romaniranch fic dump 4 [sticker books 1/2]
sticker books and firewood [part 1/2]
Title: Sticker Books And Firewood
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Length: 13,600+
Pairings: Chanyeol/Kai, side!Sehun/Suho
Warnings: not going to warn, everything is fairly minor, if you are easily triggered please read at your own discretion
Summary: Jongin heads off to summer camp as a Junior Counselor for a quick resume boost, but is instead dragged into a world of tyrannical leaders, grovelling well-groomed minions, punishment wheels, and then his obnoxious(ly attractive) mentor. Also taking care of children is terrifying.
Note: xmas giftfic for
galbijiim because she has spoiled the shit out of me this year
sticker books and firewood
Jongin likes to think he’s a fairly optimistic person.
The air is crisp, only barely hovering is the heat of summer from below the mountains, the bulk of it sitting low to sea level. Up here it’s nice, the air feels cleaner and less stuffy, but your skin still warms in the rays of the sun.
Despite this, Jongin still wears his cashmere sweater and jeans. Converse might not have been the best idea - the rocks in the gravel seem sharp enough to dig through the flimsy soles - but he feels comfortable at least.
That’s what the email said. ‘Dress comfortably’. So that’s what he did.
What the email didn’t say was that your head of camp counselor would be a ragingly stiff prick, and that no amount of cushioned attire would help soften the blow of this.
“You are not here for you. You are here to better the lives of these young children who need guidance in their time away from education. We keep them learning, which means your mind needs to be sharper than its current level of ‘wearing thin sweaters and cardboard shoes’.”
He even uses his fingers to motion out air quotes.
His name is Joonmyun, he learns. He’s short but his presence is tall, invasive, even. His office smells of pine and looks like if it were emptied of books and paper it would resemble one of those abandoned school houses. He even has a chalkboard on the wall - Jongin catches a glimpse of the words ‘Steps to personal embetterment’.
“You understand that, right? You carry a great responsibility here - responsibility for other people’s children and their health and safety, as well as their state of mind.”
Jongin jerks his head from the blackboard. Step 4 - Ask yourself how your actions could better improve the lives of those around you. Selfish thoughts are for house pets.
“Uh, yes. Yes, I understand,” Jongin says, nodding.
“Good, good. Well, If you didn’t bring other clothes we have camp t-shirts for you to wear, and I’m sure someone can loan you a pair of boots,” Joonmyun says, smiling at the end of his statement.
Jongin never thought someone could smile maliciously, but that’s what this guy is somehow managing to do.
“You, as a Junior Camp Counselor, will be paired with a mentor - a senior, seasoned counselor. You sleep in what we call dormers, and each Senior Counselor is assigned a zone. You will be Zone Foxtrot, along with Chanyeol.” Joonmyun ruffles through some of the paperwork on his desk, clucking disapprovingly when he manages to mess up some of the order of it.
Step 8 - Always be prepared. Emergency kits need to be with counselors at all times. Substitutions need to be left up to common sense. Socks can be used as menstruation pads, etc
“Cool, sounds good,” Jongin replies vaguely.
Joonmyun leans over his desk, resting his weight on his elbows. “Have you ever been camping, Jongin?”
Jongin shrugs one shoulder, “Um, once or twice as a kid. Not in a long time though.”
Joonmyun makes a noise through his nose that sounds like a dragon huffing out a fireless breath. Jongin has to make an effort not to flinch awkwardly at it.
“Alright. I’ll have my Junior, Sehun, show you around,” Joonmyun says, and then dismisses him with a limp-wristed de-salute. Wonderful.
-
Sehun, for being Joonmyun’s Junior, is almost the polar opposite of the guy. Where Joonmyun is overly perky and politely stern, Sehun seems like he’s perpetually half asleep and would rather show you the quick and easy work-around than follow a strict set of rules. His hair is bleached to within an inch of its life, and it’s even styled, which seems wildly out of place for being out in the middle of the woods.
“So, Joonmyun told you you’re in Zone Foxtrot. That’s over there,” Sehun points, very vaguely, to a bunch of trees, “And you sleep in a dormer. We call it that ‘cause it’s a little v-shaped thing made of wood that looks like someone cut the roof off a small house.” Sehun snorts at his own joke, and Jongin has to make a conscious effort not to stop and stare.
“Are there beds in the dormers?” Jongin asks, an attempt to the keep the conversation rolling. He nearly trips up on an awkwardly positioned pile of rocks, and he begins to wonder if the whole ‘straying from the beaten path’ thing is a metaphor best left to the experts. At least Sehun knows where he’s going.
