Work Text:
“Hey Seongje, was your name Wolf Keum in the Union?”
Seongje blinked up from his phone, where he’d been playing a mindless game, a puzzled expression making his brows furrow. “Mmh,” he hummed noncommittally. “Why?”
“Baku told me it was because you turned into a wolf every time you saw the full moon and started howling at it,” Juntae said, eyes big and serious like he wasn’t joking. Not even a little bit.
Seongje snorted. Baku, that bastard.
Still, the idea sparked something in his brain. It was ridiculous. Dumb. Absolutely crackheaded.
He loved it.
He leaned in, let his voice drop low and husky. “Yeah,” he said gravely. “I turn into a real nasty one.”
A beat passed in silence.
When the expected laugh didn’t come, Seongje looked up.
Juntae’s eyes were wide. Shocked. Suspiciously shiny.
Juntae was staring at him like he’d just confessed to being a government experiment. His mouth slightly open, eyes wide with discovery. The kind of look someone gives when they find out their goldfish isn’t sleeping—it’s dead.
The silence stretched.
“Wait,” Seongje muttered, squinting at him. “You actually believed that?”
There were moments when Seongje wondered how someone so soft had survived this long in their world. But then again, maybe that was exactly why Seongje had fallen for him in the first place. Juntae with his golden-retriever innocence, his wide open heart, and his frustrating tendency to believe everything his friends said. This, was one of them.
Juntae didn’t answer right away. His brows furrowed like he was solving a calculus problem. Then—clap—he smacked his hands together with a triumphant “A-ha!” like he’d just derived the entire unit circle from scratch.
“Let’s go!”
“What,” Seongje said, blinking, “the hell are you talking about.”
Juntae stood up with way too much enthusiasm, nearly knocking over Seongje’s drink. “It’s a full moon today,” he declared, voice full of conviction, “I wanna see if you really howl!”
“…Are you—are you trying to conduct a live werewolf experiment right now?”
“I need evidence!” Juntae insisted, already yanking on Seongje’s sleeve. “I heard it hurts when werewolves transform," he said, already lost in thought. "Do your clothes rip too? Should I bring a spare jacket?”
“Juntae.”
“I’ll bring snacks!”
“Juntae,” he exasperated, eyes turning a little wild.
Juntae paused, blinking at him like a puppy who didn’t understand why chewing a couch was wrong.
And Seongje just sat there, stunned.
He wasn’t sure what was worse: the fact that Baku had planted the idea, the fact that Juntae had believed it, or the fact that part of him—some deep, twisted part—was now genuinely considering going along with it.
Was he actually going to do this? Yes. Yes, he was. Because Juntae was buzzing with excitement now, already tugging on his sleeve and bouncing like a puppy. And Seongje was so far down bad for this idiot, he’d probably fake-transform into a pterodactyl if Juntae asked him to.
---
They ended up in a public park.
A very public park.
There were strollers. There were runners. There was a man feeding pigeons like he was auditioning for a Disney musical.
But none of that seemed to matter because Seongje—known delinquent, former Union member, certified terrifying human being—was now standing dead center in a grassy clearing, staring dramatically up at the moon like it had personally wronged his family.
He began to tremble.
Juntae sat cross-legged on a bench, face lit up like a kid on Christmas morning. “Are your bones… shifting?” he whispered, eyes wide with awed reverence. “Like… cracking and realigning right now???”
Seongje clenched his jaw, trying not to break character. “Yeah,” he growled, voice deep and gravelly. “It hurts… but I must become… the beast.”
He dropped to all fours with a dramatic grunt.
And twitched.
Once.
Then again. Way more violently.
Someone walking their poodle fifty feet away took one look, picked up their dog like a football, and ran.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Seongje muttered under his breath, but louder he said, “THE MOON… CALLS TO ME.”
Then—because he was in too deep now, because Juntae’s eyes were sparkling and he was on the edge of his seat watching breathlessly, because he’d completely lost his damn mind—he threw his head back and let out the loudest, most unhinged:
“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~!!”
It echoed across the entire park like a siren of chaos.
A woman screamed.
A mother picked up her toddler like she was evacuating a warzone.
An elderly man doing tai chi dropped his stance and fled.
Seongje caught the looks. The side-eyes. The horrified double takes.
For a second, just one second, he questioned all his life decisions.
What was he doing? He was almost a legal adult. He had a criminal record. He was probably on some kind of national watchlist. This was the exact kind of behavior that would get him arrested again.
He could feel his soul leaving his body from the secondhand embarrassment.
But then—he turned to look at Juntae.
And watched, in real time, as Juntae’s expression shifted: from wide-eyed curiosity, to confused contemplation, to slow realization… and then—
He broke.
Juntae doubled over, wheezing, absolutely losing his mind in the most adorable full-body laugh Seongje had ever seen.
“OH MY GOD,” Juntae choked. “I THOUGHT—YOU WERE REALLY—TWITCHING LIKE A POSSESSED MON—”
Seongje grinned.
Because yeah, it was stupid.
This entire thing was so dumb.
But it didn’t matter.
Because he was even dumber for this boy.
He watched as Juntae gasped to collect his breath, wheezing with the last of his giggles and—
“AWOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” he howled again, this time stretching his claws (fingers), throwing in the dramatic spin for effect.
