01-25-2018, 09:39 PM
[div style="width:500px;text-align:justify;font-size:12px;margin-top:10px;color:#000;line-height:120%"][align=center]❝ Chapter Eight of Interning: Shakespeare in Love ❞
Funnily enough, Minseok thought, Sehun hadn't come around to ask him any questions, this morning.
In fact, there was not much sign of Sehun being in the department at all... Usually, the English Literature student would be in by eight-thirty, trying to compensate inaptitude with excessive zeal, and as soon as Minseok strode to his desk with his bag, Sehun would sail in from the West and clamp some documents in front of him with a desperate look on his face and a distraught 'Help me, please'.
This morning, however, Sehun did not appear at his desk until almost nine-thirty. Minseok had gotten enough time to go through all his morning filing tasks, before the characteristic shadow finally came towering over him and he looked up to meet Sehun's grey face, backlit by the office lights.
"Hey," Minseok greeted. "Need any help this morning?"
"Yeth, pleath," the other man answered with a baffling lisp.
The Princeton graduate stared at him with a dubious frown, while taking his file, "Um, you okay?"
"I chipped off a tooth yethterday," Sehun drawled, then opened his mouth and revealed – like he had said – a big black crack over one of his upper front teeth, which made Minseok's jaw drop of its own accord. "Getting an appointment to ffix it next week. Yitthhing tried to glue the piethe back on but it wouldn't thtick."
"Who?"
Sehun lisped reticently, his cheeks flushing at an alarming speed:
"Yitthhing."
Minseok watched him blankly.
"YITHING."
"Yixing?" he frowned, "wait, you mean, you did this to yourself at home? At the dorms?"
"No, not the dorm, but," the younger man blushed harder, "it'th a long thtory."
"I have all day," the elder intern shrugged, too curious to care.
Sehun was about to answer when he caught sight of someone entering the department through the glass doors, and his face turned green. Minseok craned his neck, only feeling more confused when he saw Lu Han lumbering heavily towards them, his face a mask of utter displeasure and mild bafflement.
"Hi Lu Han-" he waved.
And Lu Han ignored him completely to get up in Sehun's face:
"You, come with me. Right now."
The eldest intern stared: "Um...what?"
"Hi to you too," Sehun retorted wryly, though his cheeks had grown scarlet now, and Minseok looked at each of them in turn:
"What's going on here?"
"Nothing you should worry about, Minseok," Lu Han assured fleetingly. "Just dealing with some stuff we left hanging yesterday evening."
"You left hanging," Sehun corrected pointedly, with an arched eyebrow: "you left me in Yithing's kitchen with Tao and Krith and then left without thaying goodbye even though I'd jutht thplattered my fathe over the thidewalk trying to hold you back."
"Splattered your face–" Minseok's eyes narrowed furiously in bewilderment. "What?"
"I was shocked, no, gobsmacked illustrates it better," Lu Han stated dryly, "you can't blame me."
"Thtill an inconthiderate bathtard," the younger intern spattered, spit flying through the air.
Lu Han shut his eyes, wiping a hand over his face before sighing heavily:
"Look, if we can just sort this out somewhere..."
"I'm budthy," Sehun showed his files with a haughty sniffle.
"Well, then," the elder intern clicked his tongue and jutted out his chin, "if you want your answers here, I'll do it."
"What answers?" Minseok squinted.
"If you thay it in front of Mintheok, you'll be a doubly inconthiderate bathtard," Sehun warned with one finger pointed at Lu Han's chest.
"Me? A bastard?" the elder man flicked his hand away, "I'm the one who should be traumatized, I got confessed to by a minor."
Minseok heard his jaw pop with the force of its drop. But Sehun looked more irritated by the elder man's answer than embarrassed at being publicly ousted like that:
"Ecthcuse you, I live in the UK. We're adult'th at eighteen."
"Uh, you're doing this internship in the States, so rules of the host country apply."
"You guyth are jutht colonies."
"Ex-colony," Lu Han emphasizes, "hear my wings flap. Hear that? It's the sound of independence, motherfucker."
"What are you guys actually talking about?" Minseok opened his palms in incredulity.
"I apologize for leaving you alone in that kitchen with Yixing and Kris," Lu Han jabbed his finger one last time into Sehun's ribs, "but if you hadn't tried to stop me while I was walking away you wouldn't have fallen off the sidewalk in the first place, so that's your fault. It's also your fault that I walked away because if you hadn't come up with that crazy confession out of the blue, I wouldn't have tried to walk away."
"You didn't try to walk away, you literally thcrambled for your car and tried to drive away from me," Sehun rolled his eyes.
"Guys," Minseok began.
"Either way, you dropped a wild bomb on me yesterday night."
"What?"
"Guys," Minseok sighed.
"A wild bomb?" Sehun said heatedly, "how elth was I thuppothed to confeth? Thend you anonymouth flowers?"
"Guys."
The two interns turned like one man, faltering slightly when they saw Changmin beside Minseok's computer screen with his arms folded, his hip against the table edge and an utterly unimpressed expression on his face.
Lu Han straightened up and cleared his throat.
"Um."
"You two are utterly hopeless," Changmin declared slowly. Very slowly. "U-tter-ly hope-less. I can barely believe just how unreservedly hopeless you are."
"I know I'm not usually working in this department," Lu Han began carefully.
"No, you're right, you aren't," the consultant designated the door with one extended arm, "so get out of here, right this instant."
Lu Han opened his mouth, exchanged one last angry look with Sehun who returned a discontent frown, then tried to walk away from the department, only to turn around with a bitter glare:
"We're never ending up together," he declared firmly.
"Fine," Sehun rancorously spluttered back. "No one likth you anyway."
"Well, you-"
"Lu," Changmin closed his eyes dangerously.
"Lu Han," Minseok sighed simultaneously, and Lu Han lifted up both hands in surrender.
