Tao's POV

"You sneezed on me!"

Kyungsoo's angry shout blasted through my ears and awoke a powerful headache, one that resonated through my entire forehead and pounded against my temples. What a way to wake up.

"I thingk I hab dirt im by noze." came Sehun's voice soon after.

"That's what you get for sniffing me all the damn time."

"Did you have to hit me so hard, Baek?" Chanyeol's deep voice drew me in, a pleasant soft tone to tune into beneath the cacophony happening to the right.

"You were still burning after I woke up. I had to do something." Baekhyun defended himself before adding, "Lay, can you heal this big baby too? Apparently I hit harder than his fire burns."

"I really didn't mean to burn you again-"

"I know, but when you feel it coming, drop everything and draw it back. Your multitasking ability is terrible."

My headache pounded just a little harder when I heard voices clashing somewhere off to the back of the room. I couldn't tell what they were saying, but the sound made me groan. After a quick glimpse of the annoyingly well-lit living room, I decided on keeping my eyes closed, possibly for the rest of my lifetime plus some. Fitting twelve people and one wolf in my head had taken it's toll.

"So did no one think to ask the wolf what it wanted with us, why it's helping us, or if what it's doing even is help?"

Oh no, Baekhyun opened up a whole floodgate of arguments.

"What are it's motives for all this?" the man continued. "We can't just trust this thing blindly-"

"The only information we have is from that wolf," Suho put in. "And everything it told us adds up. I think it was telling the truth. It sounds like it wants to help us."

"And it knows us from when we were children-" said Luhan.

"It could have been lying." Kris countered. "We really don't know if it told us the truth or not, Suho. Everything it said could have been a lie."

"So what if it lied? We have nothing else to-"

"So what if it lied?!"  Baekhyun asked over poor Xiumin, who rarely makes comments in large crowds. "What if it wants to build us up and use us like weapons-"

I groaned louder, working on shutting out the noises by digging my head further into whatever this thing was next to me on the sofa.

Hold on, it felt like a human. My brain processed this and the rest of me decided on snuggling in comfortably. There wasn't a single person here who I didn't feel comfortable with on a friendly, yet somewhat intimate level. A quick round of deductions made it easy to guess who it was, as even though I hadn't heard Chen's voice yet, I also hadn't experienced any random shocks to my system, nor irrational impending feelings of doom. What I did feel, was a rush of calmness that felt so incredibly soothing.

"Tao, should I call Lay over?" asked a quiet voice, one that reverberated softly under my head and echoed in my chest as something familiar and very much welcome despite the flare of pain at the sound, the exact one I had been anticipating.

Kai.

"Mmh," I hummed in agreement, a slight smile pulling at my lips. The reaction to Kai's voice was automatic, zero thoughts to it. I was getting used to having Kai at my side, always there when I needed an anchor. He was so patient with me, and I wondered how I had come to deserve it. How could he possibly love someone like me, who never stopped throwing the boy into stressful situations and emotional torture? It was still a mystery, but it was undoubtedly true and I was selfishly grateful for it. I wrapped my arms around his middle and secured my spot at his chest - another automatic reaction, this time to the boy following up on his words and calling our resident healer over quietly.

With Lay's hand on my temple, the war in my head called a truce, but only for a short time. The healer made it very clear to me that yet again, I would need rest to properly recuperate (as if I hadn't rested enough already). The headache dulled a lot, which was nice.

A new headache however, was just getting started, and I knew it was going to be a bad one. Sitting up, I braced myself for the war of words.

"What good could we do for a magic-spirit-wolf-thing who can tap into dreams and make self-destructing fortune cookies? I'm pretty sure that thing doesn't need weapons." reasoned Chen with a well-placed shrug.

"What if there are other spirits like it and it wants to use us in a fight? Or what if the government finds out about us first and uses us as weapons of war?" Baekhyun asked, voice dropping to a frightened whisper. "I can't kill a bug, much less a person!"

"We can fight off the government and whatever comes our way, if such a thing were to happen." Suho reasoned calmly. He looked to be the least concerned of everyone, quietly leaning against Chen with an arm casually up and over the boy's shoulder. If I didn't know any better, I would have even said he looked a little amused about all this. "I mean, Jongin could just teleport us out of whatever prison they try to stick us in if Tao doesn't stop them all in their tracks first."

