Caution: Anxiety and intrusive thoughts, mental illness, character injuries and illnesses, non-graphic description of vomiting.

Kyungsoo stands in his place in the back row of the interview formation and tries to focus on the questions. He’s often told to stand, rather than sit. Something to do with the height distributions he’s never quite worked out. He’s at the far end of the back row of four, furthest from the interviewer, with Jongdae standing on his left and Jongin sitting on a yellow swivel stool in front of him. It’s hard being furthest from the interviewer. He can’t really see her expressions since the agency won’t let him wear his glasses, and it makes it a lot harder to stay present when he can’t see the person talking. It isn’t as much of an issue as it could be, though. With eight people available to answer questions, Kyungsoo isn’t often called on, especially with Junmyeon doing his best to be a good leader and answer difficult questions coherently, and Baekhyun also doing so, with much more natural grace.

Baekhyun is sitting in the front row, closest to the interviewer. They usually place him close. Interviewers love Baekhyun. Baekhyun just switches on in front of a camera or on stage. Kyungsoo thinks it’s very fitting that the company gave Baekhyun the superpower of light. He wonders if they did it on purpose. Baekhyun really is like a light-bulb, able to turn on this glow, this magnetic attraction at a moment’s notice. It fascinates Kyungsoo, how Baekhyun gives and gives, light and energy flowing out of him, until all the cameras are turned off and people’s eyes turn away.

When nobody is looking, Baekhyun goes tired. Baekhyun goes dim. Baekhyun’s internal bulb goes out. Baekhyun hides himself away, alone in his dark bedroom. Kyungsoo knows not to bother Baekhyun then. Everyone knows. Because Baekhyun can’t help but switch on when people come to him, even if it’s only Jongdae or Chanyeol glancing in to check he’s okay. They can all sense that sometimes Baekhyun needs to keep just a little bit of light for himself.

Kyungsoo watches the light play off Baekhyun’s new golden-blonde hair, still somehow soft and sleek despite how many times it’s been bleached and dyed, and wonders if Baekhyun will one day run out of light to give.

The idea makes him shiver on the inside. He chews the inside of his lip as anxiety takes root in his chest. It grows, in a crawling, creeping way, along his ribs and down into the pit of his stomach, branches up to fill his throat with soft unfurling leaves. Why did he think that? He shouldn’t think things like that. What if it comes true? What if it comes true because Kyungsoo thought of it, thought it into being? What if—

“D.O-ssi?”

It takes Kyungsoo a second too long to recognize his stage name and attach it to himself.

“Yes?” he says, as smoothly as he can, looking in the general direction of her blurred face and making sure he doesn’t accidentally glare at her by way of trying to see her. In front of him, Jongin shifts on his seat, and he catches the concerned glance Jongdae sends him from the corner of his eye. Perhaps the interviewer has already spoken to him and he missed it.

Anxiety crowds his ribcage. He thinks he can feel thorns growing, poking at his soft insides.

Jongdae’s hand brushes his, and a tiny spark of static passes between their skin on contact. Kyungsoo’s fingertips sting, and he remembers it’s alright. This isn’t a live interview. If something he did was too off to be broadcast, the company will ensure it’s edited out.

“Yes, D.O-ssi. What are your thoughts on the concept of EXO’s new mini-album, Compulsion?”

Kyungsoo knows the answer to this question. It’s one of the ones they practiced earlier. He smiles and recites his answer smoothly, with just enough hesitation between the words that it will seem spontaneous and not rote-learned. He knows how to do this, how to act, and beside him, he senses Jongdae relax. He hadn’t even realised Jongdae had tensed up until that minute softening of the shoulders, that tiny breath of released air.

Jongin, though, is restless in front of him, fidgeting, getting antsy. He can never sit still for long. The interviewer moves on, back to Baekhyun and his shine. Baekhyun’s shine makes him beautiful. Makes him stand out, makes him glow. People say Kyungsoo is handsome. He usually makes the top three when they’re forced to do those awful face-ranking games. But Kyungsoo knows that Baekhyun’s shine makes him more, somehow, than any of them.