"Alright. Fine," he spat. Spun on his heels. Then suddenly hesitated and whipped his head back with a slightly distrustful expression: "It wasn't a joke, right? When you said that yester-"
"Get out," Sehun, Changmin and Minseok said in chorus. And Lu Han scampered away from the Risk department at last, not turning back a single time.
"Jesus Christ," Changmin shook his head and passed a hand over his hair, "now, Sehun finish drafting that letter for me before lunchtime. No slacking."
Sehun nodded dejectedly, and Minseok offered him a hand:
"I'll help you," he whispered quietly with a compassionate look, when the supervisor was out of sight.
Sehun glanced down at him, smiled slightly, and sat down in front of Minseok's desk with a sheepish but grateful expression.
"Thank you," he uttered honestly. And Minseok simply laughed, taking his folder to tap him lightly on the head.
⚜
Five hours and a hasty lunch later, Lu Han came back to Sehun with a mysterious, sealed scroll.
"These are all the reasons why we shouldn't end up together."
He then unrolled the document in front of him and the taped up sheets hit the floor with a dead 'clunk', rolling for another metre or so before hitting the feet of the table behind him. Sehun seized the paper and scanned it quickly.
"It jutht thays 'you're too young' like, five hundred timeth."
"That's how many times you need to be told that you're too young."
"I wish you two could have as much motivation for our charity project as you have for your star-crossed lovers issues," Minseok commented from the nearest laptop, and Jongin muffled a laugh as he distractedly played with Kyungsoo's vest.
Without listening, Luhan picked up one end of the roll and pointed at it for Sehun's benefit: "Also, if you read between the lines, there is a lot of subtext in here, like 'our personalities don't match', 'You don't like Angelina Jolie', 'You think the Hunger Games are a load of bullshit'..."
"That ith true, the Hunger Gameth are a load of bullshit."
"You just don't know how to appreciate all the beautiful themes-"
"Lu Han, you've already proved your point," Minseok exhaled loudly from a chair in the corner, "now you're just being obnoxious, just drop it already."
"You know," Sehun narrowed his eyes viciously, "for thomeone who doethn't like me back, you're awfully inthithtent on this topic."
"Sorry, repeat that?" Lu Han blinked in insincere ignorance, "I didn't hear you in all that flying spit and serpent hissing."
"Lu Han." Minseok rebuked.
"Did we miss something here?" Joonmyun whispered to an equally confused, but immensely entertained Jongdae.
"I'll tell you guys why it's like that," Tao quietly told them with a knowing air, "they're both Aries." he wiggled his eyebrows when the two O&O interns frowned sceptically at him, "it's like putting fire against fire. It's just doesn't work."
"I won't have my love life decided by some stupid star signs shit, thank you; plus, I was born on the 20th April, so I'm half Taurus at least," Lu Han spat without looking at them, and Tao rolled his eyes, as if proving his point:
"See? Aries...Stubborn as fuck."
"Never mind that," Kyungsoo waved dismissively with a groan, "can we decide what we're going to do for that CSR project already?"
"I thought we'd decided already," Kris cocked an eyebrow.
"Joonmyun?" Minseok glanced sideways.
"Oh. Right," their new team leader jolted in shock, and rapidly fumbled for his sheets before readjusting his glasses: "Um...so, to recapitulate, everyone voted by email for the cause we're going to be working for and we all agreed on 'baby elephants in Africa'." He paused. "Everyone okay with that?"
"Yep," Jongdae leaned back nonchalantly with outstretched arms. "Fine by me."
"I love baby elephants," Yixing smiled dreamily.
"So now, what we need to do is decide what kind of charity event we want to organise to raise $4,000 for those baby elephants," Joonmyun then scrunched his nose, "frankly speaking, $4,000 really is nothing when I look at it like that."
"It's two weeks and a half, though," Kris rubbed a hand over his eyes. "And we're only twelve."
"Yeah, but I feel like we should be more ambitious," Joonmyun scratched his nose pensively, "you know? Like, this is our chance to turn the tables around on the team board. We should try to aim higher than the other teams."
"What do you suggest then?" Baekhyun perked up from his seat, where he was spacing out with his head over folded arms.
"Let's raise the bar to $10,000, and see where that leads us," Joonmyun said.
"Are you crazy?" Lu Han exclaimed, "what kind of charity event can you do in two weeks that could bring back 10,000 bucks?"
"We need to be creative," the Harvard graduate admitted, but did not sway, "Chanyeol, didn't you say you had something in mind, when you talked to me by email?"
"Uh...huh?" the lanky intern blinked, snapping back into focus. "Sorry, I didn't catch that."
"Geez, what is it with everyone's focus today?" Tao yawned like a cat.
"This morning, by email," Joonmyun asked patiently, "you uh...you said you had a sudden idea about the fundraising."
"Oh, yeah, that's right." Chanyeol jerked and sat up before throwing an uncertain look around the room, "so, um...my friend runs a pretty popular bar downtown," he said. "and...sometimes, he invites me there to play the guitar. There's a little stage there and you can go up there by paying a small fee, but I usually go for free since he's my friend."
"I have a bad feeling about this," Lu Han stated.
"The thing is, I also play the drums," Chanyeol articulated with care, "and I have friends in Los Angeles who play the bass, and the guitar..." he paused, looking at everyone in the room, "if I ask my bar owner friend, we could set up a charity concert."
Silence fell upon the group as they stared at Chanyeol, who rolled his shoulders:
"No one said in the rules that you couldn't get some external help involved. Right? With a concert, and the right publicity, you could raise a lot of money in very little time. Make it three days of performances: Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. I think we could definitely hit the target amount."
"I think that's a brilliant idea," Yixing smiled.
"How would you advertise it, though?" Jongin swerved on his chair. "Without advertisement, no one's going to come and watch."
"Well, first of all I can ask all my involved friends to publicize it for us," Chanyeol declared, "they're into music and all that jazz, so they know the kind of crowd who'd like to come to this kind of events. Secondly, we could advertise it publicly, through our other fundraising events."
"Through our what?"
