you are my destiny

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/9131329.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: M/M
Fandom: Infinite (Band)
Relationship: Kim Sunggyu/Nam Woohyun
Character: Kim Sunggyu, Nam Woohyun, Kim Myungsoo | L
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe
Stats: Published: 2016-12-31 Completed: 2017-05-20 Chapters: 4/4 Words:
14261

you are my destiny

by kinases

Summary

yeah, woohyun's lonely—he'll admit that, at least. maybe he just needs a roommate or a pet,
something to take his mind off of things. he's just not quite prepared for the newest addition
to his life to be a gumiho.
 you are my destiny
Chapter Summary

honestly, woohyun's life sucks. and then he realizes it doesn't suck that much.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Woohyun has always loved the outdoors. There’s something special about the silence of the air
around him when he’s in the woods by himself, surrounded by the brush of the wind against his
face. There aren’t many places he can go to just to be alone in Seoul, so he takes a train about an
hour out of the city and follows where it takes him.

He gets off at a station near Yongjusa after the conductor tells him that this is the last stop, and he
spends the trek up to the temple snapping photos of the scenery around him. It’s beautiful, the
greens of the leaves starting to turn vivid reds and oranges with the changing of the season.
Birdsong fills the air, and Woohyun starts singing along, trying to harmonize along to the chirping
melodies.

A fox darts across his path, and he manages to get a quick shot of it before it’s gone. He’s always
loved animals, and he wonders, idly, if he’d be allowed to keep a fox as a pet.

There are too many stairs up to the temple than Woohyun’s particularly comfortable with. By the
time he gets to the top, he’s panting, short of breath, and he sits down on a bench near the stairs to
catch his breath. He’s idly tapping at his phone when he notices movement out of the corner of his
eye. It’s the fox again, and this time it treads closer to him, its paws barely leaving the ground.
Woohyun freezes, unsure of whether he should try to get more shots or if it’ll run away if he tries.
Instead of darting away again, though, it cocks its head at him, before it turns tail and disappears
into the brush.

Woohyun doesn’t know why, but he follows.

He pushes through branches and underbrush, raising an arm to his face so he doesn’t have to squint
in the sunlight, strangely strong on what’s supposed to be an overcast day, and suddenly, the trees
open up to reveal a shrine. Almost as if it’s been waiting for him, the fox is poised at the top of the
steps, and when Woohyun takes another step closer, it runs into the shrine.

It’s dark inside, and the only light seeping into the shrine comes from the door. Woohyun cranes
his head so he can see all of the tapestries and scrolls decorating the walls of the shrine, too many
to count. The fox is nowhere to be found. Woohyun looks around, craning his head this way and
that, but he gives up the search, instead taking out his phone again so he can get some shots in.

Before he can, though, he slips on a knot in the wood, and his first instinct is to protect his phone,
one arm in front of him to break the fall. He catches himself on the ground, his head knocking into
the wood, and he breathes a sigh of relief when he looks down and his phone is safe. He looks up,
though, and it’s all he can do not to scream.

There’s a smear of red across the previously pristine scroll in front of him—what Woohyun knows
is his blood from when he’d scraped it across the rough wall. He looks around frantically for
anything to wipe the blood off with, and he’s about to rip off a sliver of fabric from his sweater to
try to get it off when he hears something behind him.

“You do not have to do that.”

Woohyun turns around slowly, almost as if he’s been frozen. There’s a man in what looks like a
monk’s clothes on the other side of the shrine, and Woohyun drops to his knees, pressing his
forehead to the ground. It’s not enough that there’s permanent evidence of what he’d done, but now
there’s a witness to his crime.

“I’m sorry,” he says into the ground, barely any louder than a whisper. “I’ll—I’ll pay for the
repairs, I’m so sorry—”

Woohyun feels the press of a hand against his head, and he looks up. He can just barely make out
the slight outline of tails, too many, far more than he can count, floating in the air around the man,
and he wonders if he’s dreaming when he sees the ghostly outline of two pointed ears perched atop
the man’s head as well.

“You have saved me,” the man says, and there’s something unsettlingly canine about the way he
smiles, about how his teeth took too sharp and too pointed to be human. His eyes crinkle into half
moons and the ears and the tail blink in and out into existence around him, and Woohyun’s sure
he’s hit his head on something and now he’s having some kind of out of body experience. “There
is no need for apologies.”

Then Woohyun finds himself at the base of the mountain again, and he stumbles on his feet. He
whirls around for a moment, trying to catch his bearings, and he thinks that there’s no logical
reason for the way he’d just gotten down the entire mountain from the shrine in the blink of an eye.
He shrugs it off, though. He must’ve just dreamt up the entire experience.

Or at least, that’s what he tells himself the entire train ride home until he opens the door of his
apartment, and the man from the shrine is sitting on his couch, his hands folded in his lap and
looking as out of place as anything could be. Woohyun’s first instinct is to run, to call the cops, but
for some reason he’s rooted in place.

“Who are you? What are you? Why are you here? Wait, how did you get in?” Woohyun asks
instead, the words coming out of him in a rush. The man smiles placidly, and Woohyun takes one,
two steps forward until he’s standing right in front of him. In this light, the man’s hair shines gold
and bronze and silver, and Woohyun’s sure of it now. There is a second pair of ears on top of his
head, and Woohyun swears he can see one twitch.

He reaches out without really meaning to, and he’s met with softness, the outlines of the ears
seeming to solidify underneath his hands. He blinks, and the man laughs, a clear, tinkling sound
that reminds Woohyun, strangely enough, of the bells in the shrine.

“I am here because I chose you. My name is Sunggyu. I am not human.” The grin on the man’s
face stretches wider, his cheeks creasing, and Woohyun feels like he’s being left out of a joke. “I
am a gumiho.”

Woohyun stares at the ears beneath his palm and the tails waving lazily behind the man, and he
thinks to himself that he should’ve known as soon as he’d fallen in the shrine. He staggers
backward, because this contradicts everything he’s known and everything he’s ever believed in, but
the proof is right here in front of him.
“I also would like to make my residence inside that room,” Sunggyu says, and he points in the
direction of Woohyun’s own bedroom, his tails flicking around him. He folds his arms into his
robes and smiles genially at Woohyun. “I have decided that it is a suitable place for me to rest
whenever I wish."

Woohyun feels like he really should say something, that he should tell this man to get out of his life
and never speak to him again, that he’s going to call the police on him and have him escorted out of
his room, that he’s going to wake up the next morning and realize that it was all just a dream. But
it’s not all just a dream, and he stands there, frozen in place even though he knows his arms and
legs still move.

He watches as Sunggyu stands up to make his way towards Woohyun’s room, his tails swishing
around him, as Sunggyu takes all of Woohyun’s pillows and blankets and grins at him from the
center of the bed, as the afternoon sun glints off of Sunggyu’s hair and ears and tails and makes the
entire room shine with an ethereal light, and Woohyun wonders just what he’s gotten himself into.

Sunggyu makes himself at home in Woohyun’s bed. The man, the gumiho, looks up when
Woohyun steps into the room the next day and sits down at the edge of his bed. Sunggyu is
sprawled out over the covers, hugging the pillows to him with his leg thrown over one of them. The
fabric of his robes rides up his thighs, exposing more skin than Woohyun thinks is really
necessary, and Woohyun clears his throat.

“How long are you going to stay here?”

Sunggyu stares up at him before he curls even more into the pillows. “As long as I wish to. Your
bed is rather comfortable. I enjoy being in it.”

Woohyun’s expected as much. He sighs and turns to the closet next to the bed, pulling out one of
the ironed suits he’d hung up the last time he’d done his laundry. He reaches for the ties he’s
stashed in the lower drawer as well, his hand hovering over several different colors before he
chooses the striped navy blue one. He’s acutely aware that Sunggyu’s watching him get ready for
the day, and although he knows he should really call the cops or get rid of him, Sunggyu’s not
doing him any harm.

“What are you doing?” Sunggyu asks finally. When Woohyun looks over, he’s sitting up on the
bed, watching Woohyun select his clothes for the day with an almost unnatural fascination.

“I’m getting my clothes.” Socks, now. Striped or plain? He’ll go with striped today, since it
matches his tie.

“But you are already wearing clothes, are you not?” Sunggyu’s ears, the fox ones, not the ones on
the side of his head, are cocked forward now, and Woohyun wonders if that means he’s interested.

“These are my sleep clothes.” Woohyun gestures to the t-shirt and the boxers he’d changed into last
night before he went to sleep in the guest room. He couldn’t just kick Sunggyu out of his own
room, and besides, Woohyun doesn’t think he’ll be able to kick Sunggyu out even if he wants to.
“These are my work clothes.”

“Oh, work.” Sunggyu’s eyebrows furrow. “You do not look like a rice farmer.”

“I’m not a rice farmer,” Woohyun says, incredulous. He stares at the suit and the tie in his arms
and wonders just what part of this ensemble screams rice farmer to a gumiho. “I’m a banker. An
investment banker.”

“I see,” Sunggyu says, even though Woohyun knows he doesn’t. It’s then that Woohyun finally
notices the kinds of clothes Sunggyu’s wearing. They’re thin white robes, and Woohyun’s seen
something like these before in some of the sageuks he’s watched.

