Last Time:

He was glad of that. If there was one thing Tao hated, it was making people worry overmuch. And if anyone in the group knew, knew that he was lying in bed, holding himself and crying, they would worry.

So really, it was for the better that he was all alone right now.

CHAPTER SIX

For a long moment, Sehun stood just at the edge of the door, looking at Luhan on the couch. The older man was frowning, fidgeting like always, looking at his phone. It was a rough contrast to what their movie nights usually looked like—Luhan flitting around the room, looking at the latest notes Chanyeol had stuck on the wall, while they argued about movie choices. This Luhan was too uncertain, too nervous.

You ed up, Oh Sehun, he thought, one hand clenching into a fist. You picked that damn fight.

Yeah, he’d picked the fight, and he’d regretted it almost as soon as it had started. He’d wanted Luhan’s attention back on him, yes, and he’d felt more than a little betrayed that Luhan not only wasn’t paying him the same attention but that he hadn’t even gone the distance of talking to him, of confiding in him, like he always did. But that didn’t mean that he hadn’t started yelling over something stupid, or that he hadn’t been the one to make Luhan cry.

And that had been the biggest sign something was wrong, hadn’t it? Because normally, if Luhan’s wide, baby-deer eyes were damp, Sehun was the one roaring up to tear the offender to pieces.

Only this time he’d been the offender, and there had been no one there to tear him up.

.

Steeling himself, Sehun stepped into the room, carrying the secret box of chocolate candies he kept hidden in the kitchen as a peace offering.

Luhan, seeing him, sat upright in a flash. His phone vanished into his pocket and his fingers bounced wildly on his knee as he treated Sehun to a nervous, wobbly smile. “Hey, Sehunnie.”

“You’re a ing idiot, hyung,” Sehun said, flopping down next to Luhan.

Luhan turned sad eyes in his direction. “Sehunnie?”

“Like I said,” Sehun continued, ignoring him. “A ing idiot. You really think I care about whether or not you wore my tennis shoes to go work out?”

“But…Sehunnie…”

“I mean, I care about the part where it turned into a catfight, because Jessica-noona still won’t stop emailing me about that, and it’s getting ing annoying,” he said. He still wouldn’t look at Luhan. “But that’s not really what that was all about, was it, hyung?”

“No,” Luhan said, quiet. He turned his face to look at his knees. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Sehun said. He stretched out an arm, reaching for the remote that was beside Luhan. The move had the benefit of tucking his arm around Luhan’s thin shoulders. “So you can make it up to me by watching ty horror movies with me.”

Luhan cringed. “You know I—”

“Am a chicken? Yup. But I still like you, anyway, for some dumb reason, so we’re going to watch my ty movies, and you’re never going let me make you cry ever again, you stupid baby.”

Smiling to himself, Luhan snuggled against Sehun as the titles for The Flu began to stretch across the screen.

---

Tao woke up.

Unfortunately.

He still hurt, maybe even worse than he had the night before. The pain had migrated, though. Instead of being in his balls, it was in his gut, now. It felt like someone was squeezing his intestines, his kidneys, his bladder. Like he was being stabbed, but on the inside.

He whined and curled himself into the foetal position. His hands shifted from his crotch to pressing hard against his lower abdomen. . Had he gotten a urinary tract infection? Baekhyun had gotten one that one time before debut, and he’d certainly made it sound like it hurt like hellfire, which was a good reflection of how Tao was feeling.

And then he knew, he knew, he knew he was about to throw up. Lurching to his feet, Tao tore down the hall and locked himself in the bathroom. He fell to his knees and brought up everything he hadn’t eaten in the last two days.

“Tao?” someone called through the door.

“Think I’ve got Yi-ge’s virus,” he said, miserable. He heaved again.

“Ugh, gross. Alright.”

“Go back to bed when you’re done,” Minseok instructed, sounding harried. “I’ll leave some Gatorade and crackers on the bedside table for you. Small sips, little bites.”

Tao gritted his teeth. “Got it,” he said.

“Feel better!”

The door clicked behind them as they left.

---

Minseok stared at Luhan. “You’re kidding, right, XiaoLu?”

