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Chan always loved his caregivers, he loved how there was always a specific something with each one—a routine that made them special to him.
Minho would always tuck him in tight with warm, sweet milk in his sippy cup, with Bluey playing on his TV on days where he could hear too much, cuddling so close with his perfect head scratches to lure him to sleep so quickly that he didn’t even get to the middle of a Bluey episode. Changbin always carries him around like he weighs nothing, always playing around and lightly tossing him on couches, the other caregivers’ beds, anywhere safe and cushioned; Chan is lightly being tossed with an over-dramatic Changbin panting that he’s done (he’s not).
Hyunjin always lets him paint, draw, color, or just watch, but always leads to him dozing off or getting paint on his little clothes anyways (which is why Minho enforced clothing safe art supplies for their messy baby). Felix always bakes with him; sometimes, when he’s too small to be around dangerous things in the kitchen, he just allows him to be the taste tester and be the first to have a bite of the new treat the man makes. Jisung, Seungmin, and Jeongin always just indulge in their childish ways with Chan, always getting in some sort of trouble or a way of ticking off Minho, which sometimes gets the little into punishment and a thirty-minute timeout, but sometimes Minho lets him off the hook.
It’s been this way since Chan told them about his headspace two years ago after a stressful schedule that released everything into their faces with insecurity and fear of wrongs, but they got the hang of it well after a few months.
Of course, Chan had too many doubts and scares, ones he had to learn through trusting them and letting himself regress with them there. Even through the bad days and the days where he felt they shouldn’t have been there at all.
Chan is a bit overprotective of his little gear and things that are in a bubble of stuff little him (and big him) cherishes more than anything; one of those being a Jellycat Koala his mother sent him in one of her care packages long, long ago with an oil to make it smell like his home back in Australia named Kio.
He never sleeps without it, little or big, something he just cannot sleep well without. He even packs it when they go to overnight schedules just so he can sleep well and not have so many worries about anything going on around him. The oil being lightly dipped on to smell like home and ease him to sleep when he can’t, he always waits until the smell isn’t even lingered before putting even the smallest bit on.
It’s mid-afternoon on a relaxing day in the dorms. Chan is lying on Jisung’s chest with his koala and fluffy white blanket that is fumbling between his fingers in a type of stim as he watches the animal documentary the other put on to help calm him down after he came home visibly stressed and tipping down.
When he stops the fight in his eyes of sleep, he slumps more in Jisung’s chest, and there’s nothing the boy can’t do but softly coo at how cute the little looks asleep. He’s carried to bed with a bit of struggle; once he’s tucked into bed with a different soft, child-safe media playing, Jisung leaves with the door cracked just in case he wakes up.
It’s a few hours before a heartbreaking sob echos through the dorm, and Minho is up and ready with a prepped and warmed sippy cup and a pacifier clipped to his shirt if Chan wants it.
When Minho adventures in, Chan is rubbing his blanket in an anxious and fast-stimming motion with a slight rock.
“Baby? It’s Mimi; can I sit on the bed with you?” He’s walking close to the bed; he doesn’t want to read Chan wrong and make him more stressed than he already probably is. Chan nods, turning and holding his hands out for him to solidify even more than he wants. “Can you tell Mimi what happened?”
“Night—Nightmare,” Minho doesn’t know how he doesn’t want to start sobbing at how upset he looks now that he finally can look at him; his cheeks are so red, and he can see a little bit of some claw marks on his cheek that were blending in with his cheek color.
“Oh, baby. It’s okay. Mimi is here now, okay?” Minho wants to ask about the nightmare, but he knows that will further release tears and make him more anxious when Chan’s headspace is about getting away from anxiety and just letting go with no fears attached. “I’m here; let’s watch a movie, hm? I have your pacifier and some warm milk; if you don’t want it, that’s okay too.”
Minho climbs into bed finally, pulling Chan as close as he can, taking in the way his body is trembling in his arms. The sippy cup is taken off the desk where Minho set it as he came in, warm enough to hold and give to the little.
