Airports are busy on Christmas Eve. People scramble to catch their flights so they’ll be able to spend Christmas with family overseas or across the country or maybe just in a different place. The majority, however, are coming home for the holidays and are beyond glad to be back where they were born. The family and friends of anxious passengers fill the open areas, waiting to see those they love appear. Two such people were lounging on couches in the waiting area, waiting for the announcement that their friend’s plane had arrived.

“Hyunggg, wasn’t his plane supposed to be here by now?”

“It was delayed, Minnie. He’ll be here soon.” Leeteuk yawned loudly, stretching out across the couch as Sungmin jumped up and started pacing restlessly.

“I’m so excited for tomorrow, hyung! This is going to be great! I’m positive we’ll be able to get one of them to confess!”

“Stop pacing, Minnie,” Eeteuk mumbled, closing his eyes. He was beyond tired; Henry had called him at one in the morning to talk and ask for advice – he was having a mini-crisis thinking he’d picked the wrong majors and had screwed his life up forever. Leeteuk had talked to him for hours, calming him down and convincing him that he hadn’t done anything wrong and that he would be perfectly okay. He loved his dongsaengs and would always be there for them but three and a half hours of sleep just wasn’t enough.

“Zhou Mi needs to hurryyyy! We still have more planning to do!”

“Sungmin—”

“Flight KE323 is landing. Passengers will be disembarking shortly.” An almost-robotic voice filled the waiting area and Sungmin could have squealed in excitement.

“That’s Mimi’s plane! He’s here, hyung!” He grabbed Leeteuk’s hand, pulling his hyung off the couch and to his feet before dragging him toward the terminal. “Come on! We have to be there to greet him!”

Leeteuk let himself be drug along, still looking half asleep. He’d be awake and hyper tomorrow.

~~~

Zhou Mi, pulling his cap a little lower and adjusting his sun glasses, made his way off of the plane as quickly as he could, gripping his Louis Vuitton carryon bag tightly with one hand. As much as he loved Paris (and, believe me, he really loved Paris), he was really glad to be back in Korea with his friends. And he was especially glad to be back in time for the Christmas party at Siwon’s house. That, if nothing else, was guaranteed to be a very fun time indeed.

He’d barely stepped into the terminal when he heard his name being shouted across the space; a quick glance around revealed the source of the noise – a far-too-bouncy Sungmin with a dead-on-his-feet Leeteuk. The sheer oppositeness of their current dispositions was enough to make Zhou Mi want to burst into laughter. As it was, he suppressed his giggles and hurried over to the pair, beaming. Sungmin immediately threw his arms around the taller man, hugging him tightly.

“Mimiiiii!”

“Minnieeeee!”

“Tomorrow’s Christmas!”

“Tomorrow’s the party!”

“You’re not busy tonight, are you? Some of us are getting together at Teukie hyung’s apartment and finalizing our plans for tomorrow. We want to make sure everything goes right so that one of them will confess to the other or figure it out or something. It’s a little bit infuriating to watch the two of them be around each other all the time, be so obviously in love, and not freaking admit it!”

Zhou Mi couldn’t help but laugh. “I guess I should be unpacking tonight, but I’d much rather be part of this meeting!”

“Good!”

Leeteuk, who may or may have not fallen asleep on his feet (it was hard to tell sometimes), suddenly spoke up. “Let’s get Mimi’s luggage and then head back to my place. I think Kyu was going to come early.”

“Kay!” Sungmin chirped, bouncing off toward the baggage claim to hunt down the rest of Zhou Mi’s bags. He was excited.

~~~

Siwon’s house was absolutely huge. Well, to be fair, it was more of a mansion; he hadn’t wanted a house quite that large, but his parents had insisted and, since they wanted to pay for half of it, he couldn’t really refuse. It had unofficially become the usual meeting place when the boys wanted to get together because it was the one place where there was ample room for all of them. That’s why, on Christmas morning, Siwon found himself scrambling to make his house presentable before his friends made their way over.

