Leeteuk doesn’t know if any of the other members have noticed, but Heechul has been carrying around a pineapple a lot lately. He cradles it in his arms, and coos at it, having quiet conversations with the fruit when he thinks nobody is watching.

Theoretically, Leeteuk knows that Heechul speaks to plants, so this may in fact be totally understandable behaviour. But usually his plants are living, growing things, not random pineapples.

Leeteuk has his suspicions that Heechul may finally have cracked.

---

“Hi, my name is Ryeowook and I can control kitchen utensils with my mind.”

“Just kitchen utensils?”

“I have trouble with spatulas, but yeah, other than that, kitchen utensils.”

“…okay. Who’s next?”

“I have super speed, but only for like five minutes because then I get tired,” Yesung pipes up from his corner.

“I can read minds,” Sungmin chirps.

“Really?” Donghae pipes up from next to Eunhyuk.

“I knew you were going to say that. I know what people are going to say before they say it.”

“Ooooh, do me! Read my mind!”

“Donghae! Sit down!” Leeteuk scolds, “Next, please.”

“Can I go next, Hyung?”

Leeteuk sighs.

“Sure, Donghae.”

“I can turn anything into a vegetable!”

“That’s lovely Donghae.”

“I can make myself sneeze!”

“Thank you for sharing Eunhyuk.”

“No seriously, I can do it now. Watch!”

The sneeze is the loudest thing Leeteuk has ever heard. He rubs his temples. He can feel a stress headache coming on already.

“I can turn things that have been turned into vegetables back into whatever they were before.”

“That’s… oddly specific..? But useful, I guess.”

Kyuhyun inclines his head.

“I’m super flexible and I can dance really well.” That was Geng.

“I can speak to plants,” Heechul interjects.

“Okay, who’s left?”

“I can change people’s hair colour by touching them,” Shindong says.

“I can make people forget that I exist,” comes a voice from beside him and Leeteuk starts when he discovers Kibum sitting next to him. Apparently his power is very effective.

“I can punch through walls.” That’s Kangin.

“I can speak with Angels,” Siwon says piously. Heechul looks at him somewhat doubtfully.

“Do Angels even exist?”

Siwon’s eyes almost bug out of his face.

“How dare you!” he starts, turning red, “You insult the most sacred and holy of creatures, you besmirch the name of God! You heathen! May God have mercy on your soul!”

Heechul just cackles.

Leeteuk wants to cry. It’s okay, it’s nearly over, right?

“Okay,” Leeteuk pitches his voice high enough to carry over Siwon’s muttering and Heechul’s cackles, “So that just leaves me. I have advanced agility.”

Leeteuk takes a few seconds to sum up the situation.

“Okay, so we have a whole group of you with very different powers. I’ve been appointed leader of this group, so if you have any issues or questions or requests, please come speak to me whenever you want. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

He stands and bows, and the other members bow back from where they’re seated around the room.

“Alright, let’s get you all settled in your rooms.”

---

Being the leader of Korea’s first Super-Powered boy band (appropriately named Super Junior) was not the easiest job in the world. But still, Leeteuk prided himself on his patience and perseverance as he dealt with issue after issue with the other members.

“Hyung, do you need a cabbage?”

Leeteuk had just sat down in front of the TV for some mindless entertainment, anything to distract him from the stress of his daily life when he’s interrupted by one of his Dongsaengs.

“No thank you Donghae, I’m just watching TV right now,” he tells the younger man, groaning inwardly as Donghae’s face falls.

“Oh.”

Donghae ponders that for a moment.

“Wait!” a huge beam breaks out across his face, “Lettuce! I can make you some lettuce!”

Donghae claps excitedly, and leans towards Leeteuk, the tip of his toes just brushing the couch.

And then suddenly, Leeteuk is sitting dumbstruck on the floor surrounded by heads of lettuce.

Leeteuk groans and covers his face with his hands.

“Oops?”

Leeteuk lies back among the lettuce pondering how his life had come to this. He catches a glimmer of movement out of the corner of his eye, and there’s Heechul walking down the hallway, cooing at a pineapple.

“It’s okay Hannie; we’ll get you all better soon.”

…He named a pineapple Hannie?

Well… it would be far from the strangest thing Leeteuk has seen Heechul do. Last week Heechul had screamed when he walked in on Leeteuk eating a bowl of salad, calling him a cannibal, and snatching a stick of carrot out of the bowl: only to put it back five seconds later, muttering something about stupid self-sacrificing carrots and noble deaths.

So suddenly walking around with a new pet pineapple should totally fall into the realm of normal Heechul behaviour.

Having rationalised things to his satisfaction, Leeteuk dismisses the matter from his mind, focussing instead on the new problem of having a roomful of lettuce and no couch.

“Kyuhyun!”

---

The next time he sees Heechul with the pineapple is one day after rehearsals when he’s desperately searching for Geng. He’d snapped at him during rehearsal; for somebody with dance super powers, Geng hadn’t been doing particularly well this morning, and Leeteuk had lost his temper. He needs to find his Dongsaeng and apologise.

Which is proving to be harder than Leeteuk bargained for, because Geng is currently nowhere to be found.

He bursts into the room that Heechul shared with Geng.

“Heechul! Have you seen…” he trails off when Heechul glares at him from the bed where he’s cradling a pineapple to his chest protectively.

“Get out!” Heechul shrieks, “Hannie and I have nothing to say to you, you meanie!”

Leeteuk stumbles backwards, taken aback by the sudden attack. He leaves the room, bowing and apologising profusely.

I guess Heechul hasn’t seen Geng then…

---

After that, seeing Heechul wandering around clutching a pineapple becomes a common sight in the dorms. Especially on days where they’d had long or difficult schedules.