He almost takes it before his hands fall back. "Where Kio, Mimi?”
“Did Ji not give her to you before he laid you down?” Minho looks genuinely puzzled; usually they all look before settling Chan down to make sure Kio is in the pile of things being taken to set him down for a nap or sleep for the night. Chan shakes his head as the other sighs as he clicks a movie, How to Train Your Dragon, and shouts. “Can one of you please bring Kio for Channie?”
“On it!” Jeongin shouts back, his voice passing through Chan’s door to grab Kio. It’s quiet for a few minutes—too many minutes to a point—and Minho is a bit concerned.
“Hey, kiddo. Can I go help Jeongin find Kio real quick?” Minho already has the duvet half off his body, ready to go assist when Chan gives him the okay. When he does, Minho keeps the door open and walks into the living room, seeing Jeongin and Seungmin, face white as a ghost, holding two blobs of gray. “What the hell did you two do?”
—
Jeongin happily walks to the living room to grab Kio to give to Chan, smiling at the loved toy before seeing Seungmin walking into the living room.
“What are you doing?” Seungmin questioned him, walking more towards him.
“Giving Channie Kio, he must’ve forgotten it when Jisung-hyung laid him down earlier,” Jeongin elucidated, holding the koala a bit more firmly and begins walking to Chan’s room.
“No, let me.” Seungmin makes a move to grab the plush to give, but instead Jeongin moves too quickly for his hand.
“No, I can do it,” Jeongin protested, moving to the other side of Seungmin to continue on his way before the other pulled at the plush, which made it almost slide out of its hold until the maknae caught it.
With a bit of tug, a sound of little rips to the stuffed animal’s stitches on the head and body begins to softly echo as they argue and tug until they are separated by the successful tear to all the stitches, leaving a beheaded Kio.
"Oh, my god. No, no, no—” Jeongin mumbles, looking at Kio’s body as Seungmin holds the koala’s head, sharing the same expression as Jeongin could bet he had too. “Why didn’t you just let go? Oh my god, Minho-hyung is going to kill us. What is Chan going to think?“
“Me? Why didn’t you?” Seungmin challenged back, frustrated. “You destroyed Chan’s stuffed animal! He’s going to be so upset!”
After back-and-forth arguing and getting Minho to come out to see the damage, it was clear they were fucked.
“We didn’t mean to, Minho-hyung. It might’ve just been faulty stitching or—or just a lot of love from Channie made it loose!” Jeongin stumbled, almost to tears. Seungmin nodded in agreement, and there was a bit of fear in how the older man's jaw was clenched and he looked angry. “I’m—I’m sure we can—”
“What’s going on..?” Felix mumbles, announcing his presence in the room, his slippers sliding across the wooden floor of the entry into the living room. “Holy shit, what happened?”
“We—We—”
“These idiots tore Kio into two because they were arguing,” Minho bitterly said, glaring at Seungmin and Jeongin as he took the two parts of Kio, making sure the stuffing stayed in the plush. “I can’t imagine what Chan will think.”
“Mimi? Wha’ goin’—” Minho swears he could strangle Seungmin and Jeongin right now with how much he hates hearing the way Chan gasps. “Kio!”
Chan is running to the beloved koala in Minho’s hold with a new set of tears as he takes Kio from Minho, crashing onto the floor with even more trembling than the older caregiver saw in his bedroom. “No—No, Kio. Channie—Channie sorry, shouldn’ of left you—left you out here. Should’ve—”
His words are cut off with a loud sob, one that has everyone who wasn’t in the living room already filing out of their rooms shocked. Jisung walks over to where the little crumbled to the floor, his body shaking with sobs as he clutches the stuffed animal.
