Chapter Text
In the beginning of February, Renjun stepped out of a cab and faced a tall apartment building with grime frozen to the corners. The bitter wind whipped down the canyon of old apartment buildings and stabbed right through Renjun’s hat, chilling the thin triangular ear flattened into his hair.
The cab driver stacked Renjun's sewing machine box on top of his second suitcase. A couple more mid-sized boxes followed. Renjun's old group home had graciously hired the cab for him as a parting gift, which was lovely, except the cab diver had picked him up right at the door where he could see the sign saying exactly what the building was, and had been glancing in the mirror at Renjun the entire ride over until Renjun met his eyes. After that, he wouldn't look at Renjun at all.
The driver managed a terse goodbye, which Renjun had to ask him to repeat. In cold weather, Renjun wore an enormous, thick beanie over his cream white and chocolate brown hair in the hope that it would keep his roots from getting too dark, but it also made things a little hard to hear. At least the inside of his pants kept his tail warm, though he had to walk rather stiffly, not bending the leg his tail was practically strapped to.
“Excuse me, are you Renjun?” A tall young man stood beside him, also Asian, also wearing oversized ski pants and an unreasonably thick beanie. The noise came through Renjun’s hat and into his squashed ears, a little muffled. He paused to untangle what he’d heard.
“Yes. Hi.” Renjun carefully tipped his suitcase back down and held out a hand. The man gave it a quick shake and then leaned down to pick up the boxes in a squat that betrayed an odd mound of something tucked under his clothes against his lower back.
“You are?” Renjun asked when he stood up.
“What?” Jeno said. He tugged on his hat.
“Your name!”
“Oh. Jeno. Sorry.”
He led Renjun across the sidewalk and through the glass doors into a small, low-ceilinged lobby. Mail slots filled the wall across from a shiny wooden concierge desk that struggled to maintain elegance through the shabby grime that layered over the whole building. Jeno maneuvered all Renjun’s belongings into one elevator trip, smile stuck on his lips but rarely speaking except to tell him where the office was, how they already had his keys in the room. “Seventh floor,” he said and pushed the button. The elevator rose in silence.
Jeno counted all the suitcases and boxes with his eyes. “No wonder they needed to give you your own space,” Jeno said. His low voice didn’t make it through the hat well. Renjun had to decipher the sentence out of the clear syllables before responding.
“Yes, well. I’m trying to start a business.”
“Ah.”
The elevator opened and Jeno started hauling his suitcases and boxes onto the landing.
“It’s a tailoring and, um, fashion business,” Renjun said. “I make custom clothes for hybrids.” Jeno nodded with a raised eyebrow and tapped the sewing machine box to show he got it. “So let me know if you, like, need anything altered.”
“Jaemin alters,” Jeno says.
Renjun nearly tipped a suitcase over and scrambled to catch the box on top. “Ah, ok. Jaemin?”
“You’re probably better at it though,” Jeno said. “He’s pretty lazy.”
The apartment door at the end of the long hall opened to a wide, low-ceilinged room. The entryway had a coat closet with a neat rack of shoes and a bunch of hooks for hats. Almost every hook had been filled. Past the entryway and to their right was a kitchen. The counter that wrapped around to form a bar between the kitchen and open-plan living-dining space. There wasn't much in the wide living room, just a recliner and a large but rather squashed-looking sectional. They both faced a TV mounted to the wall over a low console table that held several game systems. A mess of wires tumbled out from underneath. The living room’s entire outer wall was one large bank of windows. Curtains several decades out of fashion puddled on the floor.
In the kitchen, another tall young Asian man about Renjun’s age was just pushing a large plate of Gimbap towards the center of the counter. Cute little black rabbit ears stuck up from the middle of his black hair, smaller than what was typical in rabbit hybrids, but Renjun paused, eyebrows furrowing. The rabbit hybrid blinked astoundingly long eyelashes over beautiful big eyes and onto smooth slim cheeks.
“Extra spam?” Jeno asked.
“On yours,” Jaemin said. “But I made a whole half vegetarian because I didn’t know what he’d be into. Hi. I’m Jaemin.”
“I’ll eat anything. I mean, I’m Renjun.”
“Really? What…”
Renjun pulled off his hat and let his ears poke up normally out of the multi-shade cream and brown of his hair. His left ear had begun to ache. The sounds of cars on the streets below came back, distant through the window. Air rushing from a vent became audible.
“Cat?” Jaemin said, and made a soft disappointed sound. “Another predator.”
“Oh? Sorry.” Renjun pulled on one of his little brown ears. “Are there other, um, cat—”
Jeno clambered out of the entryway. “Eat first? Unpack first.”
Jeno had taken off his coat and hat. He’d also peeled off his enormous ski pants to reveal athletic shorts underneath. When he turned to push Renjun’s suitcase into the living room, the tail hole in his shorts showed a sliver of bright blue underwear, though that looked actually tailored for tails and showed no skin underneath. Big triangular white ears stood straight up out of his black hair, but they looked too thickly furred to be housecat ears. A ridiculously fluffy white tail curled against his back behind him, enormous and stubbornly curved. Renjun allowed his eyes to sweep over it once and then fixed his eyes firmly back on Jeno’s face. “Let’s, um, put the stuff away…”
Now that he had time to look at Jeno’s face longer than a second or two between wrestling suitcase wheels across the ground, shock threatened to creep onto his face. Even for a hybrid, Jeno’s face was stunning, all smooth angles and balanced features, big eyes and small lips with a captivating curve. He had a little beauty mark under one eye. He gave Renjun another polite smile that arched his eyes into pleasant little crescents.
Renjun’s room was the second door down a short hallway to the left of the living room. The first was cracked a few inches but totally dark inside. His own had an overhead light and more big windows at the end of a long room. A bed the size of at least a queen filled most of the space. “I get a big bed?” Renjun said.
