Chapter Text
Had Hongjoong realized that Wooyoung would have been bringing a friend to this dinner, he never would have agreed to show up.
Well, more likely, he’d have agreed and then bailed at the last possible minute. Either way, both Wooyoung and Hongjoong would have been fully aware that Hongjoong would have bailed because of the newcomer, but Hongjoong could at least pretend that he wasn’t trying to be rude about it.
It’s not like Hongjoong is antisocial. Not really, anyway. He likes his people, even doesn’t fully dread venturing out into public to spend time with them, and he does agree to plans like this more often than not when given plenty of notice. There’s a blanket expectation of belonging among his friend group, a wordless camaraderie that goes well beyond both their shared experiences and their commonalities, bound to one another through an unconditional love for one another as people. As gross and embarrassing as that would ever be to admit aloud.
It also certainly didn't hurt that Wooyoung had surprised Hongjoong by insisting on one of Hongjoong’s favorite restaurants, a casual place with a bar and lounge conveniently close to Hongjoong’s apartment that serves decent food late into the night. It’s somewhere he’s unintentionally become something of a regular, sometimes the only alternative to fast food within walking distance to both his apartment and his studio when he pulls his increasingly frequent all-nighters.
What he doesn’t appreciate are surprises, especially ones that limit his control of a situation. While most of his close-knit circle of friends are fully aware of that fact, Wooyoung is certainly the most aware, having distilled Hongjoong down to a science over the years in a way that never fails to annoy and discomfit Hongjoong even when he isn’t using it for evil. Which makes the betrayal this time all the more clear and targeted. Hongjoong is going to have words with him, the next time he’s subjected to the gremlin’s presence one-on-one.
“Guys! Guys, this is my friend Yeosangie,” Wooyoung is certainly enthusiastic, gesticulating wildly with one hand as he holds the newcomer hostage with the other in a grip on his arm that looks painfully inescapable. His eyes are on Hongjoong alone, though, which is a fact that isn’t lost on his target. He seems virtually unphased by the glare Hongjoong levels him with in return, looking something closer to smug when he should be looking afraid for his life, had he been a wiser man.
From the other end of the table, Yunho straightens up noticeably, one golden ear perking up before flopping back down beneath its own weight. “Oh, your roommate from college, right?”
Hongjoong feels his shoulders draw in and upward unwittingly, wracked with an immediate and undeniable tension. Trust the resident puppy to drop his guard so easily around a pretty stranger. And he is pretty, almost offensively so. Features carved in otherworldly beauty, a sort of ethereal grace that Hongjoong would believe too perfect to be human, had he not had the unmistakable scent about him. Hongjoong watches unamused as Yeosang’s eyes catch the movement of Yunho’s ears and the easy wagging of his tail, widening in wonder as his lips form into a soft and surprised little “o” before he carefully and deliberately looks away from them to meet eyes with the rest of them.
“Ah, that’s right!” Oh for god’s sake, his voice. Almost hauntingly deep, sonorous and unexpected from someone with such delicate features. Hongjoong’s ears twitch where they now lie nearly flat against his head, and he has to reach up to adjust how his hat rests over them to relieve some of the claustrophobic pressure from their new position. The stranger adopts a small but pleased smile, his gaze passing politely over everyone at the table in turns.
Hongjoong doesn’t miss the way his eyes pause at every inhuman feature of the table’s occupants as he and Wooyoung take the two empty seats opposite him. There’s no distaste or even any darker sense of interest there, trained as Hongjoong’s made himself to recognize those particular red flags when it comes to interacting with humans. Still he feels his tail twitch against his leg in irritation, his hackles raised on instinct. With the way this Yeosang fails to hide his own intrigue, Hongjoong wants to scoff at the impossible possibility that this man has never seen a goddamn hybrid before.
