Archive of Our Own ^beta

There is no reason for this, only

a starved dog's logic about bones.

There is something horribly and terribly rotten inside of him, Seungmin thinks, to be so horrifically incapable of being satisfied—satisfied with his singing, with his dancing, with his body. 

He is a restless dog, a creature driven by an insatiable hunger for validation and affirmation. A hungry canine prowling the streets. A mangy stray sniffing out morsels of praise. It’s a little too perfect, his connection to dogs and this ugly, innate desire that claws its way out of his chest begging Seungmin to be better.

———————

The thing is, Seungmin has never really understood how his brain works, why he fixates on things and picks at problems until they’re gaping wounds. It doesn’t make sense because of all the members, Seungmin is the one who’s always had the tightest grasp of his emotions. He’s been complimented on his ability to know his limits, to act rationally.

He knows this isn’t rational.

He also knows his body and his job: he has to look good for their fans and he has to perform. What he has been doing may not be that rational or healthy, but honestly, he isn’t really sure it’s that terrible. He’s a little more exhausted than normal, but his pictures come out better and the stylists keep complimenting him, so he must be doing something right. 

So he continues.

Seungmin skips breakfast and lunch. It isn’t an intentional thing that he does—he’s scheduled himself for extra vocal lessons outside of the ones he goes to with Jeongin—so it’s just something he now does regularly. (He’s not positive that he needs the extra calories anyway. One of the stylists had made an approving noise at his last fitting when his belt needed an extra notch added.)

He makes coffee in the mornings for his dorm and slides out while Minho scrambles eggs for everyone else. He meets his members at the company for dance practice and guzzles down more caffeine and works on technique while everyone else eats lunch. At dinner, he picks out the vegetables Hyunjin refuses to eat from their takeout and fills up on the fresh fruit someone picked up at the store the last time they went shopping.

He doesn’t even get hungry anymore.

When he thinks back at what he used to eat, it just seems so excessive, and it's so easy—too easy, almost—to just stop. Seungmin has always been diligent. He can be disciplined about this, too.

Seungmin doesn’t even think anyone has even noticed anything different about him. It isn’t that weird, anyway, in their chosen careers. Idols diet all the time—in preparation for a comeback, for an upcoming photoshoot, simply to look better. So, it isn’t even a bad thing that he’s eating less. They all eat healthy and he’s seen the looks their managers shoot them during meal times at music shows and before concerts when they fall on food like men starved.

He’s just being a good idol. 

there is a dog upstairs and you’ve been feeding it your fingers.     it 

only shows affection with teeth. you 

look down at your knees.       they are split like ragged flags. you wish you 

had better boots and a bucket of                      

kerosene. 

you wish someone would tell you 

how you ended up here.

One night, a few weeks into whatever it is he’s doing—Seungmin refuses to name it because that implies there’s something that he’s intentionally doing, he sits in the kitchen in his dorm and stares down the kimchi jjigae that Minho had made for everyone earlier that night.

He doesn’t touch it.

He busies himself by watching his recent performance videos and taking notes on places where he can improve both his dancing and singing. He gets lost in videos and critiques and is only jolted out of his furious scribbling when Minho slams his laptop shut mid-fancam watch.

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho says. “Eat.”

He places a bowl of food in front of Seungmin and points at it.

Like an obedient dog, Seungmin eats and grins at Minho when the older takes his bowl away to be washed.

The food doesn’t settle in his stomach and he goes to bed feeling heavier than normal.

He can do better—be better—than this.

———————

He gets better and, by that, he means he gets worse.

“Hey, Seungmin?” Changbin starts to ask one day when they’re walking back to their respective dorms after one of Seungmin’s increasingly frequent visits to the gym to run on the company treadmill. Seungmin tilts his head in response, more focused on blinking the black spots out of his eyes than giving Changbin a verbal response. 

“Have you lost weight recently?”

He has. He knows he has. Seungmin weighs himself in the bathroom at his dorm every morning before he drinks his coffee and he knows he’s lost ten pounds in the last month. It isn’t a lot, especially by idol standards, but he preens a little when he realizes that he’s lost enough for it to be noticeable. 

“Couple of pounds,” Seungmin replies casually. 

Usually, he tries not to lie to his members on principle, their years of struggling together justifying a closer and more honest relationship than anyone else Seungmin knows, but this feels like something he should lie about. 

Changbin frowns at him but doesn’t say anything else. 

They finish their walk in silence and whatever pride had bubbled up inside of Seungmin at Changbin’s comment is crushed later that night when he eats an entire pack of ramen for dinner.

It ruins his night. He doesn’t eat the next day to make up for it.

———————

“Seungmin-hyung.” 

Jeongin’s voice startles Seungmin from where he’s hunched over his notebook at the dinner table, working on lyrics.

