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Gunwook is a good boy. And he has an impressive portfolio of learned tricks as evidence. Gunwook sits when he’s told, barks when he’s told, rolls over when he’s told, and plays dead when he’s told. He absolutely, absolutely does not disobey his owners.
But everything good is fleeting, and so, Gunwook, like all things shiny and angelic, meets the catalyst to his disintegration on a mild spring day with the sun bathing his yard in swathes of golden warmth.
He’s lounging belly up on the couch when a crunch of leaves startles him. Gunwook whips his head to the vaguely overgrown outskirts of the backyard, alert eyes scanning the dusty leaves for signs of anything chase-able, maul-able, or otherwise worth his interest. He does his best to thoroughly scan the shifting leaves, but the upside down world only offers him wisps of familiarity amongst the silhouettes and shadows that flicker in the wind. So, regrettably, Gunwook flops off the couch and finds his feet on the well-worn rug, slinking over to the windows and peering out of the dirt-speckled glass.
This time when the bushes quiver with the hint of an uninvited guest, Gunwook catches it. His eyes snap onto the movement and his nose twitches as he tries to catch a scent. But with the glass in his face, all he can smell is the sharp anxiety lacing his own pheromones and the familiar musk of his home. Gunwook slinks over to the sliding door leading to the backyard, stuffing his nose in the crack to catch a draught of scent, an answer to the question of the mystery intruder’s identity. Through the smell of sun and spring, Gunwook detects something vaguely sweet, a cloying scent that wafts gracefully through the air but slips from his palate the moment it brushes his nose, dissipating like a faint wisp of smoke.
Gunwook presses his wet nose against the crack harder, taking deep breaths and hoping to taste sugar in his lungs. Like a drop of blood in a pool of water, the scent curls in his nostrils and then disappears like it was never there, camouflaging in the pollen that hangs in the air.
But Gunwook is a piranha, a shark, a killer whale. He follows the scent like a trail, scrabbling his paws against the crack in the sliding door until a claw catches and glass slides open with a tired squeak. The moment the crisp air fully hits his nose, Gunwook notices the thrumming undercurrent of heady sweetness hanging between the smell of fresh dirt and young leaves. The syrupy smell diffuses in the warm sunlight, blanketing the yard in a cottony haze of vanilla concentrate and caramelised brown sugar.
The grass crackles softly under his paws as Gunwook slinks out of the safety of his house, belly low to the ground and nose held in the air, following the gradient of musky amber as the smell grows more potent with each step.
Another rustle quivers the bushes and Gunwook freezes, tail tucked low between his legs and heart thudding wildly in his chest. His stomach turns with anxiety, his breath is a barely-there wisp of an exhale. The sweet scent of sugar calls out to Gunwook, he can almost feel the crystals crunch between his teeth, the sucrose dissolving in his saliva.
The next crunch of leaves is accompanied by a faint whimper. It floats through the air like a dandelion seed, grazes Gunwook’s ears and settles into the crevices of his brain, waiting for a chance to spread its roots and take ahold of him. Gunwook feels his hackles start to raise, his chest start to puff. The thick sweetness is suddenly overwhelming, tinged with a bitter char that hangs at the back of his tongue.
There’s more shuffling in the bushes. Gunwook stands, rigid and puffed up, before the thick foliage, eyes trained on the gaps as the leaves dance to the beat of his racing heart.
A quick flash of orange and a series of short gasping whimpers, then suddenly the sticky scent of something heady fills his nostrils and settles at the back of his throat. The richness almost chokes him. It clings to his trachea and fills his lungs with a gourmand haze that pierces his sinus with an intensity that borders on violent.
And the seed starts to germinate, digging its delicate roots into the nerve fibres of his brain, prying apart old connections and forging new pathways. It latches onto the most primitive part of his mind like a parasite, makes him creep closer to the pained whimpering despite the acrid unease constricting his lungs.
Gunwook has never felt curiosity like this before. He’s not even sure if it is curiosity; more like a burning, stewing, savage desire to pin the source of the dizzying syrupy smell under his piercing glare.
