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There are rumours of a newcomer in their forest. Of a snake with iridescent scales akin to that of crow’s feathers, longer than the eye can see. A silent predator, they say, that seeks to haunt the grass and the trees in the dead of the night. Tonight, a rabbit from the next village may go missing. Tomorrow, a deer. Animals, of course. Not shifters.
They even dare to call him a god. A dragonling, they say; not yet a dragon, because he has yet to be blessed. Religious things, as things are in the forest. Kim Dokja doesn’t really care, though. In the end, he just hopes that, whoever or whatever this snake is (when it comes to rumours, it’s difficult to distinguish which is truly animal and which is merely a shifter), it won’t put him in danger.
In other words, fuck the snake, just don’t kill me.
Except Kim Dokja’s got luck as bad as his smile, so it’s a given for him to run into it one day when they run into each other while he’s out on a hunt. The rumours, Kim Dokja finds, don’t do it justice. They don’t do it justice one bit, and they certainly forgot to mention (rather conveniently) how absolutely terrifying it is.
It’s swallowing an animal—in the middle of it, actually—when Kim Dokja stumbles upon it, its silhouette shrouded by a tree’s looming shadow in the setting sun. But the light that does reach it glints off of its scales, its eyes a stark, bright gold as piercing as headlights from human cars. Kim Dokja doesn’t often mingle with humans, but his friend—Han Sooyoung, another fox herself—does, and she’s shown him her noisy-as-hell car more than a dozen times.
Kim Dokja, in the form of a fox, stumbles to a halt immediately when those piercing golden eyes focus on him. They’re as cutting as the edge of a blade, hot as fire. Kim Dokja finds himself frozen in place.
Really, the rumours don’t do it justice at all. It’s huge, see. Longer than a human car, that’s for sure. Kim Dokja is certain that it could loop around him at least three times. And it’s thick; Kim Dokja wouldn’t be able to wrap his canine jaw around half of it even if he tried. Their gazes meet in the middle as the hulking thing swallows the rest of its food. Kim Dokja would have found the shape of the dead creature inside of it funny if not for the fear arcing through his veins.
But he’s at least certain that, whatever the snake had eaten, it hadn’t been a shifter. At first, there is silence between them; the snake’s glimmering, golden eyes shimmer in the dark shadow of the tree and the setting sun. But then it flicks its tongue out, and Kim Dokja, the fox, reels back in surprise and fear. He shouldn’t be here, should he? It’s dangerous. He’s come into contact with the snake. The rumoured dragonling, a god-in-the-making, as the forest’s inhabitants have taken to calling it.
Snakes, on their own, are already huge. But shifters, whose forms are much larger than their usual, animalistic counterparts, are even bigger. So Kim Dokja is rightfully terrified when the snake lifts its head. It doesn’t move—not when it's weighed down by fresh prey in its stomach—but it reaches towards him nonetheless, tongue lashing out.
The fox shuffles back in surprise, terror, and an oncoming fascination. It’s a dangerous thing, curiosity; especially now that he knows—can smell—that this snake is no mere animal. So it must know, then, that Kim Dokja is just like him.
A shifter.
Kin.
(Gods, please don’t kill me, snake.)
When the snake’s head emerges into the dying light, bathed in orange, Kim Dokja is startled by the mark of white, diamond-shaped scales in the middle of its huge head (which, to Kim Dokja’s horrified fascination, is about the same size as his.)
Kim Dokja takes a risk. A dangerous chance, one might say, when he places a single paw forward.
The snake regards him for a moment.
Then it leans forward, and, for a brief moment, Kim Dokja thinks their noses might touch. But they do not.
Instead, the snake recoils, hissing, flaring, and Kim Dokja jumps back and turns, away, away, but the fox’s curiosity has been ignited, a too-easy flame, and now, with the knowledge that the other shifter will not hurt him, he knows in his heart that he will return here with hopes that he might see them again.
The next time Kim Dokja sees it is a few weeks after.
