*****WARNING: DOUBLE UPDATE! GO READ CHAPTER 25 FIRST!*****
Chapter 26 – In Which We See the New Year In
Deer Luhan,
To be honest, I’d still swap a drunk one of my university mates for a drunk Chen any day. He’s irritating as f*ck when he’s wasted, but it’s kind of adorable and funny.
Leigh
The night almost started badly the moment we stepped out of the high-rise building the dorm was in, Tao hiding the electric blue streaks in his hair under a beanie. Kris, now the colour of a normal human being, slung an arm around my shoulder.
“Right, Luhan, this is your territory. Where do you reckon we should go first?”
I looked up at him in alarm, my mind going blank. Kris had been perfectly comfortable suggesting a couple of bars just around the corner the last time we’d been out, so I didn’t see why I was supposed to be calling the shots. And also, how in the name of anything on earth was I supposed to be able to suggest a decent place to go drinking when I’d only left the dorm three times since I’d arrived?
“We could always go to the usual place—” Xiumin proposed with a quick glance at me, and I nearly melted in relief.
Until Kris turned to him with a scowl. “It’s f*cking New Year’s Eve: we need a line-up of at least four decent places to go to before we turn in.”
I was kind of annoyed Kris hadn’t at the very least given me prior warning, say, when he’d turned up with the plea for me to go to the dermatologist, so I could have asked Luhan for advice, and I reached into my pocket for Luhan’s phone to complain about the short notice.
It was only when I was holding it in my hand that I remembered I’d transferred the list of Important Places to Luhan onto the phone just in case I needed them. I opened it up and saw that the one right at the top was the dermatologist. Whoops. Right below that was a name he’d starred as his favourite restaurant.
I went into the messaging app.
If you’d told me earlier, I could have booked tables, I wrote. And your left ear is still orange, by the way.
Kris looked embarrassed when I showed him and he ducked away to fix his ear. I puffed out my cheeks and returned to the list. Xiumin and Lay came and peered over my shoulders.
“That one,” Lay murmured in my ear, catching the scrolling screen with his thumb and pointing to another starred restaurant halfway down the list. “We’ve been there before – Lu— uh, you’re kind of a special customer there, so you can ring up and get seats any time. We’ll go there for food.”
“Lay,” Xiumin muttered back to him, “she can’t talk.”
Lay plucked the phone out of my hand and went to the contacts list. “I’ll ring. Look for bars while I do that.”
I tugged on his sleeve as he prepared to make the call, and Xiumin scoffed and snatched the phone back for me. “We can’t do that while you’re ringing them! Here, take down the number and call from your phone.”
“Jeez, this is taking ages,” Chen grumbled with a loud yawn. I looked up at him and pointed towards Kris with an unamused expression. Kris held his hands up.
“Hey, why are you shunting all the blame to me?”
“Maybe because it’s your fault this isn’t organised?” Xiumin suggested. “It was your idea to go out.”
“Hey, I’m Canadian! You can’t expect me not to celebrate a national holiday!”
His appeal to nationality had a sudden lump springing to my throat and I shakily handed the phone to Xiumin before I could drop it. Kris was kind of right: we could no more expect him not to go out for New Year’s than somebody could expect me not to watch the fireworks from the rooftop of my house as the years changed over. It was going to be the first time in my life that I wasn’t seeing them, and an abrupt rush of homesickness hit me. At least in Korea for Christmas I’d been able to speak to people, and I’d had a conversation with my family and with Abbie and I’d even seen Ryan and eaten turkey. Plus I was Korean, so celebrating a Korean Christmas really wasn't that far removed. But this time, things were that much more alien, and it was going to be much harder to join in the fun and games when I couldn’t even say anything.
“You all right, Luhan?” Xiumin asked me.
Pulling myself together, I gave him a wan smile and nodded. He didn’t look convinced.
“Luhan,” said Lay, “they need proof it’s you, like a credit card or passport or registered diner number or something—”
Registered diner number? I pulled out Luhan’s Chinese credit card and gave it to Lay so that he could read the details over the phone.
