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~~~
Minho liked to wake up to the soothing chimes of his generic phone alarm. He had a theory that being woken abruptly by the shrill sounds of, say, dubstep- which was what Taemin very irritatingly used- wasn’t good for one’s mood when being forced out of bed at horrifically early hours. Minho liked to wake up slowly, with time to adjust to the reality that it was six in the morning and he’d had two hours of sleep and fuck everything.
Thus, he was less than pleased to be awoken one morning by the extraordinarily loud sound of Kibum screaming.
It took him perhaps thirty groggy seconds to realize that Kibum’s shrieks did not mean there was an axe murderer in the dorm out to chop them up. He could hear Jonghyun yelling something back, after all. Minho groaned, rolled over, and pulled his blanket over his head. He still had a good twenty minutes before his alarm went off.
Seven minutes later, the ruckus had still not died down. Minho cursed with all the eloquence of the sleep-deprived, and stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping over his laundry hamper before he made it to the doorway.
He flung open the door and inhaled a deep breath, ready to give his two bandmates hell for being so loudly obnoxious. His shout died in his throat, however, at the sight before him.
Kibum was standing there, stark naked and dripping wet, a towel lying at his feet, clearly having just showered. Ordinarily, that alone would have been distracting enough to render Minho speechless. This time, his usual guilty pleasure at seeing so much of Kibum’s damp, bare flesh was topped by the fact that Kibum had somehow developed cat ears and a tail.
And real ones, too, Minho realized as the tail lashed angrily about, the ears flattening against Kibum’s soaking wet hair. They were as undeniably a part of Kibum’s anatomy as his actual ears and body.
But how the hell was that even possible?
“…telling you I don’t know!” Kibum was yelling at Jonghyun, hands flying about in panicked gestures. “I was just showering and then I felt something weird and then somehow I grew a fucking tail-”
“And ears,” Jonghyun said helpfully. “You have ears, too.”
Kibum emitted a disturbingly catlike hiss. “There is clearly something wrong with the shower! Stop staring at me and go call a plumber!”
“Oh, please,” Jonghyun scoffed. “Like the shower turned you into a furry-”
“I am not a furry! And unless you have a better explanation, you self-righteous, bone-headed, small-nostriled-”
Minho had a feeling that this argument had been going on for quite long enough if Kibum was resorting to such nonsensical insults. He stepped forward and cleared his throat.
Both Kibum and Jonghyun jumped and stared at him with surprise. Minho tried very hard not to look at Kibum’s naked crotch.
“Um,” he said. “Can you two stop being so loud? I was trying to sleep.”
This was an entirely inadequate response to Kibum sprouting cat parts, and they all knew it. Kibum’s mouth moved soundlessly as he worked himself up for another round of upset shrieking.
Jonghyun got there first. He tossed his bangs out of his eyes with a quick jerk of his head, and grinned.
“Look, Minho,” he said, all infuriating charm. “I found us a pretty little kitten. Isn’t he cute?”
Kibum made a strangled, high-pitched noise halfway between a snarl and a scream. Minho hastily took a step backwards, even though he was several feet away.
Jonghyun apparently had no sense of self-preservation, however, because he reached out and ruffled Kibum’s wet hair, fingertips brushing against the silky fur of Kibum’s new ears.
“Aww,” he cooed, in the tone of voice one uses with babies and small, fluffy animals. “You’re so adorable, yes you are...”
Kibum smacked Jonghyun’s hand away with rather unnecessary violence.
“Don’t touch me! And if you ever call me ‘kitten’ again, I’ll shove you into that fucking shower! I hope it turns you into a gerbil!”
“A gerbil?” said Jonghyun. He started laughing. “Really, Kibum? That’s the worst thing you can think of? A gerbil?”
“Cats eat gerbils,” Kibum snapped.
He bent over and snatched his towel up, presenting Minho with a rather glorious view of his bare ass. Then he shouldered his way past a still-cackling Jonghyun and down the hall.
“Hyung,” said Minho, once the door to Kibum’s room had slammed shut. “Do you think the shower really...”
“No, of course not,” said Jonghyun. His laughter calmed. “I showered about an hour ago and I haven’t grown any new appendages.” He frowned. “Yet.”
Minho, despite himself, snickered. “Maybe you really will turn into a gerbil.”
“Please,” said Jonghyun. He ran a hand through his hair, eyes smug. “If I turn into anything, it’ll be a motherfucking wolf.”
~~~
There had been some small hope from all five of them- once Jinki and Taemin had woken up and been apprised of the situation, of course- that Kibum’s ears and tail would somehow fade by the time they departed for their first schedule of the day.
