As horrible and embarrassing as Taemin had imagined the skiing crash course to be, it turned out to be the exact opposite, because the teenagers were all too busy with trying not to fall over themselves that they didn’t notice Taemin’s own fatal failures and faceplants into the snow and therefore didn’t laugh at him. The instructor that taught them all the basics of slalom and the art of not tripping on your own skis was actually pretty cool, actually.

… But a little bit crazy, too, Taemin suspected, because who in their right mind would make their students ski down a slope equipped with only one ski on their first day of slaloming? Admittedly, the slope had only been a Green one and therefore very easy, but still.

Taemin had fallen over twice in the anchor lift, which had forced him to slide down the snowy slope on his – since he couldn’t get up from the ground without someone helping him – and then hobble his way to the lift again. And when he had finally, finally managed to get to the top of the goddamn slope he had only managed to ski three meters before falling flat on his face for what felt like the hundredth time that day.

Ugh, the humiliation. The frustration.

But all in all it had been pretty entertaining in a kind of absurd way, he supposed, excluding the falling over-syndrome he’d seemed to have caught back at the ski shop when he and the others had rented his and Jonghyun’s equipment.

But it wasn’t as if he’d ever admit that out loud, because that would make Key even more complacent with himself, and that did not bode well for everyone else in his immediate vicinity.

“See? I told you you’d be able to fool the instructor with your puppy eyes!” Key grinned smugly at Taemin from across the small, rounded table. “I told you!”

“Yeah yeah,” Taemin grumbled into his cup of hot chocolate, a small pout on his face as he rolled his eyes.

The five of them were all sitting huddled around a table in the corner of one of the many café/heat cabins that littered the skiing resort, each one of them nursing their respective cup filled to the brim with scalding hot chocolate and melting whipped cream on top.

Right after the crash course had ended – at one o’ clock sharp – the others had met up with Taemin (they had been skiing in the more advanced slopes during Taemin’s absence) and they’d all decided to go someplace warm to discuss what they would do next now that they all were together again.

But of course, with them being who they were, their discussions had ended up with Key happily rubbing the fact that Taemin had actually attended the skiing lesson in said boy’s face, Jonghyun rambling on and on about some girl he’d met and Onew and Minho animatedly talking about how they’d gone off-piste skiing (and apparently left Key to ski by himself, considering the nasty look Key shot their way when he heard them talk about it).

Ah well, disregarding their lack of productivity when it came to discussing what they were going to do next and Key’s aggravating behavior, Taemin didn’t really mind them sitting there, not caring about whether they laughed too loud or disturbed the other customers of the café. It was really nice.

“Oh, right, Taemin,” Onew suddenly piped up, effectively putting his and Minho’s discussion to an end as he turned to look at Taemin. “You haven’t ridden a chairlift yet, have you? Me and Minho were thinking about riding one to the top of the mountain when we’ve finished warming up. Do you wanna come along? There are some pretty easy Blue slopes that we can ski down from there, and the view from up there is amazing.”

Confirming the first question with a nod, Taemin smiled excitedly as he replied, “Yeah, that’d be really cool!”

“Why don’t we all do that?” Key suggested, putting down his now empty mug on the table in front of him, his lips smeared with chocolate that he promptly wiped away with the napkin Onew gave him. “I think it’d be a lot funnier if we’d all ski together instead of separately. We all came here to be with each other, after all, not apart.”

They all hummed in agreement; sure, it would be fun if Taemin, Minho and Onew rode the lift and skied together, no doubt about it. But if all five of them did it together?

Now that would be awesome.

Or, well. That was what Taemin assumed it would be, at least.

The more the merrier, right?

Minho leaned forward in his chair to prop his forearms on the table, playing with the ceramic cup in front of him with his long fingers. “We’d better not stay here for too long if we’re gonna do that though, guys, ‘cause everything closes at four.”

“Oooh, that’s right,” Onew gasped, clearly having forgotten about that. “Are you guys done?”

Taemin – who’d been chuckling at Onew, because it was just typical of him to forget something like that – realized with a start that he was the only one who hadn’t finished his cup of hot beverage when all of the others confirmed Onew’s question with either nods and/or “yeah”s, and as they rose from their seats to put on their jackets and get ready to hit the slopes again Taemin quickly gulped down whatever was left of his own chocolate.

Which was a very bad move.

He’d kind of forgotten the whole reason as to why he hadn’t drunk it all up like the others, and was painfully reminded of why when the scalding hot chocolate mercilessly burned his tongue and mouth, causing him to yelp and squeeze his eyes shut.

