_______________________________

Lu Han has been humming cheerfully all day, occasionally swaying his head and sometimes his noodle arms, to the tune of whatever strikes his fancy. At one point, he gets up from where he is sat on the floor to grab at Jongin’s waist and intertwine his right hand with Jongin’s left, directing their bodies to dance across the living room floor, all the while bouncing up and down and laughing laughs that draw half-moons in his eyes.

At the moment, he is clumsily singing and spinning through his own choreography of Taylor Swift’s Sparks Fly, in the middle of a sea of cardboard boxes. His face is all sorts of happy that Jongin does not have the heart to tell his boyfriend that his singing, although really good, sweetheart, you put Taylor Swift to shame, isn’t going to help move their stuff to their new house before Christmas rolls around.

There is also the fact that Lu Han’s dancing may prove hazardous to their breakable possessions. Lu Han hasn’t been known to be careful with those things. Ever. Which is why they own one-too-many kitchen ware that are chipped on the edges.

“Have I told you lately that I love you?” Lu Han asks, interrupting another one of Jongin’s tasks, which is putting adhesive tape on a box of said breakable possessions that he has just packed because at least Lu Han knows not to touch things he might be a hazard to.

Actually, he’s said it for fourteen times since he has been woken up this morning (by his own willpower, Jongin thinks, which might be the first ever since they had lived together), but Jongin tires not in hearing it. “Say it again, will you?” he urges.

“I love you,” Lu Han says sincerely, sending waves of affection to the other’s stomach.

“I love you too, babe,” Jongin replies with the same sincerity, “but—“

“No buts! Your but cancels your previous statement!”

“Okay, no buts,” Jongin laughs. “And so… we really need to get things done if we don’t want to leave anything when the movers come tomorrow.”

“Alright,” comes the response, with a display of Lu Han’s crinkly-eyed smile. He goes back to his previous job of going over a bunch of Jongin’s old stuff, to see which things to discard and which to keep, until he comes across something that makes his eyes go wide.

Like, really wide. “Uh, Jongin?”

“Hm?”

“Where did you get this?”

Jongin takes his time before indulging in what could be another one of Lu Han’s unplanned ideas of distracting both of them from getting through with their chores. When he finally does so, it is to find the older male staring, slack-jawed and extremely fascinated, at an old wooden box a few inches smaller than a shoe box. Underneath the box’s fading lacquer are brightly-painted pink lotus flowers contrasting magnificently with the chocolate-colored wood.

Jongin smiles. He had thought of showing the box to Lu Han before, but with the hectic activities that came with moving to a new house, he never had an opportunity. Now, though, he thinks he can spare a tiny bit of their already reduced time, to show him what it is. He crouches down and sits cross-legged in front of Lu Han and takes the box in his hands.

“It must have come with the stuff that mother brought over from my old room,” says Jongin. “It’s a music box, see.” Carefully, he opens the lid and out comes the melody of Swan Lake.

It’s that piece of music fiddling from the piano-like metal teeth of the music box, Jongin tells Lu Han, that had helped him get through some of the rough times of his life. He reaches across years to pull out a memory of one dreary Sunday morning, where a young Jongin was sat on a park bench underneath a sky lightly showering the Earth with snowflakes.

Eight-year-old Jongin was freezing to the bones, and the snow that bunched around his feet was making his non-winter footwear become soggy and cold-wet. He didn’t care. He could only think about how life was so unfair. How he wasn’t blessed with a sibling to cancel out the fact that he’d grown up alone and with barely anyone to play with, and now one of his parents was leaving him too.

They used to go to this park as a family every year on Christmas morn, so this day held a lot of good memories for him. Yet it was on this day that Mr. and Mrs. Kim had realized that they could never patch the holes on their marriage anymore and might as well end their repeated bickering by getting a divorce. Needless to say, Jongin had felt utter shock, betrayal and hurt at the discovery, and it was as if his life was about to crumble.

In his fits of anger, the little boy had gotten up on his feet and started kicking at the ice. It went on for a while until he noticed a dark object that lay on the white ground. He had picked it up precariously, accidentally dangling the lid open, and was surprised to hear music come out of the box. What surprised him all the more, though, was how the music had soothed his heart to some extent, the tinkling sounds making the ache in his chest dissipate slowly.