“What kind of clothes are you wearing?” Woohyun asks as he turns to face the wall and tugs his t-
shirt over his head. He’s used to changing in his own room, and he’s not going to let some nine-
tailed fox spirit distract him from his normal schedule.

“Oh. These are not my normal clothes. These are, ah, the clothes they put me in. When they sealed
me.” Sunggyu’s tone is bitter now, and when Woohyun turns to look at him, buttoning his shirt up,
Sunggyu’s frowning, his lips pressed together thinly.

“Who’s they?” Woohyun asks, and he’s fairly certain he already knows, based on where he’d
found Sunggyu, in a Buddhist temple miles from Seoul.

“Those monks. The ones that King Jeongjo sent. They put me in these before they locked me into
the scrolls.” Sunggyu stares off at a point somewhere above Woohyun’s head, then he grins at
Woohyun. “I am usually wearing much nicer robes than these, but I think I may have lost them.
These will do for now, though.”

“Would you like to wear some of my clothes?” Woohyun asks, opening his other closet to show
Sunggyu the array of shirts and pants he has for casual wear when he’s not at work, but Sunggyu
wrinkles his nose. “That’s a no, then?”

“The clothes I am wearing now are far more comfortable than yours will ever be,” Sunggyu snorts.
He keeps watching Woohyun even as he’s pulling on his socks and toeing on his shoes. “You are
leaving now?”

“Yeah, I’m going. Don’t burn down my apartment, okay?” Woohyun says, and he’s only half-
joking. He looks at Sunggyu to make sure he’s listening. “Seriously, don’t burn anything down.”

“I promise you, I will not burn down your apartment.” Sunggyu beams at him, still seated in the
center of his bed with all of Woohyun’s blankets piled up around him. “Enjoy your investment
bankering!”

Woohyun pauses at the doorway before he turns just slightly so he can see the way Sunggyu’s ears
twitch just slightly in the breeze coming in from the window. If he can ignore how Sunggyu had
basically barged into his life, he’s kind of cute. Woohyun decides to be nice and says, “Have fun at
home. I’ll be back soon.”

It’s lunchtime at the office when Woohyun realizes he hadn’t shown Sunggyu where the food was.
He’s halfway to getting his phone to call home and tell Sunggyu where all of the frozen dinners and
dumplings are, but he remembers Sunggyu probably doesn’t have a clue what a phone is or how to
use it.

He stares at his desk for so long with his phone in hand, wondering if he’s really going to let
Sunggyu starve, when Myungsoo pokes his head over the divider between the desks in the office
they share and asks, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Woohyun lies, placing his phone face down on his desk. “Hey, do you remember what
that one auditing firm wanted from us? Some files, right? For the meeting tomorrow morning?”
Myungsoo gets distracted talking about the guy from the auditing firm they work with and how
he’ll only give them the files they need if Myungsoo agrees to go on a date with him, and
Woohyun nods and smiles along as needed. He doesn’t get why Myungsoo just doesn’t go along
with it, especially since he keeps talking on and on about this guy when he never talks about
anything but his cat or his camera.

Woohyun sighs as Myungsoo launches into yet another rant. It’s going to be a long day.

It’s nearly ten when Woohyun gets home after being stuck in traffic during rush hour, his briefcase
full of cases he has to work on and his phone blinking with appointments he has to get to. He hasn’t
eaten since lunchtime, and when he steps through his front door, Sunggyu’s standing there.

“You are late.” Sunggyu’s frowning, his lips pressed into a thin line, and Woohyun doesn’t have
time for this right now. There are spreadsheets he has to fix up, and he wants to get at least ten
more proposals read before he turns in for the night.

“I know, get used to it,” Woohyun sighs, pushing past Sunggyu on his way to his bedroom so he
can shuck off his suit jacket and hang it up. He turns so he can meet Sunggyu’s eyes. “I have to
work, Sunggyu. It’s how I can make enough money so you can live here.”

“But—” Sunggyu grabs his arm as he’s about to take off his slacks, but he gently pushes
Sunggyu’s hands off of him. “But it is so dark out now. You should not be working even after the
sun has set. What kind of business is this? When do you have fun, though? When do you play?”

“I don’t. It’s alright, Sunggyu.” Woohyun’s down to his boxers and the wifebeater he wears
underneath his dress shirt now, and he looks at Sunggyu with an earnestness he hopes Sunggyu
will understand. “It’s fine.”

“Alright.” Sunggyu bites his lip. “But here, let me.” He moves to stand in front of Woohyun and
gently steers him backwards toward the bed until the backs of Woohyun’s knees hit the bed. “Let
me do this for you.”

Then Sunggyu’s hands are on his shoulders and kneading out all of the tension that’s been deeply
rooted in his muscles since day one, and Woohyun falls asleep before he even feels his eyes
closing.

Woohyun wakes up in the morning feeling more well-rested than he’s felt in the past few years. He
stretches his arms, trying to shield his eyes from the bright light of the sun, when it hits him. He
didn’t wake up to an alarm, which means his phone hadn’t gone off at all. He scrambles for the
small bedside alarm clock he has on the drawer and picks it up to read it.

It’s two in the afternoon. Woohyun’s not only six hours late for work, but he’s also missed dozens
of calls, forgotten to sit in on a very important meeting, and not shown up for one of the quarterly
department-wide conferences. He stares at the time over and over and again and again, as if
looking at the numbers more will make them change somehow. They don’t.

He dials his boss frantically, and as soon as he hears the line being picked up, the words are out of
his mouth before he knows it. “Sir, I am so sorry, I’ll be there in a second—”

“Oh, Nam. I thought you were sick, so I marked you down as using one of your sick days.”

No, no, no, no, no. Woohyun knows he can’t use up a sick day if he wants to get promoted. He’s
been saving up months and months of vacation time and sick days just so he can show to the
company that he’s dependent and reliable.
“No, sir, I’m not sick. I’ll come in soon.” Woohyun knows his voice is getting desperate, pleading,
but he doesn’t care. He needs this promotion, he needs it.

“Well, don’t, Nam. Stay at home, get some rest, and don’t come in to work today.”

The line goes dead, and Woohyun stares at the phone in his hand for what must be an eternity but
only is actually a few minutes, disbelieving and in shock. Then what happened last night plays
again in Woohyun’s head, and he remembers walking into his apartment and seeing Sunggyu and
changing out of his clothes and into just his wifebeater and boxers and Sunggyu massaging his
shoulders. That must be it.

He storms out of his own room, throwing the door of the guest room open. He’s not there. He
makes his way down the hallway, and he sees a pair of red ears peeking out of the couch.

“You did this,” Woohyun says when he rounds the corner to stand directly in front of Sunggyu,
and he looks up, his ears twitching in the breeze. “You, seriously, why would you do this to me?”

“You needed to sleep,” Sunggyu says simply, a small smile on his face. “Did you enjoy your rest?”

Woohyun could scream, but he wants to remain as calm and as in control as he can. “No, because
now I’ve missed meetings and conferences and presentations, so thanks a lot.“

Sunggyu only smiles up at him, and Woohyun’s had enough. He surges forward to grab Sunggyu
by the collar of his robes, and he shakes the gumiho in his grip. “Listen, I don’t know how things
went in the Bronze Age or whatever time you came from, but this is now. This is the present. I was
just on track to being promoted, and you. You. You ruined it for me. I hope you’re happy, because
you’ve just ruined my life. Congratulations. Please just leave me alone from now on, unless you
can’t seem to figure out how to do that either.”

And without another word, he storms back into his room and slams the door behind him, loud and
strong enough that the walls shiver. Woohyun groans and pulls out his laptop to go over some of
the spreadsheets he and Myungsoo had been working on. If he isn’t going to get his promotion this
way, he’ll get it another way.

It’s nighttime before he knows it, and when Woohyun goes to the kitchen to make himself a salad,
Sunggyu isn’t there. The door of the guest room is locked, and Woohyun hopes, fervently, that
he’s disappeared, that he’ll stop being such a nuisance to him and his dreams, that he’ll go back to
the shrine he came from already.

The salad is bland and tasteless, but Woohyun forces it down as he’s making some edits and
changes. He falls asleep that night, cold and lonely and acutely aware that there’s small crimson
and gold hair everywhere on his pristine white sheets.

He wakes up the next morning at five so he can get some of his morning workout routine in. He’s
sweaty by the time he’s done at six, and he showers quickly before he heads to the kitchen to grab a
cup of coffee and a granola bar for energy. Instead, what he finds there is a plate stacked high with
rice cakes and a scroll made of parchment tied up neatly next to it.

His interest and curiosity piqued, Woohyun takes the scroll and unrolls it. There, written in looping
black calligraphy, is I deeply apologize for the inconvenience I have caused you. It was not in my
intent to do harm to you or to what you hold dear. I understand now that investment bankering is
more important to you than sleep is, and I shall change my behavior towards you to reflect that.
Please accept these rice cakes, as simple as they may be, as my most sincere and most heartfelt
apologies for having interrupted your investment bankering.
Woohyun stares at the parchment for too long, and he stares at it until the coffee in his mug goes
cold, and he stares at it until the time comes for him to leave for work, and then he spends the
entire drive to work thinking about the letter.

