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Kyungsoo is pretty sure that he's being followed.
Well, granted, he shouldn't even be out at this hour in the first place. It had already been past curfew by the time he'd snuck out of his room, and although most of the students boarding for the year had gone home, he still had to duck from a couple of teachers diligently patrolling the school grounds.
Damn it, Baekhyun.
They’ve been meeting in the same dingy storage room for months now; why the hell would he change their meeting room now, of all times?
Nevertheless, he knows the school like the back of his hand, so he navigates the dark hallways pretty easily. Still, as he ducks behind a row of lockers running along the hallway, careful to stay in the shadows…he can't help but feel like he's being watched.
Keeping his footsteps light and knees low to the ground, he's able to make his way to the courtyard entrance. It's locked, of course, so he casually brute-forces one of the window locks open with a flick of his wrist and crawls through.
Thankfully, the football field is dark. He sees a flash of light bobbing up and down from the locker room windows before quickly dimming out.
From his hiding spot under the bleachers, Kyungsoo starts to plot out a path from here to the locker rooms—
"Hey, hold on a second—"
Kyungsoo yelps and shoots up from where he's kneeling—hitting his head on the metal butt of the bleachers.
A loud, solid CLANG! resounds throughout the field. If he weren't already reeling in pain, he'd be cringing from all the noise they're making.
"Oh, shit, Soo, sorry—I—"
Chanyeol kneels beside him, dumbly trying to pull his head back, but Kyungsoo firmly pulls away and presses his palms against his eyes. Tries to pull back the tide of pain away from his head.
When he looks up, he squints at Chanyeol's worried face.
"You okay?" the taller boy asks.
Kyungsoo frowns at him. Slaps the side of Chanyeol’s arm, causing the other boy to yelp as well.
"Why the hell were you creeping up on me like that? I thought you were supposed to take the east wing route?"
"Err, sorry, I just saw you on your way and decided to tail. You know I'm not the best at this whole stealth thing."
Chanyeol runs his fingers through his locks, sighing through his nose. It draws Kyungsoo's attention to his hair, now gray in contrast to the black it had been just earlier this morning.
Chanyeol sees him take notice of this and grins. He has to slouch a bit to keep his head from hitting the bleachers, and he looks like he's having trouble keeping all of his tall and gangly limbs to himself.
“You like my hair?”
“Why’d you choose gray, of all colors?”
"It's not gray! It's Moonstone!"
"Says who?"
"Says the box!"
Kyungsoo snorts. Moonstone. "When did you even find the time to dye it?"
Between the closing ceremony and the fuss of the student body moving stuff out of their dormitories the rest of the day, Kyungsoo just can’t imagine how Chanyeol had found the time to bend over the communal bathroom sink to indulge in his manic pixie impulses.
Chanyeol shrugs coolly. “Just did.”
He tousles his hair with a very model-like, devil-may-care confidence.
Kyungsoo knows him well, though. He reaches up to his hair and pulls a lock. Chanyeol screeches, and for a moment, Kyungsoo forgets that they're supposed to be quiet and throws his head back to laugh.
"Your hair's still wet, dumbass.”
“It took me the entire afternoon, okay?!” Chanyeol finally admits, slapping Kyungsoo’s hand away again when he sees him reaching out again. “Knock it off, Soo! Go back to being a creepy little gremlin sneaking around!”
Kyungsoo just huffs. “Sure. You’re the one following little ol’ me in the dark, and I’m the creepy one.”
Together, they quickly make their way through the bleachers, pushing each other and giggling like they’re first years, and it’s their first time sneaking out after curfew again.
***
Kyungsoo pushes the locker room door open and is immediately greeted by the sight of Baekhyun stripping, freezing as he pulls his pants down halfway.
“Freaking hell, turn off the light, Byun.”
In the middle of the room, there’s a small floating ball of concentrated light, not strong enough to light everything up, but bright enough for Kyungsoo to make out Baekhyun's favorite Doraemon boxers.
Baekhyun actually has the gall to shake his ass. "Hey, hey, hey! About time you guys showed up."
Chanyeol visibly cringes at the Doraemon shorts. "Thinking about what else we would've seen if we had arrived a few seconds later kind of scares me a little."
Baekhyun rolls his eyes. "Haha, very funny, you two. Now, if you're done staring at my ass, close the door behind you and come here!"
They do, and Baekhyun turns around and reveals the cloth in his hands with a flourish. It's a football uniform with the name BYUN on it.
