cataclysmic and confected
cataclysmic and confected
exo; luhan/xiumin, d.o; 3 900w; pg
the soho grand hotel is determined to ruin xiumin's life, and luhan is the incompetent desk clerk that attempts to fix this. d.o makes desserts at inappropriate times, kris's stress ball does not actually relieve any stress, and chanyeol is the bane of everyone's existence. also, everything explodes.
Monday through Friday, Luhan works at the front desk of the Soho Grand Hotel. This means he's in the middle of one of New York City's trendiest neighbourhoods, in a prime location to observe New York City's trendiest people and gossip about their trendy comings-and-goings. It also means he sits in a very depressing area under an enormous flight of cast-iron stairs, stares down a phone that won't stop ringing and politely tolerates the other front desk clerk. D.O, the other front desk clerk, always appears terrified of the hotel guests. At various points during their shift he spreads a large sheet of clingfilm over his half of the desk, unpacks a large cooler of edibles onto it, and begins to subtly decorate cakes or put together papaya salad.
"I wanted to go to culinary school," D.O confesses, very sadly, as he squeezes a bottle of chocolate syrup onto a slice of cheesecake. "But I guess we don't always get what we want, right?"
Luhan nods, a sympathetic smile plastered onto his face, and says, "We most certainly don't." And then he turns back to the phone, wondering how exactly his life got to this point.
Because D.O tends to single-mindedly focus on putting the right amount of green beans into his salad with precise accuracy, Luhan usually ends up handling the front desk responsibilities: processing check-ins, answering phones, contacting housekeeping, and dealing with complaints. Many, many complaints.
"I have no towels," says the phone, at a very high volume. Luhan holds it away from his ear, takes a deep breath, and makes a noise to acknowledge that he has indeed heard this statement. He does not point out that people in his hometown of Beijing have probably heard it as well. "Well, I do have towels, but they are dirty. I have no clean towels. Actually, I guess that's not true either. They aren't completely dirty, but they aren't completely clean, so they are -"
"I'll tell housekeeping to bring you some fresh ones," Luhan says, and returns the phone to its receiver with a fair amount of force. Within a second, it's ringing again.
"Why do I have three thousand dollars in mini-bar charges? I demand an explanation!"
D.O looks up from prodding his papaya salad with a spoon. Luhan hands the phone over to him and slowly lowers his head into his hands.
This is Monday morning. It's a very long morning.
And then Xiumin enters the picture.
Luhan becomes aware of Xiumin's existence when Xiumin gets fifty kilograms worth of luggage dropped on his foot, is shoved down several stairs, and is hit in the face with a door. This is the fault of the socially awkward porter, Chanyeol, who has difficulty figuring out what each of his limbs is doing at any given time. Luhan hears about the incident from Kris, the extremely attractive and severely bitch-faced manager, who is ranting about it as he storms down the stairs and past the front desk, swearing in Mandarin and nearly foaming at the mouth.
"Chanyeol has just knocked out Xiumin Kim," he seethes, viciously mangling a stress ball. "Chanyeol has just knocked out the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With a door. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
D.O freezes like a deer in the headlights, dropping the strawberry slices he's placing artistically on a shortcake. Luhan winces. "That is ... not good," he admits, and Kris laughs humourlessly.
"Neither is what's going to happen to Chanyeol when I find him," he says, and stomps off.
It's quiet for a moment, and then D.O picks up his strawberries and resumes sticking them into the whipped cream on the cake. Luhan goes back to staring at the phone.
And then they spot Xiumin.
Xiumin is extremely handsome. He has sharp features, model-like windswept hair, and is wearing a tight-fitting business suit with a red tie. (Luhan is suitably distracted.) And then he offers Luhan an awkward smile - Luhan immediately takes notice of his crooked teeth and chubby cheeks, and has to resist the urge to pinch those cheeks. Xiumin looks like a cross between a rabbit and a steamed bun, and Luhan immediately knows who it is by the fact that he's hopping on one foot and there's an enormous bruise on hs forehead.
"Hi," Xiumin says, nervously. "There are two very tall people looking for me. Please don't tell them where I am. They scare me."
This is Luhan's first glimpse of Xiumin. It's also his first glimpse of the fact that the Soho Grand Hotel is hell-bent on ruining Xiumin's life.
It starts out innocently enough, innocently enough to be passed off as an accident.
This changes very quickly.
On Tuesday morning, Xiumin comes running up to the front desk in a bathrobe. He is soaked, wide-eyed, and dripping all over the floor. Luhan begins to say may I help you, and is subsequently interrupted. "I'm sorry to bother you," says Xiumin, shaking in terror, "But my shower's just performed an attempt on my life."
D.O has that deer in headlights look again, a bit of caramel dripping off the spoon he's using to drizzle it onto a chocolate cupcake and landing in his lap. Luhan hands him a napkin, then continues to fix the disruption with a blank look. "I'm ... sorry, what did you say happened?"
