SOCIALIZATION for POLLUTEDRAIN
For: pollutedrain
Title: Socialization
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/Kai
Rating: PG-13
Length: 8,613 words
Summary: They were neighbors, and they were strangers, and it took an abandoned puppy to change that.
At the very least it wasn’t raining, Chanyeol was going to give the weather that. It was muggy and warm even for as late as it was, but he was able to walk down just feeling like he was surrounded by wet instead of actually getting drenched. If it had been raining, he’d probably have been hurrying, and the sound of the traffic, the movement of people, it would have hidden the sound that had him stopping, looking to his right and waiting.
He waited a moment, his legs already starting to move forward when here it was again. There was a scratching, a movement, and for a second Chanyeol was pretty sure it was a rat and was about to really keep going. But that sound, that was no rat. It was a dog, and he was pretty sure of that, so sure he was still ready to run when he leaned toward the box sitting just off of the sidewalk and then walked closer when he really couldn’t see. He realized “dog” was too glorified for the squirming puppy that stared up at him.
He was pretty sure the pup’s fur was golden, near as he could tell from the smeared dirt and way grosser things. What he did know was there were a pair of floppy ears, and brown eyes, with a little white blaze between them. The puppy looked up at him and the sound it made was a whimper, tail thumping once against the box like it hoped it had a reason to do it again.
“Who left you here, kid?” Chanyeol asked, wanting to pet one of those ears and not even daring until he knew if the dog wanted to chew him into hamburger. Even the sweetest looking dogs, he couldn’t tell. He dangled his fingers, letting the puppy sniff at them, almost jolting but keeping still as a warm pink tongue swept against his knuckles. It was like they were feeling each other out, and he rubbed a fingertip along the side of the puppy’s muzzle, by its eyes, the top of its head. The puppy leaned into his hand like it wanted to fall into that touch and Chanyeol hissed. “Who would leave a sweet dog like you? So you won’t bite. No shelter’s open this late and you can’t stay here.”
Someone would pick the dog up, let it loose, who knew. But he didn’t have anything for a dog, and there was a really ripe stink about the box of no fault of the dog’s own, being left there by itself. A girl, Chanyeol saw, when she flopped over and tried to hide her head against the box corner, like she was scared almost, or resigned to being left alone.
“I’ll be right back,” Chanyeol promised, and darted around the corner into the convenience store. He bought anything, the biggest thing he found a large bag of chips, and a newspaper. That gave him paper and a plastic shield, and he was both relieved and he didn’t know what when the puppy was still there when he got back. The paper ended up being enough to wrap her in, hauling her and the horrible smell into his arms and praying no one called the cops on him as he hauled her and her poking little head down the sidewalk and into the thankfully empty elevator. He was going to just have to hope that the air cleared out before anyone else got in it. She was snorting softly with every step he took, as he opened his apartment door and got them both inside. There wasn’t even really any choice, taking her straight to the bathtub. He’d bleach it out after, or something, but she couldn’t just be left like that. And she was shaking, looking up at him like he was some abominable snowman when he let her down on the tub floor and took away the filthy papers he’d wrapped her in. It gave him a chance to grab kitchen gloves and shampoo, and then he was really ready.
Even the water scared her when he turned on the faucet, getting it warm, but not too warm as he took down the handheld shower head, starting at her tail and watching her jolt as she turned toward it, thrusting her head at it.
“Hey, it’s just water. You need it, I promise,” Chanyeol told her. He stroked her with a hand, watching dirt and filth start to flow away as she leaned into the touch and started to enjoy the warm water. He scrubbed her back, her tail, her belly and paws, and she tried to lick at the water spray, pawing at his gloved hands. He carefully worked a bit of the shampoo into her coat and down her legs, until he figured it was as good as he could do. With the water off, he leaned over, and took a whiff, and could only smell shampoo and water, and that was what he wanted.
“I think you’re good- Ugh,” he complained as she shook herself and water went flying all over. “No. Wait. Towel!”
He got her all wrapped up in the towel, gently drying her ears with it as she tried to smell his hand, his shirt, his face. She licked his cheek lavishly and Chanyeol laughed, cuddling her like he would any baby.
“You hungry?” he asked, and her tail beat inside of the blanket.
She was sweet, eating bits of his dinner out of his fingers and sniffing around his legs. She tried to lever herself over his leg as he sat on the floor, nosing at his plate and resting heavy against his belly. He just couldn’t imagine what would make someone drop off a sweet dog like her. She hadn’t growled once, even when he’d been subjecting her to the bath, and seemed deliriously happy just to be around him. The food probably didn’t hurt. But leftover bits of chicken wasn’t going to be enough, even if she had to go to a shelter, so he knew he couldn’t just sit there and play with her. The bathroom was the safest place to leave her while he ran out for supplies so she could eat real food meant for dogs, and have something to pee on. But when he put her gently down on the bathroom floor, she started to romp right after him, not understanding why he kept trying to shoo her back. But the closed door, that she got, an immediate whine sounding as the door firmly separated them.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back, I swear. Be a good girl. I’ll be right back.”
Chanyeol threw the strap of his bag over his head and went out his apartment door before the mournful whines could get to him any more. He’d get supplies, as quick as he could.
Finding the nearest store with pet supplies more abundant than a measly supply of dog food had been a challenge, but he’d managed. Getting himself home with what he’d bought, between the pee pads, the kibble, the bowls and leash, and a couple of things for her to chew on, and the cutest bed he’d been able to find, and-
He actually staggered out of the elevator, trying not to drop the kibble that was trying to slide down between his arm and his hip.
“Hey, you need help?”
Chanyeol almost yipped, but hands grabbed the bag before it could slip completely out, hoisting it. Next door neighbor, Chanyeol realized. He fished for a name for a second. Jongin.
“Thank you! I was thinking I was going to be out here with a dustpan sweeping it up,” Chanyeol said, laughing as Jongin got the small, but not light, bag situated in his own arms.
“I had one break open on me once,” Jongin said, wrinkling his nose. “The dogs thought it was Christmas, though. I didn’t know you had a dog?”
“I…don’t?” Chanyeol said. And then clarified, when Jongin frowned at him. “I found a dog in a box just down the street, so I brought her home. There wasn’t anywhere to take her, and she needed stuff, so I ran out to get it.”
Maybe too much stuff. Maybe. But at least he got waddled all the way to his door, and with the dog food in Jongin’s arm, he keyed in his code and got the door open.
“What kind of dog is she?” Jongin asked and just looked at him while Chanyeol stared back blankly.
“A dog?” Chanyeol offered tentatively, and Jongin laughed. Oh. “Want to meet her?”
Because that sounded like the best plan in the world. His sister would laugh and his parents would question his capabilities, so having an impartial party was where it was at. Jongin could at least help him figure out if he needed to get her to a vet or to shelter or if she was going to grow up to be bigger than he was, or…
They were just things he worried about, that was all.
He didn’t actually think about the state of the apartment until he was leading Jongin into it, and then they were skirting his laundry basket (clean!) and the small wall of books he’d started like it was going to keep the dog where he needed her to stay. But he soldiered on, dropping his loot and getting the bag from Jongin, too, as he tried not to apologize for imaginary messiness. The high pitched bark on their entrance became intense whining and pawing at the door until Chanyeol turned the knob and pushed the bathroom door in.
“Hey, baby!” he crooned, and she was out like a rocket, jumping up against his arms as he crouched and finally sat so she could all but crawl up his body, her head writhing against his neck as he lifted her and her swishing tail. “Hey, it’s okay.”
He laughed, uncomfortable with her frantic licking, and belatedly remembering Jongin was there.
“How long have you had her again?”
“A couple of hours?” Chanyeol said, moving her down from his neck so she didn’t wear his skin off. “Hey, we have company.”
“She really took to you,” Jongin said, and held out his hand so it could be sniffed, petting the silky-soft ears like Chanyeol had wanted to do from the very start. And oh, she followed that, squirming to get a better scent.
“Ah, she smells the food on your hands,” Chanyeol laughed, as she flopped across Chanyeol’s thigh and leaned into Jongin’s scratching fingers. “I gave her a little of my dinner. I know dogs aren’t supposed to have table scraps but I didn’t want her to be hungry that long.”
She looked like a little golden dandelion weed, trotting to the pile of supplies and sniffing at it and around the bag of dog food specifically.
“I should,” Chanyeol said, and gestured, standing and rinsing out the metal bowl he’d gotten for her to eat out of, and hauling up the bag of dog food so it could be opened. Her tail was whipping around so fast, smacking against his leg just before he got the bowl down. She nearly upended it, starting to bolt the food down as she half climbed into the bowl with it.
“Hey, easy. It’s not going away,” Chanyeol said, stroking down her back. “It’s obvious she’s not a stray. She knows what it means for someone to feed her.”
Jongin nodded, watching her eat, too. “I think so, too. She’s pretty pudgy, too, so she hasn’t been fighting for food for long. And she’s not afraid of people, especially the way she took to you.”
“Why not take her to a shelter, or give her away?” Chanyeol asked, frowning at the thought of her having to spend more nights alone in the box, hungry, cold, scared. Or if she’d been found by someone mean, or someone who just dumped her out and let her scavenge.
“People don’t think about the consequences,” Jongin said, blunt. “She’ll need shots and a checkup. And spaying, at some point. Good thing they allow dogs here. A really good thing, the way you look at her.”
“I didn’t say I was keeping her,” Chanyeol grumbled.
Jongin somehow had a sixth sense and unearthed the shiny blue collar he’d bought for her.
“It was on sale?” Chanyeol said, grinning hopefully.
In retrospect he was glad Jongin hadn’t just chucked it at his head.
“It’d be nice having someone to come home to,” Chanyeol said. “I mean. As long as she doesn’t grow up to be a horse, and eat the apartment or pee everywhere.”
Jongin laughed a little, hauling her into his lap and stroking her since she’d wandered from the remnants of her food.
“So what are you going to call her?”
She looked at him like she knew he was thinking about it, and he stared back, his brain going blank.
“Lily,” Chanyeol said, trying it out loud for the first time since it had started dancing around in his head.
