Chapter Text
Lumine is really weird.
It’s something Kody realizes the very first night they meet, when Lumine (despite only having known Kody for an hour and a half at best) attempts to shield him from a bullet. With his face.
It's at that exact moment, staring incredulously at the back of the other boy’s fluffy white head, that Kody remembers thinking: Holy shit, this kid is crazy, before silently vowing to never ask random homeless weredogs for directions ever again.
But, of course, the craziness of the night doesn't end there. Because Kody's dad decides to do something even crazier.
He offers the random homeless weredog a job.
So now Kody has a bodyguard. A small, excitable, and indescribably annoying bodyguard, but a bodyguard nonetheless. One that lives in his house, eats his food, wears his clothes, and follows him around the manor like a lost and possibly brain damaged duckling. And it's driving Kody absolutely nuts.
The first week is the worst. The kid follows him everywhere; from school, to his room, to the gardens, (to the bathroom exactly once, before Kody cusses him out so viciously that he doesn't dare try it again) but no matter how many times Kody tries to lose him, Lumine always manages to find him again; half a step behind him and tracking white fur everywhere like some kind of overly excitable, fluffy bloodhound. It's maddening.
At first, Kody tries to ignore him. He decides to treat the whole situation like another one of his dad’s passing fancies; hoping that Aiden would eventually realize Lumine isn’t cut out for this type of work and send him back to whatever little hovel he crawled out of, leaving Kody free to wallow in his self-imposed loneliness once more.
Now, though...Kody’s not really sure what to think. Lumine’s been with them for a little over six months now, and even though he’s still the same level of annoying that he was in the beginning, Kody’s kind of gotten used to his antics.
What’s worse...he’s not entirely sure he wants him to leave anymore.
The thing is, over time, Lumine’s grown to be more of a...well, he wouldn’t exactly say a friend (probably would never say friend again, not after Calla, and definitely not after Elijah), but more than just some random person his dad hired, like Silver or the other manor staff. The rest of the staff don’t follow Kody around school, or wait for him outside of classes, or hang out with him in his room playing video games like Lumine does. And they definitely don’t stay up past curfew, talking about random stuff and laying side by side on Kody’s bed until they’re both drowsy and incoherently mumbling their words.
Not saying the other staff wouldn’t do that stuff with him if he simply requested it, but…he thinks he likes that it’s Lumine doing these things. And not, like, the maid. Or Sherry. (Ew.)
Plus, he’s pretty sure the rest of the staff only put up with him because his dad is paying them. Not to say he isn’t paying Lumine too, but he likes to think Lumine’s doing all this because he actually enjoys hanging out with him, not because he’s obligated to.
Kody’s probably just deluding himself, though. Lumine would totally hang out with someone else if he had the choice. Every time Kody gets a little too comfortable with him, gets that much closer to cracking a smile, all he has to do is remind himself how happy Lumine had looked hanging out with Elijah that one time to remember that Lumine isn’t actually his friend, nor would he be his friend if the circumstances were different.
...Not that he wants him to be his friend.
Just, like, hypothetically.
Honestly, he wouldn’t even know what to do with Lumine if they were friends. He’s only ever had two friends in his life (the spirit of his dead cat notwithstanding) and Lumine is about as different from them as you can get.
Take Elijah for example. He's taller and stronger than Kody, and he always used to greet him by punching him in the shoulder or ruffling his hair or something. And even though they’d been friends for quite awhile before their Epic Falling Out, he’d never seemed to understand why Kody flinched or pulled away from him every time, even though it should’ve been obvious due to the many, many bruises he had on his body from run-ins with Calla and her cronies.
Lumine isn’t like that at all. For one, he’s short, so Kody never feels like he’s being loomed over, and he's small and slight in a way that makes him appear unassuming. And, yes, Kody is aware that they’re the same height, but Lumine just seems smaller than him for some reason. It must be the ears. Or the fluffy hair. Or the poofy tail. He just looks like something that should be protected and coddled, like a little kid. Or a teddy bear.
He’s gentle too, which isn’t something you’d expect from a creature as traditionally aggressive as a werewolf, but Lumine never hits him or rough-houses with him or wrestles him to the ground like Kody sees other boys do. The most he’ll do is grab onto the back of Kody’s hoodie if he’s walking too fast. But he usually won’t touch Kody at all unless absolutely necessary.
Honestly, now that he thinks about it, Lumine’s not like other boys at all. Not only is he tiny and fluffy and overall adorable annoying, but he’s also just...really weird. Everything about him is weird. From his weird hair to his weird eyes to his weird accent (no, it is not cute, shut up Dad) to his weird personality and weird quirks—it must be exhausting, being so weird.
Kody knows a thing or two about weirdness, being a magic-less witch and all, but he’s starting to think that Lumine might be on a different level of weirdness entirely.