The younger is glaring at him from across the table. Minho and Felix left ages ago, Minho to call his parents and Felix played video games with his friends from Australia. Jeongin’s bowl of fried rice is empty in front of him and Seungmin is confused as to why he’s still at the table when he’s so obviously finished eating.

Seungmin does not order fried rice anymore. He’s trying not to eat carbohydrates, anyway, and he has started to feel bad about the bowls of food he tips into the trash multiple times a day. 

He has not touched the apple that sits in front of him. He has, in fact, been pointedly ignoring it for the better part of an hour, sipping on water as a replacement.

His stomach sits empty and tight and small inside him and Seungmin wants to keep it that way.

He takes another sip of his water and cocks his head at Jeongin in response, before shaking his head when the younger says nothing and going back to his lyrics.

Jeongin’s chair clatters against the wall when he stands and Seungmin whips his head up, mouth open to chide Jeongin, but he’s cut off before he can even start.

Jeongin stomps his way over to Seungmin and snatches his notebook away before using it to gesture at Seungmin’s apple.

“Eat your dinner, hyung.”

He stays hovering over expectantly Seungmin as Seungmin turns to face his apple. He doesn’t want to eat it. He hasn’t eaten anything today and doing so now feels a little like failure.

Seungmin purses his lips and takes another sip of water.

“I was working on something, Innie. I’ll eat after–”

“Don’t lie,” Jeongin hisses, throwing Seungmin’s notebook on the table and storming out of the kitchen.

Seungmin watches him go and feels like he’s missed something vitally important.

———————

“What are you doing, Seungmin?” Jisung asks him, days later, both boys sprawled on the floor of the dance studio, panting heavily and drenched in sweat.

He had joined Seungmin in a smaller practice room after their normal full-team dance practice when Seungmin said he was planning on staying back for a few more hours to run through some older choreography.

Chan had frowned, Minho had protested, and Changbin had wrapped his arms around Seungmin like he could forcefully carry him back home. He probably could. Seungmin had lost another ten pounds last month.

Jeongin had left the room, fuming in silence.

They had only agreed to let him say when Jisung offered to hang back as well.

Seungmin likes feeling like this after a workout, like every drop of water, of extra weight, has been purged from his body, leaving only what remains of him behind. He likes the burn in his muscles, a reminder of the weight he’s lost during their workout, a reminder of the calories he’ll continue to burn during the afterburn.

He does not, particularly, like how hard it is right now to stay conscious, his chest heaving and his hands shaking.

“What the fuck are you doing, Seungmin,” Jisung repeats when Seungmin is too busy trying to not pass out to respond.

Seungmin slowly pushes himself into a sitting position, groaning when his arms barely support him and tremble under his weight. (His weight, his weight, his weight, his too heavy weight .)

Seungmin levels Jisung with a flat look and responds.

“I’m not doing anything,”

Because, really, he isn’t doing anything. He’s just practicing a little more and eating a little less. What he’s doing is completely normal. If anything, this is what he should have been doing all along to be a better idol.

Jisung doesn’t seem to agree, because he just glares at him. 

“We’re going home now,” Jisung says, a finality in his voice that Seungmin doesn’t want to protest against. 

He needs to protest, though, because when he planned what to eat today, he had budgeted for three hours of extra dance practice and they haven’t even been in this studio for an hour.

“Jisung, no–”

“No,” Jisung interrupts, “We’re going home now.”

Jisung stands up, packing both their bags while Seungmin attempts to convince his body to stand. Before he realizes it, Jisung has both bags over his shoulder and a hand stuck in Seungmin’s face to help him stand.

Seungmin is unceremoniously hauled to his feet, stumbling against Jisung when the older boy misjudges the amount of strength he would need to pull Seungmin up from the floor. Jisung frowns and Seungmin hurries from the room before Jisung can ask any questions.

Their walk home from the company is done in stony silence. 

Jisung insists on walking Seungmin to his dorm. Seungmin feels a little like he’s had a babysitter stuck on him.

Before Seungmin can close the door, Jisung sticks a hand out to keep it open.

“You need to stop this,” he says.

“Stop what?” Seungmin asks.

He can see Jisung get angry, always prone to lashing out when he’s concerned, before visibly taking a breath to calm down.

“This is so stupid, Seungmin.”

He sounds tired. Seungmin feels tired.

When Seungmin doesn’t respond, Jisung lifts his hand from the door and it slams closed between them.

———————

They’re standing in line for catering in the waiting room of a studio, at an interview or a performance or show, Seungmin isn’t entirely positive, a week after Jisung walked him home from the company. It’s been harder to focus recently, his mind flitting through thoughts and discarding them as quickly as they’re formed.

“You hungry, Seungminnie?” Felix asks him, sweetly, softly, carefully, watching their members load their plates with fried chicken.