Kyungsoo is finding it hard to stay focused. Baekhyun’s laughter spills out and sparkles, glitters in the air, and he smiles automatically while the others laugh. In front of him, Jongin’s giggles carry the slightest edge of hysteria. He’s spinning on his stool from side to side in front of Kyungsoo while his fingers fiddle rapidly with a part of his costume. His body begins to shake as he bounces his leg. Who thought it was a good idea to sit Jongin on a seat that moves? His restlessness is tangible, trying to burst out of him. Kyungsoo feels it feed into his own anxiety, and the crowded feeling in his chest grows denser. It puts out vines and twines them through the cage of his ribs and down into his arms and legs.

He puts a steadying hand on Jongin’s shoulder. Beneath him, Jongin quiets. He knows the meaning of the touch. Be still, Jongin. Be calm. Kyungsoo is surprised Junmyeon hasn’t already stilled him with a palm on his thigh.

But no. He remembers now. Junmyeon and Sehun had gone on an interview last month and touched each other so often that the host had told them to just come out right there and then, boost the show’s view count. A joke, it was. Funny. Everyone had laughed and laughed.

Junmyeon had cried, later, after the resulting meeting with the PR team. Kyungsoo had seen the water gathering in his eyes until it overflowed and spilled down his cheeks, quietly, without any sobbing. He’d seen the water gleaming off his face in the dark van as they’d been driven home. Junmyeon had turned his face to the window, not wanting anyone to know. So Kyungsoo had pretended not to know. But he’d wondered, then, and he wonders now, at how much water there was inside Junmyeon, and how quietly it had overflowed, and how it had just kept coming, not so much individual tears as a continuous flow. Kyungsoo had never seen someone cry in that way before.

He wonders if Junmyeon might drown in all that water, one day.

Jongin shifts beneath his palm, and Kyungsoo is drawn back. Another bad thought. Another bad creation. Kyungsoo has to stop this. Kyungsoo has to stop...this.

Jongin lifts a hand across his chest and places it, warm, over Kyungsoo’s, holding it to his shoulder. Jongin’s hand is large, skin soft. His fingers are beautiful. Slender. Jongin has dancer’s hands. Jongin’s index finger taps the back of Kyungsoo’s hand, gentle, rhythmic, even as Jongin laughs at something else unheard Baekhyun has said.

Kyungsoo doesn’t quite find his way to his smile this time. He is absorbed in the gentle tapping of Jongin’s finger against his hand. He focuses on the tap, tap, tap. It keeps him from creating bad thoughts. It keeps him from being consumed.

***

There is a place in the dorm that bothers Kyungsoo. He doesn’t know why, but it does. There’s a line where the wooden floor of the hallway their bedrooms are on meets the slightly different wooden floor of the lounge. Kyungsoo doesn’t know why the floor was designed like that, but it bothers him. He knows it doesn’t make sense, but it feels like if he steps on that line, something bad will happen.

So Kyungsoo always makes sure to step over that bad line. He watches for it as he comes down the hallway towards the kitchen and makes sure his toes never get close. He takes an extra big step, so that there’s no chance of accidentally touching it. He’d like to jump, but he thinks that would be too obvious. Someone might notice him always jumping over the bad line, and Kyungsoo wouldn’t be able to explain, because it doesn’t make sense, not even to him.

He just knows that he must not step on that line.

He steps, careful, high, over the bad line and walks quietly down the dim hallway towards his bedroom at the end, carrying his glass of water in his hand. The sounds of Sehun and Chanyeol playing on the Xbox in the living room follow him down. He pauses when he passes Baekhyun’s door, glancing automatically down to see if the light is shining out from under the door.

It is not.

Baekhyun is in the dark again.

Kyungsoo stands outside Baekhyun’s door as the bad thought from the interview earlier returns to him. He stands still while anxiety bursts into bloom in his chest. This is Kyungsoo’s fault. Kyungsoo thought of it. Kyungsoo brought it into being, and now Baekhyun is low again. Bright, beautiful Baekhyun is all alone in the dark, where Kyungsoo cannot reach him. Kyungsoo can never reach Baekhyun in his darkness, because Baekhyun, when he sees Kyungsoo’s worry, will turn on his light again. And what if Kyungsoo uses up the very last little bit of Baekhyun’s light? What then?