“No bed, just sleeping bags. I bring a pillow, but that’s because I’m smart enough to think of that before coming here with practically nothing,” Sehun eyes the rucksack tossed over Jongin’s shoulder, and Jongin self consciously hikes it higher up his back.
“I have things in here,” Jongin mumbles defensively.
“Sure you do. Meals are all in the canteen over here,” Sehun points, this time to an actual concrete structure that Jongin can see, “And meal times are set, unless you have an ‘in’ with the kitchen.” He uses the same fingered air quotes that Joonmyun does, and now the whole Junior/Senior thing is starting to make a little bit more sense.
The canteen is surrounded by a skirt of gravel, the same kind from the driveway up to the main offices, which crunch loudly under Jongin’s feet. Sehun walks like he’s on half-speed autopilot, not really giving Jongin much chance to take things in, so he peeks around when he can. Inside the canteen are multiple rows of wooden picnic tables, and then steel catering trays under heat lamps for serving.
“This is the bathroom,” Sehun says, gesturing to the extended part of the concrete building, behind the canteen. “Boys on one side, girls on the other. We’re short on female counselors, so if one of the kids needs to use the little girls’ room with a chaperone, you gotta do it.”
“Um, okay.”
“Showers are in the extension over here. They’re not separated by male/female, but each stall locks so it doesn’t matter much, just bring your clothes in with you. If you don’t shower for 24 hours or longer you get 1 spin on the punishment wheel.”
“Wait, the wha-”
“This over here,” Sehun turns them abruptly, to what looks like a goddamn gallows out near the massive trash bins. The gravel is sparse here… many feet seem to have scattered it. “Is the punishment wheel.”
What it looks to be is something that should have been outlawed centuries ago, softened by colorful markers and stickers. It is an actual rickety wooden stand (see: gallows) with a pole in the center holding up a colorful plastic wheel, like the ones you’d see on game shows. Except where the ‘prizes’ would be are things like ‘cut firewood’, or ‘canteen cleanup’, or ‘drink one full cup jalapeno juice’. Jongin blinks at it.
“This is for both kids and counselors,” Sehun clarifies, as Jongin stands stupid, staring at it. “Don’t think you’re immune from punishment just because you’re finally moving up in the world, yeah?”
He punctuates this with a smack to Jongin’s back, which snaps him out of it. What in the hell did he get himself in to?
Sehun does eventually show him a better view of Zone Foxtrot. It’s a scattered circle of these wooden structures (which actually do look like decapitated roofs of small houses) and Sehun shows him to his own, home for the next three weeks. He has a little carved wooden placard on the outside of his - it says ‘Junior Camp Counselor’. No doors to the thing, just an open crawl space to enter the wooden makeshift tent, but it at least looks deep enough to give some privacy.
“Your mentor, Chanyeol, is out on a nature walk with kids. That’s his thing, you’ll be going on them with him as well until you can do one on your own.”
Jongin tosses his rucksack into the dormer, and then turns to glance up at Sehun.
“What’s your thing then?”
“Astrology hikes,” he says, with a weirdly timed lazy smirk, “Joonmyun is an experienced stargazer.”
Jongin actively tries not to roll his eyes. “Great.”
Sehun scoffs at Jongin’s failed attempt, and then turns on his heels to leave.
“Wait,” Jongin calls out after him. “What am I supposed to do now?”
Sehun shrugs. “Eat dinner when it’s served in 30.”
-
The canteen seems much bigger once you’re inside of it. The tables are full of kids, all ranging from ages 8 to 14, Jongin remembers from the email. In between them are scattered teenagers and young adults, the counselors, Jongin assumes. At the head of the largest table sits Joonmyun, who is currently sporting a paper yellow crown, the kind you get from Christmas poppers, and Jongin snorts at the sight. Sehun sits directly to his side, gazing at him with his chin resting in his palm, like a lovestruck school girl.
Jongin isn’t sure if each table is assigned by zones, so he picks the one with the least amount of people after getting his meal. It doesn’t look too terrible - spaghetti bolognaise with potatoes and green peas. Most, if not all of it, probably came from a can, but Jongin thinks Joonmyun is probably equally as nutritionally conscious as he is anal about seemingly everything else, so Jongin eats it easily.
He ends up sitting next to a little girl, who stares at him with wide eyes as she eats.
“Food’s good huh?” Jongin says awkwardly, mouth full of half-chewed spaghetti, as he tries to make casual dinner conversation with a child he doesn’t know.
She stares for long enough that Jongin starts to worry he has something on his face, but then she abruptly stops and focuses on her own meal.
