Work Text:
Kentarou runs fast, finally free, his paws fly on the wet ground, almost weightless. He isn’t haunting, he doesn’t like eating animals, he doesn’t want to hurt anybody and he can control his feral part well enough if there’s not a full moon. It has been a shitty day, to be honest a shitty week and he just needs the feeling of fresh hair on his face and grass under his hands.
A few guys tried to pick up a fight with him at school for absolutely no reason and the blamed one was Kyoutani, of course: his parents couldn’t waste time saving his adorable child’s ass like the others did; trophy of said fight was a black eye and bad marks, his grades obviously had to fell down just a month and a half before graduation. Yahaba wasn’t disappointed when he saw him arriving at practice that day, he learned to understand Kyoutani and he truly believed he wasn’t the one who started everything, but he had that pitiful look in his eyes and Kentarou couldn’t stand it. He doesn’t need anyone’s sympathy, even if it’s Shigeru’s.
He reaches a treeless plain: scattered shrubs all over it enjoying the sun after hours of rain. There’s the sound of birds in the background but he’s too exhausted to properly notice it. Kentarou drops his body in the middle of the flat land trying to regain his breath after the long run. He keeps eyes closed, slowly stirring his tail on the ground and letting the light wind ruffle the sandy fur of his back. Staying still like this is nice, he can almost forget he’s a human if enough carried away by the wolf’s overdeveloped senses. He averts something, he feels something, he can smell fear. Kentarou lifts his head inhaling deeply. There’s a frightened hare next to him, a female. For a second, he thinks of leaving, but then changes his mind, deciding to approach the small animal that is hiding under a bush near Kyoutani’s tail. He can’t actually communicate with other animals, but knows how to transmit his feelings: he lays on the ground, leaning his paws out in the hare’s direction. The first thing to come out is a pink, trembling nose, then a small face with long, brown and silver ears. It sniffs the wolf timidly, emerging slowly from its den and finally jumps on the wolf’s head after having understood he don’t have bad intentions. It’s love at first sight.
Kentarou is intimidating in both of his forms, but he isn’t ill-natured, animals understand that quite easily, people don’t.
Kyoutani keeps going to that plain every now and then, hoping to find the little hare and actually discovering it lives here. It becomes a habit: the spring weather is nice and it’s always so peaceful, sometimes he studies there too, when he hasn’t one of the mad study session with Yahaba.
The first time he went to the flat land as a human the hare was scared, but soon recognized him by his smell. He tried to bring her food sometimes but she refused to eat it, she was actually very independent. She because Kentarou named her Gina, a Japanese name meaning “silvery”, after her brown and silver fur. He later finds out that Gina’s race changes the fur’s colour with the passing of the seasons: completely white in winter and brown during summer, mixed in spring and autumn. This reminds him of Yahaba, whose hair is strange, brown during the warmer months and a soft shade of gray during the cold ones; he says it’s just genetics, his mother has it too. Kyoutani finds it kind of cute, but he surely will never tell him.
Gina actually makes Kentarou think a lot about Yahaba Shigeru (as if he already didn’t it a lot), not only due to her fur, but also because she is very smart, hares are pretty clever indeed, and she is bossy in her own way, as bossy as a hare can be with a werewolf, but still.
The thing is, he goes there more and more often, to the point that Yahaba asks him with a small pout on his face if he got a girlfriend by any chance, and Kyoutani actually tries to date a girl for a few time, but it just doesn’t work (or: she just isn’t Yahaba).
Finals and graduation passed quietly, without him having the time to realize it and to deal with the future that is approaching him slowly and menacingly. Kentarou always knew he wouldn’t have been able to go to college, it is way too expensive for his family, so while all his schoolmates hasten to send the latest applications for admission after the chaotic and stressful exams session, he just tries to relax and enjoy summer, trying maybe to forget his awkward crush, trying to forget the fact that he wasn’t able to give Yahaba the second button of his uniform (Let’s be real, Ken, you fucker, nobody does it anymore, it’s only anime shit).
He already knows that he lost from the start.
Against all his expectations, Yahaba does not disappear, instead they keep in touch, Shigeru invites Kyoutani at his place too sometimes because Kyoutani come at my house, my family is on vacation and I didn’t want to go with them but I don’t wanna stay alone either. They actually hang out more than they did during the school year and it’s awkward because Kentarou can’t look at Yahaba for more than five minutes: Shigeru keeps staring at him with those big eyes and he feels judged.
What Kyoutani doesn’t know is that Yahaba can’t just help glancing at him, it’s like a magnet. Opposites attract, but they aren’t opposites, at least not anymore.
Yahaba knows what Kyoutani is of course: they were arguing and Kentarou couldn’t control himself, he turned into a sandy-furred wolf before Yahaba could reach and grab his hand. It was embarrassing at first, wanting to explain and not knowing how, but Shigeru didn’t ask any question, he kept treating him as usual, he didn’t avoid him at all, maybe they had just less fight and this absolutely was for the best. That’s how he fell in love with Shigeru, maybe he always loved him and this was just the incentive he needed to understand it.
It’s the end of June when Kentarou understands two things: Gina is pregnant, meaning that in a little more than a month there will be one or maybe two baby hares, and moving on his huge crush for Yahaba Shigeru is definitively impossible.
When Gina’s fur is completely brown, July’s weather is sultry and the silver of Yahaba’s hair is totally gone, two cute, little hares born. Kyoutani decides to bring Shigeru to the plain.
It’s sunny and perfect, he drags Yahaba through the wood, grabbing his hand tightly just so he doesn’t get lost. It’s been a while since he went there as a wolf, he thinks the two hare puppies aren’t ready, but they already trust him and Gina is basically his wife, as Kentarou noticed she is quite possessive, she wouldn’t stay with him every time he smelled different.
“How romantic Kyoutani-kun!” Yahaba chirps in a fake tone, just to be annoying.
Kentarou grunts with a scowl.
“Shut up”
“Is this why you always had something to do?”
They’re sitting in the middle of the lawn, Gina already at ease with Yahaba, laying comfortably in his lap while the two hare children sleep in their den.
Kentarou’s ears and nose quickly turn red as he look down shrugging.
“She was cute… reminded me of you”
It’s Shigeru’s round to blush.
“Me?”
“They, you know, change their colour or something, brown in summer and grey in winter”
Yahaba laughs heartily, trying to cover the red on his cheeks with his hands.
They finally share their first kiss at the beginning of august. The university Yahaba applied for didn’t accept him, he will attend another one in their prefecture, of course, but it’s not the same, Kentarou knows how much he studied for it. He finds him at the plain, messing around with Gina, Koi and Gou (as they named the two puppies), sobbing quietly, his eyes red from the tears. Before Kyoutani can say something, two soft hands are around his back, under his arms, Shigeru’s head on the crook of his neck. And then they are kissing. It’s everything but soft: their kiss is needy, overbearing, breathtaking. They are trying to make up for all the time they lost in sudden glances and awkward flirtation.
They keep going to the plain the whole summer. Gina is jealous, at first, she likes Yahaba but there’s a sort of competition between them.
Eventually, Shigeru wins their contest: Kyoutani finds out that his boyfriend’s hair is even softer than a hare’s fur and he may have a thing for it.