A freezing cold waft of wind ruffled Taemin’s hair and kissed his face with feather light snowflakes as he, on stiff legs, climbed out of the newly parked blue car. Jonghyun, who’d left the vehicle within seconds after shutting off the engine, had already bounded through the snow over to the red house with the white corners that they had parked in front, energetically banging his fist against the door while waiting for someone to unlock and open it.

How the older man still managed to be that animated despite the fact that he, along with Taemin, had been stuck driving for the past five hours was a mystery no one would ever solve.

The snow reached a few inches over Taemin’s knees, and after he’d closed the car door behind himself and zipped up his warm jacket to not freeze to death (because that would ), he began trudging through the snow, following the path Jonghyun had paved.

It had been ages since Taemin’d seen this much snow, aside from on the TV or pictures on Google. He would have been a lot more energetic (like, jumped around and kamikaze’d into some of the many piles of snow), but thanks to him falling asleep at the end of their drive he felt all mushy and lethargic from having just recently woken up.

And on top of that his hurt like a , because Jonghyun’s car was a pile of and Taemin suspected that its seats were made out of stone. No kidding.

As the younger male walked up the small steps to the wooden porch the front door opened, and the sight of a grinning Onew greeted their eyes.

"Jonghyun! Taemin!" he said, his brown hair disheveled and sticking up at all angles. It looked like it was defying gravity. Cool. "You finally got here!”

Brushing off the snow that had stuck in their hair and on their clothes both Taemin and Jonghyun squeezed through the door into the house (because yes, they had to enter the cottage at the same time), greeting their friend with brohugs as they shut the door.

The first thing Taemin noticed about the small house’s interior was that the entranceway wasn’t very spacious, because as he shrugged off his winter jacket he had to swiftly duck in order to not get Jonghyun’s elbow in the face. He didn’t want get a broken nose only ten minutes after he’d gotten to their rented ski lodge, after all.

Taemin loved his quick reflexes.

Onew had left them to remove their outerwear and returned to whatever he’d been occupied with before Jonghyun had begun manhandling the front door, which Taemin assumed had been cooking with Key and Minho considering all of the noise – his friends’ boisterous voices as well as the sounds of kitchenware being used – that came from what Taemin guessed was the kitchen.

Swiftly ridding his feet of his bulky shoes Taemin squeezed his way past Jonghyun who, thanks to his fingers that had become all stiff and clumsy from the cold outside, still hadn’t managed to untie the knot of his boots to walk into the adjoined living room.

It was pretty large, actually, compared to the tiny entrance, and in the middle of the expansive room there was a comfy-looking red sofa facing an old TV. On the opposite wall of the tele, and behind the sofa, there was a table with four chairs, all of them made out of wood, and two huge windows adorned the wall behind the furniture.

A big grin spread on Taemin’s lips, and though he couldn’t see anything through the windows due to the night settling in right then he was so looking forward to eating breakfast at that table while watching the beautiful scenery outside the next morning.

He’d only seen the living room and the hallway, but he already adored the place.

“Jonghyun, hurry up,” Taemin called over his shoulder, grin still in place, urging his best bro to hurry up, before making his way through the spacious room with a bounce in his step.

He came to an abrupt halt at the threshold of the kitchen, brain slowly processing the sight before his eyes.

Then the short moment of stupor ended, and he couldn’t help but chuckle, because the view presented to him was just way too comically weird not to; Key, wearing a frilly, blue apron equipped with a spatula which was raised high in the air, was in the middle of trying to swat Onew’s hand away as said boy was trying to snatch one of the chicken nuggets lying on a plate next to the stove. Of course Minho was there as well, also wearing an equally frilly apron, but instead of taking part in the food-thievery/food-protecting he was sitting on the counter behind the couple while fiddling with his phone and chewing some gum, not even batting an eye at Key’s and Onew’s ongoing dramatics.

All six eyes turned to Taemin as the people inside the kitchenette noticed the brown-haired boy, and the three of them looked like deer in headlights as they realized that they had an audience. That only made Taemin laugh harder, and Jonghyun – he had finally managed to rid himself of the boots, it seemed – who had walked up next to Taemin just a couple of seconds later joined him without hesitation.

His friends were so odd.

He loved them so much.

Key and Onew regained their bearings first (Minho was still looking like Taemin’d just told him that he was, from that moment on, gonna be a statue and therefore wasn’t allowed to move), and the former male quickly put away his Spatula of Hand-Slapping and Doom in order to walk over to Taemin and Jonghyun and poke their shoulders in greeting, a warm smile on his face.

Onew, ever the opportunist, grabbed the chicken nugget he’d been trying to steal and stuffed his face with it.