The cloying caramel cloud curls around Gunwook, sticky fingers wrapping themselves around his throat, resting on his tongue, coiling in his stomach. It lays like a heavy beast, commanding his attention, demanding his obedience. Inescapable, and utterly consuming. Gunwook instinctively submits to its power, something primal bubbling to the surface of his skin, prickling his nerves and making him feverish with vanilla-laced need.
He draws closer to the bushes, trying to peer through the gaps, bracing for attack. The next whine that escapes the wall of leaves sounds more like a pained sob than anything else. It sets his nerves alight and drops a heavy stone of unease in his belly.
Unwittingly, Gunwook responds in kind, a drawn out whimper slipping between his teeth. Immediately he gets a response, a series of high pitched keens that grow louder with each sound.
Gunwook feels his brain go a little bit fuzzy, frayed around the edges where the sorrowful whines chip at his resolve and fuel his curiosity. His steps crunch loudly as he finally reaches the bushes, nose brushing against the swaying leaves, gulping down the overwhelming scent of warm musk and sticky spun sugar. The whimpers only get louder with his approach.
Gunwook’s ears ring with the high-pitched cries. They bounce around his brain like a mantra, eventually fizzling through his veins and settling in his navel, forming an insistent pressure that demands to be touched. Gunwook ignores it and opens his mouth.
“Hello?” His voice is shaky and dampened by the amount of drool dripping from his muzzle, but the cries cease almost instantly. Gunwook swallows and tries again. “Who is it?”
A sniffling whimper, and then a soft voice. “H-help.”
Gunwook’s brows draw together, creasing his face with the echoes of concern. He scrabbles for entry to the space behind the bushes, pushing through sharp branches and prickly leaves to squeeze his giant fluffy body through a nonexistent gap. It feels like he’s been dipped into a vat of caramel with the way his limbs are sluggish and uncoordinated.
When he gets his head through to the other side, he whips around surveying the shaded haven. His eyes catch on the sugary vanilla perpetrator: a little orange thing, tensed and panting where it’s laying on the dirt.
Gunwook realises with a start that the creature is a fox, about half the size of him and absolutely reeking of amber and marshmallow. The smell, despite its aching sweetness, settles into his fur like a blanket of warmth; comfortable, inviting, seductive. Gunwook feels a bit light-headed at the intensity of it. His mind is so hazy, so absolutely out of it that he doesn’t register the movement of his body until he’s pushed himself through the sharp stabs of the bush and stands broad and imposing over the little fox.
The fox gazes up at him with pleading eyes, round and glimmering with the dappled light seeping into their little bubble. But Gunwook sees no trace of fear in them. It feels like someone has stolen the floor from beneath his paws. And he’s tumbling, falling, submitting to the sultry sweet scent, nose lowering to the orange fur of the fox’s head and breathing in caramelised saccharin. It lingers on his tongue and sinks into his lungs, curls its syrupy tendrils around his heart and squeezes and squeezes and squeezes. He’s gilded with droplets of molten sugar, golden beads clinging to the milky fingers of marshmallowed vanilla, wringing him of reason and filling the gaps with a primal ache that buzzes his bones.
The fox’s nose prods Gunwook’s neck in return, snuffling at his own scent and keening into the thick fur of his coat. Gunwook feels a need well up in him. One that stutters his breath and blurs his vision until the only thing he can see is the dizzying orange of the fox’s fur, the spots of light as they wobble around their hidden haven, and the darkened backside of the little fox, slightly matted with something damp.
Gunwook’s nose drifts towards the wetness, eyes rolling back as the thick caramel air grows stronger with each increment, viscous as it pools in his lungs and seeps into his bloodstream. When Gunwook’s nose brushes the fur around the base of its tail, the fox keens like a desperate thing and suddenly gets to its feet, legs shaky and knees knocking as it finds its balance. Gunwook jolts back at the unexpected movement, the fog of sweetness lifts just for a second.