"I tried to turn the shower on," Xiumin explains, continuing to turn the front desk and the surrounding area into a series of small puddles, "And then it exploded. In my face. And everywhere. And flooded the everything." By the time he finishes, he's waving his hands about in clear distress.
"Flooded the everything," Luhan repeats, slowly, one eyebrow raised. "Uh-huh. Well, if you'd like, D.O can get you a towel, and you can go up and sit in the lounge while I alert housekeeping that -"
A chorus of shrieks and yells bursts out upstairs, followed by the sound of a huge wave of rushing water and running feet. A vacuum starts up somewhere in the distance, accompanied by frantic mopping. Kris is alternately bellowing in English, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese; his stress ball comes flying down the stairs, squashed beyond recognition. Gradually, water begins to drip through the holes in the stairs. They collectively wince.
"I think they already know," says Xiumin.
They stand there amidst the chaos in extremely awkward silence, listening to the noise of the people trying to fix the disaster and the people trying to escape it. The volume of the water increases concurrently with the volume of the vacuum. Kris's yells increase arbitrarily.
D.O quietly puts his cupcake into a plastic container, and seals it in a waterproof bag.
On Tuesday afternoon, Xiumin calls the front desk, quite baffled, and explains that the replacement room he's been placed in has been barricaded.
"Barricaded?" Luhan asks, turning to D.O with a look of exasperation as he points at the phone. D.O stares back at him, shredding a papaya with a cheese grater, and Luhan shakes his head. "What led you to believe it's been ... barricaded?"
"Well, I keep pushing on the door and it keeps pushing back. It's not opening."
"I'll send someone to check up on it." Luhan hangs up the phone before Xiumin can even say thank you, and pops one of D.O's toasted peanuts in his mouth. "It's the same guy who flooded half the place," he explains, rolling his eyes. "And now he thinks his room's been barricaded."
D.O nods, measuring out a liberal amount of fish sauce. "He's pretty unfortunate, isn't he?"
"Seems like it. Hey, are you going to use the rest of that lime?"
They're in the middle of enthusiastically mashing up the papaya salad mixture with a mortar and pestle when a loud thumping sound makes them look up, followed by the sound of Kris's multilingual stress-ball-mashing fury. Chanyeol and several other distressed-looking porters are hauling three enormous boxes down the stairs, swaying dangerously under the weight.
"Refrigerators," seethes Kris. "Chanyeol, you have just laid seige to the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With refrigerators. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
"They were a delivery!" Chanyeol is pouting, his lip nearly trembling. "For the person in Room 213."
"So you used them to trap the person in room 313?"
"I thought it was 213! It's hard to read the room numbers from behind three refrigerators."
D.O and Luhan sit in one of their many daily periods of silent tension until the porters and manager are out of sight, then resume crushing the papaya salad. Xiumin appears a few minutes later, carrying a briefcase and wearing another tight-fitting suit; Luhan could swear there's even a hint of eyeliner involved in the extremely attractive situation. Focussed on something that most definitely is not the mortar, he brings the pestle down on D.O's thumb instead of the salad. D.O yelps.
"Thank you for getting me out," Xiumin says, giving the front desk clerks an awkward wave and an extremely charming smile. "Sorry for the trouble. Have a nice day."
Luhan's brain suddenly feels a lot like the mushed papaya.
On Wednesday morning, the phone rings. Luhan answers it, blatantly ignoring the couple in front of him that is demanding assistance in returning to the room they've locked themselves out of.
"Hello? This is Xiumin." His voice is very small, and it's slightly muffled, as if coming from a confined space. "Is this Luhan?"
"Yes. What's broken now?"
"The elevator, I think. It was moving, but then all the lights went out, and it stopped moving, so ..."
Luhan puts his feet up on D.O's lap, continuing to ignore the ranting couple. "I didn't know our elevators got cell phone reception."
"Neither did I, but I figured it was worth a try."
"Did you push the emergency button?" Luhan gropes around on D.O's side of the desk until he locates a chocolate chip cookie, and stuffs it into his mouth without a moment of hesitation. D.O protests. "Sometimes the emergency button works."
"I did, several times. Look, I'm really sorry for bothering you, but I have a really important meeting in ten minutes, and I'm stuck, and it's really dark in here, and very small, and -"
"Calm down," Luhan reassures him, through a mouthful of cookie. "I'll call someone to get you out." He uses an unnecessarily complicated hand motion to signal D.O, who picks up his own phone and dials something. By now the couple has given up on receiving any sign of acknowledgement from the front desk clerks and headed off to file a complaint with the very irritable manager and his helpless stress ball; on the other end of the phone line, Xiumin has begun to hyperventilate. Luhan pauses. "Wait - are you claustrophobic?"
"M-Maybe?"
"You're very unfortunate, aren't you."
"I guess so." Xiumin sighs. The sound of a certain unfortunate person sliding down the elevator wall to flop onto the floor is audible. "I really wasn't all that unlucky until the past few days, though. I don't know what's going on."
