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Hao is beginning to believe that he is—and this cannot be understated—a little bit insane.
He cannot seriously be thinking about doing this.
There are so many reasons he shouldn’t be doing this. To start with, he’s quite positive that this is incredibly unsanitary. Can a person contract diseases from a frog? He isn’t exactly sure, but he is sure that it’s not a question he’d ever been curious enough to find out about.
Until now.
The answer, if he had to guess, is that yes, it is possible to get diseased from a frog. That’s why people don’t usually kiss frogs. Maybe in a few months he’ll be in the news for having died from Mysterious Frog-Contracted Disease, and be a warning message for all of the future stupid college students.
In this day and age, he might not even make it to the front page. Probably around the same time that he gets the Mysterious Frog-Contracted Disease, there will be a war starting, and some new climate-change related environmental phenomenon (quicksand across the entirety every country, or something), and maybe even a huge sporting event, which will obviously be more important than a random college student with MFCD (Mysterious Frog-Contracted Disease).
Is kissing an amphibian worth it if he won’t even make the front page of the news when he dies?
He looks at the frog in his hand.
The frog stares back at him.
Thinking of the vague sliminess of the creature in his hand, Hao’s lips twitch into a disgusted frown.
The frog—somehow—looks rather put off by the expression. Hao isn’t exactly sure when he became able to read animal facial expressions the same way he can read human ones. Or maybe he can’t, and this happens to be a particularly expressive frog.
“Sorry,” he finds himself saying, “I’m not really attracted to animals.”
The frog looks put off by this, too.
“If I had to choose a frog, it’d be you,” Hao says sympathetically. “Which I guess you must know, since I did have to choose a frog, and it’s you. Actually, uh, do you know if this counts as animal abuse? It’s just I’ve never gotten to have a pet of my own, and I was kind of hoping I’d never end up on a registry ‘cause I’d like a dog, someday.” He thinks for a moment. “…Are there registries for that kind of thing? There are, right? There should be.”
Blink, blink.
“Anyway, I should get this on with, right? The sooner it happens the sooner it’s over.”
So, on the floor of the science building—thanks to the most incredible and cutthroat game of truth or dare Hao has ever, ever played—he purses his lips to kiss a frog.
It’s impossible to express how absolutely and entirely disgusting it feels. (No offense intended to frogkind—he just thinks probably there’s a reason humans aren’t slimy.)
He’d squeezed his eyes shut to avoid really thinking too much about what he was doing, but he still sees the flash of light as it happens. Even with his eyes closed, it’s blinding.
He blinks a few times, struggling to see.
The frog is…
The frog is…
Well, Hao’s hand is now wrapped around the wrist of a rather pretty man, instead of the body of a frog.
They stare at each other for a few moments.
Blink, blink.
“What the fuck.” He lets go of the wrist as if it’d suddenly turned to blistering-hot metal, and scrambles back on the floor.
(The floor is noticeably dusty, and now he can’t stop thinking about when was the last time it was cleaned, if ever, and wondering what choices in his life had led him to be here, on the dirty floor with wet-slimy lips and a naked man in front of him.)
“Why are you naked?!” Hao demands, panicking.
“Well,” the guy says, though he takes a moment to clear his throat. “Frogs don’t wear clothes.”
“I—what?”
“I mean, you saw me. It’s not like I was wearing tiny little clothes, was I? Hey, if I had been, would you have been less hesitant to kiss me? For a moment there I thought you might not do it at all.”
“I never back down from a dare,” Hao responds without thinking. “Wait—huh? What do you mean, I kissed you?”
“I know it’s a bit of a shock, but… I’m the frog.”
“You’re the frog.”
“Yes.”
“You’re a man.”
“…Yes.”
“Why’d you hesitate?”
“It’s been a while.”
“I… don’t think my brain is working properly.” It sure doesn’t feel like it. There are still stars sparking through his vision whenever he closes his eyes, and he takes a moment to contemplate the likelihood of actually having gotten Mysterious Frog-Contracted Disease and the result is that he hallucinates frogs as naked, pretty men.
Probably not likely—if there were any disease (or drug) that could show people men like this, gay guys all over the world would be kissing frogs.
“Ah, that’s alright. It’s a weird situation.” The man laughs and goes to run his hands through his hair before he seems to remember that he’s covering himself up with said hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve suddenly remembered the human feeling of not wanting to be naked in public?”
“Oh.”
He’s still not processing most of this properly, he’s pretty sure, but Hao is nothing if not a problem solver, and if the naked, pretty man feels awkward being naked, then Hao will find him clothes. Somehow.