And then the fox is turning around to present its backside to him, tail pulling up high and to the side to expose its slick hole. It whines out, voice strained and pitched halfway to a scream, and arches its back so prettily below him.
“P-please, hurts.” The words are warped with the cries escaping the fox’s throat and crumpled with a heavy accent. “Need– n-need… please.”
All the breath in Gunwook’s lungs rushes out of him like a tidal wave. He breathes in again and then he’s choking on the molten sugar, burning in his lungs, weighing down his stomach with its richness. He’s frozen to the spot, swaying slightly with how lightheaded he is at the overwhelming sweetness buzzing in his bloodstream. Energy thrums below his skin, threatening to rip him at his seams, tear his flesh from his bones, leave him in a pile of ruined reason and barely restrained hunger.
Gunwook stares at the lewd sight before him, jaw dropped and drool slowly dripping from his maw. The tiny fox shuffles impatiently and wriggles backward towards Gunwook with a wanton moan, claws scrabbling the uneven dirt and leaving dark patches of freshly upturned earth in the wake of its paws. But Gunwook pays the movement no mind, gaze frozen on the pink of the fox’s hole, glistening and shiny and so beautiful with the wetness that frames it. He can’t rip his eyes away, as if the fox has cast a lure into the sea of Gunwook’s darkest desires and reeled him in until all of his dirtiest thoughts are left to writhe in the open, exposed and haunting, even in the daylight.
And despite the vague throb of embarrassment that lingers at the back of his mind, Gunwook is hungry. Hungry for the pink that waves before him like a dangling treasure. Starving for the taste of syrupy orange fur on his tongue. Absolutely ravenous for the little fox that bares its hole so easily for him, smelling like a cloying blend of molten sugar and fevered need, too rich to ignore, too sweet to resist.
The fox wails, honeyed voice dripping with desperation. And Gunwook laps it up like a starved thing, leaning closer to the fox’s backside, head clouded with the haze of primal need. The suffocating smell of pillowy marshmallow and spiced toffee is more intoxicating than ever. Gunwook’s eyes start to roll back in his head as the sticky syrup clouds his brain, infusing his thoughts with a gooey need, a churning desire. He feels something stir in his gut, drifting lower and lower until it settles in his groin, throbbing and pulsing with unbidden need. The arousal seeps into Gunwook’s tense muscles, running its honeyed fingers over him like a balm, caressing and kneading. It coaxes the desire out of him with each squeeze of the grip around his navel, pulsing and too-warm as it lingers in the depths of his stomach.
“Where does it hurt?” Gunwook’s voice is scratchy with the effort of self-restraint, ruined by the onslaught of his growling instincts demanding him to bite, take, ravage.
The fox sobs as the breath of his words grazes its hole, back arching and tail fluffing as a shiver wracks through its tiny, high-strung body. The pink pucker of its hole grows wetter, drip-dripping a soft rhythm of slick onto the scuffed dirt floor.
“Please, need- in me, in me, please, need it, n-need you in me, please, plea-” a nigh scream cuts through the stream of begging as Gunwook suddenly licks over the fox’s hole. The intense saccharine shocks his tastebuds, laying thick and potent on his tongue, seeping into the muscle and branding it with the stain of sin.
The slippery tendrils of reason and control are far gone from his feeble grasp, wrenched away by the bewitching fog of sticky amber and half-burnt caramel. The fox is sweetness gone feral. A facade of charming vanilla and skin-warm sugar, tangling with a deep musk and the bite of something forbidden.
Like a drug, Gunwook is hooked with a single taste. His tongue laps over the fox again—to savour the heady toffee on his tongue. And again—to revel in the pleasantly empty buzz of his foggy brain. And again—to sate the starved pleasure-beast in his gut, clawing against the walls of his belly and roaring to consume the vanilla haze.
The little fox is near hysterical, yelping and screaming and wailing as Gunwook’s broad tongue swipes against its puckered hole over and over, the muscle digging into the crevices of its backside, collecting every pulse of slick for himself.