Unfortunately, they were not blessed with any such luck. Kibum was still part-cat by breakfast, ears still pricked atop his head, tail still swaying through the hole he’d been forced to cut in the back of his least-favourite pair of boxers. He’d discovered that he had very little control over his tail; when he was not actively thinking about moving it, it tended to flail around and express his feelings all on its own.
“Just stick your tail in your pants and wear a hat,” Jinki told Kibum, tired and not willing to put up with more of Kibum’s freak-out than absolutely necessary. “No one will notice.”
“Of course someone will notice weird bulges in my hat!” Kibum objected. He frowned at his glass of milk. “And I can’t control my tail moving around. Someone is bound to wonder why there’s apparently a snake in my pants!”
Taemin choked on his mouthful of food. Minho reached over and pounded him helpfully on the back, grinning.
“Wear baggy pants,” Jonghyun suggested. “Your tail can flail about it in peace, then.”
Kibum frowned. “But that wouldn’t fit our concept, and it would be so ugly.”
“Would you rather be ugly or have fans wondering why you’ve grown a third leg?” Jinki demanded. “We can talk the stylists into letting you wear something besides shorts for a day. It won’t kill you.”
Kibum sulked into his milk. “I was going to wear those skinny jeans today,” he said miserably. “They make my ass look great.”
“Your ass looks great in everything,” said Minho before he could quite stop himself. He went hastily on: “Stop worrying so much about this. One day of being mildly unfashionable isn’t going to kill you. You look fantastic no matter what you wear.”
Kibum sighed, but there was a pleased curve to his lips. Minho resisted rolling his eyes; flattery always was the way to go when persuading Kibum of anything.
“All right,” said Kibum, giving in. “A hat and baggy pants it is, then.”
~~~
This was, however, easier said than done. It turned out that Kibum’s new ears and tail were extremely sensitive to touch. He would twitch badly and curse anytime someone tried to scritch his ears or accidentally brushed by his tail in the narrow dorm hall. Forcing even a fairly large beanie onto his head produced fifteen minutes of him whimpering about how awful it felt.
Cramming him into one of Minho’s overly large sweatpants until they could find a more stage-appropriate pair was even worse.
“Hyung,” Taemin beseeched, holding out his hands. “You can’t go out in public in only your underwear.”
Kibum obstinately dangled the sweatpants from his fingers, jaw clenched.
“I don’t like having my tail trapped underneath all that fabric,” he objected. “It’s very sensitive, you know.”
“Your dick is sensitive, too,” said Taemin, undeterred. “Yet you put that in your pants every day.”
Kibum squawked. Minho put his face in his hands, trying desperately not to imagine the concepts of Kibum’s dick and sensitive together.
“He has a point,” said Jinki. He looked up from where he was helping Jonghyun screw in a particularly difficult set of earrings. “It can’t be all that bad, Kibum.”
“I’m used to having a dick!” said Kibum, folding his arms over his chest. “I’m not used to having a three-foot piece of furry rope dangling from my backside!”
“It’s not exactly dangling…” said Jonghyun, eyeing said tail’s agitated swishes through the air.
“Kibum, look,” said Jinki, in his world-weary why am I the only one with common sense around here? tone of voice. “Either you call in sick today and miss all our schedules, or you wear pants. Is it really that hard of a choice?”
“You’re not the one with the oversensitive tail,” muttered Kibum. But he did shake the sweatpants out in preparation for slipping them on.
Minho smiled at him from across the room, and made a heart with his hands in an attempt to cheer him up from the trauma of the morning. Kibum blinked, and rather wearily smiled back.
“Hyung,” said Taemin thoughtfully. “Would it be weird if your dick grew a tail as well?”
Kibum threw the sweatpants at him.
~~~
Minho noticed that Kibum spent the entire car ride to the recording station balanced precariously on one side in attempt to avoid squashing his tail between his thigh and the car seat. Once they arrived at the station, he found a corner and sat the same way as well, stiff and unmoving, while Jinki went off to talk to their managers about finding an appropriate pair of baggy pants.
“Are you all right?” one of the stylists was asking concernedly now, as she did Kibum’s eye-shadow. “You look a little out of it, Kibum-ssi.”
“He hurt his leg,” said Minho, when Kibum chewed his lip and didn’t respond.
The stylist’s eyes widened. “Oh, I’m so sorry! How?”
“He contracted a rare disease that causes green spots to appear on his skin,” said Taemin seriously. “It’s not contagious, but it’s very, very painful.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Jonghyun. He nudged Taemin with an elbow. “He had a very interesting night with a dominatrix and it left quite a few marks up and down his leg, if you know what I mean...”
