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Euijoo is fourth.
First is Harua, actually, the one who notices it to begin with. He doesn’t come to visit Nicholas in his isolation, rather he’s the one to help Nicholas run away. Harua pushes him into a quiet room, holds his hands and helps Nicholas take in more measured breaths, and remains sternly calm about the entire matter the entire time.
Second, their manager, is less calm. He does a lot of hand-wringing and fretting, but it’s useful hand-wringing and fretting. He’s going over logistics, solutions, treatments to tide Nicholas over, anything that can help. Cursed fansign gifts are not unusual, he says, but that’s why they’re supposed to be screened. He leaves the room with a plan to figure out how this happened.
Kei-and-Jo are third, and they’re the ones who bring the plans on how to fix the situation. Jo is there because he was raised by witches and can recognize a curse. Kei is there for moral support. Nicholas sits and lets them do their thing and gives one-word answers to all their questions until Kei finally decides to stop fretting and pulls Jo out of the room.
Euijoo, then, is fourth. “How are you doing?” He asks, locking the door behind him. The sound makes Nicholas jump a little, a motion that makes Euijoo smile in turn. “Not good, huh?”
He sits down on the bed with his big, round eyes, all worried and soft. Nicholas feels awful. “I’m sorry,” he mumbles, pulling the blankets tighter around himself. He’d turn away and face the wall but that feels too much like a tantrum, one that he doesn’t deserve to throw, considering this is all his own fault. “I don’t know why I kept an item from a fansign, I should’ve known–”
“Hey, hey, none of that,” Euijoo shushes, which makes Nicholas feel worse. “How could you have known?”
Nicholas shrugs, and miserably protests, “Maybe I couldn’t have known about the existence of cursed cat ears, but I definitely should’ve known better than to take stuff home without permission.”
“The curse will be broken within the day,” Euijoo says, still reassuring. Not in the way that Euijoo usually is with him, blunt and honest, not coddling in the slightest.
He’s talking to Nicholas the way he would Harua, or Jo, or Maki. He’s talking to Nicholas like he’s small and fragile, and maybe that’s what Nicholas looks like right now, but damn it, it’s making his face hot and his stomach twist with humiliation.
Nicholas bristles, straightening, the blanket falling away in his frustration—goosebumps raise on the back of his neck, because he’s shirtless, he stripped down in his panic and then bundled up to stave off the cold and he never bothered to put anything back on but he doesn’t care about that now.
He doesn’t have the brain space to be embarrassed about nudity, not when he’s so utterly humiliated about everything else. “You don’t– stop treating me like a kid, damn it–!”
He starts and stops there, because the blanket falls back, and Euijoo visibly stops listening to his words, eyes locking onto the ears with instant precision. Even though the lights in the room are off, Nicholas can see the small smile that immediately creeps up Euijoo’s face, and the way that Euijoo belatedly tries to cover it with his hand.
Maybe this is another side effect of the headbands, actually. “I can see you smiling,” Nicholas threatens, fists clenching in his lap. “I can see it clearly.”
Euijoo’s eyes flit down to meet his. “Hm, yeah, they look reflective,” he muses idly, and then he looks past Nicholas. “Oh, you have a tail? Cute.”
Nicholas starts to explode, starts to shoot forwards, starts to demand, “What the hell is wrong with you!?”
But then Euijoo lifts his hand, and Nicholas freezes in place. Euijoo never moves first. Ever. Nicholas has stopped hoping for it, has stopped expecting him to. He’s the one who closes the gap, over and over, again and again. It’s their dynamic, it’s the pattern of things. Nicholas moves first, as fast as he can, and sometimes he’s too fast for Euijoo to stop him. Sometimes, Euijoo doesn’t bother to move at all, and he lets them both collide—that’s the way it goes.
Euijoo’s hand pauses between them, but not long enough for Nicholas to do anything, to say something. Not that he had anything in mind. He sits there, frozen in place, and then Euijoo’s cold fingers are rubbing circles against his ribs and Nicholas trembling and melting like Euijoo’s pressing the sun into his skin.
“Euijoo…” Nicholas shivers, turning his head to the side and tucking his chin to his sternum, fists clenched at his sides, eyes squeezed shut. He hates himself—the way he sounds, the way that he looks, the way that it’s so fucking obvious what he wants, even without the fluffy cat ears pressing back against his head. “I– mm…”
He should be running. He should be hiding. He shouldn’t let Euijoo see him like this, shouldn’t be putting another worry on Euijoo’s plate, shouldn’t be making Euijoo console him about this. It’s just a little magical mishap. It’ll fix itself. Nicholas can be a big boy. He can deal with this on his own.
