How The West Was Won
Title: How The West Was Won
Fandom: Super Junior/f(x)
OT3: Hankyung/Heechul/Amber
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9528
Summary: Now he makes cakes. They all do.
Warnings: American references to drug brands, jobs, cake-making tools, etc. Please ask if you have any questions!
Notes: Written for troisbang. Apologies again for the lateness! This is such a dilettante attempt at combining two things I love (three things, if you can spot it) into the same fic. Ace of Cakes is the obvious influence. The most charming details are stolen from the life of the fantastic Jay Grandin. Hope it works for you (aka this sucks and it's all my fault and I'm sorry)!
The catalyst wears a Dodger's cap.
Amber gets hired because she's a relation; otherwise the business is exclusive, friends-only, the baking foray that never ends. No one in their right mind would ever want to give up their job, because they make cakes. For a living! And cake, cake can be anything. Cake can be the perfect slice of heaven. Cake can be bravado as you get down on one knee and declare yourself forever committed. Cake can be a celebration of life.
Cake is also a lucrative five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue plus a television show on basic cable. So why not?
Here's how it happens: In the spring, Amber graduates with a major in History, which means she's only about as useful as a paper on the midnight ride of William Dawes. Highly valued in today's job market. While she pursues unpaid internships, her mother sweats the extended family, ending with a lead on the east.
"Have you ever made a cake?" Zhou Mi asks over the phone.
"Um, I once worked at a Tea Garden," says Amber.
This makes her more qualified than most of the current employees, he tells her. "See you in a week," he says.
Amber hangs up, goes into the kitchen, turns on the radio and the tap for dishes. Her mother's voice sounds from the room next door.
"How did it go?"
"I got the job," she says.
"Really? Did he say what you were going to do?"
"I don't know." Amber shrugs, passing the sponge over a plate. "Make cakes, I guess."
Her mother pokes her head around the corner. They both stare at the sink, spilling over with dishes.
"Why don't I do it this time," says her mother, finally.
Hankyung comes home to a bottle of spilled pills and scattered twenties. He finds Heechul in the bathroom, vigorously brushing his teeth. "Planning your escape?"
"No, and I'm not--" A thick line of foam drips down Heechul's chin. "I'm not stressed out."
"Good," says Hankyung. He notices the tension in his roommate's arms, elbows locked, hands splayed against the countertop. "Because as far as I know, no one has ever died from brushing their teeth."
Heechul glares at him via the mirror. "You're home early."
"Em has to get up early for rehearsal."
Heechul groans through the toothpaste in his mouth. "I won't sleep at all tonight."
"Want me to split an Ambien?"
"No."
Hankyung unfolds himself from the doorframe, walks over, peers down at the sink. Plenty of pink.
"You have issues," he says, before leaving to change.
Heechul throws a tube of facial cream at the back of his head in response.
The slow, agonizing descent towards making a deadline is still the same, no matter what you do: The cake that stresses Heechul out is the one for his mother's second wedding. Four hundred guests, which means at least ten stacks of 20-inch rounds, carved into something fabulous. The wedding is in 36 hours.
Heechul still has to decide on a concept.
"What about a dolphin?" Taemin suggests.
Heechul rounds on him, eyes wild. "What does a dolphin have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, isn't that--" Taemin balks. "Isn't that popular at weddings?"
"I think that's for ice sculptures," says Onew, and steers him away.
"Heechul," says Zhou Mi from his desk, "stop scaring the kids."
"Heechul," says Hankyung, holding up a Post-it. "What does 'Heimie's Haberdashery, 11:30' mean?"
Heechul groans, collapsing at his desk. "Anyone got a toothbrush?"
"Come on," says Hankyung. He abandons the fondant he was rolling out and grabs his keys. "I'll drive you."
"Shit," Zhou Mi slaps his forehead. "That reminds me--"
"Reminds you of what?"
"Hankyung," says his boss. "While Heechul's getting fitted, can you swing by the airport for me? Guys," Zhou Mi raises his voice. "My cousin is coming from California to help us out for a few months."
The majority of the room gapes at him in shock. "How," says Sulli at last. "And when."
"She needed a job, so I talked to her last week," says Zhou Mi. "And...today."
Hankyung tries to remember how to rework his jaw. "Well," he sputters, "what's her name?"