The (very large) Christmas tree was up and decorated, the garland was strung around the house, several batches of cookies had been baked and were displayed on the kitchen counter, a hand carved nativity scene was proudly displayed on a table in the foyer, Christmas dinner was cooking on the stove and in the oven, and the unavoidable piece of mistletoe was hung in the most remote doorway possible. Everything, Siwon had decided was perfect.

Or, it was perfect for the moment. It was absolutely perfect until the first few guests arrived. Heechul, Leeteuk, Eunhyuk, and Donghae wasted no time in raiding the cookie stash and knocking garland off the stair railings, much to Siwon’s dismay. Things would only get worse he knew but, nonetheless, he couldn’t help but cringe watching his carefully manicured poinsettias receive absolutely no respect.

By the time Ryeowook and Yesung appeared in the elder’s black Renault, everyone else had already arrived (the pile of presents under and around the Christmas tree was a little ridiculous) and they were all obviously giddy about something.

Ryeowook slipped out of Yesung’s car, a smile stretching across his face. “Thanks for driving, hyung!”

Jongwoon merely nodded in response; Ryeowook was already running toward Henry, who was standing in the doorway waving at them. He threw his arms around one of his two dongsaengs, squealing.

“Henryyyy!! I haven’t seen you in such a long time! How’s school? I want to hear you play the violin again! It’s always so pretty! You’re so good at it! What have you been up to? Anything exciting?”

Henry hugged his hyung back tightly. “I’m composing a song with Teukie hyung right now! It’s so much fun!” He didn’t have time to say anything else; he, Ryeowook, and Yesung were pulled into the house and attacked by the others there.

In all of the confusion, Ryeowook found himself suddenly enveloped in a pair of long arms, a familiar voice ringing in his ears, a voice he’d sincerely missed hearing.

“ZHOU MI HYUNGGGGG!” He hugged the man tightly then stepped back and started bouncing up and down. “You didn’t tell me you were coming! I thought you were still in Paris!”

“Surprise!” Zhou Mi giggled. “Merry Christmas!”

Ryeowook merely threw his arms around his hyung, hugging him again.

Soon, the usually-quiet house was filled with laughter, talking, and just general merriment. Yes, Christmastime was definitely here.

~~~

About an hour into the party, Sungmin bounced over to Zhou Mi and Kyuhyun, holding his cup of hot chocolate carefully in one hand.

“Should we implement Plan One now?”

Kyuhyun cast a quick glance around the room before nodding. “Yeah. You get Ryeowook. I’ll get Jongwoon hyung.”

Sungmin grabbed Zhou Mi’s hand. “Okay!” he chirped before dragging Mimi off to help him kidnap Ryeowook.

~~~

“Wookieeee!”

Ryeowook looked up when he heard his name to see his bunny hyung hurrying toward him with Zhou Mi in tow. His face lit up at the sight of the pair.

“Sungmin hyung! Zhou Mi hyung, I still can’t believe you’re back! I’m so glad you’re back in time for the Christmas party! I missed you so much.” He hugged both of his hyungs then stepped back. “What did you need, Minnie hyung?”

“We were wondering if you could come with us for a second.”

“Sure!”

Sungmin grin was tinted with a hint of Kyuhyun’s general deviousness and that only served to make Ryeowook a little nervous. Nonetheless, he let himself be led away toward a room off to the side, wondering what in the world was going on.

~~~

Kyuhyun wandered over to Yesung, who was deep in discussion with Hangeng about a Chinese artist that they both loved.

“Yesung hyung!” Without any regard for the conversation already in progress, Kyuhyun called out Jongwoon’s name, grabbing his attention.

“Yeah, Kyu?” If he was upset about being interrupted, Yesung didn’t show it.

“I need you to come with me for a second. Do you mind, Hangeng hyung?”

Hangeng didn’t answer; Heechul had noticed the pause in the conversation and promptly taken Geng by the arm and drug him off so that they could talk by themselves. Yesung blinked, a little surprised that the person he’d been speaking to a second before had suddenly disappeared.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll go with you, Kyu. What do you need?”

“Just follow me…”

Kyuhyun his heel, walking toward the room that Ryeowook, Sungmin, and Zhou Mi had vanished into a few minutes previously, smirking. He stopped just outside the room, making sure Yesung was near the door, and began to fabricate a bunch of questions about a song he had been working on. Perfect. Now all Sungmin and Zhou Mi had to do was get Ryeowook to confess…

~~~

“Wookieeeee…” Zhou Mi whined. “I haven’t seen you in so longgg! I don’t know what’s been going on in your life! Tell me everything!” He bounced on the couch in anticipation, leaning toward the eternal maknae.

