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Seungmin is hiding under a table. It wasn’t his first choice, just the only one that worked.
He tried a supply closet — the shelves jutted into him and he couldn’t close the door up all the way. He tried the bathroom — but it smelled, and the squeak of his shoes against the tile was too shrill. He tried a room — smaller than the others, farther out of the way; empty — but he had left his jacket behind and the air was too cold, jagged against his skin.
Then, in that room, he spotted the table.
Under it, his world is narrowed, yellowed, and softened. Rough linen hides him away. He tugs his knees up to his chest and tips his head back against the wall, taking in a deep breath. The air around him is stagnant and stuffy, cocooning him.
He takes another breath. The buzz under his skin begins to dull.
Time passes in an irrelevant manner. However, he can’t have been there too long before someone else walks in. It’s immediately apparent who it is from the sound of their half-hearted grumbling: Changbin.
“Yah, who does Hyunjinnie think he is, making me go around as his errand boy.” He paces around the room, sifting through some things. “Taking advantage of my feelings… Don’t fall for it, sweet talker, sweet, sweet talker —”
An impromptu cover of TWICE’s “SWEET TALKER” starts. It’s decently in tune, though muttered, and accompanied with dance moves — squeaks and rustling fabric that are nearly as loud as his whispers.
If he had shown up a few minutes earlier, Seungmin might have snapped at him for the noise. As it is, he just puffs out a laugh.
The singing and dancing stutter to a halt. Then, footsteps come his way.
The tablecloth is lifted. A brush of cool air swirls into the midst of the Seungmin-air that had collected in the small space.
Changbin’s curious face appears in the gap. “Seungminnie?”
“Uuah,” Seungmin replies, and rocks himself a little.
Changbin’s face twists up in a smile like it does when he finds something unbelievable or amusing. He glances around. “Yah, Seungmin-ssi, what are you doing under there?”
Seungmin doesn’t reply. He doesn’t think he can manage to form any words right now. Instead, he shapes his mouth into something like a smile, too: vacant and awkward but not upset, trying to let Changbin know that nothing’s too wrong. It isn’t exactly weird behavior for him — he doesn’t always know what to say when others talk to him, and can default to nothing at all — so Changbin hardly blinks.
“Have you seen an ugly jacket laying around that would fit an ugly weasel?”
Seungmin shrugs.
The door creaks open, and soft singing begins to fill the room again. It’s low as well, but much sweeter than Changbin’s cover had been. Changbin abruptly drops the tablecloth and stands up. He becomes just a wavering shadow on the rippling tablecloth.
“Hannie!” he calls. “Have you seen the puppy around?”
There’s a moment’s pause, and then Jisung says, “… Yo,” clearly not having listened to a single word Changbin said.
“Hannie!” he repeats, overly excited. “Our puppy is missing!”
In English: “Oh my God!” In Korean: “What about the rules on unleashed pets on premise?!” There’s the sound of a cabinet being flung open, then a drawer being open and shut.
“… Yah, do you really think he’d fit in there.”
Jisung makes a dismissive noise. His clatter comes Seungmin’s way, and then his shadow joins Changbin’s.
“Hmm.” The tablecloth is lifted for the second time.
“Yes. First try.” Jisung offers a fist bump to Seungmin. Seungmin doesn’t return it, but he can’t help but give him a small, shy smile. Jisung grins back and glances around at the small space.
“Yo, sick digs.” He then gets down on his elbows and squirms under the table with him.
Seungmin doesn’t notice until too late, but Jisung has already changed into his stage outfit. The jacket is a fabric he’s recently learned he hates wearing more than anything. When it touches his skin — it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t even feel bad, but it takes him by surprise. His body remembers the distress accompanied with the texture.
He can’t help it: he yelps.
“Oh my God! Baby!” Jisung immediately twists away from him. “I’m sorry! Did I hit you?”
“Yah!” comes Changbin’s voice from beyond the tablecloth. “Han Jisung, how could you hit him!”
“I didn’t!” He turns to Seungmin. “… I didn’t, right?”
Seungmin stares back at him with wide eyes. Again, he can’t bring himself to say anything.
“Seungminnie,” Jisung coos. He takes his cheeks in his hands and squishes them, scrunching his own face up in an obnoxious expression. “Seungminnie, I didn’t hit you, did I? Did I?”
Seungmin shakes his head hard, not as a disagreement but to dislodge the hands on him. Jisung clings for a few seconds, still babbling, then lets himself be shaken off. He leans back, wriggling himself against the wall, situating himself like a dog doing circles before laying down. “See, he says I didn’t hit him!”
Seungmin, who said no such thing, glares.
There’s a series of raps on the already-open door. How everyone is finding this room, he has no idea: he had thought it relatively out of the way.
“Hullo,” Chan says. “Have you seen Seungmin-ah?”
Seungmin abruptly remembers there was a reason he felt the need to retreat under the table. He covers his mouth to stifle a noise. Jisung’s eyes flick toward him.
“… No?” Changbin replies.
“Mmmhh, okay, okay… Well, noona says he ran off before she could finish styling his outfit, so if anyone has seen him, it’d be really helpful if they told me.”
Jisung raises an eyebrow. Seungmin shrinks under the knowledge that everyone else knows how much trouble he’s causing, too.
There’s a pause. “Under the table,” Changbin mutters.
“Oh?” Chan’s surprise is tangible. Footsteps draw closer and the third shadow of the day falls over Seungmin. The tablecloth is lifted and their leader’s amused face peers down at them.
Jisung clears his throat and says in English, “We’re jus’ chillin’, man.”