Another hand settles against his body. A broad palm, flat against his chest. Right over his heartbeat, but it doesn’t stay there for long. It drags up and over his Adams’ apple, settling under the angle of Nicholas’ jaw. Euijoo’s thumb presses his bottom lip open, just the slightest bit.
“Even your teeth are cat-like…” Euijoo murmurs back. There’s not an ounce of burden in his voice—Nicholas peels one eye open, and then flinches, and then openly gawks at the sparkling wonder that’s spread across Euijoo’s face.
He splutters, “You’re not even a little worried about this!?”
Euijoo beams back. “Oh, your tail swished when you yelled! That’s so cute.”
He is so sunny and so fucking stupid. “Please, for once, listen when people are talking to you.”
“Mm, no,” Euijoo decides, scratching behind Nicholas’s ears. It feels divine. Nicholas almost misses it when Euijoo says, “You’re talking to me about some really dumb stuff right now, because you’re anxious, and that’s fine. But I don’t want you to think about all the anxious stuff.”
Stupidly, Nicholas retorts, “Wh-what should I focus on instead, then?”
“Me,” Euijoo replies, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world, and then he’s pulling Nicholas in for a kiss.
Immediately, he’s pulling back to remark, “Oh, your tongue is rough too, that’s fun,” before he’s going back in. It’s barely any time at all, certainly not enough time for Nicholas to get his bearings, so he’s once again swept up in Euijoo’s pace.
Euijoo is a careful and methodical kisser. He’s good, which makes Nicholas uneasy, but that’s a vague twinge in the heat that quickly overtakes him. He’s too nervous to kiss back, too aware of his rough tongue and sharp fangs—he just lies there helplessly, letting Euijoo do as he wants. It’s not a position that Nicholas has ever been in, it’s not something that he ever does with Euijoo.
He’s never kissed Euijoo either, for the record, but it’s the principle of the thing—lying back and letting Euijoo have his way, instead of surging forwards, driven by the baseline fear that if he doesn’t reach out for Euijoo and pull him back, then Euijoo will wander somewhere Nicholas can’t follow. Somewhere to get away from Nicholas entirely.
“You’re a lot more docile than I thought,” Euijoo mumbles into Nicholas’s mouth, his deep voice all rough and low. With these feline eyes, Nicholas can see the way that Euijoo stares at his mouth, the way Euijoo’s tongue darts out when he nudges at Nicholas’s top lip to see his fangs again.
When Nicholas speaks, the point of the tooth nicks the pad of Euijoo’s thumb. They both shiver. “I don’t– what’re we–”
Euijoo kisses him again, closed-mouthed. “Jo didn’t say it to you, but he told me that this might be one way of getting rid of the ears.” Nicholas’s stomach starts to sink, his mouth starts to dry out, and then Euijoo chuckles shyly and looks away. “I didn’t want anyone else to do it to you. And I’ve wanted you too badly, for too long, to be rational any longer.”
Nicholas’s entire body burns. “Y-You’re not fucking with me, right?” He asks, in Korean, just to be sure. “Juju, you can’t. It’s not fair.”
It’s terrible how, even in the dark, Nicholas can see Euijoo’s entire face go soft and sad—he doesn’t have a single angle or edge among his features. He’s all sorts of round, and when it melts, it makes Nicholas want to melt away too.
Euijoo says, very kindly, “I’m done running from this. From you.”
This time, when he closes the distance between them, Nicholas meets him halfway.
He still doesn’t feel confident to be as forward as he normally is. Nicholas hasn’t kissed many people—more than most idols, probably—but he’s used to being the one to set the pace in general. It’s nice like this, though. Being cradled and kept. Euijoo’s slower than Nicholas is used to. It’s frustrating but Nicholas lets it happen, lets it wash over him.
He lets Euijoo push him down too, pressing him against the sheets. “God,” Euijoo says, eventually, reattaching his mouth to the underside of Nicholas’s jaw. “You’re really warm.”
“Hot,” Nicholas corrects in Japanese. “And thank you.”
“No,” Euijoo snorts. “I know what I said. It feels like you’re running a fever.”
