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part two hundred and eighteen
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world cup: exomeme edition: prelims | round one | round two | round three
congratulations team a!
semi-finals 07-18 00:00 UTC - 07-20 23:59 UTC
xiumin ♦ lay ♦ chen ♦ chanyeol
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Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:01 am (UTC)(link)"Aw, don't be like that, hyung," Chanyeol says in-between sneezes from the other side of the room. He sounds miserable, but Minseok can't tell whether his watering eyes are because of his stuffed up nose and the cat fur or due to the overwhelming need to clutch Minseok in all his fluffiness to his chest and the painful inability to do so.
Maybe Chanyeol should've been the one to go through this, Minseok thinks, as sour as spoiled milk. Maybe his allergies would've been settled if he was the one who got turned into a cat.
Unless he died as a result of being allergic to himself. Could that even happen?
Either way, now Minseok is uncomfortably hot in his own skin, what with all the fur and how he can no longer just sweat it out as per usual. He plops down on the cool tile of the kitchen floor, legs neatly tucking underneath him. It's horrible. The last thing he hears before he falls into a fitful sleep is the sound of Chanyeol cooing.
He wakes up to soft, less hairy flesh and opposable thumbs, legs that stretch a comfortable, familiar distance and toes that wiggle. It's considerably more cramp underneath the kitchen table, but at least he doesn't have the urge to stay on all fours and arch his back. The apartment is the slightest bit darker, their digital clock reading an hour later than he last remembers, and in the background, the sounds of a football match playing on their television are more muted than the music show Chanyeol had been watching earlier.
"Please tell me that was a dream," he asks, his voice hoarse from disuse.
Chanyeol's head whips up from the other side of the couch, where he had obviously been sprawled. "Hyung!" he greets happily, "You don't make me break out into a rash anymore!"
Minseok stares at him for a moment, Chanyeol meeting his gaze with a wide, creepy smile, before curling back into a ball under the table.
"You're not gonna get out?" he hears Chanyeol ask, registering his roommate's worried tone. It's touching, but Chanyeol has always been a nice kid. "You missed lunch. I even bought cat food just in case, not that we'll need it now. Unless you wanna try it?"
"Pass."
On a rainy day, when Chanyeol is held up at his band's practice and he has the apartment to himself, Minseok calls his mother about the cat thing. It's been happening once a week, and he thought he could handle it, really. But waking up to a storm outside his window, ears too sensitive to handle the constant thunder and eyes too sensitive to deal with the random bursts of lightning, and -- worst of all -- unable to soothe his empty stomach and get his own food until he transformed back because paws had been the wake-up call he needed.
"Oh, yes, that happens," his mother says. He hears meowing in the background and hopes it's a passing stray and not his little sister. He wouldn't wish this on anyone. "Although yours started a bit late."
He straightens, holding his phone as close to his ear as he possibly can. "Is this a second puberty thing?" If there's the slightest hint of hope in his voice, it's only because it would be nice to gain a few extra centimeters after all these years. Not so tall as to hit 180 -- Minseok's not ambitious enough for that, would probably end up banging his forehead against high shelves and low doorways -- but it'd be nice to at least be tall enough that Chanyeol stops using his head as an elbow rest during elevator rides.
"I suppose you could say this makes you an adult," his mother laughs, "though it's more of a deadline finally being set."
Well, that's mildly alarming. "A deadline?! For what?!"
He expects a death omen, or even worse, the possibility of becoming a cat forever. A shorter life span, a shorter reach, complete and total dependency upon Chanyeol as his primary caregiver. He can already taste the mushy salmon-flavored cat food Chanyeol has stocked up in their pantry.
"Meeting your soulmate!"
Minseok is almost tempted to hang up on his own mother, but of course, knows better.
"So you turn into a cat so you can meet your soulmate," Chanyeol repeats slowly, "does this mean you're gonna hook up with a lady cat?"
A strangled noise rises from Minseok's throat. Better that than the bile churning in his stomach.
