The Beast That Lurks
sehun/luhan | romance, fluff, how to tame your dragon!au | pg | 2k
Luhan's father always warned him about the beasts that lurk within the forest.
Note: for the absolutely lovely teatimetaemint ❤❤ i hope this is worth the anticipation.
The forest has always been something curious: the power it holds over the lives who enter it, the small universes contained in each pond, and the light that shimmers through thick leaves to illuminate the forest floor, which is littered with snakes and other deadly creatures. But what is most interesting, Luhan thinks, is the rumor of deadly creatures that lay beyond the wall of trees at the mouth of the forest.
His father has told their clan several times of the dangers that lay in the dark. Beastly creatures with fangs longer than human bodies and eyes that could light a soul to flames. He brought one of these creatures in years before Luhan was born and became the chief of the clan, and he still wields the fang of the beast as a weapon.
Luhan sighs at the thought-- his father would berate him to no end if he found out that Luhan ventured in the woods occasionally, dipping his toes in fresh springs he stumbles upon and watching butterflies walk the bony length of his finger. There has never been anything in the woods that could harm him other than a few poison berries, so Luhan looks over his shoulder one last time before sprinting into the forest.
The air smells of honeydew perforated by rain, damping the moss under the soles of his boots and causing waterdrops to fall from the leaves high above him and onto his head. His father could never fathom the thought of Luhan getting dirty; he has always stayed by himself, shooting arrows into the bullseye of his target instead of throwing spears at boars and killing innocent bucks.
But the forest is different. It holds a power over his thoughts and anxiety and suddenly Luhan doesn’t have to worry about the dainty way his father holds him in his thoughts. All he can think about are the soft sounds of nature and the low rumble of something unfamiliar.
Luhan stops in his tracks, heart pounding against his chest. For as long as he has been scavenging the forest, he has never heard that noise. It is like rocks tumbling over each other muffled by thick pallets of skin, ominous and reverberating around the darkest edges of the trees.
This is where he should turn back. He isn’t trained to shoot a moving target; he is useful in war, not a hunt, not hand-to-hand combat.
The grumbling grows louder, echoing off the boulders that mark off the clan’s dam, and curiosity wraps itself around Luhan’s limbs. They carry him on their own, sneaking behind trees, closer to the source of the noise, and Luhan steadies his breathing when the vibrations from the sound travel up from the ground and into the core of his bones.
Luhan stops when he sees a black shadow two times his size warped into the floor of a clearing. The shadow is rumbling, groaning, rutting against the ground in what Luhan can only describe as agony.
Luhan swiftly crouches behind a closer tree, only his eyes peeking out from behind the thick truck. That is when he notices the scales: thick, opaque plates that coat his skin in a plate of armor. Next are his eyes: a green more vivid than the most polished emeralds they sell within the city, and Luhan can’t help but stare at the golden flecks scattered by his narrow pupils.
This is one of the beasts-- one of the Dragons.
Luhan furrows his eyes at the revelation. Those are not eyes that could light a soul to flames, but ones that could lull into contentment and tranquility. And there are no fangs as long as men hanging from his mouth.
There are no teeth at all.
That, more than anything, is what compels Luhan to step from behind the tree with careful movements. The closer he gets to the squirming beast, the more his rumbles sound like cries of pain. Tentatively, without a plan in mind, Luhan calls out, “hey. Are you okay?”
The Dragon stops for just a split second that Luhan catches his gaze, staring straight into the eyes of the beasts his father warned him about, before it screams, trying its best to crawl out of the clearing with winged arms.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” Luhan tries to shout over the screeching. “Why are you yelling?! Stop yelling!”
The Dragon stops its wailing at the command, but the pained whimpers continue as he tries to crawl away, too weak to stand. The light catches him oddly at this angle, and Luhan walks closer to the red-stained scales covering the Dragon’s side.
“You’re hurt,” he mutters, more to himself, than louder again, “you’re hurt! Stop so that I can help you!” Luhan can’t help himself but call out to the creature, his heart leaping out of his chest and onto his sleeve. “Please let me help you,” he says softly, his voice sonorous and euphonious.