Her tail thumped as she stared at him, and Chanyeol thought that was acceptance itself.
“It suits her,” Jongin declared, and there it was done, settled. He had a dog. He had a really, really big responsibility that was dancing across the floor. “You'll probably want to take her out again tonight, see if she'll go outside for you.”
“Oh yeah. A little more work than a cat. Huh, Lily?” Lily looked up from where she was trying to lay waste to his sock and foot, responding more to the tone than her new name. “You have dogs?”
“They live with my parents now,” Jongin said, flicking his fingers idly at Lily’s wagging tail as it beat against him. “Between school and work, they were starting to go a little stir crazy, and they’re happy with my parents now, so I don’t want to move them again.”
“I’d offer you this one, but I think I’m stuck,” Chanyeol laughed, and Jongin snorted.
“That’s one way of putting it. I should get back, though. If you need anything, just knock if I'm home. And buy baggies.”
He knew Jongin was laughing at him when he left. But Jongin had said a very polite goodbye to Lily, who looked so sweet. Deceptively so. He couldn’t trust those puppy eyes, no way.
It turned out that human shampoo was not the ideal thing for dogs. It had required a second trip to a store with even more supplies. She didn’t need it yet, but he figured it was better to have it than not. At least Lily hadn’t had fleas, there was that. And a trip to the vet turned up no microchips, no health problems, and a nice big bill for Chanyeol to go home with. Pets cost money, his mother said, which Chanyeol knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her how much, either. It was his money, and Lily was his, officially. She had a collar and a tag and everything that said so.
It was fun having someone else in the apartment that wasn’t him. Lily followed him around with her little tapping nails and panted breaths and flopping tongue. She sniffed around his feet, along the cupboards, at the toilet seat, his laundry basket, under the front door, his game consoles, piles of books, each and every chair leg, all the while her tail either lazily wagging or stock still in concentration before he shooed her away.
She draped herself over his feet while he was watching TV like some kind of furry foot warmer, snorting into his ankle or trying to get her paws up onto the cushion so she could root into his crotch with her nose, that or put her paws all over it, and pant happily while he scratched her neck or rubbed her belly.
“You’re so cute,” he said, and she looked at him not understanding a word but maybe understanding him a little as her tail thumped. “Lily, Lily, cute and tiny.”
She all but tumbled into her bed that he’d put beside his, stepping all over it and sprawling with the shirt he’d stuck in there for her. He leaned over the edge of his mattress and rubbed his fingertips over the soft fur on the top of her head.
“You going to sleep okay down there? I guess you have to because you can’t sleep up here. Time for bed, my girl.”
He’d accidentally kick her off or something, and that would be worse than just having her sleep on the floor in the first place. She whimpered for a while, when he rolled back onto the bed. He tried to stay quiet, figuring if he talked to her it’d just make her try to get to him. It had to be done. She had to get used to it. But the third night she quieted before he fell asleep, and that was a relief.
Lily’s tail flew like a little flag as they walked down the hall toward the elevator, but it really began to whip as the doors slid open and Jongin started to make his way out.
“Hey!” Jongin said, and his greeting was for the puppy, not Chanyeol, and Chanyeol wasn’t even offended. He knew how it was. “How are you getting along?”
Okay, and that was for him. “Good! Vet says she’s doing good. We’re just going down for an after-work bathroom break. She’s been doing pretty good with that.”
Yep, bathroom habits of his dog, he discussed those with hot guys all the time. But she had been, either using the pee pads or waiting until they hit the grass. And boy, he did have baggies handy in case.
Lily wound herself and her leash around Jongin’s leg.
“Is she inviting me along?” Jongin asked, trying to disentangle himself.
“She could be,” Chanyeol reasoned. “But only if you have time to hang out with a cute girl in the park.”
“And what does that make you?”
“Her chauffeur,” Chanyeol said, waggling the leash.
Jongin burst out into laughter which had Chanyeol grinning back at him. Lily got all the cute guys, that was for sure. Him, Jongin. Everyone dropped like flies in her wake.
“Yeah, I have time,” Jongin said, and he was the one who pushed the button so the elevator doors opened again, taking them down. Chanyeol hauled Lily up so they could cross the street, but once in the park, she was as free as the leash would let her be and she head-butted the grass as Chanyeol tossed down a tennis ball for her to wallow all over.
“Is it normal to feel guilty because your dog wants to be with you even when you’re sleeping?” Chanyeol wondered out loud.
Jongin laughed, and it wasn’t even a kind laugh, but more like he was laughing blatantly at Chanyeol. “Yeah, that’s normal. Some dogs get better at it than others, especially if they can’t physically propel themselves onto the bed.”
Oh. Yeah. Nothing like a thirty pound rocket landing on a leg in the middle of the night, or however big she was going to get. That could be the downside of having a cat. Or the upside, he wasn’t sure.
“She just looks so cute and sad and all alone.”
“They’re cute so we take care of them, and not leave them to fend for themselves,” Jongin said. But he was just as quick to crouch down and ruffle his hands all over Lily’s back and sides when she tumbled at his feet. There was some definite goo-goo baby talk going on there, though Chanyeol couldn’t make it out and Lily was rapt, staring at Jongin’s face like he was made of cheese.
It was a nice face.
“I guess I wouldn’t mind her sleeping in bed with me, but I’m afraid she’d fall off, or I’d knock her off.”
Jongin looked up at him. “Either you sleep alone a lot, or the people you sleep with don’t mind landing on the floor in the middle of the night.”
Chanyeol scoffed, amused more than anything. “It’s a little different with a person than a puppy. Besides, they can kick back if they need to.”
Not that there’d been anyone recently. Closest he’d gotten to a kiss was a near-miss with a puppy tongue, and who knew where that had been.
“Do you snore, too?”
“Not that I’ve ever been told,” Chanyeol chirped back, and Lily hopped onto her feet, dashing away to the end of the leash to stare at something distant that neither of them had heard.
She mostly rolled over the tennis ball that Jongin picked up, running after it and then falling on it, chewing at it in lieu of trying to pick it up or return it. Of course, when that got old, she was perfectly happy to haul around a broken leaf or chew on some grass, or snort as dust got in her nose. She did squat finally, to his relief, and then trotted right over when Jongin called for her.
She watched Jongin so politely when he told her to sit, pushed on her butt, praised her like she was the queen when she blinked up at him and ate the treats that Chanyeol handed Jongin to give to her.
“It takes a while to make the connection,” Jongin said. But it was worth it when it happened. Obedience wasn’t something that was just something that happened like magic, and with an exuberant and silly puppy, even less.
“How smart do you think she is?” Chanyeol wondered.
“Might not get a Ph.D. but I think she’ll graduate,” Jongin said, chuckling. “She’s eager to please, so that’s part of it.”
“That’s why there’s not so many obedient cats, huh?”
And that made Jongin laugh out loud, startling a pigeon, and making Lily look up from where she’d flopped over in hopes of belly rubs. It was a lot of adventure for one day, and Chanyeol carried her with them across the street, and into the elevator that went up to their floor. She nuzzled against the buttons of his shirt and he watched the lights flash.
“I haven’t actually kicked someone out of bed,” Chanyeol said. It wasn’t like Jongin needed to know, it was just something he didn’t want to leave misconceptions about, that was all.
Jongin’s lips twitched though, just before the elevator dinged to indicate its arrival to their floor. “Good to know.”
“Thanks for going to the park with us. Say thanks, Lily. Thank you,” Chanyeol said, waving one of Lily’s paws.
“Any time,” Jongin said, and did some kind of human-to-canine fist bump with the dog.
He had to do something more than just thanks, and that was what Chanyeol was thinking anyway, as he put Lily down inside the apartment door, unhooked her leash, and watched her sashay in like she owned the place. Sure, it was fun to go out and play with a puppy, but he was really helping Chanyeol out and giving him some confidence he didn’t have already. Sure, he was new to having a dog, but they were going to figure out each other.
Chanyeol discovered that he had a second doorbell, one that one moment was staring at him as he was eating, and then next scrambling to her feet and barking when the chime sounded, looking around like there was some kind of magic going on until she beelined for the door and whatever sound she could hear on the other side of it.
“Who is it? Huh?” Chanyeol asked. Though, the actual options were few. A quick glance at the screen told him exactly and he used his foot to hold Lily back as he got the door open. And he hoped his voice wasn’t too off when he grinned at Jongin. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Jongin said, and looked down, all curious as Chanyeol was trying his best to keep Lily back. “You know, I only hear a faint bark down and again from her. The walls must be good.”
“Good,” Chanyeol said, and couldn’t even imagine if all of his neighbors hated him because of a rambunctious dog. “Though, at least she hasn’t barked much.”
“Some never stop,” Jongin said, shaking his head. And he held out a book, before Chanyeol could get around to wondering why exactly Jongin had shown up in the middle of his dinner. “I got this book on training for my parents and saw it when I was over there today. I thought if you wanted to borrow it, it might help?”
He wasn’t some kind of training master. Lily sat sometimes when Chanyeol said to sit, but it was random enough to where he wasn’t sure if she was just sitting to be sitting and not because he was telling her to.
“Cool,” he said, biting on the ends of his half-forgotten chopsticks as he looked through it. And then, he realized himself. “Oh! Hey, I have extra food, if you want to hang here for a while?”
Jongin actually sniffed the air, like he was cautious of whatever food Chanyeol might’ve been offering. But he saw the logo on the bag and his eyes lit up. Chanyeol made immediate note of that. Sure, he’d been planning to take some for lunch the next day but he’d just do something else. It got him two things, another brain for training, and Jongin’s company. And he hadn’t even had to go asking for it, which had been half the battle. He was going to get seen through pretty quickly if he just kept inviting Jongin down to the park with them, but he wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.
Jongin got his own plate, his own drink, a cushion to sit on at the table. He also got a Lily crawling into his lap and sniffing around for any missing crumbs. She flopped down, her head on Jongin’s knee, sighing heavily as she looked between them.
“Your life is so hard,” Chanyeol commiserated with her, and her tail thumped gleefully. “Maybe you could bring your dogs one day, have a play date in the park?”
