fluffy things, and eggs and candy and chocolate and easter baskets with mounds of that fake looking icky green grass (which actually sticks to his fur like he’s magnetized and doesn’t ever get off!) and really, why did anyone actually invent that stuff. Wasn’t there real grass aplenty? Nice, warm cozy sun-kissed grasses to roll around in and take little afternoon naps on?

Not that Sehun is falling short on the job… ahem.

Or maybe he is.

But screw that, because humans just don’t understand how much work it takes to be an Easter Bunny! All that candy he has to pick up from Bunny donation bins, which Sehun isn’t allowed to eat until the day after Easter, if there are leftovers. All the kids, those menacing brats who whine and kick up the dirt and throw tantrums because, “I wanted Cadbury cream eggs from Easter, not jelly beans!!!”

Sehun supposes he’ll be eating a lot of jelly beans tomorrow.

Really, okay, Easter isn’t too much work. It’s just one day out of the year, and Sehun is only designated a small part of the world in which to ‘spread fluff and delight’ because contrary to human knowledge, there are actually a lot of Easter Bunnies in the world all parceling up the earth and doing their jobs, and in the off season they hole up and mate and have cute fuzzy bunny babies who don’t even get asked what they want to be when they grow up. There’s no other option for an easter bunny except to grow up and... become an Easter Bunny.

Sehun isn’t bitter. Well, not quite. He just hops along the lane faster than normal, dumping his baskets of candy and showering little children with junk food aplenty - really, why do their parents even condone this? - so that he can be done early and spend the rest of his Easter Day having a little bunny nap by the stream.

It’s kind of peaceful actually. The sun is shining, and there’s a nice breeze, and normally he wouldn’t sleep so out in the open, but his hovel is on the other side of the valley and it’ll take too much work to hop over there right this minute.

He stretches out on his back, bunny tail a little burdensome under his , so he wiggles around until he’s comfortable and settles in for a light snooze. His hair is a rainbow of reds, pinks, yellows and greens, and just one stripe of blue for good measure (he gets it dyed, but shhhh don’t tell anyone). There are flowers all around him in similar shades. No one will even notice he’s there.

Until.

Slurp, slurp.

Something large, warm, rough and disgustingly wet suddenly slobbers on his face.

“ACCHHLKWHEHWEH!!!” Sehun shrieks and sits up, arms and legs and ears flailing in the grass.

The something with the long wet nose barks happily up at him, completely unfazed by Sehun’s disgust. There’s drool sliding down Sehun’s cheek, dog breath clogging up his pores and nostrils and it’s just the most revolting thing ever except…

“Woofff!” The dog barks, tongue lolling down, joy in its eyes, front paws spread out and its in the air like it’s time to play.

“What?” Sehun gapes.

It’s a golden retriever, fully grown, a little on the small size, and it’s totally, completely, fully dog - not even a hybrid - except, somebody has come up with the indignity of attaching a headband of pink fuzzy bunny ears to its head and…

“Woofff!!!” barks the not-bunny.

Sehun stares at it in horror. It has a collar, indicating an owner. Indicating a cruel master of an owner who makes his pet wear bunny ears, I mean, of all the offensive things you could assault an actual Easter Bunny with, it’s a dog wearing bunny ears! Don’t humans know how insulting that is? How trivial? Sehun works his fuzzy tail off living up to the role of Easter Bunny; not just any dog can wear a matching set of ears!

“Woof!!”

“Candy???” comes a frantic shout from just out of sight.

“Woof! Wooffff!!!” the dog responds. Then it pants some more and bounds up and down in a two-foot radius like Sehun is the greatest catch it could find to play with.

“Oh great,” say Sehun. He’s about to confront the owner of this menacingly offensive animal. There’s no way the dog is going let him retreat, not without tracking him down, and Sehun definitely can’t hop or run or skip that fast, curse his slow bunny-scampering nature.