"But then what if we aren't the only ones with powers-"

"The wolf implied that we are. We have these powers from some sort of mistake."

"Mistake or successful experiment?" Kyungsoo added conspiratorially.

Suho again looked amused, but not shaken. "This isn't some sort of movie-"

"This isn't a movie," Kyungsoo agreed. "But we have powers and some weird wolf-thing speaks to us in our dreams. You really think none of this is possible, that there could be a whole lot more going on than just some little mistake in our fates? We could be heading straight into a ing trap!"

"Kyungsoo, language." Suho warned him.

"Joonmyeon, superiority complex." Kyungsoo shot back without missing a beat.

Sehun's loud cackling briefly disturbed the argument before being abruptly stopped with what sounded like sharp "bzzz!" and an equally as clear, "Ah! !" I missed whatever happened because of Kai trying to get my attention, but Chen's smirk and retreating hand was enough to make a good guess.

"What?" I whispered to Kai, trying to both listen to him and everyone else at the same time, but ending up missing what he said.

"The wolf said that people of this world will rise against us. We need to stick together, so if you two can get your feet out of your mouths, I think this would be a lot easier for all of us." Chen explained this all very calmly, a mirror to the young man leaning on him. There was something different about him for sure, and I was certain it was because of Suho. The thought had me smiling. They looked very happy together, more relaxed and willing to be patient, but I supposed it was easier to believe that everything would be okay with the knowledge that they always had someone there for them if things turned out for the worse.

Completely opposite to this, stood Sehun, but it's not like I expected any different.

"Who the hell decided to give this sadistic the power of electricity? I want a ing refund. That wolf owes me for all this sh- errmmfhhmmbmm-"

With Kris' hand secured over the brat's mouth, everyone seemed much more accommodating, Kyungsoo most of all, who didn't have to fight the boy off his own neck anymore. Instantly regaining authority, Suho managed to start a long speech about how important it was that we all work together to keep each other safe, how we should watch each others' backs, how we should always stick with at least one other person whenever going out, in fact, we should all pair up and start a good, old-fashioned buddy system-

"Are you hungry?" Kai asked quietly after a while of the man's enthusiastic talking, successfully garnering my attention at last.

Talking to spirit wolves and enduring mass amounts of mental pressure did help build an appetite. While no one was looking, Kai wrote a little note and dropped it on the coffee table before grabbing my hand teleporting us away.

---

Off on a date. Ciao!

-K+T

***

"You ever been to Italy before, Tao?"

Italy. I couldn't comprehend it. I was in Italy. People moved about in bright daylight all around us, oblivious to the fact that we had just walked out of a tiny antique shop without ever having walked in the building to start with. Some inner gut feeling told me it was two in the afternoon, which was disorienting because it had been nearing nine at night back at Suho's place. Kai had seen the shop in a magazine laying on the coffee table and taken us here, and the most amazing part: he was only a little bit tired. It was fantastic. His power had grown so much in so little time.

"This is Italy?" I found myself asking him again, looking around at all the evidence surrounding me and still not believing it. "But Italy is so far away."

"No, it's not. It's right here." he said with smirk that quickly turned into a yawn. "Look, they're serving food." Kai pointed to a shop with tables and chairs that spilled out in front of a little building sporting a wide awning with letters spelling, "Ristorante". Whatever that meant.

"Do you want to try to order in English, or should I?" I asked him with a snort as we started heading in that direction. "My English is limited to 'hello' and 'thank you'. I doubt we can order and pay for food with just greetings and-" I stopped, suddenly being talked to by an older man trying to seat the both of us who seemed not to know a single word of Korean nor English. Turning to Kai, I gave a nervous chuckle and asked, "Do you happen to know Italian?"

He smiled at me with a pointed look and I realized what his intentions had been from the very beginning. We weren't paying for our food, we weren't going to talk to anyone to get it, in fact, according to the crowd of people here, we wouldn't even be staying in this restaurant at all.

Seated, with a glass of water already set down in front of me, I quietly set the menu handed to me down and brought my hands up, locking Time in it's place. The whole world stood still and silent at my fingertips. And when we were done, I knew it would appear to everyone else as if we walked in and walked out without eating.

"You could have said something."

