It Just Don’t Feel Like Christmas (Without Food)

[warmboys]

Fandom: Super Junior
Category/Rating: Bandfic, PG
Word Count: ~1450
Summary: Ryeowook refuses to cook. Eunhyuk tries to correct this.


It Just Don’t Feel Like Christmas (Without Food)

Since it’s Christmas let’s be glad
Even if your life’s been bad
--Sufjan Stevens, “It’s Christmas! Let’s Be Glad"


Christmas Eve dinner is when you take out the maternity pants your mother lent you just for the occasion, snip off the waistband, and then proceed to stuff your face like you’ve just emerged from the North Korean Famine of 97. It’s when you’re surrounded by twelve other boys you’ve known for nearly a decade, long enough to be family, but no one is talking and the only sounds are those of Shindong sucking on a juicy chicken leg, Heechul scooping out bone marrow from Ryeowook’s special pork soup.

This is Christmas Eve as dictated by Eunhyuk, who at the moment is having difficulty interpreting Ryeowook’s arms folded stubbornly across his chest as he shakes his head from side to side.

“I’m not cooking this year,” Ryeowook repeats. Eunhyuk opens his mouth, but Ryeowook has already walked away, closing his door with a note of finality.

Donghae walks by somberly. “You’re catching flies.”

Eunhyuk doesn’t understand how Donghae can joke at a time like this.

“Please. You’re the only one we have left. There’s Hankyung, but, well.” Eunhyuk lets his pause sink in.

Sungmin seems to be mulling it over. “And what do you want me to cook?”

“Um, well, you know, what Ryeowook usually makes. Like… a feast.”

Sungmin brightens and raises an index finger like he’s had a stroke of genius. “I can make Christmas-themed pies! Thirteen, er, twelve, I mean eleven of them, with individualized faces drawn in green and red frosting on top. How about that?”

Eunhyuk gulps at him. “You mean, you’re just feeding us pies for Christmas?”

“Not just pies. Pumpkin pies!”

Eunhyuk wonders just how serious Ryeowook was about his boycott. After that, he wonders if it’s possible to break through a resolve of steel. Then he remembers he still has Kangin’s cell phone number.

“Just tell him you’re going to use Yesung’s turtle for condiments if he doesn’t cook,” Kangin barks into the phone. Eunhyuk nods fervently, taking notes on a pack of pink post-its he grabbed off Sungmin’s desk.

“Try to go into detail about how you’ll slice it up and declaw it and stuff. That’ll get his balls up in a bunch. But make it realistic. Do your googling beforehand,” Kangin advises. “Empty threats are like boomerangs. They only come back to hit you in the face.”

Eunhyuk writes down in block letters, No boomerangs.

“Thanks, man. I knew you’d come through.”

“Don’t talk to me like that. You make it sound like I left for good.” And Kangin hangs up, before Eunhyuk can explain.

It turns out Ryeowook is not as nice as Kangin thinks.

“Do you think I care?” Ryeowook shrieks suddenly, shattering eardrums across a five-kilometer radius. “He pays more attention to that thing than he does to his more important human friends.”

Eunhyuk stares at him. “What if I poke at it with a small, fine knife at first, just enough to torture it, and then later slice off its turtle parts one by one very slowly and painstakingly?”

Ryeowook shakes his head.

“And it’s crying its little turtle cries of help? ‘Ryeowook-hyung! Save me!’”

Ryeowook shakes his head.

“And then I feed it back to Yesung without telling him?”

Ryeowook shakes his head but his lips twitch funnily into a slightly delirious-looking grin.

Eunhyuk realizes he’s fighting an uphill battle.

Heechul’s the last person he wants to consult, but it’s been five hours, and while he isn’t exactly hungry at the moment, he glimpses tomorrow’s inevitable hunger.

“I don’t care,” Heechul shrugs. “I’m eating out anyway.”

“Wh-what?”

“Yeah, I called up a couple of people. You can join us if you’d like-okay, I didn’t mean that.” Heechul pats Eunhyuk on the arm before slinging his purse over his shoulder and heading out the door.

Leeteuk nods sympathetically in Eunhyuk’s direction. “It’s not easy for him right now.”

It’s not easy for any of them, least of all Eunhyuk’s stomach.

Siwon tells him to believe in miracles. “Maybe a feast will magically appear in front of our eyes.”

