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It was a full moon tonight, and there was no sign of Gally.
This wasn’t like him at all. He was usually so, so careful about it. Minho only knew of one single time that Gally hadn’t been cautious about his transformation, and if it hadn’t been for Teresa’s intervention that night could’ve ended badly for everyone, but Gally was harmless in his werewolf form if he was around someone he felt safe with. His Teresa fit that role, and ever since that first night so did Minho. Gally had told Minho he was enjoying himself at art school, and there were definitely people there who he was friendly with, but being friendly with someone wasn’t the same as being friends with them. Gally always said that there wasn’t anybody at school he trusted like that.
So, each month, Gally would hop on a train and return to the Agnes & Despain hotel, making sure to get himself safely back in his old room before nightfall. It was better that way. It wasn’t likely that wolf form Gally would try to leave his room at school during the night — wolf form Gally was still Gally underneath all that fur and he knew how bad of an idea that would be — but wolf form Gally also had significantly less impulse control than he otherwise did. If he got hungry or restless there was no knowing what he might try. More concerning was the possibility that somebody else might try to pay him a visit with no idea about what would be waiting for them on the other side of the door.
So, Gally always came home for the full moon. It was better that way. He spent those nights away from everyone at school, safe in Minho’s arms, with cousin Teresa close by in case anything went wrong, which it never did, but the extra security was reassuring for everyone involved.
Except the full moon was tonight. Sunset spread across the sky, bathing the world in a golden light of the sort that usually made Minho wish he could capture this moment in time in a way that would allow him to look back on it forever, and he couldn’t even enjoy it because it meant that time was running out.
“I’m gonna go look for him,” he announced to Teresa, and he left before she had a chance to respond. Not that she would’ve tried to stop him if he had given her a chance. She’d bitten her lip so hard that she’d drawn blood; she was just as worried as Minho was.
Minho ran all the way to the station. No sign of Gally.
He checked inside all the buildings and on every single one of the platforms. Nothing.
He got on the train heading towards Gally’s school. There was no reason why Gally would be on a train heading in this direction, but Minho couldn’t make himself relax. He spent the entire journey pacing up and down the carriage, garnering more than a few dirty looks from other passengers which he couldn’t bring himself to care about, and when the doors finally opened at his destination he sprang out onto the platform and sprinted towards the school.
He kept his eyes peeled as he went in case he came across Gally on the way, in case Gally had gotten hurt on the way to the station and that was why he’d never made it home, but there wasn’t enough time for him to be thorough in his search. The Sun had nearly disappeared. The Moon was about to come out. Gally would be transforming soon, and Minho needed to be with him when it happened.
Minho reached the dormitory without finding Gally.
The dormitory rooms were small. All singly occupancy, with just a desk, small cupboard, and slim bed against the wall in each of them. They were designed for sleeping and studying and not much more. Minho and Gally certainly had an interesting time of it whenever Minho stayed the night up at the school with Gally — the bed straight up wasn’t big enough for the both of them unless they lay on top of one another. Which wasn’t a problem, per se, but still. It was the principle of the thing. They much preferred spending the night together back at the hotel, where Gally’s much bigger room gave them both plenty of room to stretch out.
A space so small certainly wasn’t an ideal place for Gally to undergo his transformation or spend his night as a wolf.
Minho made his way to Gally’s room and opened the door, expecting to find the room empty.
He was wrong.
There, inside Gally’s room, was the missing man himself.
He wasn’t alone.
There was another man stood next to Gally. The man was a few inches taller than Gally, with broad shoulders, and an expression on his face as he turned towards Minho that could only be described as pure panic.
Gally was similarly startled, and reached out a hand towards both Minho and the other man in a placating gesture.
What had Minho walked in on?
Minho opened his mouth to say something, anything, when Gally began to change.
And, to Minho’s astonishment, so did the other man.
They both grew taller. Their ears grew to a point, and they both became covered in fur in a colour matching the hair that had already been on top of their heads — Gally’s a pale brown, and the other man’s a near-white blond. They both scrambled to get their shirts and trousers off before any of their clothes could rip beyond repair.