The only thing telling Kyungsoo that it's not Baekyun's is the fact that a) the uniform is much too big for him, and b) Baekhyun isn't even a member of the football team.
"Where the hell did you get that?"
"I'm a player now, didn't you hear?" Baekhyun beams.
Chanyeol coughs like there's a dying animal stuck in his throat, and Kyungsoo crosses his arms with a raised brow.
"Let's try that again. Where did you get the uniform, Baek?"
"Aw, you're no fun!" Baekhyun pulls his shirt over his head and tosses it to Kyungsoo, who catches it and tosses it to Chanyeol behind him in return. As Baekhyun starts putting the jersey on, he points to a cart of fresh jerseys in a corner.
"I think I found the team's new uniforms for next year. It's not like anyone's gonna get them soon, might as well have a little fun with them, yeah?"
They watch as he tries to shimmy his ass into the provided uniform pants. When he finishes, he looks like a bonafide member of the team.
He turns to them with a knowing grin on his face, and Kyungsoo can already tell where this is going.
***
It only takes one look at the uniform Baekhyun dredged up for him for Chanyeol to be on board for his ridiculous idea.
"You guys are unbelievable," Kyungsoo says.
Unlike Baekhyun's, Chanyeol's uniform actually fits him well. Looking for a set for him was easy. There's always another Park and Byun on campus, after all.
In matching uniforms, the two don't find a Do in a pile but do find a Dong. All three of them holler as they tackle Kyungsoo on the ground.
When the door to the locker room opens, they freeze.
Shit, busted in my underwear. Kyungsoo thinks.
Thankfully it's just Jongdae, the last of them to arrive and the one designated with the drinks. He has a small cooler tucked under his arm, and the laugh he lets out when he sees them in a pile on the floor trying to get Kyungsoo's pants down and shirt off is enough to let everyone know that he's in with the hijinks.
Looking for a Kim is easy. Soon, all four of them are decked out in football gear, and despite initially being against it, Kyungsoo can't help but get swept into the festive mood and smile when they start taking selfies in the dark.
He really should’ve known better.
It’s been two years, so he can’t really remember what he’d expected when he’d first joined the group, but for a “secret club” that “aims to explore the mystery and science behind their unknown powers” (Junmyeon’s words, not theirs), Kyungsoo hadn’t really done much “training” aside from his daily habit of playing table tennis against the wall (an excellent way to get used to how much strength and force he’s supposed to use in everyday life), and these weekly meetings they hold where they find an empty classroom and lounge around talking about their day.
They’re pretty much like every other after-school club if you don’t count the occasional trip outside the school where they either screw around with their powers (with Junmyeon never leaving Chanyeol’s side in case something catches on fire) and illegal trips into town where they hound Jongin to treat them whenever he withdraws at an ATM and head into the dingy, neon-clad diner of their choice and fit all nine of them in a single booth.
It’s a little strange, Kyungsoo thinks as he follows his three closest friends up the bleachers to look for a blind spot from the cameras and lights.
Just when he thought the world would never be the same for him thanks to his sudden abnormal strength, his life suddenly enters such an incredible sense of normalcy that he can almost imagine himself as just your regular, everyday boarding school student who does just enough to pass a semester, occasionally plays hooky when the professor doesn’t show up, and makes valuable friends that his younger self never had.
Well. The keyword: almost.
“My beer’s already warm,” Chanyeol says sadly as he stares down into his can.
Sitting on the top of the bleachers, just staring at the football field and the forest line beyond–it’s a rare moment of quiet, even though Baekhyun and Jongdae are giggling like crazy over something Baekhyun is showing on his phone. It’s a nice change of pace from yesterday night when they hit the town one last time with the older boys as a farewell party.
Kyungsoo’s own can of beer is in danger of crumbling under his grip, but he manages. “You alright?”
Chanyeol literally used to be the most explosive among them when it came to his powers. Any extreme emotion had him catching on fire in the worst moments, hence why his mother gets notices about her son’s “chain-smoking problem,” even though he’s never touched a cigarette in his life.
He’s gotten better at controlling it, but Kyungsoo’s been friends with him long enough to know when something’s wrong.
Chanyeol shakes his head. “Just a little anxious, I guess. Like…wow. Will we really be the oldest ones next year? I don’t know if we’re ready, Soo.”
He looks down at his free hand, palm up, and both he and Kyungsoo look down at it as if expecting it to burst in flames.