“It’d be good to get her socialized, and they’re friendly,” Jongin agreed, running a knuckle down her spine. He just barely got his hand up before she could lunge to lick at it. “Ah, dog! Keeping them all together doing one thing is the hardest part.”
Chanyeol was interested to see what kind of dogs Jongin had, interested to watch him take so much enjoyment in the chicken that Chanyeol had offered, to watch him laugh when Chanyeol tried to be funny on purpose.
“We barely even met each other before Lily,” Chanyeol said. “I carried your garbage out once? I’ve been here eight months…?”
“Ten,” Jongin said. “Though your hair was kind of strange when you did move in? I heard one of the older ladies wonder if you were going to cause trouble and why the landlord accepted you.”
Chanyeol laughed loudly at that, sinking back against the couch as Lily scrambled to him to find out what was up.
“That hair was great! Or, it was supposed to be. I was so excited, and my sister was telling me not to, but I didn’t listen. A theme,” Chanyeol said, still chuckling.
“Does she think you shouldn’t have kept Lily?”
“She told me Lily would tie me down, and that if it was going to make me responsible, maybe it was a good thing. It’s not like I disappeared for days at a time anyway, but try telling your family that.”
“Oh, I have sisters, believe me, I know,” Jongin said, and he laughed, his face full of amusement at their shared pain. And okay, so he wasn’t just their nice guy neighbor. And he definitely wasn’t someone Chanyeol just wanted to be buddies with. He felt kind of guilty that he’d stolen Jongin from his evening when he’d just been doing Chanyeol a favor in dropping off the book, but Chanyeol had fed him, and Lily had almost been seeming to sit on command by the time that Jongin had looked at his phone and decided he needed to go. Trying to thank Jongin at the same time as Jongin was trying to thank him kind of felt like trying to shove his feet into too-small of slippers, something that didn’t go as smoothly as he hoped. It had ended with awkward laughter, and Jongin’s eyes flickering back up when Chanyeol had told him goodnight. And Chanyeol had that sort of zipping energy in his limbs, something he hadn’t felt in a while, something that wasn’t easily dismissed or explained away.
It seemed quieter after Jongin was gone, even if Lily followed him as he paced and then settled right against him when he finally forced himself to sit. She just couldn’t talk back, was the problem, and he had always been hungry for that. It was a little surprising that he’d lived alone as long as he had, but he’d always had friends to go out with or invade, so that helped.
“I should invite everyone over to meet you,” he said, ruffling at Lily’s fur until she rolled over onto the couch beside him. “You’ll like them. Maybe I could invite Jongin. If they like him…?”
And he hesitated. Talking about kicking people out of bed was one thing, and Jongin showing up with a book, agreeing to go to the park with them and being a nice guy wasn’t a whole lot to go on.
“What do you think of him? Well, sure you like everyone,” Chanyeol told her, and chuckled as she tried to chew on his pocket. “But he’s nice. He likes dogs. He’s hot. Yes, he’s hot.”
And he repeated that because Lily looked up at him with an adorable confused expression like she couldn’t believe what he’d just said. But then she flopped over, paws in the air as Chanyeol scrubbed at whatever itchy spot she had.
“We could date him. We could take him for walks, and cuddle him. He’d probably like kisses,” Chanyeol mused. “He likes yours. Not those kind of kisses.”
Chanyeol loudly kissed her belly, and she scrambled up onto all four paws and danced after him as he walked to the kitchen for water. He obliged her with a few drops of water off his fingertips, not like her own water wasn’t sitting right there.
“So, it’s agreed, then?” he asked Lily. “We’ll see if he wants us.”
Who wouldn’t.
It was either leap right in or be subtle, and subtle wasn’t part of Chanyeol’s genetic makeup. Even if he couldn’t think up a good reason to invite Jongin in - since he could show how Lily was sitting better right out there in the hallway - he still got to lean against the wall and talk to Jongin when they happened to pass each other. Jongin wasn’t as obvious and he didn’t actually get to finagle an invitation into Jongin’s apartment but Jongin still knew he was there, and didn’t run away. And it wasn’t even on Chanyeol’s suggestion, when Jongin caught him one evening.
“You home tomorrow?”
Lily strained to have her head become one with Jongin’s knee and Chanyeol blinked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so?”
“I was going to bring my dogs - my parents’ dogs, whatever - over. We can hit the park with all of them if you want?”
That idea took off like wildfire, and he nearly lifted both his arms to cheer. “Oh, yeah! We’re all about the park. Right, Lily? Huh? Well, she would be, if she knew what “park” meant yet.”
And if she wasn’t so focused on getting Jongin’s attention.
But it was easy enough to set a time, getting his fingers on Jongin’s arm, trying to flirt without stumbling over himself. But he knew how Lily felt when she stared after Jongin when they got into their own apartment.
The problem with having four dogs with four leashes was that there were only two humans and four hands to go around. They needed another two hands at least, maybe four, because as the dogs milled and darted and jumped over each other, getting the leashes untangled was almost impossible. Chanyeol yelped and made a grab for a leash he was untangling, only to see Lily crawl under Monggu’s belly, and then her rainbow-colored leash was all tangled up in their legs as well as-
“You’re fighting a losing battle,” Jongin advised him. Apparently it was a lesson learned from having three rambunctious dogs. Cute ones, though, and ones Lily took to after a little bit of cowering and then sniffing and licking. She was a bright little fuzzball weaving between them, getting them to romp with her even if they did create some kind of twisting puzzle of leashes. So Chanyeol gave up until one of them got hopelessly tangled by the legs or they couldn’t move because the leashes were all woven.
“Sit,” Jongin told them, and two butts went down. Lily, who had her mouth full of a tail not her own, ignored Jongin, and so did the bite-ee.
“Lily,” Chanyeol said, and at the sound of his voice, she turned. “Sit.”
It seemed to turn in her head a few times before it clicked, and she sat, tail sweeping in the grass as she looked up at him in doggy adoration.
“That’s good,” Jongin said, and Chanyeol about burst with pride. Of course, two seconds later Lily was on her feet and bowling over everything in her vicinity, but it was progress.
They kept swapping leashes, hand to hand, brushing fingers and not being left out of the leash dance as dogs darted around their legs, effectively hobbling them together. Of course there were four little panting, innocent faces.
“I think they’re planning to make a break for it,” Chanyeol said as they tried to get either the dog to move around their legs or the leash itself.
“Good thing these leashes aren’t breakaway. We’d be left here falling over as we tried to run after them.”
“How good are you at three legged races?” Chanyeol wondered, and it wasn’t like it was a bad thing to have Jongin that close. He watched the way that Jongin talked to the dogs, how he touched them, held them. He was also bemused when Jongin left him with three of the dogs and disappeared. All Chanyeol could do was flop over in the grass and let the dogs climb over him and each other and wait. It wasn’t like Jongin wasn’t going to come back, just leaving Chanyeol with his dogs for all of eternity.
“Did you die?” Jongin asked, and Chanyeol peered up at him.
Well, he had a slightly chubby poodle making a home on his stomach, so he wasn’t sure.
“That depends,” Chanyeol said, wary. But his eyes lit as Jongin held out what was quite obviously an ice cream. “Food! Hey!”
He swiped at it, and Jongin pulled it back, laughing. But it gave Chanyeol the opportunity to sit up and get the dogs re-arranged. They got to sit on a bench, so there weren’t extra tongues trying to hone in.
“What would you normally be doing on a day like this?” Jongin asked.
Chanyeol leaned back, considering the ice cream in his hands. “Calling people to see if anyone is free to hang out, or. I don’t know. Going to see a movie, or picking at music or something. I like going and hanging out with people when I can though.”
“Are they better behaved than these guys?”
They had a little semi-circle of rapt dogs, waiting for handouts. Two paws were on the bench edge, and three of them were sitting like being good was going to get them what they wanted. Being chocolate, it wasn’t, but there wasn’t any way they could’ve known that.
“It depends,” Chanyeol said, totally maligning his friends to Jongin’s amusement. No need to bring up he was subtly plotting getting Jongin to meet them, though he was pretty sure he wanted Jongin to get to know him better first. Then he could shock and awe everyone with his hot neighbor that kind of dug him and his cute dog. Even more so since three seconds later Jongin was smirking and pointing beside his own mouth. Yes, something Chanyeol wanted, but-
“Saving some for later?” Jongin teased.
Oh. He swiped with the back of his hand, sheepish.
“I know how I’m going to do this,” Chanyeol told Lily, as soon as they were home. She got a bath, whining like he was trying to murder her, and Chanyeol had a new idea on how he was going to make sure the next time he went somewhere with Jongin, that he’d have a chance that wouldn’t be as neighbors.
It started with an envelope, a piece of a paper, a folded piece of money. He considered putting Jongin’s name on the outside, and decided against it. He also decided against something cheesy like putting Lily’s paw print seal of approval on there. Whatever happened, even though Lily was always going to be a factor, it was going to be between him and Jongin to make it happen. So, Chanyeol made it happen, walking around with the letter in his pocket until he caught Jongin coming back from somewhere. Lily obliged him by taking the envelope from him, and he nudged her along. Best intentions aside, it eventually got spat out onto the floor and abandoned just short of Jongin.
“Sorry, that’s for you,” Chanyeol said, making for it at the same time that Jongin did. Jongin beat him to it, standing up as Chanyeol’s face started to heat a bit.
“What’s this?” Jongin asked, turning the envelope over.
“Ah, it’s just something. For the ice cream,” Chanyeol stumbled out, because surely it was too much to ask for his brain to be on point.
“Oh, you didn’t have to pay me back for that. I thought it was some kind of love note,” Jongin joked, tucking the envelope away. “Thanks, though.”
Lily sat at their feet, staring up at Chanyeol and he winked at her. He had it, totally.
“Asking someone out with a dog’s help would be cute,” Chanyeol said. “Though I can probably manage okay on my own.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. How does grabbing lunch together tomorrow sound?”
“Is Lily grabbing it from us, or…?” Jongin teased.
“She can tag along if she likes, though I was hoping for you and me.”
Though they both laughed, Jongin said the truth. “Like she’d say no.”
Chanyeol cleared his throat, trying for his best smile. Or maybe, the only smile he could get right then. “Are you going to?”
