Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Jaeyun is woken up by someone else’s scream. 

He groans and rolls over, trying to burrow into his pillows. He needs this sleep, hasn’t been getting nearly enough, feels regularly like he’s going to fall apart into tiny little Jake-pieces and never be whole again. Like Humpty Dumpty. So he ignores the scream that peters off into half-whispered frantic Jay-isms and begs dreamland to take him back. 

“Jake,” he hears, hissed. His ear twitches at the sound: it’s way too close for comfort. “Jake!”

Jaeyun makes a noise that sounds kind of like, “whuughhdhghfff?” and presses harder into his pillow. 

“Wake up,” Jongseong urges, which doesn’t have the intended effect.

“It’s our day off man fuck off,” Jaeyun slurs into the pillow. “Leave me alone.”

An exaggerated huff escapes Jongseong. This only serves to piss Jaeyun off more, because now he’s imagining Jongseong with his annoying stern face on and his arms crossed like a dickhead. He’s probably wearing a polo shirt too or some other stupid shit like that. 

“It’s important,” Jongseong says, “it’s really important, you have to get up.”

“No.”

Without any kind of prior warning or maybe some less drastic intermediate steps, Jaeyun feels a sudden sharp ache in his tailbone and he’s being pulled off the bed and onto the floor. 

He shouts out in pain, thrashing around and clutching his lower back. A cascade of sorries suffocates him, pouring down from Jongseong’s mouth and ending off with a: “I didn’t know that would hurt that much!”

Jaeyun scoffs, a loud sound broken by his anger. “You didn’t think pushing me off the fucking bed would hurt?” 

“No, I mean—your tail!”

Oh great, now Jongseong’s gone crazy. He’ll have to call the doctor and have him taken away. That’s good, that’s great, and surely won’t have any ruinous consequences for the group. Maybe that’s a bit of a selfish way to think, but Jaeyun isn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment. He’s cold, on the floor, in pain, awake, and it’s all Jongseong’s fault. 

He levers himself up and jabs a finger in Jongseong’s direction, and he probably looks stupid with his hair all messed up and his face still puffy from sleep, but he still injects as much vitriol in his voice as he can when he goes, “I do not have a fucking tail. And you’re a dick.”

“You—” 

Jongseong cuts himself off, covers his face with his hands, screams, and then lunges at Jaeyun. Screeching, Jaeyun backs away from the demon as best he can, but his feet get caught and tangled in the blanket and all he really manages to do is move his limbs into different configurations than they were before. Two ticklish hands shove under his armpits, brushing up against his ribs and forcing a bubble of laughter past his lips. 

“Stop, stop! Let me go!” He shrieks, trying to fight his way out of Jongseong’s hold. But Jongseong’s got him in a firm grip, arms looped around Jaeyun’s chest as he hauls him away from the space between their beds. Giving up, Jaeyun goes limp. 

Suddenly he’s being deposited in front of the full-length mirror that’s propped up next to their door. He’s weak-kneed from sleep, so when Jongseong deprives him of his support, he collapses onto the ground. A groan, which tapers off into a whine, escapes his throat. He looks up at Jongseong pitifully.

“Up.” 

He pouts harder. 

Jongseong huffs. “Up.”

Jaeyun stretches his arms out in a silent request. 

“Ughhhhhhh,” Jongseong moans, but he’s helping Jaeyun up, so a win is a win. 

“You’re the reason I was on the floor, anyways,” Jaeyun points out helpfully. 

“Shut up and look,” Jongseong commands.

Jaeyun scowls at him, to make it clear that he doesn’t want to listen, but nevertheless he turns his head toward the mirror. 

It takes him a second to register his appearance, but the second he does, he screams. A little bit. Really short and honestly not that loud either. The whole ‘folding to the floor and moaning in pain while covering his ears with his hands’ bit is just Jongseong being overdramatic. 

His ears—which are very clearly dog ears—are pulled back over his head, and his tail—which is very clearly a dog tail, which does not belong on the human body—is twitching agitatedly, left-right-left-right. 

Caught in the haze of his silent freak out, Jaeyun doesn’t register the loud, purposeful thump-thump-thumps of footsteps down the hall until the door to his and Jongseong ’s room swings open with a bang. 

Jaeyun jumps. “Fuck, you startled me!” 

Jungwon stands at the threshold like an avenging angel, like a dark grey stormcloud. Jaeyun can see the lightning flashing in his eyes. If it was anyone but Jungwon, his lopsided bedhead and the ruffled state of his pajamas would make him look silly, but it is Jungwon, and Jungwon is fucking scary when he’s angry. 

“Some of us,” Jungwon grits, “are trying to sleep.”

Jaeyun’s ears pin back and his tail tucks itself between his legs, but he’s not a coward and he’s not gonna let Jungwon seethe him into submission; he has pride to preserve. So, defensively, he yells: “I was trying to sleep, too!” 

He points at Jongseong, who is still on the floor. “This asshole woke me up!” 

Jungwon’s eyes dart down to Jongseong’s corpse, and when they flick back up they seem to finally register the situation. 

“Why are you a dog?” 

Jongseong rises like a vampire out of slumber. It’s creepy. “That’s literally what we’re trying to figure out.”

“We were not trying to figure out anything, you just ripped me from my peaceful, sorely needed sleep and then started physically assaulting me. You forced me to confront this stupid situation before I was even fully awake! You—you conniving, cruel, twisted—” 

Avoiding Jaeyun’s (truthful, not exaggerated) claims entirely, Jongseong turns to Jungwon. “He’s probably been cursed.”