When Seonghwa’s ears, previously relaxed down and nearly blending into his soft brown hair, spring upward to their full height to catch the tail end of a fantastical story Mingi recounts at the opposite end of the table, Yeosang doesn’t manage to hold in his impressed ooh! Unlike Hongjoong’s reflexive indignance at the reaction, Seonghwa unsurprisingly seems flattered by it instead in an obnoxiously transparent way. Before he can even speak for himself, Jongho leans in to gently stroke at one of them. Seonghwa straightens up, his eyes widening slightly, but he doesn’t stop him.
“Pretty, aren’t they?” Jongho’s tone is conspiratorial, watching Yeosang’s curiosity pique. Though he doesn’t need to turn to see it, Hongjoong has no doubt that Jongho is equally aware of the way Seonghwa relaxes into the touch, or the way his cheeks flush at the attention. “They’re just as soft as they look, too.”
Yeosang nods absentmindedly, eyes watching the motion of Jongho’s hand, but his own hands remain politely folded on the table in front of him. “They do look soft,” he concedes easily, directing an unfairly pretty smile at Seonghwa, who only preens at the attention. He’s always been hilariously predictable. Yeosang glances quickly at Jongho’s ears, small and rounded and barely protruding past his own dark brown hair, but it doesn’t linger and he doesn’t call attention to them.
Hongjoong would almost take offense at the way Yeosang quickly evades his eyes once they briefly meet Hongjoong’s, but the way Yeosang stiffens and sits up straighter after the fleeting eye contact feels more like a somewhat-flattering sign of cautious respect than anything resembling fear or distaste. Hongjoong doesn’t let his own eyes wander, watching attentively as Yeosang is introduced to the rest of his friends. He stays a little bit on edge, but he lets the soju they all pass around soothe the jagged edges of his initial judgement based solely on Yeosang’s unfortunate lack of a subrace.
He finds it’s quite difficult to drag his attention away from Yeosang once he’s let himself observe him. He’s polite, almost awkwardly so, as he bows to each person as they are introduced. No, definitely awkward, he corrects mentally as he watches Yeosang bark out a forced and incredibly uncomfortable laugh at the way San makes to invade his personal space. He’s stiff and impossibly flushed when San wraps his arms possessively around one of Yeosang’s frankly offensively large biceps, flinching as San’s softly pointed ears tickle against the bare skin of Yeosang’s neck when he nuzzles against Yeosang’s shoulder.
While it’s not exactly unheard of for cat hybrids to be quite so… handsy, it’s always felt foreign to Hongjoong, watching San behave that way. At the very least, Hongjoong could never relate to it, and he’d be hard-pressed to find anyone anywhere in his entire lineage who could either. Hongjoong has always been on the wary, independent end of that spectrum himself. San sat firmly on the other end - soft, trusting, cuddly, needy. An enigma, as far as Hongjoong is concerned. He knows for a fact that San is meeting Yeosang for the first time tonight, just as he is.
Despite the careful way Hongjoong watches Yeosang as they all eat and drink and seemingly assimilate the human into their established group, Hongjoong is nonplussed by the utterly benign way he comes across. After the surprise and consequent initial cursory look, Hongjoong finds Yeosang’s eyes never seem to catch again on the inhuman features of him or his friends. Still, he’s never entirely able to let down his guard. It’s just not in his nature. Beneath the table, his tail twitches sharply against where his leg continues to bounce anxiously.
Hongjoong wouldn’t say he has any true distaste for humans, only that he stopped letting them into his inner circle a long time ago. One or ten too many attempts at making exceptions had only served to leave a bad taste in Hongjoong’s mouth over the years. He still works with them on a daily basis, amicable with his human-majority coworkers and fellow producers. He’s civil, genuinely likes most of them, friendly even. Still, any attempt at moving past a professional relationship is always constructed strictly by the other party and carefully dodged by Hongjoong with a scalpel-like precision in response.