It occurs to Kyungsoo that it would be pretty bad if they burned up a poor football player’s uniform.
“It’s been two hundred and three days since you’ve last lit something on fire.” Kyungsoo comments. “...On accident, that is.”
(That one time they set the fire alarm off to get out of a test doesn’t count. They had been wholly aware of the consequences, and it was totally worth it despite Minseok chewing them out for it.)
Chanyeol turns to him with a small smile on his face. “You’ve been keeping count?”
“Junmyeon-hyung may or may not have asked me to.”
“Ah, wow. Okay.”
Chanyeol falls silent, contemplating. Kyungsoo thinks he might have said the wrong thing, and–
“Do I fuck up that often? For you guys to keep count?”
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “Really? That’s what you focus on?”
“I mean, what else was that supposed to mean?”
“You dumbass. He told me to keep count because you tend to dwell on the worst parts of yourself, even though you’re really great.” Okay, maybe he’s paraphrasing and adding a few of his own thoughts on Chanyeol, but still. He thinks the guy needs to hear it. “And honestly? I’ve been doing it because I can’t help but agree.”
Chanyeol is silent, but his ears are red, and even though the temperature around them rises, Kyungsoo gets the feeling that he won’t be combusting into flames soon.
Kyungsoo’s attention is then torn away by Baekhyun standing up and tapping the side of his beer can with his dorm key. Like a groomsman about to deliver his speech at a wedding.
“Hear! Hear!” He announces proudly, puffing his chest out. Jongade, ever the supportive friend, echoes, “Hear! Hear! The President is about to make his speech!”
“You’re not club President.” Kyungsoo counters. “We don’t have a club President. The hierarchy doesn’t exist.”
“I’m the oldest in the club right now. That makes me President.”
“Junmyeon-hyung wasn’t the president.”
Baekhyun visibly ponders on that a bit. “Yeah, well. Junmyeon’s graduating. So.”
Kyungsoo rolls his eyes. “Alright, Mr. President. What’s so important that you feel the need to holler it loud enough for the entire school to hear.”
Baekhyun beams at that. “As President, I’d like to have a toast with my new council members, silly! C’mon, cheers!”
“That’s…not how the government works,” Kyungsoo says, but his protests are drowned out by Jongdae and Chanyeol standing up to cheer.
“Cheers!” The three of them raise their glasses expectedly.
Kyungoo holds back a laugh. “Cheers,” he says, and when he clinks his can against theirs, he can’t help but follow their example as they shout out for the second time.
Four people don’t really make much of a party, but the comfort Kyungsoo feels when he’s with Baekhyun, Jongdae and Chanyeol make up for the lack of people and the thought that said people wouldn’t be back for the semester next year.
And if he were being honest with himself: Kyungsoo could never see them again after tonight; he could graduate in a year and never come back to this school he’s made his boyhood memories in; the government could one day find out about their strange afflictions and stuff them into a lab, or he could one day lose his powers and forget how it feels like to have enough strength to lift a boulder, or punch a bully, or get out of bed; still, Kyungsoo would look back at these memories and people with fondness even if the years have been a little rough. Even if they’re all just a bunch of misfits in the eyes of the student body.
“You know, Minseok-hyung passed his research down to me,” Jongdae says as the three of them lie in a pile in the middle of the football field now, lights off thanks to Jongdae short-circuiting the system, and staring up at the sky.
“I’ve been too caught up reading it; that’s why I was a little late. But apparently, his hypothesis is that our powers have got something to do with the strange meteorite that landed in the woods a few years ago.”
Baekhyun points a finger towards the sky, and the tip immediately glows. He starts drawing random constellations in the air. “Yeah?”
“‘s cool,” Chanyeol says sleepily. He has his head on Kyungsoo’s stomach, and the warmth seeps deep into his core. “That’s really cool. We’re like Superman.”
“Superman came from the meteorite, Chanyeol.”
Even with his eyes closed, Chanyeol furrows his brows. “Not true. He came…he came from a planet. I forgot. Not Earth.”
Jongdae and Baekhyun try hard to keep their giggles to themselves.
“Hey, don’t blame him for not knowing his DC lore.” Kyungsoo runs a hand through Chanyeol’s newly-dyed hair, a striking shade of gray.
No, not gray.
Moonstone.
He can’t help but chuckle. “You know he’s more of a Marvel fan.”
FIN