This… is true, Nicholas realizes belatedly. It’s not just desire that’s lit a fire in his belly. It feels like there’s a fire in his veins, like his blood is magma. He feels horny, not just aroused but fully raring to go. He’s not just tenting his briefs, but leaking into them.
Euijoo’s hand moves to his waist from his ribs, and Nicholas gasps, arching up and into it. They both pause, and then stare at each other. “Um,” Nicholas starts with a kiss-clumsy tongue. “A-Another cat thing?”
Way faster than expected, Euijoo is saying, “I mean, you can’t be going into heat.” It’s more of a declaration than a statement. “I know that magic is involved but also I seriously doubt that magic cat ears gave you ovaries and made you fertile.”
“Don’t fucking say that,” Nicholas wheezes. If Euijoo even insinuates that he’s fertile again, he’ll probably cum in his fucking boxers.
Euijoo adds, very helpfully, “It’s also the wrong time of year.”
“Why do you know so much about the estrus cycle of cats?”
“Y’know Harua’s cat impression?” Euijoo starts, and then does not elaborate. Instead he laps over Nicholas’ nipple with a too-wet tongue, and Nicholas kind of forgets to follow-up.
He keens, arching up to chase the sensation, but Euijoo moves to his neck again, nibbling at his Adam’s apple. Nicholas tries to bite his lip but his fangs are too sharp—the pain makes him flinch, and then gasp, and then he’s gasping again when Euijoo chooses to bite his collarbone. “Ah, hah–!”
It’s embarrassing, being this sensitive so quickly. Nicholas can get very sensitive, but it’s an arduous affair. He’s only ever achieved it with his own hands, under his own touch, dragging out his alone time with masochistic intent. He had to edge himself for hours, pushing and pulling against his own fraying willpower, finally toppling over into orgasm with frantic touches, crying out and drooling all over himself as he came so hard that his vision went white at the edges.
It was an exercise in curiosity that was almost a little scary to see to its conclusion. Nicholas passed out in his bed almost immediately after, woke up feeling very refreshed, and concluded that he’d maybe try it again in the future if he felt like it.
He’s almost that sensitive now, already. After just a little kissing and petting—but also Euijoo’s here. Maybe it’s not magic at all. Maybe this is Nicholas seeing a years-long game to its conclusion, a game he kept spurring on with that same masochistic intent that inspired his experiment all those years ago. He’s been pushed and pulled by Euijoo for so long now. It’s no wonder that he’s ready to fall already.
“I-If you’re gonna fuck me,” Nicholas starts, an introduction that makes Euijoo groan, rutting down and into his thigh with throaty desire. It’s enough to derail Nicholas’s thoughts, his tongue, his sanity. He spins sharply into want, grinding back up. “O-Oh fuck–”
But Euijoo knows him. Euijoo knows Nicholas better than anyone. “I’ll speed it up,” he promises, eyes all dark and hazy. He starts to pull away, starts to straighten, but he doesn’t get far. “Um. Nicho? Your… your tail is kind of…”
He’s pointing down at his thigh where Nicholas’s tail has encircled the muscle, a lazy hold that strengthens whenever Euijoo shifts back. Nicholas blinks and then yelps, mortified, scrambling forwards to snatch the treacherous appendage back. It’s a very high yelp, pitchy like a mewl, and fuck, that’s even more embarrassing.
“Don’t say anything,” Nicholas snaps. Euijoo is doing another poor job of hiding his smile behind his hand. “Don’t you dare!”
“Not saying anything,” Euijoo says in a tone that suggests he’s about to say so many things. “I just think it’s cute how you can’t hide anything from me anymore.”
Nicholas thinks, disdainfully, I’ve never tried to hide anything from you before. What are you talking about? I’ve been in love with you for years and everyone knows it. If it takes a pair of magical cat ears and tails and feline visual acuity for you to figure that out, then thank fucking God for that, I guess.
Euijoo starts laughing. “For example, when your ears press against your head like that, I know that you’re probably being all grumpy and mean.” He reaches out and takes the time to scratch behind the ears again. Nicholas makes this really terrible noise, small and wanting and not-quite strangled all the way. Euijoo, nicely, does not comment on that.
Nicholas thinks, achingly, Jesus fucking Christ, I’d let you rip the skin off my face if you did it with your bare hands.
Euijoo doesn’t do that. He gets the lube from the dresser and pulls down Nicholas’s underwear and fingers him open. He uses his bare hands for all of that, though, which means that Nicholas still feels like a broken and bloodied mess.