Chan crouches down to be closer to their level, hands on his knees. “Any chance you two can chill while Seungmin-ah gets ready?”
Seungmin shakes his head. He likes his space under the table.
“Then how about I bring your stage outfit here, you can put it on, and noona will fix it up later?”
“No,” he says, and shakes his head again. He can’t think of anything else that would currently fit through his mouth. “Nuh-uh.”
Chan looks surprised. “Seungminnie,” he chides, “you know you can’t just not wear what they’ve prepared for you. What’s up, puppy?”
Seungmin kicks out before he can stop himself. When he does, it's his socked foot that connects with Chan’s knee — his shoes had been lost somewhere between the bathroom and here, too tight on his skin.
Chan grunts.
“No,” Seungmin repeats. He shakes his head more forcefully, and, horrifyingly, feels tears well in his eyes. His lips twist up trying to keep them in.
Chan searches his face. “Okay, we’ll take a few. It’s not a problem, okay? Bin-ah, can you find noona and tell her we’ll be a bit and sorry for the inconvenience?”
“Aigoo,” Changbin says, and disappears.
Chan turns back to them. “Do you want to talk to hyung, or just take a break?”
Seungmin doesn’t respond. On one hand, he doesn’t feel up to talking right now; on the other, he does need this problem solved, and it’d be really nice if a hyung did it for him. Without thinking about it much, he lifts his hand, biting down on the skin between the knuckles closest to his thumb, and shrugs.
“No biting.” Jisung swats at the hand. “Bad dog.”
Seungmin glares and bites a little harder. Jisung wrestles him for the hand and retrieves it from his mouth, linking their fingers together and pulling it close to his chest. There are red indents where Seungmin’s teeth had been, and enough shiny flecks of spit for him to feel grossed out at Jisung for being willing to touch it.
He grimaces.
“I wanna make you the happiest one, no fears ~”
He chomps at Jisung’s fingers. The singing switches to a one-note, mildly panicked, “Aahhhh.” They play tug-of-war with their hands for a few seconds before Seungmin gives up. He keeps tugging at it a bit, but only because the feeling is nice.
When he turns back to Chan, he finds him watching them with a fond look in eyes. This also grosses him out.
“Hyung, you are a loser.” With this new-found ability to speak, he forges on. “Um, about noona —”
The strength leaves him fast. His words stick in his chest, too heavy to bother lifting out. He crinkles his face in annoyance.
Chan purses his lips. He watches Seungmin closely. “Was she making you uncomfortable?”
Seungmin thinks about this for a second, bites at his other hand, and nods. When Jisung gasps a little, and a sharp breath tears through Chan, his brain catches up with his body. He switches to violently shaking his head.
“Seungminnie, I need you to be honest with me.”
He shakes his head harder. Figuring he's about to cause his stylist a lot of trouble if he doesn't speak up, he takes his hand from his mouth and works his throat until he remembers how to talk again.
“Uh — uncomfortable, yes. Not her. The clothes.” He pauses. “Fabric,” he adds, just in case of another misunderstanding.
Chan’s face relaxes, but it does something complicated in the process that Seungmin can’t follow. “Okay, that’s fine. And it isn’t something you can put up with?”
Coming from their leader, it’s an honest question. It’s gentle, too, not pointed at all, but still — it’s too, too much. His gaze prickles on Seungmin’s skin like the awful fabric had; the eyes on him are unbearable. He shrinks away, slouching down to hide behind his legs and training his own eyes away. They land on the floor by Jisung.
“No.”
“Okay… okay.” Chan melts further into his crouch, looking like he might decide to sit down entirely, and deep in thought. “We’ll figure something out — but, ah —”
Changbin marks his reappearance with a shout. “Yah! Are we all fitting ourselves under that table?”
With a sinking feeling of dread, Seungmin notes more approaching pairs of footsteps than just Changbin’s. Moments later, the faces of Minho and Jeongin appear.
Jeongin looks preemptively amused. “I heard our puppy is causing trouble,” Minho says, eyes crinkled up in a smile.
In everyone’s presence, something starts to well up in Seungmin. He tugs harder at Jisung’s hand, going so far as to lean his weight against the grip. Jisung still doesn’t let go, which is good, because he doesn’t actually want him to. He needs to feel something he can’t put a name to — he’d bite down on a hand again, if he didn’t think his hyungs would protest.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His voice breaks and his skin crawls, and, for the first time today, he forms this complete thought: he wishes he could somehow work up the will to be normal.
Minho’s smile tilts.
Jeongin bumps past Chan to wriggle closer to Seungmin. He pokes at his shoulder. “What’re you sorry for, huh?” His smile stays firm on his face, dimpling his cheeks. “Weirdo-hyung.”
Seungmin frowns and grabs at the attacking arm. He doesn’t let go once he has it, holding tight and keeping Jeongin from annoying him further. Jeongin makes a noise of protest and tries to pull away, but he doesn’t pay him any mind.
Instead, his gaze stutters back over to Chan. It takes a few tries to get all the way to his face, because the weight of everyone’s eyes is still crawling over his skin. When he does finally look at Chan, Chan looks back.
Maybe under the table is too small a spot to hide himself in. He holds Jisung’s hand tighter and clings to Jeongin’s arm. Maybe it’s too much like what a child would do, shrinking him down into someone small and unsure. He doesn’t say anything, but, looking into Chan’s eyes, he feels like he’s pleading for something.
Of course, Chan just smiles, slow and sure. “Our Seungminnie has always had a few screws loose.”
He squeezes his own, broad shoulders under the table, and envelops Seungmin in a hug. His hold is firm and safe. He rocks him back and forth.
“We’ve always known this, yeah? It’s okay.”