"Maybe the hotel's just out to ruin your life?" Luhan offers, very unhelpfully.
"At this point, it wouldn't surprise me."
Luhan reaches for another cookie, and gets his feet shoved off of D.O's lap. He frowns. "Just stay calm, okay? Someone's going to come get you out of there in less than five minutes. You'll be be fine."
"Okay," says Xiumin. He does not sound very calm. "Thank you."
Luhan makes a nondescript noise in reply, and then puts down the phone down to find D.O staring at him with the deer-in-headlights look of terror. "What?"
"It's Chanyeol," says D.O, raising a chocolate chip cookie to his mouth with a trembling hand. "Chanyeol's the one that's going to get him out of the elevator."
"Oh god," says Luhan. "We're never seeing Xiumin again, are we?"
"No, probably not," says D.O.
They sit in silence again.
"We should put white chocolate chips in the next batch of cookies," Luhan says.
D.O agrees.
"Help," says the phone, on Wednesday afternoon, and Luhan sighs.
"Hello, Xiumin."
"How did you know it was me?" Xiumin sounds genuinely surprised.
"The phone is ringing at an awkward time, the person on the other end sounds distressed, and the conversation started with 'help'. Who else would it be?"
"Good point. Well ... I'm trapped in the bathroom," Xiumin says. "The door is stuck. The handle won't turn, either. And I think the thermostat is broken because it's really, really hot in here, but when I tried to slide the knob to change the temperature, it snapped off. So it's really hot, and I can't ... stay ... awake ..."
There's the sudden sound of something thumping, and then the dial tone sounds. Luhan pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it in panic. "I think the thermostat killed Xiumin," he says, and whacks at D.O's arm repeatedly. "Call someone! Fix it!"
D.O calls someone. D.O attempts to fix it. And then he quickly ends the call, looking horrified. "You know, on second thought, maybe we shouldn't have tried to fix it. Because the person that they're sending to fix it is -"
"Chanyeol!" bellows Kris, from somewhere upstairs. "Where do you think you're going with that chainsaw?"
Luhan puts his head down on the desk and loudly bemoans the general state of his life.
Xiumin comes down the stairs a half-hour later, looking a bit dazed but entirely sentient. Luhan leaps to his feet. "You're alive!" he exclaims, and dashes to Xiumin's side. "And you're in one piece! Chanyeol didn't break you, and - you're alive!"
"Yes," Xiumin says, and smiles a bit awkwardly. "I am. Thank you for saving my life. I appreciate ... staying alive. I'll see you later?"
He turns to leave, but Luhan blurts out, "- Wait!"
Xiumin waits. Luhan panics, trying to figure out what exactly it is that the other's supposed to be waiting for. "Um ... would you like a goldfish?" he asks, a bit lamely. Xiumin stares, clearly uncomprehending, but Luhan blunders bravely onward. "See, we do this thing where we deliver goldfish to people's rooms. To ... make them happy? So even if your life is a long series of disasters, there will be a goldfish there to make you happy."
It's quite possibly the dumbest combination of words that have ever been strung together. He begs the cosmic forces to allow him to simply stop existing. But for reasons unknown, Xiumin smiles.
"Sure, why not," he says. "I'd love a goldfish. Thank you, Luhan."
"Send a goldfish," Luhan says, as soon as Xiumin is gone, returning to the desk and flopping back into his chair with a sigh of contentment. "Send all the goldfish."
"All the goldfish?" D.O sounds worried.
Luhan smiles, and puts his feet up on the desk. "All the goldfish."
D.O sends all the goldfish. Luhan remains blissfully unaware.
On Thursday morning, Xiumin comes down to the front desk. Instead of inquiring about the latest catastrophe, Luhan smiles. "Good morning. Would you like some pudding?" He holds out a cup of D.O's freshly-mixed tapioca, and casually puts a fancy sprig of parsley on top of it.
"I'm fine, thank you," Xiumin says, after curiously observing the dessert. "I actually came to thank you for the goldfish. All ... two hundred of them."
Luhan blinks. "What?"
"There's ... there's a lot of goldfish in my room. I was going to count, but I gave up after two hundred. They just keep delivering them." He shrugs. "I appreciate the company, but pretty soon I'm going to run out of places to put them, and -"
"One moment please," says Luhan, with a pleasant smile, and then grabs the phone and punches in a number, viciously hissing, "Chanyeol. The goldfish. What have you done?"
"I was told to send all the goldfish," Chanyeol says, innocently. "See, I can be helpful sometimes." He promptly hangs up the phone, leaving Luhan spluttering.
"Are you sure about the pudding?" D.O inquires. "I made it from scratch. There's both tapioca and chocolate."
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt," says Xiumin, and proceeds to occupy the extra chair behind the desk between Luhan and D.O. D.O smiles proudly as Xiumin finishes the pudding in under a minute, nodding in approval. "This pudding is amazing. Have you ever thought of going to culinary school?"
"Actually ..." D.O says.