Leeteuk supposes that if talking to pineapples is Heechul’s coping mechanism, it could be worse. He could be like Eunhyuk who sneezes explosively to let off steam when he’s stressed, or Donghae who just keeps turning important things like car keys and remote controls, or on one memorable occasion, his own pants, into vegetables.

Leeteuk just wonders where all the pineapples keep coming from, and why Heechul insists that they are all called Hannie. Usually, he’s much more creative with the names he gives to the plants he talks to.

It isn’t until the third or fourth time he can’t find Geng anywhere in the dorms and Heechul is walking around talking to a pineapple, that Leeteuk starts to get suspicious.

So he decides to take matters into his own hands.

One day, after a very successful PV recording, he approaches Geng, sitting him down in a corner away from the other members.

Geng looks confused at what’s going on, but Leeteuk has had enough of the mystery, and he’s going to get to the bottom of things once and for all.

“Geng,” Leeteuk starts, reaching out to clutch one of Geng’s hands between his own, “We need to talk.”

“What about?” Geng looks adorably confused.

“About your super powers,” Leeteuk clarifies, and Geng suddenly goes pale.

“What about them?” Geng asks slowly, and Leeteuk steels himself to ask the question. Here goes nothing.

“Why is it that whenever you’re stressed and tired you mysteriously vanish, and Heechul starts walking around holding a pineapple that he very suspiciously calls ‘Hannie’?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Geng tries to plaster an innocent expression on his face, “What’s the pineapple got to do with anything?”

Leeteuk refuses to fall for his ruse.

“He only ever has the pineapple when you aren’t around. And your family name is Han. So it’s not that much of a stretch to assume that the pineapple is you, Geng. Or should I say, Hannie?”

And at that, it all gets too much for Geng, and he burst into tears, stiffening in shock when, in a puff of yellow smoke, he vanishes, leaving a large, ripe pineapple sitting in his place on his chair.

“Well… I guess that’s that,” Leeteuk mutters more to himself than anything, wincing when he hears Heechul shriek behind him.

“Hannie!”

Heechul rushes over to them, sweeping the pineapple – Geng – off the seat and clutching him to his chest.

“What did you do to Hannie?” Heechul demands, poking Leeteuk in the chest roughly.

“I just asked him about his super powers, and then he burst into tears and this happened,” Leeteuk explains helplessly. Heechul hisses at him.

“Stay away from my poor, stressed Hannie!” Heechul informs him, whisking the pineapple off with him.

“It’s okay Hannie; I won’t let that bully pick on you anymore.”

Leeteuk doesn’t know if this makes things better or worse.

---

A couple of hours later, Leeteuk is lying on his bed, thinking about what life would be like if he wasn’t the leader of the world’s most dysfunctional super-powered boy band, when there’s a soft knock at his door. He sighs and sits up, running a hand through his hair to settle it.

“Come in.”

Geng’s worried face peeks through the door.

“You’d better be nice to him, Park Jungsu!” comes Heechul’s obnoxious voice from somewhere down the corridor and Geng winces a little, letting himself in and shutting the door behind himself.

“Sorry about earlier,” Geng apologises, wringing his hands in front of himself, “I didn’t mean to go all pineapple on you.”

“That’s okay,” Leeteuk tells him, patting the bed beside him. Geng makes his way over to the bed and hesitantly sits down next to Leeteuk.

“Do you want to tell me why you lied about your powers?” Leeteuk ventures into the awkward silence.

“It’s embarrassing,” Geng mutters, staring at his feet.

“It’s embarrassing?” Leeteuk clarifies, and Geng nods miserably.

“Geng,” Leeteuk places a gentle hand on Geng’s knee, “Eunhyuk’s so-called ‘super power’ is that he can sneeze on command. Siwon thinks he can speak to Angels. I think those are both far more embarrassing than turning into fruit when you’re stressed.”

Geng looks up at him, hope dawning in his eyes.

“Really? You really think that they’re more embarrassing than my power?”

Leeteuk nods solemnly. Geng beams.

“Thanks, Hyung! That makes me feel so much better!”

Leeteuk pats his knee affectionately.

“No problems. Now, should we call a meeting and announce your real super power to the members?”

Geng nods a little unsurely and Leeteuk reaches up and ruffles his hair.

“I’ll get everybody in gathered in the lounge room. You can tell them all when you’re ready.”

Geng smiles at him again.

“I’ll go find Heechul,” he enthuses.

Leeteuk keeps his benevolent smile on his face until Geng has left the room, closing the door again behind him. And then he collapses against his pillows with a groan.

How is this even his life?

Leeteuk wishes he’d been born with Super Patience.

---

The band gets two new members: Zhou Mi and Henry.

“Hi, my name is Zhou Mi, and I can change the colour of my eyebrows!” The tall Chinese man beams at everybody in the room.

Where are they getting these people from, Leeteuk wonders to himself, but smiles politely and turns to their other new member.

“Hey, I’m Henry, and I can speak any language in the whole wide world.”

“Oh wow, that’s kind of awesome,” Leeteuk actually allows himself to get excited at the prospects having a band member with a relatively normal – and dare he say it, possibly cool – mutation. But his hopes are dashed half a second later when Henry opens his mouth to continue.

“But, I don’t know many words.”

Zhou Mi pats him on the head sympathetically.

“Poor Henry has the vocabulary of a five year old in almost all of his languages, except for English.”

Zhou Mi pauses for a second to think.

“At least we’re pretty sure he has more words in English,” he amends finally.

Leeteuk fights the temptation to go and bash his head against a wall. Instead, he plasters on the biggest, most welcoming smile he can manage.

“Welcome to Super Junior.”