“Umma, if this Santa’s workshop, why is there a giraffe here?” a little boy whispered to his mother. He was, in fact, not even in Santa’s workshop. He was nowhere near the North Pole. The boy and his mother were at a mall in Seoul, inside a toy store where children could take pictures with ‘Santa Claus’ (or old man Hyungdon dressed in a red suit and an obviously fake beard). And there wasn’t even a giraffe in sight. There was only Lee Sungyeol dressed in an elf costume.

Sungyeol sighed as he bent down next to the child. He in his breath and gritted his teeth, trying to patiently deal with this child. “What do you mean giraffe?” he spoke through teeth clenched into a tight smile. He turned to the side and showed off his (fake) pointy ears. “I’m clearly an elf. Look at my ears.”

“Aren’t they horns?” the child was unfazed.

“Horns?!” Sungyeol exclaimed. He furrowed his eyebrows and sincerely asked, “Don’t giraffes have antennae?”

“Aren’t they antlers?” Sujeong, Sungyeol’s fellow elf, butted in. She looked just about ready to pick up the kid and toss him on Hyungdon’s lap herself.

“Like reindeer?” the little boy asked.

“Eung,” Sujeong hummed. She then extended her hand to the boy. “Come on, let’s go see Santa.” Thankfully the boy took her hand.

And just about as they were ascending up the stairs to Hyungdon Claus, Sungyeol had to get the last word in, “Whatever! These are ears. I’m an elf.”

The little boy craned his neck back to look at the tall elf, and he shook his head. “Nuh uh,” he denied adamantly. “You’re too tall. All elves are short. Like her.” He pointed up with his free hand to Sujeong next to him.

Uh oh, Sungyeol gulped and looked up at his coworker with wide eyes. Her grip tightened onto the boy’s hand, and the boy yelped in pain. Sujeong slowly turned her head and bared her teeth. “What did you say?” she hissed.

“Uh oh, you shouldn’t have said that,” Sungyeol warned as he quickly clambered up the stairs.

The boy wiggled himself out of the elf’s grip. He faced Sungyeol. “What? Call her short? But she is short,” he defended himself.

“Aish!” Sungyeol lunged and covered the boy’s mouth with his hand. “Stop saying that!” he yelled.

Small, little Sujeong loomed over the two, wringing her hands together with a sneer on her lips. “Let me at him,” she growled.

Sungyeol leapt up, letting go of the child only to grab onto his fellow elf and restrain her. “Sujeong-ah, you’re tall,” he tried to extinguish her fiery anger. Sujeong was still kicking and flailing in his arms, as she tried to get at the kid. “You’re a goddess!”

But Sungyeol’s praises fell onto deaf ears. “Who are you calling short? Huh?” she taunted the little boy. “What about you, pipsqueak? You’re my height!”

The boy crossed his arms over his chest and huffed, “I’m only eight! And you’re old! You should be taller.”

“OLD?!” Sujeong exclaimed. She then whipped her head back (slapping Sungyeol in the face with her hair and bells at the end of her hat). Seething, she looked at her coworker in disbelief. “Did he just call me old?” she asked. And to that, Sungyeol didn’t even flinch, scared that anything that he might do would set her off.

But this tiny bomb set off anyways. “THAT’S IT!” she screeched as she set off for the little kid again.

“Woah woah woah!” Sungyeol exclaimed as he pulled Sujeong off and away. He threw her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and only set her down once they reached the bottom of the stairs…and a good 6 feet away from the child. “Chill! Or else you’re going on the naughty list,” Sungyeol warned her. If his eyes could get any wider, they would pop out of his skull.

“I’m chill,” Sujeong hissed, looking straight past Sungyeol and still glowering at the kid. Sungyeol sighed and took both her cheeks into his hands in order to turn her head around to face him. He felt her take a deep breath in. “I’m chill. I’m cool.” She had finally calmed down and carefully removed her coworker’s hands from her face.