“Here,” he says, standing to grab the lab coat hanging from a hook on a cabinet door. “Try this.”
Frog-man happily wraps himself in the lab coat, looking far more comfortable even though it’s a little too short and a little too see-through to be considered a real article of clothing.
“Thanks,” the man smiles. “Well! It was great to meet you. I really appreciate your help.” And then he turns clumsily towards the door, as if he’s just going to walk away and leave Hao here with absolutely no evidence that he’s not veritably insane.
“Wait!”
Frog-man pauses.
“I just—if you go outside like that, you’re going to get… arrested. Or on a list.”
He looks down. “Oh. Right.” Then he looks at Hao, eyes wide and pleading. “What should I do?”
Hao thinks. And then he has an idea, and then he thinks again, because he might be in the most peculiar and life-like dream he’s ever had, but even he has some standards.
Except try as he might, he can’t think of anything else.
He wonders if Frog-man had had the same thought, and that’s why he’s looking back at Hao with those pleading eyes.
“You can have my pants.”
“What?” To his credit, Frog-man looks rather shocked. “I can’t… No.”
“So where are you going to get pants?”
“I was hoping you could get me some pants…”
“I have negative amounts of money to my name. Literally negative—like I checked my bank account this morning and it said -$6.77.” He doesn’t say that his bank account will shortly be non-negative because he got dared to kiss a frog for $10, and therefore will soon be wealthy with a whopping $3.23 to his name, because it feels rude to tell a man you kissed him on a dare right after you’ve done it. Even if said man was a frog at the time. “And it’s eleven at night. Nothing’s open.”
“But… you own other pants, don’t you? You could bring me a pants.”
“I can’t—What’s the point of that when I could just give you the pants I’m wearing?”
The man looks rather embarrassed. Quietly, he says, “You’ll get cold…”
Hao thinks for a moment that he’s made it up, it’s such an incredulous sentence to him. He squints. “What?”
“It’s—you can’t be cold. I don’t want you to be cold. It’s a… frog thing.”
“I see.” He does not see. “I’ll be fine, I’m wearing boxers, and it’s pretty nice out.”
The man shakes his head, refusing.
Hao closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath, and says, “Then you wear my boxers.”
When he opens his eyes again, the man is flushed a bright red—from his exposed chest to the tips of his ears. Still, he squeaks, “Fine.”
“Fine.”
Even frogs know how to be polite, it seems, because the man turns so that Hao can undress and then redress. He’s in a rather kind mood, so he also takes off his socks, and shoves his bare feet back into his shoes. It’s not that he cares about this strange frog-man, he’d just feel bad if he had to go outside and cut his feet up on the rocks and pavement.
“I… What’s your name?” Hao says, after he’s finished removing his clothes and dressing himself again.
“Hm? Oh! Hanbin. Why?”
“Well, this is more of a third date thing for me to do, so I figured we should at least know each others’ names.”
“What’s more of a third date thing for you to do?”
“Sharing underwear.” Hao says, vaguely resigned to his fate. “Here.”
Hanbin turns, flushing red all over again at just the pile of clothes in Hao’s hands. “Your socks…?”
“Figured you might get hurt going out with bare feet.” Hao suddenly can’t meet his eyes. “I’ll step outside, so you can change.”
Somehow, they end up walking together, on the street.
Hao commando in his baggy pants, sockless in his shoes, next to Hanbin who’s wearing only socks, boxers, and a lab coat. He looks a bit like a scientist’s wet dream. Or whoever has wet dreams about scientists. A scientist’s-lover’s wet dream.
Or maybe just a science-themed stripper.
“So… how’s this all work anyways?” Hao asks in order to cut off his current train of thought. “The whole frog-to-human thing.”
“Well, it’s more of a human-to-frog-to-human thing, really,” Hanbin says. The way he walks is kind of funny—loping down the street like his limbs aren’t working properly. “A witch turned me into a frog, and I needed to be kissed in order to be turned back. It’s supposed to be a bit of a challenge, of course. No one really wants to kiss frogs.” He sounds disappointed in the concept, and his face looks quite a bit like the frog-version of him when Hao had said that he wasn’t attracted to animals.
“Witches aren’t real.”
“Sure they are.”
“No, they’re really not.”
“You saw me turn from a frog to a human and you’re hung up on the existence of witches?”
Hao’s mouth opens and closes a few times, speechless. “Yeah, alright,” he says faintly. “Fair, I guess.” After another moment, he says, “It’s just not very original, is it?”