“Yah, you guys were supposed to have gotten here, like, an hour ago!” And as usual Key skipped the pleasantries to jump straight into the nagging like the mother-hen that he was. It was all in good fun, though, because he was still smiling happily at the two of them.

“Well, you know how Taemin is,” Jonghyun began with a shrug, walking past Key and Taemin to have a look at the food stewing in the pans on the oven after saying hello to Minho with a fistbump and a ‘sup’. “He just had to stop at McBernald’s and buy one of their Happy Meals. Said he wanted one of those red airplanes that came with it. I, like the good and caring friend that I am, couldn’t possibly deny him that. It’s all Taemin’s fault, really.”

Taemin gasped indignantly, because first of all, what? He had not wanted the red plane! He’d wanted the blue one. And secondly, Jonghyun had also wanted one of those miniature planes, so why was he acting like it’d only been Taemin’s fault that they’d stopped by the fast-food place?

So sneaky!

The younger male opened his mouth to defend his hurt manliness – and also to tell Onew, Key and Minho that Jonghyun had also gotten one of those airplanes – but he trailed off when Onew unexpectedly began dragging him away from the kitchen.

Apparently Key’d gotten tired of Onew stealing food, and in order to get his partner to stop he’d told him to set the table.

And of course, with Taemin’s luck, Onew had decided that the younger male would help him with the task.

Yay.

Couldn’t he have picked Minho instead? The dude was just sitting on the counter chewing his gum doing nothing, for crying out loud!

Lucky bastard.

As Taemin and Onew began setting the table, Taemin pouting slightly because he felt the need to express his discontentment, he randomly began thinking about Minho wearing that apron back in the kitchen and what, exactly, it was that had made him put it on. Key had been the one cooking, after all, so at least he’d had a legit reason for wearing the frilly thing.

What was Minho’s excuse?

And that, ultimately, made him mull over their strained friendship.

They had met thanks to both of them being friends with Onew and Key (which Taemin’d gotten to know through Jonghyun) about a year ago, but they had never become close. Taemin hadn’t really known why, but frankly speaking, he hadn’t cared very much back then.

He’d figured that you can’t be superfriends with every single person you meet, and then left it at that.

But then their “Spin the Bottle/Truth or Dare”-night together with the girls had taken place, with the confession and the awkward exchange of words between them afterwards, and their somewhat easygoing companionship they'd had up until that point had turned into something stiff and awkward. Because even though half a year had already passed and everyone had practically forgotten about the whole thing, Taemin hadn't. It had stuck to his memory like a goddamn leech, refusing to let go and let him to forget about it, and that was what made him feel awkward when speaking with Minho – nervous, almost – because whenever he looked at the taller male he was reminded of it.

And on top of that he never knew what to say, so whenever the two of them were alone with each other (like that one time where Jonghyun went to the washroom while Onew and Key were lost in their own little world of romancefluff a couple of weeks ago) Taemin more often than not ended up making a fool out of himself by saying things that made him seem like a socially retarded loser.

It was just so. Frickin’. Awkward.

... Hehe, Taemin and Minho, the two most incompetent friends in the world.

It had a nice ring to it, didn’t it?

“What are you smiling about?”

Taemin jumped slightly at the sudden question addressed to him, his focus snapping back to the present and away from his inner musings.

He hadn’t even realized that he’d been smiling wryly at his own thoughts.

“Ehm,” Taemin started, quickly wiping the smile off his lips while frantically stalling for time as he wracked his brain for a good reply. He didn’t want to admit that he’d been contemplating his and Minho’s current state of friendship, because that would just make Onew wonder what he meant and then Taemin would have to explain it. Which he really didn't want to, because it would feel silly. Also, in the corner of his eyes Taemin could see the backside of Minho’s head (he had apparently sat down in the sofa to watch TV during Taemin’s pondering), which just made him even more certain about not wanting to tell Onew the honest truth. “The puppy. That I saw yesterday. Um.”

... He really had to work on his lying skills, because that had just been embarrassing.

His ancestors had to be crying in despair and shame down in their graves, bless their souls.

But because it was Onew and not Key or Jonghyun or Minho, the white little lie actually worked like a charm, and they smoothly left the subject of Taemin's thoughts.

And so the two friends finished their chore, deeply engrossed in an intellectual discussion revolving around Golden Retrievers, Labradors and shovels.

Don’t ask.

~:~

It had become very dark outside by the time they had all finished eating, and even though Taemin, with his arms crossed on the table before him and lips slightly parted, could barely see anything through the windows due to the complete darkness, he just couldn’t tear his eyes off of what he could see.