Jaeyun is suddenly a little glad for the ears and tail, because the mystery of them seems to have melted Jungwon’s anger into perplexed curiosity. 

“I mean, is it really a curse?” Jungwon asks. Jaeyun thinks that question is stupid because the answer to it is obviously. “It’s actually really cute. I kind of wanna pet him.”

Jaeyun’s tail starts wagging. He really hates this. It really sucks that when Jungwon clocks the motion, when he looks Jaeyun in the eyes with a slowly-growing grin, his tail starts wagging even harder. 

Trying to shift the focus away from himself, Jaeyun suddenly makes a wild and baseless accusation. 

“I think Jay cursed me.” 

Jongseong splutters, but before he can get a word in edgewise in his own defense Jaeyun continues, “I mean, he’s always calling me puppy, and he’s always saying I’m the group’s dog or whatever, so obviously it has to be him. It makes total sense. He’s trying to realize his own sick, twisted fantasies.”

Jongseong splutters some more, but he finally manages to choke out, “I do not—I do not have sick twisted fantasies! I have healthy straight realities, and also, and also you know I can’t even use magic! So how am I supposed to have cursed you?”

Jaeyun narrows his eyes at him. “Maybe you hired a witch, I don’t know.”

“When would I have time to do that? During what breaks?” 

“I don’t know, it could’ve been a remote job! Maybe you were in cahoots over KakaoTalk!” 

“What the—it wasn’t me!”

“Sure it’s not.”

“It’s not! God, whatever, you’re insufferable.”

Jungwon is laughing now, that deep, loud ha-ha-ha. Jaeyun’s tail wags so hard that it starts thumping against the mattress of Jongseong ’s bed. Fuck everything forever. 

“What’s going on?” A fourth voice pipes up. 

It’s Sunoo, standing behind Jungwon in the doorway, looking over Jungwon’s shoulder. He’s got a facemask on and his hair is pulled back by a fluffy white headband. 

“Hyung’s a dog,” Jungwon supplies. 

Jaeyun whines. “I’m not a dog.”

Sunoo shifts around to get a clearer view into the room, and then, “Oh, woah, oh my god.” 

Jaeyun really doesn’t like that his tail starts wagging even more when Sunoo comes into full view. Deciding enough is enough, he reaches back to grab and hold it still. 

“How are you a dog?” Sunoo asks, inching forward with a curious expression. 

Jaeyun shrugs miserably. “I just woke up like this.”

Jungwon follows Sunoo’s wake into the room, passing him by to invade Jaeyun’s personal space. Jungwon’s gentle hand finds its way into Jaeyun’s hair, carding through it, raking his blunted fingernails across Jaeyun’s scalp. A shudder wracks his body when Jungwon takes his right ear between two of his fingers, tenderly pinching it, rubbing his thumb along the velvet-soft pink inside. It’s like he can feel every ridge and valley of Jungwon’s fingerprint, the callus and bone of his first knuckle. His breath escapes him in a tremulous gust. 

“Oh wow, this must feel really good for you,” Jungwon comments, non-judgmentally but with a certain measure of amusement that kind of ticks Jaeyun off. 

Unfortunately, Jungwon is right, and it does feel really good, so instead of bickering he  pushes his head into Jungwon’s hand. Jungwon chuckles a little and scratches right behind his ear. Once again unhindered by his grip, Jaeyun’s tail is operating at mach speed, so fast that it’s actually kind of starting to hurt. 

Sunoo hides his endeared laughter behind his palm, though Jaeyun isn’t really listening, his world reduced to the soft patch of skin at the base of his ear. At some point he vaguely registers Sunoo’s phone camera pointed in his direction, but then a second hand takes up scratching at his other ear, and it feels so fucking good that his leg starts twitching. It actually starts to feel so good that it’s getting overwhelming, muscles tensing like a coiled spring. He could collapse, maybe, or explode. 

“Hey,” Jongseong’s voice cuts through some of the buzz, “I think that’s enough, Jungwonnie. I think Jake is about to piss himself.”

When Jungwon’s hand disappears he’s relieved, and even more than that he’s disappointed. That extreme pleasure fades with the hand’s absence. Even though he’s been standing in one place he’s panting like he ran a marathon, tongue out of his mouth as he desperately tries to draw breath.

He flops onto the ground, coming eye-to-eye with Jungwon’s slippers. Jungwon squats down and pokes him in the armpit. He flails like he’s been electrocuted and then falls limp again. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have gone that far,” Jungwon muses, entirely without remorse. 

Jaeyun wheezes a little. 

“You think?” Jongseong deadpans. 

“I think you killed him,” Sunoo contributes, nudging at Jaeyun’s calf with the toe of his fuzzy bear socks. 

Jaeyun squirms away and tucks his chin into his chest when Jungwon reaches to scratch the vulnerable underside of it, thinking that if he has to endure any more of that double-sided pleasure he might prove Sunoo right and actually be killed. 

“Are we having a party in here?” 

They all turn their heads to face Sunghoon at the same time. 

“Woah, creepy,” and then he freezes like a troll at daybreak. “Jakey…”

Jaeyun lifts his head up off the rug, ears perking, tail beginning a lazy sway. 

“Why are you a dog?”

Jaeyun doesn’t answer him because it’s at that moment that he realizes that his pajama pants are digging very uncomfortably into the base of his tail, and that the only reason half of his ass isn’t exposed to the world is that he went to sleep in a huge shirt. He starts squirming around, prying at the waistband to find a way to make it comfortable, and failing. 

“What’s wrong?” Sunoo asks. 

“My pants are uncomfortable,” Jake whines. 