Soon, Minho was stood in the doorway facing two fully transformed werewolves. One familiar and loved, and one slightly larger one that he didn’t know.
And who didn’t know him.
He took a single step further into the room and pulled the door shut behind him.
The sensible thing to do would be to do the opposite, to get away from any transformed werewolf who wasn’t already secure in his presence, but that would mean leaving Gally to face this situation alone. Minho didn’t know what was going on between Gally and this other werewolf, or how Gally had ended up here with him on the night of the full moon instead of back home at the hotel where he’d be safe, but right now Minho didn’t care. What mattered most was getting Gally through the night unscathed. Everything else was a tomorrow problem.
As the door clicked shut, the unfamiliar wolf dropped onto all four paws. He sniffed the air, his gaze locking onto Minho.
He snarled.
And Gally jumped between them, using his body to block the other wolf’s path towards Minho. He snarled back at him, louder, communicating to everybody in the room that his smaller size would not stop him from putting up a fight if it came to it, and he was more than prepared to strike.
The two wolves stared each other down.
If they came to blows then Gally would want Minho to leave. The room was tiny, there was barely enough room for the three of them as it was, and if claws and teeth started swinging there would be nowhere Minho could go to avoid getting hit except for outside of the room. Gally would never intentionally hurt Minho, not as a man and not as a wolf. Gally was physically putting himself between Minho and this other wolf in an attempt to protect him. He’d want Minho to run.
Minho was not going to run.
What sort of boyfriend would he be if he abandoned the man he loved to face a situation like this alone? What sort of person would that make him? Not the sort of person he wanted to be, that was for sure.
Besides, there was no guarantee that a fight would break out. Gally and the other wolf clearly knew each other, or they wouldn’t have both been in Gally’s room when the transformation took place. Just as Gally was still Gally when in his wolf form, this other man would still be himself as well. With any luck, that would be enough.
It was.
It took a few more seconds of their silent staring contest, but the other wolf stood down. He lowered himself to the floor with a whimper and buried his snout in his front paws. Gally placed a paw on top of the other wolf’s head, and the other wolf rolled over onto his back, showing his belly to the room. Gally didn’t move his paw from where he held it, letting it come to rest on the underside of the other wolf’s chin, claw poised on his neck.
Minho had often joked that Gally as a wolf was more like a giant puppy than a terrifying creature of the night. Sure, Gally was theoretically capable of doing all sorts of damage as a wolf, but the worst that Minho had ever seen him do was scratch up a bedpost. He’d never actually hurt anyone.
This other wolf’s instinctual reaction to seeing a stranger while transformed notwithstanding, it didn’t seem to Minho like he was really all the different.
Gally, however, didn’t appear like he was wanting to take any chances.
“It’s okay, Gal,” said Minho. “He’s not gonna hurt me.”
Gally waited a few moments more, then huffed, and removed his paw from the other wolf. The other wolf sniffed the air and rolled back onto his front. His tail wagged once, twice.
See? It was totally fine.
The small size of Gally’s dorm room wasn’t ideal, but Minho could definitely think of worse ways to spend a night than to be locked in a room with not just one but two oversized puppies for him to snuggle with.
Minho woke just before dawn.
They’d quickly given up on trying to fit all three of them on Gally’s ridiculously tiny bed, so they’d ended up falling asleep in a cuddle pile on the floor. Werewolves made a great surface to sleep on anyway. Their fur was so unbelievably soft.
That fur would soon be disappearing.
Carefully, so as to not disturb the wolves, Minho extracted himself from the cuddle pile. He crossed over to the cupboard to dig out a couple of blankets, and laid them across the sleeping werewolves. They’d be turning back into their human forms any minute now, and they’d be naked when the transformation completed. Usually this didn’t bother Minho and Gally; they saw each other naked all the time anyway, and they’d figured out plenty of ways to warm up a freshly transformed Gally over their time together. But Minho didn’t know this new wolf, and he had no idea how well Gally and this new wolf knew each other, and if the panic on the new wolf’s face before he transformed the previous night was anything to go by he probably wouldn’t appreciate waking up nude with a stranger in the room. Even if they had just spent the night sleeping curled up with one another.