“Oh, shut up,” said Kibum when Jonghyun and Taemin started snickering helplessly. “I strained a tendon a bit, that’s all.”
“Please be careful on stage,” Kibum’s stylist told him earnestly, ignoring Jonghyun and Taemin’s nonsense. “Don’t hurt yourself worse.”
Kibum smiled at her, sweet. “I’ll try,” he said, and patted her hand.
Minho fought back a frown and forced himself to focus on his own make-up.
~~~
Kibum’s mood didn’t get any better once they started recording their song- if anything, it got worse. He was stiff while dancing, even in the baggy trousers their manager had found for him, and restless, sweaty and short-tempered between takes.
Once the band members realized he had apparently really not been exaggerating how uncomfortable it felt to have his ears and tail crammed into a hat and pants, all four of them made sure to be especially supportive throughout the recording. Jinki brought him water, Jonghyun gave him a shoulder massage, and Taemin kept hugging him, being very careful to avoid his tail.
Minho, for his part, could tell that it was costing Kibum a lot to keep from snapping at the others for being so considerate. He was in that type of mood in which all kindnesses felt grating rather than welcome. And yet Kibum was clearly doing his best to hold it together, and not just because they were in public.
So Minho teased Kibum, poked at his hat, startled him with hugs, winked outrageously at him from the other side of the stage. Kibum glowered and made annoyed comments each time, but he also relaxed a little, as if it helped to be able to take out his discomfort on someone willing to bear it.
After the recording was over and they were back in the dressing rooms, Kibum caught Minho in a brief, tight hug. Minho held him close for the split second that Kibum allowed it, surprised.
“Sorry for being such an ass to you,” Kibum said. He reached out and squeezed Minho’s hands in his. “And thanks for letting me. It really helped me focus.”
“No problem,” said Minho. He smiled. “Hopefully you’ll figure out your, er, problem soon.”
“Yeah, hopefully,” Kibum agreed, smiling in return.
They lingered for another moment, fingers tangled together. Then the demands of getting their costumes off called, and they let go.
~~~
By the end of the day, they were all exhausted and relieved to make it back to the peace of the dorm. Kibum made it two steps past the front door before stripping off his pants and hat and darting into the bathroom, probably to examine his ears and tail now that he finally had time. Jinki busied himself in the kitchen with making tea. Jonghyun and Taemin vanished into their room with vague mumblings about Jonghyun teaching Taemin some more ‘breath control’ in the interests of ‘instrumental music theory’. Minho didn’t want to know what that really meant.
He himself went to help Jinki with the tea, needing some as well to relax after the stress of the day. When it was done, Jinki took his mug and wandered down the hall to lock himself into his bedroom for some much-needed alone time. Minho blew gently on his own steaming mug and carried it to his own room.
To his surprise, he found Kibum there, lying on his bed, still pantsless. He was sprawled on his side with feet near Minho’s stack of pillows, reading a book, his tail waving lazily in the air.
“Hey,” said Minho. He came forward and carefully set the tea on the nightstand. “What’s up?”
“Something in my room is obviously out to get me,” said Kibum. He looked up from his book. “I mean, none of you woke up meowing. I don’t want to spend any more time in there than necessary. What if tomorrow I have whiskers?”
Minho laughed and shoved Kibum’s feet over. “You’d look cute,” he said, climbing onto the bed and settling down cross-legged with his back to the wall. “Weird, yeah, but cute.”
Kibum rolled his eyes and squirmed towards the head of the bed so his feet were wedged underneath Minho’s legs, knees bent. Minho grinned affectionately at him and reached down to pat the side of his thigh.
“You can’t avoid your own room forever, you know.”
“I know.” Kibum curled up tighter, scrunching his body towards his feet so that he was tucked closer to Minho. “Would it bother you if I slept here just for tonight, though?”
Minho, on instinct, caught Kibum’s tail in one hand and ran it through his grip, the fur incredibly soft and silky against his palm. Kibum shivered.
“No, that’s fine,” said Minho. “You can sleep over if you want. But I’ll be fucking pissed if I wake up all furry tomorrow, too.”
Kibum laughed, ears flicking contentedly back and forth. Minho continued to play with his tail.
“I don’t think I’m contagious,” Kibum said. He yawned, an oddly catlike yawn, tongue uncurling against his teeth. “Sorry.”
Minho pressed a brief kiss to the tip of Kibum’s tail. “It’s cool.”