Sehun blinked, slightly confused: "I thought this wath our fundraithing event."
"Well, we probably won't hit our target with just that, right?" Chanyeol derided as he tried to explain, "unless we're like, so amazingly good that everyone comes craving for more or something...We're probably going to have to accompany that with online advertisement, and other regular events. Like bake-sales or something."
"Basically, we'll need volunteers to bake cookies and to sell them in the streets, or in other public places," Joonmyun elaborated, "and while you're doing that, explain our cause to people. Advertise the concerts."
"I can volunteer for baking cookies," Yixing raised his hand with a smile, "I am a master chef."
"I'll do it with you," Kris declared, "and I'll sell it with you as well. Since I can't contribute to the musical part of things..."
Sehun lifted his hand tentatively, "I can do the cookieth too."
"I need people to volunteer for the band, though," Chanyeol bit his lips, "we need a second guitarist to come with us. An electric guitarist."
"I can do that too," Yixing smiled placidly, making everyone stare at him.
"You can?" Minseok blinked.
"Yeah," the younger man beamed. "I love music."
"Any keyboard players?" Chanyeol asked.
Baekhyun seemed like he wanted to raise his hand, but eventually changed his mind.
"I'll do it," Jongdae volunteered pleasantly. "Haven't played in a while, but it should come back in time, with a bit of practice."
"Brother Lu," Yixing teasingly winked, "why don't you sing for us?"
"In your dreams, hipster manatee," Lu Han scowled.
"Well, then, Lu Han, you should participate in the bake-sales," Minseok remarked pointedly, "...with Sehun, why don't you?"
"What?" both Sehun and Lu Han started.
"I, uh..." Baekhyun finally spoke up, "I'll participate in the bake-sales too, I'm a great salesman. And an amazing baker."
"Then, I want to be paired up with Baekhyun," Lu Han said.
"No, you and Sehun don't know how to bake," Kris snarled in disapproval, "you two should be strictly in charge of sales."
"Baekhyun, Kris, Yixing, Tao, Minseok and I will be in charge of baking," Joonmyun divided carefully as he glanced at Lu Han, "and then, Kris, Yixing, Sehun and you will be in charge of selling in one part of town...while Minseok, Baekhyun and I sell in another part."
"Can't I sell too?" Jongdae pouted.
"Only if you have time," Joonmyun frowned, "you need to practice your uh, piano and all that."
"One question." Jongin suddenly chortled, "what are Kyungsoo and I doing?"
"Ohh, shoot," their team leader placed a hand over his mouth, visibly troubled, "Ah! I know, you guys will be in charge of all the advertisements online."
"Can do," Kyungsoo nodded.
"Sounds like we've got a plan, don't we?" Joonmyun smiled tentatively. "Let's get it going then. Tonight, we're going cookie baking."
⚜
"I love cookie baking," Yixing hummed heartily that night, when they were back in their flat kitchen, armed with cookie cutters and bowls of dough.
From his spot near the microwave, where he was busy battering the cookie mix with an electric whisk, Tao let out a snort and looked to the ceiling:
"The day you say you don't love something, I'd be more surprised."
"Are you guyth thure I can't help?" Sehun asked with the hint of a plea on the edge of his voice while sitting at the kitchen table.
"No," Kris snapped immediately. "Not after I've seen you burn that lasagne in your flat last week."
"It wath jutht a one-off thing," the younger man mumbled inarticulately.
Yixing applied the cutters to the flattened dough Kris was handing him on a tray, and began making star-shaped biscuits with a knowing smile.
"Sehun, if you are worried about selling these with Lu Han this weekend, don't be. Lu Han is just a really big immature idiot, he'll come around in due time."
"Can't you be the one in charge of thales near Beverly Hillth with Lu Han?" Sehun inquired.
"I can't," Yixing shook his head on the beat, "I'm already doing sales with Yifan in Little Tokyo."
"Tho?" Sehun looked confused, "we could technically change with one another."
Yixing seemed taken aback for a second, then he opened his mouth to protest when Tao swiftly intervened:
"No last minute changes," he groused and placed his dish down. "You shouldn't try to evade your personal issues by sweeping them under the carpet. If it's awkward between you and Lu Han right now, you should deal with it while it's fresh. Get over yourself."
"What am I thupposed to do?" Sehun exhaled loudly out of exasperation, "he'th the one who ith acting like a middle-thcooler and pushing all my buttons, not me."
"Do you want me to read the horoscope for Aries to you?" Tao suggested.
"No."
"Alright, then," Tao took up his mixer once again and turned it on. "Force him to deal with it like a grown-up man."
He had just finished his sentence when a beeping sound from Kris's phone caused the eldest intern to place his oven gloves down. Both Tao and Sehun threw him a glance:
"Who's that?"
"Joonmyun," Kris elucidated, clicking through the message, "asking us if we have extra flour, they've ran out on their side."
"We do have extra flour," Yixing hummed without turning away from his platter. "Sehun, why don't you make the trip and pass it on to them?"
"Never drove in the US," Sehun remarked with a helpless shrug.
"I'll come with you," Tao clicked his tongue, before pushing the dough onto the counter where Yixing and Kris were standing: "We'll be back in forty minutes, give or take. You two will be alright?"
"I'm sure we'll manage," Kris said expressionlessly, "have a safe trip."
"Sorry for the trouble," Yixing declared in a singing tone while keeping his eyes on the biscuits in front of him.
Tao only waved the apology away with an indifferent hand gesture, and grabbed his jacket while Sehun carried the packs of flour behind him. Once they were gone from the flat, Kris and Yixing remained side by side in front of the counter, each minding their own business in smothering silence for an indeterminable amount of time before Yixing finally let out a soft exclamation:
"Done."
In front of him lied five lines of neatly defined stars of dough.
"Well, then," Kris said calmly, moving the tray away, "we just have to wait ten minutes for the previous batch to be ready. Then, we can put those in."
"Good." Yixing agreed gently. "Very good."
