[EXO] Fine China (1/?)
Title: Fine China (1/?)
Fandom: EXO
Rating: PG
Genre: fluff probably
Word count: 3746
Pairing: TaoHun
Summary: All Tao wants is to do his job and pass all his classes. But then the bakery gets a mysterious new customer, and Lu Han and Yixing won't leave well enough alone.
Notes: Finally, chapter 1 is finished! Haha, I think I originally got the idea to write this fic almost a year ago, so it's about time I finally got some of it up, yeah? Thanks to gollumpanties for screaming at me and telling me I'm not trash. Your input is greatly appreciated.
Tao lives by a routine. His new routine since starting his freshman year of university 6 months ago has been busy and leaves him very little free time, but Tao has ambition, and is no stranger to hard work. He wakes up at 4:45 every morning except Thursday and Saturday, washes his face, and bikes to Patisserie Chine, the local bakery, home of the best bread for 50 miles around, and the only place in town to offer Tao the flexible hours he’d required as a student. By the time he gets there (sometime between 5:25 and 5:40), Kris has already gotten there early to unlock and start hauling all the sacks of flour that they’ll be using. Tao joins in, lugging whatever is left, and together they spends the next few hours mixing dough, shaping loaves, making fillings, and washing fruit. By the time Tao leaves at 8:30, flinging off his apron and work shirt and brushing flour off his jeans, the rest of the morning staff has arrived, and the kitchen is loud and busy. Lu Han will usually look up from where he's arranging fruit on cakes or whatever intricate decorating he's doing that day to wave goodbye, and Victoria will usually shout after Tao not to forget his share of yesterday's unsold goods in the refrigerator.
Tao tries to sign up for 9am classes for maximum efficiency. Last semester, he'd managed to land a slot in the 9am chemistry lab, which he supposed in retrospect wasn't that difficult, considering that nobody in their right mind wants to get up that early and go mix chemicals in flasks and write down the fact that they wound up with salt water, but his Monday and Wednesday mornings he'd had to devote to a core History class, which started at 9:30. Most students would be glad of the extra half-hour of sleep, but for Tao, who’s been up for hours at that point, the minutes spent sitting outside the classroom felt like a torturous loss of productivity, even if he spent the time working on homework. He was glad that semester was over and that he'd managed to put together a much more streamlined schedule this semester.
About a month into his second semester, the talk starts. His coworkers gather during breaks to talk about “the parrot”, and swap theories about why this parrot seems so glum all the time. Theories range from the romantic (“Soothing a broken heart! Where better than an upscale bakery?”) to the mundane (“He’s probably just busy-- this is a college town; people get stressed out”) to the ludicrous (“Maybe he’s allergic to cake” “Then why would he come here and buy it?” “... Futile optimism?”). When Tao’s curiosity finally overcomes him, they tell him that “the parrot” is a customer-- a boy with incredibly colorful hair who comes in most mornings, buys coffee and a pastry from the cheaper end of the menu, and invariably seems disappointed with what he gets. After about a week and a half of this, he starts coming in some afternoons as well, with similar results. Speculations bounce off the walls of the kitchens, and both Yixing and Lu Han started checking and double checking their recipes, Victoria prints out a stack of customer surveys and promises a free coffee to anyone to completes one, and Henry starts eavesdropping on conversations while he mops the bathrooms, in the hope that one of them will offer some clue for the mystery of the unhappy customer.
They turn up nothing.
“I just don’t understand it.” Lu Han whined, slumped over his workstation during a lull one Monday afternoon. “He’s in here all the time. There’s nothing wrong with the food. He gave us a 10 out of 10 on the survey sheet we gave him. We’ve been giving him discounts. It’s like he’s determined to be miserable.”
Tao looked over from the other side of the kitchen, where he was busy pulling racks of fresh loaves out of the oven. “Who, the parrot?”
“Yes.” Lu Han’s voice was muffled from where he had his face mashed up against the table. “He was in again this morning and Yixing straight up asked him if he was okay and that he looked sort of glum and he said he was fine and then he sat there for an hour looking depressed. Also, his hair is pink now, which made the whole thing doubly ridiculous.”
“That is pretty weird.” Tao said, rinsing his hands off and flopping down on a stool next to Lu Han. “Maybe Amber’s right though-- maybe he’s just having personal issues and this is just where he happens to the place he goes. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
Lu Han turned his head sideways on his workstation to glare at Tao. “You’re one to talk. You haven’t even met the guy. If you had to see that look on his face, you’d take it personally and try to make it go away.”