He’s adopted some methods that are more than a little bit ridiculed by his friends as being borderline paranoid. The hat, for one. It’s hardly even something he thinks about anymore, but he rarely leaves his house without one. Truly hiding his tail is far too troublesome, but it’s considerably less likely to be spotted the way he keeps it tucked against the near-exclusively-black repertoire of pants and shorts he typically wears than his indisputably conspicuous ears are on any given day. It’s not exactly comfortable, but he finds the hassle is more than worth the added sanity in his day to day.
So a beanie, a beret, a bucket hat, a newsboy cap like he wears today, and the shaggy extra length of his hair helps to hide where human ears might otherwise sit. He’s amassed a rather sprawling collection. Then there was his collection of fashion glasses. Considering his genetics, his vision is far from flawed - far more acute than your average human. The frames and non-prescription lenses, he finds, are enough to distract from the slightly irregular shapes of his pupils in combination with his naturally darker irises.
The plus side is that he’s always rather enjoyed fashion as a means of expressing himself, so he has fun with it these days. It doesn’t feel like the chore it did when he’d first started using it as a means to blend in, something Wooyoung specifically had been particularly horrified he’d even been trying to do in the first place.
It’s a bit ironic that Hongjoong has ever let Wooyoung chastise him for that desire at all. Wooyoung comes from a long line of raccoon hybrids. Though plain as day to most anyone regardless, all of the most obvious physical traits managed to skip his generation nearly entirely. This left him with what could almost be a passably-human form, even if every part of his weird little personality is imbued with undeniably racoonish features and tendencies. It’s almost endearing, like the fairytale of the human child raised to be wild by a pack of wolves.
It has become a hard and fast rule, however, that dating humans would no longer be in the cards for Hongjoong. He’s thoroughly turned off to the idea as a whole.
Too many men have seemed normal but turned out to be fetishists, too rough, too possessive. He’s heard one too many “jokes” about him being in heat if he’s in the mood for sex. He’s been treated like some sort of fantasy of some helpless, mindless animal when he does go into rut - even if it’s hardly more than a fleeting time period where he’s a little more horny than usual, and even if that’s not all that much to begin with. He’s been treated as if he’s some sort of lesser being just because of his ears and tail, something to conquer or check off a bucket list instead of an actual person.
If he gets called “kitten” unironically by one more goddamn sleazy creep, he’s going to prove his sharp teeth aren’t just for show.
His friends are entirely aware of his (completely understandable, if you ask Hongjoong) hang-ups, and had stopped trying to force the issue ages ago.
So why on god’s green earth is Wooyoung practically shoving this guy at Hongjoong?
He finds himself seated directly across from Yeosang throughout dinner and drinks. Wooyoung sits to Yeosang’s left, where he’s spewing a constant stream of praises and anecdotes about Yeosang that seem tailored to draw Hongjoong’s interest. It’s less the words that he finds intriguing, and more the odd combinations of body language and demeanor. The way Yeosang can seem so awkward, innocent and easily flustered, while still managing to meet each of Wooyoung’s standard digs with something quick-witted and biting… Now that may be a skill worth bragging about.
Even Mingi, usually somewhat difficult to win over, is grinning like a fool the entire evening. He hangs on every word out of Yeosang’s mouth, unflatteringly loud laughter that makes Yeosang fight back a proud little grin of his own every time he lands a successful hit on Wooyoung’s boundless pride. Hongjoong honestly can’t wait to give him shit for it later, the way Mingi’s big shaggy tail smacks repeatedly against Hongjoong’s knee beneath the table. He often whines that he’s not some big dog, that his kind is a prouder and less amiable type, but that doesn’t tend to stop him acting no more dignified than his lanky literal golden retriever of a best friend.
When Hongjoong finally tears his eyes away from the careful way he watches Yeosang, a look around the table reveals that every last one of his friends has what can only be described as heart eyes for this newcomer, of the nearly cartoonish variety. Hongjoong squeezes his eyes shut and breathes out a heavy sigh. It’s a last-ditch effort to stave off the headache he feels himself hurtling toward, a physiologic effect of the idea that he almost understands. He almost gets why the others are so enamoured. Not that he’ll ever admit it.