“I don’t like it,” she mumbles, poking at her noodles with her plastic fork. “Tastes like fish poop.”
Now it’s Jongin’s turn to stare.
“That’s… oddly specific.”
“Hey, you’re new,” another kid, a slightly older looking boy from across the table, pipes up. “Who are you?”
“Oh, um,” Jongin wipes off his hand, and then holds it out to the child across the table from him, “I’m Jongin, Junior Counselor for Zone F, nice to meet you.”
The child stares at him like his limb is floating free from his body, and then suddenly a much larger, stronger, arm slides in, gripping Jongin’s hand in a tight shake.
“It’s Zone Foxtrot,” the new phantom limb says, “Don’t let Joonmyun catch you calling it F, that’ll be a spin on the punishment wheel for you.”
Jongin looks up and gets an eyeful of teeth and what looks to be the dead carcass of a raccoon sitting atop the teeth’s head. There’s eyes in there somewhere above the teeth, along with other vaguely human features, but Jongin barely gets the chance to take it all in before Raccoon Teeth is shoving him aside to sit next to him.
“So, who are you then? Davey Crockett?” Jongin asks, and he isn’t sure if that’s even the name of a real person, but he bites it out anyways. This guy has now shoved him ungracefully into the girl at his side, forcing some of her fish poop spaghetti over the edge of her tray as she jerks.
“Nope, I’m Chanyeol,” he says, turning to grin at Jongin, “Your new mentor for the summer.”
He does have eyes, Jongin finds, as he stares at them for about half a second too long. Chanyeol’s smile is obnoxious. Not like Joonmyun’s - not in the way where it feels like a cover for something evil, but in that it makes his face obnoxiously attractive. To other people, of course.
“Nice to meet you, then,” Jongin mumbles, turning back to his food.
Chanyeol abruptly moves right into Jongin’s personal space, leaning over his lap to swap trays with the little girl at his side.
“No fish poop in this one, I made them triple check,” he says, with an obnoxious wink, and another obnoxious grin, and the combination of both ends up making the little girl giggle. Jongin shifts awkwardly once Chanyeol has moved away from him.
He eats the little girl’s scattered food in a matter of seconds, inhaling it almost, and the furry raccoon tail of his hat tickles Jongin’s shoulder, making him jump.
“Was that thing ever breathing?” Jongin asks, swatting at the beast to get its tail away from him.
“Nah, it’s fake. Why, does it freak you out?” Chanyeol asks, and then before Jongin can protest, he’s shoving the lump of fur onto Jongin’s head, and Jongin yelps pathetically.
“It doesn’t bite,” Chanyeol says lowly, leaning in to whisper it like a secret, and then pulling back to adjust the hat so he isn’t blinded by it. “Cute,” he says, and Jongin blushes.
Jongin’s arms feel like they’re ten feet too long as he awkwardly tosses the hat back onto Chanyeol’s head.
Chanyeol bangs his tray loudly on the table once he’s done eating, starling Jongin, and then he gets up. Before he walks away, though, he leans down towards Jongin and says, “We’ll have more time to get acquainted later. A man’s gotta eat.”
Another obnoxious wink, and then he’s gone.
-
His first day consists of not much more than observing. After dinner, Jongin went back to hang out by his zone, and sort of half unpacked and then repacked his things. Sleeping in the dormers isn’t as difficult as he thought it would be, and then the next morning, bright and early, Chanyeol is taking him on his own tour of the grounds.
Chanyeol’s tour is much more comprehensive than Sehun’s. He shows him that his dormer is about 5 feet away from Jongin’s, and then the scattered layout the dormers where all the kids sleep. They walk a little ways and Chanyeol shows Jongin the bonfire pit, and an area with stakes in the ground for tents.
He walks him around the entire grounds, and they only get interrupted once they’ve made their way back to the punishment wheel at the back of the canteen building. And it is, of course, by Joonmyun.
“This is your Counselor Report Book,” Joonmyun says, handing Jongin a flimsy paper notebook with nothing in it but lines and dates. “You get a gold star every time I get a good report from your mentor.”
Joonmyun flips open the notebook to show him where said stickers might be placed, and then pulls out a handful of sheets of stickers from the inside of his cargo vest - all gold star ones.
“He survived his first day,” Chanyeol says, “I think that warrants one.”
Joonmyun takes pause, like he doesn’t fully agree, and then places a star in the row by today’s date.
“Remember, I go by your mentors reports, but I hold the stickers,” Joonmyun says sternly, and he waves his glittering handful of stars to emphasize. “I hold the power to add more, or even take them away.”
Jongin nods, somehow horribly intimidated by the prospect of his merit being judged by sparkly stickers.