Along with the bells ringing in the air, Sungyeol could hear a peal of roaring laughter. He didn’t need to look around to see who it was. Rudolph. The reindeer was laughing so hard that the bells on its collar shook. Sungyeol sighed. In the song, Rudolph was the one getting teased and being made fun of. But in Sungyeol’s twisted elf world, Rudolph made fun of him.

Just as Sungyeol was about to yell at the men in the reindeer costume, he felt a tug at the end of his red and green tunic. It was that kid again. He must’ve just finished telling Hyungdon Claus what he wanted for Christmas and now was looking up at Sungyeol with expectant eyes and an open palm. “Can I have my candy cane now?” he asked.

“Yea, kid,” Sungyeol said as he rummaged through his pouch. He handed over two candy canes to the kid for all the trouble that they caused (and maybe he could give one to his mother so she’d stop glaring at the elves). “Here. Oh, and uh, Merry Christmas!” he exclaimed with as much false cheeriness as he could muster.

“You too, Giraffe-ssi,” the boy wished before leaving.

“I’m not a…” Sungyeol began to argue, but then stopped and shook his head. “Forget it,” he grumbled.

“Let’s take a break,” Hyungdon Claus announced as he sat up from his throne. He nodded over to the corner. “Sujeongie needs to take 5.” And she truly looked like she could use a break. She was sitting in the corner, breaking candy canes in half as she was muttering darkly under her breath. Sungyeol smirked. Chill, my . She needed more than just 5 minutes to cool down, which meant that he would have enough time to get food (his stomach felt like it was about to cave in and swallow him alive). A smile grew on his face at the idea of eating. But his happiness was short-lived as he turned around and saw the reindeer collapsed onto the floor, still laughing. He frowned.

“Are you guys finished yet?” Sungyeol grumbled, stepping closer to them.

Rudolph was a two-man costume. The front part of the costume slowly lifted the heavy head off. Hoya was underneath it and was wiping away the tears that had formed in his eyes from laughing so hard. “I’m good now,” he wheezed. And then he turned around to look at his other half. “But…” As if on cue, the bottom portion of the costume came tumbling down and crumbling onto the floor in a fit of laughter. Hoya smirked as he watched the other rolling around. “Hyung…”

“Great,” Sungyeol mumbled as he watched the eldest of them all stuck in a giggle fit. “Rudolph’s is laughing at me.”

Hyung, Rudolph’s , otherwise known as Kim Sunggyu. It was a person that Sungyeol had a complicated relationship with on the best of days, and now…well, Sungyeol wanted to do nothing more than to jam Rudolph’s shiny, red nose into that laughing, gaping mouth.

“Gir…affe!” Sunggyu managed to squeak out as he climbed onto his knees. “He called you a giraffe!”

“Yea, hyung. Hilarious,” Sungyeol spoke with no emotion in his voice. He closed his eyes tightly and swallowed down the feeling swirling up inside of him. It was best if he just ignore Sunggyu for now. He turned towards the others. “I’m going to the food court. Sujeong, you want something?”

“You know what I want,” she hollered from the corner, her words punctuated with a loud snap from a candy cane. Sungyeol just nodded in acknowledgement and then tried to make his way out of the ‘workshop.’

However, his ‘ignoring’ plan fell to pieces, when Sunggyu quickly got up and ran after him. “Hey, wait for me. I’ll come too,” he declared as he jogged up to the tall elf’s side.

“Great,” Sungyeol remarked sarcastically. He rolled his eyes to look at the other. They grew round as Sungyeol pushed Sunggyu back into the shop. “Yah! Take off your costume!” he yelled. “You don’t wanna traumatize the kids, walking around as half a deer.”

“Oh, right. Thanks,” Sunggyu murmured with an embarrassed smile. He waddled back into the shop and hid behind their makeshift changing wall. “But what about you?” he asked from behind the wall.

Sungyeol leaned against the store’s entrance and yelled back, “No kid is going to get nightmares seeing an elf eat a corndog.”