“Can we get going?” Tao spoke up, shuffling from leg to leg and hunching his shoulders against the cold.
“Well,” said Lay, handing me back the credit card, “we’re due dinner at quarter to nine. Remember that super snazzy place LuLu took us to when we finished Mama promotions?”
That was all it took for Chen’s jaw to drop open and him to start drooling.
“Oh my God, Luhan, marry me. That scorpion dish I had then was the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.”
It was extremely difficult not to shoot him a disgusted look. I had enough trouble understanding snails and frogs legs, and I’d actually eaten both (though I will maintain until my dying day that the frogs were just like intensely flavoured sea-reared chicken and not frogs), but scorpion? Was he insane?
“Uh, Chen,” said Lay, “since it looks like your affections lie more with the scorpion than with Luhan, shouldn’t you be looking for one of them to ask down the aisle?” He blinked innocently a couple of times and everybody burst out laughing, Chen included. I gave a small smile, undecided as to whether or not Lay was naively serious about that question or whether his poker face was even better than Sehun’s. And to be honest, the image of a scorpion in a bridal dress was as funny as it was disturbing.
“Luhan, how are these three?” Xiumin asked, waving Luhan’s phone under my nose. “I know you like this one—” he pointed to the top one, “—and I suppose we can introduce the others to our secret hideout once they’re drunk enough not to remember the way there. And the other one’s just round the corner from there, right?” He winked at me.
Xiumin, you are a god among men, I thought at him, and I nodded without even looking. If Xiumin recognised them, that hopefully meant I wouldn’t have to lead the way.
The others cheered as Xiumin read off the name of the first one and Tao finally tugged his hands out of his pockets as he moved away from where he’d been sheltering in the doorway.
“Leigh,” Xiumin whispered in my ear, “I hope you’re good at map reading. I know the first place is nearby, but it’s not really far enough to take a taxi and I can’t navigate for sh*t.”
Chen’s desire to marry a scorpion suddenly didn’t seem that strange: I was beginning to feel an unusual affection towards the Sims-like maps of Baidu and the horrific torment of my Gold Duke of Edinburgh award expedition across the Lake District in the worst rainstorms in seven years.
It was kind of hard to make it look like I knew my way there rather than the reality of me constantly checking the map and street signs. I opened up the message app and started texting Sehun out of nervous habit when Chen strolled up alongside me and struck up conversation.
“You gonna drink anything tonight?” he asked me. “You barely had five shots last time.”
I wrinkled my nose and discreetly checked the name of the street we were crossing before making a surreptitious flick through the apps to the map and back again.
Somebody has to take you children home, I typed into the message box.
“Children?” Chen scoffed. “I could drink triple the amount you had and still get home by myself.”
Raising an eyebrow, I cleared the text box and wrote: CHALLENGE.
“You’re on,” Chen told me with a grin.
You’re getting…
I hesitated, wondering what the Chinese was for “you’re getting your stomach pumped”, and at that moment, the phone buzzed with an incoming text from Sehun.
Hyung, what the hell?
I looked down at the screen and realised that I’d accidentally sent my first reply to Chen to him.
You’re going to end up getting your stomach pumped, I typed for Chen’s benefit in Korean before pressing the return key. Sorry, I wrote to Sehun. Trying to communicate with Chen.
The message came back quicker than I’d expected.
You’re obviously failing if you’re sending ME all the messages. And what challenge?
Half a second later, a new one came through.
Stomach pumping? Are you guys planning on getting wasted tonight?
I decided it was politic not to answer that and went back to the map app, obeying its instructions to take a left and dragging Chen with me.
Unfortunately, the non-answer was a red flag to Sehun.
You guys ARE going out drinking tonight, aren’t you?
Hyung, answer me.
Hey, are you sure it’s a good idea to be drinking?
HYUNG. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LET A DROP OF ALCOHOL PASS YOUR LIPS. IT’S DANGEROUS.
“Wow,” observed Chen. “Isn’t he getting a little too protective?”