Take right now for example.
Kody’s in bed, resting after a long day of school. It’s a normal autumn night. Crickets are chirping outside his window, moonlight is shining through the curtains, and everything is still, quiet, and warm.
Also, Lumine is sniffing his hair.
“What are you doing,” Kody says flatly.
Lumine yelps, loses his balance, and topples off of the bed with a massive crash.
Kody peers over the edge, unimpressed.
“Ow,” Lumine whines, clutching his fluffy white head and rolling around on the ground like a capsized beetle. “Ow, ow, owww.”
“Lumine,” he interrupts, and Lumine stops rolling. Kody thinks he may have even stopped breathing. “What were you doing just now?”
“Oh—Kody!” The other boy sits up, pain instantly forgotten. (Or maybe he’s already healed himself. Werewolf genetics are weird like that). “Hi, Kody! You’re awake! Um, how are you feeling?”
“Peachy,” he says flatly. “What were you doing?”
Lumine hesitates, heterochromatic eyes darting around the room with a nervous energy that has Kody narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
He says, “I was...hmm...um…”
“Sniffing my hair,” Kody prompts dispassionately.
“NO!” He scrambles to his knees, nearly tripping over his own tail. “I was just! Checking! On you!”
Kody folds his arms on the bed and rests his chin on them, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. “You were checking on me.”
“Yes!”
“In my sleep.”
“Yes!”
“By sniffing my hair.”
“Yes—no!” He shakes his head rapidly, eyes wide. “Not sniffing! Just checking!”
Checking what? What kind of shampoo I use?, Kody thinks sarcastically. As if he and Lumine don’t use the same shampoo. As if he and Lumine don't use the same everything, since his dad is so allergic to buying the kid his own clothes for some reason.
“Alright,” he slowly says instead. “And you had to get into my bed to do this because…?”
Lumine’s eyes get even wider. More panicked. “I was—hm. Well. I was already…here?” His tail starts thumping the ground nervously. “I—um—I slept…here.”
Kody carefully does not react. “You slept here.”
“Yes.”
“In my bed.”
“...Yes.”
“...Without my permission.”
“I was—in wolf form!,” he scrambles to explain, at a decibel entirely too loud for this time of night. “I heard weird noises so I came to see if you were okay and you were having a nightmare, so I just…stayed! And then I, um, transformed in the middle of the night! And then I didn’t want to transform back because—because I remembered Sherry saying she doesn’t like cleaning fur out of the bedsheets when she does the laundry, so, um.” Here, he finally takes a breath. “So I just stayed in human form. And then you woke up. Sorry.”
Kody takes a couple of seconds to sort that out. “I was having a nightmare?”
Lumine bites his lip and nods. “It was, um, a really bad one. Really, really bad.”
Suddenly unable to look him in the eye, Kody picks at a string on the bed sheets. “Was I screaming?”
“Yes.” His voice is small. “It was scary. I thought—I thought someone was trying to hurt you again.”
Again.
Kody grimaces. It’s been a week since he got out of the hospital, but Lumine’s clearly still shaken up about that night—the night Kody was nearly kidnapped, and ended up using so much of his already limited magic that it nearly killed him. Which is stupid, considering Lumine was the one who’d almost gotten his head torn off, but sure, let’s all fuss over Kody like always, right?
Stupid.
Sometimes he wonders what would’ve happened if Lumine had actually died that night. Would Kody’s dad have been upset? Would Kody have been upset? He likes to think he wouldn’t have been too affected, but he knows that would be a lie. The panic he'd felt when that weredog closed its jaws around Lumine’s neck was indescribable—probably even worse than when Bill—
Yeah, okay, no. Not going there right now.
“How long was I screaming,” he asks stiffly.
“A few minutes. Before I came in.” Lumine looks like he’s waiting for a scolding, ears and tail both drooping. “Um, you were talking in your sleep, too. Something about your…mom?”
A fresh wave of nausea washes over him. He closes his eyes, then rolls onto his back. “Ugh.”
“You were also crying a little,” Lumine continues, blithely rubbing salt into the wound. “So I got, um, really really worried. And that’s when I got in the bed. But then you must’ve felt me moving around or something because you grabbed onto me and I couldn’t, um, get you to let me go. So.”
Oh God. Kody brings a pillow up to his face. “Ugh,” he groans again, voice muffled.
There’s a bit of shuffling, and then he feels a lithe body scrambling up and over him onto the bed. Kody brings the pillow down to glare at Lumine sitting on his stomach, the other gazing down at him in concern.
“Kody?”
Kody closes his eyes, resigned to his fate. “Yes, Lumine.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, Lumine.”