Jonghyun laughed affectionately (and so did the others, though Taemin didn’t notice that since he was fully preoccupied with trying to check if he could still feel his tongue or if it had been burned right out of his mouth or something) while reaching over to ruffle Taemin’s hair, the younger male’s face all scrunched up in discomfort.

“Aw, did wittle baby Taemin hurt himself?” Key teased, the smirk from earlier when he’d been pestering re-appearing on his lips with a vengeance.

“Do you want papa Jonghyunnie to kiss away the pain?” Jonghyun asked, pursing his lips in the most ridiculous and ugliest imitation of a kissing mouth that Taemin’d ever seen before in his whole life.

“Eww,” Taemin gagged jokingly before swatting Jonghyun – who’d been leaning forward as if he was actually going to do it, the creepy bastard – away. “Get your gross lips away from me.”

A sudden gleam of mischief lit up in the half-blond male’s eyes, and Jonghyun pressed a hand to his own chest, right above his heart, as if he was suddenly experiencing a severe case of heart failure.

“You heartbreaker!” he then whimpered dramatically, shielding his face with his free hand to make it look like he was crying and that Taemin actually was well on his way of breaking Jonghyun’s heart. “I thought you meant it when you said you loved me yesterday night… was it a lie? Was it only my body that you wanted?”

Taemin raised an eyebrow, very much aware of how the people around them sent them strange looks, his lips twitching into a grin he tried his best not to show as he understood what it was that his friend was doing.

They really had been hanging out with Key and his penchant for histrionics far too much, because just look at them – in a heated cabin filled with people trying to get warm and relax – creating a scene as if that was what they’d been born to do.

“Your body, of course,” Taemin replied flippantly, playing along with his best bro’s antics without any hesitation, fitting the role of the evil heartbreaker perfectly (Key had made him watch so many chick flicks that Taemin knew exactly how a bad boy was supposed to act and talk). As an afterthought Taemin nonchalantly added: ”And even that wasn’t worth much.”

Wailing, Jonghyun pretended to faint into Key’s waiting arms, hands covering his face, giving their dramatic theatrical piece a short and painless ending. The second Taemin concluded that they no longer had to be ‘in character’ he dropped the bad boy-act and began laughing like crazy, desperately trying to hide the blush creeping up his neck from the way people stared at them, Jonghyun doing the same (minus the blushing, because he had no problems when it came to being the center of attention) as he quickly got back on his own two feet to mess up Taemin’s hair again.

Their bromance knew no boundaries.

Both Key and Onew (though the latter hadn’t really understood what the hell was going on before Key had leaned over to amusedly mumble it into his ear) were laughing along with the two of them, either ignoring or being completely unaware of the weird looks the other people were sending their group.

As their laughter began to die out, Taemin – still smiling from ear to ear – straightened up to put on his own jacket like the others had already done, but he stopped short when he in his peripheral vision noticed how Minho seemed to have gone completely rigid beside Onew, staring at Taemin with a peculiar expression on his face.

Oh boy, here we go again. Awkward moment, commence.

Tilting his head, Taemin expectantly awaited Minho’s return from… wherever the hell his brain had vacated to and explain why he was staring at Taemin this time.

Finally snapping back to reality, Minho slowly quirked his lips into what must have been the most fake smile ever (wasn’t Minho supposed to be the person with the perfect lying face? What the hell was he doing, messing up a simple smile?) before he opened his mouth to say–

Nothing, because suddenly Key had thrown his arm around his shoulders and interrupted their Awkward Moment of Awkward™ (and now Taemin had begun naming those moments with an added Trademark symbol afterwards. Seriously. What was wrong with him?).

“C’mon guys, we’re leaving.”

And then they all simultaneously stumbled out of the cabin like a flock of newborn puppies, talking loudly and laughing again as they tried to push each other into snow piles and stuff snow in the backs of each other’s jackets, the Awkward Moment of Awkward™ pushed to the very backs of their minds.

~:~

It was crazy, Taemin decided, how easy the more adept skiers made slalom skiing look. Seriously. They were practically flying down the slopes, so sure in their movements and every turn graceful. In comparison to them, Taemin felt like a constipated monkey who’d had both of its legs amputated.

Sure, he’d improved significantly these past four days they’d been there by then, but he was still far from looking aesthetically pleasing skiing down the snowy hills.