Kyungsoo turns and goes back to the bad line where the hallway meets the door. He looks at it. Stepping over the bad line stops bad things from happening. He knows it’s stupid, he knows it doesn’t make sense, but thorns of fear are trying to spike out of his chest and through his skin, and he needs to help Baekhyun, and he needs to make it stop.

Kyungsoo lifts his foot and takes a giant step over the bad line. The worry-thorns retreat a little, stop poking quite as hard, so Kyungsoo turns and steps back over the line again, back into the hallway.

The worry-thorns retreat a little more.

Kyungsoo counts as he turns and steps again. Three, four, five, six steps. He’s on the hallway side again. The worry-thorns are gone. Cool relief settles in their place. Six steps over the bad line is enough.

Kyungsoo turns away from the line and walks past Baekhyun’s closed door, knowing that Baekhyun will be okay now.

***

In the morning, while everyone is busy brushing their teeth or eating breakfast or finding their own clothes in the exploding mess of the shared closet, when nobody is in the hall for a minute or two, Kyungsoo finds time to step over the bad line six times. The little anxiety-prickles that had grown back overnight retreat again, so Kyungsoo walks into the kitchen. Baekhyun is sitting at the table, eating a carefully-measured metric cup of blueberries from a bowl with chopsticks, one by one. He looks up at Kyungsoo’s footsteps, and the morning sunlight spilling in from the window behind Baekhyun catches in his golden hair, still ruffled from sleep. A white-gold aureole around his head. He smiles at Kyungsoo, gentle-bright. Oh, how Baekhyun shines.

“Kyungsoo-ya,” he says by way of greeting. The light in his voice plays over Kyungsoo’s skin, and something soft inside Kyungsoo opens up its petals and blooms.

He knows, now, how to keep Baekhyun safe.

***

Two days later, a resounding crash midway through their choreo for one of the new mini-album songs, Ritual, makes everyone jump and turn to look for the source. Chanyeol is sprawled on the floor, a tangle of long, long limbs and baggy black t-shirt and dance pants. It’s not the first time Chanyeol has slipped and fallen during dance practice, not by any means. He’s just so tall that his limbs sometimes seem to escape from his control. But it is the first time that, instead of laughing or groaning or cursing or apologizing as he picks himself up so they can keep going, Chanyeol just stays lying there. Motionless. Unmoving.

The EDM beats of Ritual vibrate around the dance studio, bounce off the mirrors and the ceiling and the sprung wooden floor, and seven sweaty members of EXO stare at Chanyeol and wait for him to get up. It takes several beats of confused stillness before someone—Sehun—breaks the frozen tableau and moves to Chanyeol’s side.

“Hyung,” says Sehun. He crouches. Puts a hand on Chanyeol’s shoulder. Shakes it.

The music for Ritual ends, and as if the ending of the music breaks some spell holding everyone else in place, they flock towards Chanyeol, gather round, look down.

“Don’t around, hyung,” Sehun says. “It’s not funny.” There’s something cracking in his voice, and it sounds like pain, Kyungsoo thinks, like the embodiment of pain embedded into the grating of a young man’s breaking voice, reverberant in the suddenly silent studio.

Minseok crouches on Chanyeol’s other side, opposite Sehun. He lifts Chanyeol’s limp wrist up and lets it go. It falls back to the studio floor with a painful-sounding thud.

“He’s not messing with us,” Minseok says, looking up, and in his eyes Kyungsoo sees the way fear turns his blood, his bones to ice. “He passed out.”

Kyungsoo takes a step back. Then another. Too many people around Chanyeol. Too many voices questioning each other. Junmyeon is on his phone, calling the manager. Jongdae has his hand on Chanyeol’s forehead. “He’s burning up,” he says.

Baekhyun runs for water. Kyungsoo, still backing up, is stopped when his back hits the wall mirror and he has nowhere left to go. He watches Baekhyun drip water from his bottle onto Chanyeol’s forehead. He’s burning up, says Jongdae’s voice, on replay in his head. He’s burning, burning, burning up.