“Candy? Where are you, girl? Baaabbyyy girl?? Candy!!?”

“Wooff!”

Sehun settles for staring the animal down, paws on his hips and a sneer on his face. The dog beams up in delight. Apparently Sehun lacks in the glowering department. This day was going so good too. He got done early, there are still two or three more hours of daylight to enjoy, the flowers were pretty and smelled good too, and he didn’t even come across any more Easter Bunnies to gloat about his mate-less state of being (like finding a golden egg and having a mate is all that…) but nooo, here comes a stupid bunny-ears-wearing dog to spoil his day.

“Can-----dy??”

Sehun gulps. Coming up the meadow he spots a pair of black spotted ears. So does the dog. She bounds towards the coming figure, heavy paws kicking up flowers and grass and dirt and something shiny which flings into the air. Sehun doesn’t even hesitate. A flying shiny projectile just flew at his face, of course he’s going to catch it.

“What the-”

“Candy! There you are you, my good girl, my baaaaby.”

The newcomer with black spotted ears - an Easter Bunny! - hasn’t even noticed Sehun yet. He has gray fur and black speckles strewn about, a pale green shirt and tight white pants - seriously, what Easter Bunny wears tight pants, isn’t that just uncomfortable? Sehun picks up his discarded Easter basket with two tons of jelly beans and holds it up against his chest, depositing the shiny thing right on top in case he needs to bolt. This is an unknown situation, who knows what kind of trouble he might be in. A tight pants-wearing Easter Bunny with weird speckled coloring and a dog just entered his vicinity. He might be dangerous…

“Woofff!” Candy barks, then turns tail running right back to where Sehun is hiding, in plain sight. “Wooff! Woof!”

But then the Easter Bunny looks up, and both of Sehun’s ears melt instantly to the sides of his head. His tail twitches in earnest.

“Uhm, hi?”

Why has Sehun’s heart started to thump evenly… rapidly…?

“Hi?” says the Easter Bunny, and he took suddenly looks peakish.

He’s beautiful. Of all the things to say or think upon the meeting of another Easter Bunny, why does Sehun think he’s “Beautiful.”

“Uhm, what?” Says the other bunny. His ears have gone straight up and rigid, jaw dropping slowly.

Sehun ignores the dog pawing insistently at his feet. “Oh, oops. I mean, hi. Uhh, what are you...?”

The speckled bunny looks suddenly annoyed. “I’m an Easter Bunny, what do you mean, what am I?”

Sehun gulps. “I meant, what are you doing here! Here! Uhm, I can… see you’re a bunny. I’m a bunny too, right? It would be really silly if I couldn’t tell you were an Easter Bunny. Hey, today’s Easter. Happy Easter!” He gives the other his award-winning grin, hoping to dissuade the situation in which Sehun is making a complete fool of himself! Happy Easter, what on earth?! Sehun!?

“Ha...ppy… Easter.”

Well this is now completely awkward.

“I’m Sehun.”

“Se… hun. Nice to meet you, I’m Tao. And… you do realize this is the border of my hopping grounds, right?

So it should have been Tao demanding to know what Sehun was doing here, trespassing. Oops. Well, it’s never too late to learn things like that.

“It is?!” His heart his thumping so fast. Why is it beating so fast like it might jump right out of his chest? Do hearts hop like bunnies when they get loose? Would it run away or towards the other Easter Bunny standing before him? Strange questions, of course to have, but Sehun needs something to distract him from this… “Excuse me, I think… I’m… lost…”

Lost, or sick. Or about to pass out. So many emotions, and his head is starting to pound to match the rhythm of his beating heart, and just whyyyyy is this even happening? Even his eyes are starting to ache and the glare of this wretched golden egg he lumped on top of his jelly beans is making his eyes start to water.

“Woof!” The dog brings him back to reality. The woof-ing, and the paws to his waist and the insane sniffing and drool breath that’s now about chest high.