Stopping in the middle of pulling his too big, blue shirt over his head, Taemin pursed his mouth in thought.

Had they really been there for four days already…?

Huh.

Time sure flew by fast.

Shrugging away that train of thought – because there was no reason for him to dwell on the matter any longer than he already had – Taemin returned to undressing, discarding the blue shirt on the floor before he began tugging off the undergarment he’d worn underneath the shirt to keep warm. That piece of clothing was, however, harder to get off due to it being so skintight, so Taemin had to wriggle, bend and jump from foot to foot like some idiot in order to get it off. After the whole ordeal he ditched the troublesome piece of clothing next to his shirt before he proceeded to remove the rest of his apparel and step into the shower stall.

Turning the knob with fumbling fingers not yet fully defrosted, Taemin sighed contentedly as the hot water began pouring over his chilled body.

He’d decided to head back home earlier than the others that day, because that way he could shower for as long as he wanted without having Jonghyun or Key bang on the bathroom door yelling at him to hurry up every five seconds. But it was also because of how freezing it had been outside – he’d never been as cold as he had that day in his whole life before this trip – and his sore muscles.

Skiing really was exhausting.

In-between turning the heat of the water up a couple of notches every other minute, Taemin shampooed and rinsed his hair. He normally didn’t use shampoo, or any hair products at all for that matter, because he didn’t really think he needed them. But since someone – most likely Key, because who else would use three different brands of conditioner? – had filled the shower shelf with hair care stuff (though Taemin had begun to suspect that those products were actually meant for girls, because the fragrances were definitely feminine ones), Taemin figured that there was no harm in using them during the trip. Like, why not?

Besides, he kind of secretly enjoyed the way his hair smelled like green apples mixed with bubblegum.

Yum.

Spraying water into his scrunched up face one last time just because he could, Taemin turned off the water and put the shower head back in its original place before stepping out of the stall. The mirror on the opposite wall above the sink had been completely covered with steam, and Taemin grinned to himself.

He was totally going to write ‘Jonghyun ’, because the day before Jonghyun had written ‘Taebaby’s feet stinks’ and Taemin was not above conducting warfare with mirrors, steam and immature jibes as his weapons.

Reaching for his towel while he, with his other hand, brushed away his wet from out of his eyes, his body dripping with water, something Taemin had not expected in the least happened; the handle on the bathroom door turned.

Taemin, stopping in the middle of the motion of reaching for his towel in favor of looking at the door with and expression not too different from a deer in headlights as it opened in what felt like slow-motion.

A turn of events such as this shouldn’t have come as such a big surprise to Taemin as it did since he was sharing a house with four other people, but thanks to him having been so sure of himself being alone in the house up until then kinda threw him for a loop.

Also, the fact that he’d forgotten to lock the door was nothing short of panic inducing and slightly traumatizing, because his first thoughts of who it could be on the other side of the door was ‘murderer’, and as a result of that thought, ’holy it’s the Blood Groveller’.

But the person entering the bathroom wasn’t the Blood Groveller.

It was Minho in all of his tall, awkward glory.

When Taemin realized that it was only his tall is-he-or-is-he-not friend and not some kind of B-monster, the overflowing relief almost made him want to throw flowers or something of equally girly and cliché proportions at him.

Almost.

But then Taemin noticed the way Minho’s body seemed to have gone rigid, how the older male’s eyes had grown as large as saucers and his face turned pale, and the relief ebbed away like the receding tide.

This was Minho, not Jonghyun or Key or Onew, and Minho and Taemin alone together generally equaled inevitable awkwardness and stiffness.

Right. Taemin’d forgotten about that for a second there.

Breaking their moment of stillness, Taemin snatched his towel and wrapped it around his hips, as that was the only thing that his brain could come up with to do.

Taemin’s swift movements snapped Minho out of whatever it was that had frozen him (hadn’t he behaved like this back at the café cabin a couple of days back? …Strange), and the tall man pulled out his earplugs – those explained why he hadn’t heard that the bathroom had been occupied – to hang them around his neck before basically tripping over his own tongue to apologize to Taemin about the intrusion.

“Dude, it’s cool,” Taemin replied slowly, eyebrows rising to his hairline as he regarded Minho’s reaction. Sure, it was a bizarre situation for the two of them to be in, but Minho’s reaction was a bit too much. It’d been one thing if one of them had been a girl or something, but that wasn’t the case, so why the hell was Minho looking like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown?

They were both dudes; what was there to be so freaked out about?

It was no big deal.