Ryeowook blushed slightly; he really hated being on the receiving end of this much attention. “Um…nothing much, really. I’ve been working a lot. I got sick for a while, but Sungmin hyung, Leeteuk hyung, and Jongwoon hyung took care of me…oh! You don’t know about him, do you? I met Jongwoon hyung a little bit before you left but we’ve become really good friends since then. He’s really nice and he’s been helping me through my anxieties and fears about what happened to me at University. He’s a really great friend.” Zhou Mi noted with a delighted (but silent) squeal how his friend’s eyes lit up at mention of Yesung and the slight blush that rose to his cheeks when he said the older man’s name.

“Jongwoon hyung? Oh! I know Yesung hyung! I see him in Hangeng’s shop sometimes and we always talk! He’s so nice!” Zhou Mi clapped his hands excitedly as he and Sungmin exchanged glances. All according to plan.

“He and Wookie spend a lot of time together,” Sungmin said matter-o-factly, grinning as Ryeowook’s face turned red.

“That’s because we’re friends, hyung! Besides, he’s fun to be around. He makes you feel…safe, I guess.”

“Wookieeee, you like him at least a little, don’t you?” Zhou Mi poked the younger man on the shoulder, a mischievous smile playing across his lips.

“What?!” Ryeowook turned a much deeper red. “We’re just friends, hyung! Friends!”

“But you just seem like—”

“Friends!!” Ryeo protested, shaking his head furiously. “Nothing more!”

Sungmin could have growled in frustration; his little friend was being so much more uncooperative than they’d planned. He glanced at the door; Kyuhyun peeked around the corner and shook his head slightly.