Sunghoon tries again. “Is nobody gonna answer me? Yah. Why is Jake a dog?” 

“We don’t know,” Jay says off-handedly. “He woke up like this. What do you mean your pants are uncomfortable?” 

Jake gives up trying to fix them, sprawling on his front and making sure his shirt is tugged down enough to protect his modesty. “It’s digging into the bottom of my tail. And half my ass is exposed.” 

Sunghoon creeps in. Jake quickly sits up onto his knees and glares. “Don’t get any closer.” 

Sunghoon puts his hands up in surrender. 

“Would it work if we cut a hole in them?” Sunoo asks. “It’s not like those pants are very special.” 

“What? No way. I’m not mutilating my pants.”

“There’s literally nothing else we can do,” Jay says flatly. “Unless you want to wear a skirt, or shove your tail down your pant leg.”

The first one is out of the question. He imagines the second and the sensation of it makes a shudder run down his spine.

“...Fine.” 

With his pajama pants now comfortably cut to allow his tail through (there had been a bit of a struggle: Jay had offered to do it, Jake had called him a pervert and demanded Jungwon do it instead, and in the end it was Sunoo who’d taken up the scissors and done the job) they all traipse out into the common area, where Riki is sitting on the couch with his eyes closed, Heeseung sprawled out next to him with his feet laying over Riki’s lap. 

Jay looks at them dubiously. “Did they even go to bed last night?” 

Riki cracks a single, bleary eye open. “Yeah.”

“When?”

Riki grumbles in a way that seems to mean get out of my business, before shifting sideways and wedging his torso into the corner of the couch. Jaeyun decides he wants in, so he trots over and gracelessly descends onto Riki’s limp body. 

This causes Riki to let out a rather unfortunate sound, something halfway between a groan and a whine, just sexual enough to make everyone snicker at his expense. Jaeyun squirms around until he’s comfortable, laying sideways against Riki’s chest with his head tucked under Riki’s chin, grabbing Riki’s arm and slinging it across his waist. His tail swishes contentedly. 

“So what are we gonna do about hyung?” Sunoo asks, followed by the loud clatter of something dropping and a low, “shit.”

“Be careful in there,” Jongseong calls out, settling on the floor in front of the TV and contending with the perpetually laggy remote to get it turned on. “Probably we should tell the manager.”

Riki’s jaw cracks when he yawns, bringing his free hand up to rest in Jaeyun’s hair. The hand starts to move, stroking rhythmically, petting him. It’s not something that’s never happened to him before, but it feels so much better than usual, the caress of Riki’s fingers against his scalp. He wonders if that’s why he’s feeling so much more cuddly than usual, like an itch under his skin that he needs to sate. 

Muffled by the couch cushion he’s got his face shoved into, Heeseung asks, “What are we telling the manager about who?” 

“About Jake—”

One of Jaeyun’s ears twitches, and Riki’s hand pauses mid-stroke. 

“What is that,” Riki asks, voice flat, maybe a little scared. “On your head. What is that?”

Jaeyun sighs heavily through his mouth. “Dog ears.”

“Uhhhhhhh.”

“That’s what we’re telling the manager about,” Jungwon says, briefly looming over Jaeyun and Riki’s cuddle pile to hand them each an already-peeled mandarin. Riki seems to have shut down entirely so Jungwon has to manually close Riki’s fist around the fruit. 

The weight distribution of the couch shifts as Heeseung sits up to look at Jaeyun, eyes wide and disbelieving. It doesn’t take long at all for his expression to slide from mere shock and confusion into outright panic. 

“Hey,” Heeseung’s voice wobbles, “what the hell? Is nobody else freaked out?”

“I am,” Riki croaks, and apparently he’s been tense this whole time because Jaeyun can feel it when he deflates. 

Ignoring them both, Jungwon says, “I’ll call manager-nim now, then.” He makes to pull his phone out of his pocket before a hand on his forearm stays him. 

“It’s his day off,” reasons Sunghoon, “we shouldn’t bother him. It’s not like it’s urgent anyways.”

Now that’s just ridiculous. Of course it’s urgent: Jaeyun has dog ears. And a tail. He swallows the mandarin slice he was chewing and opens his mouth to argue the point, but Sunghoon cuts him off before he can get a sound out. 

“I mean, nobody’s hurt, or dying; we don’t have any appearances today, we don’t have anywhere to go—I think we can leave it for now.”

Unfortunately, that makes a lot of sense. Jaeyun closes his mouth with a scowl. 

Jongseong pauses in his Netflix scroll, turning to Sunghoon with squinted eyes. “You’re being too reasonable.”

Sunghoon chokes on his own offense. “I’m reasonable!”

“You probably have an ulterior motive,” Jaeyun accuses. 

Sunghoon tsks. “I never have those.”

Jaeyun pops the last slice of mandarin in his mouth and gets up off of Riki, moving to drape himself over Jongseong, who grunts exaggeratedly under his weight. 

“Get off me, you dog,” Jongseong mutters, finally seeming to settle on a show, clicking on what appears to be a golf anime. It starts off way too loud and Jongseong curses as he hastens to lower the volume. 

“You know,” Sunghoon sits on Heeseung’s legs, unconcerned about the wounded animal noise the latter makes, “I always thought if you had dog ears they’d be blond. Like, y’know, a golden retriever. Or like Layla.”

Jaeyun turns his head to face the couch. “Why would they be blond? My hair is black—wait, you’ve thought about this before? Pervert.”

“You can’t even have an imagination anymore. Because of woke.” Sunghoon sighs, and he sounds so genuinely troubled that it actually pisses Jaeyun off. 

