“Who hasn’t put on sunblock? Guys, come back you need to put this on or your skin’ll get sick.” Suho pleads as he holds out a bottle of lotion to anyone who will listen. There’s not many, considering they’re all slowly leaving already. Just Sehun and Xiumin are listening, and they don’t even need the stuff; they’re just lazing under a near-opaque umbrella for fear of their skin getting too tan. Suho had tried to force Kai to retreat from the sun too, but the toddler had all the more insisted on staying out under the sun. And what Kai wants, Kai gets.

Kyungsoo is the only one who allows Suho to rub the nasty-smelling sunblock all over his exposed skin. And that’s only because he’s half asleep and unresponsive to anything.

Behind Suho, Chanyeol comments on how white Baekhyun looks next to the grey mud and Kris decides it’s probably time to step in and, well, commandeer the ship, to put it in a way.

“Alright, guys. Listen up! I want all of you to line up in a row in front of me, now! Quickly, come on.” Kris claps his hands together and silently congratulates himself on his manly man voice that rings out over the expanse of mud as all ten of the kids (excluding Kyungsoo) look at him in surprise and stop whatever they’re doing to line up in one long row meekly.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees Suho shooting him a quick thumbs up and a smile as the first of the eight kids, Tao, sticks his arms out obediently for Suho to slather the white lotion on.

Kris doesn’t break his ‘stern father’ mask by replying, but Suho knows that he’s rejoicing internally.

*****

“Woah look at the size of that rock!” Chen’s arm interlinks with Kai subconsciously as they unearth another grey, dirty stone from a random spot in the ground. Or more accurately, Chen unearths it. Kai’s occupied with having a staring match with Kyungsoo, who’s just a bit behind them.

Kai gets the feeling that Kyungsoo might possibly be challenging him to something. Maybe he feels superior that Suho put the sunscreen on him first, or that he got carried on the way here by Suho, but Kai suddenly feels obliged to do something spontaneous, something stupid, something that’ll get Kyungsoo’s approval.

He’s completely wrong, of course, Kyungsoo just doesn’t understand why there’s a blob of mud in his hair (courteousy of Chen).

“Kai? Jongin? Bro?” Kai’s vaguely aware of Chen’s tugging at his arm, but his mind’s too busy coming up with ideas to impress his big-eyed hyung to care.

Kyungsoo’s eyes widen and his lower lip wubbers as Kai plucks the ex-stone -which has now turned into a very confused snail- out of Chen’s hands and shoves it down the front of Chen’s shirt with too much glee to be normal.

Chen stares in shock at the dirty front of his shirt for a few seconds. Kyungsoo holds his breath, expecting a violent outburst, but all Chen does is to shrug and mumble what sounds like ‘I’ll put one in your pants next time’ under his breath all while shaking the frightened snail nonchalantly from his clothing.

Kai grins and turns to Kyungsoo, who looks sufficiently shocked, to his liking.

“Yay!” Kai spins away from both his brothers, and promptly falls over five seconds later due to lack of coordination. He doesn’t stop grinning though, even as he shakes mud from his black locks and sends them flying all over the place.

Kyungsoo gasps dramatically and attempts to move forward to help his fallen comrade but ends up falling anyway because, like everyone else, his legs stick in the mud.

And so, he topples right into Kai.

Kai is ecstatic about that fact, because it means that he actually has bodily contact with Kyungsoo and that is a great thing. Wonderful, fantastic even. Kyungsoo is squishy and makes for a superb bolster.

Kai likes bolsters. But he likes Kyungsoo too.

Kyungsoo squishes up all against him and Kai decides that he likes Kyungsoo more. He’s about to hug the floundering boy around the tummy when Chen sees them and screams ‘MUD PILE’ before jumping right onto them with an icky splat sound.

To say the least, Kai is squished. Even more so when Chanyeol sees them from afar and joins in with exaggerated vigour.

Kai doesn’t like mud piles anymore. No, actually, he just doesn’t like being at the bottom of mud piles.

Then Kyungsoo inhales sharply and encircles his arms around Kai’s waist for support and Kai decides that being at the bottom is ok, as long as Kyungsoo is on top to protect him.

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

Right, so there'll be many small parts like this, I think about three or four more? One for every couple. I was going to make it one whole chunk but I think it'll be too long.

Thanks for subscribing and commenting!

Preview:

"Chanyeol plops a slowly dissolving ball of mud into Baekhyun's hand and creepily nods toward an unsuspecting Suho."