Gunwook licks and probes and carves his mark on the fox. And in turn, he lets the warm ooze of sweet slick soak into his skin, his belly, his bones. He lets the scorched sugar scent envelop him, drag him down, down, down, into the clutch of his deepest instincts, his darkest desires. A flame kindles in his belly, trickles down to his groin, burning and demanding to be quenched.
Gunwook’s hips buck forward involuntarily, thrusting the air with a desperate vigour. A whimper slips out of his mouth and vibrates against the fox’s slick hole. The fox yowls like it’s been bit, now positively screeching with the pressure of Gunwook’s muzzle at its backside.
“In me please, puppy, please, need you– your pups, wanna be filled, alpha in me, please.”
Something dark and all-consuming rears its powerful head in Gunwook. It rips through his heart and fizzles in his chest, scaling the walls of his veins and settling like a throbbing black cloud in his brain. A deep growling rings in his ears and Gunwook barely registers that it’s coming from his own mouth. His hips stutter incessantly, humping the air with reckless abandon, desperate for friction against his swelling dick. The fog creeps its thin tendrils of primal control into the folds of his brain, hijacking his functions one at a time until Gunwook is a panting, twitching, drooling mess with his snout still buried in the slick pucker of the fox’s hole, slurping up the wet like a parched thing.
A deep voice rings out in Gunwook’s head, tells him to mount. It growls in his mind, demanding him to take, to possess, to ruin, to own. It commands him to fuck the little fox within in inch of its life, leave its womb swollen with his cum, life stirring in the depths of its shaky body as his seed takes to its greedy eggs.
And Gunwook, in his pleasure-haze, is nothing but raw vibrating need. He feels his front paws hike off the ground, obeying the gravelly voice without a second thought. A puppet to his instincts, a slave to his most primal desires. Gunwook craves the wet pink heat of amber fur and vanilla salvation; needs to be wrapped in it, stewed in it, drowned in it. The frazzled fur of the fox is scorched with fever against him, drenched in sugared desperation. Gunwook’s front paws rest above its hips, grasping its thin waist in a desperate hold, eclipsing the tiny canine with his broad form. He absolutely dominates the fox, its backside presented so prettily to him, back arched and tail twitching against his thick fur where it’s trapped between their bodies.
The fox lets out high staccato whimpers that go straight to Gunwook’s swollen dick, twitching in anticipation as the angry bulbous head grazes the fox’s fur. Gunwook growls like a feral thing and instinctively thrusts his hips forward, chasing the fizzle of pleasure in his veins. His cock catches on the rim of the fox’s hole, pressing lightly for intrusion before snapping out of alignment, gliding past its hole and into the damp orange fur.
Gunwook lets out a guttural groan that blends with the fox’s melodic moan, twisting and curling in the sugar-dusted air like a promise, bouncing around the dome of leaves that surround them. Gunwook draws his hips back, lining up again with the wet pucker, growling as the pink heat stretches and parts around the tip of his raging dick. He shifts his hips forward, and gasps at the tight clutch of the fox’s hole as it clings to his sensitive shaft. Like a moth to a flame, a fish to a lure, Gunwook chases the feeling, snapping his hips in until he’s flush with the furry backside of the little fox.
The fox screams, writhing in his clutch, scrabbling against the dirt, walls pulsing around his cock. Gunwook’s eyes roll back into his head. The overwhelming cascade of red hot pleasure zips through him like a vicious current, frying every last remnant of control from his body. His hips instinctively draw back and then plough back into the fox with a ferocity, setting a punishing rhythm that jostles the little orange creature against the floor. But Gunwook’s paws remain tight on the fox’s hips, claws digging into its flesh, clutching the sugar-drenched heat against his body.
“Hah… so good, so deep puppy, so full– need your cum, need your pups, breed me, breed me, breed me,” the fox blabbers, the stream of pleas punctuated with sharp whoreish cries as Gunwook fucks into its hole, growling and drooling into its ruddy fur. His mind feels fuzzy with the way the fox’s walls squeeze rhythmically around his cock, pulsing and fluttering and gripping his dick like a vice, as if the very thought of being empty would rend its entire being.