"Why spoil the surprise?" Kai's soft voice made the sudden silence surrounding us feel intimate. Instinctively, I leaned in to catch his every word. "A date with just the two of us is much nicer than being talked over in a crowd, right?" He sat up straighter and peeked around at other tables. "Looks like our choices are chicken alfredo, ravioli, hmmm, that kind of looks like a pizza, but why are there tomato slices all over it? Weird."

Ignoring the food that looked like it had already been touched by other customers, I picked a plate from the tray of a passing waiter that held a heavy bowl of spaghetti with marinara sauce and and two slices of a plush and wonderful smelling garlic bread. Sitting down with it, I found Kai standing over by the desserts, sliding open the glass door of the display to peek inside.

"Cheesecake." he explained with a shrug. "For later."

I had to admit that this date, or whatever it was we were doing, was really nice. The silence pressing in from all sides was a little much however, so we found a stereo and I unlocked it to play a cd with quiet melodies in a language neither of us understood. Still a little unnerved, I ended up unlocking a few birds as well, just for background noise. Quickly though, I found that the nervous feeling tumbling circles in my gut wasn't from the lack of normal everyday sounds, but from the excitement and light anticipation for what this moment could hold and what kind of possibilities there were if we could get away with something such as this.

The food was amazingly fresh and warm; the bread in particular smelled delightfully of rosemary and garlic. We shared the spaghetti, which was a little less romantic than I thought it would be, as we ended up dropping noodles and spilling sauce on the table, but the dish was a large one that neither of us could have finished on our own. That didn't stop us from each trying a piece of that weird tomato pizza on the table next to us however. It was different for sure, but not bad!

And the talk we shared as we ate, well, that wasn't bad either. We talked about powers, about past schools we've been to, and even about Sehun and how much we both felt bad for all the confusion and pain we brought on him.

"I want to talk to him." I admitted as I poked around my slice of cheesecake with a fork. "I want to tell him how sorry I am for ending things the way I did. I was too harsh, wasn't I?"

"You weren't harsh." Kai countered, his own fork twirled on one tine around and around and around... "You were direct, but you needed to be. Sehun has changed a lot from when I first met him. A couple years ago, if you told me Sehun would grow up to call me a nauseating -" He stopped the fork and dropped it down on the tabletop with a sigh.

"It isn't true." I assured him.

"Try telling that to the kids at my school. What I thought were dates actually turned out to be dares, and I fell for it every time... Nothing could stop the rumors once they started churning out." Kai began to speak softer, and I strained to listen. "Each time, I thought I had finally found someone who wanted to be with me, that somehow, someone didn't think I was a sack of without reason-"

"You aren't a sack of -" I began in disbelief.

"I know!" Kai burst out. His eyes were so determined that I believed it. "I know I am not a sack of , but that doesn't change what other people think they know about me. I just wish I could start over, you know, begin things again and do everything right this time."

"I could help." I offered, gaze a little unfocused as ideas ran through my mind. "I could rewind everything back to that day, or even further back, but leave your mind untouched so that you remember to make the right choices, or I could go back with you and guide you through it and you won't have to be bullied, you won't have to be alone-"

"Hey," Kai threw a cherry tomato off of someone's salad at me, startling me. Annoyed, I threw it back as he explained, "I don't actually want to start over-"

"But you said-"

"I know what I said, but I would never do that in real life. If it meant possibly losing this-" Kai gestured in front of him to the space between us. "-then I don't want any part of it."

"But you wouldn't forget, I'd make sure of it-"

He shook his head. "Can't risk it." A smile was just starting to form on my lips when he broke out suddenly with an excited, "Do you want to go steal some important art piece after this and put it somewhere stupid and then check the news periodically to see when it gets noticed?"

Caught off guard by his lit up face, I stuttered out, "T-That was... surprisingly detailed..."

Kai shrugged. "I've thought a lot about what I could do once my powers grew. This is top of the list, right after an exotic date with you."

The more I thought about it, the more the idea sounded like fun - stupid fun. And the more I thought about Kai, the more a future with him sounded like fun too. A rush of butterflies rose up in my stomach.

"And you know," Kai started off awkwardly, fork delicately twirling on one tine again before he stopped it to look up. "You said something during your dream about thanking me in real life. I understand if you changed your-"

Rising out of my chair, I leaned forward and swiftly placed myself directly in front of him. Kai turned his head up and nearly collided noses with me we were so close. This feeling, of finally catching him off guard and watching the man who had stirred up my head so much finally getting a taste of his own medicine, it was a sense of accomplishment I never knew I needed, a feeling of complete and utter confidence that I was in control and knew exactly what I wanted.