“I assume Sehun went over the punishment regime with you,” Joonmyun says, standing back once he’s re-sheathed his stickers.
“If he didn’t, I have,” Chanyeol says, except he hasn’t gone over much other than ‘the wheel is a joke, it’s Joonmyun’s way of making punishment seem like a game’.
“What do I get with the stickers?” Jongin asks as Joonmyun turns to leave them to the rest of their tour, curiosity niggling at him, despite the incessant urge to please practically everyone he comes into contact with.
Sehun appears from the bushes, sauntering to Joonmyun’s side, right in time for Joonmyun to turn and say, “My respect.”
Chanyeol snorts loudly, and Sehun has this smug little smile on his face that Jongin thinks a more violent person would love to smack off of him entirely.
It’s only later that night that Jongin almost actually does it - when Sehun leans right into him, shows him the shimmering pages of his own notebook and says, “My book is close to full. He had to buy more stickers.”
But Jongin is not a violent person, so he doesn’t.
-
The following day Chanyeol drags Jongin to the weekly counselors meeting. It’s held in the conference room outside of Joonmyun’s office, and Jongin feels like he’s at school, waiting nervously to give a presentation on something where only the outcome of which is important.
Chanyeol makes to pull out a chair for Jongin to sit in, all gentlemanly and elegant, and then swiftly sits in it himself right as Jongin starts to. Jongin grumbles, and then takes the seat next to him.
The meeting is dull, long and drawn out. He gets a handbook of rules and expectations from Joonmyun and then vaguely pays attention to the upcoming schedule for the next few weeks until camp closes.
His major isn’t even related to this. This isn’t a requirement for social services - getting a job with kids doesn’t mean you have to know how to camp with them. Still, his advisor said his resume needed a boost. The downsides of not applying for more internships, unfortunately, and this was an easy way to add at least a paragraph to the otherwise blank page.
A new kid walks in halfway through the meeting, all done up in eyeliner and jewelry, and he smells faintly of cologne and his clothes jingle when he walks - too many zippers and pins on them. Tao, his name is - and Joonmyun instructs him to sit down in between the other two counselors - Jongdae and Yixing. Yixing doesn’t even bother looking at the kid, but Jongdae stares with an amused quirk to his mouth, like this is the anticipatory beginnings of some kind of comedy film.
Jongin wouldn’t rule that out at this point.
About an hours worth of sleep inducing material later, Jongin is ready for the great outdoors, at least in theory to keep him awake and on his feet. He waits by the front for Chanyeol, and catches Tao posing for a picture with his camera one last time before Joonmyun takes it off him to store in his locker. Tao pouts as he walks out of the office, bare of his modern peripherals, and Jongin decides that perhaps everyone in this camp is an asshole.
-
The nature walk is nice, at least.
Chanyeol shoves a notebook full of scraps of articles and definitions - pasted in it are pictures of insects and plants with little scribbled blurbs that must have been written by Chanyeol himself, and are barely legible. Jongin leafs through it absently, walking after the last of the kids, while Chanyeol leads the front.
Chanyeol stops suddenly, and Jongin’s nose is so deep in the scribble of the notebook that he collides with little Miss Fish Poop ahead of him. She frowns horribly at him, rubbing the back of her head as he apologizes.
“These,” Chanyeol says, his voice loud and booming, as he uses his height to tug down a branch from above them, “Are what, cadets?”
In response comes a collectively sloppy cacophony of children screeching, “Elderberries!” (all while one roguish voice shrieks out “Old people berries!”).
“And they are?” Chanyeol prompts.
“Bad!” “Poisonous!” “Yuck!” “Old!”
Chanyeol grins proudly and then trudges ahead, a certain arrogant strut to his walk that Jongin scoffs mildly at. He spends the next few minutes leafing through the notebook, trying to find information on elderberries, because he knows for a fact he’s eaten them before.
“The poison that comes from them goes away when you, what?” Chanyeol shouts over his shoulder.
“Cook them!”
Jongin sighs, and quietly closes the notebook. He should probably be paying more attention anyway.
The treck through the woods on this walk is, mostly, harmless. There is a small dip that turns into a child-sized cliff at one edge of the trail towards the end, and unfortunately holding a notebook means Jongin isn’t quick enough to catch the small boy that trips over himself and falls down it. And it’s like the rest happens in a blur that Jongin’s mind is too slow to process.
Just hearing the child cry makes Jongin’s gut sink in shame and fear. He drops the notebook, skips down the small incline, only to realize Chanyeol got to him faster.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” Chanyeol says quietly, repositioning the kid so that he’s sitting with his knees bent. Chanyeol digs into his vest, the same cargo one with tons of pockets that Joonmyun has, and pulls out a small green plastic box.