Sunggyu peeked his head from behind the wall and grinned cheekily. “I don’t know. Have you ever seen how you eat? It’s pretty scary,” he teased. He chuckled to himself and ducked back behind the wall to continue changing.

The elf sighed as he dropped his gaze to his feet. He kicked his slippered foot against the slick floor. “You do wonders for my self-esteem,” he spoke in a low voice.

“What did you say? I didn’t hear you.” Sungyeol lifted his head up to see Sunggyu again with his messy head peeking around the corner of the wall again. He looked almost concerned.

“Nothing,” Sungyeol dismissed with a wave of his hand. But that concerned expression didn’t fade away; in fact it went from ‘almost’ concerned to ‘certainly concerned.’ Sungyeol didn’t like it. But what he would like is to feed his growling stomach with food. Even Sunggyu could hear it gurgling. He looked down at Sungyeol’s stomach with an amused smile on his face. “Are you ready?”

The smile grew wider as the elder lifted his head. “Yea. Let’s go.”

Moments later, the two of them were sitting in the food court, and only Sungyeol had bought food. And considering how Sunggyu basically implied that Sungyeol ate like a wild animal, the elf wasn’t too keen on eating in front of the other, especially being the only on who was eating (well, sort of. Sunggyu was picking at the other’s packet of fries). Sungyeol was beginning to feel self-conscious, noticing the other’s eyes fixed on his mouth. Did he have anything on there? He wiped it furiously before asking, “Aren’t you getting anything to eat?”

“No, I’m not hungry,” Sunggyu answered as he stuffed one of Sungyeol’s fries into his mouth.

Sungyeol scoffed and pulled the fries away from the other. Sunggyu raised his head and looked offended at that. Sungyeol wasn’t about to apologize (why should he). He had more pressing thoughts hounding his mind. “Then why did you come? To get away from Hoya? Must be hard being an all day,” he joked but he still managed to get his point across.
“Haha. But it really is,” Sunggyu took the teasing well and still answered the question. He groaned as he leaned back in his seat, stretching as far as he could. Sungyeol watched the other carefully. Sunggyu probably had the hardest job of them all. Sure Hyungdon had to bounce kids on his lap all day, and Sungyeol and Sujeong had to force Christmas cheer out of every orifice. But at least none of them were bent over for long periods of time in a stifling costume, with children trying to mount them all day long. And as much as Sunggyu complained about, well, everything under the sun, never once had the elder complained about his job. “It’s hard being an ,” he joked with a tired smile. “Especially Hoya’s. But what about you?”

“Me?” Sungyeol asked with a french fry dangling from his mouth.

“Yea. Did you need to get away from Sujeongie?” Sunggyu asked. The lilt in his voice was almost too casual, obviously feigned. But the elder continued to lean back in his chair and looked over to the right. Sungyeol followed his gaze. There was nothing, but bathrooms. Does he have to pee?

“Are you and Sujeong dating?”

Sungyeol choked. He was coughing as he answered with a strangled, “What?”

Sunggyu whipped his head back around to face the other. “Or do you like her?” he cut straight to the point. “Does she like you? You guys seem to have that odd couple vibe going on.”

“No, no, no,” Sungyeol thoroughly denied. A smile was tearing at his lips at just the thought of him and his co-elf dating. Sujeong would need a step stool every time we’d kiss. He burst out into chuckles at that image. “We’re not like that. She’s not my type.”

“What is?”

“Huh?” Sungyeol muttered as he looked the other up and down. Sunggyu was serious. He seriously wanted to know. But Sungyeol couldn’t let him, not ever, because…“No, no, no. We’re not talking about this. You’d only make fun of me.” …everything they had would be ruined.

“No, I won’t,” Sunggyu promised.

“Ha!” Sungyeol scoffed as he wiped his hands on a napkin, only to throw it at the other’s face when he was done. “Yea right. You always do.”