They lapsed into a comfortable silence. Minho lifted a book of his own from his nightstand and started reading. He sipped his tea every so often, the warmth contributing to the relaxed laziness spreading through his body. He continued to stroke Kibum’s tail, winding it between his fingers, rubbing his thumb against its softness, bringing it occasionally to press warmly against his cheek.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later that he noticed Kibum was somehow purring, eyes half-closed in pleasure. He was still on the same page of his book that he’d been on ten minutes ago.
“Kibum?” Minho called softly. “Are you awake?”
“Mmm,” said Kibum, the tones of his purr shifting to sound a little more human. His eyelashes fluttered. “Wha…?”
“Shh,” said Minho. He nuzzled his nose against Kibum’s tail in apology. “Go back to sleep.”
Kibum made a faintly grumpy noise and wriggled about for a moment, dropping his book off the bed in an attempt to get comfortable. Minho grinned and chuckled at how cute this looked.
“C’mere,” he said, tugging gently on Kibum’s tail. “It’d probably be more comfortable for you to lie the right way around on the bed.”
Kibum, still too half-asleep to argue, let Minho guide him around. He settled his head on Minho’s lap and curled into a tight ball, tail for once lying mostly still against the bed. Minho rested his elbow on Kibum’s shoulder and began gently playing with the delicate softness of Kibum’s cat ears.
Kibum started purring again, but only for a few minutes this time. He fell asleep on Minho’s lap, breathing slowly against Minho’s hip.
Minho gazed down at him, unable to stop smiling. It was so nice that Kibum liked being petted like this. He brushed his thumb over the fur of Kibum’s ears and wished they could do this more often.
A sudden realization intruded into his contentment. It occurred to him- as it ought to have before, if he had not been so tired and distracted and eager for permission- that Kibum did not enjoy having his new ears and tail petted. Hadn’t that what he’d been upset about all day? He’d nearly bitten some poor staff member’s head off for accidentally patting him on the head and just barely touching his ears.
And yet, here he was, purring happily at Minho’s touch, and so comfortable with it that he’d actually fallen asleep. Minho didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe Kibum had decided to just get over said discomfort with his new furry parts. Maybe he was too tired to care.
Minho yawned, too exhausted to contemplate the mystery for long. He had a whole night of sleeping with Kibum in his bed ahead of him. Why stress himself out with worrying about anything else?
~~~
The morning came. Kibum did not lose his ears and tail.
They had no schedule until noon, so all of them slept in late. Minho watched Kibum and Jonghyun stumble around the kitchen mid-morning, attempting to put together some kind of breakfast. Jinki and Taemin dozed lazily on the couch, watching a news program on the television.
Minho sat at the table and went over the script for the drama he’d be starring in soon. He surreptitiously watched Jonghyun and Kibum mess around in the kitchen, having sword-fights with the long cooking spoons. Jonghyun was being careful not to touch Kibum’s tail, but he did so accidentally once or twice. Kibum reacted with a glare and a yelp each time, clearly displeased at the contact.
Minho frowned down at his script.
Kibum hadn’t said anything about last night, apart from thanking Minho for sharing his bed. Minho wasn’t about to pry, especially if it meant Kibum might be inclined to want to share a bed tonight as well…
Given Kibum’s behavior now, though, the answer to the mystery of last night had to be that Kibum had just been so exhausted last night that he hadn’t cared about Minho petting him. How disappointing.
Minho sighed and returned to studying the script.
~~~
The rest of the day went much like the last. Kibum grew increasingly grumpier the longer he was forced to wear a hat and pants. By the time they returned to their dorm, he was so desperate to free his tail and ears that he started unfastening his fly in the building elevator, heedless of the security cameras.
“Can’t you wait to strip until we’re inside?” Minho hissed, elbowing him.
Kibum bit his lip and gazed imploringly at him. Minho did his best not to melt at that look, and took Kibum’s hands in his, holding them still.
“We’re almost there,” said Jinki soothingly.
Taemin shuffled sideways to get a look in the mirror in one corner of the elevator. His knee hit Kibum’s leg, bumping against the tail hidden there. Kibum glared. Taemin blinked innocently. Kibum made a disturbingly catlike snarl, beanie shifting weirdly against his head as his ears flattened back.
The elevator finally dinged.
Once they made it into the dorm, Kibum shed his hat and pants faster than Minho had formerly believed humanly possible. Then he went into the kitchen, muttering about needing some kind of alcohol to de-stress.
Minho left the other three in the living room and followed Kibum. He watched for a moment as Kibum wandered aimlessly about, brows furrowed and ears twitching unhappily.
Minho went up to him and back-hugged him, wrapping his arms around Kibum’s chest and holding him close. To his surprise, Kibum immediately relaxed, tail winding around one of Minho’s legs.