“It’s true, you know.” Henry shouldered the door open, carrying an armload of empty dishes. “At first I would have been perfectly content if we could just get him to go away, but now I’m invested. I need to know why. It’s a terrible position to be in.” He dumped the dishes into the sink and sighed down at them sadly. “Sometimes I think about the fact that if I’d left this place last year, I’d have missed all of this.”
“Oh stop complaining.” Lu Han’s face was pressed facedown on the tabletop again. Tao thought that position must be uncomfortable-- didn’t his nose hurt being squished flat like that? “If you really wanted to leave, you would have done it by now instead of just threatening us with it constantly. So clearly you have reasons for staying, and until you decide to actually leave, I don’t want to hear any more about it. I have a headache, the parrot is being difficult, and the door to the mens bathroom has been locked for half an hour and I really need to pee. You should go find out what’s going on in there.”
As Henry grumbled his way out out the kitchen, Tao cracked his neck idly. “You do realize he’s older than you, right?”
“Whatever.” Lu Han grumbled. “I outrank him, and that’s not my fault. Blame Zhou Mi for upsetting the delicate hierarchy of society when he hired me.”
A glum silence descended upon the room. Lu Han continued to make quiet noises into the table as Tao got up and started cleaning up his area. They didn’t talk for several minutes, Lu Han apparently still upset about their mysterious customer, and Tao mulling over the previous conversation.
Eventually, Tao forced himself to break the silence, which was now almost oppressive. “You know, it is kind of weird that I haven’t met this guy yet.”
Lu Han dragged himself upright with apparent herculean effort, and propped his chin up on his elbows. “Yeah a little bit, I guess. You’ve mostly been working back end though, haven’t you? The less you run registers, the less likely you are to run into him. For obvious reasons. It’s not like we invite him or any of our customers to come wandering around our ovens in the hopes it will help us uncover the root of his melancholy.” Lu Han sighed in a manner suggesting that he would have already done exactly that if he thought it would help in the slightest. “Why, are you curious?”
Tao shrugged. “A little bit. It’s kind of hard not to be.”
“Well, Victoria’s out tomorrow.” Lu Han said, standing up and rubbing flour off his face. “If we get shorthanded in the afternoon, maybe we’ll pull you up to the front. And if he shows up, you can deal with him, because I’m sure as hell not doing it.”
“How generous of you.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular Mother Theresa. Now go see if the bathroom is free yet.”
By the next day, however, Tao had forgotten about the conversation, and busied himself with his usual list of tasks. Wake up, set up, class, homework, lunch, and then back to the bakery for the afternoon rush.
It wasn’t until half an hour before closing while Tao was emptying the kitchen trash that Yixing burst through the doors and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “The parrot is here.”
“Wait, really?” Tao hurriedly grabbed the trashbag and tied it off. “Hang on, let me throw this away, I’ll be right out.”
Yixing nodded. “Our gloomy customer is moving up in the world, it seems. Lu Han just sold him a slice of cream cake. He usually sticks with cinnamon twists and the like.” He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “What does it mean?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t have to mean anything, ge. He’s allowed to buy cake if he’s in a cake mood.” Tao hurried back from the back door towards the front of the kitchen. Peeking out the door, he caught Lu Han’s eye, who gestured in a completely unsubtle way towards a figure sitting alone in the front corner. And Tao just stared.
It took him a while to move past the shock of pink on the top of his head, which was incredibly bright, and oddly hypnotic. It looked really nice, Tao thought. Probably professionally done, which would explain, at least, why it’s owner mainly opted for the low-price items on the menu. On a normal student income, it was pretty obvious that a dye job of that quality would suck up the majority of your pocket money. His eye jumped down to the customer’s plain jeans/sweater combo in dark neutral shades, to his tapping foot and the way he fiddled with the shop buzzer in his hands, looking almost… nervous? Certainly not happy. And Tao’s eyes drifted back up to focus on the furrowed brow, and then on the whole face, which, similarly to his body language, looked less than entirely pleased. It also looked… familiar.
“... I think I’ve met him before.”
Lu Han’s head whipped around at approximately the speed of sound. “Wait, what?”
Before Tao could react, Lu Han had laid hands on both him and Henry as he walked past and shoved both of them back into the kitchen. At around the same moment, Amber walked cheerfully in through the back door, having finished her evening round of deliveries, only to be greeted by three of her coworkers hissing at each other excitedly. She sprinted up to the edge of the group. “Why are we whispering??”
“Tao,” and here Lu Han grabbed Tao’s collar and pulled all their heads together conspiratorially, “knows the parrot.”
“Holy shit, really??” Amber’s eyes were gleeful and prying. “What’s the story there?”
Lu Han smiled with wicked delight. “We don’t know yet, but Tao was just about to tell us the whole story. Weren’t you, my little peach?”