The wood of the desk has become very familiar to the skin of Luhan's forehead. He once again lays his face down upon it and questions the necessity of continuing to exist.
On Thursday afternoon, Xiumin returns from his meeting and waves cheerily at the front desk clerks on his way up to his room. They wave back. Ten minutes later he comes dashing back down in a panic with his hair sticking up and dried coffee grounds on his shirt and cheek.
"Sorry to disturb you," he pants, skidding to a halt in front of the desk, "But my room is on fire."
Luhan, who is drinking one of D.O's strawberry milkshakes, chokes on it. "What?"
Xiumin trembles. "My coffee-maker spontaneously burst into flames."
D.O guides the terrified Xiumin to the extra chair as Luhan sighs. "I'll call someone."
Upstairs, fire alarms begin to blare; the hotel fills with screaming and stampeding footsteps as everyone scrambles for the nearest emergency exit. Kris charges up the stairs with a fire extinguisher, hollering in a frantic voice for everyone to keep calm, then immediately charges back down as the herd of panicked people rushes down the stairs and out the door.
"I think they already know," says D.O, watching the chaotic scene while shaking a milkshake tumbler. "Strawberry or vanilla, Xiumin?"
"Strawberry, please."
It was a very small fire, the firefighters confirm, as they drive away. An unfortunate one, but a small one nonetheless. Kris, after answering an extremely long list of questions from the firefighters, is in a terrible mood and looking for people to blame. Kris blames D.O and Luhan. D.O and Luhan blame Chanyeol. Chanyeol, for reasons unknown, blames Kris. Kris still blames D.O and Luhan. Kris, needing money to repair the damages, removes a sizeable chunk from their salaries for the month. This sizeable chunk is ninety-nine percent.
"I'm going to have to live off of cucumbers and balsamic vinegar for the next month," Luhan says, in a fit of despair. "I hate cucumbers. And balsamic vinegar."
"I'm so sorry," Xiumin says, and frowns. "It's not your fault my room exploded. I'll pay back whatever Kris took out of your paycheck."
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
"I am hungry." Luhan continues rolling around unhappily on the desk, utterly inconsolable. "I have no food and I am hungry."
"I'll take you to dinner then," insists Xiumin, still frowning. "I feel bad about all this, so I should try to fix it."
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
Luhan rolls over to face the wall, and bangs his face down against the desk again. "Barcelona played against Real Madrid yesterday, the rivalry was dramatic, and I missed the livestream. I missed the livestream because of elevators and thermostats and chainsaws and goldfish. And I am hungry."
"I'm really, really sorry," Xiumin says, and puts a hand on Luhan's shoulder. "I'll take you to a football match, then. Any one you want to go to, I promise."
Luhan flips over suddenly, looking up. "Wait, what? Really?"
"Well, I mean - I was planning on going to a football match soon, like in Europe somewhere, because I really like football, and my boss is really rich so he doesn't mind if I do stuff like that, so ..." Xiumin stammers slightly, and Luhan could swear there's a hint of a blush on his (extremely attractive) face. "It's the least I can do after you've saved my life and gone through so much trouble for me over the last few days. So let me make up for everything I put you through."
Luhan blinks for several moments, thoroughly confused and surprised. "What - seriously? No, I couldn't possibly let you do that. That's too much, I mean, I can't agree to ..." Xiumin looks at him expectantly. He holds out for one more moment, then smiles and flings his arms around Xiumin's neck. "Okay, I guess I could agree to that. And it's really hard to be angry at you now, since I have trouble getting angry at people who give me things. Besides, dealing with difficult people part of my job, right?"
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
Xiumin shrugs. "I guess it technically is. Do you still want to go get dinner, though?"
"Sure." Luhan detaches himself from Xiumin and gets to his feet, shoving his phone in D.O's direction. D.O protests. "Lead the way."
Xiumin offers Luhan his arm (in a truly gentlemanly fashion, Luhan notes, and most certainly does not swoon). Subsequently, they proceed off in the direction of food.
D.O sits alone at the desk, staring at an empty bowl of home-made ice cream, and frowns. "What about me?" he asks, and is ignored.
"Fire," Kris groans on Friday morning, mauling his stress ball as he watches Xiumin check out of the hotel and hand his bags, against better judgement, to Chanyeol. "We set fire to the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With a coffee-maker. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
"I doubt it," Xiumin says, slipping Luhan his phone number along with his key card. "Maybe it was a bit ... chaotic, but I enjoyed my time here. Your front desk staff is very friendly and helpful. Also, they make excellent milkshakes."
"I most certainly do. Strawberry or vanilla, Kris?" D.O inquires, politely.
He is ignored.
% written for aupairs's second challenge: new york au; ©
% feoux is amazing for putting up with me through everything i write
% and a amazing art for this by fundamental-loop!
% there is also a russian translation by antanya!
