Chapter Text
It had been a weird day. One of these days that seemed to stretch forever, stretch as only time could do only to then hit you back in the face with the recoil and leave you thinking "Is it still 11 am?"
Hyuk peaked at the clock and growled. It was a sound born out of desperation, for it would not change a thing of his current situation.
He hated slow paced days, slow-paced movies, slow-paced conversations...
Slow-paced people.
He made a quick mental schedule for the day and decided that in a couple of hours they could have everybody's schedule all ready to go, provided Kyu had not woken up in the mood for stirring trouble.
He checked the younger one's last connection: 5:45 am... He was going to be desperate to nap for a few hours in any of the waiting room's sofas.
Great.
"That clock isn't going to tick any faster no matter how much you look at it" The voice, with a pitch slightly higher than average, startled him. He tried to talk back with something quick and witty but nothing came to mind so he just nodded and smiled, taking a quick glance at Heechul, who was trying to balance what amounted to a few boxes of things ranging from plain boring stuff to just.. trash and preventing it to fall to the ground while having then to keep the door open with a part of the body what was really not made for that specific activity, that is, the butt.
"Where are you going with all of that?"
"Where am I not going, you should be asking" Hee replied while dropping everything on the table in a pretty careless manner. Hyuk's eyes followed a small yellowish ball that rolled slowly until it fell to the floor. Heechul did not pick it up.
"They were getting rid of everything down at lost objects... There was stuff there that... Well, you can picture it. There were some valuables, and there was a lot of trash... It made me kinda sad, they throwing away all of these small toys. Look at this!" a long hand reached for the stack of trash without even a second thought and picked up a tiny cream coloured plastic bear which Hyuk thought looked awful.
" I thought..." Heechul kept talking "I thought that maybe I could take all of this down to the animal shelter... For the dogs to play with, you know?. They don't have that many toys. So I picked everything up. But then I remembered that we had a meeting. I didn't want to make anyone bear with all of this while I'm here and I was afraid they'd just throw all out if I just left it around" the hand left the bear back at the stack, moving back to scratch the back of Hee’s head, eyes all over the place as if looking for something, even if the dancer knew that was definitely not the case. "So here I am."
"I'll help you with those later" Donghae was smiling from the door, the little yellow ball on his hand.
"Don't you worry" And the ball was in Donghae’s hand no more, and Heechul was all theatrics playing with it, tossing the ball from hand to hand. "I'm like 99% sure I'll be able to kidnap someone who's free.”
One by one all the members started to turn up, with the exception of Siwon and Yesung. Siwon would join them via video chat as he was travelling at the moment and it didn't matter much, as his schedule was pretty free of idol activities at the time.
The meeting was supposed to begin at 11:15, but it didn't until five minutes later.
"Where's Yesung?" Teuk's gaze wandered around the room until it finally settled on Ryeowook, as if he had an answer to the question.
"I have no idea" the younger one, sitting by his side, shaked his head. "He wasn't at the cafeteria."
"Well then he hasn't arrived yet" he sighted, resigned, and decided to just start with the meeting, Yesung or no Yesung.
The distribution went more or less just as Hyuk had predicted: Shindong took upon him most of the SM meetings, something he was happy not to do. The two times he had to cover up for Teuk on those meetings still gave him shivers. They were such a bore. Not even in maths back at school had Hyuk heard that many numbers per sentence.
He frowned at the memory.
"Good morning" Yesung's voice made his attention turn back towards the real world.
"You're almost 20 minutes late." Kyuhyun's voice was soft; not a reprimand at all, he just sounded worried. And Yesung was not only visibly nervous, but he looked a bit confused.
"Yesung...?"
"I... I am sorry." He took a quick glance at all of them, forcing a tiny smile out of his lips before taking the seat Wook had left empty for him by his side. He didn't give any excuses for being this late.
And no-one said anything else on the matter.
There were days in which you could talk about it and days in which you really shouldn't.
That day was one of the latters.
They all recognised the signs: the dark circles under his eyes, the nervous attitude and the colorful band-aids on the tips of his fingers.
Hyuk didn't know why everybody else had decided not to talk about it, but he knew why he wasn't going to: talking about private affairs overwhelmed him.
Sometimes, talking to Yesung did that too. Specially when the singer was sad.