Lu Han’s grip on his shirt was like a vise. Tao’s attempts to pry his fingers free proved fruitless. “I said I think I’ve met him! The hair is different, but he looks like a guy in my history class last semester. But he never really talked and I don’t remember his name!”
Lu Han let go of Tao’s shirt, which was now stretched horrifyingly out of shape, and started pacing.
“Oh my god, this is brilliant. Amber, get everyone back here, we need to plan our attack.”
“What attack? What are you talking about? Why did you do this to my shirt?” Tao could hear his voice getting higher and higher. “Besides, you can’t just pull everyone back here when there are customers!”
“You’re right, there’s no time!” Amber nearly shouted, apparently caught up in Lu Han’s drama. She turned and shook Henry’s arm. “We need to move now!”
“Nope, I’m leaving. I want no part in your wild schemes. I think the bathrooms need mopping.” Henry wiggled himself free from Amber’s grip and nearly sprinted out of the kitchen. “I’m not part of your crazy brigade!”
Lu Han spun around to Tao and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “YOU HAVE TO BRING HIM HIS ORDER.”
“Wha-”
“BRING HIM HIS CAKE.”
“ASK HIM WHY HIS FACE GOES DOWN.”
Yixing pushed through the doors and wiggled into the circle. “WHY ARE WE YELLING??”
“I don’t know!” Tao wailed. “Why are you yelling at me?”
Lu Han’s eyes looked almost feverish. “Tao knows the parrot, so he has to serve him and ask him why his face goes down. This is vitally important.”
“Ahhh. Alright, I think I know what’s going on.” Yixing started using his soothing voice as he pried Lu Han’s hands off of Tao. “Lu Han, you should go back out and start dealing with the customers. It was inconsiderate of you to leave me alone behind the counter. Amber, I need you to go check on Henry. If he’s voluntarily cleaning the toilets, then there’s clearly something very wrong with him. And you, Tao,” and here Yixing started gently guiding Tao out of the kitchen towards the bakery case, “you just take the customer this slice of cake, ask him how he’s doing, and if there’s anything bothering him that we can help him with. You can do it! I believe in you!”
“Why? Why is this so important? I barely know him at all!” Tao stood numbly as Yixing plated and handed him the cake, and bodily turned him in the direction of the whirlwind of pink hair and it’s owner, who was the unknowing cause of Tao’s current distress. “He’s probably not even going to recognize me. Why don’t you do it? He’s talked to you!”
“Nonsense. We’ve spoken, like, twice. You took a semester of history with him-- that’s practically a long-term relationship!”
And so, hands shaking, Tao started to wobble his way across the cafe area, chocolate cream cake in hand, acutely aware of eyes on his back watching his every move.
“Um.” And the customer looked up as Tao reached the table. “I. Uhh, I mean. I- cake. I brought your cake. That you ordered.” Tao’s tongue kept tripping over itself, and the way the pink haired boy was staring at him wasn’t helping his nervousness. It was like every word of Korean he had ever learned in his life was running away from him before he could put it into a sentence. “And… I wanted to ask if you, um, I mean. … Why does your face go down?”
There was no reply. The boy kept staring at Tao, eyes widening. Shit. Shit shit shit. Tao desperately scanned his previous sentence in his head, but in his distress was unable to figure out if it made sense or not. Was everything I said gibberish? Did I accidentally say something rude? And still, pink hair stared in his face, mouth falling open slightly, which only strengthened Tao’s fear that he had committed a terrible faux pas sometime in the last 30 seconds. It was clear he had ruined everything. There was no way to get out of this with dignity.
“Cake!” Tao yelled hysterically, almost flinging the fluffy dessert down onto the table in front of the customer, before turning and running back into the kitchen, where he flung himself down onto a stool and started cataloging all the wrong choices he had made in his life prior to this moment.
“What happened???” Lu Han bellowed, flinging himself back into the kitchen.
“I don’t know, I think I just lost us a customer!” Tao whimpered into his hands. “I can’t speak Korean! All that came out of my mouth was stupid sounds!”
Yixing leaned his head into the kitchen. “Did everything go okay? Because now he’s just staring at the display cakes.”
“Tao’s having a mental breakdown.” Lu Han said cheerfully. “And has apparently downgraded to monolingual.”
“Damn. If that’s true, we can’t throw him at customers anymore. Lu Han, please teach him Korean again.”
“This isn’t funny. I may have actually damaged the business’s reputation as ‘not a hotbed of emotional instability’.”
Yixing smiled.“Oh Tao, that’s not true. We all have our own quirks and neuroses, and that’s okay! Did you know that Kris can’t walk away from his truck without announcing out loud that he’s put his keys into his pocket? I mean, really? What’s that all about?” He walked in and laid a hand gently on Tao’s shoulder. “Do you want me to kick Lu Han out, and we can talk about it?”