% also, twitter/ masterlist if anyone else wants them.
exo; luhan/xiumin, d.o; 3 900w; pg
the soho grand hotel is determined to ruin xiumin's life, and luhan is the incompetent desk clerk that attempts to fix this. d.o makes desserts at inappropriate times, kris's stress ball does not actually relieve any stress, and chanyeol is the bane of everyone's existence. also, everything explodes.
Monday through Friday, Luhan works at the front desk of the Soho Grand Hotel. This means he's in the middle of one of New York City's trendiest neighbourhoods, in a prime location to observe New York City's trendiest people and gossip about their trendy comings-and-goings. It also means he sits in a very depressing area under an enormous flight of cast-iron stairs, stares down a phone that won't stop ringing and politely tolerates the other front desk clerk. D.O, the other front desk clerk, always appears terrified of the hotel guests. At various points during their shift he spreads a large sheet of clingfilm over his half of the desk, unpacks a large cooler of edibles onto it, and begins to subtly decorate cakes or put together papaya salad.
"I wanted to go to culinary school," D.O confesses, very sadly, as he squeezes a bottle of chocolate syrup onto a slice of cheesecake. "But I guess we don't always get what we want, right?"
Luhan nods, a sympathetic smile plastered onto his face, and says, "We most certainly don't." And then he turns back to the phone, wondering how exactly his life got to this point.
Because D.O tends to single-mindedly focus on putting the right amount of green beans into his salad with precise accuracy, Luhan usually ends up handling the front desk responsibilities: processing check-ins, answering phones, contacting housekeeping, and dealing with complaints. Many, many complaints.
"I have no towels," says the phone, at a very high volume. Luhan holds it away from his ear, takes a deep breath, and makes a noise to acknowledge that he has indeed heard this statement. He does not point out that people in his hometown of Beijing have probably heard it as well. "Well, I do have towels, but they are dirty. I have no clean towels. Actually, I guess that's not true either. They aren't completely dirty, but they aren't completely clean, so they are -"
"I'll tell housekeeping to bring you some fresh ones," Luhan says, and returns the phone to its receiver with a fair amount of force. Within a second, it's ringing again.
"Why do I have three thousand dollars in mini-bar charges? I demand an explanation!"
D.O looks up from prodding his papaya salad with a spoon. Luhan hands the phone over to him and slowly lowers his head into his hands.
This is Monday morning. It's a very long morning.
And then Xiumin enters the picture.
Luhan becomes aware of Xiumin's existence when Xiumin gets fifty kilograms worth of luggage dropped on his foot, is shoved down several stairs, and is hit in the face with a door. This is the fault of the socially awkward porter, Chanyeol, who has difficulty figuring out what each of his limbs is doing at any given time. Luhan hears about the incident from Kris, the extremely attractive and severely bitch-faced manager, who is ranting about it as he storms down the stairs and past the front desk, swearing in Mandarin and nearly foaming at the mouth.
"Chanyeol has just knocked out Xiumin Kim," he seethes, viciously mangling a stress ball. "Chanyeol has just knocked out the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With a door. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
D.O freezes like a deer in the headlights, dropping the strawberry slices he's placing artistically on a shortcake. Luhan winces. "That is ... not good," he admits, and Kris laughs humourlessly.
"Neither is what's going to happen to Chanyeol when I find him," he says, and stomps off.
It's quiet for a moment, and then D.O picks up his strawberries and resumes sticking them into the whipped cream on the cake. Luhan goes back to staring at the phone.
And then they spot Xiumin.
Xiumin is extremely handsome. He has sharp features, model-like windswept hair, and is wearing a tight-fitting business suit with a red tie. (Luhan is suitably distracted.) And then he offers Luhan an awkward smile - Luhan immediately takes notice of his crooked teeth and chubby cheeks, and has to resist the urge to pinch those cheeks. Xiumin looks like a cross between a rabbit and a steamed bun, and Luhan immediately knows who it is by the fact that he's hopping on one foot and there's an enormous bruise on hs forehead.
"Hi," Xiumin says, nervously. "There are two very tall people looking for me. Please don't tell them where I am. They scare me."
This is Luhan's first glimpse of Xiumin. It's also his first glimpse of the fact that the Soho Grand Hotel is hell-bent on ruining Xiumin's life.
It starts out innocently enough, innocently enough to be passed off as an accident.
This changes very quickly.
On Tuesday morning, Xiumin comes running up to the front desk in a bathrobe. He is soaked, wide-eyed, and dripping all over the floor. Luhan begins to say may I help you, and is subsequently interrupted. "I'm sorry to bother you," says Xiumin, shaking in terror, "But my shower's just performed an attempt on my life."
D.O has that deer in headlights look again, a bit of caramel dripping off the spoon he's using to drizzle it onto a chocolate cupcake and landing in his lap. Luhan hands him a napkin, then continues to fix the disruption with a blank look. "I'm ... sorry, what did you say happened?"
"I tried to turn the shower on," Xiumin explains, continuing to turn the front desk and the surrounding area into a series of small puddles, "And then it exploded. In my face. And everywhere. And flooded the everything." By the time he finishes, he's waving his hands about in clear distress.
