Chapter Text
It takes three headcounts before Chan consciously registers that he is indeed stuttering out at seven. “Hey, who are we missing?”
“I’ve got Felix,” Jeongin volunteers from where Felix slumps against him, his head lolled onto Jeongin’s delt. Jeongin’s other delt stands out in hard definition, flexed as he holds the overfull basket of apples in his free hand. Some of the muscles in Chan’s neck relax at the sight. He’s so lucky to have Jeongin, who stepped up to minding Felix. Felix himself doesn’t look thrilled to be here–either sleepy from eating too many apples, or queasy from eating too many still-green apples–but he’s here and okay.
“Hyung is—agh, gross!” Jisung squirms away from Minho’s tongue in his ear. Chan is just grateful it’s above-the-belt.
Seungmin and Changbin don’t answer, the former preoccupied with goading the latter into trying to split an apple with his bare hands. Not something they should do before weighing and purchasing, but luckily for Chan’s integrity, it’s not going well.
Which means that it’s Hyunjin they’re missing, and if Chan doesn’t find him quick, the next time he’ll see Hyunjin will be for ransom or as a cult recruit with a timeshare contract.
“Stay here,” he tells the members sternly.
“No,” says Seungmin, proving that he’s paying attention, which is touching.
With a last check on Felix–rallied back to cheer by the flex of Jeongin’s bicep–Chan jogs back in the direction they came, breathing in the scent of mud and the sour tang of the fallen apples rotting back into the soil from which their trees grow. The orchard they came to is the oldest in the region and one of the biggest, many of the trees big and twisted enough to obscure sightlines of everything but the dirt path Chan is currently on. Little wooden signs on pickets at the front remind him that the right row is McIntosh and the left is Crimson Crisp, the latter having been exciting enough a name for Jisung to insist on going down.
And they had come from the Mutsu row (Minho had deigned to try some for his apples and peanut butter snacks), which means–
Hyunjin is perched high (to Chan, anyway) in a honeycrisp tree, long legs drawn up gracefully and apple cores littering the grass beneath him. He looks like his Oddinary creature.
“Hyunjin-ah~” Chan coos up to him, opening his arms wide. Hyunjin pauses mid-bite and glances down, visibly processing the update to his environment. Then he draws his legs up even higher.
“No,” says Hyunjin.
“Come downnnnn,” Chan calls up, pitching his voice so as to be more suitable to yodeling up an alpine slope than whining at his member crunching an apple ten vertical feet away from him. He wraps his arms around himself to show Hyunjin the big hug he’ll give him when he descends. “Hyunjin-ahhhhh❤️”
Hyunjin turns away, crunching faster.
Chan puts his hands on his hips, ineffectually. “Do I need to get Lino-hyung?”
“Lino-hyung is scared of heights,” says Hyunjin through a chunk of fruit. Damn, that’s true. Triumphant, Hyunjin tosses his hair, then sputters when several strands get caught on his lips.
“I’ll get him down,” says Minho next to him, and Chan nearly shits himself.
“When did you–” Minho has acquired one of those apple picking tools, the long broom with a basket on top half-covered with rake claws. He waves it around with a little too much eagerness for Chan’s comfort. The others teleported with him, Felix now on Jeongin’s back and Jisung suspiciously flushed. “Uh–”
“Hyunjin-ah~” How does Minho manage to say the same thing in the same tone but every inch of it laden with threat? He swipes the apple picker, shredding several leaves off the tree. “Hyung will pick naughty fruits~”
Seungmin starts coughing. Hyunjin scrambles–further up, clinging to slender limbs with slender limbs and Chan remembers with a sinking feeling the injury waivers they’d signed upon arrival at the orchard.
“Yeobo!” Jisung belts out, ducking as Minho snaps his entire body around and nearly takes his head off with the picker, “you can kiss Iyenie if you come down!”
“What?” says Jeongin, but Hyunjin has already activated, crawling down like a sexy spider. “No you can’t, no–”
“Hey!” says Changbin, “he’s my yeobo!”
Chan is already moving when it happens, the branch cracking under Hyunjin’s weight the inevitable next step in a choreo that Chan is always prepared for. Hyunjin shrieks from a meter above their heads, but he barely has time to fall before Chan catches him, neatly dodging the rest of the branch. Jisung isn’t so lucky, too distracted to dodge by Minho trying to apple-pick his shirt off; an apple on the end bonks him hard enough Chan hears the looney-tunes sound effect. He also hears Seungmin laugh.
“Hyunjin-ah!” Chan squeals over his racing heart, squeezing Hyunjin tight tight tight. Hyunjin clings back, horizontally wrapping himself around Chan for just a moment, sweet, shaken. Chan would melt if he didn’t need his limbs to keep Hyunjin from bruising his butt.
“Let’s move on before we get caught damaging property,” says Seungmin.
“I think I can hear gravity,” says Jisung.
“I’ll carry you, Hyunjin-ah!” Changbin shouts.
Hyunjin unwinds himself from Chan, but Jeongin has already taken off at a run, Felix screaming a joyful staccato as he’s bounced on his back. Chan will have to be on the lookout for vomit on the path as they follow, but he finds he doesn’t mind that much. Not when it’s them.