Sunggyu just let the napkin fall into his lap. It failed to wipe the determined expression from his face. “Then I won’t this time. I promise,” he tried to assure the other.

“I trust you as far as I can throw you,” Sungyeol retorted. “Which isn’t far.”

“Then start working out,” Sunggyu threw back, only to receive a menacing glare from the other in return. Sunggyu winced and apologized, “Ah, I did it again. Sorry. It’s a habit.”

“Why?” Why do you always do this to me? Nice one moment and mean the next? Acting like you care and then…act like I’m a joke?

“It’s fun getting under your skin,” the elder answered with an embarrassed smile. And then in a low voice he quickly added, “It’s cute.”

Sungyeol stopped everything. His heart. His breath. His thoughts. His tongue was the only thing operating, “Cute? What is?”

“You…How you react. It’s cute,” Sunggyu clarified, shifting uncomfortably in his seat and looking over towards the bathrooms again.

The elf narrowed his eyes on the man across from him. “Irritating” was a good way to sum Kim Sunggyu up. But more irritating than the teasing and hot-and-cold treatment was the fact that Sungyeol couldn’t figure him out at all, especially now. Why did Sunggyu come if he wasn’t going to eat? Why was he acting like this? Does he think I’m cute? But then there it was. That amused smirk on the elder’s face. Is he playing with me? Sungyeol scoffed, “Tch! I’m glad that I could entertain you.”

“Sungyeol, I…”

“We better get back,” the elf cut him off. Sungyeol quickly gathered his trash and got up to leave. But as he took his first step, his slipper slipped against the floor, causing Sungyeol to fall backwards and almost crash land onto the floor. Almost.

“Woah! You okay?” Sunggyu just barely caught the other in time, weakly so. He was already buckling under the other’s weight and slowly and gently brought Sungyeol down onto the floor. And now the both of them were sitting on the floor, like…two weirdos sitting on the floor in the middle of the mall. “You should be wearing actual shoes and not those dumb elf slippers,” Sunggyu chided.

Sungyeol rolled his eyes and rolled off of the floor. “I’m okay,” he replied, dusting himself off. He then gazed down at the elder, who was holding his hand up for Sungyeol to grab. “You nag like my mom.”

“Dad,” Sunggyu correct, grabbing the other’s hand and pulling himself up. “I’m a boy, so it’d be like your dad.”

“No, I’m pretty sure that I mean mom,” Sungyeol said with a childish grin on his face (okay, so Sunggyu isn’t the only one with a cutting tongue). He then began striding back to the store. Their break was nearly done.

“So…do you not see me as a man?”

That question almost made Sungyeol fall over again. As soon as he regained his footing (and his mind), the elf asked, “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. What do you think I mean?” Sunggyu was looking down as they walked, hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie.

Sungyeol stopped in his tracks at the doorway of the shop and rubbed the space in between his eyes. At the sound of his loud groan, Sunggyu snapped his head up and met with Sungyeol’s tired gaze. “Look. I already have a headache from little kids screaming in my ears all day. Can you not make it worse?” Sungyeol pleaded.

“Um, I…uh…This is embarrassing,” Sunggyu stammered, growing flustered. Sungyeol raised an eyebrow. This was new. “I don’t really know how to say this, but I think…”

“Sungyeol-ah!” Thank God! Sungyeol thought. He recokoned that his face was becoming as red as Sunggyu’s, and why was it even getting that red? Thankfully, Sujeong interrupted this little moment. She came running up to them, bells twinkling with her every step. “Did you get it?” she asked excitedly.

“Yea, here you go,” Sungyeol said as he threw a paper bag from the burger place at her.

“Thank you! You’re the best!” she exclaimed. And then she proceeded to do something weird. Something very weird and unexpected. She literally jumped up and pecked Sungyeol on the cheek. And as her coworker was a blubbering mess, Sujeong giggled like an evil pixie rather than an elf and pointed upwards. “You’re underneath mistletoe,” she revealed.

