Fic: Winter Delivery

Title: Winter Delivery
Fandom: Exo
Focus: Kai-centric, Kai/Suho
Genre: Fluff
Rating: G
Length: Drabble, 351 words
Summary: Jongin and Junmyeon take a walk in the snow.

Junmyeon sneezes, the sound so abrupt and tiny and ridiculously cute that it reminds Jongin of when one of his babies do the exact same.

"Please don't compare me to your dogs, Jongin," Junmyeon reminds him with a wry smile, "no matter how cute they are." It's obvious he's not in a bad mood though, Junmyeon rarely really is around him, even when they're out in the cold he hates so very much. At least it's not snowing, though Jongin wouldn't have minded that at all. Little flakes of snow landing on his tongue, on Junmyeon's hair. That wouldn't have been so bad.

"How much longer until we get there anyway?" Junmyeon asks, leaning in closer to him. They're standing shoulder to shoulder now, and even through layers and layers of sweaters and coats, Jongin feels his arm burn from the contact.

"Not much further. Thanks for coming with me, hyung."

The smile Junmyeon gives him is blinding, not too different from the ones he's always offering up to the cameras, to their fans but despite having seen it hundreds and thousands of times, Jongin still feels his cheeks warm when it's directed so obviously at him. "I haven't seen your parents in a long time. I should let them know I'm still taking good care of their maknae."

Jongin looks down at the small pile of neatly wrapped presents in Junmyeon's arms though. The gifts themselves aren't burdeningly huge -- in fact, they're all rather tiny in size -- but there's so many of them. "You didn't have to bring them anything though. Mom said so."

"Only the top two are for your parents," Junmyeon says, clutching the pile even closer to his body, as if they were heat packs rather than little boxes probably poking into his skin, "the rest of these are for your babies." This time, Jongin doesn't get to see the way Junmyeon smiles, whether it's filled with pride or even a little sheepishness, because Junmyeon hides it behind the scarf around his neck, wound almost as tightly around him as his grip around Jongin's heart.

Original Post: Here.
Prompt: Hey, it's winter. So let's do cute winter things.
Author's Note: Written for a Pursuit during SWAU. Don't talk to me about titles, I'm going through a dry spell. But honestly, there's something sweet about a guy who would not only give your parents Christmas presents, but your beloved dogs as well. I know at the time I wrote this, I had an inkling of how it's also sweet because while Kai seems somewhat religious according to rumors, Suho is Buddhist and thus technically wouldn't celebrate Christmas except socially, not that he'd be the first Buddhist to lol. Small things, small romances.

Fic: Expectations

Title: Expectations
Fandom: Exo
Focus: Sehun-centric, Chanyeol/Sehun
Genre: Fantasy, Romance
Rating: G
Length: Oneshot, 1312 words
Summary: As a couple of the only Padawans left in the Jedi Temple, Sehun and Junmyeon give a warm welcome to one of the temple's newest occupants. Star Wars!AU

"I always thought all of Grand Master Yoda's people were..." Junmyeon's voice trails off, and not just because they're in the library and need to maintain some degree of quiet and respect. His face scrunches up as he tries to bring to mind whatever word he's looking for, twisting into that weird expression that makes him look a little constipated.

"Bad-ass?" Sehun offers, only to be rejected with a quick shake of the fellow Padawan's head. "Old?" Yet another rejection, though this one kinda startles Sehun -- it's hard to imagine someone like Grand Master Yoda as having once been a youngling. He racks his brain for more suggestions, mentally pulling up the images of both the Grand Master and Master Yaddle. "Uh, green?"

"Diminutive," Junmyeon finally admits in a muted whisper, covering his flushed face in shame, as if either of the two most skilled Jedi in the Order would care about being called such. Though, coming from someone of Junmyeon's stature, it is a little hypocritical.

As far as Sehun knows though, Junmyeon's initial assumption is correct though. He knows for a fact that Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle are both barely sixty centimeters tall, and from the holocrons he's checked out of their battles, they had both always been that size. In all of his studies, he hasn't come across anything imply otherwise, or even visual records of any other members of their species. The galaxy is a pretty big place though, and despite being the largest collection of knowledge in the Galactic Republic, the Coruscant Jedi Archives don't actually hold everything.

He narrows his eyes at Junmyeon. "You found out something, didn't you?"

"I got to meet one of the Master and Padawan pairs from the Silikan Stillness," Junmyeon starts, though Sehun interrupts before he can explain any further.

"That bookbarge that was scheduled to come in yesterday?"