He at least gets to hide his face, flipped over on his front, chest pressed to the mattress and his hips pushed back. Euijoo keeps giggling, because Nicholas’s tail keeps doing something, and it’s all too embarrassing so he elected to not have to look at any of it.
Besides, he can watch another time. Euijoo isn’t running, not anymore.
“Wh-Why,” Nicholas starts, even more surprised than Euijoo is at the sound of his own voice. The words topple out of him, unbidden, but Nicholas doesn’t try to lick them back into his mouth and swallow them. He presses his cheek into the pillow, head turned sideways so his words are only a little muffled when he asks, “Why so forward now?”
Euijoo’s fingers crook deeper, press harder. Nicholas groans, rocking back—Euijoo uses that time to think. “I– Being a leader means doing what's best for the team. Making choices that won’t hurt them.” His voice is a little quiet, a little ashamed. Nicholas can’t bite his lip or hold his tongue, so he turns his face more into the pillow and hopes it swallows any sounds that might escape him.
“Then Jo told me about this solution, and I knew that you wouldn’t ever ask any of us, especially not me, and that you would try to keep all your pain quiet because you would never let yourself be that vulnerable.”
Into the pillow, Nicholas grumbles, “Hey.”
Euijoo doesn’t laugh, but his smile is audible. “Doing this would be what’s best for the team. But also, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to do this and say it was just for the team. I couldn’t have a taste of something I denied myself without wanting to eat all of it.”
Something about the word eat makes Nicholas shudder and clench down. Euijoo has three fingers in him. He feels like he could cum at any moment, really, his cock entirely untouched.
“Fuck me?” He pleads. He wishes he never asked—he might explode and die before Euijoo gets around to it. He cranes his head back, ignores the way his tail has insistently wrapped around Euijoo’s waist, and asks, very nicely, “Euijoo-kun, please fuck me, please.”
Euijoo’s smile is blinding in the darkness. He pulls his fingers out but still takes the time to say, “I like you, Nicho. I’m sorry that it took me so long.”
Nicholas buries his face in the pillow, whining, ears twitching on his head. The whine breaks way into a cry when Euijoo pushes in.
It’s so gentle, so slow, so Euijoo that it’s maddening. A couple inches in, then back out, and then a couple more inches deeper. Nicholas’s head tips back, spine bowing and limbs trembling, trying to get Euijoo’s cock even deeper.
“C-C’mon,” he stumbles out, dizzy with it. “Shit, this fucking spell…”
“Maybe you are in heat,” Euijoo muses teasingly, gasping when the comment makes Nicholas clench. “O-Oh, you really like this, huh?”
“No!” Nicholas lies. His fifteen year old search history is between him and God. “Stop smiling!”
“I’m not!” Euijoo lies back, openly laughing, finally starting to move.
He’s a little clumsy, but it doesn’t matter. Each and every thrust is making Nicholas jerk and whine, hypersensitive and overstimulated already. Fuck, maybe Nicholas is in heat. He feels like he’s cum already, lashes fluttering and panting heavily. He has to reach down to check and that still leaves him unsure, because he’s leaking everywhere.
Foggy-brained, he’s barely able to hear the way Euijoo makes a strangled little sound. “W-What the hell,” he gasps, audibly flustered. “I n-normally last longer than this–”
Nicholas pushes himself up on his arms, and then uses all of his core strength to raise up, slumping back to rest against Euijoo’s torso. Euijoo chokes, taken aback, but he doesn’t fall. His legs shift wider to brace against Nicholas’s weight, and his hands encircle Nicholas’s stomach. It’s a firm hold. Warm and comforting.
“Too close too,” Nicholas admits, laughing a little with his shame. Euijoo doesn’t laugh with him, dark eyes darting down as he scans the front of Nicholas’s body hungrily. Then he cranes his neck back for a kiss.
Euijoo flinches a little when Nicholas misjudges the distance, fang sinking into his fat lower lip, but he doesn’t let them pull apart. He moans, and flinches into Nicholas, fucking deeper and harder, chasing that feeling, not letting up. Nicholas can’t breathe like this—propped up by Euijoo’s limbs and body, full of Euijoo’s cock, swallowing Euijoo’s blood and drooling all over him—but he doesn’t mind.
He feels helpless and limp and content, cradled in Euijoo’s arms, cumming all over himself without a hand on his dick, spinning apart and over the edge.