“Open this for me,” he says, shoving the thing back towards Jongin, and Jongin does, but with shaking hands. “Give me an antiseptic wipe.”
Jongin hands him the wipe, and Chanyeol rips it open with his teeth. He holds the kid’s shin in one hand, just below his knee.
“This is gonna sting, but I’ll give you two gold stars if you don’t cry or scream.”
The boy nods, sniffling the snot from his nose, and Jongin pales. The kids have report books too?
“Jongin,” Chanyeol says, snapping Jongin out of it with an upturned palm. Jongin refocuses to see that the kids knee has already been wiped, and that he didn’t yell or cry. “Bandaid, please?”
Jongin fumbles trying to tear a bandaid, but hands it over eventually. The kid’s eyelashes are all stuck together from crying, his eyes still shining, but he smiles when Chanyeol ruffles his hair. Jongin’s heart does a weird twirl at the sight, which he chalks up to feeling guilty about letting him fall.
“You’re alright,” Chanyeol says, and he wipes the kid’s face with his thumbs a few times before helping him stand to climb back up towards the trail.
The rest of the walk is much less exciting. Jongin feels guilty about the fall, but other than seeming tense when asking for Jongin’s help with first-aid, Chanyeol seems hardly bothered by it. By the looks of things, Chanyeol actually knows what he’s doing. He’s probably dealt with kids scraping their knees hundreds of times, instead of being a minor-injury-virgin like Jongin is.
When they make it back to camp later, Jongin apologizes for dropping the ball out there. Chanyeol smirks and says “this isn’t sports,” and then turns away from him.
“I guess I don’t earn my gold star sticker for today, huh?” Jongin asks, an attempt at innocently provoking a positive response, but Chanyeol just rolls his eyes at him.
“Please ignore the stickers, I hate that shit.”
Jongin’s jaw goes slack.
“But you gave two to the kid out there, you can’t hate them that much!”
“That’s because he’s a kid. Counselors don’t need Joonmyun’s fucked up appraisal system, only Sehun is the one who gives a rat’s ass about it.”
Jongin frowns deeply, and has to swallow back the urge to say ‘I care, I want to do well out here, I want to prove to myself that I can do this and stickers are the only solid way to do that’.
“Fine,” Jongin huffs instead.
Chanyeol’s hand hits down heavy on his shoulder, gripping him and tugging playfully. “Don’t get so worked up on performance. It really isn’t a big deal.”
Jongin nods, and tries his very best not to glare at the kid with the bandaid on his knee, later when Joonmyun is placing two stickers in his book for the day. Jongin is not a child, despite all evidence saying otherwise.
-
Sehun, despite his initial first impression of being a somewhat lazy goody-two-shoes, is the first to drag Jongin into breaking the rules.
He pokes his head into Jongin’s dormer, eyes shining in the dark, and then Tao’s phantasmal head appears just beneath his, grinning as well. They look like a pair of well groomed ghosts.
“Wake up, come hang out with us,” Sehun whispers, poking Jongin through his sleeping bag.
Jongin groans sleepily and swats at the air, pausing once Tao whispers loudly, “Sehun smuggled in some vodka.”
And after a day of kids that look at you like you’ve stomped on their kittens, and slipping on moss and staining his most expensive pair of jeans, Jongin figures some vodka doesn’t actually sound like the worst idea in the world.
They end up sneaking off to one of the shower stalls, finding one that is actually dry to pile in as they pass the bottle between the three of them. It’s gross and muggy in here, but the repetitive shots of vodka heat his cheeks enough that he starts to not notice it anymore.
Tao is a total lightweight, it seems. He’s had maybe three or four shots from the bottle so far, and he’s already off on a lengthy rant about why his parents forced him to come here, court ordered.
“My parents only did this to punish me. They know I hate the outdoors. You steal a t-shirt from the mall and suddenly you’re the worst child they could have ever asked for,” he whines, voice loud enough that Sehun is shushing him in between tipsy giggles. “My mentor is the most boring piece of shit ever, too, at least you get to hang out in the main office,” he says, shoving Sehun’s mirthfully shaking shoulders, until Sehun is all out laughing, jaw unhinged and stupid looking.
“You make that sound like the better alternative,” Jongin mumbles, lips dragging against the glass of the bottle as he takes another swig.
“It is,” Tao barks, “All Jongdae ever wants to do is sing around the campfire with that tree hugging hippie who always seems like he’s stoned.”
