i'm going to retry the sukai and continue the anniversary drabble another time. also i'm going away for a few days tomorrow and i'll probably have limited internet, so don't expect an update tomorrow ;u;
 

We did our Christmas shopping today. It took ages but I finally found what I wanted to buy. And I still don’t really know what to get for Jongin and Sehun. They always say they don’t want anything from me but I want to get them at least something!! I guess I’m wrapping myself up again this year…

“Alright, we’re going Christmas shopping. Get ready,” Sehun yells through the house.

Joonmyun appears by the front door in a heartbeat, already dressed in pants, a jacket with a giant fur-lined hood and a scarf wrapped around the lower half of his face.

“I’m ready!” he announces, and Sehun kisses him on the nose because he knows Joonmyun’s been ready and sitting in his room since the end of breakfast. Jongin comes out a minute later with his gift shopping list and they head off to the department store.

“Okay,” Sehun says firmly. The three of them are standing in the middle of the huge mall, surrounded by shops, Christmas festivity and other people on all sides. The blond is more than anxious at the catboy’s request to be allowed to go shopping on his own, but they’re trying to compromise. “Okay, rules first.”

Jongin nods sagely beside him.

“Stay inside the mall,” Sehun states. “Meet back here in two hours. If you get lost you can follow the signs, ask for directions or call either me or Jongin and we’ll come and find you.”

“I’ll tell if you if I get lost,” Joonmyun chirps, and Sehun lets him roam free.

“Do you think that was a bad idea?” Jongin asks once the catboy vanishes from sight. Bad things always happen when they leave Joonmyun to his own devices.

“Too late,” Sehun shrugs. Not much he can do about it now. He clasps Jongin’s hand and twines their fingers together, tugging him away in the opposite direction. “Come on, let’s go get our stuff.”

Joonmyun hasn’t really thought about the gifts he’s going to get for everybody. He’s come to the mall today with totally blank mind and no idea what to buy, hoping that when he wanders around in the mall he’ll find something suitable for everyone on his gift list.

Of course, Jongin and Sehun are automatically at the top of the list but the first thing they’d said was, you don’t have to get anything for us. Joonmyun pouts because it’s not fair that everyone gets him something and he doesn’t. He knows he’s only got the pocket money he saves by himself over the year, but it’ll suffice. All the kitties he knows are also on the list, and Baekhyun too, and Jongin had said it would be okay if he only bought presents for just his friends.

Joonmyun passes jewellery shops and shops with knick knacks, clothing boutiques and cosmetics outlets, pausing outside each one to see what’s inside but still coming out empty-handed. Nobody needs soap or a new shirt or a diamond necklace that he can’t afford (although Zitao has a deep fondness for the sparkly things Kris spoils him with). He briefly considers wrapping himself up in paper as a gift for his owners and ends up walking past H&M and a Starbucks with a smiley face.

Joonmyun stops suddenly and sniffs. He can smell it in the air, mixed in somewhere between the cloying aroma of coffee beans and the flour of the deep-fried donut stand. There’s a lot of candy somewhere near here, and he’s going to find it.

He tracks the scent all the way to a small corner of the mall by the elevator. There’s a candy store there and he wastes no time rushing in to have a look at all the wonderful selection of things on their shelves. Liquorice straps and raspberry drops and gumballs and mints stare back at him from their shiny glass jars and Joonmyun’s mouth starts watering.

“Candy,” he says aloud, much to the confusion of the shop girl behind the counter. It’s the perfect idea. “Candy for Christmas presents!”

He finds the section where the lollies come in small buckets and buys five of them, selecting a chocolates bucket, a sour bucket, a chewy bucket, a sugary bucket and a bucket with assorted bubble gums.

The sales assistant pales when Joonmyun comes up to the counter with his arms full of buckets of candy. He beams up at her.

“Hi, can I please buy all of these?”

He walks out of the shop with a large bag in each hand and starts looking for a bench to sit down on. He’s got around half an hour left before he’s supposed to regroup with Sehun and Jongin at their designated meeting spot. He really did spend a lot of time meandering about and thinking about to what to buy for everyone.

Joonmyun’s stomach rumbles and he picks up his shopping bags, heading back to the food court. He follows the smell of donuts this time, because he could really do with a few of those.

“Hey, Sehun, over there. Isn’t that Joonmyun?”

Sehun follows the direction in which his boyfriend’s pointing and spots the tiny catboy sitting by himself at a table, popping mini donuts into his mouth. Two large white shopping bags also sit on the table by Joonmyun’s box of donuts and Sehun looks down awkwardly at his own smaller bags, both of which contain Jongin and Joonmyun’s gifts.

“Yeah it is,” he says. He nudges his boyfriend in the side, tilting his head in the universal let’s go this way gesture. “He looks like he bought more than we did.”

Once they get home Joonmyun makes Jongin find the wrapping paper and some tape. He washes his hands and sits on the floor of his bedroom, opening all the containers one by one and mixing up their contents so each bucket has a variety of different candies. He puts the lids back on and tries to wrap them up with the pretty gold paper but it turns out to be harder than he’d thought it would be - the buckets aren’t shaped like a conventional square or rectangle and the result is a series of misshapen lumps that barely stand up properly. Oops. He’s sure the other kitties won’t mind.

Joonmyun gets out his pens and writes their names on a bucket each, adding a little drawing of them too and attaches the Christmas cards he’d written the other week before looping a large green ribbon around every present to finish them off. There’s a gift for Baekhyun, Luhan, Zitao, Yixing and even Jongdae. Jongdae’s only nice to him sometimes, but sometimes is better than never at all.

He puts them all under the Christmas tree so they’re ready to go on Christmas Day.

When he goes back to his room to clean up he finds wrapping paper scraps, discarded bits of sticky tape and only a short length of ribbon left on the roll. He considers throwing the ribbon away too but then he stops with his hand hovering over the wastepaper basket, and tucks the ribbon away in his drawer instead. Maybe he’ll turn himself into a Christmas present after all.