“No,” Tao took a deep breath, “that’s okay. I think I can deal.”
“Okay. And look! You’re speaking to me in Korean! You don’t have to hand in your bilingual card.”
Yixing beamed at Tao. “Let me know if Lu Han is harassing you, okay?”
As soon as Yixing left, Lu Han clucked his tongue. “What a loser. Everyone knows Kris started doing that after he accidentally locked himself out of his car in an empty parking lot right before the fences fell over at the turkey farm next door. Seems like a perfectly reasonable response to a traumatic event.” He folded his arms and leaned on the table next to Tao. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Tao shook his head. “I made a fool of myself. He’s probably never coming back.”
“You know, this sounds an awful lot like you talking about it, and you just said you didn’t want to. But do go on.”
“I just… couldn’t find the words. My Korean just fell apart, and I’m really worried I said something nonsensical and he thinks this place employs stupid people who don’t know how to talk and then put them in charge of customer service.”
“Well, that’s not too far from the mark, to be honest. Let’s be real, if Kris didn’t have such a ridiculous class schedule, we’d probably put him behind a register, and I think we all know how good of an idea that would be. I don’t think he’s intelligible in any language.” Lu Han started rubbing Tao’s shoulders in a manner that would have been comforting if he didn’t know Lu Han. “Anyway, why are you so stressed about this? You’re usually okay with customers. Was he rude? Did he say something racist? Because if he’s harassing you about anything, we can totally kick him out if he comes back.”
“What? No, he was fine, I’m just a mess. He just...” Tao rubbed his eyes.
Lu Han leaned over to peer at Tao’s face. “He just what?”
“I don’t know, I just got flustered. I… ” Tao tried to will his face not to turn red. ”He wouldn’t stop staring.”
“Oh.” Lu Han blinked. “Ohhhhhh, gotcha.” He winked. “It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody.”
Embarrassed realization began to set in, ruining all Tao’s chances of not turning the same color as a tomato. “What? No. No! Whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t true. This isn’t a weird crush thing. I don’t like him. I don’t even know him!”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Lu Han tsked sadly. “Anyway, did I ever say anything about you? It’s awfully egocentric of you to assume everything I say is about you. Frankly, I’m disappointed in you, peach.”
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a crush on me.” Tao tried to will his face back to it’s normal color. This was less than successful. “That was not the face of a person with a crush. I’m pretty sure that was the face of eternal judgement.”
“Awww, have a little confidence in yourself, Tao. Is it that implausible that he might have a thing for you? You’re plenty attractive! Why I might have asked you out by now, were I not married to my work!” His look darkened. “And she is a jealous mistress.”
“Oh, shut up. Why do you have to keep poking at this?” Tao kicked back towards where he hoped Lu Han’s shins were. “He doesn’t know me either. It’s probably nothing. People don’t just fall head over heels for people they’ve met once and never talked to. That’s not how it works.”
Lu Han hummed quietly. “Well, maybe not. But hey, you shouldn’t assume things. What if you’re wrong? I’ll bet you ten dollars you’re wrong.”
Tao glared. “Is everything a game to you?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Ask Yixing. So what’s your answer? You gonna take me up on that bet?” Lu Han waggled his eyebrows. “There’s potentially ten whole dollars in this for you.”
“I should know better by now than to listen to the things you say, but fine. Yes. I’ll take that bet.”
“Cool.” Lu Han extended his hand. “Let’s shake on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell Victoria that you’re willing to take extra shifts on the register.”
“What? No! I never agreed to that.”
“Oh, peach, listen to me. You can’t make a bet and then never meet the conditions of the bet. You need to be in a position to run into this young lad again.” Lu Han clapped Tao cheerfully on the shoulder. “So! How about you pick up another shift and help us close up on Sunday nights? Because if you don’t want to do that, I can just talk to this guy and get your answer for you. Would that be preferable?”
“This is blackmail.” Tao grumbled. “It’s like you’re trying to make my life miserable. Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Oh no, Tao, not hurt you. I’m here to help.” Lu Han’s face was a picture of affronted sadness. “Also, I predict a huge payoff here in terms of entertainment, and things here could use some livening up. Zhou Mi hasn’t brought his friends in lately to belittle the staff, and frankly, I’m starting to get bored.”
“You are evil and I don’t know why any of us still listen to you.”
“Because I am a giver, and I am here to help you.” Lu Han extended his hand again. “So, are you in or not?”
Tao groaned, and reached out to shake Lu Han’s hand. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, probably.”