This time, it is not feeding; rather, it seems to be basking in the sunlight, coiled in a tight ring around itself several times, eyes closed and towards the high-hanging afternoon sun. His paws rustle against the grass, and he freezes, hoping the snake won’t wake so soon.
In the light, where he can get a good look at it, Kim Dokja appreciates its terrifying beauty. There are no other white scales on its person save for the diamond mark on its head, and its scales glint in the light. It’s huge; it could likely wrap itself around the trunk of the largest tree in this forest (a good eight metres tall) and cover it entirely.
The fox trudges forward, curious, ears twitching, and daring.
The snake snaps its eyes open.
Kim Dokja freezes in his tracks.
The snake’s tongue flicks outwards; in horrified fascination, the fox shifter watches the reptile uncoil from its position. He stands perfectly still as it slithers towards him, stopping just a few centimetres from his position. Kim Dokja gulps, fox eyes blown wide, before he decides to take a chance.
When he shifts, his bones cracking into place, fur receding to make way for pale skin and dark eyes, equally dark hair, covered in little but a light blue shirt and shorts, barefoot, the snake before him does nothing but watch and keep very, very, still.
Slowly, tentatively, Kim Dokja scooches backwards. The snake watches him, still as a statue, almost. The fox shifter, red ears twitching above his head, holds his hands up slowly, his smile sheepish, but every bit the cunning fox that he is. “I’m not here to look for trouble,” he starts, and the snake moves towards him. Surprised, Kim Dokja scrambles back a little, but when the reptile pauses, looking amused, Kim Dokja realises what he’s just done.
“I just… There are rumours about you,” he begins. A truth. “I was curious.” Another truth. “And I was sent to ask you if you would hurt any of our kind.” A lie, but it’s good to toss in an excuse.
The snake regards him for a moment; Kim Dokja thinks it’s contemplating something. Weighing its options, maybe. Kim Dokja wishes, like a fool, that he might be able to see the true form of this shifter.
But alas. It does not shift. Rather, it simply turns its head back towards the sun, neither inviting Kim Dokja to stay nor chasing him away. And, like the little shit, Kim Dokja takes that as permission to keep this snake company.
And so, this is how their second encounter passes—in comfortable, easy silence, beneath the afternoon sun’s light as it alights upon the two of them.
(And if Kim Dokja falls asleep and wakes up to the snake hovering above him, nose bumping against his neck in curiosity, he won’t say anything of it.)
Kim Dokja doesn’t really know how it happens, but the two of them strike up some odd routine. They’ll meet in the afternoon, just a few hours before the sun begins to set, and they will keep each other company. Sometimes, Kim Dokja will drag some of his game over, or bring a book. The snake either eats with him or listens as he recites the lines of his favourite stories, coiled at his hip, or perhaps around him. Gentle, delicate fingers would play along smooth, black scales, and the snake would sometimes drape some part of himself over his shoulders, head turned towards the book.
It’s nice, Kim Dokja thinks.
It’s nice to have someone who actually wants to listen to everything he has to say.
Sometimes, Kim Dokja comes as a fox. The snake would coil around him, then, as they basked lazily in the afternoon sun. A red fox in the middle of black, hulking scales. The snake seemed fond of resting its huge head upon Kim Dokja’s midsection.
“Hey,” Kim Dokja says, one day. “When’s your birthday, anyway? Mine’s on the fifteenth of February.” There, Kim Dokja thinks. Information for information. He’d grown used to speaking to thin air, but more often than not, the snake found ways to answer him.
Come on, Kim Dokja thinks. Shift and answer me. I want to see you.
How sorely Kim Dokja wished to touch this shifter’s face. To see it, he thinks, would be enough for him.
Hear it.
But the snake merely tilts its head its way before settling its head on his lap. It doesn’t budge when Kim Dokja tries to push it off, or not even when he threatens that he “won’t give you pats anymore if you don’t answer me, you stupid bastard!”
So that’s how Kim Dokja’s question goes unanswered.