“Oh,” he muttered as he narrowed his eyes on the sprig. Was that there when he left or…

He felt warm lips pressing against his other cheek. “Mistletoe,” Sunggyu tried to excuse his actions, but his glowing red face immediately gave himself away. And perhaps he knew it. “…and also I like you.”

Sungyeol’s jaw literally dropped. Well, that was entirely unexpected, but not weird. Not weird at all. In fact, it was kinda nice. And Sungyeol felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from his chest. The corners of his gaping mouth were slowly morphing into a smile.

“Ha! You should see your face! It’s cute,” Sunggyu teased and pointed at the other’s face. He was making light of the situation, probably because he didn’t understand what the situation was between them. Sungyeol hadn’t said anything in response or hadn’t even moved.

So Sungyeol wanted to make his feelings clear, the best way he knew how. “Come here, you ,” he said as he pulled the other in for a second kiss.

“Oh my god! Finally!” Hoya exclaimed. He sounded and looked exasperated, as if this couple had worn down his patience, and they very well may have.

“It was either they’d get together or they’d kill each other. Could’ve really gone either way,” Sujeong responded with a shrug as she dug through the bag. She then looked up at the couple in the doorway and smiled. “But I’m glad that it ended up this way.”

“Me too.” Hyungdon snuck up from behind and successfully scared the other two. “Well, that’s one couple down. How long until you two get together?” he asked, wiggling his eyebrows at the two beside him.

“Me and Hoya?” Sujeong reiterated in disbelief.

“This shorty?” Hoya sputtered into an awkward laugh, gesturing to the girl next to him.

Suejong immediately frowned and got up on the tips of her toes. She sized the other up as she sneered, “Look who’s talking.”

“Sorry,” Hoya apologized in a small voice. Sujeong just nodded proudly and reto the flats of her feet. She then continued to dig through her bag. All the while, Hoya looked on with a small smile on his face. “Cute.”

Meanwhile, back under the mistletoe, Sunggyu pulled away and looked up at the other with a confused but pleased expression on his face. “You like me?”

“Yea, I guess I’m a masochist,” Sungyeol retorted as he stepped away from the mistletoe. It had done enough for him, filling his heart again with cheer and bringing him closer with the one he loved.

Sunggyu frowned as he followed the other inside. “I can be nice too,” he argued.

“I know. That’s why I like you,” Sungyeol honestly responded. Yes, Lee Sungyeol, the giraffe elf, liked Kim Sunggyu, Rudolph’s rear end. And he liked him a lot. Sungyeol had a problem with becoming bored easily. This push-and-pull dynamic between them and silly arguments constantly kept Sungyeol on his toes, kept him entertained. He doubted that he’d ever get bored of Sunggyu. He doubted if he could get enough of him, because although Sunggyu teased and acted like he didn’t care, at the end of the day, it was evident that Sunggyu really cared about Sungyeol and how he felt. Sunggyu always healed the wounds he inflicted, and then some. Although his tongue was hard and cutting, Sunggyu’s heart was soft and warm. And Sungyeol liked both sides to him. He liked them a lot.

“Now what about me? Why do you like me?” Sungyeol asked.

“You’re tall and…” Sunggyu then paused. He furrowed his eyebrows as he searched his mind for more reasons.

“Wah!” Sungyeol yelled and lightly pushed the other. “Can’t think of anything else?”

“No, I can!” Sunggyu insisted. “There’s a lot of reasons!”

“Name 5!”

“You’re tall and…”

It took the rest of the workday, but eventually Sunggyu came up with not only five reasons, but fifteen (Sungyeol kept adding more the longer the elder took). And they were all good, legitimate reasons. But Sungyeol’s favorite was (lucky) number seven: “Because I just do, you dummy! Because you’re you!” Because Lee Sungyeol was Lee Sungyeol and is perfectly loveable just the way he is…even if he gets mistaken for a giraffe.