Gunwook’s hips snap hard and fast against the fox, pounding it, ravishing the little thing as it whines and mewls and cries. The fox is so unbelievably hot and wet and tight around his cock, Gunwook almost feels the squeeze in his brain, wringing out rivulets of pleasure, cascading along his body in shivers.
The orange fur below him is dizzying. It whispers to him, calling for him. And Gunwook is in a trance, jaw dropped open, hips stuttering in uneven thrusts, tongue lolling out to taste the caramel desire in the air. So when something tells him to bite, Gunwook immediately drops his head to the scruff of the fox’s neck, sniffing its potent scent like a drug. The fur is carnal corruption, woven with seduction and steeped in desire. It makes Gunwook lightheaded with formidable force, vying to be stained with the scent of their joint pleasure. The fox radiates a sweetness that demands to be bitten into, promising thick vanilla salvation on his tongue.
And who is Gunwook to disobey? After all, no one is as good a boy as him.
So, he sinks his teeth into the meat of the fox’s neck, vicious and feral as he growls with reckless abandon. The fox howls with a heaving sob, thrashing against the dirt floor as Gunwook’s canines dig deep into its flesh. He clamps down hard, thinks he draws blood, but the cloying sugar-soaked fur overwhelms his tastebuds; he barely tastes the metallic tang on his tongue. Amber toffee and creamy marshmallow choke him until all his senses are clogged with the inescapable musk of saccharine caramel heat. The orange fur darkens with the drool pooling in Gunwook’s mouth, matting the soft strands together in a brand of their union, blood colouring the fiery coat a deeper shade of red.
Gunwook’s hips falter as the fox clenches around him, squeezing, milking, swallowing his cock in the burning clutch of its hole, begging to be filled and claimed with his cum. And Gunwook feels a pressure building in his groin, a force that rests hard and relentless against his navel. He whimpers into the fox’s neck, the needy sound dropping off into a deep growl as the pressure curls around his dick, electric and intense in its weight. Gunwook drives his hips harder, grips the fox tighter, sink his canines in deeper. He’s desperate for the addicting swell of pleasure building in his cock, a slave to its demands in his movements.
Gunwook bites down harder around the fur in his mouth, revelling in the steady stream of hot thick blood that drips onto his tongue. The fox screams as its flesh is speared between Gunwook’s teeth. Deep wounds puncture its pristine orange fur, marring the delicate creature in an inescapable brand; an irrefutable claim of its corruption. Tears drip freely off its muzzle, glancing across its sleek fur and splattering against the dirt.
Gunwook watches the droplets fall with a sick sort of satisfaction, clamping his jaw down harder. A minuscule grain of guilt blooms in his chest, but the savage waves of possessiveness sweep the useless feeling away, drowning it in the unfiltered primal sea of his desire. He chases his pleasure, led by the taut string in his gut; following, following, following until his hips are a blur as he pounds into the fox. He uses it like a little toy, a vessel for his release, a means to his end.
With each thrust into the wet heat, Gunwook feels his dick swell, his knot inflating, his release drawing closer. The fox goads him on, whimpers and high moans zipping through his body like a current, sparking against the fuse of his orgasm.
The first time Gunwook’s growing knot catches on the rim of the fox’s hole, it howls a heaving sob, walls constricting almost impossibly tight around his length. Gunwook’s jaw goes slack at the buzz of pleasure that surges in him, firing every nerve in his body and tingling down to his toes. His teeth loose their brutal grip on the fox’s scruff, unplugging the deep wounds and sending blood gushing into his mouth.
Even with the metallic taste flooding his tastebuds, the thick blood is just so sweet. Like syrup on his tongue, Gunwook gulps the rich smoothness down, slurping and lapping at the wounds like a starved animal. The punishing rhythm of his hips grows sloppy with the hazy veil of intense pleasure that clouds his brain. His knot barely grazes the pink pucker of the fox’s hole as his movements grow shallower and shallower, chasing a release that sprints away from him like prey from a predator.