For lunchtime, Woohyun takes out a bento box and unpacks some of the rice cakes that had been
on the plate earlier this morning. He gingerly places one into his mouth, but as he chews, the more
he realizes that there are a complex melody of flavors, and it’s nothing like what Woohyun’s ever
tasted before. When he’s done, he stares down at the empty box and wonders just why he’s so
energetic now when he’d been so lethargic just before.

Maybe he does owe Sunggyu an apology.

He manages to get Myungsoo to cover for what he needs to do at the end of his shift, promising
that he’ll pay Myungsoo back whenever he wants. Woohyun leaves two hours early, and he’s home
before eight. Sunggyu’s not sitting on the couch and idly playing with the motors controlling the
footrests, and Woohyun guesses that he’s still in the guest room. He doesn’t know why, but he gets
a sudden feeling that Sunggyu’s sitting on the bed, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Woohyun knocks on the door. “Sunggyu? Are you there?”

It takes a few moments for the reply to come, but when it does, Woohyun only notices how
hesitant and measured the tone behind the words is. “Yes? I am here in the room.”

“Sunggyu, can you come out?” Woohyun asks before he’s stepping away from the door so
Sunggyu can have some space. Sunggyu opens the door almost immediately, and he closes it
behind him before he folds his hands behind his back.

“I apologize—” Sunggyu starts, but Woohyun cuts him off.

“No, I’m sorry. I lost my temper with you even though you really don’t know any of the customs or
rules of this time. I think I really should’ve tried to understand you more.” Woohyun grins at
Sunggyu. “You were just trying to get me to sleep, right?”

Sunggyu nods. “Yes, we usually sleep for half of the day.” He looks back up at Woohyun’s eyes,
searching. “You seemed to sleep for just a fraction of what i do. So I was worried for your health.”

“I get that,” Woohyun says. “But I really, really do have to go to work. It’ll be a huge disaster for
me if I don’t go, because then I might lose my job and I’ll be unemployed. And you wouldn’t want
that, would you?”

Sunggyu’s eyes widen and he shakes his head, and Woohyun smiles at him. “So please don’t use
any of your gumiho magic to put me to sleep anymore. Maybe on the weekends, but not before I
have work.”

“But,” Sunggyu starts as he fidgets with his fingers. He meets Woohyun’s eyes squarely. “I did
nothing of that sort. It was all you that was tired.”

Woohyun stares back at him, taken aback, and he realizes that he doesn’t know how to respond. He
clears his throat, and as if on cue, his stomach rumbles. He grins sheepishly at Sunggyu. “Would
you like to get some dinner?”

Woohyun chooses a nice barbecue place near his apartment. It’s an all you can eat style eatery,
where he can order whatever types of meats he wants to and then grill it. He thinks it’ll be a good
choice for someone like Sunggyu.

He’d explained to Woohyun during the drive there that he doesn’t really need to eat. He’d used to,
but then he’d eaten so many human livers before he’d been locked in the scroll that he’s sated and
full for the next few decades, and Woohyun didn’t know whether to be startled or to be relieved.

“But,” Sunggyu had said with a smile showing off his pointed canines, “I would not object to
eating more meat.”

He’d thrown a coat on Sunggyu since he’d refused to change into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt,
enough coverage so that anyone looking would think that he’s just very into wearing traditional
clothing. The tails and the ears aren’t a problem, since Sunggyu can make them appear and
reappear at will. Sunggyu sits opposite him in the booth, and they teach each other how to play the
games they’d grown up with as they wait for their food to come.

Woohyun’s in the middle of teaching Sunggyu how to play the mandu game when their first orders
of meat arrive. “Wait,” Woohyun says, without looking up from the grill, “I have to cook this
first.”

He hears swallowing, and then when he looks up, an entire plate of bulgogi is missing, and there’s
a small droplet of blood dripping from the corner of Sunggyu’s mouth.

“Sunggyu,” Woohyun says, exasperated, then he drops his voice to nearly a whisper. “I told you,
you can’t eat raw meat in public. Please just let me finish grilling so we can pretend you’re
actually. You know.” Human.

“But this meat is delicious,” Sunggyu whines, but Woohyun shoots him a hard look. Sunggyu’s
lower lip juts out when he pouts. “Alright. I agree to your terms.”

From then on, it’s fairly smooth sailing, with Woohyun grilling the meat and placing equal
portions on his and Sunggyu’s plates, but it gets even better when they bring out the yukhwe.

“What is this?” Sunggyu asks, his eyes shining as the plate is placed right in front of him.

“It’s a dish made with raw beef. It’s been seasoned and salted already, but you can eat it as it is.”
Woohyun returns Sunggyu’s beaming grin and turns back to the galbi he’d been grilling. He’s
enjoying this more than he thought he would, and it doesn’t help that the company he’s with is
surprisingly witty and easy to talk to.

They both come out of the restaurant stuffed, and Woohyun holds his stomach and groans. “I’m so
full. Why did we eat so much?”

“Because you said that we should, and I quote, get our money’s worth.” Sunggyu stares back at
him, and he coughs.

“Oh right, I did.” Then, as if the thought’s just occurred to him, Woohyun whirls around so he can
look at Sunggyu. “I’d been meaning to ask, but where did you get the rice cakes from? And the
calligraphy brush? And the parchment? I don’t have any of that stuff inside my apartment, so how
did you—?”

“Magic,” Sunggyu says, easily and simply, shrugging. Woohyun watches the way his cheeks puff
out whenever he smiles like that, watches the way he looks back at him one last time before he’s
darting ahead to look for the car, and he thinks that it isn’t so bad after all.
They settle into an easy routine. Woohyun shows Sunggyu how to use the stove and the
microwave, and although Woohyun doesn’t really mind either way, Sunggyu insists on cooking for
him before and after he gets back from work. It’s a different kind of feeling, one he’s not used to,
when he has a lunch ready for him in the morning.

It had started out with just rice cakes, but as the days go by, Sunggyu seems to be learning. After
Woohyun teaches him how to use the rice cooker, his lunches become rice bowls with some rice
cakes and vegetables on the side. Myungsoo takes notice of this, and one day as Woohyun takes
out his lunch to start eating, he leans over Woohyun’s desk.

“You got a girlfriend?” Myungsoo asks, blunt and matter of fact in the way that he always is, and
Woohyun nearly chokes on a rice cake. They’re covered with soy sauce today instead of
gochujang, and he thinks that he’ll have to tell Sunggyu to lighten up on the seasonings when he
gets home tonight.

“No,” Woohyun says slowly, trying to figure out an excuse. Of course Myungsoo’s noticed that he
has home-cooked meals now when he’d always just gotten a coffee and a granola bar to keep him
awake for the rest of the day before.

Myungsoo’s eyes narrow. “A boyfriend?”

“No!” Woohyun splutters. “Where are you getting all of these ideas?”

“Look.” Myungsoo points at the packed lunch in front of him. “You’re eating actual human food
instead of your gross energy and protein bars.” He puts a hand up to stop Woohyun when he opens
his mouth to object. “Seriously, something’s up. You’re a lot happier than you used to be, and you
leave right away when you need to clock out. Before, you used to just stay here until the boss had
to tell you to leave.”

“It’s nothing,” Woohyun lies. But now that Myungsoo’s mentioned it, he can’t stop thinking about
it. He hadn’t even noticed he's started to leave earlier and earlier day after day, and he realizes that
he hasn’t thought about wanting a promotion for a while now.

“Also, when did you get a cat?” Myungsoo asks suddenly. He leans in closer to Woohyun, looking
intently at his jacket.

“I don’t have a cat, though.” Woohyun follows Myungsoo’s gaze to where short red hairs are
sticking to his jacket. Fuck. They must’ve been left behind from when Sunggyu had spent that first
night rolling around in Woohyun’s bed. He hasn’t cleaned it since, so it’s not too out of the
ordinary for him to still have those hairs on him. He clears his throat. “My neighbor has a cat. He’s
really annoying and likes to get his hair all over me. So annoying.”

Myungsoo doesn’t really look convinced, but Woohyun shoos him off. “Let me eat in peace, Kim.
Shoo. Stop being so nosy all the time. Also, don’t you have that guy from the auditing firm to
worry about?”

Myungsoo flushes and goes back to sulking at his desk, and Woohyun grins. The food Sunggyu
makes tastes better when he can properly enjoy it, anyway.

He spends most of the commute home that night thinking about what Myungsoo had said. He
knows that if he goes back and looks at the times he’d clocked in and out, he’ll see that he’s been
getting to work later and later and leaving earlier and earlier. He still puts in enough work to meet
weekly quotas, but the amount of time he spends at the office per day is rapidly dwindling, and
he’s surprised to realize that he doesn’t really care. The him of before would’ve forced himself to
work harder, but now, he’s content to do as much as he has to so that he can live. Other than that,
there are things in his life that he would rather spend time doing.

“I’m back,” Woohyun says, toeing off his shoes and stepping through the doorway.

“Welcome home,” Sunggyu calls out, sprawled on the couch. He’s levitating small balls of foxfire
around in the air, the white-blue balls dancing around above their heads. Woohyun knows he
should be more concerned that Sunggyu’s going to burn his entire apartment down, but he doesn’t
really care. He watches the way the flames flicker in and out of existence, and he wonders if
Sunggyu’s going to do the same, if Sunggyu’s going to blink out of his life just as suddenly as he’d
appeared in it.