The Dragon’s movements slowly fade out into stagnancy, its wings closed in on its sides, hiding its wounds. Luhan walks to him calmly but with authority in his step and his head held high. He skips the wound first, heading straight towards the beast’s face. Its eyes are wide and searching him, nostrils flared and mouth agape as a threat, but Luhan sees nothing but a cute face and gorgeous eyes.
“I need you to calm down for me, okay?” Luhan whispers to it, and its ears flatten back against its head. “That’s good, that’s really good,” he nods with a smile. “Now, are you a girl?” The Dragon doesn’t react, merely a blink of its eyes. “A boy?” The Dragon’s tail stirs up dirt as it thumps against the ground repeatedly, and Luhan’s grin widens.
“Okay, good boy. Now, I’m going to have to look at where you’re hurt so that I know which supplies to get. Will you lift your wing for me?”
The Dragon looks skeptical at first, watching Luhan, seeing if he moves even an inch. Eventually, he lifts the flap of his wing, turning his head the other way like he’s ashamed.
Luhan winces once he sees the damage. There is a broken arrow sticking through the gaps in his scales, like he tried to get it out himself, but the end wouldn’t come out of skin. Luhan almost reaches for it, to try and pass comfort from the palm of his hand, but the Dragon immediately recoils from him and his hand falls back to his side.
“I have to go get some supplies to help fix you up,” Luhan walks back up to the Dragon’s face. He runs a hand over the smooth surface of his scales. Luhan actually thinks he hears a purr. “I’ll be back in no time, Sehun.”
The Dragon-- or Sehun, as Luhan has named him-- widens his eyes, and for a moment Luhan’s heart stalls. He doesn’t know if the Dragon will approve the name, or if he already has a name, even. But then Sehun is smiling a toothless smile and nuzzling into his hand, and Luhan mutters Sehun one more time before running to get medical supplies.
The clan usually only has to patch up men who hurt themselves during a hunt, but they have everything that Luhan needs. Ointment from an aesculapian to numb the area around the arrow, rags to clean up the blood, tweezers to pick out the splints of wood, and gauze to wrap it all up. Sehun cries throughout the entire thing despite Luhan’s comforting words whispered against his skin, only stopping once Luhan has assured him that the gauze is securely wrapped around his wound.
“You should get some sleep,” Luhan murmurs once the air in the forest is settled again. “And later we can figure out how you got that arrow stuck between your scales.”
Sehun’s eyes gleam, his gummy smile showing through again and he pounces on Luhan with all the weight of his body, knocking the human to the ground. Sehun purrs happily, his wings flared and ears sticking straight up. Luhan can’t remember the last time he was this happy.
Then Sehun is laying his head down on Luhan’s chest, and he isn’t that heavy, and his green and gold eyes are staring straight into Luhan’s, and the day runs up on them all at once just to hit them with exhaustion.
Sehun falls asleep to the lull of Luhan’s heart underneath him, and Luhan to the gentle breaths that wash over his arm and prick goosebumps on his skin.
//
The first thing Luhan wakes up to is a significantly lighter head weighing on his chest. The second is the hair tickling his chin and neck, and the shallow breaths ruffling the material of his shirt less than it did before.
Luhan is met with a face full of hair-- human hair, on a human head, with a human body. “What the hell?!” He shouts, shoving the stranger off of him.
The day has already bled into night, the stars freckling the sky and the Moon shining light on the pale face of the stranger that rolls off of him. Where Luhan has copper hair, the man has silver, which is a stark contrast to his black clothing.
The stranger groans loudly, popping his back out and turning out the kinks in his neck. Luhan’s heart skips a beat when the stranger opens his eyes, and he stares into depthless vats of emerald greens. The man grins coyly, and his bold irises are hidden behind the perfect curve of eyelids. Luhan scrambles away from him.
“Um.”
“It’s me. Sehun.”
“Uh.”