“They furnished this place back when the government grant money was fresh,” Jeno said. “This used to be my room, by the way. If you find, like, socks under the bed, just give them to me.”
“Your room?”
“I just moved into Jaemin’s.”
“Is that the one next door?”
“No, Jaemin and I are on the other side of the kitchen.” He kept smiling, steering suitcases away from the door with his tail wagging lightly.
“They really didn’t tell me anything when they assigned me to this place,” Renjun said. “Who all lives here?”
“Me and Jaemin,” Jeno said, “You, and Haechan, who you share a bathroom with.”
“Haechan.”
“Next door. And we’re all Asian, born in 2000.”
“Ah. They said this was one sorted by, um, hybrid type.”
Jeno cocked his head to the side. “It’s not. It’s sorted by, um, Asian men born around 2000.”
“Well, I can see that now,” Renjun muttered. “Which is fine,” he added when Jeno’s tail stopped wagging. “I really don’t mind not living with more cats. Cat hybrids. Like I’m actually sick of living with so many other cat hybrids. This is a good change.”
“You came from a shelter, right?” Jeno said.
“Group home,” Renjun said softly. “We don’t use ‘shelter.’”
“Sorry.”
“It’s fine. That’s what it is.” He sank onto the mattress and patted it. The comforter was soft but just as threadbare as the ones back at the home, but the mattress seemed like it was in better condition. Jeno’s tail had begun to wag again as he watched Renjun settle in.
“I’ll get out of your space. Should I bring the gimbap back here, or put it in the fridge?”
“I ate already. Right before I left. It’s like, ten-thirty. Sorry.”
Jeno gave him another grin and a nod. “I’ll leave some spam ones for you,” he said. He left the door open. Renjun sat on his bed for another ten minutes, flipping through Instagram photos of hybrid models and hybrid artists, the hybrids he just left behind, the hybrids he knew back in his wild teenage years. Finally, he closed his phone, and ignored all his suitcases in favor of unpacking his sewing machine and his most recent project and getting back to work.
“Roommate Agreement,” Jaemin said when dinner was eaten and Jeno had cleared the dishes into the sink. Renjun, who had been halfway out of his chair and ready to escape back down the hallway, sank back into his seat. “Doyoung—that’s our social worker for the apartment—says we should do this the first evening.”
Jeno and Jaemin remained in the two seats across the table from him where they’d sat to eat dinner, both facing him, muttering quietly to each other every once and a while. Jaemin’s attention, at least, now sat on him, though Jeno’s friendly quiet was directed at his phone. Jaemin had cooked again. The third roommate hadn’t appeared all day. The sun had set and still, no movement through the crack in Haechan’s door and no new person entering the apartment. Neither Jaemin nor Jeno had made any motion to wait on him for dinner.
Renjun read over the agreement, which was a lot of normal stuff about cleaning up your own mess and keeping things in your designated spaces. He’d signed something similar back in the group home, though his roommate had disregarded it completely and the room had always been a mess.
Jaemin had already been putting the roommate agreement into action. He’d made Renjun a space in the bathroom, kitchen, and front closet, labeled with his name on a piece of masking tape, and Renjun found ”Storage space in public areas should be divided equally amongst roommates and marked clearly.” Other things were more hybrid specific. ”Clean your hair and fur out of the bathroom drains after every use.” and “Clearly discuss all hybrid-type-specific needs with you roommates. Separate agreements are necessary for some hybrid types.”
Renjun skimmed a lot of the neatness bullets and got down to the more complicated business of paying for things. “There’s a grocery fund?”
“There’s a house account that we all pay into,” Jaemin said. “Bills and living expenses come out of it. You can find it on the Hybrid Welfare website under housing. Doyoung should have sent you an email.”
Jaemin folded his elbows on the table and leaned forward over them, studying Renjun as he scanned over penciled-in quiet hours that someone had written. It had been crossed out and changed once before, allowing for more noise at night and less in the morning. A small note said, See Haechan’s agreement for winter quiet hours. Renjun blew right over that to ask the more important question. “No curfew?”
“Curfew?” Jaemin said, low voice grinding through his smile. “We’re all adults here.”
“Right.”
“First time you’ve lived independently?”
Renjun nodded.
“You’re going to love it.”
“I applied like ten months ago,” Renjun said. “I like living with people but the home was a little...”
“Four’s a good number,” Jaemin said. “We’ve been three here for a long time. Before Haechan was here we had Mark. Also a cat hybrid. It’s always been kind of quiet.”
“Uh-huh.”
Jeno looked up at Jaemin. His tail started wagging. Jaemin’s closest ear angled towards him. Jeno went back to his phone with a smile.
Renjun signed the agreement.
“Ok, second one,” Jaemin said, pulling it out of his lap and sliding it across.
“Second?”
“Haechan’s a special type.”
“You make him sound like a Pokémon.”
“Our special boy.”
Jeno snickered. “So special.”
The paper on the nicked, uneven wood of the table had Hibernation Agreement in bold text across the top. Renjun read it again.
“Hi-hibernation?”
“Yeah,” Jaemin said. “I actually prefer him this way.”
Jeno let out a snort and kicked Jaemin under the table.
“Is he a…like, how many types of hybrids hibernate?”
“You can just say it,” Jaemin said. “He’s a bear hybrid.”
Renjun tapped the end of his pen against the table and stared at the agreement with his eyes unfocussed. “A bear hybrid. The guy I share a bathroom with.”
Jaemin continued grinning like Renjun’s response was the reaction to a prank. “Yes. He’s really small for a bear hybrid.”
“Like, how small?”
“I think he’s just a little shorter than Jeno and me? Which is why he’s here with us and not in a bear home.” Jaemin continued smiling, but it had begun to look a shade anxious. “He looks like a normal person.”