Fandom: EXO
Rating: PG
Genre: fluff probably
Word count: 3746
Pairing: TaoHun
Summary: All Tao wants is to do his job and pass all his classes. But then the bakery gets a mysterious new customer, and Lu Han and Yixing won't leave well enough alone.
Notes: Finally, chapter 1 is finished! Haha, I think I originally got the idea to write this fic almost a year ago, so it's about time I finally got some of it up, yeah? Thanks to gollumpanties for screaming at me and telling me I'm not trash. Your input is greatly appreciated.
Tao lives by a routine. His new routine since starting his freshman year of university 6 months ago has been busy and leaves him very little free time, but Tao has ambition, and is no stranger to hard work. He wakes up at 4:45 every morning except Thursday and Saturday, washes his face, and bikes to Patisserie Chine, the local bakery, home of the best bread for 50 miles around, and the only place in town to offer Tao the flexible hours he’d required as a student. By the time he gets there (sometime between 5:25 and 5:40), Kris has already gotten there early to unlock and start hauling all the sacks of flour that they’ll be using. Tao joins in, lugging whatever is left, and together they spends the next few hours mixing dough, shaping loaves, making fillings, and washing fruit. By the time Tao leaves at 8:30, flinging off his apron and work shirt and brushing flour off his jeans, the rest of the morning staff has arrived, and the kitchen is loud and busy. Lu Han will usually look up from where he's arranging fruit on cakes or whatever intricate decorating he's doing that day to wave goodbye, and Victoria will usually shout after Tao not to forget his share of yesterday's unsold goods in the refrigerator.
Tao tries to sign up for 9am classes for maximum efficiency. Last semester, he'd managed to land a slot in the 9am chemistry lab, which he supposed in retrospect wasn't that difficult, considering that nobody in their right mind wants to get up that early and go mix chemicals in flasks and write down the fact that they wound up with salt water, but his Monday and Wednesday mornings he'd had to devote to a core History class, which started at 9:30. Most students would be glad of the extra half-hour of sleep, but for Tao, who’s been up for hours at that point, the minutes spent sitting outside the classroom felt like a torturous loss of productivity, even if he spent the time working on homework. He was glad that semester was over and that he'd managed to put together a much more streamlined schedule this semester.
About a month into his second semester, the talk starts. His coworkers gather during breaks to talk about “the parrot”, and swap theories about why this parrot seems so glum all the time. Theories range from the romantic (“Soothing a broken heart! Where better than an upscale bakery?”) to the mundane (“He’s probably just busy-- this is a college town; people get stressed out”) to the ludicrous (“Maybe he’s allergic to cake” “Then why would he come here and buy it?” “... Futile optimism?”). When Tao’s curiosity finally overcomes him, they tell him that “the parrot” is a customer-- a boy with incredibly colorful hair who comes in most mornings, buys coffee and a pastry from the cheaper end of the menu, and invariably seems disappointed with what he gets. After about a week and a half of this, he starts coming in some afternoons as well, with similar results. Speculations bounce off the walls of the kitchens, and both Yixing and Lu Han started checking and double checking their recipes, Victoria prints out a stack of customer surveys and promises a free coffee to anyone to completes one, and Henry starts eavesdropping on conversations while he mops the bathrooms, in the hope that one of them will offer some clue for the mystery of the unhappy customer.
They turn up nothing.
“I just don’t understand it.” Lu Han whined, slumped over his workstation during a lull one Monday afternoon. “He’s in here all the time. There’s nothing wrong with the food. He gave us a 10 out of 10 on the survey sheet we gave him. We’ve been giving him discounts. It’s like he’s determined to be miserable.”
Tao looked over from the other side of the kitchen, where he was busy pulling racks of fresh loaves out of the oven. “Who, the parrot?”
“Yes.” Lu Han’s voice was muffled from where he had his face mashed up against the table. “He was in again this morning and Yixing straight up asked him if he was okay and that he looked sort of glum and he said he was fine and then he sat there for an hour looking depressed. Also, his hair is pink now, which made the whole thing doubly ridiculous.”
“That is pretty weird.” Tao said, rinsing his hands off and flopping down on a stool next to Lu Han. “Maybe Amber’s right though-- maybe he’s just having personal issues and this is just where he happens to the place he goes. It’s probably just a coincidence.”
Lu Han turned his head sideways on his workstation to glare at Tao. “You’re one to talk. You haven’t even met the guy. If you had to see that look on his face, you’d take it personally and try to make it go away.”
“It’s true, you know.” Henry shouldered the door open, carrying an armload of empty dishes. “At first I would have been perfectly content if we could just get him to go away, but now I’m invested. I need to know why. It’s a terrible position to be in.” He dumped the dishes into the sink and sighed down at them sadly. “Sometimes I think about the fact that if I’d left this place last year, I’d have missed all of this.”