“No, seriously, why have you been imagining me as a dog-boy?”

Sunghoon ignores him. 

Riki speaks up. “How did this happen?”

“We don’t know,” Jungwon admits, dropping down next to Jaeyun with a plate of macaroni salad, which Jaeyun had not been aware they had in the fridge. “The working theory is a witch.”

“Or Jjongsaeng.”

Jongseong glares at Jaeyun and elbows him in the ribs, making him crumple to the floor with a pained whine. Everyone is so mean to him. 

“Here comes the airplane,” Jungwon says, and Jaeyun has barely any time to react and open wide before a bite of macaroni salad is shoved into his mouth. It leaves a smudge of mayonnaise dressing on the corner of his lips. Jungwon swipes it off with his thumb, lingering a bit too long. 

Jaeyun’s stomach feels kind of funny. Maybe the macaroni salad has gone bad. 

“Good boy,” Jongseong comments absently. 

“Right!” Jaeyun stands up very, very quickly, nearly overturning both himself and Jungwon’s breakfast in the process. His tail, which is once again unfortunately wagging, smacks Jongseong in the face. Serves him right.

He makes his way to the kitchen. “Ooh, are you making ramyeon?” 

He comes up behind Heeseung, who managed to escape from under Sunghoon at some point, and wraps his arms around Heeseung’s waist. Squeezes tight enough to make Heeseung wheeze a little, and then lets go, turning to the fridge. 

Jaeyun opens the door, scans the contents, closes it, sighs, and then opens it again. From the living room, Riki calls out, “hyung, can you make me an omelet?”

“Make your own omelet,” Jaeyun calls back, putting a half-empty carton of eggs on the counter. 

Jaeyun makes Riki his omelet, and gets his tail tugged as thanks—the nerve of this kid. In response Jaeyun threatens to hit him and then doesn’t. 

Taking that mercy and running with it, Riki fights with Jongseong for about ten minutes over stewardship of the TV (they end up compromising on a joint game of Mario Kart). The arguing is kind of loud and annoying, which Jaeyun doesn’t care about, but it evidently drives Sunoo and Heeseung away because between one moment and the next they’re gone. Jungwon and Sunghoon have also left, but they said where they were going, though Jaeyun doesn’t remember. A cafe or something.

He ends up falling asleep on the couch, head in Jongseong’s lap, blissful ear scratches between games. For some reason he dreams that he’s being chased by Tanooki Mario, who turns into Layla, and now he’s not being chased at all but he’s in deep, deep water at Cheep Cheep Beach. Riki’s there, too, unloading every curse word in every language he knows onto some poor receptionist, who is inexplicably Jungkook, because they’re now in the Hybe lobby, which is open-faced and on a racetrack. It kind of looks like the one in God’s Menu. Layla is still there except Jaeyun is her, now, and Jongseong is looming above him and telling him to sit, good girl, have a treat. Jaeyun wakes up sweating. 

“You good?” Jongseong asks, because Jaeyun must look distressed. Or maybe he was doing that thing in his sleep that dogs do, where they twitch and move their legs like they’re running.

“Fine,” he yawns, sitting up, smacking his mouth to try to rid himself of the post-nap dryness. There’s drool crusted on his cheek and when he looks down there’s a patch of it on Jongseong’s sweatpants, too. Oops. “Weird dreams.”

At some point during his nap Sunoo must’ve migrated back into the living room because he’s sitting cross-legged at the base of the couch, engaged in the game, while Riki sits a round out. It’s a bit strange that he’s still in the dorm—usually when they have a day off Sunoo goes out to meet with his sister or one of his many, many friends, but maybe they were all busy or he just didn’t feel like it today. Sunoo’s whims are fickle and Jaeyun doesn’t always understand them. 

“Who’s who?” Jaeyun asks, trying to refocus his bleary eyes to see what’s going on on-screen. 

“Sunoo is Inkling Girl and I’m Waluigi.”

“You would be Waluigi.”

“Shut up.”

Jaeyun does, but with some amount of satisfaction mentally notes that Sunoo is beating Jongseong handily, solidly in third place. Jongseong is so far behind that Jaeyun is worried he’s gonna get lapped. 

The round ends with Jongseong in last place and Sunoo in second, a triumphant grin on the latter’s face while Jongseong scowls. 

“Are you not gonna do anything today?” He asks Jongseong. Surely he has better things to do than sit here and lose all day. Usually he’s the one doing the most during their days off. 

“No,” Jongseong says, screwing up the timing on the start and stalling his kart out. “I’m tired.”

“Makes sense.” Jaeyun says. He’s also tired. “What time is it?” 

“Don’t you have a phone?—get the fuck out of my way, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck you—NO—”

He does, but he’s pretty sure it’s still in his room, and he doesn’t want to have to get up and go get it. He also doesn’t want to say that, so he just stares into the side of Jongseong’s face the entire rest of the race. Jongseong places sixth. 

While they’re waiting for the rest of the players in the lobby to choose which course to play, Jongseong sighs and digs his phone out. “Half past one.”

“Damn,” he snuggles into Jongseong’s side, “When did I fall asleep?” 

“How would I know?”

“Jeez, testy.”

Jongseong hands the controller off to Riki, who groans, “Oh, come on, not Superbell Subway again.” He scrubs his hand down his face, long and slow. 

“I told you we shouldn’t play online,” Jongseong says, “people have terrible taste in courses. And only two of us can play at a time.”

“Yeah, but it’s boring playing against the CPUs, they all suck.”

“Dude, we suck.”

