A woman’s voice echoes through the small house, nudging Minseok from his sleep.

“Oi!! Zhang Yixing! Are you awake!?”

The boy in bed beside him rustles, but doesn’t wake up. Minseok buries his head further under their shared pillar, tugging the soft wool blanket higher past his chin.

“Yixing! Yixing?”

Footsteps pound down the hallway as Minseok’s heart speeds up. He prods the boy, whispering his name, more frantically as the seconds tick on. The most he gets are a few odd groans and Yixing rolling halfway onto his side. One arm flails and whacks Minseok in the face, and if Minseok were any less animal, any more human, it might have hurt. He settles for smacking him back, but it’s a moot issue when the door flies open and Yixing’s mom stands on the precipice.

“Zhang Yixing, what did I say about sleeping in? Your morning chores aren’t going to do themselves-”

She stops right at the moment Minseok freezes, and their eyes meet in the near dark. Yixing chooses this moment to finally wake up.

“Mooom?” he yawns, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and completely unconcerned about whatever this looks like.

“Yixing…?”

Two seconds ago she was mad; now Yixing’s mother’s voice is laced with something different. Shock, confusion, the panicked poison of a woman whose brain is on overdrive, and the sad thing is she doesn’t even realize how crazy this truly is.

Yixing yawns again, and Minseok observes through the corner of his eye Yixing’s hand straying towards his own face, to the source of minor pain Minseok inflicted on him just moments ago. He might even bruise. Minseok isn’t entirely in control of his strength, especially when he’s panicked, scared, and perpetually sleep deprived from the strain of adjusting his sleep patterns to observe the rituals of these human townspeople.

He holds his breath when Yixing finally remembers their situation. That they’re sharing a bed, and that they’ve been caught. Minseok is waiting for the reaction, sure that Yixing will panic just as he did.

Minseok is completely unprepared for Yixing to laugh.

“Oh, sorry mom, I forgot to tell you Minseok and I stayed up late studying for a test.”

There’s silence in the room as his mother tries to process. “Minseok?” she asks. “I’ve never met a Minseok?”

And Minseok closes his eyes, because of course she’s never met him before. He’s only lived here for possibly two months, and in a town with less than a thousand people, that’s not only strange, it’s practically unheard of.

“Transfer student,” says Yixing easily. Then he smiles that disarming smile that could make even the devil melt.

Apparently it doesn’t work on his mom.

“Get up. I didn’t make enough breakfast for two. You can cook for your friend yourself if he’s hungry. I have other things to do.”

Her eyes are like stone, cold and knowing, even if it’s impossible for her to know just what she’s looking at. She stares Minseok down and despite her words she doesn’t leave the doorway. Her fingers clutch at the frame like talons, like a predator protecting her baby, and that’s probably the most in common she has with Minseok’s species. It would be comical if Minseok was not, for once in his life, scared to death.

“He’s not your boyfriend is he?” she says after a beat, with just enough venom in her breath to make the threat stand.

Yixing laughs again. And that’s exactly where Minseok’s heart breaks for the very first time.

“No, mom. Of course not!” He continues to giggle as he makes his way out of bed, the kind of laugh that can only stand in for the genuine, honest to God truth. Yixing’s mother’s eyes finally soften. “He’s just a school friend. I told you. Sorry we overslept. I’ll take care of everything else today. You can go to work. Love you, mom.”

Barely two months later is when their friendship finally snaps. Ironically, it begins in the same way. Another restless high school study session, two exhausted friends, one oblivious and the other too carefree that it borders on recklessness. They pass out amidst their school books, and fall into bed, and the pounding on Yixing’s door the next morning is straight out of a nightmare when Minseok wakes up and realizes, he’s not exactly human right now.

There’s a scream of fright from the doorway, and a startled gasp that is Yixing’s waking up. Followed by an oversized wildcat streaking past the door frame and disappearing into the morning light.

Two weeks later he dares to meet his friend again, apologies on each of their lips, and Minseok tries to explain. The worst part of it is, Yixing isn’t even afraid of him anymore. He’s afraid of their relationship, and that’s when it ends.

This certainly isn’t the first time Lu Han’s found himself in A Crisis. Plenty of moments in his normally staid back, socially sedentary lifestyle could give this a run for its money: the time his parents split up; the time TVXQ split up; the year he discovered he was gay, which looking back on things now was probably related to TVXQ. This isn’t even mentioning the whole Junmyeon thing which Lu Han became a pro at pretending wasn’t a big deal. (It was a Big Deal.)

Not quite as big as this one though.

“Woah, woah, wait. Slow down!”

His lips are tingling. Xiumin’s eyes are bright, wide open and aroused. Lu Han scrambles away, hand pinching his lower lip because, woah woah woah, this is not right. He just kissed Xiumin! He just kissed a hybrid! A wildcat he was supposed to monitor from a distance, maybe strike up a relationship — platonic, excuse him, platonic relationship!

And right now there’s not enough distance between them to keep it that way. Any farther back and he’d probably fall off the hilltop. In a cliche melodrama he’d probably fall a long way and go splat, but here it’d be more of an ungainly tumble before he rolled halfway down. Either scenario might be preferable though to the look of error now forming on the hybrid’s face.