Jongin had searched the park for the owner of the music box and even frequented the park bench for the sake of whoever may have left it behind. A part of him hoped no one would show up since he had gotten rather fond of the device. Still, some of his time was spent religiously waiting because then it had distracted him from his parents’ messy divorce. As the last traces of snow had melted, Jongin went back to the park, waiting, even when all he ever did was to open the music box and listen to the instrument.

Growing up, he continues to tell Lu Han, he would come to listen to Swan Lake whenever he would feel sad. It was a sort of wonder that the music could still play whenever Jongin opened the box, since it must now be really old.

Throughout his story, amazement glimmered steadily in Lu Han’s eyes. Jongin thinks it must be due to how he’s speaking to Lu Han about his childhood, or a slice of it, at least, which has always been a touchy territory for Jongin. He smiles at the other again after his story has reached its end.

When his mouth could finally find words, Lu Han speaks, “This is going to sound all sorts of weird, Jongin, but I have to tell you that this is mine.” He is met with a dubious look.

“No, it isn’t,” Jongin replies, chuckling; “I told you, mother brought this over from her house. They must have finally cleaned out my old room.”

“No, really,” Lu Han insists. “This is mine. Or at least it was. Look—”

In the midst of Jongin’s wide-eyed confusion and disbelief, Lu Han calmly takes the music box in his hands and turns it upside down. There, on the bottom of the box, on top of the lacquered wood, Lu Han shows Jongin the Chinese characters that had been carved thinly. For the first time in a span of many, many years, Jongin makes out what the characters mean:

Lu Han’s name.

It is Lu Han’s turn to smile fondly as he traces a finger on the characters. “My grandmother gave it to me before we left China to come here. She said to take good care of it because it was already really, really old by then. I don’t even remember where I’d lost it, only that I’d been really disappointed at myself for losing such a precious thing. When I had told Grandma about it, however, she only smiled and said that my loss might be someone else’s gain. She said I should just hope that the box would bring happiness to somebody else and that it would be in good hands.”

A pause renders them in a trance-like, magical state as Lu Han directs his smile to the person whose life had been linked, albeit delicately, to his own all the years in between losing something and finding it again along with so much more.

“I’m glad it had been.”

Breaking out of his bewilderment, Jongin can only reach out and take Lu Han into his arms and engage him in an ardent kiss that he hopes is as exquisite as their discovery. Both of them know that Jongin has never been good with words, but he tries to put a lot of meaning into the kiss, a lot of the things he wants to say—I love you, perhaps, and Thank you and I’m so glad to have you in my life and a plethora of many other things still jumbled in his head. Because he still can’t believe it—the way their lives have been intertwined long before they’ve ever met.

Lu Han can’t help but climb onto Jongin’s lap, straddling him, and grin into the kiss, even as he swipes his tongue over the other’s bottom lip. It makes Jongin cling tightly to him, the music box now lay forgotten on the floor beside the pair.

Moments later, it is Lu Han who pulls away, with Jongin letting out a whine as he chases the mouth he’d wanted to explore more, earlier. He laughs and plants another good one on Jongin’s puckered lips before he asks coyly, “Didn’t you say we needed to sort our things out before the movers come tomorrow?”

“I did,” Jongin says as he gently pushes Lu Han off of him and makes to stand up. “But—and this is a BIG BUT—“ He reattaches Lu Han’s body to him, encircling his arms around the older one’s waist, when they’re both off the living room floor and directs them to the bedroom. “There’s been a change of plans.”

Lu Han laughs again. “And what exactly is the plan now, hmmm?”

“You’ll see,” Jongin whispers, breath tickling Lu Han’s ear. “It’s all sorts of wicked.”

A/N: Laaaaame. *flails wildly* I know. Sue me. Or don't, please, I've no money to defend myself. Like zilch. Sorry, am I rambling? I am rambling—but someone asked for a fluffy fic and I hope this'll do. Happy Christmas?

Huhu I haven't seen the new Star Wars movie yet, which is perhaps why I'm /all sorts of uninspired./ I'm planning to put up another story tomorrow, but... I guess we'll see.

There's still the others chaptered stories to work on. Heheh

Also, there's a draft for another instalment (ooooohhh like a saga? How dorky could I get?) for this 'Surprise' series, but it won't get posted until next year. Muhaha. I hope you'll wait for it, like how I'll forever be waiting on KaiLu to happen. [This is me rambling... and hopelessly dreaming.]

OK, BUT—HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!