“And he’s not…”
“He’s a little—well, not a little,” Jaemin’s scrunched his nose up. “He does play rough. He’s not, like, aggressive, but he can be intense. He’s not that big so it hasn’t been a problem.”
“He can be intense.”
Jaemin shrugged. “You don’t have worry about it at all until spring. And really, he’s fine. He was approved to live with us, and we didn’t have a tough time in the fall.”
“Well,” Jeno said.
“Well, not in the way you’d expect,” Jaemin conceded. “He’s a lot. You’ll see. You don’t have to worry about violence though. Not from him. He’s not scary.”
The hibernation agreement had a lot of questions about personal details and preferences that Haechan had filled in with a bright green pen. Can I be woken up in an emergency? was answered with, “Sometimes, but when I’m deep under, you can use the adrenaline shot under the bed.”
“Oh jeez,” Renjun muttered.
“That’s like if there’s a fire or something.”
“Uh-huh.”
Are your housemates allowed to change your clothes if you urinate in your sleep? “This has never happened to me, but yes please.”
“Oh my god.”
“He’s a pretty light sleeper for a hibernator apparently,” Jaemin said, “but you wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Without looking up, Jeno said, “My gaming chair came apart while I was rolling in it down the hallway. I screamed right in his open door and he never twitched.”
“We have a few responsibilities,” Jaemin said, pointing at the section at the top Renjun had skimmed over. “We just have to keep meals packed in fridge at all times so he can eat whenever he wakes up. There’s a list of foods that he can handle during hibernation. That’s pinned to the fridge. We take turns making extra.”
“Oh.”
“He’s got these heating pads in his bed that we have to heat up every eight hours.”
“Ah.”
Jeno put his phone down on the table and leaned in to look at the sheet. “He leaves his laundry in the hallway sometimes,” he says. “And if he runs the shower for a long time we have to make sure he hasn’t fallen asleep and drowned.”
Renjun clenched his jaw and looked between the two of them, waiting for words to come out of the swirling alarm in his head and getting nothing.
Jaemin chewed on his lower lip. “Sometimes you have to check and make sure his water glass is still full and refill it if it’s not.”
Jeno said, “I turn his space heater off during the day and turn it back on at night.”
Jaemin gave him a pat on the knee and turned to face him. “I didn’t know that,” he said.
“I just don’t think it’s good to leave the space heater running all the time.”
“Smart.”
They smiled at each other. Renjun’s gaze dropped back to the worksheet, blocking them out.
One of the last items on the list was Do you consent to cuddles from your housemates while you’re asleep? Haechan had answered with “Yes please. As much as possible.”
“Cuddles?” Renjun asked.
Jaemin leaned over again to look. “Right. Haechan says that’s mostly psychological. Like human social preferences mixing with bear instincts. Most actual bears hibernate solo, but bear hybrids prefer packs. That’s why they usually live in homes together. They clump up to sleep in winter.”
“That’s actually pretty cute.”
“That’s probably what we’re worst at,” Jaemin said. He looked like he’d scooted his chair a little closer to Jeno’s. They tipped together like playing cards. “The cuddling.”
Renjun nodded and went back to the responsibilities, reading over them carefully. “They really didn’t tell me anything when they put me in this house,” he muttered.
Jaemin and Jeno sat silently across the table, watching him read over it again. He flipped the page and signed under Jeno and Jaemin’s names.
“I’ll put your name on the schedules,” Jaemin said. “Want to go meet him?”
“Now?”
Haechan’s door opened to a deeply dark room that felt sauna hot after the poorly heated living room. Blackout curtains covered the window. Jeno flicked the overhead light on and revealed a mirrored version of Renjun’s new room, but where Renjun’s room was all bare utilitarian furniture in white plaster and light wood, Haechan’s room was built for coziness. A thick woven rug covered most of the floor. The bed was piled high with cushions and pillows. Tapestries hung on the walls. It looked like a Pinterest addict had tried to recreate a cabin in a college dorm.
At first, no hint of a person was visible in the lumpy blanket mess. After a few seconds of trying to figure out which folds of fabric were separate blankets, Renjun located a corner of forehead and some brown hair barely visible between a pillow and the plaid of a flannel sheet towards the middle left side of the bed. One round furry ear curved gently against a pillow. The mound of puffy duvet and fluffy covers was so thick they didn’t move with his breath.
“It’s not like actual bear hibernation,” Jaemin said. “He wakes up like once every one to three days. Usually once a day. If two-day sleeps become regular, we call the doctor.” He pointed to an open notebook on the table beside the bed. “He records when he wakes up. That’s important. He has a hard time telling between dreams of waking up and actually waking up, so he needs to record it in case he starts sleeping too long and doesn’t realize.” He picked up a bin of what looked like bean bags. “These are the things we warm up. When you’ve warmed them up, just toss them under the blankets wherever.”
“You probably shouldn’t cuddle him until after you actually meet him when he’s, like, lucid,” Jeno said. “It would be weird if he woke up and there was a stranger in his bed.”
“Oh, I wasn’t really planning on…I mean, I’m not big on cuddles either.”
Jeno and Jaemin both sagged a little. “Darn,” Jaemin said.
“I was kind of known in the group home for not liking hugs.”
Jeno’s eyebrows pinched in with what looked like concern. Jaemin nodded slowly without making eye contact. Renjun pressed his lips together and didn’t let any other personal information slip out.
“Here’s our teddy bear,” Jaemin said, and flicked the blanket away from Haechan’s face. Round pink cheeks and a small face came into view. Fluffy brown hair haloed his head and curled around his round bear ears. One cheek squished against the sheets.