At Felix’s words, everyone pauses in their pursuit of the best drumsticks, glancing at Seungmin’s clean, white, empty place.

Seungmin doesn’t notice. His eyes are firmly locked on the way that oil drips off the chicken, pooling on the paper plates provided and his stomach turns at the thought of putting it in his body. 

“No, not really–” he pauses when Jisung makes an angry noise and looks up in time to see Changbin’s knuckles go white where he’s clenching his plate in frustration.

He rethinks his answer.

“I ate before this,” Seungmin settles on. It isn’t a lie, not technically—he ate a bowl of fruit last night for dinner while Minho and Jeongin stared him down at the table—so Jisung should be happy and everyone can stop looking at him so weirdly. 

Felix gives him a strange look but doesn’t say anything else as the line shifts and the members begin to settle in to eat around the waiting room.

Seungmin fills his plate with vegetables and walks past the chicken without looking at it. Once he’s satisfied with the food he’s picked up, he makes his way to an empty spot on the couch and stares at what he’s put on his plate.

He’s jolted out of his inspection when Felix drops into the spot next to him. A weight is added to his plate and when he looks down, he sees that Felix has transferred a piece of the chicken he picked up to Seungmin’s plate.

The chicken is exactly what Seungmin would have loved a few months ago. It’s greasy, shiny, and shimmery with oil. The skin looks crispy and Seungmin can hear the crunch it makes when Felix takes a bite of the drumstick from his own plate. Briefly, Seungmin allows himself to imagine eating it. Salvia pools in his mouth, like a starving dog, and he swallows it down. It would taste good, he knows, but it would also feel bad. It’d be savory, yes, but it would weigh him down and he’d be able to feel it for hours. 

He can’t eat it.

As Seungmin watches, the oil from the chicken spreads across his plate, soaking into the (safe, good, clean) vegetables he’d picked up earlier, ruining them. 

He stands up abruptly, grabs a napkin, and, fishing the vegetables from the pool of oil created by the chicken, transfers them to a new plate. 

He leaves the plate with the chicken behind and sits back down.

He ignores Felix’s stare—everyone’s stare—and wipes the vegetables clean.

The chicken probably didn’t taste all that good anyway.

———————

Seungmin is cornered in the vocal room.

Hyunjin slams open the door and blusters in, full of Hyunjin-typical dramatics, startling Seungmin into hitting a cacophony of wrong keys on the piano.

He drops a smoothie bowl into Seungmin’s lap and sits next to him on the tiny piano bench. The bowl is pretty, the purple of the acai almost completely covered by the toppings. There are fresh-cut bananas and strawberries, tastefully drizzled peanut butter, and chocolate chips decorating the surface of the bowl. Seungmin knows instantly that Hyunjin didn’t pick this up from somewhere; he made it. For Seungmin. To eat. 

Hyunjin stabs the bowl with a spoon and points at it. 

“You’re going to eat that,” Hyunjin says. “Because I made it and I didn’t even cut any of my fingers off when I was doing it. So you have to eat it.”

At that, Hyunjin splays his hands as proof, then threads the fingers of one hand through Seungmin’s and leans his head onto Seungmin’s shoulder.

“I’m not hungry,” Seungmin intones, staring at the bowl in his lap blankly.

“And I don’t care,” Hyunjin responds. “I made it for you and it’s full of love and it will make you feel better.”

Seungmin wants to say that there isn't anything to feel better from, but Hyunjin has turned his head so his big eyes are boring into the side of Seungmin’s head, and Seungmin feels bad because Hyunjin is a really terrible cook but he went out of his way for him, so he starts to eat.

He stabs the bowl a little more aggressively than is needed, but he does lift the bite to his mouth. And chews. And swallows. And takes another bite.

Once he’s started, he can’t stop. It’s like every hunger pang he’s forced down over the last few months hit him all in one go and he’s inhaling the smoothie bowl faster than his body can handle it. If Hyunjin asked, Seungmin wasn’t even sure he’d be able to describe what the smoothie bowl tasted like. It could be perfect. It could be terrible.

Then the bowl is empty and Seungmin is shaking.

He can’t breathe because his stomach is so full. He hasn’t been this full in months and it hurts and he’s gagging before he knows what’s happening.

Hyunjin grabs the trash can and leans Seungmin over it, just in time for him to lose the smoothie bowl he had just eaten.

“Breathe, Seungminnie, please,” Hyunjin pleads. 

Seungmin wants to reassure him, to tell him that he’s okay, to say that this is fine and normal, but he knows it isn’t. He doesn’t know what to do. He feels like he’s choking on fruit. He feels like he’s dying, just a little.

Hyunjin sits next to him, rubbing his back, his fingers hesitantly tracing the bumps in Seungmin’s spine and doesn’t say anything, even when Seungmin collapses against him. 