Well, so much for Plan One.

~~~

Plan Two involved Heechul, who was possibly the most upfront and in-your-face of every person there. It was Kyuhyun’s job to go track down his hyung and get him to implement the plan. He looked all over the house, looking for any sign of Heechul and was just about to give up when the older man stepped out of the bathroom in front of Kyu; he’d been fixing his hair.

“Hyung!”

Heechul paused, glancing over at Kyuhyun. “What do you want, Kyu?”

“Our first plan failed.”

“You actually thought it would succeed?” Heechul scoffed at the idea; Kyuhyun frowned, but continued.

“We need you to help us with Plan Two. You know what to do, right?”

“Of course I do. Grab Yesung and shove him under that door while I go get Ryeowook.”

Kyuhyun nodded, heading off to find Yesung for a second time that night and drag him to one specific doorway in the household. Heechul, smirking, sauntered toward the living room where Ryeowook was mostly likely to be found. He scanned the room briefly, finding his target chatting happily with Leeteuk. Kyuhyun and Jongwoon were nowhere to be seen.

“Damn, that boy works fast…” Heechul muttered, heading toward the lovable barista and grabbing his wrist. “Hey, Wook, come with me.” He didn’t give the boy a chance to protest; he just began to walk off, dragging Ryeowook with him.

“What do you need, hyung? …Hyung?” Ryeowook looked up at the older man, wondering why he wasn’t saying anything. Normally he wouldn’t stop talking, but now he wouldn’t seem to start! 

A moment later, a doorway came into view, and the person standing, stranded, in that doorway.

“Hi, Jongwoon hyung!” Ryeowook chirped, smiling happily. “What’re you doing here?”

Yesung shrugged lightly. “I don’t know. Kyu asked me to wait here for a second while he got something to show me and—” He was abruptly cut off as Heechul not-so-subtly shoved Ryeowook into him; he blinked in surprise, his arms immediately wrapping around the younger man’s frame to keep him from falling. “You okay, Wookie?”

Ryeowook nodded, flashing a smile at his hyung. “I’m fine!”

Heechul stood there, arms folded over his chest, smirking at the pair. “Hey, you two. Kiss already.”

Ryeowook turned the darkest shade of red he possibly could as he sputtered out, “K-K-Kiss? W-W-What are y-you t-talking about, hyung?” Jongwoon seemed to be frozen on the spot. His brain had kind of shut down at the thought of him kissing his favorite barista.

Heechul pointed at the doorframe above their heads. “Mistletoe.”

This time, all the blood drained from the younger man’s face, leaving him a startlingly pale white.

“C’mon, Wookie, Jongwoon. Kiss.”

“B-B-But hyung—”

“No buts.”

“H-Hyung—!”

“You’re making this worse by stalling.”

Ryeowook whimpered, his heart pounding far too loudly in his chest. There was no way. There was absolutely no way that he could kiss Jongwoon hyung. Not because he didn’t want to (because lord knows he did) but because he wasn’t sure that was what Yesung wanted and he valued this friendship too much to take the chance of screwing it up. But what was he supposed to do? If it had been anyone else watching the scene, he probably could have escaped without much effort. Since it was Heechul, though, there was essentially no chance that he was going to get out of this situation.

For a brief moment, the thought of actually pressing his lips against the younger’s crossed through Jongwoon’s mind. Maybe, he thought, that would help him figure out these weird feelings he had for the barista. Maybe. Just when he was about to, something he’d overheard Ryeowook say earlier that evening shot painfully through his mind, making its way to his heart and settling there – “We’re just friends! Friends! Nothing more!” Right. Friends. He couldn’t act on these feelings. But he couldn’t help himself.

Out of nowhere, Ryeowook felt a pair of lips touch his forehead gently and he nearly passed out.

“There,” Yesung said, ruffling Ryeowook’s hair fondly before sticking his tongue out childishly at Heechul. “There’s your kiss.” He hurried down the hall, lowering his face so that the others couldn’t see his sad smile. That was as close as he’d ever get to a real kiss. Because they were just friends.

Ryeowook just stood there in the doorway, staring at the spot where Yesung had been a second later. Slowly, he reached up, his fingers touching the place where Jongwoon’s lips had pressed so delicately against his skin; he wanted to squeal but bit down on his lip to keep from doing so, instead just turning light pink and grinning foolishly. Heechul, frustrated by the loophole that had been found, stormed off to announce the failure of Plan Two to the masterminds behind this plot.

~~~

Leeteuk, Sungmin, Kyuhyun, and Zhou Mi sat in a room away from the main hub of activity at the party to regroup; a sense of utter gloom filled the air in a way that really wasn’t in keeping with the Christmas spirit at all. Both of their initial plans had failed and their backup plans were beginning to look like they had no chance of success. Being the oldest, Teukie spoke up first, feeling he had a responsibility to do so.

“This isn’t working.”

“I think we made things worse,” Sungmin said, looking exactly like a sad puppy. “If Yesung heard Wookie proclaim adamantly that they were just friends, and Kyu said that he definitely did, then there’s no way he’d confess now. And Wookie is obviously in either the most advanced form of denial or he thinks that Yesung doesn’t like him and doesn’t want to take the chance to say anything.”

“But we know that they both like each other,” Zhou Mi interjected, tapping his long fingers on his leg as the wheels in his brain turned. “Is there any way we could convince one of them that the other likes them?”

Kyuhyun shook his head. “I doubt it. They wouldn’t really believe it. Ryeo has to hear it from Yesung hyung; Yesung hyung has to hear it from Ryeo.”

“I know this game is kind of childish, but what about Truth or Dare? We might get one to confess that way.” Zhou Mi glanced up at the others.

“They’d probably find loopholes,” Sungmin said miserably. “That’s what they did with the mistletoe. Besides, we’d have to get everyone to agree to it and I know several people out there would not agree to it. Like Kibum. And Siwon.”

“What about a present?” Leeteuk said suddenly, his head shooting up. “What if we gave one of them a present, supposedly from the other, and on the card or something it expressed their feelings. You know, ‘I love you’ and all that jazz.”