Bear hybrids usually had a broad body and face, heavy bone structure, extraordinary height. Next to that idea, Haechan looked nearly miniature. The folded figure of his body under the sheets looked no bigger than a couple of pillows.
“He calls himself a teddy bear, by the way,” Jeno said suddenly. “We didn’t, like, make that up. He likes that name.”
“Okay. Good.”
“Haechan,” Jaemin said in a sweet little voice, “this is your new roommate. Be nice.”
Haechan didn’t move. Jaemin scratched behind one brown bear ear. He straightened up and caught the look on Renjun’s face. “He likes that too. He told me to do it a lot.”
“A-ah. Yeah. Um. The kids at the home liked that too.”
“You don’t?” Jeno muttered.
Renjun started to reach for his own ears and then firmly crossed his arms. “I mean, I don’t really let people…”
Jeno made a clear cringe face and looked pointedly at Jaemin for rescue.
“Alright I think that’s everything,” Jaemin said loudly. “We see him at least a couple times a week so you’ll probably meet him soon.” He flipped the blanket back over Haechan’s face and motioned everyone out. Jeno brought the basket of heat bags with him.
Back in the kitchen, Renjun checked the chore board and found he was on dish duty. He got to work. While he washed, Jaemin silently wiped down all the surfaces while Jeno painstakingly heated up the pile of bags one by one and put them in the basket. He caught Renjun turning around to stare as the ninth bag went in. “Haechan’s a little high maintenance,” he said, “but like, he can’t help it. Sorry you got thrown into it, but like…”
“No, it’s fine,” Renjun said. “Of course, it’s fine. This is how things work.” It worked the same way when a woman at the home had vocal chords only capable of meows. It worked the same way with the little boy who had claws and couldn’t easily handle soft objects or even touch his own body with his clumsy clawed toddler hands. Sometimes people needed extra help, and so he helped them. At any point in Renjun’s life, an inconvenient genetic twist could suddenly become active, and his only hope would be that others around him would also be committed to a community that helps just because.
When Renjun finished the dishes and left the kitchen, Jeno followed with his basket. He gave Renjun one last beautiful smile before going into Haechan’s room. Renjun closed his own door and got back to his sewing machine.
According to the little notebook next to Haechan’s bed, he had woken four times since Renjun moved in, twice in the very early morning, once just before midnight when Renjun distinctly remembered being awake but probably had headphones on, and once while he was at a shelter for bird hybrids taking someone’s measurements for a jacket they could fit their extremely deep chest into. But despite seeing Haechan several times a day, he hadn’t met him yet.
Renjun had permanently taken the morning shift on heat bags. At eight-thirty in the morning, he lifted up the very edge of a blanket and tumbled a couple in. Haechan had his head more or less where it was supposed to be on the bed that morning: sunk down between the two pillows right at the head of the bed. Renjun felt around, trying to stay away from the body, and dragged cool bags out of the little caves Jeno had shoved them into the night before.
As he wrestled the pile out of their blanket tangle, Haechan took a deep, deep breath and rolled slowly from his side to his front. Renjun jumped back, but no more sound or movement followed. He reached behind himself and smoothed the puff of fur beginning at the top of his tail. “Haechan?” he hissed. The pile remained inert. Renjun shoved the last of the heat bags under the edge of some blankets near his feet and quickly left the room.
A client needed to be fitted, so Renjun braved the winter weather, tail pinned to his leg, ears pinned to his head, partly to ward off leering strangers, and partly to keep them from freezing. The circulation in his tail was especially terrible. By the time he returned, it shook with cold. It had been years since he was outdoors so often in winter, having been holed up in the home most of the time for the last three. He’d begun to worry that the cold would give him thick dark patches in his hair the way it used to when he was little and didn’t care so much about hats.
Jeno was just heading out when Renjun got back. He gave Renjun a polite smile and a friendly, puppyish hum as he held the door open. Renjun’s heart still thudded every time he came face to face with Jeno’s pink lips and black hair, his skin smooth and pale as an actual snow white. His big white ears had disappeared miraculously into his hat, and the tail had vanished into his baggy coat. Renjun was pretty sure he used a big elastic band to strap it to his back. It seemed that nothing but pure force could stop it from wagging.
Renjun had done some surreptitious googling the day before and changed his guess from husky ears and tail to Samoyed. About twenty years ago, Jeno might have been very expensive, which was the kind of thought that made Renjun close his computer and sew furiously for an hour, trying to work through the shake in his psyche. Twenty years ago, Renjun would have been expensive too.
He passed the afternoon in what was becoming a new routine. Instead of monitoring children until he got a break around noon, he settled at his desk as early as he wanted and stayed there until Jaemin called him for dinner. He’d moved his work station under the window for better light. The winter sun smacked full into the glass and heated the room to a point where Renjun began to wonder if he should go pull all the heat bags out of Haechan’s bed for him. The satin under his fingers slid everywhere. He didn’t have quite enough floor space for the pattern but wouldn’t brave the living room.
In the evening, Jaemin appeared at his door anyway and witnessed Renjun crouching on the floor with his tail whipping back and forth, threatening the pin box sitting on his chair seat because he didn’t have the focus to control it.
“Dinner,” Jaemin said. He leaned only partly past the doorframe, hand still on the knob where he held the door open only far enough to stick his face in. “Do you mind this?”
“Oh, you’re fine. I’m not that territorial. I mean, I kind of am, but I’m pretty used to having people in my space so…”
He cleared his throat and scratched the back of his neck. Jaemin slow nodded at him once, eyes darting around awkwardly. “I made fish?” His voice trailed quietly away.
Renjun fucking loved fish. He gritted his teeth and nodded. “I’ll be out soon.”