(He does end up patting the stupid snake anyway; he can’t help himself.)
Kim Dokja’s birthday comes in a flash.
He doesn’t really know why he chooses to spend it with the snake, of all shifters. Han Sooyoung had offered to take him to the city for the whole day, have him stay over at her apartment, but he’d refused. Perhaps he held some sort of hope that the snake might give him what he wants—what he’s always wanted. So he’d told her that he wanted to be back by sundown, or he wouldn’t go at all.
So that’s how he finds himself here.
Kim Dokja had dashed here; midway, he’d shifted into his fox form, and then he’d had trouble skidding to a halt when he stumbled into the clearing. As always, his snake rises to greet him, unfurling from its tight coil. Kim Dokja, breathless, watches it slither forward; it lifts its head, poises it close.
Kim Dokja leans forward. Their noses touch.
It’s the first time the snake has allowed that to happen. Most of the time, they’d merely hovered.
The snake pulls away, then, regarding him. And then it recedes back into the shadow of a tree, the moonlight upon its scales. Kim Dokja, entranced, finds himself following.
The snake stares. A moment passes, then two. Then three.
Finally, Kim Dokja shifts back. “Is there something you want me to do?”
The snake’s head gestures to the back.
“You want me to turn around?”
Hope, unbidden, fills his chest, sets his heart beating a rapid thump-thump-thump in his chest. There’s no way, right? There shouldn’t be. Not after all this time.
That’s the thing with objects of desire. You yearn so long for them that, when you finally get them, you begin to doubt reality.
But the snake nods, and Kim Dokja swallows. Maybe it’s not what he wants. Maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s—
There’s a sound. Something rustling, first. The red fox ears perched upon Kim Dokja’s head twitch in surprise, listening, listening.
And then a hand places itself upon his shoulders.
Kim Dokja whirls around so quickly he gets dizzy; it sets him stumbling forward, colliding against a firm chest. Large, strong hands reach up to hold his arms, hold him steady, but Kim Dokja feels like he’s soaring.
He’s suddenly terrified of looking up.
There are scales along the exposed (very strong, muscular) arms. Lining the top of his forearm, and at the exposed waist (oh my god he has abs oh my god he’s not wearing clothes oh my god there are scales on his hips and the sides of his upper thighs)—
There are also scales on his very toned and exposed chest and gods, gods, gods, he can’t do this, he—
“Kim Dokja.”
Fuck.
His voice makes Kim Dokja’s knees wobble a little. Is this real? This can’t be happening. Velvety and smooth, deep and husky, like warm caramel, like honey.
“Eyes are up here.”
Fuck.
Kim Dokja drags his gaze upwards—
And he sucks in a breath.
Maybe, if the inhabitants of this forest gazed upon this face, they would truly call him a god.
Strong brows, piercing eyes with dark pupils as fathomless as the chasm of a cliff, as deep as the sea; an angular nose, sharp-but-not-too-much-so features. Full lips, long, dark lashes. Wavy black hair the colour of his scales, thick and soft and falling before his eyes. He’s ethereal, Kim Dokja thinks, as he reaches a hand up to trace the scales upon the man’s cheekbone.
“Are you finally going to tell me your name?” Kim Dokja finds himself asking, his voice barely a whisper.
The snake lets out a dark, dark chuckle, leaning forward. Their foreheads collide; the hands upon Kim Dokja’s arms wrap around his waist. Warm, warm. Kim Dokja is sure he’s blushing.
“My name is Yoo Joonghyuk,” he says, his tone matching the fox’s. Rough thumbs trace shapes upon his waist, Yoo Joonghyuk leans forward. Kim Dokja sucks in a breath.
“May I?”
Fuuuck.
“... Yeah.”
“Happy birthday, baby.”
The kiss is soft, first. Slow. Easy to keep up with. But then it becomes fast, and searing, and Kim Dokja is pushed against a tree and he’s arching into him and god, god—
He’s never had a better birthday.