Zhou Mi mulled over the proposition for a minute before responding.  “That has the potential to work, but there’s the risk that they would notice it wasn’t actually from the other one. I mean, Wookie knows all of our handwriting pretty well, so I’m sure he’d be able to tell. Although Yesung hyung is gullible enough that he’d probably not even question it.”

“Zhou Mi hyung, all of our plans are risky. That’s the nature of a plan like this. None of them are one hundred percent foolproof, no matter how hard you try.” Kyuhyun rolled his eyes, leaning back on the couch and sighing. “What if we just kept kind of pushing them together throughout the night? If they find themselves around each other enough and we hint at their feelings, maybe one of them will get it. That’s easier than trying to find a gift or write something to go on that gift.”

“That seems too simplistic.” Sungmin wrinkled his nose.

“Some of the best plans are the simple ones,” Kyuhyun shot back.

“Look,” Leeteuk stepped in before a real argument could start. “Why don’t we do both? We can push them together throughout the rest of the party and, if things aren’t going the way we want, we can do the present thing or try something else.” He looked to the others for confirmation, hoping they would agree to the compromise. One by one, the other boys nodded. “Okay then. Let’s go get them together!”

~~~

By the end of the night, Ryeowook had vaguely noticed that Sungmin, Zhou Mi, Kyuhyun, and Leeteuk had developed a habit of forcing him to sit near Yesung or talk to Yesung or even just be in the same room as Yesung. Personally, he didn’t mind being around his hyung that much at all, but he was afraid that, if he spent too much time around him, his feelings would be discovered. Jongwoon, on the other hand, hadn’t noticed anything unusual about their behavior.

The Masterminds were quite upset that their plans hadn’t worked (they’d tried several other things over the course of the night as well, none of which were successful) and resolved to give it one last shot with the present the next morning. After that, they’d have to take some serious time off to regroup.

It was late in the evening now and the party was dying down. Everyone seemed to come to an unspoken agreement that they would spend the night at Siwon’s place (he’d expected this would happen and had gotten the guest rooms prepared) and open their presents the next morning; most of them were too tired to really want to deal with that at the moment. A group of the boys had asked Siwon if they could watch a movie; Siwon had quickly popped in the first movie he saw – Edward Scissorhands – before staggering off toward his own room so he could collapse on his bed.

Eunhyuk was curled up in the loveseat, Donghae was stretched out across the floor in front of Hyukkie, Sungmin was situated in a large armchair with his eyes glued to the screen, Jongwoon was sitting on the edge of the couch, and Leeteuk had gently pushed Ryeowook to sit next to the vocal coach. As the movie progressed, they slowly began to file out of the room one by one until only Yesung and Ryeowook were left. It wasn’t long before, with a large yawn, Ryeowook slowly slid down until he was lying on the couch with his head in his hyung’s lap. Yesung didn’t think anything of it; it felt natural and perfect and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He began to the younger’s hair absentmindedly and, when the movie came to an end a little while later, looked down, only to find Ryeowook asleep.

He didn’t move. Jongwoon didn’t want to move. That would disturb the sleeping boy and potentially wake him up, something Yesung wanted to try to avoid. Ryeowook looked so much like an angel when he slept, he reflected, a soft smile on his face. A flawless, gorgeous, wonderful little angel. His little angel.

He wanted to fall asleep next to Ryeowook every night. He realized that. He wanted to hold the younger man in his arms and call him his and never let him go. But, as his brain kept reminding himself, that would never happen. Because they were “just friends.”

Nonetheless, he would enjoy this moment, this calm, quiet moment when the only person in his world was Ryeowook and everything was perfect.

It didn’t take long before he was asleep as well, his arm resting over Ryeowook’s shoulders, holding him close. He always slept better when his little angel was nearby. 

Hi, my precious cupcakes! ^^

I'm so sorry about not updating in forever! I've been so busy and I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month this month as well, so I've just had so much stuff going on! I hope you liked this chapter (I had the hardest time coming up with evil plots, actually...)~ I didn't do tons of editing on this chapter, so please forgive any mistakes!

I'll do my best to get the next chapter out much sooner! ^^

I love you!

love,

afallingstar