One thing Dongmin was incredibly conscious of was his temper. He’d gotten in trouble as a kid at home for lashing out at his younger brother, and had always had to work on controlling it in school. He’d become more conscious of it after he moved into the Fantagio dorms, and kept a tight leash on it, trying to present a calm and cool head to everyone. For the most part, it worked.

Sometimes, though, his temper flared, and Dongmin couldn’t get a lid on it quick enough to keep from lashing out.

He’d had another grueling series of days of little sleep and many activities. They were down to the crunch time before their comeback, and between their Asia tour, filming in Japan, and the million other things that came with releasing a new mini album, Dongmin was feeling stretched and at least mildly anxious about everything. He could feel a stress pimple forming under his skin near his nose, painful and undoubtedly stubborn enough not to disappear with normal skincare. He still had to memorize the script for that week’s MC scenes, but he had a splitting headache on top of it all.

It did little to help that some of the members were being louder than usual. In the back of his head, Dongmin knew that it was simply their reaction to the worry that came with doing a comeback. Sometimes, though, that didn’t really help.

He was sitting on one of the couches in the basement of the company building, script in his lap, head resting in one of his hands. Several members had tried to bother him, but he’d politely asked them to leave him alone. At one point, Jinwoo had snuck up to his side and blown in his ear, scaring him. It had almost been enough to snap the reign on his temper, but Dongmin had gotten it under control at the last second.

“Please, hyung,” he said, lips tight. “Not right now.” 

Jinwoo had obviously seen in his face that today was a worse day than usual, because he had backed off without another word. Dongmin couldn’t blame him entirely for trying to lighten the mood- he knew he was being a bit of black cloud, and for as much as he didn’t want to bring the group’s energy down, he truly did not have it in him when his head was aching and his usual focus was hard to find. 

He had finally managed to push the dual pains of the headache and the growing blemish to the back of his mind and really zone into his script, focussing on the slightly cheesy jokes and guest MC appearances of the week when it happened again. 

“Yah!” Dongmin shouted, head snapping up as Sanha scrambled back from the arm of the couch, grinning like the Cheshire Cat after sneaking up and blowing in Dongmin’s ear, just like Jinwoo had done a half hour ago. Dongmin’s head throbbed from the base of his skull to his temples, and his neck ached from snapping up so quickly. “Would you stop that!” he said angrily.

Sanha’s smile dropped off his face, and the other voices in the room died as everyone looked over. Dongmin realized that he had yelled, and all his angry energy suddenly fled from his body. “Sorry,” he said immediately, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. With a heavy exhale, he picked up his script and rose from the couch. “I’m going to one of the practice rooms,” he said, and then left the room as quickly as possible.

Once he was in one of the small vocal rooms, Dongmin leaned against the wall, closing his eyes as he sighed heavily. Sliding down to sit on the floor, Dongmin tossed the script to his side and rested his head in his arms, the guilt of snapping sitting heavily in his stomach.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed between getting into the room and when he jerked up at the sound of the door being pushed open, but it was enough for him to doze off without meaning to.

“Hey, hyung,” Sanha said quietly, stepping around the door and closing it behind him. 

Dongmin rubbed his face. “Hi,” he said in response. Sanha folded his long legs up so that he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, about a foot away from where Dongmin was still leaning against the wall. 

“I brought you these,” Sanha said, extending his hand in a fist. Dongmin reached out with his palm up, and Sanha dropped three white pain pills into his hand. “JinJin said you probably needed to take another dose.”

A small smile broke over Dongmin’s face. “He’s not wrong.”

“Here.” A water bottle, pulled out of the pocket of Sanha’s sweatpants. I’m sorry for making you upset.

“Thank you,” Dongmin said, accepting the water. He took the pills, chasing them with water. I’m sorry for snapping.

“Do you want help running your lines?” It’s alright.

Dongmin smiled at Sanha, then reached over and picked up his script. Flipping through it, Dongmin found the last scene he had worked on. “Start here,” he said, passing the script to Sanha.

“Am I Saeron-ah?” Sanha asked, accepting the booklet.

Dongmin nodded. “And Soomin,” he added, shifting so that he was facing Sanha fully. 

“Ah,” Sanha said. “Should I do two different voices?”

With a tired smile, Dongmin said, “If you want to.” They spent the next hour running Dongmin’s lines, complete with Sanha’s different voices for each person that appeared in the script. When Jinwoo came to find them, Dongmin was in stitches, laid out on the floor as Sanha did a complete rendition of Twice’s TT.

It didn’t take long to devolve from there, as members were drawn to the sound of girl group songs being yelled across the practice rooms. Soon they had moved into the big practice room, Jinwoo had hooked his phone up to the speakers, and they were messing around, dancing to songs without caring if the choreography was right or not. Myungjun fell, Minhyuk spun, Sanha screamed and yelled, Bin did the choreography perfectly until Jinwoo joined him and they started doing nonsense while yelling the raps of songs over the recordings. Dongmin smiled and laughed and, for a while, forgot his stress and played with s.