Kai's lips were right in front of me, and I watched as they blurted out a startled, "Hi."

"I didn't change my mind." I told him, gently using my hand to lift his chin just slightly. "Thank you, Kim Jongin. You saved my sanity. I couldn't have gotten through all that madness without you."

I let go, observing his features beginning to fall as I pulled away.

And then I dived back in, capturing his ill-prepared lips and laughing internally at the whole situation. This was caused by me, me. I managed to trick Kai and successfully wrap him around my finger for just this one little moment and it all came out perfectly. Although it really hadn't been so long since the last time we kissed, I still missed these lips. Kissing Kai brought all kinds of strange feelings to my chest, but I was starting to welcome these feelings more and more.

It was so perfect.

Until a commotion rang out and we were both drenched in warm ravioli. Time decided to start up again without me knowing it. The shock of it made us both pull apart, and I listened as a tourist of some kind made angry faces, and though I couldn't understand the language they spoke in, it seemed to be in a disgusted manner. They did this on purpose, I realized. All around, the people in the restaurant looked equally as furious at us, as if kissing were strictly outlawed in this little restaurant. In fear, I locked Time once again.

"Is this what it'll be like from now on?" I asked in disbelief, turning to Kai and immediately forgetting my fears as I laughed at his ravioli-splattered face. Plucking a single square-shaped noodle from his hair, I said, "Sorry. The next time the people of this world get hostile, I'll protect you better, I promise."

"Not if I protect you first." he quipped, with a smile before sauce off his lips. "Oh, this is really good though."

Curiously, I tried some of the sauce on my fingers and agreed. "We should have eaten this instead."

"Next time."

some more sauce off my fingers, I didn't even think about turning that idea down. Instead, I echoed, "Mmh, next time."

"Next time... will you thank me again?" Kai asked, looking hopeful before amending, "You don't have to answer that-"

"How about I thank you now." I interrupted. That hopeful look returned to his face, and I wanted to keep it there, so I continued, "And tomorrow too... the next day... the day after that..."

Kai was staring at me, and I couldn't decipher his expression.

"I like you." I said finally.

The stare lasted another second more before he turned away with a bitter chuckle and began picking a stubborn tomato from my bangs. "Let me know if that turns into love, Tao."

"I will," I promised, watching his eyes and waiting for them to look at me again. "When it happens."

He paused and we made eye contact at last.

"When?"

"When." I affirmed.

"When." Kai echoed.

Looking down at myself while he looked lost in thought, I sighed at the sight of my soiled clothing. "I'm ruining all my nice shirts lately." I groaned, thinking back to the number of shirts I had to throw away that had been torn and bloodied.

Seeming to snap out of his trance, Kai asked, "Do you want to go shopping for more?"

"Shopping? For clothes? Oh no," I placed a hand on my chest, instantly happier at the thought. "You found my weakness."

Kai perked up in his seat. "Really?"

I nodded.

"Then let's go." he said, standing, but I caught him on the arm to stop him.

"Before we go do that," I absentmindedly wiped another goopy noodle off his shoulder. "What was that art-stealing idea you had?"

He looked at me, and I looked at him. Everything was perfect in that moment, not because we were about to vanish myseriously in front of twenty-odd people who hated us, but because we both had the same evil little smile on our faces.

The people would rise up against us.

Why shouldn't we raise a little hell too?

***

Author Note:

This chapter has been half-written for several months but I got writer's block and couldn't function properly enough to write out the rest until I took out a huge chunk of what I'd written and put it in another chapter, so

This took forever. UGhHHhhhh

It wasn't even worth the wait. This chapter . I'm trying to get as much writing done today as possible, so I might update something else, or I might update another chapter of Discovery soon, if not today, during the week maybe?

I need to stop letting my mind turn into mush after work, because I'm not getting anything done anymore. I think sleeping more and eating better could help - what do you guys think? A little bit more effort has got to do something at least.

If you read my black and white fic, then you'll know that I'm having weird boy troubles and I've been driving myself nuts trying to figure it all out, but I think I want to pretend they don't exist and just immerse myself in writing instead, yup yup, that sounds good