Shut up, Chen, I typed. A slim finger reached across me and pressed the send button. I gaped at him in horror and then whacked him hard on the shoulder. Laughing, he skittered out of my reach.
It was a good thing he did, because Sehun’s temper appeared to have cracked in the next text.
DON’T YOU TELL ME TO SHUT UP, YOUNG LADY. WHAT IF SOMEBODY FINDS OUT BECAUSE YOU’RE DRUNK?
He was right. I made a mental note not to drink more than a couple of glasses of anything, and I was about to send him a message to that effect when a new one came through.
OMG, I’m so sorry – delete that, please. Chen hasn’t seen, has he?
I deleted it.
Relax, he didn’t, I told him. I’m planning to remain sober on the grounds somebody has to get them home. I don’t want to pass out on the streets like you guys sometimes do in Seoul.
I’d reached the next street to turn into before he replied, and I thought that perhaps he might have been embarrassed.
Text me when you turn in? he asked, changing the subject completely. I want to know you’re safe.
He’d even added a smiley face. Sehun never added smiley faces.
Aw, are you getting all emotional? I teased.
There was another long pause.
“Luhan!” I heard Xiumin calling behind me, but at that moment, another text popped up.
I was being serious about the alcohol.
Somebody grabbed my arm and spun me around.
“Seriously?” panted Chen, reaching for the phone. “Who’s so interesting you walk right past the place because you’re texting?”
I tried to keep the phone out of his reach, but he was quicker than me, and I only just managed to lock it before he took it from me, but not before he’d had a brief glimpse at the screen.
“Just what has been going on between you and Sehun for the last month?” he demanded, handing the phone back with a disappointed expression. “It’s like you’re dating or married or something.”
I put a good two paces between us before unlocking the phone again.
You’re in a real wedding mood tonight, aren’t you? I asked him. I’m sure I know a seamstress around here who could make a suitable wedding dress for that scorpion.
Although I’d decided to let Chen off his fifteen shots or equivalent until after we’d eaten, we still all left the first place tipsy. Chen and Tao had used up forfeits they held on me to insist I join in a game of beer pong, and they were both considerably more practiced with it than I was. Xiumin had had the good sense to step in after I’d had to drain the second pint and told them that I wasn’t allowed to drink more because of the concussion I’d had. My mum’s fragmented plate was really proving to be useful.
“Speaking of forfeits,” Kris said as we clambered into a large taxi to go to the restaurant, “we should sort them out while we eat and then carry them out after. And then we can watch fireworks.” He hiccupped. “Somewhere.”
We received several scandalised glances from well-dressed diners when we entered the restaurant in our far more casual outfits, but then a girl eating with her family by the window stood up and started screaming like she was having a fit and everybody lost interest in us.
Unfortunately, that only lasted for about five seconds, when it became clear that we were the reason the girl was so impassioned, and one of the waiters hurried away from the couple he was serving mid-order to take us to a private backroom where we couldn’t be disturbed or cause a disturbance. A blissful few days in the M dorm with little contact with the outside world had almost made me forget what fans could be like.
Challenges and forefeits flew around thick and fast as we waited for our food to arrive, ending with our usual fallback when Tao challenged Kris’ drawing skills and he drew a cartoon dragon for us on a paper napkin that looked a little like a confused duck with far too many wings.
“But they’re spikes,” Kris insisted. “They’re obviously spikes.”
“That is still attempting to be a duck,” Tao shot back, just as stubborn.
Lay had his head tilted to one side. “I don’t think it looks like a duck,” he said.
“Thank you—” began Kris, but Lay tilted his head to the other side.
“Doesn’t particularly look like a dragon, either,” he said. “I think it’s a dinosaur.”
“That is not me,” Chen countered firmly. Lay looked between the napkin and Chen’s face, and then suddenly grinned.
“Challenge.”
Kris changed tack immediately. “Lay, I love you,” he said, tears practically brimming in his eyes. “You’re the first one who’s identified one of my drawings for what it actually is.”
