Deer Luhan,

Spending Christmas away from the family is hard.  In the UK, it’s a big family thing, whereas here, it appears it’s not.

Also, never play violent card games with Kai.  The reason this is illegible is because I can’t write with my right hand after that last game.  And I thought I could be competitive….

Leigh

We ended up filming the Christmas thing in the hospital with Baekhyun.  The dorm was going to need professional cleaners to get rid of all the flour, and D.O. and I had decided it would be best to smuggle a gigantic Christmas tree into the hospital rather than trying to cook in all the carnage.

“I think we’re going to have to call in a professional plumber to unclog the drains, too,” he muttered to me as we gathered around Baekhyun’s bed, waiting for the cameras to start rolling.  “I hear Suho washed off at least five kilos of flour.”

I had to work very hard not to laugh.  Suho had been so caked in the stuff that his hair still looked grey, prompting a surprised Baekhyun to exclaim: “Gramps!  Did they kill you or something?” when he had walked into the room.  For some reason, Suho hadn’t found it funny.

“Ready to roll!” somebody called out, causing the buzz of noise and activity to disappear.  There was a loud snap and Suho was suddenly counting us in for EXO’s habitual greeting.

“Yay for a cheesy start to Christmas,” I muttered as sparkling streamers exploded all over us, and D.O. snickered softly.

It was kind of hard to think of interesting things to do around the hospital bed, especially after it took the six of us who knew Luhan wasn’t really there half an hour to persuade Suho that the mood wasn’t right for Christmas songs, what with Baekhyun lying on his ‘death’bed and all.  I really had to hand it to the kid: he played it up beautifully, insisting that he couldn’t sing along and that it would ruin his Christmas if everybody but him got to sing, and that he would cry, and that he’d never forgive us, and that above all he didn’t want Luhan to sing as he was responsible for landing him in hospital in the first place (cue angry comments from all of M and none of K that it wasn’t Luhan’s fault), and we ended up with an excruciating pause that even the directors didn’t know how to fill.

Baekhyun soon did, though.

“We should exchange presents,” he announced, looking around at us.  “I’ve decided that my present to you all this year is myself, since you should all be so relieved that I’m still alive.”

“Can somebody please shut him up?” Kris grumbled, but he was smiling.

Present-giving turned out to be an odd mixture of Secret Santa and group love.  Baekhyun was pissed off that he wasn’t allowed up to decorate mine and D.O.’s tree, and Kai and Chanyeol had teamed up with Suho to get Sehun a year’s pass to his favourite bubble tea shop.  Chen presented the group with a gigantic photo album of what he called ‘candid’ shots of everybody and I spent a good hour and a half in hysterics over the fantastic collection of derp faces he’d managed to put in there.  Kris insisted that presents weren’t really his style but, when pressed, admitted to bullying the managers into getting EXO a holiday in the States in February.  Lay and Xiumin huddled in a corner, discussing the gifts they’d exchanged with each other, which left Tao to scamper out of the room, returning not long after in a red outfit and with a large sack of presents.

“Oh, God,” I groaned loudly when I saw the fake white beard.  “Don’t tell me.  Santao Claus has come to town.”

Tao looked up as though I’d just given him an epiphany.  “You know, I hadn’t thought of that one.”

Everybody burst out laughing, which of course ended in Baekhyun giving a loud yelp of pain.  We all turned to look at him.

“Dying, here!” he exclaimed, shooing our gazes away with his hands.  “Just go get your presents!”

The atmosphere eased after that, and we crowded around Tao like excitable puppies to claim our gifts.  Typically, mine was a book on binary and computer science.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have cause to use this,” I observed to Chanyeol, who was trying on a new snapback.  I flipped the book over to read the blurb.  “I’m not even sure it’s in a language I’m capable of understanding.”

“You’re fluent in Korean,” he pointed out, holding up his phone to check how he looked on the internal camera.

“Yes, but I’m not a robot.”

He just grinned at me.  I reached up and straitened the cap out for him.

“There.  You look beautiful now.”

“Baekhyun!” he whined immediately.  “Luhan’s going all gooey on me!”

“Luhan!” Baekhyun whined in response, “Chanyeol’s destroying his manly rapper image by going gooey on me!”

Things stagnated again during lunch, largely because we were all too busy eating to say anything (D.O. and Kai took sadistic pleasure in force-feeding me fifths of everything because Luhan apparently ate like a horse rather than a deer and this had been captured on camera before).

“This is our last big gathering before you lot go back to China, isn’t it?” Suho observed eventually, waving his chopsticks vaguely in the direction of everybody in EXO-M.  I felt a bit disconcerted that I was included in that.

“Last big gathering my ,” Baekhyun snorted from the bed.  “When did you all move out of the dorm?”

“It’s the last televised big gathering, partially because of you being here,” Suho corrected, “so we should play some games.”

“Spin the Bottle,” I suggested out of university habit, and several people turned to stare at me.  Whoops… maybe I shouldn’t have said that.  I held up my hands.  “Just kidding, guys.”

“Keep it PG-13,” Suho told me, frowning.

“And this Christmas,” Chanyeol said in his best MC voice, “Santa appears to have given Luhan a new sense of humour.”

I mock-glared at Tao.  “What kind of osmosis-processed power was actually in that binary book?”

“He also appears to have given Luhan a manlier glare,” Chanyeol continued to everybody’s amusement.  “We’re just hoping for the day in which he makes a pokémonesque evolution from doe to moose.”

“Oh my God,” exclaimed Chen as everybody, TV crew included, exploded into laughter.  “Why did I never think of that before?”

Chanyeol stuck his tongue out at him.  “It requires an IQ.”

Suho somehow saw a need to interpose himself before either of the two started scrapping, even though neither was anywhere near.

“Okay, okay, enough insults,” he said.  “What about games?”

“Well, if Spin the Bottle’s off the board,” I said, “I’m guessing stuff like Ring of Fire is too, so why don’t we go for Janggi?”

From the glint in Kris’ eyes, he was the only one who understood what Ring of Fire was, but the response from everybody else was identical to the one I’d received for my first suggestion.

“It’s PG-13!” I protested.

“Just no,” said Lay.

“We could have a strength competition.”  Xiumin had spoken up.  “It’s been a while since any of us arm-wrestled.”

Whereas I had elicited what-are-you-smoking looks from the others, Xiumin managed to squeeze out expressions of pure terror.

“It has to be something Baekhyun can participate in,” Suho said quickly.  Xiumin looked disappointed, but everybody else breathed a sigh of relief.  I elbowed Sehun discreetly.

“He’s not that strong, is he?” I mouthed so that it wouldn’t be caught by my microphone.

Sehun looked at me like my nose had sprouted a third nostril.  “He’s a freaking monster.”

“Oh.” I automatically cringed away from the direction Xiumin was sitting in.  “Okay.”

“What about a dance-off?” suggested Kai, but that was immediately shot down because nobody wanted to compete with the resident dance machine.

“Baekhyun can’t dance in bed,” Xiumin put in.

“A tongue-twister-off, then,” Kai said with a shrug, but at that, everybody swivelled to look at me.  I noticed the slightly worried looked of most of K and the disturbed looks of M and instinctively crossed my arms over my chest.

“What?” I demanded innocently.

“No,” said Kris.  “I object.”

I breathed a sigh of relief: I’d never learnt any Korean tongue twisters, and judging by their reactions,