Sehun lifts a fact-telling finger, “Yixing does not get high, I have asked him, many times.”
Tao shoves him again, “Of course you would.”
By the fourth or fifth (or maybe eighth?) round Jongin is starting to feel it. He craves the bitter taste on his tongue, and his body feels heavy and loose. He tips his head back against the concrete of the shower at his back, and if he were sober that might have actually hurt.
“Man, I don’t envy you though, seriously,” Jongin slurs, directing this towards Sehun, as Tao is now almost completely passed out on the floor in the fetal position. Sehun arches a curious brow. “Like, I would go nuts with Joonmyun as my mentor.”
Sehun shrugs, and then coyly picks at the hem of his shorts, which gives Jongin a strange sense of deja vu from his first time seeing Sehun eat dinner at the head table. “It’s not that bad,” he says quietly. “Besides, Chanyeol is way worse than Joonmyun,” he adds.
Jongin shrugs, sinking into the cement beneath him, as if it were still wet and sucking him down into it. “He’s just kind of cocky, I don’t know. He’s good with the kids.”
After what feels like another 20 rounds of swigging back shots, all bypassing the sleeping Tao on the ground, Jongin can barely hold his head up. They finish the bottle they had, and Sehun brandishes another from his pocket, and Jongin shakes his head the way he thinks some of the kids here might refuse the dinners they don’t like.
“No more,” he mumbles. “Gotta get up.”
He stands, miraculously, using the wall as a pillar of support, and then catches Sehun poking Tao’s face to wake him so they can keep drinking. Jongin thinks he hears Sehun shout something after him, but the world only exists in a haze right in front of his eyes, so anything outside of this is completely muffled and out of focus.
The thing is, Jongin is a sleepy drunk. Which doesn’t necessarily bode well for late night drinking escapades, but he figures if he can stumble his way back into his dormer, everything will be okay. His meager collection of star stickers might actually stay intact, and he can write tonight off as another experience to put under his belt. He thinks about adding illicit drinking to his stupid resume and then starts laughing at himself.
“What the hell? Where have you been?”
Shit. Of course, he manages the catch Chanyeol right in the middle of a night sweep.
Jongin stiffens himself, forces his body to seem as sober as humanly possible, which probably only really produces the opposite effect.
“I was showering… for 24 hours.”
Chanyeol lifts an amused brow. “Well that’s physically impossible because you were here a few hours ago.”
“That’s not what I said,” Jongin groans, and then stumbles. Chanyeol is unfortunately good at catching people that fall.
“Whoa there,” Chanyeol says, talking to Jongin like he talks to the kids, and Jongin squirms as he wraps an arm around his middle, holding him up. Chanyeol stares at him curiously for a moment, before tilting his head up by his jaw. He then sniffs at Jongin’s mouth, and Jongin flails.
“Whatthefuck are you doing?” he whisper-shrieks.
“You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?” Chanyeol asks, an infuriating tone of calm and composure.
Jongin pushes away from him, stumbles again, and then goes limp in Chanyeol’s arms when he catches him a second time.
He eventually manages to somehow crawl into his sleeping bag in the dormer, but not without Chanyeol’s help. In fact, one of Chanyeol’s legs is also in the sleeping bag, and it is kind of uncomfortably twisted around the both of them. Jongin shifts until his head is pillowed on Chanyeol’s ribs, while Chanyeol sits awkwardly beneath his tangled mess of limbs, and for some reason comfort just seems to settle over top of him suddenly - like the gentle snap of shaking out a blanket and letting it lay.
“So you’re an affectionate drunk,” Chanyeol notes vaguely, as his one hand that isn’t propping him upright cups the back of Jongin’s head where it’s pressed into his chest.
Jongin unconsciously nuzzles into him, clinging like he would to a very conveniently body-sized body pillow. Chanyeol scratches the back of his head, fingers threaded through his hair, and Jongin’s body sinks through the floorboards.
Mumbling something about golden stickers that make his tongue taste like stars, Jongin begins to drift off. Chanyeol’s hand doesn’t move from the back of his head.
“Shit, you’re lucky you got back when you did. You would have lost all your damn stickers and you would have sulked for a year.”
“Mm’don sulk,” Jongin mumbles, and then, rather comfortably, conks out.
-
The next morning, Jongin finds he feels about as dead as he assumed Chanyeol’s coonskin hat was when they first met. Chanyeol, thankfully, assures him he looks nothing like it - in fact, he looks fine, no more sleepy than he usually does early morning (which Jongin vaguely notes means he looks at him in the morning, which isn’t as big of a deal as Jongin’s dehydrated brain seems to want to make it out to be).