"Flooded the everything," Luhan repeats, slowly, one eyebrow raised. "Uh-huh. Well, if you'd like, D.O can get you a towel, and you can go up and sit in the lounge while I alert housekeeping that -"
A chorus of shrieks and yells bursts out upstairs, followed by the sound of a huge wave of rushing water and running feet. A vacuum starts up somewhere in the distance, accompanied by frantic mopping. Kris is alternately bellowing in English, Korean, Mandarin, and Cantonese; his stress ball comes flying down the stairs, squashed beyond recognition. Gradually, water begins to drip through the holes in the stairs. They collectively wince.
"I think they already know," says Xiumin.
They stand there amidst the chaos in extremely awkward silence, listening to the noise of the people trying to fix the disaster and the people trying to escape it. The volume of the water increases concurrently with the volume of the vacuum. Kris's yells increase arbitrarily.
D.O quietly puts his cupcake into a plastic container, and seals it in a waterproof bag.
On Tuesday afternoon, Xiumin calls the front desk, quite baffled, and explains that the replacement room he's been placed in has been barricaded.
"Barricaded?" Luhan asks, turning to D.O with a look of exasperation as he points at the phone. D.O stares back at him, shredding a papaya with a cheese grater, and Luhan shakes his head. "What led you to believe it's been ... barricaded?"
"Well, I keep pushing on the door and it keeps pushing back. It's not opening."
"I'll send someone to check up on it." Luhan hangs up the phone before Xiumin can even say thank you, and pops one of D.O's toasted peanuts in his mouth. "It's the same guy who flooded half the place," he explains, rolling his eyes. "And now he thinks his room's been barricaded."
D.O nods, measuring out a liberal amount of fish sauce. "He's pretty unfortunate, isn't he?"
"Seems like it. Hey, are you going to use the rest of that lime?"
They're in the middle of enthusiastically mashing up the papaya salad mixture with a mortar and pestle when a loud thumping sound makes them look up, followed by the sound of Kris's multilingual stress-ball-mashing fury. Chanyeol and several other distressed-looking porters are hauling three enormous boxes down the stairs, swaying dangerously under the weight.
"Refrigerators," seethes Kris. "Chanyeol, you have just laid seige to the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With refrigerators. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
"They were a delivery!" Chanyeol is pouting, his lip nearly trembling. "For the person in Room 213."
"So you used them to trap the person in room 313?"
"I thought it was 213! It's hard to read the room numbers from behind three refrigerators."
D.O and Luhan sit in one of their many daily periods of silent tension until the porters and manager are out of sight, then resume crushing the papaya salad. Xiumin appears a few minutes later, carrying a briefcase and wearing another tight-fitting suit; Luhan could swear there's even a hint of eyeliner involved in the extremely attractive situation. Focussed on something that most definitely is not the mortar, he brings the pestle down on D.O's thumb instead of the salad. D.O yelps.
"Thank you for getting me out," Xiumin says, giving the front desk clerks an awkward wave and an extremely charming smile. "Sorry for the trouble. Have a nice day."
Luhan's brain suddenly feels a lot like the mushed papaya.
On Wednesday morning, the phone rings. Luhan answers it, blatantly ignoring the couple in front of him that is demanding assistance in returning to the room they've locked themselves out of.
"Hello? This is Xiumin." His voice is very small, and it's slightly muffled, as if coming from a confined space. "Is this Luhan?"
"Yes. What's broken now?"
"The elevator, I think. It was moving, but then all the lights went out, and it stopped moving, so ..."
Luhan puts his feet up on D.O's lap, continuing to ignore the ranting couple. "I didn't know our elevators got cell phone reception."
"Neither did I, but I figured it was worth a try."
"Did you push the emergency button?" Luhan gropes around on D.O's side of the desk until he locates a chocolate chip cookie, and stuffs it into his mouth without a moment of hesitation. D.O protests. "Sometimes the emergency button works."
"I did, several times. Look, I'm really sorry for bothering you, but I have a really important meeting in ten minutes, and I'm stuck, and it's really dark in here, and very small, and -"
"Calm down," Luhan reassures him, through a mouthful of cookie. "I'll call someone to get you out." He uses an unnecessarily complicated hand motion to signal D.O, who picks up his own phone and dials something. By now the couple has given up on receiving any sign of acknowledgement from the front desk clerks and headed off to file a complaint with the very irritable manager and his helpless stress ball; on the other end of the phone line, Xiumin has begun to hyperventilate. Luhan pauses. "Wait - are you claustrophobic?"
"M-Maybe?"
"You're very unfortunate, aren't you."
"I guess so." Xiumin sighs. The sound of a certain unfortunate person sliding down the elevator wall to flop onto the floor is audible. "I really wasn't all that unlucky until the past few days, though. I don't know what's going on."
"Maybe the hotel's just out to ruin your life?" Luhan offers, very unhelpfully.
"At this point, it wouldn't surprise me."