“Hey, c’mon now,” Jaeyun mediates, “Sunoo’s mid.”

Sunoo whips his head over his shoulder to glare at Jaeyun. He’s so cute. “Don’t call me mid.” 

Jaeyun giggles. “Look at the screen, race is starting.”

After their miserable Superbell Subway failure, Jaeyun joins for a few rounds, doing rather poorly himself. A round in they stop playing online, because Riki’s one-sided beef with a Baby Daisy player whose display name is just a unicode star is starting to reach ridiculous levels. At some point they just keep getting worse and worse, ending up so frustrated that they quit and (reluctantly, on Riki’s part) agree instead to play Smash Bros, from which Jaeyun respectfully demurs. At some point Heeseung comes out into the common space and leaves with a can of Cola and a promise from Sunoo to play Valorant later in the evening, and shortly afterwards Sunghoon and Jungwon arrive home. 

“Hey guys,” Jungwon greets, carelessly kicking off his shoes. It looks like the two of them went to the convenience store, because they’re carrying two plastic bags each. “Hyung, I got what you asked me for,” Jungwon says, walking over to the side of the couch and holding out the smallest of the bags. It looks like it has only one thing in it. 

“Thanks,” Jongseong says, eyes not straying from the screen. “Could you just put it on my bed?” 

“Sure.”

“What’d he get you?” asks Jaeyun, curious. 

Probably because he’s committed to irritating Jaeyun as much as possible at all times, Jongseong just says, “you’ll see.”

“Ugh, whatever.” This is usually the point at which Jaeyun would leave and find someone more willing to entertain him, but he’s really comfortable against Jongseong’s side and for some reason doesn’t want to move. 

It does get boring, though, watching the sprites on the screen beat each other up, so after the end of one match he goes to his room to fetch his phone. After collecting it off the nightstand he catches sight of the bag and can’t contain his curiosity, rationalizing it by telling himself that Jongseong knows him, and therefore probably knew he’d snoop, and besides if Jongseong had Jungwon buy it for him then it can’t be that bad. 

As soon as his hand makes contact with the contents of the bag he freezes, tells himself five times in his head that it’s not what he thinks, and then pulls the object out of the bag. It’s exactly what he thinks. 

Furious, he stomps out into the living area with the collar dangling off his finger, bell jingling merrily (dogs don’t even wear bells! That’s cats!), and points it accusingly in Jongseong’s direction.

“What the hell is this? I’m gonna kill you.”

Jongseong just laughs, folding forward and running out of breath and getting punted off the platform in his game. When his laughter ceases after an annoyingly long time, he straightens back up and wipes away imaginary tears (probably just because he knows it’ll piss Jaeyun off even more) and faces him with a smirk, which is also annoying. 

He opens his mouth but Jaeyun decides he doesn’t actually want to listen to his answer, so instead lunges and starts throttling him. The evasion maneuver Jongseong attempts doesn’t pan out in his favor and Jaeyun manages to wrap his hands around Jongseong’s neck, though he doesn’t squeeze. 

The bell on the collar, which has now slipped from his hand to his wrist, rings obnoxiously as Jongseong fights back, and then rings even more enthusiastically when somebody comes up from behind to wrap their arms around Jaeyun’s waist and pull him away. Heeseung is now fighting them both to try and get in the middle of their squabble.

“What the hell? What is your issue?” Jongseong pants once he’s out of Jaeyun’s reach and trying to regain his bearings, face flushed and hair disheveled. 

The collar of his already-stretched shirt has been pulled across his shoulders to expose the sharp line of his collarbone, which somehow and irrationally makes Jaeyun kind of angry. That feeling is fading fast as it always does, and he starts feeling a little bad for having been so aggressive. He slumps into the arms keeping him in place, letting himself become dead weight and ignoring the resulting distinctly Riki-shaped squawk. 

This is exactly when Jungwon walks into the living room, yawning through his fingers and looking bewildered at the scene before him. 

“What’s going on?”

“Jakey’s trying to kill Jay,” Sunghoon provides, followed by Sunoo’s, “again.” 

“He deserves it,” Jaeyun defends, because he might not be that angry anymore but he has his pride, “he wants to make me wear a collar.” He holds the thing up demonstratively, the bell glinting in the light and tinkling softly. 

“Hey, when did I ever say I’d make you? Maybe it’s for Layla.” 

“Why would you be getting my dog a collar? And anyway it’s too small for Layla. I know your games, sicko.” He points accusingly at Jongseong, who shrugs. 

When Jaeyun looks over to Jungwon, maybe for support or for backup, Jungwon is just looking dangerously contemplative, a hand on his chin. “Well,” he starts, and a deep primal dread begins to build in Jaeyun’s gut, “you would look cute…”

“Freaks, all of you. Freaks!” Jaeyun feels himself getting red and indignant. “I can’t believe I’ve been living with—with a bunch of perverts. What, you want me to get on all fours and bark, too? Huh?” 

Jaeyun shouldn’t have said that. He really shouldn’t have said that. Because now Jay’s eyes have an odd glint to them, and Jungwon’s pondering has intensified, and Heeseung just shrugs when Jaeyun looks pleadingly at him. No hope for him, not at all. As a last resort he makes eye contact with Sunoo, begging for a shred of empathy, of rationale, of normalcy in this madhouse he’s been dropped into; Sunoo’s mouth is twisted in sympathy, and his eyes are apologetic, but Jake can tell that whatever hole he’s dug himself into is his alone to escape. 

“If you’re offering…” Jongseong says, lips curling up into an evil grin. 