It was just… so beautiful.

The silhouettes of the tall trees reaching for the dark blue night sky, the snow and frost that seemed to glisten whenever the light from their house or from the moon fell on it at certain angles, the peacefulness and stillness of everything…

It really was a winter wonderland, just waiting for him to explore it.

Absolutely amazing.

All five of them were still seated around the table – Minho sitting on the (really ty and uncomfortable, Taemin could tell) portable chair he, Key and Onew had bought the day prior when they’d gotten to the house and realized that there were only four chairs, and the rest of them on the four chairs that were included in the furniture set – even though they’d finished eating a while back, and now, after their loud talking, joking and laughing during the dinner, a pleasant silence had settled amongst the friends.

Taemin sighed contentedly, a warm, almost buzzing, feeling inside of his chest.

He was happy.

Very happy.

These guys really were like a second family to him (even Minho, he reluctantly had to admit, despite their many huge issues).

Originally only Onew and Key had been supposed to go on this skiing trip, because it had been supposed to be a romantic holiday trip just for the two of them, but the moment Jonghyun had heard about it the man had begged the couple to let him come along. After days of whining and pleading they had grown tired of Jonghyun’s incessant begging and finally said okay, fine, you can come with us.

The second Jonghyun got a ‘yes’ from them, Taemin caught wind of the trip, because Jonghyun had always been allergic to keeping things from his best bro, and the trip was no exception. So what had happened next was that Taemin had, of course, wanted to come too.

Unlike Jonghyun, Taemin had managed to convince the couple to let him go on the trip with them within a matter of hours.

He was a pro when it came to the arts of puppy eyes, after all.

Apparently Minho had been nagging them about the trip too, because later on it had been decided that he would also come with them.

And so, in the end, instead of being a romantic ski trip for two it had ended up being a getaway for a group of friends who wanted to escape their daily lives to have fun and spend some real quality time witch each other.

And boy, was Taemin glad about that, but it was not only because this was the first time ever that he was on a ski trip. No, it was also because he had been unable to hang out with Key, Onew and Minho (he met Jonghyun practically every day thanks to him living only a couple apartments away from Taemin) because of his hectic job at the dance studio as of late, and he had begun missing his strange friends.

His life was so boring without them.

Someone cleared their throat loudly, effectively breaking the peace and quiet of the group, and turning his head slightly Taemin looked at the perpetrator, Key.

“Taemin,” the two years older man began slowly, fingers interlaced with Onew’s where their hands were resting on the table. “You remember how you told me that you’ve never skied before?”

Taemin raised one eyebrow, curious as to where this was going, before nodding in affirmation. “Yeah.”

“I figured that you’d need someone to teach you how to do it. I mean, none of us would want you to accidentally kill yourself within the first five minutes out on the slopes,” Key continued, lips twitching into a smile. “So I kinda got you signed up for a crash course in skiing. It starts tomorrow at nine thirty sharp, and ends somewhere around two, I think.”

Taemin frowned slightly. Key acted so much like his mother sometimes, seriously. It could be quite annoying, because Taemin was an adult – he’d recently turned 21, for god’s sake! – and could handle things such as this himself. He didn’t need anyone to baby him, despite how ‘young and innocent’ (that’s what his friends always described him as) he may have appeared.

But Key had obviously done it in good will, and Taemin figured that having a real teacher would be better than forcing one of his friends to teach him how to ski, so he valiantly brushed off the annoyance and mustered up a grateful smile to replace the frown and opened his mouth to thank Key.

“Thanks for that, I gue–”

“It’s for children between the ages thirteen to eighteen.”

“What?” Taemin exclaimed, jolting upright in his chair. Gone were the warm, buzzing feeling from before and the gratefulness towards his friend.

Minho, who had been listening to their conversation with a semi-curious expression, quickly hid his mouth behind one hand before anyone noticed the amused quirk of his lips. Onew quickly excused himself from the table, muttering something about the television.

Jonghyun simply started cackling, not caring in the least whether Taemin noticed or not, while high-fiving Key and calling him a genius.

Taemin was not finding the situation as amusing, and he was not seeing how doing that made Key a ‘genius’.

“Key, I’m twenty one! There’s no way that they’re going to let me participate in it!” he argued, both upset and affronted. “And also, why would you do that? Couldn’t you just have had, hm, I don’t know, signed me up for the adult one?”

, he would look so uncool amongst the children and embarrass the hell out of himself.