“Oh stop complaining.” Lu Han’s face was pressed facedown on the tabletop again. Tao thought that position must be uncomfortable-- didn’t his nose hurt being squished flat like that? “If you really wanted to leave, you would have done it by now instead of just threatening us with it constantly. So clearly you have reasons for staying, and until you decide to actually leave, I don’t want to hear any more about it. I have a headache, the parrot is being difficult, and the door to the mens bathroom has been locked for half an hour and I really need to pee. You should go find out what’s going on in there.”
As Henry grumbled his way out out the kitchen, Tao cracked his neck idly. “You do realize he’s older than you, right?”
“Whatever.” Lu Han grumbled. “I outrank him, and that’s not my fault. Blame Zhou Mi for upsetting the delicate hierarchy of society when he hired me.”
A glum silence descended upon the room. Lu Han continued to make quiet noises into the table as Tao got up and started cleaning up his area. They didn’t talk for several minutes, Lu Han apparently still upset about their mysterious customer, and Tao mulling over the previous conversation.
Eventually, Tao forced himself to break the silence, which was now almost oppressive. “You know, it is kind of weird that I haven’t met this guy yet.”
Lu Han dragged himself upright with apparent herculean effort, and propped his chin up on his elbows. “Yeah a little bit, I guess. You’ve mostly been working back end though, haven’t you? The less you run registers, the less likely you are to run into him. For obvious reasons. It’s not like we invite him or any of our customers to come wandering around our ovens in the hopes it will help us uncover the root of his melancholy.” Lu Han sighed in a manner suggesting that he would have already done exactly that if he thought it would help in the slightest. “Why, are you curious?”
Tao shrugged. “A little bit. It’s kind of hard not to be.”
“Well, Victoria’s out tomorrow.” Lu Han said, standing up and rubbing flour off his face. “If we get shorthanded in the afternoon, maybe we’ll pull you up to the front. And if he shows up, you can deal with him, because I’m sure as hell not doing it.”
“How generous of you.”
“Yeah, I’m a regular Mother Theresa. Now go see if the bathroom is free yet.”
By the next day, however, Tao had forgotten about the conversation, and busied himself with his usual list of tasks. Wake up, set up, class, homework, lunch, and then back to the bakery for the afternoon rush.
It wasn’t until half an hour before closing while Tao was emptying the kitchen trash that Yixing burst through the doors and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “The parrot is here.”
“Wait, really?” Tao hurriedly grabbed the trashbag and tied it off. “Hang on, let me throw this away, I’ll be right out.”
Yixing nodded. “Our gloomy customer is moving up in the world, it seems. Lu Han just sold him a slice of cream cake. He usually sticks with cinnamon twists and the like.” He leaned in to whisper conspiratorially. “What does it mean?”
“I’m sure it doesn’t have to mean anything, ge. He’s allowed to buy cake if he’s in a cake mood.” Tao hurried back from the back door towards the front of the kitchen. Peeking out the door, he caught Lu Han’s eye, who gestured in a completely unsubtle way towards a figure sitting alone in the front corner. And Tao just stared.
It took him a while to move past the shock of pink on the top of his head, which was incredibly bright, and oddly hypnotic. It looked really nice, Tao thought. Probably professionally done, which would explain, at least, why it’s owner mainly opted for the low-price items on the menu. On a normal student income, it was pretty obvious that a dye job of that quality would suck up the majority of your pocket money. His eye jumped down to the customer’s plain jeans/sweater combo in dark neutral shades, to his tapping foot and the way he fiddled with the shop buzzer in his hands, looking almost… nervous? Certainly not happy. And Tao’s eyes drifted back up to focus on the furrowed brow, and then on the whole face, which, similarly to his body language, looked less than entirely pleased. It also looked… familiar.
“... I think I’ve met him before.”
Lu Han’s head whipped around at approximately the speed of sound. “Wait, what?”
Before Tao could react, Lu Han had laid hands on both him and Henry as he walked past and shoved both of them back into the kitchen. At around the same moment, Amber walked cheerfully in through the back door, having finished her evening round of deliveries, only to be greeted by three of her coworkers hissing at each other excitedly. She sprinted up to the edge of the group. “Why are we whispering??”
“Tao,” and here Lu Han grabbed Tao’s collar and pulled all their heads together conspiratorially, “knows the parrot.”
“Holy shit, really??” Amber’s eyes were gleeful and prying. “What’s the story there?”
Lu Han smiled with wicked delight. “We don’t know yet, but Tao was just about to tell us the whole story. Weren’t you, my little peach?”