“What’s up?” said Kibum. He tilted his head back to rest against Minho’s shoulder.
Minho shivered as the soft silkiness of one of Kibum’s ears pressed against the side of his neck. He resisted the urge to turn his head sideways and kiss Kibum’s cheek.
“You doing okay?” he said. “I know randomly being kind of a cat has got to be weird as fuck…”
“I’m not ‘kind of a cat’; I just have ears and a tail,” Kibum said, though there wasn’t any real heat in his voice. He sighed, leaning more heavily against Minho. “And they’re really, really distracting.”
Minho tried to think of a way to say: how are they distracting, if you’re so comfortable with me touching them? without ruining the mood. He couldn’t.
Instead, he said, low and playful and deliberately insincere in the way that all the band were when pretending to flirt with each other:
“You’re really distracting, pretty kitten.”
Kibum snorted, body trembling a little. “Taking notes on silly pet names from Jonghyun-hyung, are you?”
Minho tightened their embrace. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” said Kibum, tone softening. His hands found Minho’s own, thumbs circling reassuring caresses onto Minho’s knuckles. “I don’t mind.”
Minho didn’t know what to say to that. He leaned his head sideways to press their cheeks together and said nothing instead. Kibum’s eyes closed and he hummed softly- a noise not quite a purr. The feeling of Kibum’s tail wound around Minho’s leg and the softness of the ear against his neck stirred a deliciously shivery sensation low within him, like a promise.
It took Minho a good minute or so to notice the quiet sounds of breathing not his or Kibum’s own, punctuated by soft whispers. He tensed, making Kibum tense as well. They broke apart and turned around.
Jinki and Jonghyun, leaning in the entryway, simultaneously raised an eyebrow each at them. Minho breathed in sharply and tried not to panic.
“So,” said Jonghyun, going immediately from eyebrow-raising to eyebrow-waggling. “It’s uncomfortable for someone to be all up on your furry bits, is that it, Kibum-ah?”
Kibum’s eyes narrowed. He did not deign to respond, instead choosing to stalk out of the room without answering Jonghyun’s question. His tail waved stiffly behind him, ears flattened against his hair, lending a haughty weight to his silence.
Jonghyun’s piercing gaze fell onto Minho’s own. Minho swallowed.
“Come on,” said Jinki, gently taking Jonghyun’s elbow. “Minho doesn’t know anything yet, either.”
“I- what?” said Minho. He frowned. “Hyung, what do you mean?”
“You’ll find out,” said Jinki comfortably. “It’s amazing how humans sometimes overlook the most obvious reasons for easily explainable phenomena.”
“Hyung, you sound like a science textbook.”
“Try a wizard textbook,” said Jinki, annoyingly cheerful. “I’m not sure science can explain Kibum’s sudden ability to meow. Hey,” and here he paused, as if struck by some profound epiphany. “Do you think this means Kibum’s Animagus form is a cat?”
“I dunno,” said Jonghyun thoughtfully. “Don’t the fans call him a fox?”
“Fox, cat…” Jinki waved a hand about. “They both suit him.”
“Yeah, but there’s a distinct difference and I bet J.K. Rowling would agree with me here-”
Minho rolled his eyes at this rampant nerdiness and followed Kibum out of the kitchen.
~~~
They spent the evening hanging out as a band, all five of them, and it was really irritating. Jonghyun kept shooting sly glances over at Kibum and Minho. Jinki would notice this and poke Jonghyun’s shoulder until he stopped. Taemin, baffled by this strangeness, kept mouthing what’s up with the hyungs? at Minho and Kibum. Since Kibum was blatantly ignoring all these goings-on, it was left to Minho to shrug helplessly at Taemin and mouth back: I don’t know either.
In the end, Minho couldn’t stand it anymore and left to sit in his room. He stretched out on the bed and sighed. Finally alone, he was free to remember how it had felt to hold Kibum close, and to relish that feeling.
Perhaps five minutes later, there was a sudden muffled commotion from the direction of the living room. Minho put a pillow over his face and tried not to listen.
Perhaps five minutes after that, a familiar someone knocked on Minho’s door.
“Come in,” Minho called. He put the pillow aside and sat up.
Kibum shut the door behind him. He hesitated for a moment, twisting his hands nervously about, then went over and crawled onto the bed as well.
“They think I should talk to you,” Kibum said. “They’re probably right. The hyungs have guessed what I’ve been freaking out about already, and Taemin will probably figure it out soon because that kid reads some very weird hentai.”