Just that thought fills Woohyun with a feeling he can’t describe, and after he changes back into
more comfortable clothes, he settles down onto the couch next to Sunggyu. He’s almost completely
given up his routine of working until midnight as well, and he’s started just leaving what he has to
do for work at the office instead of bringing it home.

“Are you tired?” Sunggyu asks as Woohyun leans against his shoulder.

“Shhh.” Woohyun takes the remote and turns the channel to something other than the news he’d
been watching this morning. They sit there in relative silence, but it’s not awkward. Instead, it’s
something comfortable now, the way that they sit together, their shoulders pressed together, and
Sunggyu is warm by his side.

“The blue man is trying to wrap something around a box. Why?” Sunggyu asks, and Woohyun has
to stifle a laugh. The first time Sunggyu had seen the television, he’d yelped and jumped five feet
into the air, and Woohyun had to explain to him that no, there weren’t tiny people inside his metal
box.

“It’s just part of the game,” Woohyun says, and when one of Sunggyu’s tails lands in his lap, he
instinctively starts petting it, running his fingers through the soft fur.

Sunggyu gives him a narrow look even as he leans into the touch. “My tails are not toys, I hope
you realize.”

“I know,” Woohyun says, using the tip of one of the tails to brush Sunggyu on the nose. “But
they’re fun to play with, aren’t they?”

Sunggyu sighs, deep and long-suffering, and Woohyun grins with triumph.

It’s a chilly autumn day when Sunggyu puts the coat on and goes into Woohyun’s room to smack
him awake. “Ow! What are you doing, Sunggyu?” Woohyun clutches the pillow closer to himself,
burrowing deeper under the covers. “It’s Saturday, leave me alone.”

“We are going sightseeing!” Sunggyu announces, putting his hands on his hips, and Woohyun
peeks above the blanket. Sightseeing? What could Sunggyu possibly know about Seoul in this day
and age, three hundred years after he’d lived?

But Woohyun’s curious to see where Sunggyu wants to go, so he pulls on pants and throws on a
sweater, and when he goes to the door, Sunggyu’s waiting. “You are so slow,” he huffs, grabbing
Woohyun’s wrist and pushing the door open.

Woohyun follows, and he listens to Sunggyu talk the entire time. Sunggyu’s learned how to wear
what Woohyun calls non-gumiho people clothes now, and when Sunggyu’s walking in front of
him, his strides long and his steps quick, with a sweater and a coat and jeans on, he looks like just
another guy.

“Listen, there is this garden that I know that is super beautiful during the autumn season. It was
built by King Jeongjo in honor of his mother, Lady Hyekyeong, and it is so beautiful, you will not
believe your eyes,” Sunggyu says, and Woohyun’s content to just walk beside him. “The flowers
and the trees planted there are so rare that people came from all over Joseon Korea to look at the
garden.”

As Sunggyu talks on and on, the more Woohyun starts to get a dawning feeling of dread.
Sunggyu’s going off of his instincts, following the path that he’d known hundreds of years ago, but
the city’s changed so much since then. Woohyun knows this area of the city is the industrial one
where skyscrapers touch the sky, but he keeps quiet. Maybe he’ll be proven wrong.

In his excitement, Sunggyu’s walking so fast that Woohyun knows that he doesn’t see the
surroundings around him, that he doesn’t see how there are barely any trees, let alone flowers and
grasses, around them. Sunggyu jerks to a stop, and Woohyun nearly trips onto the ground.

“Behold!” Sunggyu says, grinning at Woohyun before he turns to look at where the garden is.
Woohyun knows the exact moment Sunggyu realizes, because his grip on Woohyun’s wrist
slackens and his face falls. They’re not standing in front of a beautiful garden. They’re standing in
front of an office building, its exterior drab and gray, and Woohyun knows that if they open the
doors, there will be office workers poring over paperwork.

“But it was here,” Sunggyu says, his voice small and quiet, and he doesn’t object when Woohyun
laces their fingers together to tug him away. “It was here.”

“Let’s go home,” Woohyun says, trying to make Sunggyu understand that he knows, and Sunggyu
follows. He’s quiet the entire way home, and Woohyun squeezes his hand more tightly, hoping that
just this will be enough for now. When they get home, Sunggyu locks himself in the guest room,
and Woohyun spends what feels like hours just staring at the closed door. He knows better than to
bother Sunggyu when he’s like this.

Woohyun suddenly gets an idea. He doesn’t know how feasible it is or if it’s even going to work,
but he gets on his laptop and searches up what Sunggyu must’ve been talking about earlier. There
are records of a garden near where they’d gone, and Woohyun spends the next few hours scouring
the internet and writing down what kinds of flowers were in the garden.

The next morning, Sunggyu’s door is still closed, and Woohyun has his fist poised and ready to
knock before he holds back. There’ll be time for that later. Not many places are open this early on
a Sunday morning, but he drives to the nearest nursery that’s open and rattles off the list of flowers
he’d written down the night before.

He comes home with a small planter and bags full of seeds, his arms straining with how heavy
everything is, and he finishes setting up the planter on the balcony connected to his apartment just
before dinner. He wipes his hands clean of dirt and wood shavings before he knocks on Sunggyu’s
door.

“Sunggyu,” he tries. No response. “I have something for you.”

When Sunggyu comes out, his face is drawn and he looks like he hasn’t slept. Woohyun’s about to
ask if he’s okay when he shakes his head. “I am fine,” he says hurriedly. “Please do not worry.
What do you have for me?”
Woohyun leads Sunggyu to the planter, and he shows Sunggyu the bags of seeds he’d bought.

“I know this isn’t anything like the garden you had back in your day, but I tried to find flowers that
were kind of similar to the flowers back then. We can move the planter inside if you want to plant
them now, or we can leave them outside if you want to wait until spring.” Woohyun swallows. “I
hope I didn’t step over any boundaries, but I thought you might like to have these flowers with you
all the time.”

“No. No, this is perfect,” Sunggyu whispers. His eyes are shining when he looks up at Woohyun.
“I would like to plant these in the spring, please.”

Sunggyu pitches forward so suddenly that Woohyun almost drops all of the seeds, and Sunggyu’s
ears tickle Woohyun’s face when he draws him in for a hug.

“Thank you,” Sunggyu murmurs into Woohyun’s ear. “Thank you so much for bringing my life
back to me.”

As he stands there, running his hands over Sunggyu’s back and feeling his warmth in his arms,
Woohyun thinks that he should be the one thanking Sunggyu for bringing the light back into his
life.

One night, when Woohyun comes home from work, all of the lights are off. He nearly drops the
bag of doughnuts he’d bought for Sunggyu on the way back, scrambling to turn on the lights. This
hasn’t happened since Sunggyu had appeared in his apartment that one afternoon, and Woohyun
starts opening all of the doors down the hallway, checking the bathroom and the bedrooms. He’s
not there.

“Sunggyu?” He calls. No response. A cold chill starts to set into his bones when he realizes that
Sunggyu’s gone, that he won’t wake up to see Sunggyu in the kitchen with his lunch, that he won’t
have to tell Sunggyu to stop eating all of the raw meat anymore.

But then it feels like there’s a voice in his head telling him to go outside, and Woohyun has no idea
where it’s coming from, but he follows. He leaves his apartment and goes down cramped
alleyways and well-lit streets, walking where he feels like going. His feet seem to be moving on his
own, but then the voice in his head tells him that he’s getting closer, that he’s almost there, and
Woohyun thinks, deliriously, that it sounds a little bit like Sunggyu’s voice.

He stops in front of a darkened alley in the back of a restaurant, and it feels like he’s breathing
above water when he shakes his head to clear it. He wonders just how he’d gotten here when he’s
never been in this area of the city before he sees it. There’s a dark shadow at the end of the
alleyway, and Woohyun hesitates before walking towards it. It’s not until he’s standing just feet
away from it that he smells the overwhelming stench of blood, and when the moonlight shifts,
Woohyun gasps.

It’s a fox with auburn fur, its ears and tails tipped with white. Its fur is matted down with blood and
dirt, and it looks like it’s close to dying, its breath coming out in short puffs. Woohyun looks at the
way its tails keep flickering in and out of existence, at the way it almost looks like there are nine at
one point, and he knows.

“Sunggyu?” He whispers, and when the fox opens its eyes to stare up at him, he collapses on his
knees in front of it. “Oh fuck, Sunggyu, are you alright? Holy shit, what do I do, please don’t die
—”
Take me home, please.

The words flash into Woohyun’s mind so quickly that he knows that he hadn’t been the one to
think them up, and he stares at Sunggyu. “Was that you—?”

Please.

Woohyun doesn’t waste any more time. He shrugs off his coat and drapes it around Sunggyu,
taking care not to shake him too much, and he gently lifts him up off the ground and into his arms.
Sunggyu is heavy and warm in his arms, and he knows that blood is going to get everywhere on his
clothes and on him. He doesn’t care, though.