Lu Han’s grip on his shirt was like a vise. Tao’s attempts to pry his fingers free proved fruitless. “I said I think I’ve met him! The hair is different, but he looks like a guy in my history class last semester. But he never really talked and I don’t remember his name!”
Lu Han let go of Tao’s shirt, which was now stretched horrifyingly out of shape, and started pacing.
“Oh my god, this is brilliant. Amber, get everyone back here, we need to plan our attack.”
“What attack? What are you talking about? Why did you do this to my shirt?” Tao could hear his voice getting higher and higher. “Besides, you can’t just pull everyone back here when there are customers!”
“You’re right, there’s no time!” Amber nearly shouted, apparently caught up in Lu Han’s drama. She turned and shook Henry’s arm. “We need to move now!”
“Nope, I’m leaving. I want no part in your wild schemes. I think the bathrooms need mopping.” Henry wiggled himself free from Amber’s grip and nearly sprinted out of the kitchen. “I’m not part of your crazy brigade!”
Lu Han spun around to Tao and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders. “YOU HAVE TO BRING HIM HIS ORDER.”
“Wha-”
“BRING HIM HIS CAKE.”
“ASK HIM WHY HIS FACE GOES DOWN.”
Yixing pushed through the doors and wiggled into the circle. “WHY ARE WE YELLING??”
“I don’t know!” Tao wailed. “Why are you yelling at me?”
Lu Han’s eyes looked almost feverish. “Tao knows the parrot, so he has to serve him and ask him why his face goes down. This is vitally important.”
“Ahhh. Alright, I think I know what’s going on.” Yixing started using his soothing voice as he pried Lu Han’s hands off of Tao. “Lu Han, you should go back out and start dealing with the customers. It was inconsiderate of you to leave me alone behind the counter. Amber, I need you to go check on Henry. If he’s voluntarily cleaning the toilets, then there’s clearly something very wrong with him. And you, Tao,” and here Yixing started gently guiding Tao out of the kitchen towards the bakery case, “you just take the customer this slice of cake, ask him how he’s doing, and if there’s anything bothering him that we can help him with. You can do it! I believe in you!”
“Why? Why is this so important? I barely know him at all!” Tao stood numbly as Yixing plated and handed him the cake, and bodily turned him in the direction of the whirlwind of pink hair and it’s owner, who was the unknowing cause of Tao’s current distress. “He’s probably not even going to recognize me. Why don’t you do it? He’s talked to you!”
“Nonsense. We’ve spoken, like, twice. You took a semester of history with him-- that’s practically a long-term relationship!”
And so, hands shaking, Tao started to wobble his way across the cafe area, chocolate cream cake in hand, acutely aware of eyes on his back watching his every move.
“Um.” And the customer looked up as Tao reached the table. “I. Uhh, I mean. I- cake. I brought your cake. That you ordered.” Tao’s tongue kept tripping over itself, and the way the pink haired boy was staring at him wasn’t helping his nervousness. It was like every word of Korean he had ever learned in his life was running away from him before he could put it into a sentence. “And… I wanted to ask if you, um, I mean. … Why does your face go down?”
There was no reply. The boy kept staring at Tao, eyes widening. Shit. Shit shit shit. Tao desperately scanned his previous sentence in his head, but in his distress was unable to figure out if it made sense or not. Was everything I said gibberish? Did I accidentally say something rude? And still, pink hair stared in his face, mouth falling open slightly, which only strengthened Tao’s fear that he had committed a terrible faux pas sometime in the last 30 seconds. It was clear he had ruined everything. There was no way to get out of this with dignity.
“Cake!” Tao yelled hysterically, almost flinging the fluffy dessert down onto the table in front of the customer, before turning and running back into the kitchen, where he flung himself down onto a stool and started cataloging all the wrong choices he had made in his life prior to this moment.
“What happened???” Lu Han bellowed, flinging himself back into the kitchen.
“I don’t know, I think I just lost us a customer!” Tao whimpered into his hands. “I can’t speak Korean! All that came out of my mouth was stupid sounds!”
Yixing leaned his head into the kitchen. “Did everything go okay? Because now he’s just staring at the display cakes.”
“Tao’s having a mental breakdown.” Lu Han said cheerfully. “And has apparently downgraded to monolingual.”
“Damn. If that’s true, we can’t throw him at customers anymore. Lu Han, please teach him Korean again.”
“This isn’t funny. I may have actually damaged the business’s reputation as ‘not a hotbed of emotional instability’.”
Yixing smiled.“Oh Tao, that’s not true. We all have our own quirks and neuroses, and that’s okay! Did you know that Kris can’t walk away from his truck without announcing out loud that he’s put his keys into his pocket? I mean, really? What’s that all about?” He walked in and laid a hand gently on Tao’s shoulder. “Do you want me to kick Lu Han out, and we can talk about it?”