Kibum’s tail lashed about, agitated. Minho caught it with his hand and stroked it to calm Kibum down.
“What on earth does Taemin’s porn collection have to do with you?” he asked.
Kibum’s ears flicked back and forth. He bit his lip. “Well, there’s a specific reason I don’t like people touching my ears and tail.”
Minho took a breath. “You don’t mind me touching them.”
Kibum, to his surprise, actually blushed at that. “Well, no. Would you let me explain, though? Because I bet you won’t want to touch any of me ever again after I do.”
Minho very sincerely doubted that. Kibum could have been covered in boils and scales and Minho would still have wanted to lick him everywhere. Although possibly not if the boils were contagious.
There was no way to say that without sounding profoundly weird, however, so he just nodded and gestured for Kibum to go on.
“Well, um,” said Kibum, looking down at his hands. “Okay. It’s not that it’s uncomfortable for people to touch my ears and tail. It’s that it’s…distracting.”
Minho frowned. His hand paused on its caress down the length of Kibum’s tail.
“Distracting?”
“Uh, yeah. See, it feels nice to have people touch them. Really nice. Like, usually, oh shit that turns me on nice.”
Kibum was chewing his bottom lip now, ears stiff with embarrassment. Minho boggled at him. Well, then. That put a whole new spin on Kibum’s discomfort at wearing pants. The whole time they’d been out in public, had he been fighting an inappropriate series of boners?
Minho couldn’t help it; he gave a small snort of suppressed amusement. Kibum jerked his head up to glare at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking that it was probably beneficial for you to be wearing baggy jeans for more than one reason,” Minho said innocently. “Right?”
Kibum’s mouth twitched, like he was trying to conceal a grin. “Get your mind out of the gutter, asshole.”
Minho’s mind was very frequently in the gutter where Kibum was concerned, but he wasn’t about to admit to that. He shrugged instead, curiosity spiking.
“Why are you so cool with me touching you, then?” he asked. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment. “Do I not, er-”
He stumbled over the words. There was no casual way to ask one’s friend so hey, why don’t I turn you on?
Kibum had gone tense again. “Actually, it’s the opposite. When anyone else touches my ears and tail it feels weirdly arousing and I don’t want it to, so it freaks me out. When you touch me, I don’t mind being a little turned on, so I wind up enjoying it. When I was tired, it was pretty calming to have you pet me, but otherwise…um. It’s the opposite of calming. In a good way.”
Minho stared at him. Kibum scratched his thumbnail against his knee, muscles stiff as a board, like he was bracing for a blow.
“Are you telling me you’re attracted to me?” Minho said finally, when he was sure he’d heard Kibum right.
“Yeah,” said Kibum. His ears swiveled about, nervous. “Sorry. I know you like playing with my tail and ears, but I’ll understand if you’re too uncomfortable to do it anymore.”
This was the most ridiculous statement Minho had ever heard. Of course, Kibum didn’t know it was ridiculous. It seemed Minho had done a much better job of hiding his feelings than he’d thought.
He brought his handful of Kibum’s tail up near his face and kissed it. Kibum stared at him, eyes wide. Minho smiled.
“I like your tail and ears, yeah,” Minho said. “But if it’s all right with you, I’d also like to play with the bits of you that aren’t quite so furry.”
Kibum continued to gape at him for another long moment. Then he squared his shoulders and smirked, ears folding seductively back.
“That can be arranged,” he purred, leaning forward and fisting a hand in Minho’s shirt.
Minho brought a hand up to stroke his thumbs against Kibum’s ears, silkily soft with fur against his skin, and kissed him. Kibum’s lips were every bit as wonderful to kiss as Minho had imagined. They were also, very fortunately, furless.
He gently squeezed one hand around an ear. Kibum gasped and shuddered.
“Sorry,” said Minho quickly. He let go. “I didn’t mean to hurt you-”
“Are you serious?” Kibum nudged his head into Minho’s hand again, nuzzling his way forward so his ears were flattened under Minho’s palm. “Do it again; that felt fucking great.”
Minho obediently did it again. Kibum shivered hard and moaned, eyes fluttering shut. Minho, on impulse, tilted Kibum’s head down and sucked most of one ear into his mouth. He licked at the inside, tongue stroking slowly over its softness. Kibum mewled and clung to him, trembling.
Minho teased the ear with just an edge of teeth. Kibum made a soft, incoherent noise low in his throat and slid one hand down Minho’s front, deliciously near his hardening crotch…
“Hyungs!”
Minho made a very undignified squawking sound and accidentally bit down on Kibum’s ear. Kibum whimpered with pain. Minho hastily let the ear slip out of his mouth, spitting fur out as he did so, and pulled Kibum into an apologetic hug.
