Quiet.

That’s the first thing Suho noticed as he walked through the door of the dorm, nudging it aside with his elbow as he struggled to balance his gym bag, a box of donuts, and a stuffed puppy that a fan had given him that he was looking forward to giving to Lina. As he wriggled out of his shoes and set the donuts down on the table, the atmosphere in the dorm grew cold.

“Hello?” he called. It was strange that there was no answer. He had been certain that only he and Kai had gone to practice that morning, and Kai had gone running after some pretty trainee in the hopes of using Lina's adorableness to score. Thus, all of the other ten members should already be gathered in front of the T.V. or in their bedrooms or something. “I’m home!”

He inched warily into the room, clutching the puppy to his chest after letting his bag drop to the ground. “Hello? Hell- oh hell!”

Suho fell to his knees on the ground, hand clamped over his eyes as he writhed in pain. With his other eye, he found the bright orange Nerf bullet that had just hit him in the face.

“What the-”

Suho didn’t have time to finish questioning what was going on before some panicked blur tackled him. “Hyung, you’re in the war zone! Get down!”

“Kyungs-”

“It’s the K team! Go go go!” someone Suho assumed was Chen instructed from the living room side of the hallway before a barrage of orange bullets rained down on them.

“Cover us!” Kyungsoo shrieked to the other side, ducking underneath the table.

“I got you, just get our leader out of there!”

Suho let himself be shoved along into the nearest bedroom -Chanyeol and Baekhyun’s- as soon as the opponents stopped to reload, unable to choke out some protest about not wanting to be in the breakfast couple’s lair. The door shut behind them not a millisecond after every inch of their bodies flew through it.

“You got reckless back there, sergeant!” Chanyeol hissed, shoving Kyungsoo lightly. There was an inexplicable streak of dirt on his face, and Suho decided not to ask how he had managed to get a bruise on his cheek, deciding instead that it was their make-up artists’ problem. “We almost lost you!”

“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo choked, sounding like he was on the brink of tears. “I won’t do it again. I just don’t have the strength to watch another one of our men go down.”

“This is war, Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol announced heartlessly. “There is no place for tears here.”

“What the hell is going on?” Suho snapped, trying to snatch the Nerf gun away from Kyungsoo before he took somebody’s eye out.

“It’s been a long day,” Chanyeol answered ominously.

Suho stared at him blankly for a moment. “Tell me what’s going on right now or I’ll move Baekhyun to a different room.”

“Battle,” Chanyeol said. “Clean and simple. Or rather not. There’s nothing clean about this. Blood, gore, death left and right. Just look at our cadet.”

He paused to turn to Sehun, who -for some reason- was staring listlessly out the window, clutching a gun to his chest.

“Fell in love with a soldier on the opponent’s side. Had to shoot him straight in the heart. Men going down left and right, there’s no place for love here.”

Suho’s knuckles turned white as he tightly gripped his own arm so that he could suppress his overwhelming desire to roll his eyes. “Going down?” he asked instead. “What do you mean going down? Is anybody actually hurt?”

Chanyeol gestured down at the Pokemon bandaid on his leg. “Got this battle scar in the-”

“Chanyeol, shut up, I know you got that when you ran face-first into a stationary car.”

“We’re down Kai and Sehun,” Chanyeol continued as if Suho had never spoken. “Baekhyun got hungry an hour ago and walked away. We've lost three men.They’ve only lost one: Luhan.”

Sehun let out a strangled whimpering noise.

“There, there, buddy,” Kyungsoo whispered, his back tenderly.

“We’re just waiting until they come for us,” Chanyeol said. “And then we die.”

Kyungsoo sprung to his feet and slapped Chanyeol across the cheek.

“Whoa!” Suho shouted, standing too. “No hitting! You guys are-”

“DON’T YOU DARE SAY THAT. IF I HAVE TO WATCH ONE MORE OF MY MEN GO DOWN, I WILL KILL ALL OF THE OTHER FIVE MYSELF. WE ARE BROTHERS IN THIS, DO YOU HEAR ME?”

Suho took a step back, wary of the insane glow in Kyungsoo’s eyes. His foot landed on something large and smooth, and he wrinkled his nose in distaste as he looked down at the neon orange that was inexplicably wet. He kicked it under the bed where it belonged, hoping that it would stay there, forgotten forever.

“We do this on our terms,” Kyungsoo demanded, voice cracking with emotion. “Our terms!”

“CHARGE!” someone from the other side of the door shouted. Suho noted with a sigh that it was Kris’s deep voice shrieking, and thus the only person capable of bringing this to an end was just as guilty. Chanyeol a gun against Suho’s chest before he opened the door and scurried out to fight.

Chanyeol fell to the ground almost immediately, crawling miserably back into the bedroom. He reached out a shaky hand to grip at Suho’s jeans. “Avenge my death,” he whispered.

“I will!” Suho shouted despite himself. “I will!”

He leapt into the hallway, guns ablazing as a savage scream erupted from his chest, nothing but the image of Chanyeol’s pleading face and Sehun’s eyes as they gazed mournfully into the city emblazoned in his mind.

Almost immediately, a bullet hit in the forehead. He fell to the ground beside Kyungsoo’s body, life flashing before his eyes and-

Ding.

“Oh,” Kyungsoo said, standing up to dust himself off. “That’s the oven. Dinner’s ready.”

“Sweet,” Kris shouted, dropping his gun onto the floor as he trudged over to take a seat at the dining table. Chanyeol poked his head out from the bedroom before happily skipping into the hallway, leaping gleefully over Suho’s body.

Suho shut his eyes and wondered if, maybe just maybe, he could just stay here on the floor and die.

 

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