Minho sat himself with his back against the door and watched the werewolves shift back into their human forms.
He didn’t have to wait much longer before the other werewolf began to stir.
The other werewolf stretched out his shoulders, rubbed at his eyes, clenched a fist around the blanket Minho had laid on top of him.
And he froze.
“Hey there,” said Minho.
Slowly, the man opened his eyes. He pushed himself into a sitting position, keeping the blanket wrapped around himself as he did so, and turned to face Minho.
“I am so sorry.”
“Hi So Sorry,” said Minho, with a raised eyebrow. “I’m Minho.”
The man breathed out a laugh and shook his head. “Ben,” he said. “My name’s Ben.”
“Oh!” said Minho. “Gally’s mentioned you, you’re that new guy in his technical diagrams class.”
Ben nodded. “That’s me.” A small smile crossed his face. “He’s talked about you, as well. He really loves you.”
A smile tried to push its way onto Minho’s face.
Minho was delighted that Gally was making friends, and that Gally had spoken about him to his new friend enough that one of the first things said new friend wanted to say to Minho was about how much Gally loved him. It filled Minho with a warm syrupy feeling. In most other contexts he might’ve let that feeling spill out of him, might have let Ben see his smile, and excitedly quizzed him some more on what Gally was like when Minho wasn’t in the room.
But he hid his smile, and kept his happy feelings hidden. He still had a small bone to pick with Ben.
“You got any idea why Gally didn’t make it home for the full moon?”
Ben winced. “Please don’t be mad at Gally. If you’re gonna be mad at anyone it should be me, it’s all my fault. I was really stressed this past week trying to figure out how I was gonna handle the full moon here at school. The rooms are kinda small, and the locks aren’t strong enough to stand up to someone like me swiping at them. I guess I was acting weird enough for Gally to notice, and he ended up putting it all together and figuring out what my problem is.” Ben sent a brief glance towards Gally. “He tried to get me to go home with him. I was too freaked out about someone working out that I’m a werewolf to listen. Then it was too late and we wouldn’t have made it anyway, so we had to stay here and hope for the best.”
Minho allowed himself to imagine, just for a second, what would’ve happened if Gally and Ben had wolfed out on the train. Even if the wolves had managed to be on their best behaviour the entire time it was practically guaranteed that the general public would not have done the same. Things would’ve gone very south very quickly.
“Good call,” said Minho. “I mean, I wish you’d listened to him in the first place so me and his cousin didn’t have to spend so much of yesterday panicking that something had happened to him and that’s why he wasn’t home, but you guys were right that staying here was a better choice than risking it on the train.”
Ben nodded. “I really am sorry,” he said, pulling the blanket even closer around him. “His cousin owns the hotel you live at, right? Will she be angry?”
“What, Teresa?” Minho shook his head. “Nah. I’ll send her a telegram just as soon as Gally’s up and she’ll totally get it, don’t worry. And, in future, you’re more than welcome to spend your full moons are the hotel with us. Gally’s room back home has gotta be at least four times the size of this one, so it’s well worth the journey.”
To Minho’s surprise, Ben began to tear up.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re being so kind to me. You and Gally. I thought I was the only one like this, that I had to handle it all by myself.”
“Well, you don’t,” said Minho, voice firm and allowing no argument. “Unless you want to do this alone for some reason, you never have to go through a transformation alone again. Gally and I are gonna be here for you for as long as you need.”
Ben darted forwards and flung his arms around Minho in a hug.
Truthfully, Minho was beyond glad that Gally had met Ben. Minho did everything he could to support Gally in all areas of his life, including his lycanthropy, but ultimately there was only so much that Minho could do. Minho wasn’t a werewolf. He was only human. There were some things about being a werewolf that Minho could never hope to understand.
But now here was Ben. A werewolf, just like Gally. Ben needed support, which Minho was happy to give. Gally would support Ben as well, and Ben would support Gally in return.
Ben was the first werewolf that Gally had met other than the one who’d turned him all those years ago. Judging by Ben’s reactions, the opposite was probably also true. Ben hadn’t known any other werewolves either.
Neither of them needed to be alone anymore.
And Minho was going to stay right there for them both.