“I’m sorry,” said Chen, jabbing a finger at the image, “but that is clearly a f*cking dragon, which means Kris has drawn a self-portrait, not me.”
“Nah, I think it looks like you,” Xiumin put in with a straight face, propping his head up on his elbow.
Groaning, Tao knocked his head against the table. “Oh, God, don’t. If he wins this one, it’s another one for him to frame and put on the wall.”
Kris grinned. “What a fabulous idea!”
“No,” said Chen. “You need to win this one to put it up on the wall, and that is not a portrait of me.”
Five heads swivelled in my direction.
“Your decision,” stated Kris, moving to one side as the food arrived to allow the waitress to place it on the table. I raised a quizzical eyebrow and pointed at myself.
“Yes, you,” said Xiumin. “This requires a majority vote.”
I looked between Kris proudly holding up the paper napkin and Chen.
“Lu-ge,” Chen said calmly, “all this boils down to is whether you value me or Kris’ artistic ability more.”
I chewed on my lip for a few seconds, momentarily distracted by the sight of a large dish of prawns being placed very near me, and then reached for Luhan’s phone.
Sorry, Chen, I typed into it. It’s so hard to get a forfeit on you.
“What?” the singer exclaimed in disbelief, running his hands through his hair as Kris punched the air and the others started celebrating with him. “Do you actually hate me?”
I noticed Tao quietly filch the napkin while Kris was distracted so that he could rip it up.
I’ll drop your challenge from fifteen shots to ten, I told Chen, reaching for a prawn. Just grin and bear it. And I nodded to the shredded napkin in a satisfied Tao’s hands. Chen promptly wrapped his arms around the younger boy and swept off his beanie to ruffle his blue-streaked hair.
“At least somebody’s still on my side!”
Yelping, Tao escaped his clutches and snatched the hat back, ramming it onto his head so hard I almost thought he’d burst through it. Then he suddenly froze up.
“Luhan, what the f*ck? Are you trying to kill yourself?”
The table went silent and everybody glanced between me and Tao as he pointed at me in alarm and I paused with the prawn halfway to my mouth. I gazed at Tao, confused. Had he had too much to drink already, or had the trauma about the hair dye caught up to him and started to make him hallucinate?
I popped the prawn into my mouth with a shrug.
It was liked I’d flicked a switch. I just had time to see Lay whisk the prawn dish off the table before Tao and Kris had both leapt over it and knocked me flat.
“Crap, Tao, did you see how much he had to drink?” I heard Kris ask as Tao whacked me in the solar plexus and then rolled me onto my back to pound it as I started coughing.
“No idea,” Tao replied. “Xiumin, can you check for his epipen?”
Dazed and winded, I coughed the prawn out onto a waiting napkin and Tao allowed me to roll back over.
“It's not here,” Xiumin said. I guessed that was one thing Luhan had probably taken with him.
“What were you thinking?” Kris demanded, glaring at me. “You know you’re allergic to seafood!”
I gave a feeble cough, inwardly distraught. I loved prawns, and I hadn’t had the opportunity to eat them for ages. And Luhan was allergic to them? Just my luck. And more importantly, why had nobody told me?
“I did say alcohol and concussion shouldn’t be mixed,” said Xiumin. “Is he all right?”
I pushed myself into a sitting position. Chen’s face was white, and Lay was wincing.
Kris gave me a once-over and handed me a glass of water. “Looks like it,” he said. “But God d*mm*t, Luhan, what if we hadn’t been here?”
Then I could have eaten my prawns in peace, I thought sullenly. Next thing I knew, Luhan was going to turn out to have a phobia of heights or something. If I got banned from going to a theme park with them….
Gingerly, I returned to my seat and reached for the rice instead, but they still eyed me like I was a time bomb for the rest of the meal.
Fortunately, everybody seemed to forget that little incident as soon as we moved on to the next place and the forfeits started to come into play. Xiumin and Lay had both apologised for forgetting that Luhan couldn’t eat seafood, and I happily mimed being a totally static tree in the middle of the dance floor for a full ten minutes from a forfeit Kris had on me. It had produced a number of curious guys as well as girls and the band had commented on my bizarre behaviour when the song had ended.
