Chapter Text
Jisung knows it's rude to stare, but how can he not when there's a weird handsome guy, looking at him like he’s holding the universe, and shooting something like that?
“Did you hit your head? Should we go to the hospital?”
“Hospital?”
“Yes? Where people get checked up for injuries or sickness? You could have a concussion for all I know, you came here busted.”
“No, absolutely not. I’m fine! And no, my head is okay, thanks for worrying.”
“You said you came from Kam… Uh… Kamma… Kammo…”
“Kammorat.”
“Yeah, Kammorat. Oh my God, are you an alien???”
Jisung slides away from Minho, terrified. There's an alien in his house, they’ll come eat him and then take over Earth! Maybe they’ll control his brain and he’ll become a slave? Fuck! He needs to leave!
“What? No! I’m not an alien, idiot. Kammorat is another universe next to yours. Well, I think.”
The squirrel-boy just looked at him with a blank face, silent. Minho could almost hear flies around.
“Uhm… Jisung? Are you there?”
“I… You lost me when you said I'm not an alien, to be honest.”
Minho just signed, rubbing a hand on his face.
“I think it’ll be a lot harder than I thought.”
“You think? You won't even tell me what you are! Are you like… Harry potter?”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s a wizard, a boy who can do magic with his wand with spells and all that.”
“You’re telling me, human wizards need incantations to use magic? Weak.” Minho scoffs.
“It's an alternate universe, we don't have wizards in real life.”
“That’s… I don't want to imagine a world without magic.”
“You use magic, right? Can you show me?”
Jisung looks hopeful, and does his puppy-eye look. Minho won't be able to resist him!
“Please, Minho hyung?”
Minho looks torn, but bods with a roll of his eyes.
“Close your eyes.”
Jisung does. Then he waits. The room seems darker, but since his eyes are closed, he doesn’t see anything anyway.
“You can open them.”
But Jisung wonders if his eyes are open right now. There's no difference between, it's just… Black. Jisung never saw that kind of dark. It was way worse than not seeing your surroundings, he couldn’t feel them. Panic starts rising in his chest and his throat closes up. He hates it. He hates it so much. Pictures flow in his mind, voices won't shut up. Make it stop, why doesn’t it stop? Suddenly, a hand cups his cheek gently and another takes a hold on his hand.
“Shhh, it’s okay, it's only me. This is my power, well, a certain part of it. Don’t be scared, I'm here with you, yeah?” Murmurs Minho while soothingly rubbing circles in jisung’s palm. The younger doesn't understand, he just met Minho, but he feels at ease with him, and the voices stopped talking and now his mind is at peace. He’s just confused. What the hell is going on? His quokka’s mind is too tired to understand right now. Concentrating on things around him, Jisung sees that the shadows have disappeared and the beautiful boy is looking at him, a little smile on his face.
“Welcome back, darling. Are you, perhaps, scared of the dark?”
Minho doesn’t ask why he reacted like this, and the quokka is grateful.
“Shut up! What kinda darkness was that?”
“Trust me, you haven't seen half of what I can do.”
Jisung notices that Minho is still holding his hand. Following his gaze, the older guy coughs a little and removes his hold. Taking his phone, Jisung’s eyes widen. It was almost midnight!
“Fuck, I need to sleep! I have work tomorrow! Dammit, why did you have to come this late???”
“Sorry?”
“Listen, you can sleep here for all I care, I'll grab you blankets, you’ll sleep on the couch.”
“But, we could share-”
“DON’T! Don’t even think about it.”
Jisung rushes into his room, takes three blankets (to be sure) and hands them to Minho. Without looking him in the eyes, he starts rambling.
“So like, I don't know if whenever you came from people work, but here we do. I have to leave tomorrow morning, so I'll probably be gone when you wake up. So like, there's ramen, you know how to read, right? Just don't burn the house down… I almost did, I just touched the oven and it almost broke! Wait, you know what? Maybe I should just bring food on my lunch break, and could you not break anything? I’m not rich enough to buy something again, and-”
“Babe, it's fine, I’ll be cautious. As for the food, you don't have to worry, I won't break anything or burn your house. Now go to sleep. Now.”