“I’m not,” Luhan insisted, shaking his head. “Look, it makes sense. Think about it, yeah? We all know that the rest of us are going to get bitten or hurt or something. It’s only a matter of time. So why not take control of that? If I get bitten now, I change now. When we have time, and space, and I can go through the whole furrying process in the comfort of my own house with my friends nearby cuddling me. And don’t even tell me that that’s not the point; I saw how much easier it was for you, that way.

“Plus, right now? We’re all thinking of the advantages. Duizhang’s little play-date idea worked out really, really well. Before you even start, yes, I know that there are downsides. The whole emotional barometer thing, for one, and for two, that whole grrr-arrgh-claws-fangs thing. But if it’s got a ninety percent chance of happening to me anyway? I’m taking control of it.”

His piece said, Luhan folded his arms over his chest and sat back against the wall.

Minseok sighed and scrubbed his hands across his face. “LuLu, this isn’t something you can take back when it doesn’t work out.”

Luhan arched one fine eyebrow. “I have no intentions of taking it back,” he said calmly. “You know that, MinMin.”

“Yifan will kill you. Hell, Yifan will kill me.”

“You let me handle Duizhang.”

As gentle and sweet as Luhan looked—and sometimes acted—he had a will of steel, and no one got away with pushing him around. He’d push back, twice as hard, and Luhan had way of always winning.

He didn’t have a reputation for starting fights, Minseok remembered, but Luhan sure as hell was known for finishing them.

“Alright,” Minseok said, sighing heavily. “But not right now. Tonight. When we leave.”

“At dinner break,” Luhan countered. “We’ll only be here for a little while after that. It’ll get my blood moving, which will spread it faster. The fever will hit by the time we leave, and I’ll be a were by morning.”

Minseok blinked. “You’ve really thought about this.”

“I told you,” Luhan said. “I’m not going into this blind. I’ve looked at the upsides and the downsides. Consider this my informed decision.”

Impressed, the other man nodded. “You got it, LuLu. Just, do me a favour?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re the one who gets to tell the duizhang.”

---

Luhan waited until Minseok had apologetically the bloody mark on his forearm, then wrapped the wound in clean cotton. He bound it off with tape, and was already lowering his sleeve back down over the incriminating bandaging as Minseok started shimmying back into his clothes.

“Remember,” Minseok said, “you get to tell Yifan. When I’m in a different room. Or country.”

Luhan snorted. “I remember,” he said. “Now, go on. Get out of here. Go get something to eat. You’re looking peaky.”

Minseok rolled his eyes. “I’m getting, I’m getting,” he said, suiting actions to words and sliding out of the small changing room.

Luhan followed a few seconds later, once he had calmed himself back down. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Minseok, even Minseok-the-wolf. But human reactions were ingrained for a reason, and it was hard not to flinch when teeth that white and that sharp were coming at you for what you knew was going to be a hell of a bite. Even when you had asked for it.

Kris was still waiting in the larger practice room, staring blankly at himself in the mirror. He didn’t so much as blink when Luhan approached him.

“Duizhang, you need a break,” Luhan said. Careful of his arm, which was starting to throb, he eased himself down to sit next to Kris. “Waiting for the dìdì to bring you dinner?”

Kris nodded. “Maknae line are on a food run.”

“Chances of that ending in disaster?”

“High, but not so high as to not make them work,” Kris said. “Sehun’s getting a little big for his britches.”

Luhan snorted. “As long as it’s real food that comes back, and not, like, a bag of chips.”

“We sent a manager with them for that exact reason,” Kris said. “We’re not dumb, Suho and I.”

“Just overworked,” Luhan agreed. “Shove over.” He pushed and prodded until Kris rolled over onto his stomach, and then tapped his shoulder. “Okay if I…?”

“Ugh,” Kris grunted, closing his eyes. “Go for it.”

Luhan nodded. “You got it, duizhang.”

He wasn’t as good as Minseok at massages—no one was as good as Minseok—but Luhan wasn’t exactly a slouch, either. He’d gotten good at using his weight to work out knots of tension and to loosen up sore spots that were just starting, meaning he was a prime favourite when Minseok’s hands were already busy. And as tense as Kris was, Luhan didn’t have to work all that hard to find places where he could do some good. He knew he couldn’t solve all of Kris’s problems, but he could at least help him feel a little bit better.

“XiaoLu, you’re good at that,” Kris groaned, melting as a knot between his shoulderblades suddenly let go. “. Where’d you learn that?”