Kyungsoo thinks of Chanyeol. He thinks of Chanyeol burning. There’s always been fire in Chanyeol. He glows, a bit like Baekhyun, but in a different way. Chanyeol is exuberant, effusive, enthusiastic. Full of friendly warmth, like embers. Full of passion, like tongues of flame leaping high, high to touch the stars. There’s always heat inside Chanyeol. And now there’s fever. Burning.

What if it’s too much? What if Chanyeol’s burning can’t be stopped? What then?

A bad thought. Kyungsoo has thought another bad thought. He cannot stop it. He is helpless. Fear crawls through him. Chanyeol stirs and groans on the floor, mumbles something in response to Baekhyun calling his name. He’s coming around, but Kyungsoo’s fear doesn’t fade. Chanyeol is burning up.

Kyungsoo remembers Baekhyun. Kyungsoo stepped over the bad line for him, and Baekhyun’s light came back. But he didn’t do anything for Chanyeol.

The manager appears, along with several more staff. Kyungsoo leans against the mirror and watches them kneel down and talk to Chanyeol. He can’t hear what they’re saying through the crackle of flames in his ears. Chanyeol is burning. Kyungsoo has thought this into being and he has to stop it. The bad line is at home, and he can’t get to it, but there’s another crack here, just beside Kyungsoo, where he leans against the wall mirror. A line where two slabs of mirror join, stretching floor to ceiling. Kyungsoo looks at the line. It’s a division where no division should be. The mirror should be all one. It’s a bad line, just like the line between the hallway and the lounge where the floor changes but shouldn’t.

Kyungsoo turns around and presses his palm flat to the mirror just beside the crack. He lifts his hand again, sees the slight smear on the glass his hot hand has left behind. He lifts it high over the bad line and places it flat against the mirror on the other side.

One.

The tearing fear in his chest recedes, just a little.

Kyungsoo jumps his hand back.

Two.

He hears Chanyeol’s voice from the floor behind him, deep tones unmistakable, even weak and sounding groggy. But he is awake. He is speaking.

It is working.

Three. Kyungsoo focuses on his hand. Inside him the anxiety-thorns retract and curl back in.

Four, five, six times Kyungsoo moves his hand, and the reflection the mirror shows him is of Chanyeol sitting up, helped by the staff, face pale, eyes dazed and fever-bright. Six is not enough. Kyungsoo needs to do more.

Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. The rhythmic motion of his hand goes back and forth, back and forth. It absorbs him. Enchants him. Eleven, twelve, and Chanyeol is being helped to his feet, leaning heavily on the tallest two staff members. Kyungsoo hears the words fever, fluids, rest. The staff help Chanyeol out at number fifteen, and Kyungsoo’s hand goes still, flat against the mirror, and the big studio goes quiet, filled only with shocked, worried members and Kyungsoo.

“Kyungsoo?”

Baekhyun’s voice. Kyungsoo turns his head. Worry shines in Baekhyun’s eyes as he looks at Kyungsoo, resting both forehead and palm against the mirror as he is. Baekhyun is worried, but Baekhyun still shines.

“He’ll be okay,” Kyungsoo tells Baekhyun, because he hates to see the worried shine. He wants to tell Baekhyun how he knows, but it would sound crazy, so he doesn’t.

“Are you okay, though?” asks Baekhyun. The worry shine hasn’t faded.

Kyungsoo takes his head and palm off the mirror and turns back towards the room. Sehun is crying. Junmyeon is hugging him. Kyungsoo hopes Sehun’s tears don’t make Junmyeon overflow. Junmyeon already has too much water in him.

“Yes, hyung,” he says. “I’m okay.”

***

Baekhyun’s light is steady, now, and Chanyeol has stopped burning. Kyungsoo has been keeping Baekhyun safe by stepping over the bad line six times. He has been keeping Chanyeol safe by jumping his hand over the mirror line fifteen times. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do about Chanyeol if there’s a day he can’t go to the studio, and what he’ll do about both of them when they go on tour. It worries him a lot, but not as much as the immediate problem, which is that he thought of Junmyeon, and water overflowing. He brought that into existence with his bad, wrong thoughts. He needs to figure out a way to stop it before Junmyeon gets hurt, like Chanyeol was. He needs to stop it before Junmyeon drowns.