Junmyeon makes a flicking motion with his fingers and uses his control over the Force to flick at Sehun's forehead without actually getting his hands dirty. "Don't call it that! It's a Corellian Colonizer!" His expression turns reverent, and not for the first time does Sehun wonder why Junmyeon hadn't instead turned to starfighters rather than archives given his enthusiasm. "But yeah, it's the one that docked yesterday. I went with Master Kyuhyun to help with welcoming the Jedi who've decided to stay with us for the time being, and one of the Padawans I met was... like Grand Master Yoda. Except tall."

Imagining a tall Grand Master Yoda is actually a lot harder than Sehun thought it'd be, and all he can come up with is a green, rubber-limbed creature with those familiar, gigantic ears. It doesn't look right at all. "There's no way," he immediately argues, "whoever you met has got to be another species. I bet they weren't even all shriveled and and wrinkly like Grand Master Yoda."

"Yeolda isn't wrinkly because he's like centuries younger than Grand Master Yoda," Junmyeon tells him, rolling his eyes. "But he's got the ears and the three fingers and the same speech patterns and everything. He's just. Really tall. Unfairly tall."

Junmyeon probably just means tall compared to Grand Master Yoda and Master Yaddle. Like seventy centimeters instead of sixty. For a species that tiny, even that small difference would seem huge. "Whatever," Sehun says, rolling his eyes right back at Junmyeon, just because he knows it irritates the other Padawan, "I'll believe it when I see it."




It takes less than a day for Sehun to see it.

"Sehun, you must be," the tall, green, giant-eared, three-fingered alien greets him with a smile that's wide, friendly, and utterly terrifying, "Yeolda, I am, but call me Chanyeol, friends do." Just like Junmyeon had insisted, Chanyeol is tall even by human standards, and he's not wrinkly at all. His skin looks as smooth as Sehun's own, his hair thick and dark, more like Master Yaddle than Grand Master Yoda. His amber eyes somehow brighter than any of Coruscant's three moons.

"Uh, yeah," Sehun mumbles, only continuing with his greeting when Junmyeon nudges him in the side with one of his bony elbows instead of the Force for once, "welcome to Coruscant, Chanyeol."

It's strange, having to actually look up at someone who wasn't a full-fledged Jedi Knight or Jedi Master. It's partially because most of the older Padawans they'd grown up with had left with their Masters to train themselves throughout the galaxy unlike Junmyeon and Sehun who had Masters and positions and paths of study that kept them stationed at the Order's headquarters instead, and partially because the few Padawans they did still see were fresh out of the Initiate stage, still younglings in the grand scheme of the universe and in their own cultures, yet to reach their destined heights. Even Sehun has a few more centimeters left in him before he stops growing, unlike poor Junmyeon.

"Very cool, Coruscant is," Chanyeol answers happily, looking around wildly even though Sehun can't imagine how different the Jedi Temple could be from one of the praxeum ships they have flying around the galaxy. There would still be Jedi of all ranks running around with holocrons and lightsabers regardless of whether or not they were in the temple or on the Silikan Stillness. Those things were basically entire cities on a single ship from what he's heard, even better maintained than most planets on the Outer Rim. "Looking forward to exploring, I am."

"We could show you around, couldn't we, Sehun? We've grown up here our whole lives."

Sehun blinks, probably for the first time since he's laid eyes on Chanyeol. "Yeah, we have. We could," he agrees, taking in Chanyeol's mega-watt grin. He wonders if this is what being under a mind-trick would feel like, except he's pretty sure no one would dare to do such a thing to fellow Jedi, especially in the sanctity of the temple.

But he's not quite sure how else to explain the foreign pounding in his chest, brought on by the sight of this alien and the way his ears curl and uncurl as he rambles nonstop to Junmyeon about training on a praxeum ship instead of a proper Jedi Temple, of his experiences throughout the galaxy on planets the two of them have only heard of in their lessons.




"You know," Sehun says later that night, when it's just him and Junmyeon again because Chanyeol had to go meet up with his Master to discuss his future training on Coruscant, "Grand Master Yoda's kind of cute."

Junmyeon makes a face. "Sehun, he's a millennium older than us. Please don't tell me this is going where I think it's going."

"What? Oh, gross, no!" Sehun's pretty sure his face matches Junmyeon's right at that moment, and he shoves the other Padawan's shoulder. "I just meant... His species? They're pretty cute guys. The ears are cute."

He feels his skin prickle under Junmyeon's stare, and not even in that nice tingly way the Force is supposed to make him feel. The way meeting Chanyeol had made him feel.

"Sehun," Junmyeon finaly says, clasping a hand on his shoulder with a strange look in his eyes, "be careful, okay? Meditate a little more on the Order's teachings and calm your heart." There's something about the way he says it that leaves Sehun uneasy, and he probably pulls away from Junmyeon a little more roughly than he intended.