He makes it home in almost record time, and after he lays Sunggyu out on the ground, he runs to
the bathroom to grab towels and supplies. When he comes back, Sunggyu’s a human again, his ears
and tails fainter then ever, and Woohyun can see that he’s bleeding from his chest and stomach.
There are scratches up and down his arms and legs, and Woohyun swallows. “What happened?”

“I wished to go out for a run, but some dogs found me, and I could not escape in time.” Sunggyu
closes his eyes. “Stupid dogs.”

He kneels next to Sunggyu, dabbing at the wounds with the towels, before he feels Sunggyu’s
hand on his wrist.

“Stop,” he says hoarsely, and Woohyun stills.

“I’m just trying to help, Sunggyu, you’re going to die.” Woohyun’s hands are trembling now, and
he can’t stop it the way his hands shake as he tries to soak up more of the blood.

“Woohyun, I have to tell you something. Please listen. Please stop moving around.” Sunggyu’s
eyes are so earnest, so serious, that Woohyun puts down the towels and sits still. “Do you
remember the time that you found me? And you set me free? In the shrine? A few months ago?”

Woohyun nods. It seems like almost another lifetime now, but when he thinks back to it, he can
still pull back how he’d seen the shrine at Yongjusa and gone in, not realizing that that moment
would change the course of his life.

“You died,” Sunggyu says, and he reaches for Woohyun’s hand, as if he can console him
somehow. Woohyun gasps, and Sunggyu’s eyes fix on his. “When you fell, you hit your head, and
you would have died forever, if it were not for my intervention.”

“But how? Why?” Woohyun doesn’t remember this happening at all, but now that Sunggyu brings
it up, he thinks he can remember falling and blacking out, but nothing more.

“Gumihos—we have these beads. They are an extension of our life force, you could say. When I
did that, I became bonded to you, which is why I could not leave. I also was allowed to nudge your
actions and thoughts.” Woohyun remembers the way he’d walked without thinking to where
Sunggyu was, the way he’d been thinking things that weren’t his, and he realizes that it all makes
sense. Sunggyu swallows. “I gave mine to you so that you could live, but I would like it back now,
if it is alright with you. I would really like to continue living, so—”

“How do I give it back to you?” Woohyun asks, crawling closer to Sunggyu, moving so that he’s
hovering almost directly over Sunggyu. Then he feels Sunggyu reaching upwards, his fingers
finding their way to the back of Woohyun’s neck, dragging him downwards, and then Sunggyu’s
kissing him.
His lips are soft, and as Woohyun closes his eyes to kiss him back, he can feel it. There’s power
building within him, like a fluttering in his chest, and he can feel it leaving his body. He’s about to
pull back, but Sunggyu keeps him there, tilting his head and deepening their kiss. The fluttering
builds and builds and suddenly it’s gone, and then Sunggyu pulls back, licking his lips.

As Woohyun watches, the wounds all over Sunggyu’s body start to shrink, and then they
disappear. His skin looks like he’d never been injured in the first place. Sunggyu pushes himself up
onto his elbows, and then he drags himself into a sitting position to he can stare at Woohyun before
he’s scooting closer and closer.

“Thank you, Woohyun.” Sunggyu smiles, his eyes crinkling into crescent moons, and Woohyun’s
throat is suddenly dry at the memory of Sunggyu’s pink lips against his. Sunggyu moves even
closer, and when he opens his eyes so he can look at Woohyun again, Woohyun swears that he can
almost see the reflection of the moon in those eyes. “I am glad that you have allowed me to keep
living here.”

“I’d do anything to keep you here, don’t worry,” Woohyun whispers before he closes the distance
between their lips. Sunggyu’s arms wind around his neck again, and he realizes that this, Sunggyu
in his arms, is what he’s been waiting for his entire life.

It’s a snowy winter day when Sunggyu marches into Woohyun’s room. They haven’t done much
since that night; work has been getting busier and busier, and although Sunggyu always welcomes
Woohyun at the door with a hug and a kiss, Woohyun’s always too tired to do anything else.

“Woohyun,” he announces. “I wish to sleep here from now on.”

Woohyun looks up from where he’d been searching up more biennial flowers for the planter on his
laptop, and he scoots over. “Sure,” he says, moving his laptop and phone aside to make room.
“Come on in.”

Sunggyu doesn’t really walk towards the bed as he jumps onto it, nearly colliding with Woohyun
and knocking him over. Sunggyu pushes Woohyun to lie on his back, and Woohyun watches the
way his tails swish idly in the air behind him.

“Yes?” Woohyun asks, reaching up so he can brush his knuckles against Sunggyu’s cheek, and
Sunggyu closes his eyes, leaning into it.

“I missed you,” Sunggyu says, dropping his head into Woohyun’s shoulder and rubbing his
forehead against Woohyun’s shirt. “So much.”

“I missed you too.” Woohyun grins even though Sunggyu can’t see it, patting Sunggyu’s back and
feeling the tension evaporate from his body. “Do you want to look at some of the flowers I was
going to get for the planter so we can put them in when it’s spring?”

At Sunggyu’s nod, he reaches over for the laptop and drags it closer so Sunggyu can see the screen.
Sunggyu stares at the screen before settling back more comfortably onto Woohyun’s chest. “The
first, the third, the fifth, and the sixth ones, please.”

“Noted,” Woohyun says against Sunggyu’s hair. Sunggyu’s ears twitch, and when they tickle
Woohyun’s nose, he sneezes. Sunggyu lifts his head up to give him a dirty look, and Woohyun
laughs. “Sorry.”

They lie there for a while, Woohyun running his hands through Sunggyu’s hair, and Sunggyu’s so
still that Woohyun’s not sure if he’s even awake. “Sunggyu?” He whispers.

“Shut up,” Sunggyu mumbles, and Woohyun doesn’t even try to bite back the smile. There’s a lot
Sunggyu’s learned from him, but Woohyun doesn’t think anything will be as funny as seeing and
hearing a gumiho use twenty-first century colloquialisms.

“I have a present for you.”

“A present?” Woohyun can tell by the way that Sunggyu’s ears perk up that he’s immediately
interested, and he pushes Sunggyu off of him just slightly. Sunggyu sits back on his heels, folding
his legs under him and putting his hands in his lap as he waits for Woohyun to get the present.

Woohyun’s hands are just slightly sweaty on the handles of the bag. He’d bought this on a whim,
but now he’s not entirely sure if Sunggyu will even like it. He just hopes Sunggyu doesn’t think
he’s making fun of him. When he takes it out, Sunggyu looks at him with confusion. “A brush?
But you already have so many of these?”

“No,” Woohyun says, settling down on the bed next to Sunggyu. He raises the brush to eye level,
letting Sunggyu see how delicate and fine the bristles are. “It’s a fur brush. It’s not for your hair,
it’s for your tails. Didn’t you say you were annoyed of getting things stuck in them, like snow or
twigs? Or we can get some of the tangles in them out now?”

The confusion in Sunggyu’s eyes is completely replaced by curiosity and excitement now, and he
moves to lie across Woohyun’s lap so that his tails are in Woohyun’s face. He turns his head so he
can grin at Woohyun and say, “Brush me then, Woohyun. Show me what you are useful for.”

Woohyun doesn’t back down from a challenge. He curls a hand around the base of the tails, and
with long and purposeful pulls, he uses his other hand to brush Sunggyu’s tails from base to tip free
of tangles and other things he might’ve picked up on the ground. He’s halfway through the tails, on
number five, when he notices that Sunggyu’s panting lightly, and he stops. “Sunggyu? Are you
alright?”

“I am fine,” Sunggyu murmurs, and his voice is hazy, like he’s dreaming. “Please continue.”

Woohyun picks the brush up again, but he goes slower this time, keeping his eyes on Sunggyu for
any change in his behavior. He’s on the seventh tail now, and when he tightens his grip on the base
of the tails just slightly since Sunggyu’s started moving around a lot, he hears it. A long, low
moan.

He stares down at Sunggyu in shock, and Sunggyu doesn’t meet his eyes, covering his face with
his hands. “I apologize, that was very unbecoming of me, please disregard that—”

“Sunggyu, are you turned on?” Woohyun reaches downwards so he can gently pry Sunggyu’s
hands off of his face. He’s flushed a deep red, and he stares at a point behind Woohyun’s head
instead of answering. Sunggyu shifts just a little bit, and Woohyun can feel something pressing into
his thigh. “You are.”

“Please do not look at me,” Sunggyu mutters as Woohyun drags him upwards so that he’s sitting
on Woohyun’s lap and facing him.

“How can I stop looking at you when you’re like this? Sunggyu, can you show me your face?”
Sunggyu looks at him underneath his eyelashes, and Woohyun can feel arousal start to build when
he sees Sunggyu like that, his eyes half-lidded and his cheeks pink. “Was it because of me?”

Sunggyu nods, short, and his hands ball into fists at his sides.
“Was it because of this?” Woohyun reaches behind Sunggyu, and he hesitates for just a moment
before he curls his fingers around the base of Sunggyu’s tails again. Sunggyu shakes, his head
dropping onto Woohyun’s shoulder, and he breathes out in harsh and ragged gasps.

“My tails, ah, the very base of them, they’re very, um, sensitive to touch,” Sunggyu murmurs into
Woohyun’s shoulder, and Woohyun pulls him back just slightly so he can see Sunggyu’s face.
“When you touch them, ah, it makes me like this.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” They’re so close now, close enough to kiss, but he stops himself.