They stood in front of the counter without a word; Yixing, suddenly captivated by a piece of humid flour beneath his nail, and Kris seemingly answering a text on his phone. As soon as he lowered the device, however, the younger man threw him a disarming glance.
"Um." The elder intern blinked, "what?"
"You know," Yixing said, dead serious but unalarmed, "I didn't even think about it before he mentioned it earlier."
"Who? Mentioned what?" Kris creased his brow, slightly embarrassed.
"It seemed completely natural to me that I should be doing my cookie sales with you," the other man expounded. "So when he said I could actually do it with Lu Han, the idea kind of caught me off guard."
Kris simply closed his mouth, unsure of how to respond, but somewhat anticipating the rest of what was on Yixing's mind.
"So...?"
"So, it's funny!" Yixing stated rather firmly, a look of concentration slowly dawning on him as he started observing the movement of the clock on the microwave. "It's funny how the brain works... I never thought of it this way. I think I need to reorganise my thoughts a bit."
"Uh...I really don't know what you're talking about?"
Yixing glanced at him in surprise once again, then gradually smiled.
"Me neither."
Kris was now baffled without trying to dissimulate it. He groaned and passed a hand over his face before turning to lean against the counter.
"Yixing, sometimes you don't know just how bloody much you confuse me."
"Right now, I'm a bit confused by myself as well," Yixing admitted effortlessly and let out a small laugh.
Kris thought he would say something else, but the younger man fell silent after that. Preferring a smiling Yixing to a ruminating one by a milestone, the Economics graduate soon slapped his oven gloves over the counter and cleared his throat to get the other intern's attention:
"You know, we don't even know if those cookies taste good or bad – none of us tried it yet," he noted.
"You're right," the younger man immediately lit up like a firework spark in the night, face illuminated by a meaningful grin, "that's unacceptable; what if the cookies were inedible? We should take a few right now to test them on children in the neighbouring blocks."
"I was rather thinking of just trying one or two ourselves, but sure." Kris sneered without ill intentions. "If you say so."
"I say so," Yixing nodded. "Come on, let's get a few cookies out of this burning hell called oven. And then, grab your jacket."
Perhaps, Kris thought, today was not the day to say everything he had on his mind.
But he could suck it up, and deal with it like a grown-up man.
⚜
⚜
⚜
Sehun mildly wanted to die of shame.
"It's only $2.60, for baby elephants in Africa," Lu Han was hammering down on a mildly offended mother and her son, "don't you care about baby elephants? You don't want your child to become a decent person?"
"Lu Han-"
"If your son grows up to be a human without any feelings for society, what kind of future does this planet have?" Lu Han shouted as the woman swiftly pulled her child along, down the streets of Beverly Hills. "Hey, I'm speaking to you!"
As he noticed a few passing couples throwing them a puzzled glance, Sehun cleared his throat and tried to smile:
"We have an upcoming conthert; pleathe come."
They looked at him with a mild grimace and hurried on their way.
"It's fucking useless," Lu Han groaned, giving a frustrated slap to his basket filled with cookies, "we're not going to sell anything."
"Not if you thcare everyone off before they even get what we're thelling," Sehun lisped resentfully, "you've been inthulting people all morning."
"I need a coffee," Lu Han simply grumbled, looking around them for a place to sit down and buy a drink. "There. Starbucks."
"We haven't thold a thingle cookie yet," Sehun objected.
"We'll do it after coffee," the elder man shook his head and repositioned his snapback. "It's way too early for a weekend right now. I shouldn't even be awake."
Sehun followed him reluctantly. He could barely believe that he had even been anxious about Lu Han's potential behaviour over his unrequited concession of the other day. The elder man had been nothing short of obtuse so far, not mentioning their Wednesday incident one single time, as if he had already forgotten about it, and spending the entire morning just complaining about every living thing under the sun – which included Sehun's company. Not only that, but Lu Han was a terrible salesman. He was aggressive, blunt and intolerant. Every time he talked to someone on the street, it sounded like an invitation to battle.
As they entered the Starbucks, Sehun rubbed his hands over his face for the fifteenth time.
"You're like a rabid dog," he said to the elder man as he headed for the counter, "thtop talking to people ath if they owe you money."
"Look, if you want to complain about how I do things, you should at least be able to sell something yourself," Lu Han scoffed as the barista walked towards them:
"Hello, anything to drink?"
"Double expresso shot," the Media & Communications graduate said, then gave Sehun a twitch of the eyebrow while reaching for his wallet.
The younger man widened his eyes.
"What?"
"Order what you want," Lu Han nodded at the barista.
"Oh, uh...an expretho macchiato, pleathe," Sehun managed.
Lu Han placed a ten dollar bill on the counter wordlessly, and Sehun blinked, wanting to say something about paying for himself, when the Starbucks employee smiled at Lu Han again:
"Anything to eat?"
"No, thanks," the intern shook his head.
"What about your little brother, then?"
"Hith what?" Sehun exclaimed in a squeaking voice.
Lu Han immediately covered his mouth and let out a weird muffled noise, which suspiciously sounded like laughter when Sehun thought about it, but he was too flabbergasted to chide on it. Instead he looked at the barista and blurted out in vexation:
"I'm not hith little brother!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, it's just – I'm really sorry," she quickly apologized, "the two of you looked so similar, the way you spoke and everything..."
"Hang on, the way we speak is similar?" Lu Han raised his head with concern now.
"I'm taller than him; if anything I should be hith older brother!" Sehun stammered.
"Look, just forget what I've said," she invited with a tiny laugh, "alright? So, um, anything to eat?"
"No, thanks."
"What about you, sir?" she smiled at Sehun who glared back.
"Nothing either, thank you."
As soon as they got out of the place twenty minutes later, however, he was shaking his head with vehemence:
"I can't believe she thought that. That'th crazy."
"It's pretty damn hilarious, though," Lu Han cackled as they walked back towards his car, parked between a truck and a sports car down the alley, "apart from the 'similar way of speaking' part. There is no way that I speak similarly to you. No way."