Then.
Another howl.
But this one…wasn’t his.
“AWOOOOOOOO~!”
Seongje froze.
Juntae’s laughter died in his throat. He slowly turned his head like a character in a horror movie. “S-Seongje…” he whispered, voice trembling. “Did you just… did you just call a real wolf pack?!”
“Juntae, there are no wolves in Seoul,” Seongje said as calmly as he could, even though his heart rate had spiked like a stock crash.
“Then what was that?!” Juntae hissed, already scrambling off the bench like the grass was lava.
He sprinted over and practically latched onto Seongje’s arm, both hands clutching the sleeve of his windbreaker like it was a rope dangling him above certain death. His face was pressed to Seongje’s shoulder, breath warm and frantic.
“SEONGJE,” he whisper-yelled. “I am too young and beautiful to be eaten by urban wildlife!!”
Seongje’s grin widened despite himself, cheeks aching from how hard he was smiling. The sleeve of his jacket was being violently wrinkled, but he didn’t care.
Because Juntae—sweet, ridiculous, completely gullible Juntae—was trembling against him and looking up at him with wide, terrified eyes like he was the only thing standing between him and certain doom.
And for some reason, that made Seongje’s stupid heart do a full somersault.
“Relax,” he said, low and dramatic. “I told you. I’ll protect you.”
He barely had time to shrivel internally from the cringe at the line’s cheesiness—the comment straight out of a romance webtoon—before Juntae tightened his grip and nodded gravely like that was the most logical solution to imminent death.
Seongje didn’t even bother hiding his laugh.
He looked back at the trees. Something was rustling.
And he just knew—
This night was about to get even more chaotic.
From the trees emerged a tall, shadowy figure. Howling. Loudly.
“AWOOOOOOOO~!”
Juntae screamed.
A full body, high-pitched scream.
“IT’S STANDING!!! SEONGJE, IT’S A STANDING WOLF!!! WHAT DO WE DO?!”
And then he launched himself onto Seongje’s back like a backpack that screamed and trembled. His arms wrapped tightly around Seongje’s neck in sheer, terrified survival instinct.
Seongje might’ve died then and there if his heart didn’t already belong to this absolute disaster of a boy.
The figure stepped forward into the moonlight, revealing none other than—
Baku.
Wearing his stupidest grin and no remorse. “AWOOOO~!” he howled again, throwing his arms up like a party trick.
Behind him, Gotak followed slowly, dragging his feet and wearing an expression that said he deeply regretted being born into this friend group.
Juntae peeled himself off Seongje like he’d just barely escaped a life-or-death situation and flopped dramatically onto the grass.
“You scared me!” he whined, pointing at Baku like a betrayed anime protagonist. “You guys are the worst!"
Gotak raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. “You actually believed him?”
“He said his bones were shifting!" Juntae cried, voice breaking on the last syllable like this was a personal attack on his soul.
Gotak didn’t blink. “Juntae, you once believed Sieun had laser eyes.”
“That was ONE TIME and we were at Karoake!” he protested. “The lights made his eyes look weird,” he mumbled more to himself than anything.
From a bench a little ways off, Sieun and Suho sat like two stoic NPCs witnessing a bug in the simulation.
Sieun blinked slowly. “Do you think they’ve finally lost it?”
“I think,” Suho said, arms crossed, “they never had it to begin with.”
Baku sauntered over and slung a lazy arm around Juntae’s shoulders. “Awww, our sweet little golden retriever. You really thought wolf-boy was gonna transform under the full moon?”
Juntae flailed. “I just—I didn’t not think it was possible!”
“God, you’re adorable,” Baku said, voice rising to a high-pitched mockery. “What’s next? You gonna tell me you believe I’m a vampire? Want me to bite your neck?”
“Stop it Baku!” Juntae shoved him, red-faced, and tried to scramble away like a flustered squirrel.
But before Baku could retaliate with more teasing, Seongje stepped in.
He moved like a wolf guarding his territory—shoulders loose but alert, head tilted slightly down, eyes sharp and locked on Baku like he might actually bite.
Cool. Calm. Completely done with the nonsense.
“Knock it off,” he said, voice low and steady, but there was a protective edge beneath it—quiet, firm, the kind that made people instinctively back off.
And just like that, Juntae vanished behind him, clinging to his back like a tiny gremlin using a big bad wolf as a shield—only to immediately stick his tongue out from behind Seongje’s shoulder at Baku, grinning like the world’s most chaotic goblin.
Baku squinted. “I will throw you into a bush.”
“Try me,” Juntae chirped. “He’ll maul you.”
He patted Seongje’s shoulder like he was threatening to unleash a rabid dog, smug as anything.
Seongje rolled his eyes but couldn’t help the smirk tugging at his lips. He turned slightly, just enough to glance over his shoulder—just enough to see Juntae’s face again.
Cheeks flushed from all the chaos, eyes still sparkling with mischief and leftover adrenaline, hair a windblown mess from the mad sprint away from the “standing wolf.” He looked ridiculous. Radiant. So alive it made something in Seongje’s chest stutter and skip, like his heart didn’t know how to keep up.
How the hell had he gotten this lucky?
It was true that he wasn’t a wolf.
But he’d howl at the damn moon every night if it meant getting to see that smile again.