"No," he says emphatically, his arms crossing in front of him. "There is no lady cat. There may even possibly not be a lady involved." He tries not to blush, but with each ridiculous word coming out of his mouth, he feels himself growing more and more flustered. "There's me, and there's the cat, and then whoever is with the cat. That's it."
Chanyeol leans back against their couch, wrapping a friendly arm around Minseok's shoulder. It's a heavy but warm weight, holding him down when everything else seems to be spiraling out of control. Minseok leans into his hold with a deep sigh.
Why couldn't things just stay like this? Minseok and the cool, too-tall dongsaeng he met in high school, living peaceful mundane lives with neither hair nor hide of weird, furry family secrets.
He sighs again, resting his head on the shoulder Chanyeol has kindly lowered for him.
"So you're not the cat," Chanyeol continues and Minseok can see the gears turning in his head as he works it out. He can also see the pout growing on his face, as if the news is disappointing more than mystifying. "If you're walking around in its body, what do you think it does with yours?"
To be honest, Minseok doesn't even want to imagine what an animal could possibly in his body doing during the hour-long switches. He's seen cats, from a distance if nothing else, seen the way they chase lizards and lick their balls regardless of who's watching. His mother had told him anyway.
"Mom says when it happened to her, my dad's cat just slept the whole time."
He faintly remembers the cat from when he was a child. Short-haired and tiny, not unlike his mother. Just like her, she had grown more easily agitated with age and had attacked him multiple times before finally choking on a hairball and dying. He still still has nightmares sometimes, of the cat staring blank-eyed at him while sitting on his chest in the middle of the night, just like the stories of ghosts sitting on people's chests.
He doesn't realize how tense he's gotten again until he feels Chanyeol's free hand reaching out for the hand Minseok has between them. Large, calloused fingers that completely cover his own.
"Well, you turning into that cat. You said it stops when you finally meet... whoever, right?" Chanyeol asks, voice low and deep and soothing.
Minseok nods, as much as he can with his head on Chanyeol's shoulder. "Either I find them or I wait this out until the cat dies. Which could be years." His mother had told him it'd been a blessing. An ancestor pleasing someone enough that their patron thought it'd be a good idea to gift the whole family with some convoluted mix of involuntary shapeshifting and their own red strings of fate. "It's supposed to speed up the process. It's how my cousin met his boyfriend, apparently."
He can see Chanyeol's nose wrinkling out of the corner of his eye. "The tiny pasty one? That lives in Apgujeong?"
"Joonmyun, yeah." Joonmyun, who'd been turning into a little white Van cat for almost seven years before running into a guy whose three dogs made a habit of harassing the cat he regularly turned into on a weekly basis. Minseok's mother had complained of his own transformations starting so late, but he doesn't envy Joonmyun, even in spite of knowing about the tall, handsome boyfriend he'd ended up with at the end of that whole mess.
Chanyeol seems to mull over this new information, and Minseok lets the silence fall between them. He's tempted to reach out for the take-out they have on the coffee table in front of them, but honestly can't be bothered, not when Chanyeol makes such a comfortable pillow.
"I'll help you, hyung."
Minseok reluctantly pulls away, taking in the determined smiled on Chanyeol's face and the fist he had drawn away from Minseok's hand in favor of a fist pump. Like everything else Chanyeol does, he looks amazingly enthusiastic. Minseok already feels the energy draining from his body, though his chest warms a little at the sight.
"You really don't have to," he tells Chanyeol softly.
But as expected, Chanyeol doesn't take the out. Instead, his smile brightens. "Nah, it'll be fun. I never get to wingman for you. We'll find them, I promise! Whether it's a guy or a girl or even a dog--"
"No."
Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:07 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:13 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:10 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:13 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:23 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 12:26 am (UTC)(link)Re: wc!au: team xiumin - something about a cat
(Anonymous) 2014-07-18 01:25 am (UTC)(link)