“You’d tell me if you weren’t, right?” Kody doesn’t respond. “Right Kody? Kody? Kody, Kody, Kody—”
“Why are you still here,” he mutters, not even attempting to throw Lumine off, because he knows he wouldn’t be able to. Lumine looks like he’d only be about 80 pounds soaking wet, but the kid’s heavier than you’d think. Kody’s pretty sure his bones are made out of steel or something.
“It’s, like, four in the morning,” he continues. “Go to bed. Your own bed,” he snaps before Lumine can finish wiggling his way under the covers.
“But I don’t want to go to my own bed,” Lumine says, fixing him with an expression that looks dangerously close to a pout. “I can’t just leave!”
“Why not?,” Kody asks. “You don’t have to keep following me around, you know. You’re not even my bodyguard anymore.”
“Well—yes—I know that.” His tail is starting to thump against the bedding now. Kody glares at it until it goes still. “I just—I’m worried. What if something happens to you and I’m not here? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. You’re my—you’re my friend, Kody.”
And there it is. That word again. Friend.
Kody, as a rule, doesn't really do the whole friendship thing anymore. After his last two attempts ended in unmitigated disaster, he’d just given up on the concept as a whole; decided that there was something wrong with him and that he was destined to be alone forever or something. And it hadn't really been a big deal, until he'd started to get older, and he'd been forced to watch from the sidelines as everyone around him formed the types of meaningful connections he’d always pretended he never really cared about, but had secretly wanted more than anything.
But…Lumine’s changed things. Not even his old friends’ betrayals had hurt as deeply as Lumine’s cries of pain did that night. Not even his mother, awful as she was, had caused Kody to break down sobbing as loudly as he did when he finally had Lumine safe and sound in his arms again. Not even his dad, in the few years he’s had custody of him, had managed to break down Kody’s walls as effectively as Lumine had in just a couple of months.
Nobody else has made him care for them as deeply as Lumine has. And that's…well, Kody doesn't really know what to think about that. But it certainly means something.
He tamps down the strange emotion burgeoning in his chest and fixes Lumine with the coldest glare he can muster. “Okay, whatever. You still haven’t explained why you were practically inhaling my hair, though.”
Lumine goes pink all the way up to his ears (well, his human ears, anyway. Wait, do werepeople have two sets of ears?) and looks at his hands.
“Is that a werewolf thing?,” Kody prods. “Smelling things all the time?”
“Um, maybe? I dunno.” He’s still not looking up. “I have a really good nose so I can smell lots of things humans and witches aren’t able to. And you—I like smelling you. So, I just—did. Sorry.”
“You like smelling me,” Kody repeats, desperately trying to make sense of...whatever the hell this conversation is. “Okay.”
“You smell really good,” Lumine adds, then seems to realize that this is not something that normal people admit out loud, because he suddenly looks horrified with himself. “I mean—!”
“Lumine.”
“It’s comforting!,” he wails. “You smell like—like magic and Aiden and school and Sherry—and—and—home. You smell like home.” He buries his face in his hands, completely missing Kody gaping at him like an idiot. “I’m sorry. That’s weird. I’m so weird. I’ll leave.”
Lumine begins the treacherous journey back over Kody, but Kody grabs him before he can reach the other side of the bed, holding him still.
“Lumine.”
“Nooo,” he whines, covering his face again.
“Lumine.”
His ear twitches. Warily, he peeks out from behind his hands.
Kody waits until he’s meeting his eyes and says, “You are, without a doubt, the weirdest person I have ever met.”
“No! Kody!,” he yells, embarrassed, trying to fight him off. (Not very seriously, if Kody can keep hold of his wrists without being flung across the room like a ragdoll) “Stop it! Don’t say I’m weird!”
“You are though,” he points out calmly, changing his grip when Lumine thrashes with a renewed fervor. “But it’s okay if you’re a little weird. You know why?”
Gradually, Lumine stops fighting him. He fixes him with a suspicious look that really shouldn’t look as endearing as it does. “Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t be you if you weren’t a complete weirdo. And…” He grimaces, losing confidence, but powers through, “And I like who you are. So.”
Lumine is staring at him. Kody can tell, even though he's very determinedly avoiding eye contact right now.
“Look,” he starts. “I know I'm not the best person to be around sometimes.” (Most of the time, he thinks wryly) “But I'm glad you're…I mean it's nice of you to…to put up with me even when I'm—” His face feels like it's on fire.
“Kody—”
“Shut up, I’m not done talking yet.” Lumine’s mouth shuts with a click. “What I’m trying to say is…thanks. For not being an awful person. And for being here, and staying here, even though you don't have to.” Throat suddenly dry, he forces out, "...You’re a good f-friend, Lumine.”
Silence.
Kody looks up from the bed to find Lumine staring at him incredulously, mouth open in a little pink ‘o’.