“What?”
“Turning a guy into a frog. As a witch.”
Hanbin brightens. “I said the same thing! But apparently it is. Witches turn princes into frogs. Of course, nowadays the amount of princes in the world really makes it difficult to make a living out of that sort of thing. And princes have security for stuff like that, so they’re not turned into frogs.”
“I… really don’t think that’s why they have security.”
“No, it is.”
“Well, your witch is boring and unoriginal, and stupid. God!” Hao says, suddenly incensed. “I can’t believe I kissed a frog!” He falls into a squat, burying his head in his hands.
He can tell that Hanbin is hovering awkwardly next to him, his socked feet shifting awkwardly being the only thing in his line of view.
“Um.” Hanbin pats his head lightly. “Sorry. Good thing I wasn’t a real frog…?”
“No,” Hao laments, “that makes it worse. Now there’s proof. You could go around telling everybody I kiss frogs.”
“Okay,” Hanbin agrees softly, “but I won’t.”
“I don’t know that,” Hao snaps. “I don’t know you! You’re just a random frog I kissed!” His emotions get too big, and he stands to storm away, except Hanbin keeps following him.
“I’m not random! We had psych together!”
“Shut up!” he says, still walking furiously.
“But—”
“This is so fucking stupid!” he cries. “What is this, The Princess and the Frog?!”
“In that one they’re both frogs, actually—”
“That’s only the Disney version!” Hao yells, whirling around to face the apparently-not-stranger. He breathes heavily a few times. Then, softly, “Did we really have psych together?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” Hao swallows. He decisively makes eye contact with Hanbin, because he’s not pulling his lab coat tight around him anymore and Hao doesn’t want to see his naked chest and Hao’s boxers—or at least he doesn’t given the circumstances. Jury’s still out for whether he’d want to in a different context. (He would.) He squints. “You have really nice skin.”
“Huh?” Hanbin reaches up to touch his face. “Oh. Yeah, frogs have natural mucus that allows them to stay self-lubricated, so.”
“Please,” Hao chokes out, “do not say ‘self-lubricated’ ever. Or mucus. Or that entire sentence ever again. Please.”
Hanbin grins. “Frogs have natural—”
“Stop!” Hao turns around and storms off again, but he’s laughing, and so is Hanbin, and he feels a little less crazy, somehow.
Catching up to him silently (Hao’s not sure if it’s a symptom of wearing socks and not shoes, or the whole frog thing), Hanbin says, “I sat a few rows behind you in psych. Last semester.”
“Did we ever talk?”
“No,” Hanbin says quickly.
Hao doesn’t respond.
“Well, okay,” Hanbin admits. “We did, but it was super embarrassing for me, so. I wasn’t going to bring it up.”
“What happened?”
“I went up to you and said ‘Your hair was red before, right?’ and you said ‘Yep’ and I said ‘And before that it was blond, and before that it was pink’, and you said ‘…Yep’ and I realized I sounded like a total freak rather than someone who was interested in you, so I walked away.”
“That was you?” Hao asks, incredulous.
“…Yeah.”
“God,” he laughs, “I tell people about that sometimes because it was so weird.”
Hanbin flushes, stammering.
“I mean, it was made so much weirder because you gave up on the conversation,” Hao insists. “If you’d said, ‘I’ve enjoyed seeing your hair colors’ or something it wouldn’t have been so strange. Or maybe ‘What color are you gonna do next?’ or—honestly anything.”
“It definitely,” Hanbin is still pink, “wasn’t my best moment.”
“I did think about you for a while after,” he continues thoughtfully. “You’re handsome enough that it almost worked—” he plows through Hanbin’s ‘huh?’ at being called handsome “—and I was definitely intrigued, but then… I don’t think I ever saw you in class again.”
“Yeah,” Hanbin rubs his neck sheepishly, and he’s entirely given up on trying to hold the lab coat shut, so Hao really hopes they don’t walk by anyone who might want to report him. Or anyone at all. It’s one thing for Hanbin to be half naked in front of Hao, but it’d be entirely different if it was a bunch of randos.
Mostly, of course, because Hao knows that the reason that Hanbin is half-naked is because he was until recently a frog. And other people wouldn't know that.
“So it turns out when you get super embarrassed and wish you were not human anymore, there are witches out there that can hear your wish and turn you into a frog. Or something.”
“Wait.” Hao frowns. “So you were a frog because of me?”
“Well,” Hanbin says slowly, “I would say I was a frog because of me, but it was right after and because of a conversation with you, yes.”
