Jinsu fiddled nervously with her scarf as she watched the snow falling softly through the chalet window.

“Baekhyun definitely doesn’t know about this?” she checked for the fifteenth time in at most half as many minutes.  “You’re certain?”

“One thousand percent,” Sehun assured her, grabbing her by the waist and hauling her onto the sofa beside him as she paced past yet again.

It didn’t stop her from biting her lip.  “Do you think he’ll be happy to see me here?”

There was a startled choke and Kyungsoo’s head popped up over the back of the sofa on the other side of the room that was facing the TV.  “Did you two have a massive fight he didn’t tell us about before he came out here or something?”

“Why wouldn’t he be happy?” Sehun asked before Jinsu could reply to Kyungsoo.

“CERN and skiing are supposed to be his special time,” Jinsu fretted, “not to mention he said he didn’t want anything for Christmas, so I thought I’d come out to visit him instead, but I don’t even know how he’s going to respond to me being here—”

With a loud snort, Kyungsoo’s head slid down again and he returned to his book.  “I say we go with Plan A like we originally intended and leave her and tied up with ribbons on Baekhyun’s bed.”

“Kyungsoo!”

Sehun did his best to look indignant on Jinsu’s behalf, but a snicker escaped him and he was soon spluttering with laughter.  “Chanyeol, Jongdae and Jimin are all going to be here by the end of tonight – there was a good reason why we decided against that.”

“I forgot about that,” Kyungsoo admitted, his tone rueful.

Jinsu groaned.  “You two are terrible friends.”

Kyungsoo’s head shot up again.  “Excuse you?”

“Terrible friends would not have lied about needing licencing agreements in order to leave early to pick you up from the airport,” Sehun said, offended.

“Yes, terrible friends would have told Baekhyun you were coming.”

“Terrible friends would have gone with Plan A.”

“That would only make us terrible friends to Jinsu,” Kyungsoo pointed out.  “It would probably make us extremely good friends to Baekhyun.”

Sehun started snickering again.

“I hate you both.”  Jinsu turned her back on Sehun and pretended to sulk.  It was hard to maintain when both boys were openly laughing, because they both had the soft, amusing sort of laugh that made you want to snort and join in.  After a moment or two, Sehun went back to video-calling Minju, who would be joining them with Saeeun in a couple of days’ time, while Kyungsoo was already re-immersed in his book.

Jongdae was the next to arrive, swanning into the chalet in a fluffy of snow with enough food to feed an army.

“Jongin’s parking the car and Jimin’s flight is delayed,” he announced before looking around.  “Where are Baekhyun and Chanyeol?”

There was a loud thud as Kyungsoo dropped his book and his head shot up from the other side of the sofa in horror.  “Which moron thought it would be a good idea to let Jongin loose on the roads of any country?”

Jongdae looked a little confused, while Sehun nodded fervently in agreement.  “Well, until Jimin arrives, Jongin and I are the only ones with driving licences—”

Kyungsoo narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.  “I guess it is marginally the lesser of two evils.”

It took a few moments for what he was saying to register, and Jongdae dropped the food bags indignantly.  “Hey!”

Snickering, Kyungsoo bolted from the room as Jongdae lunged at him, and Jongdae chased him out.  Jinsu winced as she heard them thundering up the chalet’s wooden staircase and through the rooms above, but Sehun seemed more interested by the food.  He poked around at the bags for a bit and then looked up.

“This could potentially be awkward,” he said.  “Chanyeol’s diversion to keep Baekhyun out of the way was to go on a shopping spree for the entire week.  We might not have enough room to store all the food.”

“It’s fine; we can just shove it in the snow drift under the balcony.”

Sehun’s face lit up like a lightbulb and he nodded with a grin.

Jongin came in a few moments later, stamping snow off his boots and shivering.  It only took a glance in the direction of the fire before he was curling up on the sofa in front of it with his eyes closed and a long sigh of relief.  Jinsu and Sehun exchanged glances when soft snores started up just a few seconds later.  With another glance at Jinsu, Sehun picked up a pen and stealthily shifted over until he was sitting beside Jongin, pen poised and tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he surveyed the sleeping teenager’s face.  Shaking her head, Jinsu turned away as Sehun set to work with an expression of utmost concentration.  Jongin continued to sleep peacefully, even when Kyungsoo and Jongdae tore back into the room and Kyungsoo used one of the sofas as a defensive barrier to catch his breath as he and Jongdae made feints to dodge away, both giggling in absolute hysterics.  For somebody who’d suffered from a severe back injury only a few months before, Kyungsoo was remarkably agile.  He vaulted the sofa to escape Jongdae’s clutches and this time dashed for the balcony windows, which he wrenched open before Jongdae could get to him.  Jinsu could have sworn she heard him yelling “wheeeee!” as he leapt over the balcony railings.  A shower of powdery snow flew up, followed by a second one as Jongdae leapt after him.

“Is Kyungsoo on something?” Jinsu asked Sehun, only half joking.

Sehun paused in his artistry and tilted his head to one side as he considered.  “I think it’s just the mountain air.”

“God help us all,” Jinsu muttered.