“Baby, Ji is so sorry. I should’ve made sure you had her before I laid you down. I thought she was in your room; I—I must’ve confused one of your other stuffie friends for her; I’m so—I’m so sorry.” Jisung watches the way Chan looks at him, and it makes his heart break into two. He scoots away from him, his back turned to him. After a second, it’s like a switch, so familiar to them—he sucked himself out just like when they found out for the first time. “Chan—“
“Why? You—You guys know how much this—I can’t—” Chan’s voice is so shaky, his entire body shakes as he stands up with Kio still in his hands. “You guys probably did me a favor, yeah? I’m too—I’m too old to be sleeping with a stuffed animal anyway, heh. It’s—It’s fine.”
“Channie-hyung—” Jeongin pushes past a few of the members as he begins his way down the hall to his room and backs up a bit more when Jeongin begins to walk close.
“No, I want—I want to be left—left alone, please,” The plea is almost a similar pitch of a squeak, and when Chan closes his door. The room is tensely quiet, no one dares to move or even make a noise.
“Okay, is anyone going to explain what the fuck just happened?” Changbin drags a knife through the silence, his arms crossed as he sits on the couch. “How did this even happen?”
“Seungmin and I were stupidly fighting over Chan’s koala, and we tugged so harshly when we were fighting about it that we—we tore it in two,” Jeongin responded, looking at his socks instead of his members.
“This wouldn’t have happened if you had just given it to me,” Seungmin replied harshly with a glare at the maknae. “You just had to let go, Jeongin.”
“Instead of you two just going back and forth arguing who did what, we need to figure out how to make this up to Chan,” Hyunjin interjected, looking towards Chan’s closed door down the hallway. Everyone hummed in agreement with Hyunjin’s point, looking at one another for someone to start a round of ideas.
It’s silent for a few minutes before Jisung opens his mouth, then closes it again in a rumble of insecurity. “What if—What if we buy him a new one..?”
“It wouldn’t be the same, Jisung. It wouldn’t feel as loved as Kio; it would just seem like a replacement,” Hyunjin responded, and he watches the way Jisung frowns at it. “It’s a good idea, Jisung, but it won’t be the best option.”
“How about we settle on it? Text an idea when it comes up. Does that work..?” Seungmin asks in the little huddle they have in the living room, and they all agree, dispersing into their own rooms to do their own things.
Minho debates checking up on Chan, but when he gets to raising his hand on the door, he hears the leader sniffle with a muffled and cracked “Go away, Minho.” And he obliges, shuffling into his own room to do some shopping for when they actually stumble across an idea to help and can give Chan gifts to just calm Minho’s own guilt.
Chan hasn’t stopped crying since he got into his room and shut the door, just in pure shock that his lovely koala is ruined. He rubs his nose on his hoodie, even though he knows he shouldn’t, but he’s still in a somewhat regressed state, so he doesn’t want to deal with an annoying burn from the tissues.
His phone rings a few minutes after Minho came to almost check up on him, he had sent his mother a message to call him. If he couldn’t have Kio, maybe her voice could soothe him instead.
“Hi, honey,” Her soft, warm voice just wants to send Chan sobbing again; he hates being away so much. He sniffles by accident; he didn’t tell her what happened in his text; he sort of didn’t want to tell her. “My Chris, why are you crying? What happened?”
“Remember the koala you sent me around the time of Levanter?” Chan begins, and he hears his mom hum in acknowledgement. “Seungmin and—and Jeongin ripped it by accident, bad, and—and I don’t—I don’t know what to do. I’m so sorry, Mom.”
It’s embarrassing the way he just breaks down on call with her while there is an ocean separating her true ways of calming him down: playing with his curly hair, rubbing his cheeks to get rid of the tears flowing down, shushing him, and rocking even when he knew he was too big to even be sitting in her lap.
“Hey, hey, Chris, honey, it’s okay. I can always ship you another one; let me look at the shop website.” His mother says, her voice delicate and comforting as always, but Chan wants to say it won’t be the same; the material won’t feel worn and loved; it’ll feel new and unfamiliar. “Oh, they don’t sell it anymore.”