“Because I wanted you to touch me,” Sunggyu whispers, and Woohyun feels the last shred of
control he had evaporate with those words. He surges forward to crush his lips against Sunggyu’s,
and he feels Sunggyu return it with an equally insistent fervor.

Woohyun tightens his grip on Sunggyu’s tails, squeezing, and Sunggyu moans into the kiss,
shuddering. Sunggyu’s rutting against him now, riding his thigh and making small noises in the
back of his throat, and Woohyun’s suddenly aware of how he’s almost uncomfortably hard now,
his cock making a tent in the boxers he’d worn to sleep. Sunggyu’s robes have ridden up, and
although they still cover everything else, they’ve shifted so his legs are completely exposed, and
Woohyun feels his throat becoming drier and drier the more he stares at the long expanse of skin in
front of him.

“Please,” Sunggyu begs, and he looks so broken, so wrecked, with his hair messed up around his
face and a red flush high on his cheeks and on his neck, that Woohyun can’t resist. He doesn’t need
to be told twice to grab Sunggyu and push him onto his back against the pillows, or to lower his
mouth to Sunggyu’s neck and start sucking kisses into the skin there. He pulls back so he can look
at what he’s done, and he knows they’ll bruise tomorrow, all of the marks he’s leaving on Sunggyu
now. He just wishes Sunggyu went outside more, so people could see what he’s doing to him.

“Woohyun,” Sunggyu says again, “please.”

Woohyun leans back again. Sunggyu’s in front of him, his eyes wet and his mouth open and
panting, and his cheeks are pink and his neck is a splotchy red. Woohyun reaches for the tie of
Sunggyu’s robes, and they fall apart without any resistance at all. His chest is pale, save for the
flush across his collarbones, and, except for a light scar across his stomach, there aren’t any
markings anywhere on him. Woohyun needs to fix that.

He reaches over to his bedside table for the lube, and he pops the cap open to coat his fingers with
it. When he turns back to Sunggyu and gently moves one of his legs aside, Sunggyu opens up, his
legs spreading. Woohyun circles his slick finger around Sunggyu’s entrance, and he watches the
way Sunggyu takes him in. He adds another finger, then another, and before he knows it, he has
Sunggyu twisting on his fingers, trying to get him even further in. He scissors his fingers, leaning
forward so he can kiss Sunggyu again, wet and open-mouthed and sloppy.

“You’re so beautiful,” Woohyun breathes out as he pulls his fingers out of Sunggyu, and then he’s
pulling his shirt over his head and off. He does the same to his boxers, kicking them onto the floor,
and he watches the way Sunggyu’s eyes rake hungrily from his arms down his chest and stomach,
down to where he’s hard and leaking against his stomach.

“No, you are,” Sunggyu says, and he reaches for Woohyun, “so handsome.”

Woohyun brushes a lock of hair away from Sunggyu’s face before he leans in to kiss him again.
He pulls back so he can slick himself up, and he strokes himself again, just to make sure he’s ready
enough. Woohyun hikes Sunggyu’s ankles over his shoulders before he pushes into him in just one
thrust, bottoming out against Sunggyu’s ass.

“I have wanted you for so long,” Sunggyu whispers against Woohyun’s neck, and his breath
hitches with the next thrust, one that makes the bed creak underneath them. “So long.”

Woohyun hopes that the kiss he presses to Sunggyu’s lips, long and deep, can convey everything he
wants to say to him. I’ve wanted you for a long time, too. A very long time.

Sunggyu’s boneless after he comes, and he wraps his arms around Woohyun’s neck and demands
to be carried into the bathroom to be cleaned up. “Bossy,” Woohyun mutters with a smile on his
face, and Sunggyu turns his head so he can kiss the smile off.

“I know,” Sunggyu says, with a self-assured and confident smirk on his lips, and Woohyun falls
just a little bit harder for him.

Sunggyu splashes water back at him when they’re in the bathtub, his back resting against
Woohyun’s chest. His tails are in Woohyun’s face again, but he doesn’t mind, not really. Woohyun
helps Sunggyu lather up his tails to clean them off, and he pauses.

“So the tips are okay?” Woohyun asks, his hands rubbing shampoo over the tails, and Sunggyu
nods.

“Yes, only the base at the very bottom is that sensitive,” he explains, twisting so he can show
Woohyun. He stops to think before he says, “Oh, the base of my ears as well.”

“These ones?” Woohyun reaches up so he can rub his thumb against the base of the soft ears
perched on top of Sunggyu’s head, and Sunggyu shivers and looks at him with a gaze like melted
honey before he leans in to kiss Woohyun again.

“Yes,” Sunggyu murmurs, “but to be honest, it feels like I am on fire no matter what part of my
body you touch.”

Sunggyu’s even more pliant after that, letting Woohyun carry him back to the bed so he can blow
dry his hair and his tails.

“So fluffy,” Woohyun mutters, burying his face into the tails and hugging them to him once he’s
done. “So fucking fluffy.”

“You like my tails more than you like me, do you not?” Sunggyu demands, a false tone of
indignance creeping into his voice. The towel draped over his head and the smile tugging at the
ends of his lips ruin the effect, though.

“Nah,” Woohyun says, and he pulls Sunggyu close so he can kiss him on the nose. He pulls back
so he can rub his thumb across Sunggyu’s cheekbones, and he wonders just how he lived without
Sunggyu in his life. “I like you the most.”

(On a bright spring morning, Woohyun rolls over in bed, woken up by the shrill ringing of his
alarm.

“G’morning,” he mutters when he feels something soft hit his cheek, and he reaches out for it,
expecting it to be one of Sunggyu’s tails. His hand closes around something vaguely spherical and
furry, and his eyes shoot open. He’s holding what looks like a ball of fluff, and there’s another ball
of fluff next to it. He blinks and rubs his eyes, and the balls of fluff have ears and tails, and
 Woohyun nearly screams.

“Sunggyu! What are these things doing here?” he asks, almost in hysterics, holding the two balls of
fluff in one hand and shaking Sunggyu awake with the other.

Sunggyu slowly blinks awake, but once he sees what Woohyun’s doing, he narrows his eyes at
him, and Woohyun has the sinking feeling that he’s said or done something wrong again.

“You do not recognize your own children?” Sunggyu asks, a dangerous tone in his words now, and
Woohyun looks at the balls of fluff again. He realizes that they have the same coloring Sunggyu
does, and that when they move around in his hands, he can make out foxlike features in their faces.

“My children? But how?” Woohyun stares at Sunggyu in disbelief. Sunggyu’s a man, or at least
he’s pretty sure, and Sunggyu’s stomach had been flat just last night, and Woohyun doesn’t
remember ever having any kids. Just where did these balls of fluff—half-human and half-gumiho
children—come from?

“Magic,” Sunggyu replies, simply and smugly, before he rolls over and goes back to sleep with a
self-satisfied smirk on his lips.

Woohyun stares at the balls of fluff and then at Sunggyu, then back at the balls of fluff, and he
wonders, for what must be the thousandth time by now, just what he’s gotten himself into.)

Chapter End Notes

i hope you guys enjoyed the tales of gyumiho (hehe) ♡ please feel free to let me know
what you think, either here or on twitter~ happy new year's eve!
 ever after
Chapter Summary

woohyun tries to deal. (he fails.)

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Woohyun stares. And stares. And keeps staring. “You what?”

“Try to keep up, Woohyun,” Sunggyu huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into
the couch. “I simply took a part of your soul and a part of my soul and fused them together, and
that split in two. Honestly. What do you not understand? I thought you were supposed to be
intelligent.”

“But—” Woohyun splutters. It just doesn’t process, although he thinks that he should be used to
this by now. His life hasn’t been the same ever since he hit his head in the shrine that day. “Why?”

Sunggyu shrugs, lifting one of what Woohyun now knows aren’t random balls of fur, but tiny
gumiho babies, to his shoulder. “Because I wanted to. And I thought it would be fun. And also, you
seem to like children and animals.” His lips curl at the edge. A challenge. Woohyun and Sunggyu
both know that Sunggyu wouldn’t leave now that they’re bonded, and it’s not like Woohyun
would, either. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Woohyun mentally calculates how much more he’s going to have to spend on food and sighs. This
would be a different story if he were still fresh out of college, his degree new and shiny in his hand.
But he has a stable job that pays well now, and he knows that it’s more than enough to support two
kids— and he feels oddly, oddly satisfied by just thinking that— and an annoying gumiho on top of
that. “No. No at all, Sunggyu.”

It turns out that they don’t have to spend that much on food at all. Woohyun watches as Sunggyu
cuts up a slice of (very raw, very red, very bloody) steak into smaller bite-sized pieces. The babies
are just lying on the table next to Sunggyu’s hands, and when they smell the blood, they roll over
until they hit the gumiho’s hand. Sunggyu then picks up some of the pieces and pops one into each
of their mouths.

“Isn’t this a health hazard?” Woohyun ventures warily. He’s heard that babies aren’t supposed to
have solid food until months after birth. Not that he has any personal experience with babies, of
course.