“…Right.” Hao’s at the point in this whole experience where he says ‘Why the fuck not!’ to every piece of new information he receives. It’s probably a symptom of him still being caught up on the fact that witches are real.
Finally, they make it to their destination, and Hao swipes into his dorm. He holds the door open for Hanbin before he realizes. “Is there… somewhere else you need to be?”
Hanbin thinks for a moment. “Not as far as I’m aware? Actually I bet my parents have reported me missing, or something, and my dorm probably got given to someone else already.”
“…Alright. You can stay in my dorm overnight if you need to.”
“Thanks.”
“We can even get you clean clothes. And I’ve got a spare toothbrush in the cabinet under the bathroom sink. And you can, like, call your parents. If you want.”
Hanbin takes longer to answer this time. “Thanks.” He sounds almost a bit choked up, which is maybe strange, but then again if Hao was a frog for months, he’d probably be choked up at the smallest bit of human kindness, too.
“No worries.”
In the rush of everything, there are a few critical facts that Hao has forgotten about.
The most important of which being the following: he’d been in the middle of a game of truth or dare, and all of his friends are sitting in a circle in the middle of his dorm’s living room, staring at them standing together in the doorway, like a very, very fucked up version of a surprise birthday party.
He decides to lean into it. “Uh—surprise?”
“Hanbin?” Matthew asks, shocked.
“You know him?” Hao looks between the two of them.
“Why’s he look like a scientist stripper?”
“He—”
“Who is this guy?”
“I—”
“Did you kiss a frog or not, because I accidentally lost the ten dollars I was going to give you in another round.”
“I kissed the frog!” Hao cries loudly over all of the chatter.
The room descends into enough silence that it really is audible when Gunwook drops his plastic spoon (unfortunately along with the jello shot on it, which Hao had hardly gotten to even partake in because the frog dare was from the first round, and he’s kind of wishing he had been because he’s feeling far too sober to deal with everything going on right now).
“I kissed the frog,” he repeats, slightly breathless, “and then he turned into a guy, and now Hanbin is here. Everyone say ‘hi, Hanbin’.”
“Hi, Hanbin,” the room choruses.
“I can’t believe it worked,” Gyuvin mutters.
“What worked.” Hao glares at him.
“Oh—no. Nothing.” He fidgets in his spot.
“Kim Gyuvin. Tell—”
Hanbin tugs at his sleeve. “Can I have some clothes?” he whispers with big eyes.
Hao sighs, hesitant to be pulled away from his interrogation. But the eyes in his periphery are so big, and looking at him, and pleading, so he agrees, and lets Hanbin follow him into his room to finally provide him with actual clothes.
Hao stares at him at length in order to properly evaluate the sizes he’ll be looking for in his closet. He lets himself stare a little extra, too, because Hanbin is pretty, and he blushes prettily, and blink, blinks his eyes prettily, and god Hao really has to tear his eyes away so he can turn around and rummage through his clothes.
“Here,” he throws a shirt. “And here.” And sweatpants. “…And here.” A clean pair of boxers, and some socks, because Hanbin’s are disgusting, by virtue of having been worn on the gross, city pavement of their campus.
Hanbin scrambles to get dressed, and Hao gives him some privacy, studying the wood on the door of his armoire rather than turning around.
“Do you think we’ll get in trouble for stealing that lab coat?” he asks, because it feels too awkward to not say anything at all.
“Probably not.”
“You think?”
“Eh.” There’s rustling as Hanbin puts on Hao’s clothes. “The university is well enough off.”
“Yeah exactly. The richer the university, the more they bother their students for every dime and nickel they can get.”
“Guess it’s not worth it for the pennies, anymore.”
“Didn’t they discontinue them?”
“Mhmm. If you hold onto your pennies now, will they be worth anything in, like, fifty years? Or will they still be worth a cent?”
Hao just shrugs. “Depends on the type, I guess.”
“Hao,” Hanbin says hesitantly.
Hao turns around.
“No—” Hanbin rushes. Hao spins back towards the armoire accordingly. “I mean, I’m dressed. But. I—”
A moment of awkward silence. Hao doesn’t say anything, because he’s found the best way to get people to say what they’re trying to say is to not say anything at all, rather than prying it out of them.
“When I became a frog, the witch told me… she told me that I could only be turned back through a kiss from someone I… care about.”
“Okay,” Hao agrees slowly.
“Gyuvin said ‘it worked’ because we’d figured out a plan…”
“A plan.” Hao’s tone is dry.