"Bethides, how did she even know I wath the younger one?" Sehun added with a sense of dread. "Do I look that much younger? Ith that what everyone thinkth when they look at uth? That I'm your younger thibling?"
"What would you rather have them think, that we're a couple?"
"N-no."
He thought maybe Lu Han was going to be angry at him, but the elder man simply smirked:
"Good, 'cause that ain't happening."
Feeling cheeky today, Sehun stopped walking and stared dead into Lu Han's eyes.
"Why not?"
"Why –" the elder intern snorted, "Hmm, let me see. Well, firstly, I regret to inform you, but I only date very sexy people and you're really not sexy at all."
"So ith Mintheok thexy?" Sehun challenged.
"Minseok is hella sexy, but that is not going to work," Lu Han stuck a finger up, almost getting Sehun's nose in the process. He then turned away towards the car again, "not going to work because Minseok's straight. I asked. But that is not the problem. The problem is – you are not sexy for two cents."
"I could be."
"You really couldn't," Lu Han opened the car door on the passenger's seat and pointed at it with a smile, "now get in the car, we're trying a different avenue."
Sehun almost obeyed, lowering his head with a grumble, when suddenly an impulse he had not even seen coming took hold of him, and he backed away from the passenger seat like cattle from the slaughterhouse. Lu Han gave him an incredulous look.
"What's your problem?"
"I'm going to drive."
"You can't drive," the elder man cocked an eyebrow.
"I actually do have an international lithenthe," Sehun blurted out, "I jutht don't feel comfort- um...anyways. I'm going to drive."
"Dude, there's no way I'm letting you touch my-" Lu Han broke off when the younger man snatched his keys and headed for the driver's seat, "Hey!"
Sehun slipped behind the steering wheel before Lu Han could come around, and hurriedly closed the door. The Australian graduate shook his head and knocked on the window. When the other intern failed to unlock the door, he walked around and slipped into the passenger seat:
"Is that how you're trying to show you're sexy?" he snapped, "by driving when you don't know how to drive?"
"I know how to drive, I jutht thaid I had an international lithenthe," Sehun grunted, fumbling with the car keys. "I jutht never uthed it in the Thtates."
"Have you ever used it anywhere outside the UK?"
"...No," Sehun mumbled.
"Say that again?"
"I thaid, no," the younger man dropped, groping around some more, "hey, ith thith car a manual?"
"Yes."
"Huh," the Oxford graduate faced the front and the car rumbled.
"Why?" Lu Han frowned worriedly.
"I haven't driven a manual in a while..."
"Dude," the elder man immediately reared, "get out of that seat, man. You're going to get us into a car accident or something."
"No, I'm not. Thtop dithtracting me. How do I reverthe...?"
"Wait, no. No. Don't do that-" Lu Han began, then jumped when Sehun crashed the car into the sports car behind, which immediately began to wail in alarm. "Oh, my fucking God."
Sehun faltered at his own blunder, mortified, before hastily following Lu Han as the elder man rushed out of the car to check the damage done.
They had barely started to inspect the car hood when the owners of the sports car arrived down the street, two hulking young men in polo shirts – students by the looks of it, who pointed at them with an accusatory finger:
"Dude, what the fuck did you guys do to my car?" the first one said, lowering his sunglasses and his cup of iced drink, "that's a brand new car, you fuckers, you better pay the God damn damages-"
"Calm down," Lu Han instantly raised one hand, "calm down, alright? I just looked, your vehicle didn't suffer any damage. It's just the alarm that went off."
"If there is a single scratch..."
"There is no scratch," Lu Han pacified them while sounding exasperated, "Jesus Christ. My car is the one that got a bump, okay? Not yours."
"You better not try to lie," the bulky student growled, "because if I find anything..."
"He thaid there wath nothing," Sehun stood up in front of Lu Han and stated angrily, "bethides, even if there wath, I'd be the one paying the damageth, so you should be talking to me. Not him."
The two students glanced at him with an arched eyebrow:
"What does your little brother want, now?"
"I'm not hith little brother," Sehun glowered, outraged.
"Dude, learn how to speak before you try to sound menacing," the first student laughed this time, and something seemed to click in Lu Han's head, because he dismissively shoved Sehun backwards and approached the two brutes again:
"Now wait a minute. If you're starting to make fun of that dumb fuck's lisp, then you're plainly looking to get your face smashed."
Sehun frowned. "Who'th a dumb fuck?"
The second guy only snickered: "What so he even needs his older brother to stand up for him now?"
"I'm dead serious," Lu Han informed him.
"Okay, so the baby needs his older brother to talk for him because he can't talk, but the older brother actually finds his little brother to be retarded as well," the first student guffawed. "Right. This is the saddest thing I've ever seen..."
And then, Lu Han abruptly pulled back and threw his head forward again, forehead smashing against the other man's skull with a dead sound that caused Sehun's jaw to drop in shock. The hulky young man fell on the ground with a stream of swearwords, his beverage splashing all over the concrete, and the second guy stepped back with a flabbergasted squeak.
Lu Han seemed more furious than in pain, pointing a finger at the two students in turn:
"You two better get the fuck out of here before I decide to pummel you to the ground," he warned. "You hear me? Get the fuck out."
"Lu Han, wait...L..."
"Get. The. Fuck. Out." Lu Han articulated heatedly as the two students scrambled to their feet and got into their car, not even caring for the spilled drink on the floor.
As soon as they drove away, Lu Han straightened his T-shirt and shook his head in disbelief:
"Jesus Christ. Kids nowadays."
"You didn't have to do that," Sehun mumbled in mortification, "but thankth."
"They don't get to piss me off, act like self-entitled douchebags, and then expect to get away without me kicking their sorry ass," the elder intern laughed coldly as he inspected the scratch on his car and whispered: "son of a bitch, that car actually knocks harder than it looks."
"I'll pay for it, for real."