“No,” Tao took a deep breath, “that’s okay. I think I can deal.”
“Okay. And look! You’re speaking to me in Korean! You don’t have to hand in your bilingual card.”
Yixing beamed at Tao. “Let me know if Lu Han is harassing you, okay?”
As soon as Yixing left, Lu Han clucked his tongue. “What a loser. Everyone knows Kris started doing that after he accidentally locked himself out of his car in an empty parking lot right before the fences fell over at the turkey farm next door. Seems like a perfectly reasonable response to a traumatic event.” He folded his arms and leaned on the table next to Tao. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” Tao shook his head. “I made a fool of myself. He’s probably never coming back.”
“You know, this sounds an awful lot like you talking about it, and you just said you didn’t want to. But do go on.”
“I just… couldn’t find the words. My Korean just fell apart, and I’m really worried I said something nonsensical and he thinks this place employs stupid people who don’t know how to talk and then put them in charge of customer service.”
“Well, that’s not too far from the mark, to be honest. Let’s be real, if Kris didn’t have such a ridiculous class schedule, we’d probably put him behind a register, and I think we all know how good of an idea that would be. I don’t think he’s intelligible in any language.” Lu Han started rubbing Tao’s shoulders in a manner that would have been comforting if he didn’t know Lu Han. “Anyway, why are you so stressed about this? You’re usually okay with customers. Was he rude? Did he say something racist? Because if he’s harassing you about anything, we can totally kick him out if he comes back.”
“What? No, he was fine, I’m just a mess. He just...” Tao rubbed his eyes.
Lu Han leaned over to peer at Tao’s face. “He just what?”
“I don’t know, I just got flustered. I… ” Tao tried to will his face not to turn red. ”He wouldn’t stop staring.”
“Oh.” Lu Han blinked. “Ohhhhhh, gotcha.” He winked. “It’s okay, I won’t tell anybody.”
Embarrassed realization began to set in, ruining all Tao’s chances of not turning the same color as a tomato. “What? No. No! Whatever you’re thinking, it isn’t true. This isn’t a weird crush thing. I don’t like him. I don’t even know him!”
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.” Lu Han tsked sadly. “Anyway, did I ever say anything about you? It’s awfully egocentric of you to assume everything I say is about you. Frankly, I’m disappointed in you, peach.”
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a crush on me.” Tao tried to will his face back to it’s normal color. This was less than successful. “That was not the face of a person with a crush. I’m pretty sure that was the face of eternal judgement.”
“Awww, have a little confidence in yourself, Tao. Is it that implausible that he might have a thing for you? You’re plenty attractive! Why I might have asked you out by now, were I not married to my work!” His look darkened. “And she is a jealous mistress.”
“Oh, shut up. Why do you have to keep poking at this?” Tao kicked back towards where he hoped Lu Han’s shins were. “He doesn’t know me either. It’s probably nothing. People don’t just fall head over heels for people they’ve met once and never talked to. That’s not how it works.”
Lu Han hummed quietly. “Well, maybe not. But hey, you shouldn’t assume things. What if you’re wrong? I’ll bet you ten dollars you’re wrong.”
Tao glared. “Is everything a game to you?”
“Pretty much, yeah. Ask Yixing. So what’s your answer? You gonna take me up on that bet?” Lu Han waggled his eyebrows. “There’s potentially ten whole dollars in this for you.”
“I should know better by now than to listen to the things you say, but fine. Yes. I’ll take that bet.”
“Cool.” Lu Han extended his hand. “Let’s shake on it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell Victoria that you’re willing to take extra shifts on the register.”
“What? No! I never agreed to that.”
“Oh, peach, listen to me. You can’t make a bet and then never meet the conditions of the bet. You need to be in a position to run into this young lad again.” Lu Han clapped Tao cheerfully on the shoulder. “So! How about you pick up another shift and help us close up on Sunday nights? Because if you don’t want to do that, I can just talk to this guy and get your answer for you. Would that be preferable?”
“This is blackmail.” Tao grumbled. “It’s like you’re trying to make my life miserable. Are you trying to hurt me?”
“Oh no, Tao, not hurt you. I’m here to help.” Lu Han’s face was a picture of affronted sadness. “Also, I predict a huge payoff here in terms of entertainment, and things here could use some livening up. Zhou Mi hasn’t brought his friends in lately to belittle the staff, and frankly, I’m starting to get bored.”
“You are evil and I don’t know why any of us still listen to you.”
“Because I am a giver, and I am here to help you.” Lu Han extended his hand again. “So, are you in or not?”
Tao groaned, and reached out to shake Lu Han’s hand. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, probably.”