It was salmon, one of Renjun’s favorite foods in the world, though he’d never said that out loud to anyone. He tried to put it in his mouth with a normal facial expression, eyes darting to his two roommates to see if they were watching. As usual, neither of them looked at him. Jaemin had a bowl of curry. He’d also heated up some of the roasted vegetables no one had eaten in the last few days for himself and Renjun. Jeno had a very large piece of salmon and rice only.
“Thanks for dinner again,” Renjun said. “Sorry again about last night.”
There had only been a little smoke, but the pasta was inedible by the end.
Jaemin shrugged. “I like cooking. There was a sale.”
Jeno had on a full face of makeup on, subtle but hard to look away from, eyelashes even thicker and eyebrows sharper, cheekbones even more defined.
“Jeno, what were you up to today?” Renjun asked.
Jeno’s head came up quickly, eyebrows arching. He made an arm motion that looked like a phone being shoved back in a pocket and seemed to think about it. “I had a gig,” he said. “Makeup brand.” He motioned to his face. “Yeah.”
“Right. Looks good.”
Jeno gave him a big smile that backed up Renjun’s Samoyed theory. Jaemin dumped the rest of his rice in his curry bowl and carefully stirred it around. When he finished, he looked down the table at Jeno. “They did a good job today,” he said. “Looks good.”
“Fanks.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
Jeno gave him the smallest, cutest hint of a glare. Renjun finished the rest of his food and watched the way Jaemin’s bunny ears flattened back to back along the middle of his head when he wasn’t paying attention to anything in particular. His fur looked almost as shiny as his hair.
“Am I on dishes tonight?” he asked, though he knew he wasn’t.
“Jeno,” Jaemin said.
Renjun nodded.
“Hm?”
“You’re on dishes.”
“I know.”
“Renjun asked.”
“Mm.”
A small creak brought every dexterous ear in the room around to point at the left hallway, which the winter night had left a black rectangle. Slowly, a figure shuffled out of the dark and became a surprisingly tall young man with overgrown brown hair hanging in fluffy waves to his closed eyes. He wore a white t-shirt that sat unevenly on narrow shoulders. As he moved, he breathed sharp and quick through his nose, mouth slightly open, like he was sniffing his way through the house. He didn’t open his eyes until he had a hand on the kitchen counter, and it looked like it took effort.
“You’re in time for dinner,” Jaemin said.
“…mm,” Haechan croaked, voice nothing but sleepy grind. Renjun’s ears twitched with it.
“It’s salmon.”
“…mm!”
“Here, sit. I’ll get you some.”
Haechan wobbled to the chair at the end of the table and pulled it out, chest and nostrils still expanding with quick breaths. He froze, blinking open round, deep brown eyes to look at Renjun right in front of him. “mm?” he said to the others.
“Remember that we were getting a new housemate? This is Renjun.”
“mm.”
Haechan sat down and nearly followed his momentum into a faceplant on the table. He shook his head and blinked rapidly. Moles scattered over his warm skin. His lips pouted, full and blush pink. He forced his brown eyes wide and looked at Renjun again. “Hi,” he murmured in a voice higher and softer than Renjun had expected, “I’m Haechan.” He flashed a gorgeously sunny grin that faded like it had taken a lot of effort. He glanced at the top of Renjun’s head and Renjun realized his ears had just flattened in shock.
“Renjun,” he returned, and tried to match the smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Haechan nodded, he sat there, looking the table, and Renjun’s heart sank with the realization that this one was as nonverbal as the other two roommates.
Then Jaemin set a plate with rather small portions of vegetables, rice, and salmon on the table in front of him, and Haechan rumbled in one breath, “Fuck, my guy. You went all out didn’t you. This woke me up, you know. Smelled so good. Salmon? When did you get rich?”
“There was a sale.”
“Mr. Thrifty gettin’ crazy,” Haechan said. He slapped his hand down on top of his fork handle and struggled to pick it up. “You know it was so hot in my room today,” he mumbled. “I think I was almost awake like a lot this afternoon, or at least just dozing. I was, you know, aware. Kind of sucks that I couldn’t get up until now, but it’s whatever.”
“You would have missed Jeno if you got up earlier.”
“Hey, cool,” Haechan said, and finally took a big bite of salmon. A look of excruciating bliss crunched his face up as he chewed. He leaned slowly back in his seat and let out a long, throaty groan that almost sounded like a roar. Renjun’s ears flattened again. “Fuck, salmon, god. I’m gonna cry.”
Jeno chuckled. “It’s your favorite food, right?”
Renjun’s ears stayed pressed back, stiffening further as that little stereotype hung in the air, but Haechan laughed, and said, “Yeah. I practically live on salmon sometimes.”
Jaemin motioned towards his plate with his chopsticks. “You were eating so much of that in the fall I was worried about you getting mercury poisoning.”
“That’s tuna, dummy. Salmon’s not that bad. Tuna’s probably more of Renjun’s thing.”
Everyone at the table turned to Renjun just as that really settled into his flattened ears and dredged up memories of all the kids at high school shoving their tuna salad under his nose at lunch.
“Oh shit, sorry,” Haechan said. A bite of salmon fell from his fork.
“Do you like honey too?” Renjun asked softly.
Haechan nodded hard.
“He eats it with a spoon after workouts,” Jeno said.
Renjun let out a deep sigh and focused on the happy memory of a Christmas dinner at the group home two years ago where they hired out a local sushi restaurant for the day and ran them completely out of fish. Haechan shoveled more salmon into his mouth. “I really love tuna,” Renjun said.
“I’ll put it on the grocery list,” Jaemin said. “For the record, the giant bag of carrots in the vegetable drawer is mine.”
Jeno heaved a deep sigh. “And I’m allergic to chocolate.”
Renjun giggled and then slapped a hand to his mouth. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I shouldn’t laugh.”
“You can laugh,” Jeno said. “I have to laugh or I’ll cry.”