"We'll settle that later," Lu Han grunted and opened the door on the passenger's side: "now, please get in the car and stay away from the steering wheel, princess."
"I'm not a printheth."
"Not a printheth," Lu Han repeated exaggeratedly and Sehun scowled at him:
"You're making fun of my lithp too."
"I'm entitled to because I caused it," he stuck out his tongue while the younger intern took his seat with a vicious little squint of the eyes.
"Thon of a bit'th," Sehun whispered.
"You want me to knock off that second front tooth, too?"
"...No thank you."
Lu Han shut the door and walked over to the driver's seat. As soon as he sat down, however, he reached over and got a huge cooler box from beneath the backseat, which he placed between Sehun and himself, before opening it and drawing out a whole range of ice lollies and cones.
The younger intern offered him a bewildered look as the other man gestured towards him with the sticks in hand:
"What?"
"Choose something," Lu Han nodded, "I got them as, like, a celebration for whenever we finished our cookie sales today, but considering that we're getting nowhere near that, might as well..."
"Thankth, you didn't have to," Sehun faltered.
"No, you're right, there's a lot of things I don't have to do; but I feel like it. So take one before it all melts."
The Oxford student indulged, picking a Solero, and Lu Han instantly gave him a look.
"Solero, really?"
"What, are you even going to judge me on that?"
"No, I'm just saying..." the elder man shrugged and chose a cone himself before putting the rest in the ice box.
They ate in silence for a while, and then Lu Han, who was looking out of the windshield with a pensive air on his face, suddenly said:
"See, nothing's changed much in the end."
Sehun's head instantly shot up to stare at him. That statement made a lot of sense out of their morning, all of a sudden; because, he realised, that was it. It was Lu Han's primitive way of patching things up between them and telling him that it was okay – okay for Sehun to like him even though it was one-sided, and okay because it wouldn't make things awkward between them if he continued to.
Sehun sucked on his ice pop without replying, and without looking at Lu Han in the face. The cold actually hurt his teeth, but he didn't mind it all that much.
"Okay, now, next problem." Lu Han said as he put one hand against the steering wheel and heaved a bottomless sigh: "How the fuck do we sell those damn cookies?"
Sehun considered their predicament for a little while licking his lips, then the idea dawned on him like a blooming bud in his mind.
"I have an idea," he declared, tapping Lu Han on the shoulder, "find a thity square. A plaza of thome thort... thomewhere with a lot of people pathing through."
"And then what? Start juggling with the cookies?"
"No."
"Look, I'll tell you what, I refuse to sing. No matter what."
"No thinging, I promithe," Sehun guaranteed. "Jutht trutht me."
The elder man only offered him a half-interested glance, and eventually bit into the biscuit part of his cone to hold on to it while he turned the ignition on.
"Alright," he stated, "let's give this a try."
⚜
Kyungsoo didn't know what to expect when he arrived in Chanyeol's living room after being summoned on a Saturday afternoon, but it certainly wasn't this.
"You want me to do what?"
"Look, I'm so sorry for asking you all of a sudden," Chanyeol explained, as Jongdae happily fidgeted on the keyboard behind him and Yixing looked for a place to plug in his amplifier, "but you're the only one who can be our lead vocalist. I mean, Lu Han is adamant that he won't take part in the on-stage part of things, Kris is willing but his voice is a nightmare, and Minseok refuses to admit that he can sing. He keeps pretending to make these awful screeching noises whenever I ask him to hum his favourite song as a try-out, it's horrible."
"What makes you think that I can sing?" Kyungsoo shook his head incredulously.
"Because, you were specially recommended by Jongin yesterday, after work hours," Chanyeol replied. "He vouched for you like...three thousand times."
Kyungsoo instantly felt a disagreeable warmth creeping up his cheeks and had to bit on his tongue not to show it. Dear Lord; there went the oh, so annoying blood vessels that could not control their influx of blood in the right place at the right moment. What had these past few weeks done to his reputation as a scary dark lord? He was losing his touch, this was a disgrace...
"Kyungsoo," Chanyeol called him back to earth.
"Yes," he shot back very calmly, his features a marble statue, "well. What did Jongin say exactly?"
"He said you were an amazing singer, and that if we didn't make you sing for the band, it would be the biggest mistake we could make for our concert. An outright catastrophe, he said."
"Well, that's um, very kind of him, and I don't think I deserve the compliment, although he is very nice for saying it. I hope you'll tell him that."
"Why don't just tell him yourself?" the NYU graduate blinked.
"For the same reason that he didn't actually ask me if I wanted to sing for this concert or not," Kyungsoo said through pursed lips, then looked around at the oversized flat and Chanyeol's friends, who were now starting to play a few notes on the bass and guitar, "what about Baekhyun, then?"
"Uhh..."
"I've heard that guy sing "Pretty Woman" as he walked down the aisles in the Business Tech department. He doesn't sound half as bad."
"No, he doesn't. He sings great." Chanyeol nodded, looking down at his thumb, "it's just..."
Kyungsoo watched with mild consternation as the elder man's face turned from eagerness to bad reminiscing to gloom to bottomless depression. He eventually took the NYU graduate into pity and rolled his eyes.
"Alright, I'll sing," he dropped. "I just can't guarantee that it'll sound decent for a concert, though."
"That's awesome," Chanyeol instantly brightened up. "Thanks a lot. I'm sure you'll sound great."
"You need to sort out your problems with Baekhyun," Kyungsoo informed him instead. "I mean, this couple of days with you guys in the department have just been awkward as fuck. Do you know that this is not elementary school heartbreak? You're twenty-one for Christ's sake."
"It's only been two days..."
"Two days is too much," Kyungsoo stated with a glare. "I'm not going to act as the messenger between you guys and pass him your comprehensive "how-to-do-IT" notes forever, Chanyeol."
"I just promised him that I'd give him some space..." the elder man panicked. "It's only temporary. I'm just leaving him some room to breathe before he's ready to face me as a friend again. We agreed that it wouldn't make things awkward between us."