Luhan wants to believe him; he wants to look into Sehun’s green eyes and say that he believes him wholeheartedly, but he can’t.
“I know it seems… impossible,” the man-- Sehun?-- looks down, his silver fringe hanging over his eyes, “but you’ll understand eventually.”
“Show me the bandages,” Luhan commands with a short breath, but Sehun just stares back at him confusedly. “Show me the bandages from where the arrow hit you!”
“Okay, okay!” Sehun holds up his hands, signaling the other man to calm down, but it just puts him more on edge. He lifts up his shirt, fingers curled around the hem of his shirt, and the bandages show within inches, already soaked through with blood. The moonlight hangs off his muscles in long sketches, highlighting the lithe body of a Dragon, and Luhan gulps.
“I need to change the dressing,” Luhan comments off-handedly. By the time Sehun has processed it, Luhan is already pulling off the old gauze and throwing it to the side. “You don’t want to get an infection. That’s certain death.”
“Yeah,” Sehun coughs, because Luhan’s face is awfully close to his and he can feel his cheeks heating as his new bandages are wrapped around his torso. “So, as you know, my name is Sehun. What’s yours?”
“Luhan,” he replies distractedly. He wraps the last bit around Sehun’s torso then tapes it off, and finally sits back to admire his work. There are a few moments of silence before Luhan wonders, “so you’re really just going to use the name I gave you?”
Sehun pulls his shirt back down, but he keeps his gaze in his lap. He picks at the grass beside him, tearing it up then throwing it into the night’s breeze. “I guess. I’ve never had a name before.”
“Your parents didn’t even give you a name?”
“No,” Sehun shakes his head, “names imply ownership, and nobody can tame a dragon.” Sehun meets Luhan’s gaze, brushing his bangs out of his eyes to showcase cheeks dusted pink, and neither of them speak for a few moments, until--
“It looks like I already have.”
Luhan breaks out into the first grin, and it doesn’t take a second for Sehun to follow, all eye smiles and curved lips.
And-- what do you know?-- human Sehun has teeth.
Luhan's father always warned him about the beasts that lurk within the forest.
Note: for the absolutely lovely teatimetaemint ❤❤ i hope this is worth the anticipation.
The forest has always been something curious: the power it holds over the lives who enter it, the small universes contained in each pond, and the light that shimmers through thick leaves to illuminate the forest floor, which is littered with snakes and other deadly creatures. But what is most interesting, Luhan thinks, is the rumor of deadly creatures that lay beyond the wall of trees at the mouth of the forest.
His father has told their clan several times of the dangers that lay in the dark. Beastly creatures with fangs longer than human bodies and eyes that could light a soul to flames. He brought one of these creatures in years before Luhan was born and became the chief of the clan, and he still wields the fang of the beast as a weapon.
Luhan sighs at the thought-- his father would berate him to no end if he found out that Luhan ventured in the woods occasionally, dipping his toes in fresh springs he stumbles upon and watching butterflies walk the bony length of his finger. There has never been anything in the woods that could harm him other than a few poison berries, so Luhan looks over his shoulder one last time before sprinting into the forest.
The air smells of honeydew perforated by rain, damping the moss under the soles of his boots and causing waterdrops to fall from the leaves high above him and onto his head. His father could never fathom the thought of Luhan getting dirty; he has always stayed by himself, shooting arrows into the bullseye of his target instead of throwing spears at boars and killing innocent bucks.
But the forest is different. It holds a power over his thoughts and anxiety and suddenly Luhan doesn’t have to worry about the dainty way his father holds him in his thoughts. All he can think about are the soft sounds of nature and the low rumble of something unfamiliar.
Luhan stops in his tracks, heart pounding against his chest. For as long as he has been scavenging the forest, he has never heard that noise. It is like rocks tumbling over each other muffled by thick pallets of skin, ominous and reverberating around the darkest edges of the trees.
This is where he should turn back. He isn’t trained to shoot a moving target; he is useful in war, not a hunt, not hand-to-hand combat.