“Have you ever lived with hybrids that weren’t, like, cat hybrids?”
Renjun turned back to Haechan, who had asked, and found him staring, fork resting on the table. His eyes roamed over Renjun’s ears again. Renjun shook his head. His tail flicked audibly against his chair leg and he pulled it under his thigh to keep it under control. “I’ve met a lot of other types of hybrids,” he said. “Just never lived with them.”
“I hadn’t either,” Haechan said. “I mean, I always lived with bear hybrids until this year. It’s different.” He pointed at Jeno and Jaemin. “Like, just the smells alone were hard to get used to. I’ve been smelling you all over the bathroom for days, you know. I can tell you’re not intentionally scent-marking things, but sharing a bathroom with Jeno?” He cocked his head to the side and huffed out a little laugh.
Jeno sucked in a breath through his teeth. The thwapping pattern of his tail stopped. Renjun’s fists clenched under the table, feeling like he’d just learned something he really wasn’t supposed to. They’d had scent-marker hybrids back at the home, cat hybrids who’s cocktail of extra features included a sharp nose and territoriality that Renjun was painfully familiar with. He’d never had the sensitive nose though, and had never felt the urge to piss on things to claim them.
“These two are so weird,” Haechan continued, “You’re all super weird. Like, weirdly normal”
“Yup,” Jaemin said, steely. “You’re the weirdest, Sunshine. Eat.”
Haechan blinked down at his plate like he’d already forgotten it was there. He picked up his fork and took another couple bites, but his eyes drifted back to Renjun and his fork clattered back onto the table again. “He’s as hot as you two,” he said, looking back down the table. “That’s not fair.”
Renjun’s ears flattened again, he forced a smile down. Haechan pushed his hair back from his eyes with an awkward palm, revealing his own sharply handsome face. “Hm,” he said. “Are you…” He scrunched his nose and pointed to his own ears. “Is there a PC way to ask this? Do you have, like, a breed?”
“There’s no good way to ask that,” Jeno said, suddenly sharp. He stared at his lap, but his expression had grown colder than Renjun had seen it yet.
Haechan just sighed. “Sorry,” he said. “We’re really upfront about that as bear hybrids. Species effects everything about our health.”
“You were never bred as pets.”
Haechan let out a short little huff. “No, we weren’t, Jeno,” he said, falsely cheerful. “We were bred as weapons.”
“Hey, hey,” Jaemin said. “We’re all on the same side of it here. Eat your salmon. Jeno, relax.”
Renjun’s tail kept trying to pull free of his leg. He looked back and forth between them, watching Jeno give Jaemin a look that was almost guilty and Haechan stare Jeno down with a look that might have been challenging if it wasn’t so sleepy.
“It’s called colorpoint,” Renjun said. The attention in the room returned to him. “What you’re noticing with my ears. It’s not really specific to a breed. A lot of cats have it, but it’s a mutated enzyme that produces melanin only at lower temperatures. Colorpoint cats are heat maps of themselves. The hair that grows close to my scalp is usually warm, so most of my hair is light, but my ears are usually slightly colder, so they’re dark.”
Haechan hummed. “Is that why your eyes are so light?”
Renjun nodded. “It’s a form of albinism.”
Jaemin leaned forward suddenly, staring. “I hadn’t even noticed,” he said. Renjun opened his eyes wide so Jaemin could see the light gray-brown of his irises.
“Pretty,” Jaemin said.
“Thanks,” Renjun said softly.
“Haechan keep eating.”
“Sorry, mom,” Haechan said. He took another bite. “I’m not really hungry anymore.”
“Eat all of it.”
Haechan sighed and took another bite. He blinked sleepily at Renjun.
“So what’s your, um…type?” Renjun said. “If bear hybrids have to be open about it.”
“Ursus arctos horribilis,” he said, and Renjun almost asked if he’d forgotten how to speak English before Haechan clarified, “Grizzly.” He held his fingers close together. “A really little one.”
Renjun laughed before he could help it. Haechan had caught him right in the middle of the thought, There’s no way that’s true, for just that reason. Haechan grinned and nodded.
“They thought I was a black bear cub when I was growing up because I don’t look or act like a grizzly hybrid, but nope. Grizzly.”
Renjun’s ears had gone flat again, head spinning with the shock of cub and grizzly thrown around like something affectionate. “Why’d they think that?”
“I’m small. I hibernate like I’m small. But I eat like a grizzly so they eventually got me tested.”
“Black bears don’t like salmon?”
Haechan grinned and took another bite. “I’m sure they love salmon. Black bear hybrids tend to maintain more human metabolic rates through winter so they don’t gain as much weight before and they don’t sleep as much. I don’t either, but I eat like my body wants to. Like my appetite and metabolism are not on the same page.”
“He’s lost a lot of weight just since mid-December when he started slowing down,” Jaemin said.
Haechan sighed. “None of my clothes fit.”
“You’re in luck. Renjun’s a tailor.”
Haechan put five grains of rice in his mouth and chewed contemplatively. “Good, good…” He swallowed with effort. “Do I have to finish this?”
“I’ll call your nutritionist if you don’t.”
Haechan took another determined bite. Jeno got up and collected Renjun’s empty plate. On his way past Haechan’s chair, he gave Haechan an ear scratch and got a happy little hum in return.
“When did you move in here?” Renjun asked.
Haechan looked up at him, cheeks round with his chewing. He swallowed and then thought about it. “Few weeks ago?” he said.
“Early November,” Jaemin said. “It’s been more than three months.”
Haechan kept staring at Renjun.
“Like five more bites, Haechan. You’re nearly there.”
Haechan turned slowly to Jaemin. “Am I awake?”
“Yes.”
Haechan chewed unevenly, like he kept forgetting there was food in his mouth. “We got about ten minutes,” he said. “Maybe less.”