Seungmin can’t even look at him.

———————

In some logical way, Seungmin knows he’s been doing worse recently. At least, he thinks he’s doing worse because he’s finally acknowledging that there is something to be doing worse, but he doesn’t really want to think about it. So he doesn’t. 

It’s too easy now to let things slip. He can’t make himself care.

But he knows he isn’t doing well because he hasn’t eaten anything in the last three days and he was so shaky at practice earlier today that Minho sent him home. Seungmin knows he is off his game; the realization is a hard pill to swallow amidst the bitter taste of emptiness that lingers on his tongue. He’s snuck back into the company, of course, because he doesn’t know what else to do. 

That rotten and terrible thing inside him festers if he sits still too long.

Minutes blur into hours as Seungmin pours himself into perfecting every step, every spin, every jump. His heart beats faster with every run-through of their choreography, but he doesn’t ease the intensity at all. He just continues.

At the chorus for their new title track, a wave of dizziness washes over Seungmin like a tsunami, and his vision swims. He can’t see anything, a kaleidoscope of colors blending into an indiscernible blur across his eyes. It’d almost be beautiful if he wasn’t so terrified.

He sinks to his knees and scrabbles at the ground for stability.

“Seungminnie? Are you okay?”

Chan's voice cuts through the haze of disorientation, sharp and clear, a whistle of an owner to a dog lost in the fog. 

“I'm fine,” Seungmin finds himself saying, forcing the words out even when he can’t tell up from down. 

“You don't look fine.”

Seungmin makes to stand and prove just how fine he is, but the second he isn’t clinging to the ground, darkness swarms him and he collapses.

He doesn’t know how long he’s out, but blind panic flickers through Seungmin as awareness slowly reclaims his body. He blinks up at Chan from where he’s nestled in his leader's arms, confused and hurt and scared. 

He wants Chan to fix this.

"Channie-hyung," he whispers hoarsely.

It’s just Chan’s name, but Seungmin knows Chan can read in between the lines. Seungmin knows his members better than himself and he knows that they know him. It’s just Chan’s name, but it’s also an acceptance that something is wrong; it’s an admittance that he needs help. 

“I know,” Chan says, pulling Seungmin up and wrapping him in a hug. “I’ve got you, Seungmin-ah.”

And Seungmin believes him.

i love you like a rotten dog, i love you like my canines are falling out of my gums. like a monster, like a beast.

Seungmin is sitting at the dinner table staring at the plate of food in front of him. Minho had left it, labeled, for him in the fridge for when Seungmin returned to the dorm for the day. He thinks he’s hungry, but his body is tired, as if his limbs were made of lead, and the effort it would take to pick up the fork and start eating seems almost impossible. 

Still, Minho made him food. And he wants to eat it.

He takes a bite of the noodles and tries not to cringe when he feels the lump of food move down his throat and hit his stomach. Because Minho made this, deep down, Seungmin knows it tastes good. He just can’t taste anything right now, instead fixating on the texture of the food in his mouth. He drinks his water, in a bid to forget that feeling.

He takes another bite. Seungmin feels it crawl down his throat like a serpent slithering into hiding beneath his ribcage. Something in his brain tells him this isn’t a good idea, that he’ll feel worse if he eats.

He takes another bite.

The door creaks open behind Seungmin, and he tenses at the sound. He’s only made it through two bites of his noodles.

“Hey, Seungmin,” Felix greets with a warm smile, taking a seat beside him. “Mind if we join you?”

Seungmin blinks in surprise.

“Sure, I guess,” he manages to choke out, around the lump that’s formed in his throat.

Without a word, his roommates settle around the table, piling the table with food from various takeout restaurants. Something inside him warms when he realizes Minho only made food for him. 

When he looks up to thank Minho, he’s avoiding eye contact and the older’s ears are bright red. Seungmin laughs out loud and slowly, tentatively, picks up his fork to take another bite of food. 

This time, it doesn’t taste quite as bland and terrible.

He finishes the whole meal.

———————

Seungmin wolfs down the remainder of his granola bar before joining the rest of his members in the waiting room to monitor their pre-recording for Inkigayo. His hand clenches around the wrapper and he steps away for a second to throw it away before he forgets and leaves it somewhere. 

When he rejoins the group to look at the footage, Minho slips an arm around him and pulls him flush to his side in a rare show of public skinship.

“Kim Seungmin.”

Seungmin turns his head to make eye contact with his hyung.

“Your dancing looks good,” Minho says. “You look strong.”

Seungmin knows what Minho isn’t saying.

(You look healthy. I’m glad you’re okay. I didn't want to lose you. I’m glad you’re here. I love you.)

Seungmin smiles at Minho and nods in agreement.

“I feel strong.”