“Yeah.” Hanbin sounds nervous. “To get you to kiss me. As a frog.”
Hao turns around. Hanbin is standing in the middle of the room, fiddling with the hem of his shirt, which is actually Hao’s shirt.
He’s not really sure what to say. Somehow, what comes out of his mouth is, “How did frog-you and Gyuvin make a plan together? How did he even know it was you?”
Hanbin opens his mouth a few times, and Hao almost makes a quip about how he’s supposed to be a frog, not a fish, but somehow he doesn’t feel like it’s the appropriate time.
“It’s a long story,” Hanbin says at last. “I’ll tell it all to you another… time.” It seems to dawn on him halfway through his sentence that he’s implying that he and Hao will see each other again, even though they really have no reason to.
It dawns on Hao halfway through the same sentence that he really wants to have a reason to.
“Is that really what the witch said?” He takes a step forward.
“Huh?” Hanbin manages, taking a small step back and stumbling to a sitting position on Hao’s bed.
Hao stops in front of him, neatly slotting himself between Hanbin’s legs. “When the witch turned you into a frog, did she say you have to be kissed by someone you ‘care for’?”
Hanbin seems frozen for a moment.
“Tell the truth,” Hao prompts.
He shakes his head.
“Hmm. What was it that she said, then?”
“I…” Hanbin’s voice is hoarse.
“Was it maybe… that you had to be kissed by someone you love?”
Hanbin nearly has tears in his eyes, looking up at Hao, and part of his heart drops at the sight. He’s been through so much tonight, what with turning back into a human after having been a frog for so long, and the embarrassment of it all, that Hao takes pity on him, and kisses him.
(Let it be known that the pity accounts for approximately 6% of why Hao kisses him. It’s fun to pretend that it’s a higher percentage than that, but it’s not. Mostly he just really wants to.)
It’s much better, kissing Hanbin as a human.
Much less slimy, to be sure, but mostly it’s better because he can actually reciprocate, and Hao doesn’t have any sad, stomach aches from the concept of non-consensually kissing a poor animal for a pitiful sum of $10 (which turned out alright, this time, but is definitely not something he will ever, ever do again).
More than that, Hanbin is a good kisser.
His lips are warm, and soft, and he uses just the right balance of pressure and ease, and it’s—nice.
And then he’s pulling back, pressing his head into Hao’s mattress to get away.
“Huh?” he says, dazed.
“What.”
“You kissed me.”
Hao nods. “For the second time tonight.”
“I—Why?”
“Well,” he says slowly, “one might think I might’ve kissed you because I wanted to.”
“But—I—”
“Do you want to kiss me?”
Hanbin nods, and the way he does it is so fast and forceful that it makes Hao giggle.
“Okay, so then kiss me.”
“Really?”
“What, do you think you have to be a frog for me to want to kiss you?” Hao’s nose scrunches up involuntarily at the thought. “Not that I really wanted to kiss you when you were a frog. But for ten dollars I’d—goddammit. My ten dollars.”
“It’s okay,” Hanbin says soothingly. “I’m rich, I’ll replace the ten dollars.”
“Rich?”
“Like really rich.”
“How rich?”
“Well…”
“Almost…” Hao says laughingly, “like a modern-day prince?”
Hanbin’s lips drop into a perfect ‘O’, and Hao can’t help but kiss him again at the sight of it.
It’s been a while since Hao’s kissed anyone—even longer since he’s kissed someone that loves him, and it makes him a bit dizzy, thinking about the concept, and he really has to get the whole story from Hanbin as soon as possible. Or, he decides as he bites softly at Hanbin’s bottom lip, maybe he can get the whole story tomorrow.
One of Hanbin’s hands is tightly fisted in Hao’s hair, and the other is… everywhere. On his arms, and his waist, and his hips, and his legs, and—truly everywhere, and it pulls Hao even closer, even heavier down onto Hanbin, which he’s not sure is even possible.
He sighs happily, pulling away slightly to get a good look at the pretty face beneath him, and then there’s an annoying buzzing by Hao’s ear, and he sits up to bat the fly away.
It must’ve gotten in through the hole in the screen window, which he’d left open because it’s rather nice out this evening.
Hanbin lays under him, flushed and well-kissed, lips nice and bitten-pink, and his eyes are kind of sweet and glassy, and Hao really, really likes him, and—he opens his mouth, and eats the fly.
Hao stares at him.
Hanbin stares back.
Blink, blink.
Hao blinks back.
“…I’ll go brush my teeth.”
𓆏