Chapter Text
To say Chan is embarrassed by his animal form is an understatement.
He looks in the mirror in his hotel room. A tiny, vaguely mashed potato shaped puppy stares back.
It’s his first shift in months—only hours after their final show of the tour. His skin had long since started to itch, painfully so, as a result of holding off a shift for so long. He just didn’t have time while on the road, he told himself. At least, not enough time to do so in private. Which he preferred. He definitely didn’t feel the crushing weight of loneliness every time he shifted, nor had he ever spent the night crying out, hoping that despite the façade he’s maintained since he was a trainee that he likes shifting alone, one of his members would find him and hold him close.
An involuntary whine claws its way up his throat. Chan snaps his mouth shut before it can escape.
Like all shifters, Chan’s animal form has been part of him since the day he was born. Unlike all shifters, Chan’s animal form never fully physically matured.
“It’s a rare phenomenon, but not completely unheard of,” a doctor told his mother, when his thirteenth birthday had passed and his animal form showed little to no signs of growing. “Other than the stunted growth, he’s perfectly healthy. Give it time. He’s most likely just a late bloomer and will start to grow more further into his teen years.”
Now, Chan is twenty five and his animal form looks the same as it did when he was a child.
A small, fluffy, white puppy, weighing barely fifteen pounds. A gust of wind could knock him over—and it has.
When he first came to Korea, he began to tell those around him he preferred to shift alone: something considered a personal decision and typically respected by just about any culture. Everyone assumes he has a large dog form or even a wolf form, which he uses to his advantage to maintain a lie he’s become so used to telling that he isn’t sure if he can stop. As a puppy shifter, he craves companionship and affection. As a liar, he receives neither.
“You guys stay,” he told his members hours earlier at the party to celebrate the conclusion of the tour, doing his best to ignore their pouts. By the time the required photo-ops were finished, his skin felt like it was on fire. If he held off a shift much longer, his body could force him into one. “I could use a shift.”
So here he is. Alone. Like every time before.