"Text it to him," says Heechul, and pushes him out the door.
Thirty seconds later in the car, Hankyung's mobile screen lights up. "Amber Liu." Heechul reads.
"I don't even know how I'm supposed to--" Hankyung begins to shake his head, then twists around to check his blind spot before merging left. "I mean, how do I find her? Stop every girl in their early twenties and just, like. Thoroughly creep them out?"
"There's gotta be some paper in here," Heechul says, rummaging through the glove department. But all he can come up with is a Sharpie and a Free Energy t-shirt.
"This is bad," says Hankyung.
"It's not as bad as showing up to your own mother's wedding with a nonexistent cake," snaps Heechul, and uncaps the marker.
It could have gone better.
But it doesn't.
After getting off the escalator, Amber steps up to the man holding a t-shirt with her name on it like a kid at a carnival booth. "Hi," she says.
"Stop freaking out," Hankyung replies.
Okay, what. "I'm not freaking out."
He turns in her direction, and Amber notices the phone at his ear. "Oh," she says.
"I gotta go," Hankyung says into the phone, hangs up, then asks her, "Can I help you?"
"Um, you--" she points to the shirt. "I mean, that's--" She clears her throat, tries cracking a smile. "So you didn't feel like wearing it?"
He blinks at her. "You're Amber?"
"Yeah," she says, because why wouldn't she be.
"You're--" He takes in the short hair, baseball cap, big backpack. The Gamma Rho Lambda t-shirt and Swedish clogs. "Zhou Mi's cousin," he says, to make sure.
The double-take isn't lost on Amber. It's accompanied by a feeling of being mildly insulted. "Would you like to see some ID?"
"Of course not," Hankyung says quickly, crumpling up the shirt. "You have luggage, right?"
While they wait at the carousel, Hankyung keeps looking at his watch. It's a gorgeous steel Cartier, square face, self-winding.
Personally, Amber thinks that watches on guys who have cellphones is just an excuse for a bracelet. On impulse, she voices this opinion out loud.
He glares at her. "You ever get stopped outside the girl's bathroom?"
Thus, the ethos of their relationship is set.
When they pick up Heechul, trailing a garment bag and a two-foot long receipt, Amber takes one look at his face, laughs in disbelief. "You can believe he's a guy, and I can't be a girl?"
"Did I miss something?" Heechul looks at Amber, then back to Hankyung. "Who's the kid?"
Hankyung presses his lips into a thin line as he keys in the ignition.
Six years ago, Zhou Mi made a cake. It was for the one-year anniversary of Luna's twin sister beating cancer. On the cake, an anthromorphic figure of cancer as an insect was getting thrashed by a whip cream roll of newspaper. It was edgy and violent and totally won the hearts over of everyone who eventually ate it. So then Zhou Mi got an idea.
Luna, Kyuhyun, Onew and Zhou Mi had an acapella group back in college that blew minds at birthday parties and wedding receptions. But with the economic downturn, people would rather played Vivaldi by Sarah Chang on their portable boomboxes. So they became Zhou Mi's first employees.
Heechul and Sulli had a media company, which started off posing Sulli next to train tracks and taking mysterious pictures of her in the fog, and ended with them going to places like Tanzania and Ho Chi Minh City to shoot documentaries on street culture and government-run orphanages. When they were hired for logo design and promotion during Zhou Mi's move from his home kitchen to an actual bakery, they ended up staying long-term.
Taemin was a recent art school graduate whose philosophy towards baked goods was that it was only food pottery. Luckily, his interview was in person.
Zhou Mi recruited an old friend, Hankyung, because he had a 1968 blue canvas Toyota named Margaret. She has a Superman sticker on the front edge of the hood. Margaret's trunk is just wide enough for 36-inch sheet cakes. Hankyung, who had recently finished choreographing a ballet on fellowship in London at the time, seriously had nothing better to do, and was sleeping on Zhou Mi's living room couch.
Now he makes cakes. They all do.
Amber stands at the entrance of the bakery, feeling completely intimidated. "How can this many goodlooking people all be in the same place at the same time?"
Zhou Mi nudges her. "Hey, what about the cakes?"
She just shakes her head. "It's like being on the set of a CW show."
In the back, Luna is saying, "How about you give her," she pauses for dramatic effect, "the world?"