“Who’s paying?”
It startled the awkward out of him, letting him puff out his chest a bit and really see how Jongin was teasing him, how he was leaning in, how it really looked like he wasn’t going to tell Chanyeol no.
“Since I asked,” Chanyeol said, and let that be his explanation. He wasn’t a cheap date. He took in the open button at Jongin’s collar, the dark band he wore at his wrist, the quirk of his mouth.
“Then I guess since you asked, I don’t have anything better to do. You picking me up?”
“I suppose walking all the way down the hall is something I can do.”
Jongin let him reach out and jab him in the shoulder for it, and let him stand there for another twenty minutes even though he wanted to dance around inside while they discussed the finer points of restaurants and what they liked eating best, and where they had and hadn’t been. Chanyeol scooped Lily up just to have something to do with his hands, and she fell asleep while they talked, a comforting weight as he hitched out a laugh.
“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, the grin all but bursting out of him.
“Yeah,” Jongin said, and man, his smile was gorgeous.
Chanyeol had been on a number of first dates, though it was the first one where he was leaving with a neighbor after he’d very faithfully knocked on Jongin’s door to greet him. It was just the two of them, Lily closed up with her toys to wait, and it was easier. She could have been a crutch, too easy to talk to her, or about her, than to each other, learning about each other. He had so many questions, what all Jongin liked to do, what kind of movies he liked, had he enjoyed school, where did he want to go on vacation. He knew Jongin had sisters, and that his parents were alive, and that he loved dogs and chicken, though in vastly different ways.
But there wasn’t chicken on their date, just curry and rice and egg, and an endless pot of tea as they hunkered down in a corner.
“This was the first place I ate in the neighborhood when I moved in,” Chanyeol said. It was a place that Jongin hadn’t been to, so it was something that Chanyeol was able to introduce him to. “I come here when I can’t think of anything else I want more.”
Chanyeol had to scrub his palms a bit, nerves he hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t like the food or the restaurant was going to make or break things, but it was his own choice and one he was offering.
“Is it okay?” he asked, almost wiggling forward in his seat after Jongin had taken a few bites.
Was the food okay, was he okay, was he having fun, was the sky still blue. If he slid forward any more he could’ve bumped knees with Jongin, and as it was, Jongin took another very deliberate bite.
“I’d eat here again,” Jongin said.
Maybe even with Chanyeol, and that was enough to put a grin on his face. It wasn’t like he needed a boost to his appetite anyway, but knowing that Jongin liked what was in front of him seemed to make the food just that much more appealing.
“I have a list of questions,” Chanyeol confessed. “Not an actual list, but in my head. I actually looked online.”
“What to ask on a first date, a guide of general questions,” Jongin said. “Did you see the one that had people wearing flower crowns?”
“I- Wait, you looked, too?”
There was a very interesting spot on Chanyeol’s collar it seemed, and Chanyeol caught one of Jongin’s ankles between his.
“First question,” Jongin said, prompting him with a gesture from his spoon.
“Morning person?” Chanyeol asked.
Jongin looked properly horrified.
One point for Jongin, among all the other points he already had.
They could’ve just walked right back to the apartment after eating, but it was at most a two minute walk, and the park was full of a whole bunch of other, different memories. Chanyeol wasn’t really ready for it to be over, even if they’d sat until the tea got cold, and he didn’t want to invite Jongin up and into his apartment like he expected Jongin to put out because Chanyeol bought him some rice. That had to happen because Jongin was into Chanyeol’s face at the very least.
“So after all this time and you couldn’t resist a man with a dog?” Chanyeol asked, eyeing Jongin with speculation.
Jongin looked him over. “Something like that.”
That had him leaning in. “Really?”
“You were gentle with her. Your hair wasn’t so weird any more.” And Jongin chuckled as Chanyeol’s mouth bowed into a pout. “You have a nice voice.”
Well. That had him preening. “I like your voice, too.”
And his hands and his laugh and a bunch of other things. It wasn’t just the dog, though she’d been a catalyst that maybe they’d needed. Maybe it would’ve happened naturally anyway, that Chanyeol would have looked up one day in the hall and been distracted by Jongin’s face and found a reason to talk to him. Maybe it would’ve taken another few months, or maybe one of them would’ve moved before that happened. He didn’t know why the thought of reaching for Jongin’s hand made his fingers curl in worry, but his second thought, making for Jongin’s shoulder earned him a glance, and it was on an exhale that Jongin pressed up against his side. An arm curved around his back, his waist, and it was pretty much all he could do right then not to turn and just fold Jongin right in and do some kind of happy dance. That probably would’ve been too much, too embarrassing, but it didn’t stop him from wanting.
He was an aggressive cuddler. Maybe he should’ve made a disclaimer about that. And his friends were, well. He imagined their faces when he produced Jongin. Hot neighbor! Look at lucky him!
“I can almost hear you thinking,” Jongin interrupted him.
Chanyeol gaped, and fished around for anything he could say to that that even made sense. “I was thinking that one day I want to introduce you to my friends,” he said, and felt a bit shy even to say it. “I mean, not right away. Just.”
“Maybe I want to introduce you to my friends first,” Jongin said, and it was nearly a challenge, like he was going to fight Chanyeol on it.
“Oh. O-okay?”
Jongin burst out laughing, making them stagger a couple of steps as they walked and he was struck by the enthusiasm for the idea.
“Hey, you want to introduce me to your friends!”
“You met my dogs already, so,” Jongin said, like that was some kind of test, or something. “And I’d get to show you off.”
Chanyeol wondered how many times he was going to get thrown off stride, clearing his throat about to sail right along at the pleasant thought of it.
“You think they’ll like me?” It was a thoughtful sound, the way that Jongin stopped them both, the way he planted himself in front of Chanyeol and squinted at him. He wanted to poke Jongin’s stomach or make light of it, or pretty much anything, and he was just stuck and barely remembering to breathe when he remembered the rest of his tease. “I’m not going to have a puppy to help me. Though. There’s you.”
“There’s me,” Jongin agreed.
Not just him. Both of them. He had Jongin there, mostly alone, right in front of him. It wasn’t the first time he had the thought that he wanted to kiss Jongin, but it was the first time he really had the chance to try. His hand was on Jongin’s ribs, not really pulling him in but holding him, and for a brief moment, he almost thought to ask, to wonder out loud, except that Jongin was too close to wonder. Jongin was gripping his shoulder and pulling him in. They didn’t have to wonder who was first there, who was most eager, a chill down his spine as Jongin almost hummed against his mouth, and kissed him again.
“Now it’s a real date,” and thus spoke Jongin to Chanyeol’s raised eyebrows.
Though he wondered when the second date started when the first didn’t truly end.
Days flowed in little meetings, conversations in the hallway, in the elevator, kisses traded in passing as Jongin carried home food one night, or woke Chanyeol from too-long naps so that Lily wouldn’t be forgotten in her need to go outside. That was nice, too, because if he knew he’d be home late, Jongin took Lily out, and if Chanyeol could rouse Jongin from bed, they got to huddle together in the chilling morning air as Lily sniffed around before finally getting around to doing her business.
“Do they make litter boxes for dogs? They should,” Chanyeol said, his teeth nearly chattering as Jongin blew into his hands.
“But then she wouldn’t get to sniff at every other dog’s pee, and you’d never leave the apartment,” Jongin observed.
Which totally wasn’t true, except that it sort of was.
“Thank you for suffering with me,” Chanyeol said, all politeness, though the way Jongin was eyeing him, Chanyeol was already preparing himself for making it up to him. Having their separate places allowed for alone time, a thing Jongin appreciated, but it also allowed for easy access. Very, very appreciated.
Although, there were always revelations. Weeks into the relationship, a month, two, Chanyeol was still discovering little things. Some good. Some questionable. Some devious. Jongin, it seemed, had a sticky hand for sweaters. Especially as it got colder, and they were in and out of the building taking Lily on walks, it seemed like he found himself hunting for clothes more often than not. He didn’t notice when they showed up, thinking he’d just buried them in the laundry, but he really did notice when his own favorite sweater was missing a week and turned up on Jongin while Jongin was lounging unassuming on Chanyeol’s couch. With Chanyeol’s dog no less. Accessory to a crime.
“You’re wearing my clothes,” Chanyeol said, and it was no secret he was into that, but more importantly, “You’ve been stealing my clothes.”
“Sweaters?” Jongin corrected, like that was a different kind of thing altogether. “You have nice ones!”
It wasn’t a ploy to get Chanyeol over to his apartment when he was missing something. Granted, half the time he did that, it ended up actually hidden in his own laundry and not hauled off for ransom by Jongin. He protested, but he didn’t really mind.
No one touched his hats, though. That really was something different.
One Year Later
Affection wasn’t even the right word for it. Swamping love, maybe, to find Jongin stretched out on his side on the floor with Lily sprawled out against him. Her nose was poked up against Jongin’s chin and her tail down by his hips. They were both asleep, and Chanyeol wondered if the frantic chasing of tennis balls in the park earlier had contributed to Lily’s exhaustion. Though even for a mostly-grown dog, she was pretty dead to the world. Jongin, on the other hand, Chanyeol knew he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. Though apparently it was time for another one.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Chanyeol said, nudging his fingers into Jongin’s ribs. “If you sleep there, you’ll be grumpy in the morning.”
Plus the bed would be cold.
Jongin just grunted at him, swiping an arm up. At first, Chanyeol thought to back him off, but he realized Jongin was trying to get a hand on him to drag him down with them. Well. He knelt, holding Jongin’s hand and nudging up behind him. Jongin’s eyes never opened but there was a telltale satisfied quirk to his mouth that Chanyeol kissed.
“I hope you don’t want me to carry you to bed,” Chanyeol said, and Jongin snorted, humming as Chanyeol nuzzled into his neck and held him, warm despite the cool of the floor. Lily twitched under their tangled hands, but was out almost instantaneously, her heart beating against Chanyeol’s fingers. A little while, then. He’d let Jongin wake up a bit, so he could go right back to sleep. But Chanyeol would hold them both until then.