Eunhyuk can never tell when Siwon is being serious. “You mean, Ryeowook will magically change his mind and decide to cook for us?”

“No,” Siwon corrects. “I mean.” And he points to the ceiling.

Eunhyuk looks, but there is nothing there.

“God, damn it. I meant GOD.”

“Oh.”

But God has never personally handfed him before.

The night before Christmas Eve, Eunhyuk calls Kibum over. “You’re my last resort, Kibum. Could you at least ask him why he’s doing this?”

An hour later, Kibum emerges from Ryeowook’s room with hands out, palms up. “He says he’s not cooking until your feet stop smelling like bean paste.”

Eunhyuk thinks it’s unfair that Ryeowook can get away with being evil just because he’s cute.

Come the 24th of December, most of the members in the house spend the day lazing around on the couch watching reruns of My Girl and not cooking.

When Leeteuk and Shindong reenact the kissing scene, complete with full-body dips and cheek-fondling, Eunhyuk decides he’s going to sleep away the memory of what it feels like to eat.

He wakes up to the smell of potatoes. Slightly burnt, but still edible. He can tell.

He jumps out of bed and sprints into the kitchen to find everyone there-even Kangin, who’s wearing a cone-shaped Santa hat made of red construction paper with gold streamers coming out the top. Even Heechul, who is whacking at something with an unnaturally large knife. Sungmin is holding a bowl of what looks like brown cookie batter, while Yesung and Ryeowook appear to be wrestling over a potato peeler. Ryeowook is winning. Siwon stands overlooking the pot on the stove while Shindong stirs. Kyuhyun, Donghae, and Kibum flick rubber bands at each other across the dinner table.

“Wha-“ he begins, when he realizes that Heechul’s eyes are red and puffy. “Oh, crap.”

“No, idiot. It’s these onions.” Heechul stops his angry chopping to lean his head back. Leeteuk helps wipe his runny nose with a dirty dishcloth. “Oh, I hate this. These hands weren’t born to do manual labor.”

“But I thought you were ditching us to hang out with Mithra or Hongki or something,” Eunhyuk splutters.

Heechul stares at him blankly. “When did I say that? It’s Christmas eve, and we’re family, aren’t we? Family sticks together, no matter how much they hate each other.”

“I don’t hate anyone but you,” Leeteuk says, wiping up the last of his onion-induced tears. Heechul bites at his hand.

The dinner is small, and Eunhyuk realizes he could’ve gone without the maternity pants. There’s more talking this year than any other, but there are also more silences. For the first time, when Siwon says grace, Heechul joins them in closing his eyes.

Later, when Leeteuk’s cell phone lights up, and he announces, “It’s Hankyung,” they all try their best not to sound too hopeful but immediately crowd around Leeteuk who puts the phone on speaker.

“How are you guys?” is what Eunhyuk catches of Hankyung’s soft, crackling voice before they all jump in with angry questions and overeager greetings. Leeteuk shushes them, making a cutting motion across his neck. He hands the phone over to Heechul, who’s been quiet until now.

“We’ll figure this out, okay. Don’t think about doing anything without telling us. You need to inform us of every move you’re about to take before you take it. We’re united, alright. Don’t-” Eunhyuk can hear the catch in Heechul’s throat. The word hangs in the air. Everyone is breathing in unison, waiting.

Without thinking, he reaches over to squeeze his hand. Heechul doesn’t squeeze back. He brings up a sleeve and rubs furiously against one eye.

“I can’t promise anything at this point,” Hankyung is saying. “But know that I’m thinking of you all. I love you.”

“Merry Christmas,” Donghae shouts just before Heechul hangs up the phone.

They eat the rest of dinner in silence, until Shindong starts blasting Christmas carols riddled with North Korean propaganda from the living room. Even Heechul cracks a smile and starts yelling, “What the hell is this?” after the third song. When all the food has gone and all that’s left is a pile of chicken bones on the table and Sungmin’s funnily shaped pumpkin-flavored cookies, Eunhyuk decides that it turned out better than he imagined. He’s not the fullest he’s ever been, but at least he’s not hungry.

Or alone.

--

title snatched from rihanna's "it just don't feel like christmas (without you)"; i sucked out some of the sap.
this is an attempt to write happy christmas fic that summarizes how i feel about things atm.
*brownie points if you catch the jerry maguire reference!