“What about you, Hongjoong-ssi?” Yeosang’s voice is noticeably more timid when he cautiously addresses Hongjoong, which Hongjoong sincerely doubts has much to do with the fact that his eyes are still pressed firmly shut.
He snaps them open, face carefully neutral as he stares back at Yeosang in what he hopes looks something in the vicinity of open but unimpressed. Yeosang doesn’t immediately continue his question, his smile hopeful but twitching ever so slightly with what surely must be doubt. Hongjoong sighs once more as he concedes that he’s probably going to have to make nice with this human that his friends are so clearly obsessed with already. “What about me?”
Swallowing hard, Yeosang seems to gather his courage before he continues. It’s endearing, how obviously he wears his thoughts and feelings on his sleeve, as mentally taxing as it is for Hongjoong to admit to himself that he feels that way about it. “Wooyoungie said that you were a creative, too. A- a musician, or something like that?”
Hongjoong can’t help but cast a glance at Wooyoung, but aside from the way he watches Hongjoong right back with a shit-eating grin, his face gives nothing away. He may have spaced out for a moment, but he certainly didn’t miss Wooyoung telling Yeosang that. “A producer, at a small label,” Hongjoong corrects, not missing the way Yeosang perks up at Hongjoong’s response. He may or may not bask slightly in the impressed exclamation he receives in response, but in typical Hongjoong fashion, he’s quick to deflect. “And what, was Wooyoung talking shit about me to you or something?”
“If I talked any shit, it was only the unbiased truth,” Wooyoung purrs, earning an unimpressed eye roll from Hongjoong. “But no, in fact! Our Yeosangie saw some pictures of you that I had, and he wanted to know more about you.” He ignores the almost whiny protests from Yeosang, suddenly and conspicuously muffled by the palm of Wooyoung’s own hand as they may be.
Hongjoong makes a face. “Why do you have pictures of me, anyway? I very vividly remember declining to let you take selcas of the two of us. Repeatedly.”
“We’ve been best friends since hyung was just a kitten,” Wooyoung declares proudly, voice sickly sweet. He only seems to smile wider when Hongjoong grimaces in response. “I have my ways,” he adds with a conspiratorial wink that serves to make Hongjoong regret that very friendship, as well as a number of other life choices that led him to this moment.
What serves to break the standoff between the two of them is Yeosang reaching a shaky hand up to grab Wooyoung’s wrist with a near white-knuckled grip. The yelp Wooyoung lets out as his hand gets dragged away from Yeosang’s mouth almost gets a genuine smile from Hongjoong, at least until Hongjoong sees the look on Yeosang’s face. Certainly before Yeosang opens his mouth to stutter out a particularly alarmed-sounding, “Since h-hyung was a what?”
There’s total silence at their table for half a heartbeat before Wooyoung bursts into that terrible, cackling laughter of his. Great, here comes that headache again. Except maybe it’s going to evolve into a migraine, Hongjoong thinks distantly as Wooyoung lurches across the table and snatches Hongjoong’s hat right off of his head. He’s practically howling with laughter when he lands back in his seat, hat clutched to his chest like an ill-gotten prize, and uses his free hand to gesture back at Hongjoong as if the answer speaks for itself.
It does.
Even with Hongjoong’s ears flattened defensively against his head, it’s painfully clear exactly where Yeosang’s frantic eyes immediately flit to. Hongjoong grits his teeth, but he doesn’t let his irritation show any more clearly in his reaction. Instead, he waits for the other shoe to drop as Yeosang watches the way Hongjoong’s ears cautiously relax to their natural position atop his head. He’d suspected that Yeosang had been too good to be true, so he need only wait for him to prove it now.
“Oh my god, is that why you’ve been so standoffish? Because you’re a cat?” Yeosang blurts out, and ah. There it is. He looks like he regrets his words immediately, eyes going comically wide as he covers his mouth with both hands and squeezes his eyes shut. As if refusing to witness whatever reaction he’s about to get from Hongjoong would make it cease to exist. He’s clearly mortified, but Hongjoong is hardly feeling charitable.