… Unless, of course, Minho was some kind of special snowflake who couldn’t handle seeing another person of the same in their birthday suit.

, Minho’s reaction was making this situation way bigger than what it would have been if, for example, Jonghyun had been the one to enter the room. Taemin could feel his cheeks heat up. Minho’s obvious mortification was making him self-conscious, and he instinctively pulled the towel a little bit tighter around himself, as if that was somehow going to make the situation better.

And then Minho suddenly sprang into motion, backpedaling (and tripping on his own two feet like a real smooth looking champ) and practically ripped the door of its hinges as he pulled it open to exit the washroom, leaving a flabbergasted Taemin in his wake.

… Special snowflake, indeed.

After the ten seconds it took Taemin’s brain to process the situation he had just been in and then to catch up with the present one, he hurried over to the door to close it firmly before he locked it.

He was so not going to forget to lock a door behind himself ever again.

~:~

The sound of the front door abruptly opening and two boisterous voices laughing happily reverberated through the – up until that moment – completely still house, waking Taemin from his nap with a jolt. Completely disoriented and not a little bit groggy, Taemin braced himself against the soft couch cushions as he sat up, blinking the sleep away.

After his shower he’d decided to occupy the sofa and watch whatever ty horror movie it was that was running and relax. Maybe even see if he could talk to Minho and make sure his might-be-might-not-be-friend’s brain hadn’t combusted as a result of the already infamous situation.

Apparently, Taemin had failed to do any of those things and had instead fallen asleep.

Faillllll.

Yawning widely, Taemin twisted his body to regard the noisy pair of friends that had caused the sudden increase of decibels in the house. The culprits were none other than Onew and Key, leaning heavily on each other as they were removing their cumbersome ski boots. Their cheeks were flushed (whether it was from the cold or from simply being together Taemin didn’t know), and their faces and eyes practically shone of happiness like beacons in the dark. They hadn’t noticed that Taemin was seated on the sofa, watching them, and he made no move to alert them of his presence and chose to instead observe their behavior when they thought they were alone.

He was honestly kind of curious as to how the two of them acted when they thought no one was looking, because sometimes Taemin forgot that they were together – in love with each other and had been for the past years – since they didn’t flaunt their relationship nor make out every ten seconds like other couples tended to do. And neither did they declare their undying love to each other at every available opportunity. Taemin assumed that that was because the two of them had been together for such a long time already that they didn’t need constant reassurance of their mutual feelings towards each other.

Of course, that didn’t mean that there weren’t any difference between the way they behaved towards each other compared to other people, it was just that you really had to squint in order to really take notice of those small details; the secret smiles, the lingering touches, the subtle kind and loving gestures only meant for them, Onew and Key, and no one else.

Their subtlety was what made most people (that didn’t hang out with them on a regular basis) more often than not mistake the two of them to be close friends who were simply very touchy-feely witch each other instead of an actual couple.

Taemin cocked his head, pursing his lips in fascination. Key and Onew had suddenly stopped talking, stopped moving, and were only staring into each other’s eyes, expressions still conveying nothing but love and bliss.

They held their breath, exhaled.

And then they moved forward, their foreheads touching as they closed their eyes, their lips mere millimeters away from each other–

And Taemin promptly choked on nothing, his face beet red as he turned away. That was a moment waaaay too intimate and love-y for an outsider such as himself to have witnessed. He almost felt like a Peeping Tom.

The sudden sound of someone experiencing inadvertent self-caused asphyxiation made both Key and Onew jump in surprise, their romantic moment completely destroyed, and both of their heads swiveled around to finally notice Taemin on the couch.

Onew was the first to regain his bearings, smiling brightly as if Taemin just hadn’t interrupted their moment. “Hi there, Taemin! Are you okay?”

Key, who experienced a similar reaction as Taemin considering his crimson cheeks and momentary muteness, cleared his throat thrice before stepping away from Onew to pull off his winter jacket with fumbling fingers.

“I’m fine,” Taemin answered, his voice a couple of notches higher than normal as he tried to pretend that he wasn’t embarrassed, both for his own sake and theirs. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m totally fine. Never been finer.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

They exchanged awkward grins – at least on Taemin’s part – before Onew followed Key’s example as they finished removing their outerwear.

What is this, awkward moment day?

Taemin grimaced to himself and willed his cheeks to return to their normal color instead of the crimson they were currently showing off. This was not his lucky day, that much was he sure about.