“I was originally going to do that, actually,” Key admitted, looking unperturbed by Taemin’s exasperation as he calmly rose from his chair to begin gathering the plates and cutlery still left on the table. “But then I realized that it’d be a lot cheaper for us if you took the kids’ course, so I figured that that’d be better. And don’t even try using that argument, Taemin; if you use those puppy eyes of yours like you usually do you’ll have no problem blending in with the teenagers. It’s foolproof.”

Taemin opened his mouth to retort, but he couldn’t come up with anything that Key wouldn’t be able to run over with his sharp tongue. Stupid Jonghyun were of course still laughing at Taemin’s misery – like he always did – and Minho were looking (staring, really) at him with eyes full of mirth and a no-longer concealed grin on his lips.

Crossing his arms, Taemin pouted all manly-like before grumbling slightly. “Whatever. I’m not going to embarrass myself in front of a bunch of kids. I’m not doing it; Jonghyun will teach me how to ski.”

During the car drive earlier that day Jonghyun had actually admitted that he wasn’t very good at skiing at all and that he was definitely going to stay away from the red and black slopes, but having him as his instructor would be a million times better than having to stumble around like an elephant with a group of hormonal teenagers.

… Of course, now that he thought about it, it would have been a lot better to have Minho teach him, because yesterday when Taemin and Onew had been speaking on the phone the older man had told him that Minho was amazing when it came to skiing. But considering the inevitable awkwardness that was always lurking around the corner, waiting for the two of them to be alone together so that it could attack, he’d rather take his chances with Jonghyun.

He just needed to learn the basics, after all. The rest of it he could figure out himself.

How hard could it be, really? It wasn’t as if it was rocket science or something.

“Hey, leave me out of this! I’m just an innocent bystander!” Jonghyun replied immediately, trying to look like the ‘innocent bystander’ he claimed that he was as Key simply rolled his eyes.

Taemin’s cheeks flushed red in annoyance as he looked at Jonghyun– betrayed again! What was this, a conspiracy of some sort? – but he never got the opportunity to open his mouth to further express his displeasure with them because Onew had suddenly burst out the title of some movie that were playing on the tele that he had been watching during their bickering, effectively gaining everyone’s attention.

Onew was a trained professional when it came to diffusing problematic situations arising within their group.

Twisting in his seat with his hands gripping the backrest of the chair, exasperation forgotten in favor of curiosity (he had never been very good when it came to being annoyed for an extended period of time), Taemin craned his neck in order to catch a glimpse of the movie.

He couldn’t see anything since the back of the sofa blocked the view, but he could hear muted screams and gurgling sounds coming from the TV. So it was a horror flick, then?

Cool.

Leaving the table – Minho and Key didn’t need another person to help clean up after the dinner, he decided – Taemin crossed the living room to plop down in the couch next to Jonghyun who’d sat down next to Onew only a couple of seconds earlier.

The movie was called Return of the Bloodgroveller 2, Onew repeated when Jonghyun asked him after they’d been watching the bad acting and special effects for a couple of minutes, and it was about around some blond foreigner (Taemin couldn’t remember her name) running around trying to get away from said ‘Bloodgroveller’.

Obviously it was really, really bad (seriously, even the name of it was lame) and looked like one of those mass-produced, low-budget films with generic plotlines that had been made back in the 8o’s or something.

Terrible, really, and the director should feel ashamed of himself.

But it was pretty fun laughing at the stagnant acting skills of Blondie, as they came to call the main character, and the poor SFX, so the three of them continued watching the awful motion picture despite its general yness.

It was towards the end of the movie that Minho and Key joined the three of them on the couch. Somehow, their cleaning up after dinner had taken them well over half an hour, and Taemin half-heartedly considered asking them what they’d been doing back in the kitchen. In the end, though, Taemin decided not to, because if the two of them wanted to spend some private bro-time with each other while the others were watching Return of the Bloodgroveller 2 then Taemin didn’t want to pry.

Besides, Minho had sat down next to Taemin – did he have to sit that close? – so Taemin didn’t want to make the already tense atmosphere between them even more awkward.

He was such a good and thoughtful friend, really.

And then they all watched the ed up ending of the tiest movie they’d ever seen together, and afterwards they all felt pretty damn minded, because where the had those one-legged, badly dressed aliens that killed off the oh-so-horrifying Bloodgroveller come from?

So random.

~:~

Most people would wear a beanie, a peaker hat or maybe even a bobble hat when they went skiing, because their slim design could fit underneath the ski helmet without making it all uncomfortable.

Key was not ‘most people’.

Never had been, really.

So Taemin shouldn’t have been as surprised by the sight of Key’s chosen headwear when he walked out the front door to join Minho, Onew and Key next to their two cars parked on the poorly shoveled road that went by their house.