Gunwook thinks his rapidly swelling knot is at full girth already; the pressure in his navel feels like it’s about to explode at any second, threatening to drag him under the crashing waves of carnal lust. He fucks deeper into the fox, his knot only slightly stretching the tight muscle before he’s drawing back for another forceful thrust. The fox whimpers and cries below him, shaking with its own pleasure and begging for release.
“Knot, knot, alpha, knot, please,” the fox chants into the syrupy air, lithe body jerking with the force of Gunwook’s thrusts, “please alpha, ‘m yours, knot me, want your pups, knot-”
The fox cuts itself off with a howl as the stiff knot at the base of Gunwook’s cock finally forces into its tight hole, stretching the pink ring obscenely, moulding it to fit his girth. The fox gushes around him, capturing the bulb in its depths with a vice-like grip. The slick matts their coats together where Gunwook’s hips meet the fox’s backside, warm and dizzying as it pushes Gunwook over the crest of his release.
Gunwook’s cock twitches uncontrollably in the suffocating clutch of velvety walls as cum spurts out of his dick in waves of pleasure. He groans as his muscles clench, working to squeeze every last drop into the devastatingly empty womb of the fox. His knot locks him in the grasp of the tight heat and Gunwook wouldn’t dream of moving if he could, completely succumbing to the surge as it drags him under, whites out his brain, rips at his heart. Gunwook’s breath comes out of him in heaving puffs, straight into the deep gashes at the fox’s neck. The hot moistness of his panting makes the fox keen, a loud and desperate sound as its walls contract again.
Gunwook thinks he might die. His heart is rabbiting out of his chest, threatening to rip through his skin and plop right onto the dirt floor. His groin still pulses as cum pumps steadily out of him. His paws shake where they clutch the fox’s hips, claws digging into the soft fur, clinging onto the final dregs of his shuddering pleasure.
Through his haze of a brain, he thinks it wouldn’t be so bad if he did just flatline; just drop to the ground as his heart loses its rhythm, bliss in his face and the last of the electric jolts of pleasure fizzling out in his stagnant blood. He would die a happy pup, and go to heaven like every good dog—maybe find a fox or two to keep him company up there—and bathe in the riches of his vanilla scented pleasure harvest.
His cock offers a final twitch, a weak spurt chasing out the last of his load of cum, pumping the tight hole so full that Gunwook can feel the pressure of his own release as it curls around the shaft of his dick, hot and sticky. His body trembles against the fox, jolting with the aftershocks of his orgasm. Gunwook lowers his body weight onto the trembling legs of the fox, draping himself, heavy and spent, over the creature like a custom fur coat. The fox barely protests, a weak whimper slipping from its mouth that tapers off into a wheezing breath.
Incrementally, Gunwook tries shifting his hips. His knot, ballooned snugly in the velvet heat, shifts subtly, but remains firmly lodged in the wet clutches. A moan rips out from both of their throats. The noises tangle in the air, bouncing around the leaf-walls and twisting around the weakening strings of caramel as they diffuse through the shrubbery.
They stay unmoving in their position for what seems like hours, catching the wisps of their breaths and chasing the slowing thumps of their heartbeats from their eardrums.
After Gunwook has aged approximately one whole dog year being parked firmly on top of the poor fox, it starts to strain. Its bony pelvis suddenly seems to dig deep into his stomach. Faintly, he shifts his weight between his legs, minutely wiggling to take the ache out of his abdomen. This time, he manages to fight off the whimper that bubbles up his throat, stuffing it back down and stamping it out.
“Heavy,” the fox breaks the growing silence, whining out the short word as it shakes under Gunwook’s broad frame. Gunwook grunts in understanding, scrabbling to heave his oversized frame off the little fox. Once all four of his paws touch the scuffed dirt floor, Gunwook tries to find his balance on weak legs like a newborn deer. But his flailing is limited by his knot, stuck in the too-tight clutch of the fox’s walls, impossible to tug free in its engorged state.