“Eh? Taemin, where’s Minho?” Key asked, apparently having recovered from the embarrassment by then, eyebrows raised as his eyes searched their living room for the tall male in question. “Isn’t he with you?”

“I think he’s in your room,” Taemin replied, thankful for the neutral question which allowed him to focus on something else rather than what he had just been witness to. “He’s been in there this whole afternoon.”

At least that was what Taemin assumed since he hadn’t seen anything of Minho after–

Nope, he was not going to think about that.

Delete.

Key frowned. “Really? He hasn’t hung out with you?”

“Nope.”

A frown slowly developed on Key’s face, and he exchanged a look with Onew before muttering something to himself.

Feeling as if he was missing something vital, Taemin opened his mouth to inquire about whatever it was that he apparently wasn’t aware of, but Key beat him to it.

“Sorry, Taemin, me and Onew have to… change the sheets,” Key said, smiling brightly and pushing Onew in front of himself towards his, Onew and Minho’s shared room. “See you at dinner, okay?”

Blinking in surprise over the obvious and sudden lie – what the hell, couldn’t Key have come up with something better than “change the sheets”? – Taemin stared at the door as it closed behind the pair.

This day was just getting more and more ludicrous by the second.

And where in the world was Jonghyun? Shouldn’t he have returned to their cabin by then? A quick glance towards the watch hanging on the wall confirmed that it was well over four already, so he couldn’t be out in the slopes.

Deciding to send a quick text message to his best bro – and turn up the volume of the TV in order to drown out the sounds of what seemed like a very heated discussion within their room as Taemin figured that whatever they were talking about was none of his business – he laid down in the sofa again, fingers swiftly typing the message “where are u” before hitting ‘send’.

He needed someone, or something, that could distract and help him forget about the near-kiss. Gah, why hadn’t he alerted them of his presence the moment they’d entered the house? If he’d done that he’d been able to avoid the second uncomfortable situation of the day that had occurred.

That was definitely the first and last time that he would ever do something as ingenious as that.

Returning the cellphone to the pocket where he always kept his phone when wearing jeans, he then focused on the TV that was still playing the gritty black and white movie. As usual, the movie was even tier than its previous predecessors, and Taemin (thankful for the momentary diversion) absentmindedly wondered what kind of idiot it was that had come up with the idea of finding the worst movies ever and then broadcast them all on the same channel.

Either an evil genius when it came to trolling others or one sad muppet who actually genuinely enjoyed the movies and thought others would, too.

Taemin didn’t know what was worse.

Grabbing the remote which he had apparently been lying on this whole time, the bored male began pressing the buttons, attempting to find any other working channel than the y one that was currently trying – and failing miserably – to entertain him. Like all of the times prior to this one, his efforts were completely unfruitful; there were no other working channels but that one.

Groaning dramatically, Taemin dragged a hand over his face. Where were Jonghyun when you needed him? Without his best friend there, and the others busy with whatever they were doing, Taemin was at a complete loss of what he was going to do.

Read the book that he’d seen lying on Jonghyun’s nightstand? Nah, it looked boring.

Play around on his cellphone? Been there, done that.

Cook dinner? He was getting really hungry, now that he thought about it…

Yeah, he could mess around in the kitchen and see if there were any funny ingredients he could cook something tasty with.

Good plan.

Rising from the sofa with about as much grace as an elephant seal out of water, Taemin began making his way to the kitchenette, fully intending to go through with his idea.

But as usual, Taemin’s decided course of action to fight his own boredom was thwarted as the door to his three friends’ room unexpectedly shot open, and a confounded Minho was pushed out of the small space by none other than the mother hen of their group, Key.

“And stay there!” Key exclaimed, pointing at Minho with an expression that dared Minho to defy him accompanying his words, before he shut the door again with a loud bang.

Taemin stared at the door, wondering (not for the first time) what the hell was wrong with his friends, before he slowly turned to meet Minho’s eyes. They both looked equally astonished about their friend’s behavior, and none of them knew what the proper reaction to this sudden development was.

Okay then.

.

~:~

haha, this fic is actually turning out to be a lot more quick-paced than I had first planned, but I haven't really got a problem with that since it's so light-hearted. If you do, however, then tell me and I'll keep that in mind.

It's kinda funny; the scene between Key and Onew  was actually just supposed to be them holding hands or something, but my Onkey loving heart got carried away and it ended up in an almost-kiss. xD

Thank you for reading this! :)

And also, I love you guys! <3

18/03 2013, Elysionista