He wanders restlessly around the dorm, looking for something bad he can fix for Junmyeon. It’s been three days since Chanyeol nearly burned. He’s better now, fever broken, almost back to normal, but Kyungsoo still hasn’t found a way to keep Junmyeon safe.

“What are you looking for?”

It’s Junmyeon himself. Kyungsoo’s head goes up. He’d been looking at his feet, slipper-clad, near-silent as he’d slowly walked along the walls in the lounge, eyes flickering from side to side as he searched for something that felt wrong. He hadn’t realised Junmyeon had come into the kitchen. Perhaps he’d been there all along.

Kyungsoo looks at Junmyeon. He can’t tell Junmyeon he’s trying to find something that will save him from drowning. That would sound crazy, but worse than the fear of sounding crazy is the fear of speaking the words aloud. If just thinking can call it into being, how much more power would saying it aloud have?

Junmyeon is holding a glass full of water. To Kyungsoo, his eyes look glossy. His pale skin seems to have acquired a pearly sheen, like the water inside him is starting to slowly, slowly seep its way out. Kyungsoo’s eyes fix on the glass of water in Junmyeon’s hand.

“Are you going to drink all that?”

Junmyeon looks down at the water like he’s forgotten he was holding it.

“Yeah,” he says, and gives Kyungsoo a rueful smile. “I’m hungry.”

Junmyeon is on a diet. He always diets for comebacks, even though his body fat percentage has never risen from the single digits as long as Kyungsoo has known him. One meal a day, salad and lean protein, stave off the hunger with glasses of water, until his six-pack pops and his eyes are gaunt when the makeup is removed.

“Then you should eat,” Kyungsoo says. “Don’t drink that, hyung. Eat something instead.”

He doesn’t want Junmyeon to drink that water. He’s already overflowing.

Junmyeon looks down at the glass of water. Looks back up at Kyungsoo. His smile is tired. So tired.

“Got to keep the fans happy,” he says, and lifting the glass to his lips, he gulps it down.

***

The next morning, Kyungsoo is brushing his teeth, sandwiched between Baekhyun and Jongdae as they foam and foam at their mouths, when he notices the tiny screw in the bottom right corner of the mirror is missing. He glances up to check the other three corners. There are screws there, holding the mirror to the cupboard behind it, but the fourth one, the bottom right, is gone, leaving a tiny dark hole. It looks wrong. It looks out of place. It’s bad.

Kyungsoo keeps brushing his teeth while Baekhyun and Jongdae spit simultaneously into the sink on either side of him. He keeps his eyes fixed on the bad hole. He brushes and brushes until Baekhyun and Jongdae are gone. Then he spits his mouthful, rinses, and leans closer to the hole. He presses it, feels the circular edge indent the tip of his index finger.

Kyungsoo thinks of Junmyeon and water. He lifts his finger and taps it against the hole, quite hard. It makes a satisfying bump that he can hear in the hollow of the cupboard behind the mirror. One. Two. Three.

It takes thirteen taps of the hole for Kyungsoo’s worry about Junmyeon to fade. A breath escapes him, a little sigh. He leans against the sink and hangs his head. It is only morning, but he is already tired. But he’s relieved, too, because he’s found the way to keep Junmyeon safe.

He leaves the bathroom and goes to step over the bad line in the hallway six times. Baekhyun will be safe. Junmyeon will be safe. And soon they’ll be at the studio, and Chanyeol will be safe too.

***

They’re filming a variety show. Kyungsoo dislikes variety shows for a number of reasons, the biggest being that he’s just not good at being spontaneous. He tends to freeze, panic, when something is sprung on him. He’s not a quick thinker like Baekhyun, not able to make everyone laugh with exaggerated reactions like Chanyeol, not sharp-tongued and sharp-witted like Jongdae. In some ways he’s like Jongin, but Jongin is adorable when he’s confused, giggling nervously or pouting like a young child. Kyungsoo just goes blank, and there’s only so many times that can be played off.

The game they must play is a challenge relay. Each member must complete an individual challenge before the next member can start theirs, competing with the regular cast of the show for who can complete them all quickest. The staff have matched the games with EXO’s superpowers. They bring out two large, shallow tanks of water and place them on stands at the front of the set. The challenge is to rearrange the fridge-magne