Then his gaze softens.
“Oh, Kody,” he begins. “I—”
Then Kody’s bedroom door slams open against the wall, and Lumine yelps and topples off the bed for the second time that night.
“What in God’s name,” Sherry snarls in the doorway, looking about 0.3 seconds away from transforming and mauling them both to death, “Are you two doing.”
“Braiding each others’ hair,” Kody deadpans. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get some sleep! Which is apparently impossible in this goddamn house!,” she shoots back, then slumps against the door in evident exhaustion. “God, it sounded like you two were killing each other in here. What’s with all the yelling?”
Lumine whimpers in pain from somewhere on the floor.
Tonelessly, Kody says, “Lumine transformed and tried to kill me, but I stabbed him and now he’s dying.”
“What?!,” she exclaims, right as someone else pokes their head around the door.
“What’s going on in here?,” his dad asks, smiling blearily through squinty eyes. “A slumber party? Why wasn’t I invited?” Then he blinks, taking in the scene. “...Why is Lumine on the floor?”
Lumine sniffles pathetically. “I fell.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Why'd you do that?”
“He didn’t do it on purpose!” Kody snaps, already irritated beyond belief. Couldn't they see he and Lumine were having a moment? God. “Nothing’s happening, we were just talking. Can you guys go away now?”
His dad frowns. “Try saying that more politely, please.”
“Okay,” he amends. “Get out.”
Sherry mutters something about spoiled brats under her breath and shambles out into the hallway and back to her room. His dad, on the other hand, enters the room fully (ignoring Kody’s death glare) and helps Lumine to his feet.
“Sorry, Aiden. We didn’t mean to wake you,” Lumine says, still sniffling a bit. He must’ve landed on his head or something. Kody has the strangest urge to comfort him, but he doesn’t really know where to begin with that sort of thing, so he just keeps his hands to himself. “I was just, um, making sure Kody was okay.”
“Thank you, Lumine. I appreciate it,” Aiden says seriously, and Lumine puffs up importantly. Kody rolls his eyes. “And I’m sure Kody does too, doesn’t he?”
Kody flips him off.
“Ah, my sweet little boy. So loving.” His father wipes away an imaginary tear and Lumine snickers quietly into his sleeve.
Aiden then ruffles both of their heads affectionately; or at least tries to. Kody ducks away before his hand can make contact, but Lumine leans into the touch like an affectionate pet. What a kiss up.
“Alright, you two. Off to bed now.”
Kody and Lumine murmur in assent, and Lumine turns to leave, his socked feet barely making a sound as he pads out of the door.
Kody, experiencing a brief moment of insanity, almost calls him back to stay after all, but then he catches the soppy look his father is directing at him and scowls.
“What?,” he demands.
“Oh, nothing,” his dad says airily, which lets him know that it is definitely something, and something bad. “Just glad to see the two of you getting along.”
“Right.” He waits for the other shoe to drop.
He doesn’t have to wait long. His father’s eyes gleam with an unholy light. “So...you two were talking?”
“Yes.”
“Just talking?”
“...What else would we be doing?”
Aiden wiggles his eyebrows meaningfully.
Kody launches a pillow at him, but he laughs, ducking out of the way.
“Dad!,” he hisses, feeling his face heat up. “Don’t be weird. We’re friends.”
“Ah, okay, okay, got it,” he chuckles. “But I thought you said you didn’t ‘do’ friendships anymore.”
“Yeah, well.” Kody huffs, flustered. God, dads make everything embarrassing. “He is. My friend, I mean. So you can’t ever get rid of him, okay? Or I’ll be mad.”
Silence.
Kody chances a peek at his father, only to find him staring back at him with an unreadable expression on his face. Then it suddenly gives way to something sentimental, overjoyed, and incredibly, indescribably soft.
“What?,” he demands again, exasperated.
“Nothing,” Aiden chuckles. “I’m just—so proud of you, Kody.” He leans in to kiss his forehead. “So, so proud.”
Kody lets him get his kiss, though he shoots him a wary look when he pulls away, just on principle. “For what?”
“For being you. For still having love in your heart, and the ability to share it with others, despite everything.” He smiles gently, and, wait a minute, is he crying? “I’m just—so happy you decided to give Lumine a chance. You two are good for each other.”
Again, Kody feels himself flush. If anything, he should be thankful that Lumine decided to give him a chance, not the other way around—not that he’d ever admit that out loud, but. You get the idea. “Whatever. Get out of my room, old man.”
Said old man chuckles and finally, finally leaves, though not without one more tearful smooch to his cheek that Kody makes a show of wiping off in disgust.
Once everything’s quiet again, Kody settles back into bed. He turns into his pillow and takes a deep breath.
His pillow smells like Lumine.
For some reason, he doesn’t mind all that much.