"My heart is perfectly fine," he mutters. Lies. He doesn't remember ever lying to his friend before, not over something that wasn't like where the last pastry on his plate had disappeared to. "I was just saying. Don't we have to love and appreciate all beings in the galaxy?"

"Equally, yes," Junmyeon agrees hesitantly, his voice making Sehun's stomach twist into knots, "make sure to remember that part, too."

Original Post: Here.
Author's Note: Written for SWAU. Based off of a quote from Sehun during their Star Wars-themed Vogue shoot in which he said something along the lines of "Because I like Chanyeol, I started liking Yoda too" when asked about his favorite character. I'm actually really happy with how much of the Star Wars universe I managed to squeeze into this, but that just means I have a lot to explain too... haha. I'm gonna go mostly in the order that they show up. 

So part of the story involves the species to which Yoda and Yaddle (who is honestly pretty bad-ass if you read her biography, like seriously) belong to, which has never been specified and of which little is known because of Lucasfilms' gag order and guidelines to anyone involved in Star Wars and its expanded universe detailing how they are explicitly not to explore it. This lack of specification actually came in handy seeing as I could add Chanyeol as a member of their species (due to his fairy ears lol) and fudge details like the typical short stature and the ridges on their foreheads. I know I shouldn't think about him and Sehun getting together, but I am shallow and like my human-humanoid alien romances to not be too squicky, so yes, I made Chanyeol an green-skinned alien babe. I decided to go with Yeolda as his given name because of its obvious similarity to Yoda and Yaddle, although there is technically no naming scheme when it comes to their species. 

Next... so holocron is short for "holographic chronicle", which is basically a hologrammic book/data storage device. Sehun and Suho would have access to probably the largest collection of holocrons in the galaxy considering they're stationed at the Coruscant Jedi Temple, which is basically the headquarters of the Jedi Order and home to the Jedi Archives, which was the largest collection of knowledge assembled by the Jedi. The Jedi Temple on Coruscant wasn't the only place where Jedi lived and trained, as there were other, smaller, and sometimes more specialized temples on other planets throughout the galaxy. Coruscant was the seat of government and the center of the galaxy though, so of course it had the biggest Temple. Other places where Jedi lived were on were starships that traveled throughout and explored the galaxy, and praxeum ships were specifically starships on which young Jedi were trained though they also ferried researchers and traveling Jedi. The Silikan Stillness was one of the most renown praxeum ships I read about in my research.

So, about being a Padawan. Basically the progression as a member of the Jedi Order is Initiate -> Padawan -> Knight -> Master -> Grand Master. At a very young age, before they even properly bond with their families, Force-sensitive children (younglings) are detected and brought to a Jedi Temple (or praxeum ship) to be trained to harness the Force and to learn the Code of the Jedi. When the kids finally reached early adolescence, they would undergo trials to determine if they could become Padawans (those who didn't left the Order), who were basically apprentices to older, more experienced Jedi. Most Master-Padawan pairs would then leave their home temple to allow the Padawan to earn experience by working throughout the galaxy. Sehun and Suho are obvious exceptions here -- likely apprenticed to Masters who had to remain in the temple, like the Chief Librarian or other more clerical/administrative work, who were training the two of them to take their place. Chanyeol, having been raised on a praxeum ship, would thus get more traveling experience than the two of them and their theoretical knowledge. Suho probably envies this a bit, because he's always wanted to travel more, has always loved starfighters as much as the archives.

Last major thing: the Jedi Code appears to call for a lack of emotion in order to ensure peace, and a lack of passion to ensure serenity. This is to encourage Jedi to be as objective as possible, considering they are considered the galaxy's peacekeepers. Attachments to other people were supposed to be discouraged, but really because the Jedi were to love everything and everyone so they could do all they could to protect the majority rather than those they were biased against. The closest they were kinda allowed were the other younglings who grew up in their clan and their Jedi comrades and Master, though that was expected to come a lot closer to camaraderie than familial love. So when Sehun feels the stirrings of a crush on Chanyeol, Suho is actually warning him once they're alone. It's actually something that the few comments I got on EM failed to notice, because it leaves the oneshot feeling a bit uneasy. Despite Sehun's feelings, he technically isn't supposed to explore them, at least in a pre-Empire/New Republic Jedi Order that strongly discouraged it. The Jedi Order wasn't perfect, and there were a lot of reasons why it fell. It's an interesting read, but that's as much as I need to cover lol.

But yeah, so this was titled "Expectations" because there were Sehun's expectations of Chanyeol's species, and then there were the expectations expected out of him from Suho and the Jedi Order, to not feel anything towards Chanyeol. I'm glad I found a title I liked.