It doesn’t stop the ire from rising in Hongjoong like the low growl in his throat, a learned reaction to all of the bullshit he’s dealt with over the years. His claws bite into the tabletop, even with how short and neat he keeps them trimmed. Yet before he can even open his mouth to really drive his frustration home, start on one of his near-memorized tirades about shitty, dated stereotypes, he’s jarred from his focused annoyance by Mingi smacking him none too gently with one of those stupidly large hands of his.
“Careful, hyung,” he warns, snorting unattractively. His voice carries a grating sing-song lilt to it that Hongjoong feels like he could rightfully smack him right back for and be fully justified in doing it. “You look about ready to prove the basis for that stereotype you hate so much.”
Instead of the violence Mingi clearly deserves, Hongjoong only levels him with a look that is at least venomous enough to have Mingi’s grin falter ever so slightly. He glances back to Yeosang in time to see him cautiously looking back at Hongjoong, and the guilt is clear as day in his eyes, but Hongjoong can’t help but feel that he deserves to squirm a little bit.
“I’m standoffish because I don’t like being ambushed with hanging out with a stranger when I’m supposed to be spending time with my fucking friends,” Hongjoong grits out, pushing himself to his feet. He watches just long enough to see the way Yeosang’s face falls, the way he looks almost crushed. Just long enough to decide he doesn’t like that look on Yeosang, which is just coincidentally long enough to get pissed off anew at the way his heart lurches at the sight.
The tepid air outside the restaurant is hardly enough to cool Hongjoong’s temper on its own, but by the time he’s got his back pressed to the brick wall of the side of the building, he finds his indignance has morphed into something less certain. He feels a little like an asshole, more than a bit guilty for how he’d behaved. Clearly the kid had regretted his words, even looked ready to explain himself. Hongjoong just had to Hongjoong it up by refusing to talk it through like adults.
It’s just a touchy subject, even coming from his friends. Coming from a human, though. Of course Hongjoong was bound to lose his temper a little bit.
It’s only been maybe five minutes, but Hongjoong is feeling calmer than even he’d expected by the time Yeosang timidly approaches him. He’s pleasantly surprised to see he’s come alone, makes a mental note that Yeosang deserves some sort of credit for attempting to speak to Hongjoong one-on-one after the type of display he’d pulled inside. His voice is even when he glances at Yeosang where he stands fidgeting and clearly uncomfortable, letting out a gentle acknowledgement. “Yes?”
“Oh, I’m- I’m so sorry! Before tonight, I’d never even really met a hybrid before…” Yeosang trails off nervously, fingers fidgeting with the fabric of his sleeves as his eyes dart just about anywhere but back at Hongjoong for long. “What, why are you looking at me like that? I mean, of course I’ve interacted with hybrids before, just… I don’t have any hybrid friends, and I swear I never intended to be rude or to stare, or to say something so fucking stupid. I didn’t even mean it like it came out, I only meant you were acting like that because you seemed to be hiding that you’re a cat, but it’s just…”
“It’s just?” Hongjoong prompts, and he almost feels bad for the slightly impatient quality his voice takes on. There’s just a lot to unpack there, and Hongjoong feels like it’s only fair to let him finish with whatever puzzling nonsense he’s about to let tumble from those loose lips of his before tackling it.
“I just thought you were really pretty!” It’s practically a whine, and Hongjoong feels his eyes widen in a perfect mirror of Yeosang’s own in the moments before Yeosang brings his sweaterpaw-laden hands up to hide his face from view. It fails to shield the way a flush spreads clear as day over the skin between his fingertips and over the tops of now fire-red ears. “Ask Wooyoungie, I turn into an idiot when I’m around someone I’m crushing on. I didn’t even realize you were a cat hybrid until like five minutes ago!”
