Jongin pulls his goggles away from his forehead and down over his eyes. Swinging his arms back and forth, he loosens his shoulders and tries to relax even as anticipation tightens his muscles.

A bell rings, and the mass of swimmers dashes across the frigid sand, splashing or diving into the frigid waters.

Jongin plunges in head-first, smoothly cutting through the water and resurfacing before his body recognizes the shock and locks his body. He wades back to shore, shaking and laughing, and runs to the waiting arms of his boyfriend, holding his camera up to his face and a large blanket over an arm.

“You’re insane, you know that, right?” Baekhyun drops his camera and pulls the blanket around Jongin. He’s dressed like an Arctic native, himself. His face barely shows within the depths of his fur-lined hood, wind-stung tears dropping into a thick scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face.

“Cold water does wonders for the circulation,” Jongin chatters. His arm shakes, but he manages to pull off his goggles and put his feet back into his boots.

The annual Polar Bear Festival at Haeundae Beach, Busan, attracts a decent crowd. Baekhyun’s heard estimates of nearly two thousand men and women, all stripping down to run down the beach and jump into the ocean in the middle of winter. He’s never seen the attraction, Maybe it’s the adrenaline rush, a feeling of accomplishment, for a sense of new achievement, but it definitely doesn’t sound or look fun.

But Jongin’s enjoying himself, he muses, looking up at Jongin’s shining eyes. The dancer’s looking over the crowded beach, laughing merrily. His cheeks are flushed from cold, but they could quickly turn blue if he doesn’t dry off and put some clothes on.

“C’mon, let’s get back to the room. You can thaw before dinner.” They each volunteered to work the reception at their hotel. Jongin and Jung Soojung, a friend and fellow dancer, are performing a duet from The Nutcracker ballet, and Baekhyun—as well as photographing the event—is singing a couple of songs and playing piano with Chanyeol accompanying on guitar.

No one looks strangely at them as Jongin shuffles behind Baekhyun, wrapped in his big comforter with goggles and untied snow boots. A lot of the guests are dressed similarly as they make their way back to their own rooms.

Their room is on the second floor of the hotel, but neither Baekhyun nor Jongin feel like putting in the extra effort of climbing a flight of stairs.

Jongin waits until Baekhyun’s removed his winter layers before pulling him into the bathroom to shower.

The steam from the shower and even steamier kisses chases away the winter ocean chill, and Jongin walks into the bedroom in just his underwear and a T-shirt, throwing back the blankets and sheets to flop across the bed with a content groan.

Baekhyun joins him shortly, similarly dressed, and sits on Jongin's thighs. He's left his prosthetic in the bathroom and wears a simple black eyepatch.

“You warmed up, yet?” Baekhyun asks, drawing his hands flat over Jongin’s chest and torso.

“Freezing.” His hands are warm beneath the hem of Baekhyun’s boxers. “Any suggestions?”

They're lazily making out and pawing at one another when the phone rings. Baekhyun answers it a little huskily, listens a moment, and passes the receiver to a pouting Jongin. “Soojung.”

Jongin drops flat on his back, looking like a teenager gossiping to her girlfriends after school.

It's a brief conversation, ending with some confirmation and handing back the phone for Baekhyun to replace on its cradle.

“She wants to get another practice in before tonight.” He sounds sulky. Usually Jongin has to be dragged away from his dance.

“Is something wrong?”

“If you saw things from my perspective, you'd not want to go, either,” Jongin replies cheekily, thumbs drawing circles over Baekhyun’s hip bones.

Baekhyun scoffs and stands on a knee, withdrawing his other leg to sit beside his boyfriend and smack his chest. “Get going. It’ll warm you up faster than I could.”

“I have faith in you—” Jongin shrieks with laughter when Baekhyun digs his toes beneath his waist.

“Just get dressed, would you? I need to meet up with Chanyeol, anyway. We still haven’t settled on what songs we’re doing.” He scoots up the bed when Jongin gets to his feet and watches from the head of the bed while his boyfriend pulls on sweatpants. Stealthily, he takes his phone from the side table and resets the settings to automatic for an instant photo of his lithe boyfriend on his toes, pulling his pants up to his waist.

Jongin has a sixth-sense about cameras and frowns at the phone in Baekhyun’s hand. “Did you take a photo of my ?”

“Can you blame me?” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “It’s a nice .”

“Someone’s gonna find your phone and think you’re a ert,” Jongin mumbles, pawing through his dance bag.

“ersion is a photographer’s bread and butter, babe.”

Finding everything he needs, Jongin zips the bag only partway and slips his feet into his shoes that aren’t meant to be slip-ons. The heels are flattened and ruined. “I thought it was preservation.”

“That, too.” Baekhyun tilts his head back for a kiss. “I’ll see you before the performance.”

---

a/n: I kind of alluded to Baekhyun's disadvantage in the notes of Light of My Life, but it's actually referenced here. He only has one working eye. For a photographer, it can kind of hose up business a little bit.

North America is probably polar plunge central, usually for a charity, but their history is over 100 years old. The first recorded one I found was in 1904, in Boston, although the year before that, a sort of club was founded by a dude you believed the cold water did good stuff for stamina and virility. Some Canadians take the plunge as a New Years tradition. Some people will roll in the snow and hop in a hot tub in winter, just because. A personal polar-ish plunge.

These polar plunges are a little extreme for a lot of us, but don't fear the cold.

As well as being good for circulation, a bath of cold water has been shown to help burn an extra 500 calories a day by activating type of fat which generates heat, increases metabolism, and burns off the bad, flabby fat. A cold water rinse in the shower can make hair appear shinier, stronger, and healthier by closing hair cuticles, and flattening hair follicles and increasing their ability to grip the scalp. A good practice is a cold water shower in the morning, to wake you and energize you, and a warm one at night, to relax you.