“Candy, no!” Cries Tao, but already Sehun is tipping backwards, basket, dog, jelly beans and all. The shiny golden egg hits him square between the eyes and the sky rushes to meet his whole line of vision. He lands in a thump, jellies scattering everywhere and a giant dog on top of his chest now readily at his jaw.

He doesn’t scream though, probably. Maybe that high pitched whine was the other bunny, and not Sehun, because Sehun definitely doesn’t scream that shrilly. Perhaps.

“Are you okay!?”

“Woof!!”

“Not you, Candy!” Tao pushes the animal scornfully aside. Sehun just focuses on breathing. But not too deeply because that would mean inhaling dog breath and oh- two speckled bunny ears are drooping across his face, the face of Tao peering down worriedly. “Are you… okay??”

“Yes, no. Am I? I feel a little funny actually…”

Inexplicably, the other bunny smiles. It’s a softening effect of his otherwise stark features, and Sehun feels his heart drop from his chest cavity to his gut.

“You said your name was Sehun?”

“Y-yes. Why? Do you know me? I swear I haven’t trespassed before, please don’t report meeee! I was just going to take a little rest and-”

Then the other bunny giggles, and every bit of fear melts away.

“I think I know why you feel so weird right now,” says Tao.

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?” Sehun would sit up to ask this important question, but it’s way more relaxing to lay in the grass with his arms clutching his Easter basket and try to appear like he’s not dying.

“Because you’re holding a golden egg and… I’m feeling a little funny too.”

And then all of a sudden, it makes sense. A golden egg. Sehun found a golden egg. Well, the bunny-dog Candy kicked it up, but it fell right into Sehun’s hands at the exact same moment another Easter Bunny came into view, which means… the fluttering of his heart, the feeling he’s either totally doomed or totally saved… now he finally understands…

“Mate…” he whispers, as if saying it louder will make the other bunny run away.

Tao makes a wry crooked smile with his lips and tilts his head. “Yeah.”

Over the next few hours, Sehun has a little more time to dwell on this. It happened on Easter, on a day he was least expecting, and if he’d been doing his job more thoroughly, then perhaps they wouldn’t even have met. By all accounts they shouldn’t. Tao wasn’t even supposed to be here either. He was supposed to sitting at home bunny-sitting his brother Minseok’s latest litter of babies with his mate Luhan.

“But then they came home early too and… kicked me out to do other stuff, so I was wandering the perimeter and playing with Candy and-”

“Hang on,” Sehun interrupts him. They’re nestled into the grass not too far away from where they met, tails covered in earth and their arms above their heads, hips touching in a way that shows they can’t even be separated. And still, Sehun just has to ask this question. “Why do you have a dog, and why did you put bunny ears on her?”

Tao giggles. “Because she’s cute! And because my litter makes all have their mates already, and I was lonely!”

Sehun eyeballs the dog warily. Candy has settled right across both their shins, pinning them down, but she doesn’t seem to show any bias.

“You mean, you replaced me with a dog before we even met?!”

He sighs and laughs, and Tao blushes prettily. Later on, Tao says he’ll take him home and introduce him to his brothers, and tomorrow Sehun needs to report into Bunny Services and tell them that he’s going to be busy for a while… the honeymooning might last an entire year? He twitches his whiskers and peers down his lashes at Tao, pleased all around to find a mate, especially one as handsome as Tao, weird as he is. Sehun has never heard of an Easter Bunny having a pet before, and what bunny wears white pants and then lays on the grass and then shows off his grass stains like a badge of honor!

“So uhm, will your dog get jealous if I kissed you right now?”

“Why would she? She may even get jealous of me. Last I checked, you’ve been by her today more than even by me!”

Well that has Sehun blushing too. He’s not sure he wants to be by two beings today. Although… when Tao twists towards him and nudges his nose right into Sehun’s cheek, and then kisses the spot right afterwards… dog drool be damned, Sehun isn’t letting go of this bunny.