Sunggyu gives him a withering look that tells him that he’s immediately wrong. “No,” Sunggyu
starts, and Woohyun wonders if Sunggyu has always sounded this disapproving, or if this is just
post-baby Sunggyu talking. Probably the latter. “They are not eating the meat, they do not have
teeth yet. You dummy.”

As if to illustrate his point, Sunggyu picks up one of the fur balls and opens its mouth so Woohyun
can see. He’s right. No teeth. “They are just sucking on the blood.” Sunggyu stops to think. “Well,
they do not really have to eat, actually. But they just like the taste of it.”

Woohyun stares at the rest of the meat that he’d bought, the rest of the meat that Sunggyu had cut
up into tiny pieces and only took two out of. “So what should I do with the rest of these?”

“You could make meatballs?” Sunggyu suggests. “Wait, actually. Please make meatballs. Thank
you in advance.”

Woohyun sighs as he picks up the errant pieces of meat that Sunggyu hadn’t given to the babies
yet. He doesn’t really want to admit it directly to Sunggyu’s face, but as annoying as he always is,
he’s kind of cute when he puts the babies’ needs over his own.

Woohyun realizes that there’s a question that he hasn’t really asked yet. Sunggyu is lying on the
bed and watching the babies as they take their afternoon nap. Woohyun’s taken off a few days
from work, citing the fact that he’s had months of sick leave and vacation built up over the years
before Sunggyu had come into his life. Those were the days he’d come into the office seven days a
week, he remembers. Those were pretty shitty days.

He’d been so absorbed in his work that he’d lost some of the most valuable friendships that he’d
forged over the years. He’d backed out on get-togethers and friendly dinners, saying that he had
projects to finish and clients to speak to, and all of it had been true. He’d been too busy to even
have a life, and it had been all his fault— he’d ended up working nearly twice as much as some of
the others in the office had, if he counts the time spent at home reviewing contracts when everyone
else had most surely been with their family and their loved ones.

Myungsoo had squinted at him when he’d requested time off, and when Woohyun had asked what
was on his face, Myungsoo had only said, with a strange look in his eyes, “You’ve never taken
time off before. Never. You’ve changed, Woohyun. You really have.”

He supposes he has, but like hell he’s going to let Sunggyu know. He’d never hear the end of the
teasing.

He sits down next to Sunggyu, and when he does, Sunggyu scoots over so he can lay his head in
Woohyun’s lap. His eyes are still on the babies, though.

“I have a question,” Woohyun says, and Sunggyu’s eyes snap to him. “So— the kids. Are they, um.
Boys? Or girls? Or I don’t know, one of each or something.”

Sunggyu stares at him, his eyes boring upwards into Woohyun’s, before he sits up abruptly, almost
hitting Woohyun’s chin with his forehead on the way up. “Actually, I do not know. Let me check,”
he says, and he prods at one of the babies until it rolls onto its back, exposing its stomach. “Oh, this
one is a boy.” He prods the other one, too. “This one is a boy as well.”

He settles back down, laying his head onto Woohyun’s lap again. “Any more questions? I promise
I will not make fun of you if they are stupid questions.”

Just one. Woohyun hasn’t ever heard Sunggyu refer to them by name, only as “the kids,” “the
babies,” “the children,” or, when Sunggyu hasn’t had enough sleep and they keep yipping
throughout the night and waking him up to put them back to sleep, “the most infuriating and
annoying creatures to have ever existed on this good earth.”

“What should we name them? Or did you already have names in mind?”
 The beginnings of a slow and lazy smile start to spread across Sunggyu’s face. “I thought you
would never ask.”

Chapter End Notes

hellooo!! so this is how subsequent gyumiho chapters are likely going to be like, aka
really short drabbles focusing on their lives together ^__^ hbd woohyun!!!
 before it all
Chapter Summary

sunggyu reflects.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

As far as he can remember, Sunggyu has always been alone.

He doesn’t remember the early days of his life much anymore. He remembers them in vague
memories, vague flashes of color and light and sound. He thinks that he must’ve had a mother at
some point, or maybe a father, or parents, at the very least. He must’ve had parents— otherwise,
there’s no way he could be alive. Maybe they were killed by soldiers or hunters, or maybe they
were taken down by something more powerful than they were. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t
remember anymore.

He remembers having to fend for himself in the forest, having to hunt for his own prey. He doesn’t
like doing it, but he knows that that’s what he’ll have to do to survive another day. He remembers
starving sometimes and barely having enough energy to walk around, let alone to use his magic to
find food. But he also remembers being happy, being able to run freely in the forest in whatever
form he wants to, being content with hearing the sounds of birdsong and nature all around him.

Then they come.

They come with violence and bloodshed, and Sunggyu can only watch as they destroy the only
home that he’s ever had, the only home that he’s ever known. They burst through the forests with
their staves in hand, and he decides that he doesn’t care anymore. He’ll let them kill him— except
they don’t. They whisper some words that Sunggyu can’t quite make out under their breath, and
the next thing he knows, he’s stuck inside a scroll.

He doesn’t know how much time passes when he’s trapped in there. He’s moved across lakes and
rivers, across mountains and valleys, until they bring him up a long flight of stone stairs and into a
shrine. It’s a small one, one made of wood and barely anything else, and Sunggyu sighs. It’s not a
bad place to spend the rest of eternity, but it could be better. It could be so much better.

Sunggyu loses track of how much time he spends in the scroll. There isn’t much to do. No one
comes into the shrine anymore, and the only company he has are the dust motes floating in the ear
and the occasional bird. Days, weeks, months, then years pass by without him aging at all.

As the years go on, though, Sunggyu notices something. The spell that had been cast on him so
many years ago is starting to lose its power. It’s not enough that he can escape, but he can do small
things— little things, meaningless things. He doesn’t have that much power anymore, but it’s still
fun to pretend like he can still do what he used to be able to do when he was in his prime.

He starts small. He tries making tiny tornadoes in the air, just to see if he can stir up the wind
again. He can’t quite break out of the spell yet, but he realizes that he can project himself outwards
as a fox and see through its eyes, so he tries it just to see what it’s like now. The world is different
 — there aren’t as many trees anymore, and it’s loud, so loud.

There’s a guy there. He looks young. Kind of annoying. But he has a thin shiny rectangular-shaped
thing in his hand, and Sunggyu can’t help it— he wants to find out what that thing is. He almost
makes the guy trip— oops— but he feels a strange tingling across his body which means that his
magic is wearing off, and he runs all the way back into the shrine.

He doesn’t expect the guy to follow him.

Sunggyu watches him as he walks into the shrine. He’s a curious person— who would spend their
free time going to a place like this and then follow random foxes into strange places? It doesn’t
make sense.

Then the guy falls and hits his head and gets his blood onto Sunggyu’s scroll and Sunggyu feels
this rush of happiness and freedom and he knows that he’s finally free. But then there’s the issue of
the guy. Sunggyu stares down at him, and judging by the angle of his neck and just how much
blood’s been spilled, he’s somewhere close to death, and Sunggyu sighs. It would be untoward not
to pay this man back for giving him back his freedom, so he reaches deep within himself and gives
the man back his life.

He also follows him home. It’s not hard to do, not when he can already see the place the guy wants
to go back to (his home, somewhere in a maze of tall buildings) in his mind’s eye. Sunggyu tries to
hide a smile when he sees the guy panic, but he doesn’t quite manage to hide it completely. This
guy is funny. Sunggyu likes him.

Sunggyu learns more about Woohyun day by day. There’s been quite a few numbers of hiccups
along the way. He doesn’t quite know how to adapt to modern day life, and it’s not quite his fault
if he messes up cooking once in a while. After all, he’s used to eating his prey raw. It’s not his fault
humans are such picky eaters.

Then Sunggyu gets antsy and tired of being cooped up in the same place for so long and Woohyun
gives him back his bead and Sunggyu becomes stronger than ever and then Sunggyu worms his
way into Woohyun’s bed— it’s because Woohyun’s bed is larger and softer and more comfortable
than the bed in the room Sunggyu’s been given, of course, Woohyun being there is just an
additional bonus.

Sunggyu realizes, early one morning when the sun is just beginning to make its ascent into the
heavens and Woohyun has an arm thrown over Sunggyu’s waist, that he likes it here. He can’t
quite imagine a life without Woohyun, and he hopes that Woohyun feels the same. Woohyun
makes a sort of sniffling sound in his sleep, and Sunggyu leans closer to brush a stray lock of his
hair aside. Woohyun moves just slightly into his touch, and Sunggyu doesn’t bother hiding his
grin. Cute.

He’s happy here. He’s happy here with Woohyun and— well. It’s as much of a surprise to him as
it’s probably going to be for Woohyun when he wakes up and finds two very fuzzy and two very
alive balls nestled against him, but he has to think fast. He knows that this kind of stuff happens
spontaneously with beings with as much magical energy as he has, but he can’t let Woohyun know
that he’s so happy that his own magic worked against him.

He’ll just wait until the morning, then. For now, he’s okay with just watching the rise and fall of
Woohyun’s chest, and he knows that this is something that he’ll always remember.

Chapter End Notes

Chapter End Notes

i wanted to explore a little bit of sunggyu's past before proceeding with the furball
plots hehe i'd love to go more in depth into his past someday 8_8
 four's a crowd
Chapter Summary

woohyun takes sunggyu to meet one of his friends. predictably, everything that can go
wrong does go wrong.