“Eat faster. While you’re awake, can you give consent to snuggles from your new roommate?”
“Consent given,” Haechan muttered. He gave Renjun a heavy-lidded blink that was probably just sleepy but evoked bedroom eyes a bit too strongly. “Please come cuddle me. It helps with the dreams.”
Five minutes later, Jeno had Haechan’s arm around his shoulders and was walking him back down the hallway towards his room. Renjun followed in case Haechan really rag-dolled and needed to be caught. He wobbled along, head lolling forward. Jeno held him up in front of the sink in the bathroom and made noise in his ear to keep him conscious while he brushed his teeth, then scrubbed it off his face before lowering him into bed. He was limp before his head hit the pillow. Jeno pulled his long legs and arms into bed and the blankets up around him.
“Does his temperature actually drop when he hibernates?” Renjun asked.
“It does,” Jeno says. “His heartrate and breathing slow down too. Not nearly as much as an actual bear’s, but we have to keep him warm.” He flipped the switch on the space heater to turn it on.
“He really should be with other bear hybrids, shouldn’t he?” Renjun asked.
Jeno shook his head. “They playfight a lot. He’s like half their weight. He said they kept beating him up on accident. I think they were worried that if one of them decided to fight him for real, they’d accidentally kill him.”
“He really is small.”
“I looked it up,” Jeno said. “Most grizzly hybrids are over 6’5’’, up to 7’6”, and like three-hundred pounds. They’re built like wrestlers.” He patted their very normal sized roommate through his blankets.
“I don’t know about cuddling,” Renjun said, “but I can spend some time in here. I don’t mind.”
Jeno gave him a big grin. His big curly tail wagged against his back. “Good,” he said. “He’ll like that.”
Haechan’s bed was big enough that Renjun could hunker in the upper corner and not risk touching the motionless body sprawled out under the covers. He’d brought his sketchbook to plan out a gown for a cat hybrid model going to a gala. She wanted something that draped freely but still let her tail out without it looking awkward. He pulled up references on his phone and pushed his toes into a pile of heat bags.
His headphones cocooned his triangular ears in big half spheres on an adjustable headband, a product he helped crowdfund several years earlier with tiny little portions of his monthly government checks. He’d caught Jeno eyeing them a couple times already but hadn’t gotten up the nerve to send him a link. No one in the apartment had been blessed with the convenience of human ears. At the group home, those with human ears were always the target of jealousy, except for the kids with half formed structures where human ears should be, or the one boy with all four possible ears, and only one of each pair worked. He’d developed a permanent head tilt to try to get sound input on an even plane.
The headphones were probably too small for Jeno, and too short and wideset for Jaemin. Haechan’s little bear ears would fit even better than Renjun’s.
As soon as Renjun’s small desk had become too crowded with fabric to use, Renjun’s sketch space had become an upside-down cookie tray across his lap in Haechan’s bed. The sleeping figure would have been hard to adjust to, except that he never moved, didn’t even seem to breathe. Haechan swaddled up in blankets and vanished into the bedding, leaving Renjun feeling very much alone in a room much cozier than any he’d seen in a long time. Sometimes Jeno or Jaemin joined him for a bit. Unlike Renjun, they often piled right on top of Haechan’s sleeping figure, wrapping around him to spend time looking at their phone or taking a quick nap. Haechan never stirred.
Which is why a hand against Renjun’s tail in the middle of his sketch project made him yelp out what sounded horribly like a startled cat yowl, high up in a part of his throat that he tried not to ever use to make sound.
As he pulled his specialized headphones off his head, Haechan’s face emerged out of the blankets to his left. “You good, bro?” he mumbled.
“Sorry,” Renjun said. “Sorry about that.” He rubbed his own chest, trying to breathe.
The hand on his tail gently pulled, which was something little kids at the group home did when they wanted his attention, and they always got very soundly scolded. He’d hissed at one once, which had been horrifying for everyone involved.
“What…” Haechan said.
“Maybe let it go?”
The hand travelled a few inches up into the very strongly puffed section near the base. “Oh,” Haechan said, and pulled his hand back. “Wow I really scared you. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. It’s your bed.”
Haechan pushed up onto his hands and knees, legs folded under him. He sat there a minute, eyes barely open, sniffing the air, and then crawled over to the notebook on his nightstand to check his phone and write down the date and time. He turned and crawled to the other side of the bed, passing Renjun, but stopped at the edge and curiously thumbed the cookie sheet.
“Hm,” he said. He reached under the bed and pulled out a cushioned lap desk. “I’ll need that back in the spring,” he said, and stumbled into the bathroom. Renjun switched out the cookie tray with the lap desk. The shower turned on.
Jaemin swung around the doorframe. “Did I hear Haechan?” he asked.
“He’s showering.”
“Nice,” Jaemin said. “Could you get out of the bed for a minute?”
When Haechan emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, Jaemin had dumped all his bedding on the floor. Jaemin and Renjun had a fitted sheet stretched across his bed. “Hey,” Jaemin said. “It’s been five weeks since we changed these.”
“I know,” Haechan said. “They were starting to smell bad even to me.”
“Oh,” Renjun mumbled with slight horror.
Haechan shuffled through the extra blankets, pillows, heat bags, and stuffed animals scattered across the floor to pull a change of clothes out of his dresser. Renjun turned his gaze back to blue plaid flannel sheets. “Pillow-cases,” Jaemin said, tossing them over. Renjun’s ear twitched towards the sound of a towel dropping to the floor and focused on pulling the cases onto the pillows. Jaemin rearranged the blankets. “I should eat,” Haechan mumbled.
“Do you want to?”
“Mmno.”
“There’s leftover Kimchi Jiggae.”
“Ooh, then yes.”