"The world," Heechul repeats. "Like a globe? She's not, exactly -- it's not like she likes maps."
"No, I mean, like the saying, you know, give her the world--"
"But there's so much blue," says Heechul, and slides down in his chair until his face is pressed against the table. "It probably won't match her dress or something."
"How about a tree?" says Hankyung.
Heechul's voice is muffled. "Why a tree?"
"Because," says Hankyung. "It's what marriage is about, right? Extending the family, starting a new life. New growth. You can decorate it with the same flowers she picked for her wedding theme."
"A tree is hard, Kyungie," says Heechul, lifting his head up from his desk.
"A tree is impossible--" Zhou Mi interrupts, walking forward with Amber.
"Unless your tree is Grandmother Willow," says Onew.
"--unless your guests can eat PVC piping," Zhou Mi finishes. "You can't have a top-heavy cake."
Heechul and Hankyung look at each other. "Do we still have some flower wire left?" asks Heechul, grabbing a sketchpad.
"I think so," Hankyung smiles. He walks back to his desk. "But double-check with Kyuhyun when he gets back."
"Sulli, if you want to get started on the branches--"
"I love how you just assume," says Sulli, but she's already pulling out a mixing bowl.
"--can you do them with meringue? Luna, if you could get started on the trunk, start with, maybe, 12-inch rounds? Whatever you can do to make up for the volume of the supports. And, Onew--"
Onew, who has his hands buried wrist deep in a bucket of chocolate modeling clay, looks up. "What?"
"Flowers, dongsaeng."
"Is this your cake shop now?" asks Zhou Mi.
"I'm bringing you a five-thousand dollar order," says Heechul, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear. "I can afford to own it for a day."
"Can I help?" Amber speaks up.
Heechul eyes her skeptically. "What can you do?"
"I," she pauses, thinking. "I know how to make waffle fries."
"Really?" Hankyung asks, interested despite himself.
"So washing dishes it is," says Heechul, and pushes her towards the sinks.
"If anyone needs me, I'll be in the back making cream puffs," Zhou Mi mutters.
The tree cake is a hit. Just the right amount of cheesy for the 40-50 crowd, but it actually looks quite nice sitting among the table placements. Heechul's mother has a little trouble deciding how to cut it until Sulli takes the branches off the top, the fixture curling out in all directions like an arabesque. The girls did an amazing job. Onew's lilies, covered with sanding sugar and silver dragees, are unbelievable.
Amber hadn't expected to be invited to the wedding, but while they were finishing up the night before, Heechul had tossed a paper plane in her direction, smothering a yawn with his other hand.
"Your ticket in," he said, rubbing at his eyes as she opens it.
"But I didn't do anything."
Heechul shrugs. "There's gotta be some credit given for doing what no one else wants to do."
So there she was, standing at the far end of the yard, fifty million bobby pins holding her hair up, sipping an orange soda and watching couples dance under string lights stuffed into clear glass bottles. Amber still doesn't know how she managed to land in the one place on the east coast where everyone had just the right haircut to perfectly accentuate their fine-boned facial structures.
Within half an hour of the cake getting cut, she rejects an invitation to dance with a guy named Peter, bumps into an old high school acquaintance, Henry, on a music scholarship at BU, eats way too many cubes of pepperjack cheese, and is exchanging stories about old boyfriends with Luna, when Hankyung joins them.
"He wasn't that bad a guy," she's telling Luna, "but--"
"Speaking of bad guys," Luna says, and smiles as she spots him walking up with a woman Amber doesn't know on his arm. Her her legs easily go on for miles. Hankyung introduces her as his girlfriend, Emily.
"Nice to meet you," Amber smiles automatically, sticking out her hand.
Emily smiles back. "So are you having fun, making cakes?"
Amber shakes her head. "I haven't made any yet. Just the dishwasher for now."
"Don't worry," says Hankyung. "In a few weeks, Deathly Hallows is going to come out, and no one will show up to work. Then Zhou Mi will make you do everything."
Emily lets go of Hankyung's arm to link with Amber's instead. "They're all total fanatics," she faux-whispers. Her hair grazes the edge of Amber's cheek. She makes a note to turn off her Hedwig's Theme ringtone as soon as she can.