"It's not working."
"It's temporary," Chanyeol assured once more, nodding to himself. "He...he just needs some time."
Kyungsoo could only look to the ceiling again, wanting to remark that it was probably Chanyeol himself who 'needed some time' more than anyone else, but much too tired to argue with the elder man on this topic. He smiled at Yixing when the Chinese intern cheerfully waved at him, guitar over his neck and shoulder, and then studied Chanyeol with an expectant nod:
"Alright, then. What songs are we doing?"
"Well, I've made a small selection. But of course you're free to add things as we go along...I thought of things we could re-arrange as a band, and came up with 'Thinking Out Loud', 'No One Else Like You', 'Staring at the Stars'..."
"We should put an Adam Lambert song somewhere in there," Jongdae slipped past with a shrewd face, "just saying."
"Were you the one who suggested 'Something I Need'?" Kyungsoo suddenly asked as he pointed at one of the names on the list, and Chanyeol peeked up at him:
"Nah, that's Jongin's idea. He suggested it when I talked to him the other day... But hey, it's a really good song."
Before he could stop it, a small smile graced Kyungsoo's lips.
"Actually, he shouldn't be taking very long..." Chanyeol glanced at his watch and the younger man stared at him:
"What, he's coming?"
The doorbell rang at the same time, and Jongdae, who had just come out of the bathroom, pulled it open, allowing Jongin's head to peek through.
"Hello," the law student smiled in amusement and displayed a pile of carton boxes and plastic bags in his hands, "I brought pizza and coke, for those who like that sort of thing."
"Oh my God," Yixing exclaimed delightedly, "you're a saint."
"We haven't even started rehearsing," Chanyeol grimaced while the Chinese intern waltzed across the room to take the food away from their new audience.
Kyungsoo only gazed at Jongin in pure wonder, blinking stupidly as the younger man showed him a leer and walked up to him.
"Are you, um, here to watch the practice session?"
"I wouldn't have missed it for the world," Jongin simply responded with a smile as he threw his jacket on the nearest chair.
⚜
Lu Han and Sehun arrived at the plaza around two in the afternoon, under a beating sun and sluggish air, which caused Lu Han to almost take off his hat, before the younger man pushed the basket of cookies into his hands.
"What?"
"I need your cooler box," Sehun clarified and picked it up in his arms before getting out of the car, "okay, here we go..."
"Are you planning on selling the ice cream as well?" Lu Han cocked an eyebrow, "might actually work better than cookies, considering the weather. We should have talked to the other guys about that."
Sehun failed to reply. With a perplexed frown, Lu Han followed him as he walked to the centre of the square and placed the ice box on the floor, before suddenly climbing on top of it under the Australian intern's dumbfounded eyes.
"What are you doing? You look ridiculous."
"Do you think I'm very vithible, though?" Sehun inquired instead with a concerned look.
"Damn right, you're visible," he hissed, "you look moronic as well. Get off there, this is embarrassing. There are tons of people here."
"I know, that'th the point. Can you put the cookieth on the floor with our pothters on it?"
"Like this?" Lu Han complied reluctantly, still feeling slightly mortified.
"Yeah. Now thtep away."
"What the hell are you trying to do?"
"Work English Literature magic," Sehun responded while clearing his throat.
Lu Han stepped back with a dubious glower, when with a clear voice and woeful tone, the Oxford student suddenly began to blare:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow – creepth in thith petty pathe from day to day, to the latht thyllable of recorded time; and all our yethterdayth have lighted foolth the way to duthty death," he waved with his hand, "Out, out, brief candle! Life'th but a walking shadow, a poor player, that thtruts and frets his hour upon the thtage, ..."
Lu Han looked around him while wanting to crawl six feet underground, and sure enough, a few people passing by were already pausing to watch the booming young man and his wide dramatic moves, rhymes popping out of his mouth like a bubbles:
"It ith a tale told by an idiot," Sehun declaimed dolefully, "full of thound and fury – thignifying nothing!"
"He's reciting Shakespeare," a middle-aged woman observed as she stopped by with her husband.
"It's Macbeth," someone else commented, standing next to Lu Han to watch. "I haven't heard this since eighth grade."
"Thou cometht to uthe thy tongue; thy story quickly," Sehun leaned towards another passer-by as he delivered his lines, and the person quickly chuckled as they walked away.
By now a small group of people were slowly gathering around the Oxford student and his ice box, and as some of them noticed the basket on the ground, they stepped into the circle to throw in a coin or two.
"She would have died later anyway," Sehun discoursed dramatically, "That newth was bound to come thomeday. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. The dayth creep slowly along until the end of time."
"Is that your younger brother?"
All of a sudden, a tourist and his wife had slithered behind Lu Han and made him turn with a jolt.
He stared at them blankly, wondering what to say, while they smiled expectantly at him:
"Uuuuuuuh..." he pointed at the other intern on the ice box. "Him?"
"Yes. He's rather daring," the woman said and smiled encouragingly. "is he your little brother?"
"Oh yeah, right, ha ha," Lu Han nodded with a troubled laugh, then glanced at the orating Sehun, and back at the tourists again. "He's sixteen," he dropped with a serious face.
"Oh, my. It takes some guts to do stuff like that at this age."
"Yeah, yeah, he is really into it," the elder intern agreed with conviction.
"Not to be rude or anything, but is it me or he has a funny way with his...I mean."
"Oh! Well, uh, you see..." Lu Han thought about it for a second, hesitated, then blurted out all at once, "he's got a speech impediment."
"Oh...I see," the couple looked contrite.
"Yeah, he's got that since he was small," the intern said to everyone who was standing close to him, "but we always told him to do whatever he wanted to do. That's why he's up there. He loves acting. He wants to be go into drama school when he's older, he's just that good. Now," he pointed at the box, "he's pursuing his dreams while standing on that ice box. He's going for it. Right there."