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Woohyun thinks that he’s seen a lot of really strange things in his life— Woohyun knows he’s seen
a lot of really, really weird things in his life, from a man appearing out of a Joseon-era scroll to that
man turning into a fox to two very soft and very round balls of fur appearing in his bed one night.

There’s no real reason for him to be surprised at anything anymore, except here he is, standing in
the middle of someone else’s apartment and gaping in what he knows must be a very unattractive
way at what he sees before him.

“What the fuck,” he says eloquently, holding the kids in his arms. Hyunwoo tries to squirm out of
his arms and Hyunsoo bites down on his wrist, but he keeps a tight grip on them.

“Shut up,” Sunggyu snaps, holding a butter knife to the neck of the tall man he’s backed up against
the wall.

“Shut up,” the man echoes, his hands raised in an insincere show of surrender, but his eyes are
sparkling with mirth.

The door opens, and the man looks over to where Myungsoo is toeing off his shoes, a bag of what
must be soda in his hands, and another bag which looks like it’s full of pastries. “Welcome home,
honey!” The man chirps, and a flurry of things happen all at once.

First, Myungsoo’s bags clatter to the ground, the cans of soda spilling out of the bag and the
pastries tumbling everywhere, but Myungsoo has his eyes fixed on Sunggyu and the man.

“What the fuck?” he asks, and his voice makes him sound like he isn’t even completely there, like
he’s so shocked that he can’t even process what’s going on. Woohyun can relate.

Second, the man turns his head, his gaze flickering down to the spilled groceries on the ground
before— and Woohyun will swear to any court that he saw this happen— all of the fallen pastries
and cans of soda and bottles of soju rearrange themselves perfectly back into the bags Myungsoo
had brought them in.

Then, finally, third, Sunggyu presses the butter knife deeper into the man’s skin, eliciting a sharp
yelp, before he whirls around and hisses at Woohyun, “your friend is sleeping with a demon?”

“I don’t really like the term demon,” the man says, seemingly unperturbed by the butter knife at
his throat, and there’s a rather dangerous looking grin curving at the edges of his lips as he speaks
his next words. “I prefer dokkaebi.”

As chaos unfolds again, Woohyun has to mentally rewind a bit.

He’d gotten to work just a few minutes late one day last week. The kids— Hyunwoo and Hyunsoo,
they’d decided— had started to shift forms from vaguely fluffy fox pups to being slightly larger
human babies, and having to wake up every so often to figure out if he had two foxes or two
humans in the crib had taken a toll on Woohyun’s sleep schedules.

Myungsoo had looked over at him as he staggered into the office and, with his eyebrows furrowing
together, asked, “hey, where have you been lately? We really need to catch up sometime, hyung,
I’ve barely seen you at all in the past few months.

One thing had led to another, and Woohyun had gone home that night with an idea brewing in his
head: he’d invite Myungsoo over to his place for dinner and introduce him to Sunggyu and the
kids. It wouldn’t make sense for his best friend and his— Gumiho? Boyfriend? Roommate who
doesn’t pay any rent at all?— not to meet at all.

Myungsoo had been more than thrilled, offering up his place instead so that Woohyun wouldn’t
have to worry about any of the cleanup. “It’s fine, hyung, consider it a gift from me to you. I
wouldn’t be lying if i said it’s mostly just so i can actually see you again, though,” he’d said the
next day at work.

Fast forward to just a few minutes ago: Woohyun and Sunggyu and the kids had showed up at
Myungsoo’s apartment door, a fairly decent place in a fairly nice area of the city, their arms laden
with bags of rice and side dishes. Sunggyu had gone out to the car to grab some rolls of kimbap
they’d made together, and Woohyun had been more than surprised to see a lanky man opening the
door instead.

“Who are you?” Woohyun had asked, stepping backwards just a bit, and the man had just rubbed
the back of his head.

“I’m Myungsoo’s boyfriend,” he’d said, reaching out a hand to shake before realizing that
Woohyun had his arms full with kids. “Sungyeol.”

“Hi, Sungyeol,” Woohyun had said, stepping inside and placing some of his bags on Myungsoo’s
dinner table. “I’m Woohyun.”

Then Sunggyu had stepped through the door, holding the rolls of kimbap, and then he’d jerked his
head so sharply to the right that Woohyun had been sure he’d get whiplash, and then he’d
somehow managed to procure a butter knife seemingly out of nowhere and lunge at Sungyeol.

“Monster,” Sunggyu had hissed, placing the knife precariously at Sungyeol’s throat, and the only
thing Woohyun could ever have thought of to describe the situation was: what the fuck.

Woohyun blinks. It’s been the most exciting five minutes of his life.

He’s seated at the table now, holding Hyunwoo in his lap and trying to keep him from reaching for
Sunggyu’s discarded butter knife. Sunggyu sits next to him, Hyunsoo in his lap, his body
practically vibrating with tension. Sungyeol is across from Woohyun and Myungsoo is across from
Sunggyu, an arrangement that Woohyun thinks will probably prevent unnecessary bloodshed for
the next hour or so.

“You’re a what?” Woohyun asks.

“A dokkaebi,” Sungyeol says. “Like a goblin? Kinda? But I’m much, much more handsome and
charming than those regular old uglies.”

“He is evil,” Sunggyu says plainly, moving the butter knife away from Hyunwoo before the baby
can grab it. “He will only bring bad luck into your life. These good for nothing lowlifes are more
than happy to scheme and steal and seduce.”

Oh. Woohyun supposes that of course the one person he’d thought was normal in his life,
Myungsoo, would turn out to be involved in all of this supernatural stuff as well. He hadn’t even
believed in it up until now, but he guesses that it serves him right.

“Did you know?” Woohyun asks Myungsoo, who until now has just been trying to distract
Hyunsoo’s attention away from the butter knife with some colored blocks.

“Huh?” Myungsoo looks up, his eyes wide.

“Did you know that your boyfriend is— well. Like that?”

“Oh. I mean, I thought he was a normal guy, remember that guy from the auditing firm?”
Woohyun vaguely remembers Myungsoo saying something about that, but he can’t quite bring up
the exact memory of it, so he nods anyway. “Well, that was him. Turns out he’s stuck in the human
world now because he stole a god’s treasured pet dog a few centuries ago. He’s kinda harmless
now, though, I guess.”

“By the way, it was totally worth it,” Sungyeol chimes in. “She’s so cute. Her name is Aga.”

“So he’s not… evil? He won’t eat you in your sleep?” Woohyun asks, rocking Hyunwoo from side
to side.

“I don’t think s—” Myungsoo starts, but he’s cut off by Sungyeol.

“Not unless he wants me to,” he says with a leer, and Myungsoo’s expression darkens before
elbowing Sungyeol in the side. Sunggyu pretends to repress a laugh at that, and Sungyeol’s eyes
become sharp again. “Enough about me, though. What are you doing out here in the human world,
gumiho?”

Sunggyu bristles. “I was sealed in a shaman’s scroll and released when this guy here hit his head in
my shrine, but that is none of your business, dokkaebi.”

“And what are those things?” Sungyeol asks, gesturing towards the infants in their arms.

“They are not things, you uncultured pig, can you not tell or is your brain too small to comprehend
what they are?” Sunggyu snorts. “They are our children.”

“How’d you make babies?” Sungyeol looks interested now, a glint in his eyes that Woohyun isn’t
sure if he likes the look of or not.

“Magic,” Sunggyu says smugly.

“Can we also—” Sungyeol looks to Myungsoo, and Myungsoo looks up from poking at Hyunsoo’s
tiny hands long enough to give Sungyeol a blank stare.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Myungsoo says with an air of finality that Woohyun’s learned to
recognize with when Myungsoo knows he’s won the discussion, and he represses a laugh.
Dokkaebi or not, Myungsoo seems to be good at handling his boyfriend.

“Let’s just eat,” Woohyun says, suddenly tired to the bone, and everyone else nods furiously,
except for Sunggyu, who keeps his gaze firmly fixed on Sungyeol. He manages to relax, though,
handing Hyunsoo over to Myungsoo’s waiting arms and making half-playful and half-serious jabs
 at Sungyeol. By the end of the night, Sunggyu’s as unwound as Woohyun’s ever seen him, joking
openly with the others. Surprisingly, the night passes by quickly, and they have to leave faster than
they’d anticipated.

“How was it?” Woohyun asks as they walk back to the car, the kids snoozing in their arms. “What
did you think of them?"

“It was fun,” Sunggyu admits. “Even the dokkaebi was funny. Funny-looking, mostly, but also
funny.”

They finish strapping the kids into their car seats, and Woohyun takes advantage of the darkness of
the night to lean over the driver’s seat to press a light kiss to Sunggyu’s cheek. “Thanks for coming
tonight. I didn’t know about the boyfriend, but— I guess it worked out.”

“Of course,” Sunggyu says, his eyes shining in the moonlight. “I would like to do it again.”

Of course, Woohyun thinks. Anything to see Sunggyu use a butter knife as a weapon again.

Chapter End Notes

happy third birthday to ifnt's second best title last romeo *_*_*_* sorry i don't have a
real explanation for how this chapter turned out the way it did lolol

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