Title: Socialization
Pairing(s): Chanyeol/Kai
Rating: PG-13
Length: 8,613 words
Summary: They were neighbors, and they were strangers, and it took an abandoned puppy to change that.
At the very least it wasn’t raining, Chanyeol was going to give the weather that. It was muggy and warm even for as late as it was, but he was able to walk down just feeling like he was surrounded by wet instead of actually getting drenched. If it had been raining, he’d probably have been hurrying, and the sound of the traffic, the movement of people, it would have hidden the sound that had him stopping, looking to his right and waiting.
He waited a moment, his legs already starting to move forward when here it was again. There was a scratching, a movement, and for a second Chanyeol was pretty sure it was a rat and was about to really keep going. But that sound, that was no rat. It was a dog, and he was pretty sure of that, so sure he was still ready to run when he leaned toward the box sitting just off of the sidewalk and then walked closer when he really couldn’t see. He realized “dog” was too glorified for the squirming puppy that stared up at him.
He was pretty sure the pup’s fur was golden, near as he could tell from the smeared dirt and way grosser things. What he did know was there were a pair of floppy ears, and brown eyes, with a little white blaze between them. The puppy looked up at him and the sound it made was a whimper, tail thumping once against the box like it hoped it had a reason to do it again.
“Who left you here, kid?” Chanyeol asked, wanting to pet one of those ears and not even daring until he knew if the dog wanted to chew him into hamburger. Even the sweetest looking dogs, he couldn’t tell. He dangled his fingers, letting the puppy sniff at them, almost jolting but keeping still as a warm pink tongue swept against his knuckles. It was like they were feeling each other out, and he rubbed a fingertip along the side of the puppy’s muzzle, by its eyes, the top of its head. The puppy leaned into his hand like it wanted to fall into that touch and Chanyeol hissed. “Who would leave a sweet dog like you? So you won’t bite. No shelter’s open this late and you can’t stay here.”
Someone would pick the dog up, let it loose, who knew. But he didn’t have anything for a dog, and there was a really ripe stink about the box of no fault of the dog’s own, being left there by itself. A girl, Chanyeol saw, when she flopped over and tried to hide her head against the box corner, like she was scared almost, or resigned to being left alone.
“I’ll be right back,” Chanyeol promised, and darted around the corner into the convenience store. He bought anything, the biggest thing he found a large bag of chips, and a newspaper. That gave him paper and a plastic shield, and he was both relieved and he didn’t know what when the puppy was still there when he got back. The paper ended up being enough to wrap her in, hauling her and the horrible smell into his arms and praying no one called the cops on him as he hauled her and her poking little head down the sidewalk and into the thankfully empty elevator. He was going to just have to hope that the air cleared out before anyone else got in it. She was snorting softly with every step he took, as he opened his apartment door and got them both inside. There wasn’t even really any choice, taking her straight to the bathtub. He’d bleach it out after, or something, but she couldn’t just be left like that. And she was shaking, looking up at him like he was some abominable snowman when he let her down on the tub floor and took away the filthy papers he’d wrapped her in. It gave him a chance to grab kitchen gloves and shampoo, and then he was really ready.
Even the water scared her when he turned on the faucet, getting it warm, but not too warm as he took down the handheld shower head, starting at her tail and watching her jolt as she turned toward it, thrusting her head at it.
“Hey, it’s just water. You need it, I promise,” Chanyeol told her. He stroked her with a hand, watching dirt and filth start to flow away as she leaned into the touch and started to enjoy the warm water. He scrubbed her back, her tail, her belly and paws, and she tried to lick at the water spray, pawing at his gloved hands. He carefully worked a bit of the shampoo into her coat and down her legs, until he figured it was as good as he could do. With the water off, he leaned over, and took a whiff, and could only smell shampoo and water, and that was what he wanted.
“I think you’re good- Ugh,” he complained as she shook herself and water went flying all over. “No. Wait. Towel!”
He got her all wrapped up in the towel, gently drying her ears with it as she tried to smell his hand, his shirt, his face. She licked his cheek lavishly and Chanyeol laughed, cuddling her like he would any baby.
“You hungry?” he asked, and her tail beat inside of the blanket.
She was sweet, eating bits of his dinner out of his fingers and sniffing around his legs. She tried to lever herself over his leg as he sat on the floor, nosing at his plate and resting heavy against his belly. He just couldn’t imagine what would make someone drop off a sweet dog like her. She hadn’t growled once, even when he’d been subjecting her to the bath, and seemed deliriously happy just to be around him. The food probably didn’t hurt. But leftover bits of chicken wasn’t going to be enough, even if she had to go to a shelter, so he knew he couldn’t just sit there and play with her. The bathroom was the safest place to leave her while he ran out for supplies so she could eat real food meant for dogs, and have something to pee on. But when he put her gently down on the bathroom floor, she started to romp right after him, not understanding why he kept trying to shoo her back. But the closed door, that she got, an immediate whine sounding as the door firmly separated them.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, I’ll be right back, I swear. Be a good girl. I’ll be right back.”
Chanyeol threw the strap of his bag over his head and went out his apartment door before the mournful whines could get to him any more. He’d get supplies, as quick as he could.
Finding the nearest store with pet supplies more abundant than a measly supply of dog food had been a challenge, but he’d managed. Getting himself home with what he’d bought, between the pee pads, the kibble, the bowls and leash, and a couple of things for her to chew on, and the cutest bed he’d been able to find, and-
He actually staggered out of the elevator, trying not to drop the kibble that was trying to slide down between his arm and his hip.
“Hey, you need help?”
Chanyeol almost yipped, but hands grabbed the bag before it could slip completely out, hoisting it. Next door neighbor, Chanyeol realized. He fished for a name for a second. Jongin.
“Thank you! I was thinking I was going to be out here with a dustpan sweeping it up,” Chanyeol said, laughing as Jongin got the small, but not light, bag situated in his own arms.
“I had one break open on me once,” Jongin said, wrinkling his nose. “The dogs thought it was Christmas, though. I didn’t know you had a dog?”
“I…don’t?” Chanyeol said. And then clarified, when Jongin frowned at him. “I found a dog in a box just down the street, so I brought her home. There wasn’t anywhere to take her, and she needed stuff, so I ran out to get it.”
Maybe too much stuff. Maybe. But at least he got waddled all the way to his door, and with the dog food in Jongin’s arm, he keyed in his code and got the door open.
“What kind of dog is she?” Jongin asked and just looked at him while Chanyeol stared back blankly.
“A dog?” Chanyeol offered tentatively, and Jongin laughed. Oh. “Want to meet her?”
Because that sounded like the best plan in the world. His sister would laugh and his parents would question his capabilities, so having an impartial party was where it was at. Jongin could at least help him figure out if he needed to get her to a vet or to shelter or if she was going to grow up to be bigger than he was, or…
They were just things he worried about, that was all.
He didn’t actually think about the state of the apartment until he was leading Jongin into it, and then they were skirting his laundry basket (clean!) and the small wall of books he’d started like it was going to keep the dog where he needed her to stay. But he soldiered on, dropping his loot and getting the bag from Jongin, too, as he tried not to apologize for imaginary messiness. The high pitched bark on their entrance became intense whining and pawing at the door until Chanyeol turned the knob and pushed the bathroom door in.
“Hey, baby!” he crooned, and she was out like a rocket, jumping up against his arms as he crouched and finally sat so she could all but crawl up his body, her head writhing against his neck as he lifted her and her swishing tail. “Hey, it’s okay.”
He laughed, uncomfortable with her frantic licking, and belatedly remembering Jongin was there.
“How long have you had her again?”
“A couple of hours?” Chanyeol said, moving her down from his neck so she didn’t wear his skin off. “Hey, we have company.”
“She really took to you,” Jongin said, and held out his hand so it could be sniffed, petting the silky-soft ears like Chanyeol had wanted to do from the very start. And oh, she followed that, squirming to get a better scent.
“Ah, she smells the food on your hands,” Chanyeol laughed, as she flopped across Chanyeol’s thigh and leaned into Jongin’s scratching fingers. “I gave her a little of my dinner. I know dogs aren’t supposed to have table scraps but I didn’t want her to be hungry that long.”
She looked like a little golden dandelion weed, trotting to the pile of supplies and sniffing at it and around the bag of dog food specifically.
“I should,” Chanyeol said, and gestured, standing and rinsing out the metal bowl he’d gotten for her to eat out of, and hauling up the bag of dog food so it could be opened. Her tail was whipping around so fast, smacking against his leg just before he got the bowl down. She nearly upended it, starting to bolt the food down as she half climbed into the bowl with it.
“Hey, easy. It’s not going away,” Chanyeol said, stroking down her back. “It’s obvious she’s not a stray. She knows what it means for someone to feed her.”
Jongin nodded, watching her eat, too. “I think so, too. She’s pretty pudgy, too, so she hasn’t been fighting for food for long. And she’s not afraid of people, especially the way she took to you.”
“Why not take her to a shelter, or give her away?” Chanyeol asked, frowning at the thought of her having to spend more nights alone in the box, hungry, cold, scared. Or if she’d been found by someone mean, or someone who just dumped her out and let her scavenge.
“People don’t think about the consequences,” Jongin said, blunt. “She’ll need shots and a checkup. And spaying, at some point. Good thing they allow dogs here. A really good thing, the way you look at her.”
“I didn’t say I was keeping her,” Chanyeol grumbled.
Jongin somehow had a sixth sense and unearthed the shiny blue collar he’d bought for her.
“It was on sale?” Chanyeol said, grinning hopefully.
In retrospect he was glad Jongin hadn’t just chucked it at his head.
“It’d be nice having someone to come home to,” Chanyeol said. “I mean. As long as she doesn’t grow up to be a horse, and eat the apartment or pee everywhere.”
Jongin laughed a little, hauling her into his lap and stroking her since she’d wandered from the remnants of her food.
“So what are you going to call her?”
She looked at him like she knew he was thinking about it, and he stared back, his brain going blank.
“Lily,” Chanyeol said, trying it out loud for the first time since it had started dancing around in his head.
Her tail thumped as she stared at him, and Chanyeol thought that was acceptance itself.