Luhan reaches for another cookie, and gets his feet shoved off of D.O's lap. He frowns. "Just stay calm, okay? Someone's going to come get you out of there in less than five minutes. You'll be be fine."
"Okay," says Xiumin. He does not sound very calm. "Thank you."
Luhan makes a nondescript noise in reply, and then puts down the phone down to find D.O staring at him with the deer-in-headlights look of terror. "What?"
"It's Chanyeol," says D.O, raising a chocolate chip cookie to his mouth with a trembling hand. "Chanyeol's the one that's going to get him out of the elevator."
"Oh god," says Luhan. "We're never seeing Xiumin again, are we?"
"No, probably not," says D.O.
They sit in silence again.
"We should put white chocolate chips in the next batch of cookies," Luhan says.
D.O agrees.
"Help," says the phone, on Wednesday afternoon, and Luhan sighs.
"Hello, Xiumin."
"How did you know it was me?" Xiumin sounds genuinely surprised.
"The phone is ringing at an awkward time, the person on the other end sounds distressed, and the conversation started with 'help'. Who else would it be?"
"Good point. Well ... I'm trapped in the bathroom," Xiumin says. "The door is stuck. The handle won't turn, either. And I think the thermostat is broken because it's really, really hot in here, but when I tried to slide the knob to change the temperature, it snapped off. So it's really hot, and I can't ... stay ... awake ..."
There's the sudden sound of something thumping, and then the dial tone sounds. Luhan pulls the phone away from his ear and stares at it in panic. "I think the thermostat killed Xiumin," he says, and whacks at D.O's arm repeatedly. "Call someone! Fix it!"
D.O calls someone. D.O attempts to fix it. And then he quickly ends the call, looking horrified. "You know, on second thought, maybe we shouldn't have tried to fix it. Because the person that they're sending to fix it is -"
"Chanyeol!" bellows Kris, from somewhere upstairs. "Where do you think you're going with that chainsaw?"
Luhan puts his head down on the desk and loudly bemoans the general state of his life.
Xiumin comes down the stairs a half-hour later, looking a bit dazed but entirely sentient. Luhan leaps to his feet. "You're alive!" he exclaims, and dashes to Xiumin's side. "And you're in one piece! Chanyeol didn't break you, and - you're alive!"
"Yes," Xiumin says, and smiles a bit awkwardly. "I am. Thank you for saving my life. I appreciate ... staying alive. I'll see you later?"
He turns to leave, but Luhan blurts out, "- Wait!"
Xiumin waits. Luhan panics, trying to figure out what exactly it is that the other's supposed to be waiting for. "Um ... would you like a goldfish?" he asks, a bit lamely. Xiumin stares, clearly uncomprehending, but Luhan blunders bravely onward. "See, we do this thing where we deliver goldfish to people's rooms. To ... make them happy? So even if your life is a long series of disasters, there will be a goldfish there to make you happy."
It's quite possibly the dumbest combination of words that have ever been strung together. He begs the cosmic forces to allow him to simply stop existing. But for reasons unknown, Xiumin smiles.
"Sure, why not," he says. "I'd love a goldfish. Thank you, Luhan."
"Send a goldfish," Luhan says, as soon as Xiumin is gone, returning to the desk and flopping back into his chair with a sigh of contentment. "Send all the goldfish."
"All the goldfish?" D.O sounds worried.
Luhan smiles, and puts his feet up on the desk. "All the goldfish."
D.O sends all the goldfish. Luhan remains blissfully unaware.
On Thursday morning, Xiumin comes down to the front desk. Instead of inquiring about the latest catastrophe, Luhan smiles. "Good morning. Would you like some pudding?" He holds out a cup of D.O's freshly-mixed tapioca, and casually puts a fancy sprig of parsley on top of it.
"I'm fine, thank you," Xiumin says, after curiously observing the dessert. "I actually came to thank you for the goldfish. All ... two hundred of them."
Luhan blinks. "What?"
"There's ... there's a lot of goldfish in my room. I was going to count, but I gave up after two hundred. They just keep delivering them." He shrugs. "I appreciate the company, but pretty soon I'm going to run out of places to put them, and -"
"One moment please," says Luhan, with a pleasant smile, and then grabs the phone and punches in a number, viciously hissing, "Chanyeol. The goldfish. What have you done?"
"I was told to send all the goldfish," Chanyeol says, innocently. "See, I can be helpful sometimes." He promptly hangs up the phone, leaving Luhan spluttering.
"Are you sure about the pudding?" D.O inquires. "I made it from scratch. There's both tapioca and chocolate."
"Well, I guess it couldn't hurt," says Xiumin, and proceeds to occupy the extra chair behind the desk between Luhan and D.O. D.O smiles proudly as Xiumin finishes the pudding in under a minute, nodding in approval. "This pudding is amazing. Have you ever thought of going to culinary school?"
"Actually ..." D.O says.
The wood of the desk has become very familiar to the skin of Luhan's forehead. He once again lays his face down upon it and questions the necessity of continuing to exist.