The grumbling grows louder, echoing off the boulders that mark off the clan’s dam, and curiosity wraps itself around Luhan’s limbs. They carry him on their own, sneaking behind trees, closer to the source of the noise, and Luhan steadies his breathing when the vibrations from the sound travel up from the ground and into the core of his bones.
Luhan stops when he sees a black shadow two times his size warped into the floor of a clearing. The shadow is rumbling, groaning, rutting against the ground in what Luhan can only describe as agony.
Luhan swiftly crouches behind a closer tree, only his eyes peeking out from behind the thick truck. That is when he notices the scales: thick, opaque plates that coat his skin in a plate of armor. Next are his eyes: a green more vivid than the most polished emeralds they sell within the city, and Luhan can’t help but stare at the golden flecks scattered by his narrow pupils.
This is one of the beasts-- one of the Dragons.
Luhan furrows his eyes at the revelation. Those are not eyes that could light a soul to flames, but ones that could lull into contentment and tranquility. And there are no fangs as long as men hanging from his mouth.
There are no teeth at all.
That, more than anything, is what compels Luhan to step from behind the tree with careful movements. The closer he gets to the squirming beast, the more his rumbles sound like cries of pain. Tentatively, without a plan in mind, Luhan calls out, “hey. Are you okay?”
The Dragon stops for just a split second that Luhan catches his gaze, staring straight into the eyes of the beasts his father warned him about, before it screams, trying its best to crawl out of the clearing with winged arms.
“I’m not going to hurt you!” Luhan tries to shout over the screeching. “Why are you yelling?! Stop yelling!”
The Dragon stops its wailing at the command, but the pained whimpers continue as he tries to crawl away, too weak to stand. The light catches him oddly at this angle, and Luhan walks closer to the red-stained scales covering the Dragon’s side.
“You’re hurt,” he mutters, more to himself, than louder again, “you’re hurt! Stop so that I can help you!” Luhan can’t help himself but call out to the creature, his heart leaping out of his chest and onto his sleeve. “Please let me help you,” he says softly, his voice sonorous and euphonious.
The Dragon’s movements slowly fade out into stagnancy, its wings closed in on its sides, hiding its wounds. Luhan walks to him calmly but with authority in his step and his head held high. He skips the wound first, heading straight towards the beast’s face. Its eyes are wide and searching him, nostrils flared and mouth agape as a threat, but Luhan sees nothing but a cute face and gorgeous eyes.
“I need you to calm down for me, okay?” Luhan whispers to it, and its ears flatten back against its head. “That’s good, that’s really good,” he nods with a smile. “Now, are you a girl?” The Dragon doesn’t react, merely a blink of its eyes. “A boy?” The Dragon’s tail stirs up dirt as it thumps against the ground repeatedly, and Luhan’s grin widens.
“Okay, good boy. Now, I’m going to have to look at where you’re hurt so that I know which supplies to get. Will you lift your wing for me?”
The Dragon looks skeptical at first, watching Luhan, seeing if he moves even an inch. Eventually, he lifts the flap of his wing, turning his head the other way like he’s ashamed.
Luhan winces once he sees the damage. There is a broken arrow sticking through the gaps in his scales, like he tried to get it out himself, but the end wouldn’t come out of skin. Luhan almost reaches for it, to try and pass comfort from the palm of his hand, but the Dragon immediately recoils from him and his hand falls back to his side.
“I have to go get some supplies to help fix you up,” Luhan walks back up to the Dragon’s face. He runs a hand over the smooth surface of his scales. Luhan actually thinks he hears a purr. “I’ll be back in no time, Sehun.”
The Dragon-- or Sehun, as Luhan has named him-- widens his eyes, and for a moment Luhan’s heart stalls. He doesn’t know if the Dragon will approve the name, or if he already has a name, even. But then Sehun is smiling a toothless smile and nuzzling into his hand, and Luhan mutters Sehun one more time before running to get medical supplies.