Chan just stares at Kio; the plush couldn’t even be replaced, even if he could, because the place retired the koala. “I’m so sorry, baby. Maybe I can send you something else since I didn’t know you loved the koala as much as you did. I thought you would’ve just thrown it deep into your closet to never be seen again when it arrived. Maybe when you visit Australia again, I can ask my friend to sew it back up.”
“No, no, it’s—it’s okay, Mom. I’m sorry for calling you this late; I’ll let you go,” Chan flicks his eyes at Kio one more time before he hears his mother sigh.
“Okay, baby. No worries about calling me this late; Berry was barking up a storm to be let out anyway. Get some rest, okay? Text me if you need anything. I love you and miss you!” His mother spoke, ending the call in a second with a shout to Berry from his dad. He looks at his phone, a weird swarm in his chest as he gets up from the floor, setting Kio on his desk and curling up in his bed, the warm milk on his little shelves above him.
He just burrows himself in his blanket, even if it turns too hot, just enough to hide himself from his members until he can get over the fact that a comfort item of his is gone.
It’s around dinner time when Minho finally has an idea. While he is cooking dinner for the members and himself, he pulls out his phone while he cooks up some vegetables to have in their meal.
“Hey, Mom. You still sew, right?” Minho turns down the heat a bit to add a small amount of seasoning before continuing to cook.
“Mhm, why do you ask?” His mother questions as he can hear the faint meow from one of his cats.
“Is it possible you can fix a stuffed animal for me..?” Minho trails off as his mother hums in confusion, “Not for me, for Chan. It’s really precious to him; Seungmin and Jeongin ripped it.”
“I’m sure I can; just give it to me whenever you can, and I can give it some fixing up,” His mother replied, a smile heard in her voice. “I’m surprised you remembered; I haven’t sewn much since you were younger.”
“Yeah, I remember coming home to you sewing something almost every day.” Minho lightly chuckled. “Okay, I gotta go. Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, let me know when you come by,” His mother ended the calls with goodbyes and love yous as Minho called the members to dinner. When the only person who doesn’t come out is Chan, it makes Minho feel guilty.
“I’ll bring a plate to him, even if he doesn’t want to eat with us, he still needs to eat,” Hyunjin pointed out, grabbing a plate that was set out for him on an empty seat and making it for him before traveling to his room. He knocks before walking in, seeing a Chan-sized lump under his duvet. “Hi, Channie. You need to eat, so I brought you dinner. I’m sorry about what happened.”
Chan doesn’t say anything or move as Hyunjin places the plate next to the beheaded Kio, placing a kiss on the hair he can see that hasn’t been covered by the duvet.
Hyunjin closes the door behind him when he leaves Chan’s room, swallowing down the lump that makes him want to cry about what happened.
“Is he okay?” Jeongin asks, seeing the way Hyunjin looks when he arrives back at the table.
“He’s shutting himself away; I feel so bad about this. This shouldn’t have happened,” Hyunjin mutters as he sits in his own seat, a plate of food already on it, but he doesn’t have the appetite, not after seeing the leader.
“I called my mom, and she said she could fix it for me. I’m going there tomorrow after our schedules if something doesn’t come up or change, but tomorrow is going to be really rough as a group and for Chan,” Minho mentioned, watching as everyone just nods and doesn’t really say anything.
After dinner, everyone goes into their separate rooms to wind down for the night and head to bed. Still not in sight of Chan until a little after midnight, Felix grabs a brownie and sees the way Chan places plastic wrap around the uneaten plate to place in the fridge.
His face illuminated by the refrigerator lights is red and splotchy; his emotion is just blank, and it seems Chan takes a few seconds to process what he’s doing.
Felix cannot take the thought of Chan being regressed right now, especially alone after two years of constantly being looked after, so he has to ask. “Channie? Do you want me or anyone else to sleep with you tonight?”
Chan looks at him after he closes the doors of the fridge, blinking blankly at him, even though Felix knows that it has to hurt from how much he must be crying, and the way he responds solidifies Felix's attempts to not have the leader alone. “N—No, Lixie. Is okay.”