Jisung feels like he has to follow Minho’s orders, so he goes to his room, gets under the covers and closes his eyes. Then, it's like something lifts off his mind and Jisung realizes where he is. Confused, again, he opens his eyes. He’s about to get up to at least brush his teeth like he was supposed to hours ago, but he hears Minho talk.
“Goodnight, Jisung.”
“... U-uhm, goodnight hyung…”
~
At his job, Jisung can't concentrate. He made two mistakes, and customers need to call him out at least two times to order. He can only think about Minho, his gorgeous face, his goddamn petnames, his powers, his softness, Kammorat… He’s screwed.
“Jisung!” turning around, the quokka sees his friend and coworker, Ryujin, looking annoyed. She’s scary. Very scary. And she’s mad. Time to run-
“Hey, Ryujin.” Tries Jisung with a beautiful smile.
“Don't hey me, mister! What's wrong with you? You’re normally focused, and you gave a caramel macchiato to a man who wanted black coffee. Black coffee, Ji!”
“I know, I'm really sorry! I didn’t sleep well last night.”
Ryujin, hearing that, hums and wiggles her eyebrows.
“Rough night, huh?”
“Oh my fricking God, no! Not like that! Geez, Ryujin!”
“I was joking, relax! Wanna talk about it?”
“Its nothing, i’ll try harder, sorry for the trouble”
“Just… Don't push yourself too much.”
Jisung could finally concentrate better after pushing a certain brown-haired boy far away from his thoughts. And when he wanted to come back, he’d whisper little shoos. Everytime he would say “Shoo Minho hyung, shoo”, Ryujin would look at him like he’s out of his mind, but the squirrel boy doesn’t care. At the end of his shift, he almost runs to his home. At least it's not burnt down. Opening the door, he smells meat. Wait, meat? What? Entering the kitchen, he notices the pretty smile of bingo, but also… Someone else. His hair was a bright red, his happy face with a cute smile, white freckles on his blush cheeks, and he had… Antlers. Fucking antlers. Small fluffy antlers with pink flowers all over them.
“Hi! You must be Jisung, right? I’m Felix!”
“Hello? What are you doing here? Minho hyung, do you know him?”
“He doesn't, but I know him! He’s-”
“I met him two hours ago” cuts Minho off with a glare directed at Felix. The red-haired boy whimpered. Jisung would have too, it looked so intimidating, but dang, that was hot. Wait what-
“As you can see, he’s not from here either.”
“Another one?”
“I’m a nature spirit! And I really need to go back to my forest.”
“Whoa! That’s so cool!” exclaims Jisung.
“I like you, Jisung. You look so cute! You remind me of Anouki.”
“Who?”
“My pet squirrel! I think you’d get along well with him, you’re like, the same species!”
“If you want to sleep here you better take that back!”
“You would let me stay here??” shouts Felix, surprised.
“I mean, if you're from Kammorat too… Plus, people would wonder why you have antlers. They’re adorable, by the way. But it's not normal here.”
“You take our existence well, for a human.” Says Minho, who stayed silent until then. Jisung looks at him, uncertain what he meant.
“Honestly, I think I just didn’t realize it yet. I’m pretty sure I have a spare bedroom, but if there's more of y'all, I’ll have to sell the bed to put in sleeping bags.”
Jisung joked.
“You had another bedroom and you made me sleep on the couch??” said Minho, offended.
“I forgot!”
“I can take the couch.” tells Felix.
“Sure, if you want.” smiles Jisung. “By the way, why does it smell like meat, here?”
“There were animals behind your house,” starts Minho. “Probably followed Felix. I killed them.”
“What the fuck?”
“You don’t have anything here! Do you only eat those wiggly things you have in your cupboards?”
“Ramens? The noodles? Yes, I'm broke, that's allI can afford!”
“Felix, think you could bring meat sometimes?”
“I… I’m not killing animals, hyung!”
“There are other animals, they won't stop existing if you kill one or two every week!”
“Fine…”
Jisung cooks the rabbit the best he can, following a YouTube tutorial, and while they are eating, he turns to Felix.
“So, nature spirit, what can you do, how’d you come here, and most of all, why are you here?”