Renjun turned and found him just pulling a t-shirt over just a little round belly that didn’t look nearly big enough to get someone through a long winter. He’d put boxers on, but his tan legs stretched unbelievably long from his hips to the floor. Renjun pulled his eyes away.
“Can you wash my sweatpants too? I’m out.”
“Out of sweatpants? Like all of them?”
Haechan pointed to a rather full laundry basket beside his desk.
“Oh shit. Sorry about that. Has that been piling up since January?”
“I keep forgetting to put it in the hallway,” Haechan said. He put a heavy hand on Renjun’s shoulder and leaned there. Renjun stumbled a little before getting his feet planted.
“Sorry,” Haechan mumbled.
“No, it’s fine. Go ahead.”
Haechan rubbed his hair out of his eyes and lay his heavy gaze on Renjun’s face from close range. Heat prickled Renjun’s neck and cheeks. “You’re shorter than I thought,” Haechan said. They were nearly the same height, but Haechan looked down slightly to see him. “I guess the ears make you look taller,” he said. He touched his own ears, which didn’t add much height to him at all.
“They’re soft,” Haechan said. “Wanna touch ‘em?”
“Huh?”
Jaemin laughed. “He wants you to scratch his head.”
“Please?”
Renjun reached up, fingers tingling with the oddness of being allowed. He brushed past Haechan’s very soft little ears to scratch behind them like he’d seen Jeno do at dinner the other night. Haechan let out a soft sound and leaned into it. He drifted sleepily forward until his forehead rested on Renjun’s shoulder. He breathed deep.
“Are you…”
“Yeah, you smell really interesting,” he said. “You actually kind of smell like a cat. Like, Jeno doesn’t smell like a dog at all, and Jaemin doesn’t smell like rabbits, but you smell…” Behind him, Jaemin rolled his eyes at the ceiling, jaw clenching. Haechan’s weight began to sink into Renjun’s shoulder. Renjun gripped his arms and tried to figure out what to do.
“No,” Jaemin said. “You’ll fall asleep like that.” He pulled Haechan back. “You have to eat. Just a little bowl of kimchi jiggae. Like a really little one.”
“Hmm,” Haechan said with a hum that shivered in Renjun’s ears like an ASMR video. Haechan’s eyes were still closed, but he let Jaemin pull him to the kitchen by the hand. Renjun arranged all the heat bags back into the bed, and after a minute of consideration, climbed back into the blankets with the lap desk to keep sketching.
He’d known he smelled like a cat. One of the older hybrids at the group home had told him once that cat hybrids smelled more like cats than other hybrids smelled like their animals, but he’d always assumed it was more that they were primed to smell that on each other more than other hybrids would be. He’d never been told by another type of hybrid that he smelled that way. The longer he sat with it, the worse it felt. He didn’t mind other cat hybrids smelling cat on him. That was safe. He wasn’t sure about a bear hybrid.
Haechan returned with Jaemin a few minutes later and sat by Renjun’s feet while Jaemin rummaged in the top drawer of his dresser. “Do bear hybrids smell like bears?” Renjun asked. Jaemin paused and looked back at him, wide-eyed.
“Mm, not sure,” Haechan said. “I’ve never smelled a bear.” He gave Renjun a wry smile. “I’ve been to a zoo like twice and I always steer clear. I’ve heard that real bears get weird around us, so I’m guessing we do smell like them. I mean, I can smell something distinct on other bear hybrids. And dogs don’t like us.”
Jaemin’s eyebrows pinched, but he turned back to the drawer. “I swear I put it in here,” he said.
“Check the bathroom.”
Jaemin strode across the room to the bathroom like he wanted to be out.
“Do you want to smell me?” Haechan said, voice dropping into the low rumble that tickled Renjun’s ears like sonic bees. “See if you can smell it?”
“I appreciate the offer,” Renjun said, barely above a whisper, “but I don’t have a nose like that.”
“Mm, lucky.”
Jaemin returned from the bathroom with a black plastic comb. He settled on the bed behind Haechan and pulled it through the bedhead that matched his brown ears. “Your hair is natural, isn’t it?” Renjun asked. “Like mine.”
“Mhm.”
Jaemin took a deep breath, then quietly said, “The only person in this house with an unnatural hair color is Jeno.”
“Jeno’s hair isn’t black?”
“Snow white, like his ears.” Jaemin got the last tangle out of Haechan’s waves and pushed him towards the pillows. Haechan crawled to the middle with his eyes still closed and slowly struggled under the blankets. He still wore no pants. His long legs slid slowly under the blankets. Once settled, he turned his back against Renjun’s leg and pulled a teddy bear into his arms. A funny feeling like laughter bubbled at Renjun’s ribs. He wanted to squeeze something.
“Coming in, Jae?” Haechan mumbled.
“Yeah, for a little while,” Jaemin said. He crawled under the blankets and lay there staring at his phone until he fell asleep too. Renjun’s pencils scratched softly on his sketchbook over the sound of soft breathing. The warmth had seeped right into Renjun’s bones, making him warm from the tip of his ears to the tip of his tail in a way he rarely was in winter. Haechan’s back was hot against his leg. Jaemin let out very soft snore sounds. As the quiet weighed warmly over Renjun, a thick rattle trembled in his upper chest.
For a moment, he could only sit there, processing what he felt with his hands frozen on his sketchbook. He pressed a hand to his throat and let the vibrations tickle his fingers. Sure enough, his chest rumbled softly with the barest little purr.
He couldn’t remember the last time he purred. Maybe a late night in high school with ecstasy in his brain and one of his old classmates holding him in their lap, their clawing fingers in his hair, too out of his mind to hate it the way he should have. The purring petered out as quickly as it had started, but he sat there a long time, hand pressed to his throat, nothing but soft breathing in his ears.