"I think it's great," a smartly dressed old man remarked, and stepped forward to throw a five dollar bill into the basket beneath Sehun's feet. A few people immediately followed suit, while Sehun placed a hand over his chest:
"â€â€ÂArm, arm, and out! If thith which he avoucheth doeth appear, there ith nor flying henthe nor tarrying here. I 'gin to be aweary of the thun, and wish th' ethtate o' th' world were now undone ."
"You can have a cookie too, if you want," Lu Han explained to the tourists who were still standing next to him. "We're doing this as a charity project. This is like a prelude to the concert we're putting up in town."
"A concert? When's that?"
"Um, in two weeks' time," he bit his lower lip, "but I mean...you guys are travelling, right? You probably wouldn't be here."
"Oh, actually, we're staying a month," the man laughed.
Lu Han opened his mouth.
"Ah."
"We'd be interested to come," the wife kindly smiled, "do you have a flyer or something?"
"How much did we get...?" Sehun asked as he finally stepped down from his box a good two and a half hours later, after finishing half of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"You," Lu Han emphasized as he flicked through the coins and in the basket, "have earned us a hundred and thirty-two dollars exactly."
"That'th... not a lot."
"Yeah, but it's only five o'clock," Lu Han smirked, while handing him a bottle of water, "you can still give us a round two, can't you?"
"I haven't done monologues thinthe high thchool," the other man confessed before drinking a long gulp.
"I'd be more worried if you did that on a daily basis, to be honest," he snorted, then kicked an empty bottle on the ground. "How the hell do you know all that by heart...? Like, you don't even blink when all that crazy stuff sprouts out of your mouth."
"English Literature," Sehun simply looked down his nose. "Thee? Told you it wath useful."
Lu Han sneered, giving him a soft punch on the shoulder.
"Do you know how to recite all that stuff in another language, too? French, perhaps?"
"I do thpeak French, actually. I learned it at thcool," he sniffled, "Je parle un petit peu le franthais."
Lu Han smiled against his will.
"Dude, I'm pretty sure that's not how you say it."
"Yeth it ith. Bonjour, Paris. J'aime les baguettes."
"Did you just say you like baguettes?" the elder man laughed out loud, then shook his head in disapproval. "That's so racist."
"How ith it rathist, baguettes aren't even people."
"It's discriminatory against loafs," he listed gravely. "And toast..."
"That doethn't even make thenth," Sehun scowled.
"And croissants, for that matter..."
"Croithants are French too!"
Lu Han simply cackled, holding his sides as he saw the younger man's bemused expression. After a break, he eventually deigned to smile with honesty, the remains of a chuckle still hanging by the corner of his lips.
"Listen, I admit it," he started and glanced at his shoes, "what you did just now, with the Shakespeare, it was...well, it was pretty cool."
Sehun's face instantly illuminated with a smug grin.
"You mean to thay it was bloody thexy."
"Ehh, no, I don't think I ever mean to say it was 'bloody thexy', but yes, okay. Maybe it was a tiny little bit sexy," he gestured with his index and thumb, pressing them together with a sheepish smile, "like, a tiny bit. Just this much."
Sehun shrugged:
"That'th good enough for me."
"You're really easily satisfied, aren't you."
"No," Sehun shook his head, flashing him a deadly serious gaze, "I jutht lower my thtandards thpecially for you."
Clicking his tongue in annoyance, Lu Han smacked the younger man on the back of the head with his basket and scampered off under Sehun's lisping protest.
⚜
⚜
"Did you come alone, or are you accompanied?"
Kris raised his eyes to the sight of a Yixing on the basketball court of the dorms, holding a ball under his arm and wearing a beautiful grin on his face.
He cocked an eyebrow and unfolded his legs.
"Wow, seriously? Pick-up lines at two in the morning on a weekend?"
"What are you talking about, that's the perfect time for pick-up lines." The younger Chinese intern smiled at him. "I saw you sitting outside on your own from my window."
Kris did not reply in time, too busy watching the other man's laugh lines and emotive eyes. He almost failed to react when Yixing abruptly tossed the ball into his hands.
"Come on," he said, skipping on his feet and bending his back to warm up, a sly smirk gradually lighting up his features, "I came down specially for you. So let's not waste time. Play."
"Why were you spying on me in the first place?"
"I don't know," Yixing shrugged, then clapped his hands, "you coming?"
Kris dribbled a few times slowly, as a sneer overtook him:
"You won't say I didn't warn you."
"Why? Are you really good?" Yixing tilted his head in amusement.
Without answering, Kris rushed forward, dribbling quickly across the field, about to bypass Yixing when the younger man brought his body towards the ground and stole the ball away from him.
Kris spun around with a blink, and the other intern laughed out loud:
"Hah," he grinned, letting the ball bounce crisply against the ground, "who's surprised, now?"
With a disbelieving smirk, Kris dived and swerved to Yixing's side, who dodged him with the ball. Instantly, he braked on his feet, skittered to Yixing's other side and smacked it out of the younger man's hand, before dribbling towards the goal and slamming the ball through the net in one smooth jump.
Yixing whistled as he walked back with the ball under his arm.
"Impressive, Mr. Wu Yifan," he beamed gently. "You've got other tricks like that?"
"You're not too bad yourself." Kris snorted, "Are you playing seriously right now?"
"Are you?" the younger man smiled.
Kris stared into his eyes, inhaling deeply.
"I am."
Yixing observed him calmly for a while, completely still, then pursed his lips.
"Come and get it, if you can," the elder man challenged tranquilly, slowly dribbling from one hand to the other.
With a sudden light in his gaze, Yixing lunged forward, snatched the ball from Kris after a feint, dribbled, and took two large strides to mark a gracious three-pointer under the elder man's riveted eyes.
As the ball fell back onto the ground and bounced off with an airy sound, Yixing turned around to look at him with an elated smile.
"I was serious just now," he said.
"I know," Kris smiled back.
The ball rolled off the field, knocked against the watching stands, and slowly came to a stop.
I only just realised that I haven't updated this in...about a week. Oops.