“It’s a little something I picked up from Min-ge,” Luhan said. He bit his lip. Now was a good a time as any to bring it up…

“Ah, duizhang?”

Kris stiffened, ever so slightly. “What else did you pick up from Minseok-hyung?” he asked, a note of pleading in his voice.

Luhan winced, already trying to soothe the tension that had just come back. “Well, nothing that can be treated with antibiotics—”

“Not time for bad jokes, LuLu.”

“He bit me.”

There. All his cards were laid out on the table, clean and easy as that.

Kris sighed, his eyes sliding shut once more. “Ngong gau.”

Luhan recognized the sentiment behind the swear, even if he didn’t speak Cantonese. “Relax, duizhang,” he said, even as he leant harder into a tight knot. “For what it’s worth, I asked him to bite me. Well, I told him he was going to bite me, really. I backed him into a corner. He had no choice.”

“He had a choice,” Kris said, clearly unhappy but aware that there was nothing he could do. “He always has a choice. Same as you.”

“Fair,” Luhan said. He shrugged. “But, Yifan, I promise you, I thought about it first. I took a good look at it from all directions, and, really? This is the best option. For me, at least. I mean, as much time as we spend together, you know that there are going to keep being infections, no matter how careful we are. You still aren’t one hundred percent sure how, where, or when Suho got bitten enough to start the change. How many accidents are there going to be? Maybe not as bad as what happened to Kyungsoo and Kai—”

“You remember that?”

Luhan lifted a hand from his back to wobble it, seesaw-like, in midair. “Sort of? It’s six of one, a half-dozen of the other between what I really remember and basically having been stoned out of my mind on jiŭwĕihú juice.”

“Technically I think Daesung-sunbaenim is a gumiho,” Kris said.

That gave Luhan pause. “Same creature, different word, right?”

Kris shook his head—well, rolled it from side to side. “In this case? I actually think different word for similar, but still different, creatures.”

“So…lang ren and werewolves…?”

“Far as I can tell, still same.”

“,” Luhan said. “Talk about confusing.”

Kris snorted into his arms. “Tell me about it.”

---

Tao could hear movement. Nervous, hurting, he checked the door. Still locked. Good.

“TaoTao?”

. That was Minseok’s voice. He wasn’t just going to leave because Tao didn’t answer. Hell, if Tao failed to respond, there was every chance in the world that Minseok would actually break down the door. Or get Chen to pick it open, whichever was the more convenient to him at the moment. He’d done it before, both the employing Chen to pick locks and the actually breaking down the door. Admittedly, the door in question had been cheap, but…

His mind was wandering. “Yeah, Min-ge?”

“How are you feeling, jagi?” Minseok asked. He sounded like he was standing against the door. He probably was.

Tao sighed. “Awful,” he said, entirely truthfully.

“I’m sorry,” Minseok said. “I’d hug you if I could.”

“Probably not a good idea,” Tao said. “You don’t want to get whatever this is.”

“Yeah, Duizhang looked pretty miserable when he had it, and you sound like the wrong end of a good weekend,” the other man agreed. “Do you need me to bring you anything? More juice, more crackers?”

Tao shook his head, only to realize that there was no way Minseok could know that. “No,” he said. “I think I’m good. I haven’t really eaten or drunk all the stuff you left.”

“But you have eaten something?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” Minseok said. “I know it to eat when you’re feeling vomit-like—sorry, I don’t know that word in Mandarin—but it will help if you have something in your stomach. Even if it just gives you something to vomit.”

“Nauseated,” Tao said. “That’s the word you’re looking for. And I’m not really vomiting any more. Just feel…how did you say? Like the wrong end of a good weekend.”

Minseok laughed. “Okay, TaoTao. We’ll leave you alone. Luhannie got bit, so we’re going to be having a powwow on K’s dorm room floor tonight. Duizhang will be here, but he’s sleeping in LuLu and Lay’s room. Call us if you need us. Otherwise, sleep well, feel better.”

“Thanks,” Tao said. He lay back down atop the sheet, listening to Minseok’s footsteps fading down the hall. He thought he could hear the soft squeak of one of the dog toys they took to keep themselves occupied and quiet in wolf form, but another bolt of pain distracted him.

Biting his lip, Tao clutched his abdomen. How much longer could he deal with this?