“I’m not!” Jaeyun shouts, renewing his efforts to escape Riki’s vise-like grip around his middle. “Let me go or I’ll kick you in the balls!” He then attempts to do just that, but the angle is off and he doesn’t quite manage to reach them. 

Heeseung is the one to come to his defense: “alright, guys, let’s leave him alone for now. That’s enough.”

For now!? 

Riki lets go of him, finally, and Jaeyun scrambles away and to the kitchen, curling down below the island and peeking only his eyes above the lip of the counter. His ears are pressed to his skull and he has his tail tucked between his legs. Sunghoon takes one look at him and bursts out laughing. 

“Stop it,” Jaeyun whines, “it’s not funny. I’m being tortured. I’m not even safe in my own home anymore.” Jungwon approaches, Jaeyun watching his movements warily. “What do you want?” 

“Nothing.” This does not convince him. 

In the background, he hears Sunghoon say, “Hey, when you think about this it’s a good thing. The En-O’ Clock editors won’t have to work so hard putting dog ears and a tail on Jake all the time.” 

Jaeyun starts to feel like he’s being stalked by a wildcat. 

“I just want to nap,” Jungwon’s voice is innocent in a way that is damning, “Nothing wrong with that.”

“And what does that have to do with me?” Jaeyun squints.

“Nap with me?” 

Jaeyun doesn’t understand why Jungwon is being so ominous about this. It’s not like they’ve never napped together before. It doesn’t happen too often, but it’s not a nonexistent thing. 

He’s still skeptical, but he did wake up way too early (thank you, Jongseong), and despite his earlier nap his eyes are feeling a bit droopy again, so he agrees, following Jungwon to his room. The prospect of cuddles sounds enticing, too: he’s feeling touchy today for some reason, more than usual. Maybe it’s the dog ears. Maybe they’re changing him. 

Jungwon climbs into his bed first and shuffles under the covers and opens his arms for Jaeyun. Crawling in after him, Jaeyun says, “don’t try anything funny.”

“I would never,” Jungwon lies. 

Jaeyun pulls Jungwon’s blanket up to his chin, rests his head on Jungwon’s chest, and promptly falls asleep. 

He’s woken up by someone shaking him, and if it’s Jongseong again he will actually kill him. Luckily for Jongseong when he opens his eyes it’s Heeseung whose face is blocking out the light.

“You can’t sleep too long,” Heeseung says, “or you won’t be able to fall asleep tonight.” 

“You underestimate me,” Jaeyun mumbles, swatting Heeseung’s hand away from his face and turning over to shove his face in the pillow. “I can do anything.”

“I’m sure you can. Up we go.” The sheets are tossed off of his body and two arms snake around his waist, lifting him up and off the bed. Everyone is always manhandling him, it’s unfair. What happened to agency? To bodily autonomy? 

The rest of the members are all in the common area when Heeseung drags him out there, visibly straining against his weight, face red and a little sweaty. Serves him right. He’s dropped (gently, to Heeseung’s credit) on the living room floor and Heeseung sits down heavily next to him, out of breath. In protest of whatever he’s been dragged out here to do Jaeyun remains sprawled on his back. When Jongseong passes by to sit on the couch he sticks his leg out a little more in an attempt to trip him, but he gets caught and Jongseong just steps over him. Jaeyun kicks at the space Jongseong just vacated. 

Eventually he rolls over and slumps to the couch, wedges himself between Jongseong and Sunghoon, and then spends the next ten or so minutes futilely trying to adjust his tail into a comfortable position. 

“Stop squirming,” Jongseong orders. He’s got his guitar on his lap so Jaeyun can only take up a fraction of it, pressing his feet against Jongseong’s thigh and resting his head on Sunghoon’s shoulder. Riki sits on Sunghoon’s other side and is somehow still playing Smash Bros. He’s waiting for Sunoo, who is going through all of the characters and all of the color options before he finally settles on an option. 

“I can’t get comfortable, though,” Jaeyun whines, grabbing his tail and moving it from his right side to his left. 

Jongseong sighs heavily, as though greatly burdened by Jaeyun’s discomfort, and reaches over to grab Jaeyun by the nape—scruffing him. Like a puppy. Calm washes through him, not like water but like static fuzz, faint blue sparks in his vision. He goes limp, still, restlessness overthrown by the firm grasp of Jongseong’s palm. Weird. 

“Good boy.”

This fucking guy. 

Jaeyun doesn’t stay mad at him for long, though, (not that he ever really can), because Jongseong helps him rearrange himself into a more pleasant position before he continues strumming his guitar. It just so happens that this means he’s lying down again, legs draped over Jongseong in a way that doesn’t impede his playing and head on Sunghoon’s lap, curled up tight to fit; even though he’s got his phone and Riki and Sunoo’s intense fighting game to entertain him he drifts back off to sleep. This time he doesn’t dream of anything in particular, just the amplified sensation of Sunghoon’s hands in his hair and on his ears, the aftershocks of an earthquake. This time he thinks he really might ruin his sleep schedule. 

When he wakes back up they’ve moved on from Smash Bros and are now playing some other fighting game that Riki insists is superior. It’s some girl with huge fists against a girl with striped leggings, though he can’t tell who is who. Sunghoon has both of his hands on Jaeyun’s body, one of them planted firmly on his head while the other one pets his upper arm. Jongseong’s guitar has been moved off his lap and he’s fiddling with something on his phone, so Jaeyun switches sides, feet over Sunghoon’s lap and head on Jongseong’s. 