In fact, when Jongin woke up, Chanyeol was still wrapped around him - or perhaps it was the other way round. Regardless, he looks younger when he sleeps. Less muscled and tall, and more like a boy. Jongin’s arms ached from being stuffed under the weight of them both, clinging to him for dear life, but it wasn’t as alarming as it perhaps should have been. It was even kind of… nice.
Chanyeol is really good at helping people, which is why he’s probably so good with the kids, and Jongin doesn’t understand his subconscious need to justify Chanyeol’s excellence in camp counseling, but his brain thinks about it anyway, like it or not. He helps Jongin get up and ready for the day, so that by the time they head for breakfast, Jongin feels like something resembling a human being.
They round the way towards the canteen, and Jongin’s stomach quivers at the remembrance of the showers, and how much vodka eroded the lining of it the night previous, but all of that washes out of him like a sponge being squeezed the minute Chanyeol barks out a loud, obnoxious laugh.
Up on the gallows, right beneath the wheel, are Tao and Sehun - both looking twice as dead as Jongin feels.
Tao’s hair is all sticking up on one side, his eyeliner leftover having smudged and making him look damn near diseased with it, and he sways in attempts at standing still. Sehun’s hair is equally unstyled and ridiculous, but he looks less physically ill and more upset. Perhaps it has something to do with the pajama-clad Joonmyun standing stern and stiff to the side of him.
If there weren’t already a small crowd gathered, Jongin perhaps would have spared them the humility and walked past. He smacks Chanyeol, with feeling, on the arm though, because his disgustingly loud laughter isn’t helping.
“I’m spinning it for you both, I’m too tired for this,” Joonmyun says, and the defeat in his tone is almost scarier than the usual stern authority. It kind of explains why Sehun looks so ashamed.
The punishment wheel lands on kitchen duty, which Joonmyun extends for an entire week, instead of a day. He then says some things about being kicked out, and not wanting to involve the authorities, which Tao rolls his eyes at, and Sehun refuses to look up from the toes of his shoes. Joonmyun dismisses them with a sigh, and when Tao catches Jongin watching in the audience, he flips him off. Well, maybe he deserves it.
Later in the day, Tao still looks physically ill, and no less pissed off than he had earlier. Jongin catches Jongdae rubbing his back by the fire, telling him it isn’t a big deal, kitchen duty can be kind of fun, he probably punished himself more than Joonmyun ever could.
Something seems off about Sehun though. Not like Jongin would ever consider himself a Sehun expert, but he’s been sitting outside on the bench by the main office for hours, having gone there right after his kitchen duty ended.
And Jongin hates eavesdropping, but he’s curious. It’s not really an excuse for standing behind one of the bungalows of the office and waiting, right after watching as Joonmyun finally emerges from the building.
He only catches fragments.
“I expected you to be better than this.”
“I’m sorry, hyung.”
“No you aren’t.”
“I am!”
“You realize everything you do reflects back on me now, right?”
“Yes, hyung, I’m sorry.”
A quiet sigh, and then the sound of gravel shifting beneath shoes.
“I’m invested in you. In more ways than one.” More shifting, the soft crunch of the ground at their feet. “Please remember that.”
“I will.”
Something about Sehun’s tone makes Jongin feel like more of an intruder than he actually is, and he decides the leave them, walking around the back way to head back to their zone for the night.
-
The next few days seem to settle into something like a routine. Wake at dawn, breakfast bright and early, and then planning with Chanyeol for the day. Most days, if their schedule isn’t full, Chanyeol will take the kids on one of his nature walks, but today is not one of these days.
No, today Chanyeol has decided, all from his coonskin-adorned head of ideas, that they are going to build a raft and go out on the river on it.
Jongin does his best not to panic, because swimming isn’t exactly his forte, and the water isn’t exactly warm, despite it being summer. The water runs from up high in the mountains, up where humans usually can’t get to, and where there is probably sheets of ice on the surface before the sun comes up.
They end up building the rafts out of recycled barrels and rope. Chanyeol has it all mapped out, and splits the thing into two halves, one that he oversees, and the other one for Jongin. It takes the better part of the afternoon to put it together, and Jongin’s hands are sore enough to blister, but it’s kind of exciting seeing something you created being put to practical use.
Still though, Jongin is the first to snatch up one of the orange floaty vests. He tightens it right around the ribs, which Chanyeol (obnoxiously) laughs at. In fact, Chanyeol is barely wearing anything in comparison. He’s got a white vest on and his dumb coon hat, and then a pair of cargo shorts and boots. He’s got two tattoos on his upper arms - one of a bird whose feathers wrap around his shoulder, and the other a black outlined spray of leaves falling as if the wind had blown them. Jongin wonders if that one is unfinished or if it’s intentionally meant to look like that. He’d seen the bird tattoo before, but not the leaves. The leaves are more subtle.
