Tao watches the four, wait, three kids (plus an adult) rolling around in the mud and sighs. He adjusts himself atop his safe, dry rock and pulls his legs up away from the ground into a crossed-legged stance. Tao doesn’t like the mud. Not at all. What’s there to like about it? It’s dirty, gross, probably had the poopies of all the fishies, and it feels weird. All squishy and lumpy and sandy.

His hate for the mudflat stems from earlier on, when Chen dragged him down and Chanyeol flattened the wind out of him. The mud stuck to his clothes and, when he finally dried, caked his once-adorable panda-decorated shirt in disgusting sand-like brittle rock. It was fun to peel off, though.

“Tao! Come and join us!” Chanyeol shrieks as he flops over onto his back again. His face is covered with the grey mud, as well as his clothes and every inch of his skin and hair.

Tao shudders.

“Don’t want!” He yells back defiantly and knots his arms together in a firm cross.  Defiantly, he turns his back on the unperturbed child and faces Lay, instead.

He’s trying to find a fishing line of some sort so he can start fishing in the tiny, pathetic puddle of water he’s sitting at.

“Lay what you doin’?” Tao rubs his nose as he inches forward, interested. He sneezes, and that’s enough to shock Lay out of his reverie to give an appropriate answer to Tao.

“Fishing!” He grins, showing off his front two missing teeth, and holds up his bait, a crab which looks more like a rock (and probably is). “Wanna help me look for string?”

Tao claps his hands and nods enthusiastically. He turns around to stand up to go look for some string, but being only four, he forgot that there was only mud all around.

And so, he falls. Face first.

Shock dulls his senses at first, but when he finally pulls his face out of the ground, he realises exactly where he is.

He sniffles. And his sniffles turn to silent sobs. And then his silent sobs turn into full out bawling.

Kris’ the first one over, cooing over him and picking him up and carrying him and bouncing him in his arms like he did when Tao was a baby. Suho’s next, followed closely by Chanyeol, Chen, and Baekhyun. Then the rest of them follow. Someone crying is rare and extremely serious to the kids. They're kept so happy most of the time that there's usually no incentive for tears.

Everyone helps wipe the mud on Tao’s face away, helps brush off the mud on Tao’s shirt (which mostly rubbed off on Kris’ shirt anyway so that doesn’t matter), and pats his back soothingly, whispering comforting things to him. Tao keeps on mumbling unintelligible things into the crook of Kris’ neck, things even Kris can’t decipher.

He rubs the back of Tao’s dark head assuringly and bobs him up and down gently. The rest of the family, after ensuring that Tao’s ok, clear off soon after.

“Tao no like mud.” Tao mumbles into Kris’ neck when everyone's left, his small hands locking around it loosely.

“Yeah panda, I know.” Kris presses a kiss to Tao’s temple.

Their silence is broken when Lay excitedly exclaims that he’s caught his very own pet rock.

************

And...This is the end to the mudflat series! I'm sorry this was so short, I have no idea what happened ;A; I love Taoris but I didn't want this to become ia so the possibilities are extremely limited ><

Also, the preview in chapter 4 was changed because I couldn't fit in it and tbh, it sounded really creepy. Tao being sadistic and everything.

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