All the jostling shifts Gunwook’s dick inside the fox, his knot tugging mercilessly at its rim in a vain attempt to free itself. The fox cries out at the pressure, clamping down around Gunwook, squeezing him tight in its hot embrace. The high sound almost echoes in their cavern of leaves, glancing off the light spots and shadowed foliage in a tinny reverberation.
The sound, despite the frequency with which it coloured the caramel air a couple minutes ago, now triggers something deep in Gunwook’s stomach. The noise is laced with a kind of quiet apprehension, as if the fox was waiting for him to turn around and finish the job of mauling him. The seed of guilt, previously drowned out by his lust, now blooms savagely in its absence, filling up his chest and piercing his heart with its sharp little claws. So, for the sake fo the poor fox, Gunwook freezes in his place, all too conscious of the pure pain their sheer size difference could cause. He ends up with his backside pressed to the fox’s hind, standing ass-to-ass with the little creature he just pumped full of his cum, chained to his crime of passion and throttled by slowly rising regret.
The silence that settles around them is unnerving. In the wake of the slew of moans and whimpers that dribbled out of the fox’s mouth, the emptiness in the air weighs heavy on Gunwook’s eardrums. The pressure of the fox’s muted submission melds with the raw stagnancy of the unmoving air, choking Gunwook’s throat and squeezing the air out of his lungs. Distantly, Gunwook feels cold tendrils of panic start to awake in him, slowly coiling like snakes in the pit of his stomach. He opens his mouth to speak.
The first sound to escape him is cracked and warbled with the tightness of his vocal cords. The fox jumps a little at the sudden rift in their inertia, but says nothing. Gunwook honestly doesn’t know whether to be grateful for the fox’s lack of acknowledgement or wilt under its static apathy.
But Gunwook is anything but a quitter, so he swallows the lump in his throat, coughs out the tension in his voice. Gunwook nudges a peace offering towards the fox, like a puppy offering to share his favourite toy.
“So… I’m Gunwook.”
There’s a tense silence. The seconds drag on, trickling by as if in slow motion. With each trailing moment, Gunwook withers a little bit more, cursing himself for shattering the thin illusion of their tranquility.
Until, suddenly, the fox is clearing its own throat and the soft timbre of its voice floats across the air.
“Gunwook,” the fox repeats, testing the syllables on its tongue. It sounds more like Gunuk coming from its sharp mouth, but Gunwook thinks it’s kind of cute; the kind of cute one would find a little fool.
Gunwook waits eagerly for a reply, already hooked on the slightly mashed pronunciation of his own name. The seconds stretch on between them, with no indication of a further reply from the fox. Gunwook holds his breath. And maybe prays.
“I’m Matthew.”
All the air leaves Gunwook’s lungs in a wave. He grins with all his teeth and feels his tail start to go, wagging in that dumb exaggerated motion that sweeps everything in its path. His tongue lolls out of his mouth; starts to pant with the warm excitement spreading in his bones.
“Matthew.” Gunwook tastes the letters on his tongue, swirling it around his mouth like a hard candy, feeling the sugar dissolve in the warmth of his saliva.
“Matthew.” He says it louder, glowing with delight, the word delicate between his teeth. His tail thumps against Matthew’s body, shaggy fur whipping him in a soft rhythm.
“Mmm,” Matthew hums, a small complaint as he draws away from the assault.
But when Gunwook looks over, he sees a small smile tugging on the corners of his lips. It’s a fleeting thing that’s replaced by a weak frown as soon as Matthew catches him staring, but Gunwook soaks it up all the same. And even with the weight of a disgruntled Matthew’s attention, Gunwook feels lighter than ever, like he’s floating in a world of vivid colour, with the subtle scent of torched sugar nestling into his fur, soaking into his skin, making a space for itself as it burrows into the precious folds of his memory.