But Jongin is not staring, no, because he’s currently straddling one of the barrels with two kids in front of either of his knees, and he’s trying to keep his balance so the entire raft doesn’t tip. In fact, the water looks kind of choppy and white washed, and isn’t that sort of dangerous to go out on in regular, industry standard boats?
“Are you sure this is safe?” Jongin asks, yelping and holding onto the rope tied around the barrel that wobbles beneath his legs.
“Nope, I’m not, but that’s part of the adventure,” Chanyeol replies, shouting over the packed group of children swaying on the barrels between them.
Chanyeol stands up on the end, using a large branch he’d found by the bank to push away from it, and then they are bobbing and weaving their way through the unsteady water.
Jongin clings to the mess of plastic entangled rope beneath him the way he thinks one might cling to an animal that’s lost all control. The kids seem to sway with the water just fine, until they hit a ragged bump in the river and it all starts going downhill from there.
Two barrels somehow manage to dislodge themselves completely. Jongin, on impulse, reacts quickly enough to tug the kids away from the buoyant death traps in time that nobody gets knocked out by them.
The only thing is, with those two now gone, the rest of the raft collapses like a jenga puzzle. Jongin starts to sink, and as he feels the rush of cool water up his legs, towards his stomach and back, the only feeling he can really process is panic.
Still, there’s some clarity to be had in the midst of an adrenaline rush. The vests, luckily, do their job, and most of the kids float towards shallow enough water that they can stand, but there’s one kid who is currently floating face down, which Jongin’s tiny, water-logged brain tells him isn’t a good sign.
Jongin tries to swim to the kid, gasping in gulps of air and occasionally choking on an absently inhaled mouthful of water, but he can’t. He’s in too deep, and his vest makes it so that his body is more inclined to floating with the current, rather than following the weak direction of his swimming.
His feet start to scrape the gravel as he kicks his way to nowhere. Standing on in the very tips of his toes allows him to get a decent amount of air into his lungs, and he vaguely makes out the shape of Chanyeol with the limp orange vest-encased child tossed over his shoulder.
Jongin doesn’t remember walking back to the bank, but by the time Chanyeol pulls the kid out of the water, he’s got the rest of the cadets back on the grass, watching with baited breath. Jongin sits on a large rock off to the side, heart pounding, his body weighed down by the wet of his clothes. The river itself isn’t deep enough to really do all that much damage, but this kid must have gotten hit in the head with one of the rogue barrels, because it looks like he’s swallowed a lot of water.
Chanyeol positions the kid on his back, and while he does this Jongin allows himself to gaze out toward the river, and catches sight of Chanyeol’s coonskin hat floating down it, until it’s out of sight completely.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
Jongin turns back to find Chanyeol pillowing the kid’s head against the rocks with the damp vest off his own back, which leaves his upper body bare and gleaming in the sunlight, muscles taut and back tense. And Jongin knows this is the most inappropriate time on the planet to stare, but it doesn’t stop him from doing it.
Chanyeol pumps the child’s stomach a few times, and then performs basic CPR until the kid is coughing up a lungful of river sludge and Chanyeol is laughing, relieved. Jongin hasn’t stopped shaking.
“Campfire,” Chanyeol calls out, wringing out the water from his shirt and then wrapping it around the kid’s shoulders, “Rinse off back at base and then gather round the fire to get some heat back into your bones.”
Chanyeol’s eyes fall to Jongin, sitting on the rock with his knee bouncing, chewing on his lip, staring at the damp impression of a child’s body on the rocks at the bank.
“Hey,” Chanyeol’s voice grabs his attention back, “You alright?”
Jongin nods, and then glances up to Chanyeol and practically groans at the way his eyes cling to the sight before him. Chanyeol in damp shorts, riding low on his hips, his chest shimmering wet in the sun, hair stuck to the sides of his face. Jongin is literally the world’s worst camp counselor.
Chanyeol doesn’t take Jongin’s nod as much affirmation, considering he holds Jongin by the jaw, tilts his face up until he has to squint from the direct sunlight. He’s making sure he’s alright, Jongin realizes, which is ridiculous. He should be helping the kids, not sitting on the sidelines, drying out in the sun.
Still, at least, Chanyeol doesn’t seem angry with him. More concerned than anything, which makes guilt eat away at Jongin’s core.
Part 2