He glared over Kibum’s head at the doorway. “Taemin! What the fuck?”
Taemin blinked innocently at them. “I have something to tell you.”
“We’re busy!”
“So?”
Kibum settled back out of Minho’s arms. He glowered at Taemin as well.
“Whatever you have to tell us had better be good,” he said, eyes narrowed and tail lashing dangerously. “Or I’m going to cough up hairballs in all your favourite shoes.”
Taemin stared, fascinated. “Can you really do that?”
“If he can’t, I will,” said Minho, in an attempt to be threatening. Given that he was currently attempting to fish a wad of fur out from the back of his tongue with his fingers, thus garbling his words, the attempt was less than successful.
“That’s disgusting,” Kibum took a moment to inform him. He returned his attention to Taemin. “Come on, spit it out.”
Minho hacked the fur out onto the rug. Kibum turned to glare at him.
“I didn’t mean you!”
Minho grinned sheepishly. “…sorry?”
“You two need to have sex,” Taemin announced.
Kibum squeaked loudly and fell over. Minho just stared at the maknae, face twitching, rendered momentarily speechless by this spontaneous declaration.
“I’m serious,” said Taemin, when neither Kibum nor Minho answered him. “I read this one manga- they made it an anime too, but the anime was kinda boring and it actually wasn’t hentai- and everyone had ears and tails. They fell off the first time you had sex. So, to get rid of your furry bits, you should have sex.”
“Um,” said Kibum from where he was lying on side, arm flung dramatically over his face. “For one thing, I’ve had sex before. For another, can we stop calling them my ‘furry bits’? It makes it sound like my balls are made of hamsters or something…”
Minho choked, trying desperately not to imagine this, and failing. Taemin, still focused on his apparent solution, just shook his head and pressed on.
“But hyung, you haven’t had sex since you got your furry-”
“I thought I told you not to call them that!”
“-parts, right? And you haven’t had sex with Minho-hyung, either,” Taemin finished, triumphant.
Kibum huffed and sat up. “Well, maybe I might have if you hadn’t decided to be such a cockblock just now!”
Taemin frowned. “You were going to have sex?”
“What did you think we were doing, having a three out of five round of platonic tonsil hockey?”
“Minho-hyung was sucking on your ear, though. I didn’t know your cat ears had tonsils!”
“I didn’t mean that literally; it’s an expression!”
“…oh.”
Minho buried his face in his hands. He’d somehow gone from successfully concealing his intense secret attraction to Kibum from everyone, to listening to Taemin and Kibum yell at the top of their lungs about the very thing Minho had been guiltily fantasizing about for months. It was a very weird thing to process.
He took a deep breath and raised his head.
“Okay guys,” he said loudly. Taemin and Kibum fell quiet and looked at him. “I think all three of us are agreed that it is an excellent idea for Kibum and I to fuck each other, whether it cures his furry problem or not.” He paused, wrestled for a moment with what a bizarre statement that had been, and went on: “So, Taemin, if you could just maybe leave us alone for a while, we can go about doing the thing, all right?”
Taemin shrugged. “Sure,” he said. His eyes gleamed suddenly. “Although, you know, I wouldn’t mind watching…”
“Oh my God, get out,” said Kibum, human ears turning red, and flung a pillow at him.
Taemin snickered and ducked out, closing the door behind him. Minho tried to steady his breathing. He found he could not quite look Kibum in the eye.
“So,” said Kibum awkwardly. “Um.” He gave a nervous giggle. “You wanna dip your stick a little, if you know what I mean?”
This struck Minho as enormously funny, for no reason he could quite explain. He gasped and fell over, laughing hard. Kibum smacked him on the hip, then lost the battle against mirth as well. He collapsed on top of Minho in an undignified heap, cackling.
When their laughter had spent itself, Minho cuddled Kibum close and nuzzled his face into the side of Kibum’s neck.
“That is the worst euphemism for fucking I’ve ever heard,” he said, reaching down to trace his fingers along the tempting curve of Kibum’s ass and the base of his tail.
He could practically feel Kibum rolling his eyes.
“Oh, please,” Kibum said, arching into the touch. “There are worse.”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Umm…‘roast the broomstick’, ‘sink the sausage’, ‘hide the ferret’, ‘wet the noodle’…”
Minho snickered. “I’d sink my sausage into you any day, baby.”
Kibum let out a breath of stifled laughter and nipped his ear reprovingly. Minho mock-yelped and held him closer.