Hongjoong can’t hold back his groan, mortification mixed with second-hand embarrassment at Yeosang’s expense. Yeosang only shrinks behind his hands at the sound, clearly defeated, and Hongjoong almost feels bad, except-
“Wait, what do you mean you don’t have any hybrid friends? Are you not friends with Wooyoungie?” He means it as half a joke, but the way Yeosang freezes before dropping his hands down far enough for Hongjoong to see the alarm in his eyes only makes Hongjoong suspicious. “Wait, he didn’t just pluck you off the goddamn street and pretend you were friends just so he could con me into talking to some cute stranger, did he?” He narrows his eyes at the rising panic he feels emanating from Yeosang. “And you just went along with it? You let yourself be complicit in a Jung Wooyoung scheme without even understanding the magnitude of that sort of decision?”
Now it’s Yeosang’s turn to groan. “No, no! Wooyoungie is my friend, we really were college roommates, I swear!” As his hands finally drop fully away from his now rosy face, the mounting concern changes tone to something more dazed. “Wait, did you say- is- Wooyoung’s a hybrid?”
And, okay- maybe this guy really doesn’t know the first thing about hybrids, because what?
“Come on, really?” Hongjoong starts, a dull but persistent headache forming at the base of his left ear. “Did it seriously never occur to you to wonder about his weird-ass habits? All the weird shit he hoards?”
“I thought he was just a collector,” Yeosang murmurs, suddenly and openly questioning his own line of thought.
It hardly feels necessary, but Hongjoong is seized by the sudden generosity to ensure this kid gets it. “That he collects exclusively shiny things, with no other rhyme or reason as to what?”
“I figured he thought they were pretty,” Yeosang reasons.
“Yes, because he’s genetically wired to. Okay, and what about the fact that he is nearly exclusively and excessively active at night?” At Yeosang’s self-deprecating smile, Hongjoong hazards a guess. “You just thought he was a night owl. Got it. Yeosang-ssi, Wooyoungie is a raccoon hybrid. He’s nocturnal. He goes into a straight-up torpor during the cold weather, what on earth did you think was happening then?”
“He told me he had seasonal depression,” Yeosang groans, and okay, sure. That does sound like something Wooyoung would say. He probably said it as a joke, because like Hongjoong, he probably thought that there was no way Yeosang didn’t already know the real answer.
Hongjoong generously gives Yeosang a minute, because it does genuinely seem as though he’s sorting and recategorizing some things in his mind with the addition of this new information. He’s caught off guard when Yeosang lowers himself into a crouch and groans into his hands, but it definitely adds credence to the impossible naivety Hongjoong has witnessed from him in the short hours since they’ve met.
“That explains all of the goddamn hissing and biting,” he urges, muffled into his own hands, and yep. The man must truly be friends with Wooyoung if he’s getting that full experience.
“There’s no way you’re real,” Hongjoong ultimately decides. It’s the only logical conclusion to this conversation. He does decide to head back into the restaurant by means of fleeing the conversation instead of leaving entirely as he’d originally intended, a fact that clearly isn’t lost on Yeosang as he perks up before staggering back up to his feet.
Hongjoong pauses at the door, and Yeosang waits just enough to determine that Hongjoong isn’t bothered by his presence before cautiously following behind him inside. There’s a relieved and quietly pleased expression on his face, and Hongjoong does not feel his heart trip over itself in response.
Though Yeosang may not have had any true intention of embarrassing Hongjoong earlier, Hongjoong still somewhat childishly can hardly wait to poke fun at what he’d only just learned about Yeosang outside. Adding more proof to his claim of a long-standing friendship with Wooyoung, Yeosang only takes the incredulous teasing in stride. He smiles shyly as Hongjoong recounts their conversation, and if Hongjoong didn’t know any better, he’d think he seemed almost proud to be the subject of Hongjoong’s amusement. He certainly doesn’t seem bothered that Hongjoong’s entertainment is entirely at his own very public expense, and that’s a little bit baffling, too.