On Thursday afternoon, Xiumin returns from his meeting and waves cheerily at the front desk clerks on his way up to his room. They wave back. Ten minutes later he comes dashing back down in a panic with his hair sticking up and dried coffee grounds on his shirt and cheek.
"Sorry to disturb you," he pants, skidding to a halt in front of the desk, "But my room is on fire."
Luhan, who is drinking one of D.O's strawberry milkshakes, chokes on it. "What?"
Xiumin trembles. "My coffee-maker spontaneously burst into flames."
D.O guides the terrified Xiumin to the extra chair as Luhan sighs. "I'll call someone."
Upstairs, fire alarms begin to blare; the hotel fills with screaming and stampeding footsteps as everyone scrambles for the nearest emergency exit. Kris charges up the stairs with a fire extinguisher, hollering in a frantic voice for everyone to keep calm, then immediately charges back down as the herd of panicked people rushes down the stairs and out the door.
"I think they already know," says D.O, watching the chaotic scene while shaking a milkshake tumbler. "Strawberry or vanilla, Xiumin?"
"Strawberry, please."
It was a very small fire, the firefighters confirm, as they drive away. An unfortunate one, but a small one nonetheless. Kris, after answering an extremely long list of questions from the firefighters, is in a terrible mood and looking for people to blame. Kris blames D.O and Luhan. D.O and Luhan blame Chanyeol. Chanyeol, for reasons unknown, blames Kris. Kris still blames D.O and Luhan. Kris, needing money to repair the damages, removes a sizeable chunk from their salaries for the month. This sizeable chunk is ninety-nine percent.
"I'm going to have to live off of cucumbers and balsamic vinegar for the next month," Luhan says, in a fit of despair. "I hate cucumbers. And balsamic vinegar."
"I'm so sorry," Xiumin says, and frowns. "It's not your fault my room exploded. I'll pay back whatever Kris took out of your paycheck."
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
"I am hungry." Luhan continues rolling around unhappily on the desk, utterly inconsolable. "I have no food and I am hungry."
"I'll take you to dinner then," insists Xiumin, still frowning. "I feel bad about all this, so I should try to fix it."
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
Luhan rolls over to face the wall, and bangs his face down against the desk again. "Barcelona played against Real Madrid yesterday, the rivalry was dramatic, and I missed the livestream. I missed the livestream because of elevators and thermostats and chainsaws and goldfish. And I am hungry."
"I'm really, really sorry," Xiumin says, and puts a hand on Luhan's shoulder. "I'll take you to a football match, then. Any one you want to go to, I promise."
Luhan flips over suddenly, looking up. "Wait, what? Really?"
"Well, I mean - I was planning on going to a football match soon, like in Europe somewhere, because I really like football, and my boss is really rich so he doesn't mind if I do stuff like that, so ..." Xiumin stammers slightly, and Luhan could swear there's a hint of a blush on his (extremely attractive) face. "It's the least I can do after you've saved my life and gone through so much trouble for me over the last few days. So let me make up for everything I put you through."
Luhan blinks for several moments, thoroughly confused and surprised. "What - seriously? No, I couldn't possibly let you do that. That's too much, I mean, I can't agree to ..." Xiumin looks at him expectantly. He holds out for one more moment, then smiles and flings his arms around Xiumin's neck. "Okay, I guess I could agree to that. And it's really hard to be angry at you now, since I have trouble getting angry at people who give me things. Besides, dealing with difficult people part of my job, right?"
"What about me?" D.O asks, and is ignored.
Xiumin shrugs. "I guess it technically is. Do you still want to go get dinner, though?"
"Sure." Luhan detaches himself from Xiumin and gets to his feet, shoving his phone in D.O's direction. D.O protests. "Lead the way."
Xiumin offers Luhan his arm (in a truly gentlemanly fashion, Luhan notes, and most certainly does not swoon). Subsequently, they proceed off in the direction of food.
D.O sits alone at the desk, staring at an empty bowl of home-made ice cream, and frowns. "What about me?" he asks, and is ignored.
"Fire," Kris groans on Friday morning, mauling his stress ball as he watches Xiumin check out of the hotel and hand his bags, against better judgement, to Chanyeol. "We set fire to the personal assistant of the personal assistant of the CEO of the largest investment bank in the country. With a coffee-maker. This hotel will be closed by this time tomorrow."
"I doubt it," Xiumin says, slipping Luhan his phone number along with his key card. "Maybe it was a bit ... chaotic, but I enjoyed my time here. Your front desk staff is very friendly and helpful. Also, they make excellent milkshakes."
"I most certainly do. Strawberry or vanilla, Kris?" D.O inquires, politely.
He is ignored.
% written for aupairs's second challenge: new york au; ©
% feoux is amazing for putting up with me through everything i write
% and a amazing art for this by fundamental-loop!
% there is also a russian translation by antanya!
% also, twitter/ masterlist if anyone else wants them.