“It suits her,” Jongin declared, and there it was done, settled. He had a dog. He had a really, really big responsibility that was dancing across the floor. “You'll probably want to take her out again tonight, see if she'll go outside for you.”
“Oh yeah. A little more work than a cat. Huh, Lily?” Lily looked up from where she was trying to lay waste to his sock and foot, responding more to the tone than her new name. “You have dogs?”
“They live with my parents now,” Jongin said, flicking his fingers idly at Lily’s wagging tail as it beat against him. “Between school and work, they were starting to go a little stir crazy, and they’re happy with my parents now, so I don’t want to move them again.”
“I’d offer you this one, but I think I’m stuck,” Chanyeol laughed, and Jongin snorted.
“That’s one way of putting it. I should get back, though. If you need anything, just knock if I'm home. And buy baggies.”
He knew Jongin was laughing at him when he left. But Jongin had said a very polite goodbye to Lily, who looked so sweet. Deceptively so. He couldn’t trust those puppy eyes, no way.
It turned out that human shampoo was not the ideal thing for dogs. It had required a second trip to a store with even more supplies. She didn’t need it yet, but he figured it was better to have it than not. At least Lily hadn’t had fleas, there was that. And a trip to the vet turned up no microchips, no health problems, and a nice big bill for Chanyeol to go home with. Pets cost money, his mother said, which Chanyeol knew, but he wasn’t going to tell her how much, either. It was his money, and Lily was his, officially. She had a collar and a tag and everything that said so.
It was fun having someone else in the apartment that wasn’t him. Lily followed him around with her little tapping nails and panted breaths and flopping tongue. She sniffed around his feet, along the cupboards, at the toilet seat, his laundry basket, under the front door, his game consoles, piles of books, each and every chair leg, all the while her tail either lazily wagging or stock still in concentration before he shooed her away.
She draped herself over his feet while he was watching TV like some kind of furry foot warmer, snorting into his ankle or trying to get her paws up onto the cushion so she could root into his crotch with her nose, that or put her paws all over it, and pant happily while he scratched her neck or rubbed her belly.
“You’re so cute,” he said, and she looked at him not understanding a word but maybe understanding him a little as her tail thumped. “Lily, Lily, cute and tiny.”
She all but tumbled into her bed that he’d put beside his, stepping all over it and sprawling with the shirt he’d stuck in there for her. He leaned over the edge of his mattress and rubbed his fingertips over the soft fur on the top of her head.
“You going to sleep okay down there? I guess you have to because you can’t sleep up here. Time for bed, my girl.”
He’d accidentally kick her off or something, and that would be worse than just having her sleep on the floor in the first place. She whimpered for a while, when he rolled back onto the bed. He tried to stay quiet, figuring if he talked to her it’d just make her try to get to him. It had to be done. She had to get used to it. But the third night she quieted before he fell asleep, and that was a relief.
Lily’s tail flew like a little flag as they walked down the hall toward the elevator, but it really began to whip as the doors slid open and Jongin started to make his way out.
“Hey!” Jongin said, and his greeting was for the puppy, not Chanyeol, and Chanyeol wasn’t even offended. He knew how it was. “How are you getting along?”
Okay, and that was for him. “Good! Vet says she’s doing good. We’re just going down for an after-work bathroom break. She’s been doing pretty good with that.”
Yep, bathroom habits of his dog, he discussed those with hot guys all the time. But she had been, either using the pee pads or waiting until they hit the grass. And boy, he did have baggies handy in case.
Lily wound herself and her leash around Jongin’s leg.
“Is she inviting me along?” Jongin asked, trying to disentangle himself.
“She could be,” Chanyeol reasoned. “But only if you have time to hang out with a cute girl in the park.”
“And what does that make you?”
“Her chauffeur,” Chanyeol said, waggling the leash.
Jongin burst out into laughter which had Chanyeol grinning back at him. Lily got all the cute guys, that was for sure. Him, Jongin. Everyone dropped like flies in her wake.
“Yeah, I have time,” Jongin said, and he was the one who pushed the button so the elevator doors opened again, taking them down. Chanyeol hauled Lily up so they could cross the street, but once in the park, she was as free as the leash would let her be and she head-butted the grass as Chanyeol tossed down a tennis ball for her to wallow all over.
“Is it normal to feel guilty because your dog wants to be with you even when you’re sleeping?” Chanyeol wondered out loud.
Jongin laughed, and it wasn’t even a kind laugh, but more like he was laughing blatantly at Chanyeol. “Yeah, that’s normal. Some dogs get better at it than others, especially if they can’t physically propel themselves onto the bed.”
Oh. Yeah. Nothing like a thirty pound rocket landing on a leg in the middle of the night, or however big she was going to get. That could be the downside of having a cat. Or the upside, he wasn’t sure.
“She just looks so cute and sad and all alone.”
“They’re cute so we take care of them, and not leave them to fend for themselves,” Jongin said. But he was just as quick to crouch down and ruffle his hands all over Lily’s back and sides when she tumbled at his feet. There was some definite goo-goo baby talk going on there, though Chanyeol couldn’t make it out and Lily was rapt, staring at Jongin’s face like he was made of cheese.
It was a nice face.
“I guess I wouldn’t mind her sleeping in bed with me, but I’m afraid she’d fall off, or I’d knock her off.”
Jongin looked up at him. “Either you sleep alone a lot, or the people you sleep with don’t mind landing on the floor in the middle of the night.”
Chanyeol scoffed, amused more than anything. “It’s a little different with a person than a puppy. Besides, they can kick back if they need to.”
Not that there’d been anyone recently. Closest he’d gotten to a kiss was a near-miss with a puppy tongue, and who knew where that had been.
“Do you snore, too?”
“Not that I’ve ever been told,” Chanyeol chirped back, and Lily hopped onto her feet, dashing away to the end of the leash to stare at something distant that neither of them had heard.
She mostly rolled over the tennis ball that Jongin picked up, running after it and then falling on it, chewing at it in lieu of trying to pick it up or return it. Of course, when that got old, she was perfectly happy to haul around a broken leaf or chew on some grass, or snort as dust got in her nose. She did squat finally, to his relief, and then trotted right over when Jongin called for her.
She watched Jongin so politely when he told her to sit, pushed on her butt, praised her like she was the queen when she blinked up at him and ate the treats that Chanyeol handed Jongin to give to her.
“It takes a while to make the connection,” Jongin said. But it was worth it when it happened. Obedience wasn’t something that was just something that happened like magic, and with an exuberant and silly puppy, even less.
“How smart do you think she is?” Chanyeol wondered.
“Might not get a Ph.D. but I think she’ll graduate,” Jongin said, chuckling. “She’s eager to please, so that’s part of it.”
“That’s why there’s not so many obedient cats, huh?”
And that made Jongin laugh out loud, startling a pigeon, and making Lily look up from where she’d flopped over in hopes of belly rubs. It was a lot of adventure for one day, and Chanyeol carried her with them across the street, and into the elevator that went up to their floor. She nuzzled against the buttons of his shirt and he watched the lights flash.
“I haven’t actually kicked someone out of bed,” Chanyeol said. It wasn’t like Jongin needed to know, it was just something he didn’t want to leave misconceptions about, that was all.
Jongin’s lips twitched though, just before the elevator dinged to indicate its arrival to their floor. “Good to know.”
“Thanks for going to the park with us. Say thanks, Lily. Thank you,” Chanyeol said, waving one of Lily’s paws.
“Any time,” Jongin said, and did some kind of human-to-canine fist bump with the dog.
He had to do something more than just thanks, and that was what Chanyeol was thinking anyway, as he put Lily down inside the apartment door, unhooked her leash, and watched her sashay in like she owned the place. Sure, it was fun to go out and play with a puppy, but he was really helping Chanyeol out and giving him some confidence he didn’t have already. Sure, he was new to having a dog, but they were going to figure out each other.
Chanyeol discovered that he had a second doorbell, one that one moment was staring at him as he was eating, and then next scrambling to her feet and barking when the chime sounded, looking around like there was some kind of magic going on until she beelined for the door and whatever sound she could hear on the other side of it.
“Who is it? Huh?” Chanyeol asked. Though, the actual options were few. A quick glance at the screen told him exactly and he used his foot to hold Lily back as he got the door open. And he hoped his voice wasn’t too off when he grinned at Jongin. “Hey.”
“Hey,” Jongin said, and looked down, all curious as Chanyeol was trying his best to keep Lily back. “You know, I only hear a faint bark down and again from her. The walls must be good.”
“Good,” Chanyeol said, and couldn’t even imagine if all of his neighbors hated him because of a rambunctious dog. “Though, at least she hasn’t barked much.”
“Some never stop,” Jongin said, shaking his head. And he held out a book, before Chanyeol could get around to wondering why exactly Jongin had shown up in the middle of his dinner. “I got this book on training for my parents and saw it when I was over there today. I thought if you wanted to borrow it, it might help?”
He wasn’t some kind of training master. Lily sat sometimes when Chanyeol said to sit, but it was random enough to where he wasn’t sure if she was just sitting to be sitting and not because he was telling her to.
“Cool,” he said, biting on the ends of his half-forgotten chopsticks as he looked through it. And then, he realized himself. “Oh! Hey, I have extra food, if you want to hang here for a while?”
Jongin actually sniffed the air, like he was cautious of whatever food Chanyeol might’ve been offering. But he saw the logo on the bag and his eyes lit up. Chanyeol made immediate note of that. Sure, he’d been planning to take some for lunch the next day but he’d just do something else. It got him two things, another brain for training, and Jongin’s company. And he hadn’t even had to go asking for it, which had been half the battle. He was going to get seen through pretty quickly if he just kept inviting Jongin down to the park with them, but he wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.
Jongin got his own plate, his own drink, a cushion to sit on at the table. He also got a Lily crawling into his lap and sniffing around for any missing crumbs. She flopped down, her head on Jongin’s knee, sighing heavily as she looked between them.
“Your life is so hard,” Chanyeol commiserated with her, and her tail thumped gleefully. “Maybe you could bring your dogs one day, have a play date in the park?”