The original plan had been for Chanyeol to detain Baekhyun as much as possible on the way between CERN and the ski resort so that everybody else could arrive first, but predictions of an abrupt change for the worse in the weather and the delays to Jimin’s flight meant that Chanyeol had to cut his losses an hour earlier than intended so that they would actually be able to reach the chalet that night.  His phone had either died or had no signal for most of the journey, though, because the first that anybody in the chalet knew of it was when Kyungsoo and Jongdae burst in, both blue with cold and absolutely soaked from going out in the snow without jackets, yelling something about preparing for battle because the enemy was coming.  Before anything could be done about hiding Jinsu for a big reveal later, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were removing their snowboots in the hallway.

In an attempt at heightening the suspense, Sehun lunged across the sofa to try to knock Jinsu behind it and keep her hidden, but he landed on her instead and they both toppled over with a loud thunk that drew everyone’s attention.  They landed in a very compromising position, Sehun on top of Jinsu, and somebody wolf whistled.

Baekhyun stopped dead, his expression blank, then confused, and then a little weirded out.  But before he could say anything, Jongin emerged.  He popped his head up over the side of the sofa to see what all the fuss was about and yawned hugely.

“I’m dreaming,” he mumbled before flopping down again to go back to sleep.

His intervention caused a full minute of silence as everybody stared.  Then Kyungsoo covered his mouth with his hand in an attempted to stifle a snort of laughter.  Jongdae crept over to the sofa to get a better look at Sehun’s artistry.

“The Randy Adventures of Roland the Unicorn and the Perpetually Hungry Centaur,” he read off Jongin’s forehead.  “Sehun, what the actual ?”

Jinsu let out a winded gasp as Sehun stopped propping himself up with his arms and collapsed on top of her with a silent gale of laughter before rolling off her and onto his back.

“Are they frolicking by his left ear?” Chanyeol asked, peering over Jongdae’s shoulder.

Baekhyun also joined them.  “No, that’s here.  See where he’s written *frolic frolic*?”

“Yeah, I think they’re prancing there rather than frolicking, Chanyeol, sorry.”  Jongdae’s face was the picture of seriousness.  “And I think the caption for this one ought to be kamasutra kamasutra.”

Sehun choked on his laughter, his face beginning to go red.

“Oh lord, cannot unsee,” Baekhyun mumbled with a shudder.  He turned away from the curious boys poring over the cartoon images all over Jongin’s face and then paused, spotting Jinsu again as she curled up and attempted to catch her breath again.

“Why’s Jinsu here?” he asked in confusion.  “Come to that, why are Jongin and Jongdae here?  I thought this was just letting off steam after a tough but interesting week studying—”

Kyungsoo rounded on him with a frown.  “Are you trying to kick your girlfriend out into the snow, you heartless monster?”

Baekhyun hastily backed up a couple of steps with his hands raised in surrender.  “N-no, I’m just confused—”

But Kyungsoo had already turned to Jinsu.  “Dump him,” he recommended with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder.

“In the snow!” Jongdae and Sehun exclaimed together, and then there was chaos again as Baekhyun tried to escape them both and the three of them were scrambling over the furniture in a frenzy.  Weary from their journey, Chanyeol slumped down on the sofa beside Jongin, only to be trampled over by Jongdae seconds later as he used Jinsu’s cousin as a shortcut to get Baekhyun before he dived behind the TV.  Chanyeol whined and curled up in a ball while Kyungsoo tried to keep a straight face as he rescued his book from the male stampede when Baekhyun managed to free himself.

This time, Baekhyun dived on Jinsu and clung to her like a koala.

“You can’t throw me outside!” he insisted as Sehun and Jongdae approached, rolling up their sleeves with twin evil smirks.  “It’s not fair to Jinsu and it’s very ungentlemanly and you were just telling me I couldn’t throw Jinsu outside and—”

He rolled them both over in an attempt to get away from the miscreants, but Sehun and Jongdae pounced with a whoop of glee and Jinsu shrieked as they were suddenly airborne and punched into air so cold she thought her heart might fail.

They landed in a flurry of snow in the drift under the balcony, Jinsu on top of Baekhyun.  He sat up, spitting out a mouthful of snow, and Jinsu saw three silhouettes leaning over the balcony railings.

“You blockheads!” Baekhyun protested heatedly.  “Why would you throw Jinsu out into the snow when the whole reason behind throwing me out into the snow was to stop me from throwing Jinsu out into the snow?”

“Using another human being as a human shield is a violation of human rights and makes you a war criminal,” said Kyungsoo’s voice matter of factly.

“By the way,” added Jongdae, “I’ve heard there’s a very energetic activity two people can do together if they want to keep warm—”

Baekhyun lobbed a snowball at him.  Laughing, the three boys retreated and closed the balcony windows.

Rather than subjecting themselves to more teasing, Jinsu and Baekhyun snuck up to his shared room with Chanyeol once they’d got back inside and Baekhyun had, as quietly as humanly possible, made them both large mugs of hot chocolate.

“You really should change,” he told her as she purloined one of his long-sleeved t-shirts to wear over her damp clothes and burrowed into the blankets on his bed.  “You might get ill.”

Jinsu stubbornly shook her head.  Baekhyun flopped down on the bed beside her in a clean top and snuggled up.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he asked curiously, nudging his face closed to hers.

“Sur-choo!” Jinsu sneezed.  Laughing, Baekhyun backed off a little.  Jinsu sneezed a second time and lifted her head.

“Surprise,” she said.  “Except you ruined it by arriving early.”

“Why?  What were you planning?”

“I don’t know