Sunghoon pets his ankles and Jongseong brings one hand down to Jaeyun’s hair, and even when Sunghoon pulls a little on his tail he feels so nice that he doesn’t reprimand him. Everything around him is soft and hazy, and he just can’t help how he tries to wriggle further into it, to blanket himself more and more in that sweetness. 

“Jake, stop it.”

He bats the bothersome voice away like a gnat, focusing only on getting more comfortable.

“Jake, seriously—”

He cracks an eye back open at that, looks up at Jongseong’s face, which is flushed and almost panicked. “You need to stop, now.”

Of course Jaeyun doesn’t listen, and of course he regrets it almost immediately. Because when he moves his head just a little bit more to the side, it comes into contact with something hard. 

Jaeyun freezes for a very, very long moment. Long enough for Sunoo to lose his match against Riki and start complaining. Long enough that he begins to think he might never move again. 

“Jake,” Jongseong starts, slowly, deliberately. “Get your head off my lap. Please.”

“Yeah, right, yeah,” he squeaks, sitting up abruptly. 

Entirely oblivious to their situation, Riki asks, “You guys wanna play a round?”

On autopilot, Jaeyun responds, “sure,” and holds his hand out for a controller. 

Jongseong parrots him wordlessly, and now they’re sitting side-by-side in silence staring at a character select screen. He aimlessly moves from character to character, not really taking anything in. 

Jungwon, who seems to be able to pick up on nonsense from the members no matter the distance, emerges from the hallway with his hair wet and a towel over his shoulders and immediately zeroes in on Jaeyun and Jongseong. 

“You two are acting weird,” he accuses. “Why is Jay-hyung blushing?”

“Everything is normal,” Jongseong says, at the same time as Jaeyun blurts out, voice too high-pitched to be the truth, “No reason!” 

Jungwon’s face grows more skeptical, if possible. It’s times like these that Jaeyun wishes he was good at lying. 

It doesn’t seem to be that important to Jungwon in the end, though, because he just shrugs and makes his way to the couch, plopping down on Jongseong’s knee. Jaeyun can see out of the corner of his eye how Jongseong stiffens, but Jungwon doesn’t say anything so he probably isn’t far enough back to feel Jongseong’s… problem. Relaxing minutely, Jongseong wraps his arm around Jungwon to more comfortably hold his controller, finally picking a character.

That manages to knock both of them out of their stupor and they both pick a character and start the match. Neither of them know how to play this game.

“That was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen,” Jungwon comments, once one of them wins. Jaeyun isn’t entirely sure who.

Neither of them refute him, because they can’t. 

When they retire to their room, it goes like this: 

“So, uh, earlier…”

“We don’t actually have to talk about it,” Jongseong says, a little pleadingly. 

Jaeyun fixes him with a stern glare. “You might think that, but I’m the one that had my head on your boner.”

Jongseong winces. “Don’t say it like that… and it’s not like it’s my fault, you were the one rubbing your head all over it.”

“Wh—I was not—” but he was, so he shuts up. “Well. We still have to talk about it.”

“What even is there to say? It’s a—it’s a perfectly normal human reaction.” Jongseong won’t look at him. 

“Yeah, but why were you getting turned on by my face in your lap?” 

Jongseong grows indignant. “It would’ve happened no matter what! I’m sensitive, okay?” 

Jaeyun opens his mouth to say that if Jongseong was rubbing his head all over Jaeyun’s junk he wouldn’t get hard, but he doesn’t actually know if that’s true so he closes his mouth again. That is something he is not going to think about. 

“Well if you’re so easy to rile up then maybe you need to jack off more.” What is he saying?

Jongseong goggles at him as if amazed by his terrible judgement and lack of ability to think before he speaks, and then says, “what the hell are you talking about?” 

“I mean if you ever want any help… I mean, well, I mean. Shut up.”

“I wasn’t saying anything. Did you just—”

“Shut up.”

“Did you just offer to jack me off?”

“No.”

“Because it sounds like that’s what you were saying.”

“I didn’t. What were we talking about? I think I have amnesia. I don’t remember how to talk. Woof.”

Jongseong stands up from his bed and approaches him, stopping a few feet away with that stupid smirk on his face. “If you’re offering then—” 

Jaeyun looks down—he can’t help it, it’s at eye level—and points at Jongseong’s crotch. “What the—pervert!” 

Jongseong smacks his hand to the side. “Don’t point at my junk, what the hell.”

“Don’t call it your junk.”

“It’s mine, I’ll call it whatever I want. Are you gonna jack me off or what?”

Jaeyun turns to the side and crosses his arms. “No.” He darts his gaze to the (growing!) tent in Jongseong’s pants, and then doubles down. “No.” 

“I know you want to.”

“Who said that? Get out of my face.” He glances over again. Fuck, he kind of does want to. In the straightest and most platonic way possible. He’s just curious, it’s normal. It’s healthy. He thinks the dog ears are clouding his judgement. 

“I’m not in your face.” Which is true, but also not something Jaeyun will admit. 

For a little bit there’s silence as Jaeyun fights a legendary internal battle, and then Jongseong sighs and says, “well obviously I’m not going to force you. Sorry for being—”

He panics and turns to face Jongseong. “No, wait. I mean, no. I mean, fuck. I’ll su—give you a handjob.”

Jongseong raises his eyebrows. Infuriating. “You were gonna say something else.”

“No I wasn’t,” Jaeyun denies. “Are you gonna take it or not? Offer’s closed in five, four—”

“Are you sure?”

“—three, yes I’m sure shut up, two—”

“Okay, yeah. I’ll take it.”

Jaeyun grins, “yeah you’ll take it.” 

“Shut up. How are we gonna do this?” 