“It’d be good to get her socialized, and they’re friendly,” Jongin agreed, running a knuckle down her spine. He just barely got his hand up before she could lunge to lick at it. “Ah, dog! Keeping them all together doing one thing is the hardest part.”
Chanyeol was interested to see what kind of dogs Jongin had, interested to watch him take so much enjoyment in the chicken that Chanyeol had offered, to watch him laugh when Chanyeol tried to be funny on purpose.
“We barely even met each other before Lily,” Chanyeol said. “I carried your garbage out once? I’ve been here eight months…?”
“Ten,” Jongin said. “Though your hair was kind of strange when you did move in? I heard one of the older ladies wonder if you were going to cause trouble and why the landlord accepted you.”
Chanyeol laughed loudly at that, sinking back against the couch as Lily scrambled to him to find out what was up.
“That hair was great! Or, it was supposed to be. I was so excited, and my sister was telling me not to, but I didn’t listen. A theme,” Chanyeol said, still chuckling.
“Does she think you shouldn’t have kept Lily?”
“She told me Lily would tie me down, and that if it was going to make me responsible, maybe it was a good thing. It’s not like I disappeared for days at a time anyway, but try telling your family that.”
“Oh, I have sisters, believe me, I know,” Jongin said, and he laughed, his face full of amusement at their shared pain. And okay, so he wasn’t just their nice guy neighbor. And he definitely wasn’t someone Chanyeol just wanted to be buddies with. He felt kind of guilty that he’d stolen Jongin from his evening when he’d just been doing Chanyeol a favor in dropping off the book, but Chanyeol had fed him, and Lily had almost been seeming to sit on command by the time that Jongin had looked at his phone and decided he needed to go. Trying to thank Jongin at the same time as Jongin was trying to thank him kind of felt like trying to shove his feet into too-small of slippers, something that didn’t go as smoothly as he hoped. It had ended with awkward laughter, and Jongin’s eyes flickering back up when Chanyeol had told him goodnight. And Chanyeol had that sort of zipping energy in his limbs, something he hadn’t felt in a while, something that wasn’t easily dismissed or explained away.
It seemed quieter after Jongin was gone, even if Lily followed him as he paced and then settled right against him when he finally forced himself to sit. She just couldn’t talk back, was the problem, and he had always been hungry for that. It was a little surprising that he’d lived alone as long as he had, but he’d always had friends to go out with or invade, so that helped.
“I should invite everyone over to meet you,” he said, ruffling at Lily’s fur until she rolled over onto the couch beside him. “You’ll like them. Maybe I could invite Jongin. If they like him…?”
And he hesitated. Talking about kicking people out of bed was one thing, and Jongin showing up with a book, agreeing to go to the park with them and being a nice guy wasn’t a whole lot to go on.
“What do you think of him? Well, sure you like everyone,” Chanyeol told her, and chuckled as she tried to chew on his pocket. “But he’s nice. He likes dogs. He’s hot. Yes, he’s hot.”
And he repeated that because Lily looked up at him with an adorable confused expression like she couldn’t believe what he’d just said. But then she flopped over, paws in the air as Chanyeol scrubbed at whatever itchy spot she had.
“We could date him. We could take him for walks, and cuddle him. He’d probably like kisses,” Chanyeol mused. “He likes yours. Not those kind of kisses.”
Chanyeol loudly kissed her belly, and she scrambled up onto all four paws and danced after him as he walked to the kitchen for water. He obliged her with a few drops of water off his fingertips, not like her own water wasn’t sitting right there.
“So, it’s agreed, then?” he asked Lily. “We’ll see if he wants us.”
Who wouldn’t.
It was either leap right in or be subtle, and subtle wasn’t part of Chanyeol’s genetic makeup. Even if he couldn’t think up a good reason to invite Jongin in - since he could show how Lily was sitting better right out there in the hallway - he still got to lean against the wall and talk to Jongin when they happened to pass each other. Jongin wasn’t as obvious and he didn’t actually get to finagle an invitation into Jongin’s apartment but Jongin still knew he was there, and didn’t run away. And it wasn’t even on Chanyeol’s suggestion, when Jongin caught him one evening.
“You home tomorrow?”
Lily strained to have her head become one with Jongin’s knee and Chanyeol blinked.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so?”
“I was going to bring my dogs - my parents’ dogs, whatever - over. We can hit the park with all of them if you want?”
That idea took off like wildfire, and he nearly lifted both his arms to cheer. “Oh, yeah! We’re all about the park. Right, Lily? Huh? Well, she would be, if she knew what “park” meant yet.”
And if she wasn’t so focused on getting Jongin’s attention.
But it was easy enough to set a time, getting his fingers on Jongin’s arm, trying to flirt without stumbling over himself. But he knew how Lily felt when she stared after Jongin when they got into their own apartment.
The problem with having four dogs with four leashes was that there were only two humans and four hands to go around. They needed another two hands at least, maybe four, because as the dogs milled and darted and jumped over each other, getting the leashes untangled was almost impossible. Chanyeol yelped and made a grab for a leash he was untangling, only to see Lily crawl under Monggu’s belly, and then her rainbow-colored leash was all tangled up in their legs as well as-
“You’re fighting a losing battle,” Jongin advised him. Apparently it was a lesson learned from having three rambunctious dogs. Cute ones, though, and ones Lily took to after a little bit of cowering and then sniffing and licking. She was a bright little fuzzball weaving between them, getting them to romp with her even if they did create some kind of twisting puzzle of leashes. So Chanyeol gave up until one of them got hopelessly tangled by the legs or they couldn’t move because the leashes were all woven.
“Sit,” Jongin told them, and two butts went down. Lily, who had her mouth full of a tail not her own, ignored Jongin, and so did the bite-ee.
“Lily,” Chanyeol said, and at the sound of his voice, she turned. “Sit.”
It seemed to turn in her head a few times before it clicked, and she sat, tail sweeping in the grass as she looked up at him in doggy adoration.
“That’s good,” Jongin said, and Chanyeol about burst with pride. Of course, two seconds later Lily was on her feet and bowling over everything in her vicinity, but it was progress.
They kept swapping leashes, hand to hand, brushing fingers and not being left out of the leash dance as dogs darted around their legs, effectively hobbling them together. Of course there were four little panting, innocent faces.
“I think they’re planning to make a break for it,” Chanyeol said as they tried to get either the dog to move around their legs or the leash itself.
“Good thing these leashes aren’t breakaway. We’d be left here falling over as we tried to run after them.”
“How good are you at three legged races?” Chanyeol wondered, and it wasn’t like it was a bad thing to have Jongin that close. He watched the way that Jongin talked to the dogs, how he touched them, held them. He was also bemused when Jongin left him with three of the dogs and disappeared. All Chanyeol could do was flop over in the grass and let the dogs climb over him and each other and wait. It wasn’t like Jongin wasn’t going to come back, just leaving Chanyeol with his dogs for all of eternity.
“Did you die?” Jongin asked, and Chanyeol peered up at him.
Well, he had a slightly chubby poodle making a home on his stomach, so he wasn’t sure.
“That depends,” Chanyeol said, wary. But his eyes lit as Jongin held out what was quite obviously an ice cream. “Food! Hey!”
He swiped at it, and Jongin pulled it back, laughing. But it gave Chanyeol the opportunity to sit up and get the dogs re-arranged. They got to sit on a bench, so there weren’t extra tongues trying to hone in.
“What would you normally be doing on a day like this?” Jongin asked.
Chanyeol leaned back, considering the ice cream in his hands. “Calling people to see if anyone is free to hang out, or. I don’t know. Going to see a movie, or picking at music or something. I like going and hanging out with people when I can though.”
“Are they better behaved than these guys?”
They had a little semi-circle of rapt dogs, waiting for handouts. Two paws were on the bench edge, and three of them were sitting like being good was going to get them what they wanted. Being chocolate, it wasn’t, but there wasn’t any way they could’ve known that.
“It depends,” Chanyeol said, totally maligning his friends to Jongin’s amusement. No need to bring up he was subtly plotting getting Jongin to meet them, though he was pretty sure he wanted Jongin to get to know him better first. Then he could shock and awe everyone with his hot neighbor that kind of dug him and his cute dog. Even more so since three seconds later Jongin was smirking and pointing beside his own mouth. Yes, something Chanyeol wanted, but-
“Saving some for later?” Jongin teased.
Oh. He swiped with the back of his hand, sheepish.
“I know how I’m going to do this,” Chanyeol told Lily, as soon as they were home. She got a bath, whining like he was trying to murder her, and Chanyeol had a new idea on how he was going to make sure the next time he went somewhere with Jongin, that he’d have a chance that wouldn’t be as neighbors.
It started with an envelope, a piece of a paper, a folded piece of money. He considered putting Jongin’s name on the outside, and decided against it. He also decided against something cheesy like putting Lily’s paw print seal of approval on there. Whatever happened, even though Lily was always going to be a factor, it was going to be between him and Jongin to make it happen. So, Chanyeol made it happen, walking around with the letter in his pocket until he caught Jongin coming back from somewhere. Lily obliged him by taking the envelope from him, and he nudged her along. Best intentions aside, it eventually got spat out onto the floor and abandoned just short of Jongin.
“Sorry, that’s for you,” Chanyeol said, making for it at the same time that Jongin did. Jongin beat him to it, standing up as Chanyeol’s face started to heat a bit.
“What’s this?” Jongin asked, turning the envelope over.
“Ah, it’s just something. For the ice cream,” Chanyeol stumbled out, because surely it was too much to ask for his brain to be on point.
“Oh, you didn’t have to pay me back for that. I thought it was some kind of love note,” Jongin joked, tucking the envelope away. “Thanks, though.”
Lily sat at their feet, staring up at Chanyeol and he winked at her. He had it, totally.
“Asking someone out with a dog’s help would be cute,” Chanyeol said. “Though I can probably manage okay on my own.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. How does grabbing lunch together tomorrow sound?”
“Is Lily grabbing it from us, or…?” Jongin teased.
“She can tag along if she likes, though I was hoping for you and me.”
Though they both laughed, Jongin said the truth. “Like she’d say no.”
Chanyeol cleared his throat, trying for his best smile. Or maybe, the only smile he could get right then. “Are you going to?”