“I’m sorry. Did I... do it wrong?”

Lu Han gapes at him, heart pounding and absolutely thunderstruck.

“. No.”

“No?”

Xiumin’s crestfallen look might actually strike Lu Han dead. Any moment now; he’s waiting for it.

“No, no you were, fine. But.” Lu Han panics. “I can’t, I can’t really… I shouldn’t be kissing you…”

It takes ten seconds for the hybrid to metaphorically straighten up, school his expression, and cast a dimmer over his sparkling eyes. Every ounce of flirtiness is gone, all mischief erased. The effect is monumentous to Lu Han’s state of being. He doesn’t like it one bit.

And there’s nothing he can do about it now. Xiumin isn’t someone he’s allowed to kiss. He’s a creature of the wild. There are rules in place, laws that… well actually there aren’t any laws about wildcats. There aren’t enough wildcats in existence for someone to have created a law about interspecies cohabitation.

A long ago conversation with Jongdae comes to mind, all of it rushed into a shamble of a memory which strikes at Lu Han and pains him with regret.

“Hey, what would happen if you ever liked a human?” he’d asked him once.

Jongdae had laughed. “What? But I’m human.”

“No, I mean — you know what I mean. Do wolves and humans ever, get together? I don’t think I’ve heard much about the subject. Kind of always seemed a bit, taboo.”

“Is it? Yeah, I suppose it is.”

“But why?”

At the time Lu Han was only curious. He knew lots of wolves had human friends, especially the ones who lived in the city like Jongdae. But he could count on one hand the number of wolves he’d interviewed that even knew of an interspecies couple, and they always spoke of the matter in slightly hushed voices.

“Why is it taboo? I don’t know, Han, should we get together and find out why?” Jongdae had laughed. Lu Han thought it was hilarious. But then Jongdae had wracked his brain and coughed up a number of legal obligations in the form of permits and registration, and what-ifs if the couple had kids and if one of the offspring was hybrid or not. That wasn’t even going into the social pressures stemming from the leaders of the packs who worried about everything from bloodlines, to diluted gene pools, or if the couple were unable to procreate, even to the pressures of one or the other partner acclimating to their new desired environment. Lu Han and Jongdae had eventually given up the conversation and moved on to funnier things. It didn’t really haunt Lu Han again, until today.

“Is it because I’m a specimen?” asks the wildcat.

The response practically slaps Lu Han in the face.

“What?!”

Xiumin shrugs. “You and your kind. You always come, you watch me. And then you leave. You were here the longest. So I wanted to kiss you.” He speaks like it’s no big deal, and when his eyes land on Lu Han’s, they stay there for a few seconds, challenging him to reply, until he looks off into the distance like he’s merely curious about where next he’ll go.

Something about the whole ordeal strikes Lu Han like an ulcer.  It’s not the first thought he’s had about the wildcat playing with him, but it is the first time Lu Han realizes he’s potentially been played .

“You kissed me because you were bored?”

“And because you’ll leave soon,” Xiumin answers quickly, another carefree shrug of the shoulders. Lu Han watches him wince, as if remembering all his little cuts and bruises which are probably pulling against his skin. Other than that, however, the wildcat seems unaffected. And Lu Han is semi-pissed. In a heartbeat he forgets his own ethical qualms, sees himself instead as the wounded party.

“Fine, just fine. Anything else you’d like to experiment with while I’m still in the vicinity, or are we good?” It might have been a joke. In another situation Lu Han would totally make a joke. But tonight it just sounds bitter. He stares down the hybrid, waiting for anything: a sign, some humor. Maybe the cliche Psych! I was kidding, Hey, I really like you, and can we snuggle now?

None of that happens. And the longer the hybrid doesn’t reply, the more antsy he becomes, the more upset. His bitterness trickles away and in its place booms a slow, methodical simmer of regret, like a baby heartbreak.

It’s probably good this is happening now, before he gets any deeper.

So he meets Xiumin’s eyes and apologizes. “I’m sorry. That was mean of me. I’m going back to my cabin, so if you need something else come by. Have a good evening. Goodnight.”

He doesn’t move in spite of his words. Like he’s still waiting for the wildcat to do something, say something else. Either accept the apology or challenge it. There’s in inkling in Lu Han’s bones though that he’s already said too much, that they have said enough.

Is the wildcat really that stone-hearted? Lu Han really wants to know, but the longer Xiumin stands there the less likelier it becomes that Lu Han’s ever going to know.

“Fine. Goodnight,” says Lu Han again, jaw gripped tightly in place because any second now his chin is going to wobble. He bites his lower lip just hard enough to catch himself, not bad enough to bleed, and he stares down the wildcat. His recklessness almost gets the better of him, and why should it not?! Lu Han is practically, almost, maybe just a tiny bit in love with a hybrid wildcat who could eat him for breakfast, and in fact… yeah, he’s apparently done just that.

And does it hurt. That he’s only been toying with him this entire time.

“Just like a damn cat,” he says aloud. Accidentally.

Lu Han gasps. Xiumin’s eyes light up, the previously extinguished fire roaring vehemently back into place.

“Excuse me… what?”

Lu Han just curses. Then he runs.

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