Seven shots into his challenge from me, Chen started to get silly. The pouts and puppy eyes came out in astonishing force as he whined about being voted a dinosaur on Kris’ behalf, even though we’d decided Lay didn’t get the forfeit as Kris had drawn a dinosaur and Chen wasn’t actually a dinosaur (somehow, the forfeit powers were transferred to Kris instead), and Kris, running out of decent ideas for forfeits after getting Tao to do a semi-strip tease and Lay to open conversation with random passing strangers with a sober “I’m a unicorn, what are you?”, relented and only went as far as forcing him to do the gwiyomi player where I’d taken root as a tree earlier.
After the tenth shot, Chen’s grin could have rivalled the Cheshire Cat’s and he’d decided he wanted revenge over being voted a dinosaur and started challenging each of us on pretty much everything we said.
“Hey!” objected Tao as he tossed aside his fifth can of beer. “I supported you!”
Chen surveyed him through bleary eyes for a moment or so. “Not enough,” he slurred, and stuck his tongue out before wrapping his arms around one of Lay’s and clinging on with a large pout. It was almost too adorable for words.
Though Tao and Lay weren’t in much better condition, Chen had easily drunk the most out of us when we headed out at quarter to midnight, planning on stopping off at a park nearby to watch any firework displays before moving on to the third club on the list, and it showed because he could barely walk.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he insisted, pushing away from Lay, who was trying to steady him, and lurching into a doorpost.
“No you’re not,” Lay sighed, trying to tug him away, but Chen gave a sleepy smile and wrapped his arms as best he could around the wood before planting a large kiss on it with a muffled “thanks for catching me.”
It wasn’t until he started serenading the carcass of a rat next to a drain on the street that I decided action had to be taken. I ducked under one of his flailing arms as he tried (and failed) to balance on the edge of the pavement, and just about managed to get my arms around his torso in time to catch him.
This is hopeless, I texted to Xiumin. I’m taking him home. I’ve already had to steal his beer from him twice this evening: I don’t think I can do it for another three or four hours.
Xiumin looked over his shoulder and dropped back to where I was standing with a lolling Chen in my arms.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “Isn’t New Year kind of big for you?”
I’ll handle it, I wrote, holding the phone up for him. I can watch the fireworks on TV. Chen needs to go home right now, though.
“But don’t you want any help or anything—?”
Go have fun. I’ve dealt with plenty of drunk people at university, and actually, it’ll give me an opportunity to get hold of my parents without the worry of being walked in on.
Xiumin looked from me to Chen, who was now professing his love for a one-legged pigeon that had just landed beside us, and nodded.
“Text me when you get back, then. And make sure he’s okay.”
I smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up before hefting Chen’s near deadweight around my shoulders and dragging him back down the street to an intersection where I’d seen a couple of taxis not that long ago.
Fortunately, Chen didn’t throw up in the taxi on the way back, though the driver had been very reluctant to let us into the vehicle at all. That said, he wouldn’t stop clinging to me, nuzzling his head against my neck every other moment and cooing in a garbled mix of Korean and Chinese that it was unfair of Kris to call him Godzilla and that I looked like a vampiric muntjac and that he didn’t want me to eat him.
Waiting for the lift was almost torturous. It was bad enough keeping Chen upright, but he still thought he had the capacity to move, and he kept waving to the plants in the foyer, pointing to the potted trees and proclaiming them to be love children of EXO’s Tree of Life and asking all the plants (with polite bows, of course) to continue giving their love and support to EXO.
“Because we’re aliens,” he told them as the lift doors finally dinged open and I hauled him inside. “We’re handsome wolf aliens from EXOplanet, so you should listen to us.”
Dear God, I groaned inwardly, though I had to admit I was amused.