The clan usually only has to patch up men who hurt themselves during a hunt, but they have everything that Luhan needs. Ointment from an aesculapian to numb the area around the arrow, rags to clean up the blood, tweezers to pick out the splints of wood, and gauze to wrap it all up. Sehun cries throughout the entire thing despite Luhan’s comforting words whispered against his skin, only stopping once Luhan has assured him that the gauze is securely wrapped around his wound.
“You should get some sleep,” Luhan murmurs once the air in the forest is settled again. “And later we can figure out how you got that arrow stuck between your scales.”
Sehun’s eyes gleam, his gummy smile showing through again and he pounces on Luhan with all the weight of his body, knocking the human to the ground. Sehun purrs happily, his wings flared and ears sticking straight up. Luhan can’t remember the last time he was this happy.
Then Sehun is laying his head down on Luhan’s chest, and he isn’t that heavy, and his green and gold eyes are staring straight into Luhan’s, and the day runs up on them all at once just to hit them with exhaustion.
Sehun falls asleep to the lull of Luhan’s heart underneath him, and Luhan to the gentle breaths that wash over his arm and prick goosebumps on his skin.
//
The first thing Luhan wakes up to is a significantly lighter head weighing on his chest. The second is the hair tickling his chin and neck, and the shallow breaths ruffling the material of his shirt less than it did before.
Luhan is met with a face full of hair-- human hair, on a human head, with a human body. “What the hell?!” He shouts, shoving the stranger off of him.
The day has already bled into night, the stars freckling the sky and the Moon shining light on the pale face of the stranger that rolls off of him. Where Luhan has copper hair, the man has silver, which is a stark contrast to his black clothing.
The stranger groans loudly, popping his back out and turning out the kinks in his neck. Luhan’s heart skips a beat when the stranger opens his eyes, and he stares into depthless vats of emerald greens. The man grins coyly, and his bold irises are hidden behind the perfect curve of eyelids. Luhan scrambles away from him.
“Um.”
“It’s me. Sehun.”
“Uh.”
Luhan wants to believe him; he wants to look into Sehun’s green eyes and say that he believes him wholeheartedly, but he can’t.
“I know it seems… impossible,” the man-- Sehun?-- looks down, his silver fringe hanging over his eyes, “but you’ll understand eventually.”
“Show me the bandages,” Luhan commands with a short breath, but Sehun just stares back at him confusedly. “Show me the bandages from where the arrow hit you!”
“Okay, okay!” Sehun holds up his hands, signaling the other man to calm down, but it just puts him more on edge. He lifts up his shirt, fingers curled around the hem of his shirt, and the bandages show within inches, already soaked through with blood. The moonlight hangs off his muscles in long sketches, highlighting the lithe body of a Dragon, and Luhan gulps.
“I need to change the dressing,” Luhan comments off-handedly. By the time Sehun has processed it, Luhan is already pulling off the old gauze and throwing it to the side. “You don’t want to get an infection. That’s certain death.”
“Yeah,” Sehun coughs, because Luhan’s face is awfully close to his and he can feel his cheeks heating as his new bandages are wrapped around his torso. “So, as you know, my name is Sehun. What’s yours?”
“Luhan,” he replies distractedly. He wraps the last bit around Sehun’s torso then tapes it off, and finally sits back to admire his work. There are a few moments of silence before Luhan wonders, “so you’re really just going to use the name I gave you?”
Sehun pulls his shirt back down, but he keeps his gaze in his lap. He picks at the grass beside him, tearing it up then throwing it into the night’s breeze. “I guess. I’ve never had a name before.”
“Your parents didn’t even give you a name?”
“No,” Sehun shakes his head, “names imply ownership, and nobody can tame a dragon.” Sehun meets Luhan’s gaze, brushing his bangs out of his eyes to showcase cheeks dusted pink, and neither of them speak for a few moments, until--
“It looks like I already have.”
Luhan breaks out into the first grin, and it doesn’t take a second for Sehun to follow, all eye smiles and curved lips.
And-- what do you know?-- human Sehun has teeth.