“Sorry, I meant: I’d wet your fur any day, my pretty little kitty…”
It was Kibum’s turn to snicker, even as his body shuddered, hips rolling forward to grind eagerly against Minho’s own.
“I think you’ve got your anatomy mixed up,” Kibum said. He gasped when Minho squeezed the base of his tail, eyelashes fluttering softly against Minho’s cheek. “Ugh, yes…”
“I’ve wanted to do that for so long,” Minho whispered into his ear, encouraged by the needy little mewls Kibum was making. “I’ve wanted you for so fucking long, you have no idea…”
Kibum moaned, tail stretching into stiff curls above him. “I have some idea,” he breathed back. “And, ugh, these past two days have been awful. Every time I have to wear those fucking pants and hat for hours, I can’t help imagining you fucking me all the time and I get so fucking hard-”
Minho growled and ran Kibum’s ears through his hands again, pressing a rough kiss to Kibum’s neck as he did so. Kibum whimpered loudly and arched up, trying to follow the path of Minho’s hands and losing track of what he was saying. Minho dragged him back down and kissed him, hard and deep and possessive. Kibum ground their hips together and kissed him back just as fiercely.
More than a little stick-dipping ensued from there.
~~~
The next morning, Kibum’s ears and tail were indeed gone. Minho spent the morning watching Kibum sulk about how unfair it was both that Taemin had been right about the sex thing, and that his two newfound erogenous zones had vanished before he’d had a chance to let Minho play with them more than once.
Minho consoled Kibum with kisses and a delicious round of shower sex. After that, Kibum was much more cheerful, almost smug about how he’d get to return Taemin’s inevitable I told you so with a yeah but who’s the one getting laid regularly now, huh? I bet you’ll never have kinky weirdly-feline sex.
Minho, for his part, let Kibum’s bubbly talkativeness take the brunt of Jonghyun and Jinki’s eyebrow-wiggling, innuendo-laden breakfast conversation. He felt hard-pressed not to smile giddily and sing at everything. After all his worrying, everything had worked out perfectly with Kibum, even if it was thanks to the whole freaky cat thing.
Halfway through breakfast, the door to Taemin’s room banged open and their maknae shuffled down the hall and into the kitchen.
“Ummm…morning,” he said, and yawned. “I think Kibum-hyung is contagious.”
They all turned to stare at him. Sure enough, Taemin now sported a beautiful pair of kitty ears and a long and lustrous tail.
“Hah!” Kibum crowed, slapping the table. “Now you get to wander around all day being turned on by your fucking hat!”
Taemin pouted sadly at him, then blinked.
“Hyung,” he said, surprised. “Yours are gone.”
“We sank the sausage,” Minho mock-whispered loudly.
Kibum and Jinki made nearly identical strangled noises and clutched at each other. Minho had the grace to slouch embarrassedly lower into his chair, and prodded at his breakfast with a finger.
Jonghyun paid no attention to any of this. He’d already gotten to his feet and crossed the room to stand by Taemin. His eyes raked appreciatively up and down Taemin’s half-clothed form.
“Your furry bits are really pretty, Taemin-ah,” said Jonghyun. “I like them.”
Taemin’s gaze snapped over to him. “Really?”
“Mm-hmm,” Jonghyun hummed. “I like them a lot.”
He reached out and scritched at the base of one of Taemin’s ears. Taemin’s eyes fluttered closed. He moaned loudly, leaning into the touch. Jonghyun licked his lips.
“Holy shit,” said Minho, staring. “Are you two…”
“You know,” Kibum began at almost the same time, eyes flashing wickedly. “If you guys hurry up, there’s still time for Taemin to lose his furry bits before our schedule today…”
Taemin’s eyes opened and he giggled awkwardly, hunching his shoulders with embarrassment at the teasing. Jonghyun just grinned, smug, and tugged him forward into a very sloppy, tongue-filled kiss.
“That’s the spirit!” Kibum yelled encouragingly, waving the newspaper around as Taemin’s hand made its way up under Jonghyun’s shirt.
Jinki flopped his head forward onto the table.
“Why am I the only one not getting laid?” he complained.
Minho reached over and patted his hair.
“Don’t worry, hyung,” he said, attempting to ignore both the wet smacking sounds from the direction of Jonghyun and Taemin, and Kibum’s attempts to give Jonghyun lewd suggestions on how to touch Taemin’s tail. “I’m sure you’ll find cat ears and true love in no time.”
Jinki heaved a melodramatic fake sigh. Minho grinned and resumed staring happily at Kibum’s beautiful profile.
This week was turning out to be weird as fucking fuck, but Minho wouldn’t have changed it for the world.