The real problem came when I dragged him into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He let go of me and wobbled over to the toilet. For a split second, I froze, unsure whether it was best for me to be in the room to make sure he didn’t pass out with his head in the bowl or whether I should leave, fast, but then he sat down in a heap and started retching.
My university instincts kicked in and I rushed over, but not before he’d caught his t-shirt in the first bout of vomit. I managed to get him to his knees with his head over the bowl and scrambled for a mug and water before returning to pat and massage his back.
He looked a little better once he’d heaved it all up, and he gulped down the proffered water with a murmur of thanks.
“You’re lovely,” he told me in a baby voice as I hustled him along to his room. “Can you stay with me tonight?”
I shook my head. He whined and tugged on the hem of my shirt.
“Pleeeeeeeease?”
Not a chance. I took out Luhan’s phone and typed in I’ll be right next door.
“That’s too far away!” He tugged on my shirt again.
Chen, it’s about three steps.
He pouted at me, but I figured he wouldn’t even notice when he was asleep, so I didn’t really care. Detaching his fingers from my clothing, I reached out with my free hand and opened the door to his room, which he shared with Tao, and, after a lot of coaxing, got him to sit down on the bed while I hunted for his pyjamas. They eventually turned out to be under his pillow.
Okay, I wrote. You just need to change into these and then you can go to sleep.
“Don’t wanna,” he protested. I sighed. He pulled back. Irritated, I reached out for his shirt.
At that, he crossed his arms over his chest and gave a whine, scooting further away and shaking his head.
“You’re going to steal my favourite t-shirt!”
No I’m not.
“Yes you are! I know you are – you’re going to take it off me!”
Chen, it’s covered in vomit. I’m just going to put it in the laundry basket.
He eyed me suspiciously.
“Promise?”
I sighed again and held out my pinkie finger. He looked at it for a moment and then shyly shook his head, twisting himself from side to side like a five-year-old. I could have sworn I saw a blush creeping to his cheeks.
“I don’t wanna,” he said, reverting to that oh-so-adorable baby voice. “I don’t wanna strip.”
But his pinkie still wrapped around mine.
“Now you can’t steal my t-shirt. It’s a promise.”
I reached out to help him get the shirt off so that I could carry out the promise and put it in the laundry basket in the corner, but he withdrew again, this time with a coy little grin.
Perplexed and frustrated, I returned to the phone.
Chen, for the love of God, we’re both men in here. Just get your clothes off.
“Challenge,” he pouted. “I don’t wanna strip on my own.”
I’d had enough. Tucking the phone into my pocket, I lunged at him. He shrieked and started giggling when I pinned him down to the bed, but I still managed to wrestle his top off him – and boy, were his biceps beautiful – and lob it into the open laundry basket. A couple of minutes later, I’d managed to force him into his pyjamas and tuck him into bed.
GOOD NIGHT, I wrote firmly, turning him onto his side in case he started vomiting again, and planting a kiss on his cheek when he pointed to it expectantly.
But as I got up, he rolled back over with a cheeky grin.
“Your turn!” he announced. “You haven’t stripped yet!”
I decided it was best to ignore him.
Unfortunately, even in his drunken state, he was still pretty quick. Before I knew quite what had happened, I was sitting on his lap on the bed and he’d whipped off my chequered shirt. I let out a silent yelp of protestation as I found myself there in only my chest compressor, which he surveyed with interest before one slim finger went to the zip just below the hollow of my throat and that coy expression was back.
“Open, Sesame!” he pronounced, flicking the zip down before I could stop him.
I grabbed hold of his hands, trembling. He took a peek as the chest compressor opened up, eyes widening and mouth forming a comical little o, and then wriggled his wrists out of my grip.
“Whoops!” he giggled, closing the zip with another flick and slumping back down on the bed. I sat there, frozen. He beamed up at me.
“Heh heh!” He hiccupped. “Hyung, you’re a girl!”
And he passed out.
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Chapter 27, in which Kris makes an interesting discovery, will be up tomorrow.
Spotted any fandom references, allusions to pop cultures or any other jokey stuff? It's in there :D
And who's gonna find out next, I wonder?
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