“Who’s paying?”
It startled the awkward out of him, letting him puff out his chest a bit and really see how Jongin was teasing him, how he was leaning in, how it really looked like he wasn’t going to tell Chanyeol no.
“Since I asked,” Chanyeol said, and let that be his explanation. He wasn’t a cheap date. He took in the open button at Jongin’s collar, the dark band he wore at his wrist, the quirk of his mouth.
“Then I guess since you asked, I don’t have anything better to do. You picking me up?”
“I suppose walking all the way down the hall is something I can do.”
Jongin let him reach out and jab him in the shoulder for it, and let him stand there for another twenty minutes even though he wanted to dance around inside while they discussed the finer points of restaurants and what they liked eating best, and where they had and hadn’t been. Chanyeol scooped Lily up just to have something to do with his hands, and she fell asleep while they talked, a comforting weight as he hitched out a laugh.
“See you tomorrow, then,” he said, the grin all but bursting out of him.
“Yeah,” Jongin said, and man, his smile was gorgeous.
Chanyeol had been on a number of first dates, though it was the first one where he was leaving with a neighbor after he’d very faithfully knocked on Jongin’s door to greet him. It was just the two of them, Lily closed up with her toys to wait, and it was easier. She could have been a crutch, too easy to talk to her, or about her, than to each other, learning about each other. He had so many questions, what all Jongin liked to do, what kind of movies he liked, had he enjoyed school, where did he want to go on vacation. He knew Jongin had sisters, and that his parents were alive, and that he loved dogs and chicken, though in vastly different ways.
But there wasn’t chicken on their date, just curry and rice and egg, and an endless pot of tea as they hunkered down in a corner.
“This was the first place I ate in the neighborhood when I moved in,” Chanyeol said. It was a place that Jongin hadn’t been to, so it was something that Chanyeol was able to introduce him to. “I come here when I can’t think of anything else I want more.”
Chanyeol had to scrub his palms a bit, nerves he hadn’t been expecting. It wasn’t like the food or the restaurant was going to make or break things, but it was his own choice and one he was offering.
“Is it okay?” he asked, almost wiggling forward in his seat after Jongin had taken a few bites.
Was the food okay, was he okay, was he having fun, was the sky still blue. If he slid forward any more he could’ve bumped knees with Jongin, and as it was, Jongin took another very deliberate bite.
“I’d eat here again,” Jongin said.
Maybe even with Chanyeol, and that was enough to put a grin on his face. It wasn’t like he needed a boost to his appetite anyway, but knowing that Jongin liked what was in front of him seemed to make the food just that much more appealing.
“I have a list of questions,” Chanyeol confessed. “Not an actual list, but in my head. I actually looked online.”
“What to ask on a first date, a guide of general questions,” Jongin said. “Did you see the one that had people wearing flower crowns?”
“I- Wait, you looked, too?”
There was a very interesting spot on Chanyeol’s collar it seemed, and Chanyeol caught one of Jongin’s ankles between his.
“First question,” Jongin said, prompting him with a gesture from his spoon.
“Morning person?” Chanyeol asked.
Jongin looked properly horrified.
One point for Jongin, among all the other points he already had.
They could’ve just walked right back to the apartment after eating, but it was at most a two minute walk, and the park was full of a whole bunch of other, different memories. Chanyeol wasn’t really ready for it to be over, even if they’d sat until the tea got cold, and he didn’t want to invite Jongin up and into his apartment like he expected Jongin to put out because Chanyeol bought him some rice. That had to happen because Jongin was into Chanyeol’s face at the very least.
“So after all this time and you couldn’t resist a man with a dog?” Chanyeol asked, eyeing Jongin with speculation.
Jongin looked him over. “Something like that.”
That had him leaning in. “Really?”
“You were gentle with her. Your hair wasn’t so weird any more.” And Jongin chuckled as Chanyeol’s mouth bowed into a pout. “You have a nice voice.”
Well. That had him preening. “I like your voice, too.”
And his hands and his laugh and a bunch of other things. It wasn’t just the dog, though she’d been a catalyst that maybe they’d needed. Maybe it would’ve happened naturally anyway, that Chanyeol would have looked up one day in the hall and been distracted by Jongin’s face and found a reason to talk to him. Maybe it would’ve taken another few months, or maybe one of them would’ve moved before that happened. He didn’t know why the thought of reaching for Jongin’s hand made his fingers curl in worry, but his second thought, making for Jongin’s shoulder earned him a glance, and it was on an exhale that Jongin pressed up against his side. An arm curved around his back, his waist, and it was pretty much all he could do right then not to turn and just fold Jongin right in and do some kind of happy dance. That probably would’ve been too much, too embarrassing, but it didn’t stop him from wanting.
He was an aggressive cuddler. Maybe he should’ve made a disclaimer about that. And his friends were, well. He imagined their faces when he produced Jongin. Hot neighbor! Look at lucky him!
“I can almost hear you thinking,” Jongin interrupted him.
Chanyeol gaped, and fished around for anything he could say to that that even made sense. “I was thinking that one day I want to introduce you to my friends,” he said, and felt a bit shy even to say it. “I mean, not right away. Just.”
“Maybe I want to introduce you to my friends first,” Jongin said, and it was nearly a challenge, like he was going to fight Chanyeol on it.
“Oh. O-okay?”
Jongin burst out laughing, making them stagger a couple of steps as they walked and he was struck by the enthusiasm for the idea.
“Hey, you want to introduce me to your friends!”
“You met my dogs already, so,” Jongin said, like that was some kind of test, or something. “And I’d get to show you off.”
Chanyeol wondered how many times he was going to get thrown off stride, clearing his throat about to sail right along at the pleasant thought of it.
“You think they’ll like me?” It was a thoughtful sound, the way that Jongin stopped them both, the way he planted himself in front of Chanyeol and squinted at him. He wanted to poke Jongin’s stomach or make light of it, or pretty much anything, and he was just stuck and barely remembering to breathe when he remembered the rest of his tease. “I’m not going to have a puppy to help me. Though. There’s you.”
“There’s me,” Jongin agreed.
Not just him. Both of them. He had Jongin there, mostly alone, right in front of him. It wasn’t the first time he had the thought that he wanted to kiss Jongin, but it was the first time he really had the chance to try. His hand was on Jongin’s ribs, not really pulling him in but holding him, and for a brief moment, he almost thought to ask, to wonder out loud, except that Jongin was too close to wonder. Jongin was gripping his shoulder and pulling him in. They didn’t have to wonder who was first there, who was most eager, a chill down his spine as Jongin almost hummed against his mouth, and kissed him again.
“Now it’s a real date,” and thus spoke Jongin to Chanyeol’s raised eyebrows.
Though he wondered when the second date started when the first didn’t truly end.
Days flowed in little meetings, conversations in the hallway, in the elevator, kisses traded in passing as Jongin carried home food one night, or woke Chanyeol from too-long naps so that Lily wouldn’t be forgotten in her need to go outside. That was nice, too, because if he knew he’d be home late, Jongin took Lily out, and if Chanyeol could rouse Jongin from bed, they got to huddle together in the chilling morning air as Lily sniffed around before finally getting around to doing her business.
“Do they make litter boxes for dogs? They should,” Chanyeol said, his teeth nearly chattering as Jongin blew into his hands.
“But then she wouldn’t get to sniff at every other dog’s pee, and you’d never leave the apartment,” Jongin observed.
Which totally wasn’t true, except that it sort of was.
“Thank you for suffering with me,” Chanyeol said, all politeness, though the way Jongin was eyeing him, Chanyeol was already preparing himself for making it up to him. Having their separate places allowed for alone time, a thing Jongin appreciated, but it also allowed for easy access. Very, very appreciated.
Although, there were always revelations. Weeks into the relationship, a month, two, Chanyeol was still discovering little things. Some good. Some questionable. Some devious. Jongin, it seemed, had a sticky hand for sweaters. Especially as it got colder, and they were in and out of the building taking Lily on walks, it seemed like he found himself hunting for clothes more often than not. He didn’t notice when they showed up, thinking he’d just buried them in the laundry, but he really did notice when his own favorite sweater was missing a week and turned up on Jongin while Jongin was lounging unassuming on Chanyeol’s couch. With Chanyeol’s dog no less. Accessory to a crime.
“You’re wearing my clothes,” Chanyeol said, and it was no secret he was into that, but more importantly, “You’ve been stealing my clothes.”
“Sweaters?” Jongin corrected, like that was a different kind of thing altogether. “You have nice ones!”
It wasn’t a ploy to get Chanyeol over to his apartment when he was missing something. Granted, half the time he did that, it ended up actually hidden in his own laundry and not hauled off for ransom by Jongin. He protested, but he didn’t really mind.
No one touched his hats, though. That really was something different.
One Year Later
Affection wasn’t even the right word for it. Swamping love, maybe, to find Jongin stretched out on his side on the floor with Lily sprawled out against him. Her nose was poked up against Jongin’s chin and her tail down by his hips. They were both asleep, and Chanyeol wondered if the frantic chasing of tennis balls in the park earlier had contributed to Lily’s exhaustion. Though even for a mostly-grown dog, she was pretty dead to the world. Jongin, on the other hand, Chanyeol knew he’d gotten a good night’s sleep. Though apparently it was time for another one.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Chanyeol said, nudging his fingers into Jongin’s ribs. “If you sleep there, you’ll be grumpy in the morning.”
Plus the bed would be cold.
Jongin just grunted at him, swiping an arm up. At first, Chanyeol thought to back him off, but he realized Jongin was trying to get a hand on him to drag him down with them. Well. He knelt, holding Jongin’s hand and nudging up behind him. Jongin’s eyes never opened but there was a telltale satisfied quirk to his mouth that Chanyeol kissed.
“I hope you don’t want me to carry you to bed,” Chanyeol said, and Jongin snorted, humming as Chanyeol nuzzled into his neck and held him, warm despite the cool of the floor. Lily twitched under their tangled hands, but was out almost instantaneously, her heart beating against Chanyeol’s fingers. A little while, then. He’d let Jongin wake up a bit, so he could go right back to sleep. But Chanyeol would hold them both until then.