He really should’ve been used to his friend’s odd taste in fashion by then.

The keywords being ‘should have’.

Pointing and laughing was inevitable, and in a matter of seconds Taemin went down for the count and crash-landed in the snow, laughing like a madman.

Because the… thing… that Key was wearing was a fur hat with earflaps. That in itself wasn’t what was bad, because fur hats could look pretty cool on some people. Key would probably have looked pretty damn good in that hat.

If it hadn’t been white with black dots.

And fuzzier than Fuzzy the fuzzy Furry.

And practically looked like it was trying to devour Key’s head completely.

It looked like a snow leopard had, after having been electrocuted, crawled up on his head and died a gruesome death by the hands of the Bloodgroveller.

It really was that bad.

Key let out and indignant squeak the second he came to realize that what Taemin was laughing was his hat. “Hey!”

Jonghyun, because he had impeccable timing like always, chose that moment to open the door and leave the house, nearly stumbling over Taemin’s collapsed body with a surprised grunt. But then he, too, noticed the fugly thing that Key was wearing.

“Oh my god!”

Taemin was quickly joined on the snow-covered ground by Jonghyun, the two best friends rolling around in the white – but cold – fluff while clutching their aching abdomens.

“That… that hat is amazing,” Taemin managed to squeeze out, tears of glee in his eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” Jonghyun agreed, and they fist bumped each other.

Or, well, attempted to brofist; they had kind of missed each other’s’ knuckles, but whatever. It was the thought that counted.

Key, who had been making affronted hand gestures and noises while stomping his foot during their laughing in failing attempts to get them to stop, scowled at the two of them and huffed.

“Are you two done? We need to get going,” he said, an annoyed edge to his voice as he turned around to look at Onew, who had been standing next to him while confusedly trying to figure out what Jonghyun and Taemin were laughing at, and Minho. “Have you guys got everything?”

Both males nodded in affirmation, and the three of them bent down to fasten the clasps of their ski boots before they put on their respective skis.

After finally managing to calm themselves down, Taemin and Jonghyun helped each other get up from the ground and dust themselves off as their three friends got ready to leave, and after having locked the front door they, still smiling like crazy, walked up to their waiting friends.

The cottage they’d rented was a ten to fifteen minutes’ walk to the skiing resort’s centre where they were going to rent Taemin’s and Jonghyun’s skiing equipment at one of the stores, after all, and they didn’t want to have to rush to get there in time before Taemin’s crash course started. So there they were after waking up extra early to eat a quick breakfast, eager to make their way to the skiing hotspot and hit the slopes.

Since Minho, Key and Onew had gotten to the cottage one day prior to Jonghyun and Taemin’s arrival the three of them already had their hired skis and equipment, so instead of walking – like Taemin and Jonghyun was going to have to do – to the centre they were going to use their skis to make the walk smoother.

Kind of like cross-country skiing.

Key shot Jonghyun and Taemin a smirk.

A smirk that looked decidedly evil, Taemin noticed with a slight dread. He’d seen that smirk before, and it meant that whoever was at the receiving end of it was going to get their wipped. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

He did not like that smirk.

“Try to keep up, will you? We don’t want to have to wait for you two for too long, after all.”

Both Jonghyun and Taemin frowned in bewilderment at that. Why would they have to wait for–

And suddenly, a cloud of snow blew up in the two confused males’ faces, and Minho, Key and Onew were quickly gliding down the snow-covered road.

They kind of looked like cross-country skiing champions what with the sheer speed of their advance down the path.

But then the sound of Key, Onew and Minho’s receding laughter reached their ears, and as their shared moment of awe towards their skilled friends came to an abrupt end Jonghyun and Taemin realized two things.

One, they didn’t know the way to the centre (they could always follow the path, but hey, everyone knows that they’d manage to get lost one way or the other anyways).

And two, they would have to run in order to not lose their (mean, evil, sadistic) friends out of sight.

So that was what Key had meant when he told them to not make them wait for them.

“!”

They both began sprinting, arms flailing and their movements clumsy, courtesy of the deep snow that their boots kept sinking down into and their bulky winter clothes.

The following fourteen minutes it took the two of them to get to the Centre was the most trying fourteen minutes in Taemin’s life so far.

Key really got them good for laughing at his hat.

~:~

Super Junior's "No Other" has kinda almost inofficially become this story's theme song in my eyes, because I listen to it on repeat whenever I type on this and feel weird when I don't. Also, the lyrics fit, so it's a match made in heaven. Or something. Haha, I can't believe I haven't gotten tired of the song yet, but I guess that's the power of good music. xD

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! lol

 

11/03 2013, Elysionista