Jaeyun looks between their beds and makes a decision. “Get on your bed.”

“On mine?” 

“If you get cum everywhere it’s not gonna be on my sheets. I’m doing you a favor, here.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“But you accepted.”

Jongseong scowls but moves back to his bed, sits down, watches Jaeyun get up and walk over. Why is his tail wagging? This is insane. He should back out right now. 

(He doesn’t.)

He shoves Jongseong by the shoulders until he scoots down the bed and his back hits the wall, legs straight out in front of him. Jaeyun crawls between them and tries to feel normal about this. He very bravely fails. His tail is still wagging, because there isn’t a world in which he ever catches a break. 

Without preamble he pulls down the waistband of Jongseong’s shorts until they slide over his ass. He doesn’t bother pulling them down any further, and then he pulls down his briefs, too. Jongseong’s dick pops out like a Whac-A-Mole. Jaeyun imagines hitting it with a plastic mallet and then winces. 

“You look like you’re going to war,” Jongseong comments. “You know you don’t have to do this.” 

“I’m doing it,” Jaeyun asserts, and then wraps his hand around Jongseong’s cock and watches his bare stomach twitch at the sensation, because of course Jongseong always has to sleep shirtless. Which Jaeyun has never thought about or lingered on before, naturally. “It’s fine.”

“Don’t force yourself, seriously.”

“I’m not,” Jaeyun snaps, because he really isn’t. It’s just—something new. Something he’s never done to anybody but himself. 

Right. That’s right.

Remembering that he knows how to do this, has done this countless times to himself, calms him down, and he approaches the challenge with a renewed confidence, spitting in his palm and wrapping it once again around Jongseong.

“What the fuck? I didn’t say you could rub your spit all over my penis,” Jongseong says, and Jaeyun looks unimpressed up at him. 

“Just say dick. Please. Or cock. Besides this is basically the same thing as a blowjob.” He thinks about the implications of that and then emphasizes, “which I am not going to do.”

“I wasn’t going to ask you to. What makes you think I want your mouth all over my dick anyways?” Jongseong scowls and crosses his arms.

Jaeyun scoffs. “Excuse me? You should be so honored to have this mouth all over your dick. I’d blow your mind. As a matter of fact—”

“Just jack me off, oh my god.” 

Jaeyun doesn’t like his tone, so he makes the first downstroke excruciatingly slow, and matches the pace on the upstroke. 

“I’m gonna kill you.” Jongseong’s eyes are closed, and his teeth are grit. “Can you please go faster?”

Abruptly Jaeyun speeds up, to a point he knows will be uncomfortable. Jongseong makes a little noise and grabs him by the wrist. 

“You know what? Get your hand off my dick, I’m doing this myself since you’re so bad at it.”

“Fine, I’ll stop teasing,” he chops at Jongseong’s hand until it releases him. “Prepare yourself, Jjongsaeng, you’re about to experience something magical.”

“I hate you.”

“Woah, slow down, I’m not into that—” Jongseong glares at him. “Okay, fine, fine. You got it, boss.”

Jaeyun does it properly this time, and it turns out Jongseong wasn’t lying about being sensitive because it doesn’t take long at all for him to get all worked up. Faster than he should, in Jaeyun’s opinion, because after no more than three minutes Jongseong’s cum is all over his face and chin and he’s retreating from the scene.

“Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew,” Jaeyun has his shoulders to his ears (or where his human ears used to be), tense with the deeply uncomfortable sensation of Jongseong’s spunk all over his face. He reaches up to wipe it off but then realizes that the fluid is also on his hands, which is gross, so he takes one of Jongseong’s medium-clean shirts off his laundry chair and scrubs his hands and face until they’re dry, and then tosses it at the laundry basket and misses. “Warn me next time, what the fuck?” Whatever boner he refuses to acknowledge he’d developed over the course of the handjob is now long gone. 

“Sorry,” Jongseong says weakly. “Could you get me a tissue?” 

Jaeyun throws the tissue box at Jongseong’s head and then marches over to the bathroom, wrenching the door open with the intent to wash his face and hands more thoroughly only to walk in and see Jungwon sitting on the toilet, pants down to his ankles, staring blankly at the wall. 

“What the fuck!?” Jaeyun backs out and slams the door shut. “Lock the door!” 

Jungwon yelps. “It was closed! Why wouldn’t you knock!?”

“Because I thought if someone was inside they would lock it!” 

Jungwon doesn’t respond to that. Jaeyun waits for the toilet to flush and the tap to run and Jungwon to step out. He pauses at the doorway. 

“Um, hyung,” Jungwon’s eyes are wide. “You’ve got,” he points up at his own hair. “In your…”

For the first time in his life Jaeyun hopes it’s a bug. 

“I think you have cum in your hair,” Jungwon finally says. “And on your ear, too.”

“That’s crazy. You’re hallucinating. Why would I have cum in my hair? What kind of situation—” 

Jungwon cuts him off with a hand to the shoulder and a serene expression. “Hyung. I don’t care.” He brushes past Jaeyun and leaves him to his crisis. 

When he returns to the bedroom, face clean and hands clean and teeth clean just for good measure, Jongseong is already asleep in Jaeyun’s bed. For some reason all he feels is fond; he tries to conjure up annoyance and fails. Jongseong’s boxer briefs and pants are on the floor, blanket up to his waist, and Jaeyun sincerely hopes that he is not naked under there. Not that it makes a difference; he’s already seen all the parts that matter. He crawls in under the sheets and is relieved to see that Jongseong had at least bothered with boxers. 

Falling asleep is surprisingly easy.