After an eternity on the precipice, the fall is too good to be true.
“God–!” Euijoo gasps, pressing his forehead to Nicholas’s temple and fucking in as deep as he can, stuttering grinds deeper and deeper as he spills his warmth into Nicholas’s guts. Doing it raw was key to breaking the curse, apparently. Euijoo said that sincerely, but Nicholas vaguely thinks that it’s fine if he was lying.
They’re both still hard. Very hard. Nicholas feels antsy, feels impatient. The reluctance with which Euijoo pulls out signals that they might be on the same page here.
“Hey,” Nicholas mumbles, clenching around nothing when he’s left devastatingly empty. Euijoo hums, and Nicholas just repeats, “Hey, Juju?”
“Yes?” Euijoo replies, eternally patient. Then he’s shoved down to the bed. “U-Uh!”
Nicholas grins, crawling over Euijoo’s naked and prone body, his catlike grace making the movement sultry and seductive. He hopes that Euijoo can see the glint of his fangs in the low light, that Euijoo can see the hunger in his eyes. It goes both ways, after all—how is Nicholas supposed to stop after getting a taste of what he’s wanted for so long?
“I think we have to do it again,” he goads, lining Euijoo’s length up against his hole, grinding back against the wet head. Euijoo’s head falls back but his eyes remain wide open, like he doesn’t wanna look away. “I don’t think it worked. I don’t think it took, yet–!”
His words break off when Euijoo’s hips jerk up, sudden and sharp, fucking into Nicholas on accident. It’s all the cum, Nicholas realizes faintly. It made the slide smooth and easy. God, he wants another load, he wants to feel Euijoo even deeper. He sinks down—the angle that they’re at might get Nicholas what he wants.
“Oh no,” Euijoo grits out, brow furrowed but lips turned up. It’s a grimace of a smile, soured by exertion and all-consuming want. He sounds delighted and dismayed, all at once. “Uh– This curse m-might– fuck, Nicho! It’s stronger than… th– ahn–!”
The air is sparking, their sheets still just dry enough to be kindling, to catch flame. Nicholas has his hands planted on Euijoo’s ribs, rocking down in long and languid rolls of his hips. Euijoo has one hand on Nicholas’s hips and the other on Nicholas’s chest, kept there by a tail wrapped around his lips.
They’re both gasping, wordless, thoughtless, moving and grinding into each other, as if they can get even deeper, somehow. As if the lines and edges between their bodies will melt away, as if they’ll dissolve into nothing, together, becoming everything as one.
“This curse rules,” he sighs, head tipping back when Euijoo plants his feet on the mattress and fucks up. Euijoo chokes out a sound, halfway between a laugh and a moan, and takes one of Nicholas’s hands in his to lace their fingers together.
“Your ears twitch when you’re happy,” he notes, quiet and small and pleased. Nicholas grins back, laughing in turn when the glint of his fangs makes Euijoo visibly swallow. “God, Nicho…”
And, just like that, the world burns away.
—Bonus.
Sixteen hours pass before the door to Nicholas’s room opens. Surprisingly, it’s Nicholas himself who emerges. Bare-chested, sweatpants slung low on his hips, covered in bites and bruises and his gaze flat and unimpressed.
“What?” He gruffs out, staring at them all steadily. His black, fluffy ears are pressed against his head warily. “Need something?”
He doesn’t even give them a chance to answer. He grabs a bottle of water out of Fuma’s hands, an ice pack from Yuma’s, gives them a nod, and then disappears back inside. The last thing they see before the doors close is a satisfied swish of his tail, undoubtedly a response to the last thing that they all hear;
Euijoo’s voice, whining out a long and petulant, “Nicho, pass the water, please.”
Staring at the closed door, Kei-hyung asks, “Um. Jo?”
Jo just shakes his head helplessly. “I really don’t know.” He was raised by witches, damn it, that doesn’t mean he has all the answers!
Fuma stares at his now empty hand with a frown, and then shakes his head and sighs. “I guess I’ll call the manager and ask him to re-book that consultation with the wizard.”
He putters off. The rest of them are left still staring at the door, until a high mewling sound rings out from behind it. Yuma scrambles to the speaker and starts playing Kei-hyung’s jazz playlist at a deafening volume again, face pinched and ears red. “This sucks,” he groans.
“No more bringing back weird fansign items again, okay?” Kei-hyung states with artificial cheer. Faintly, Jo nods, and walks away as fast as he possibly can.