“Can Lixie at least cuddle until you fall asleep?” Felix watches the way Chan blankly blinks again and then nods. “Okay, come on, baby.”
Felix hadn’t even taken note of the way Chan had dressed himself as he walked with him to his bedroom and finished his brownie, wearing kangaroo sleep pants and his ‘I Heart Australia’ shirt that was way too big for him.
In his room, the only light is his TV as he crawls into bed, waiting for Felix to come. When he does, he snuggles into him until he’s on top of him, which little Chan likes to do a lot, mostly because it makes him feel better when he needs it.
When Felix feels Chan’s body weight push on him, he doesn’t want to separate; he can lie and say he fell asleep cuddling Chan when he asks the next morning.
—
The next few days are tough; it’s clear Chan isn’t sleeping well days after Felix slept with him. The stylists whine under their breath with having to use so much color correction to fix the eyebags under his eyes, and he seems sluggish too; Felix isn’t sure when he last saw the leader eat.
When Minho comes back home after visiting his mother with a small gift bag after dropping the koala off the day after the situation happened, relief is poured over the dorms.
“Can you get Chan, Yongbok?” Minho settles the bag carefully on the living room coffee table, while everyone else waits for the leader to come in.
Felix nods, walking to Chan’s door with a gentle knock. He never really expects a response anymore; he usually just hides in his room and doesn’t come out for hours.
When he opens the door, Chan is watching a video on his computer, seemingly a Pokémon video essay, with another stuffed animal in his arms, seeming a bit dissatisfied that the plush doesn’t have the same feeling as Kio.
“Chris? Can you come out to the living room, please?” Felix hates the way Chan blinks mutely for a few seconds at the screen before turning to face the other Australian. “It’s important.”
Chan nods, pausing his video, settling the small Eevee plush on his bed, and getting out of bed to follow Felix out to the living room like he asked.
When they arrive, everyone watches him as Felix guides him to the middle seat of the couch between him and Minho. They’ve been waiting for days for this to finally fix what they had done.
“This is for you, Chan.” Minho leaned over to grab the gift bag from the table to place in his lap, softly hovering his hand on the leader’s back, too scared to make the contact.
He watches the way Chan looks at him confused as he pulls out the tissue paper before a carefully wrapped gift in gray tissue paper is pulled out by his trembling hands. When he opens the paper, a familiar sparkle sparks in his eyes again. “Kio! How did you—”
“I had my mom fix her up for you,” Minho said, and Chan felt his vision blur as he looked at Kio’s familiar face. He thought she was gone, unable to be fixed. “I also bought you something else, but if you don’t want it, that’s okay.”
Chan holds Kio in the bent of his elbow as he peers into the gift bag once more. Another delicately wrapped gift in blue tissue paper is pulled out and torn through before a soft kangaroo plush stares at Chan with brown beady eyes.
“I asked your mom where I can get a kangaroo plush that is from the same company as Kio, and she sent me a link. It was hard hiding it from you until Kio was fixed, if you don’t like it—”
“I lov’ it; thank you, Mimi,” Chan whispers, hugging Minho’s side.
“Seungmin and I wanted to apologize for what happened to Kio; we should’ve just come to an agreement to let one of us take it to you instead of ruining it. We are so sorry, Channie,” Jeongin spoke, close to tears in guilt for making Chan feel terrible these past few days over Seungmin and his stupid behavior.
“It's okay, Innie! Mimi fixed Kio; no problem anymore!” Channie smiled softly at the pair on the small sofa to the left side of him, walking over to give them both a hug and a simple pat on the head. “Don’ cry, hyungies. Kio all betters, she forgives you too!”
The little holds up Kio to give Seungmin and Jeongin both button nose kisses to their cheeks with a soft giggle. The night ends with snacks and a movie marathon of whatever Channie, Kio, and his new friend, Roo, want to watch.