He had one of these kinds of sadness that, just like the sea, threatened to drown you. That made you heavy, that got into your bones like heavy rain pouring over you.
Sometimes, when Hyuk looked at him while sitting quietly, his eyes full of a kind of attention nothing or no-one quite deserved, he felt like Yesung truly was the saddest person on earth.
Ryeowook was the only one who, sometimes, managed to get through to him, and that made Hyuk's chest feel heavier.
His eyes looked for him and found him sitting behind Wook, hiding the same way one hides behind a wall, while the younger one caressed his knuckles under the table without looking at him, absent minded.
He had always felt a little bit of envy for their relationship. Ryeowook seemed to always know what Yesung needed, as if he could peak into his mind, and Yesung trusted him, with no need for words.
He followed the fingers that danced over the singer's hand and sighed.
And, without any other incident, the meeting was over. Work had been scheduled for the next ten days and that meant being able to start planning.
He saw Heechul slip away down the hallway with Donghae, who was now carrying all the stuff Hee had arrived with. Kyuhyun had disappeared towards one of the rooms on the top floor that was currently empty because there "no-one would hear him snore". Shindong and Teuk were going to stay behind for another couple of hours, just "running the numbers" (and thus feeding Hyuk's theory that sometimes they just did it for the shake of it), and about the others...
He hadn't even heard Yesung leave.
He sighed yet again and decided that he'd drop by the cafe before leaving to get something to eat, and then he'd dive head first into his couch and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. He could already feel a headache coming his way.
Having no use for the elevators, he jumped his way down the stairs, four steps at a time and, since the cafeteria was pretty much deserted at that time of the day, he crossed the threshold wearing his best smile. There was a new waitress working there, a tall and not very impressionable woman that had started a few weeks ago.
After giving it some thought he had decided that, if he played his cards just right, maybe she would be willing to stir up some trouble with him.
"Today is her free day."
"What?" He spinned his whole body to look behind him and found himself face to face with Ryeowook. A confused look took over him.
"The waitress. Tall, short brown hair, large mouth... It's her free day."
"I have no idea what you're talking about" He could feel his face starting to radiate heat, as if he had been caught with his hand deep in the cookie jar. Wook looked at him for a second, rolled his eyes back and sighed.
"Whatever you say"
Hyuk followed him in silence, planning to steal some of the food he was carrying on his plates.
"Is Yesung still around?"
"No, he went back home. I'll call him later, to check up on him."
"Did something happen?"
"His head, that's what happened. What always happens." He took a small sip of his cold tea and sighed again. "I do not know what to do about his anxiety these days. He feels useless, like he does not matter"
"But that ain't true." Hyuk had managed to claim to himself a plate full of fruit without any resistance on Ryeowook's side. "You've told him so, right?"
"It doesn't matter what I tell him, Hyuk. Only what his head tells him. It's the only voice he really listens to, anyways. He sees himself as expendable, he needs to feel accepted, loved." Wook scratched his head, a bit lost for words. "It's not like he isn't important, because he definitely is, but he doesn't feel that way. It's like he needs his life to be like one of those dumb movies he watches, at least for a while... And I do not know what else to do; it's eating him up."
"But life ain't like the movies"
"Well you go and tell him that." replied Ryeowook, his voice sounding tired "It's not that easy, don't you know? We all have a prism through which we see reality, Hyuk... And we can't change the way Yesung sees it. He needs reality to match with what he sees, somehow... But I don't know how.
That conversation haunted Hyuk all the way back home.
And he was also being haunted by Yesung's dark circles under his eyes. The way he made himself small slouching on chairs. His hair dark as the night. His sweet and begging smile. His bitten lips, full of tiny wounds.
When the car stopped at a traffic light, Hyuk found himself looking at a movie poster, some new flick that was going to be released in a few days.
On the poster a man and a woman were hugging each other, surrounded by all the cast. And he found himself getting angry at the poster, getting angry at the world, because they were the things that made Yesung feel sad. Because now it was him who was feeling useless.
He closed his eyes, making a list of everything that made that movie stupid while the light turned green and the car started moving again.
Real life was better than the movies, but Yesung needed a movie. And he'd make sure that Yesung would get what he wanted.
And so, by the time Hyuk stepped out of the car he had decided that, if the only thing that was going to give Yesung the trust and happiness he needed was a cheap romcom he was willing to give him just that.
He was willing to give him everything.