Soon enough, Emily is whisked off by Luna for some kind of impromptu karaoke session, and Hankyung sits on the table Amber is leaning against, his feet still able to touch the ground that she can't quite reach. "Holy shit," Amber tells him.
He looks at her, puzzled. "What?"
"What is with the water in this city?"
"Oh, yeah," Hankyung grins. "Yeah, she's--" He clears his throat. "I know."
"In high school," Amber says, "did she work at an Abercrombie or a Starbucks?"
"How totally presumptive," Hankyung comments. "Judgmental, even."
"Well?"
He coughs. "She worked at the Gap."
"Knew it," Amber mutters, draining the rest of her glass.
Hankyung stares at her for a second, then says, "Look, I'm sorry about the whole, identity crisis thing."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Amber says, "I didn't know you were having one."
"You know what I mean. I mean, tonight, you look -- I wouldn't have thought, if you had, like this--"
"Oh my god, stop," she says. Now they were both embarrassed.
"Ugh, whatever," says Hankyung. "I like your earrings. Is that okay?"
"Sure," says Amber, then squints up at him. "I like yours too."
He laughs at that, reaches to touch it self-consciously. Amber notices he's not wearing his watch.
"So," Hankyung says eventually. "Waffle fries, huh."
"Yeah. And tea."
"Really," he says. "Okay, what goes good with lavender?"
She thinks for a moment. "Taro."
"Close enough."
A screech of feedback interrupts them suddenly, and they both look towards the stage, where Emily is bending over to pick up a fallen microphone. "Sorry, everyone," she calls, straightening up and waving at the crowd, Luna laughing behind her.
Amber catches Hankyung smiling to himself. "How did you guys meet, anyway? Did you have to buy like, a dozen scarves before you could ask her out?"
"What, you don't think I can score by myself? And why do you assume I was a customer? You don't think I can merit an employment at the Gap?"
Amber snorts. "It's not possible."
Hankyung rolls his eyes, but he answers her question. "We actually graduated from the same dance academy -- it's what she does now," he adds. "Local theatre productions, occasionally goes up to New York for master classes. I actually waited tables while in London, but," he rubs at his chin, thinking. "When I came back, we met up again. Decided to give it a shot. Simple story, really."
"Lucky," Amber sighs.
Hankyung glances at her, then looks back at the crowd. "Homesick?" he asks, gently.
"I don't know." She raises one shoulder in a half-shrug, then turns around to set her empty glass on the table. "It still feels like I'm on vacation. I don't feel like I'm ready, you know? For this post-school, rest of my life, planting a tree--" she gestures behind her at the remaining stump of cake, "stuff yet."
"Jesus." He blatantly stares at her this time. "How old are you, exactly?"
"Twenty-two next September," she answers, and is surprised to see him visibly relax.
"Not too bad," he says. "Taemin's, like, five. Sulli's still a fetus. You should hear their problems."
"What are you saying? That unlike you, young people don't have real problems?"
"That's not what I'm -- are you calling me old?"
"I am definitely calling you old. What are you, thirty-five?"
"Why aren't you dancing?" Hankyung switches gears, and Amber's smile fades.
"I don't dance. Not much, anyway."
"It's a wedding," he says, and steps back out onto the dance floor. "There are certain customs you have to adhere to." At that exact moment, the DJ switches to Frank Sinatra's You Make Me Feel So Young.
Hankyung raises his eyebrows. "And if you needed a sign..."
"But I--"
"Get over here, Liu." He holds out his hand.
For the first time since she's arrived, Amber laughs. And she takes it.
"So is your mom happy?" asks Hankyung, as the reception winds down. He sits down in the chair next to Heechul, who is staring at the room at large in a sleep-deprived, wide-eyed stupor.
"Catatonically thrilled," Heechul says at last. "At least, I think so."
"I'll bet she is."
"I don't actually care," Heechul points out, "because I'm going to sleep for the next fifty years."
"Damn, Kim," says Hankyung. "I had plans, just the two of us."
"Your plans are lame."
"Mm." They sit in a comfortable silence, until Heechul speaks up again.
"Thanks, though."
"For what."
"Saving my ass. With the cake concept. With the tux. And, you know. General...transportation."
"Heechul," says Hankyung. "Shut up."
"Wait," Heechul says, as he starts to get up again. He nods in the direction of Amber, standing near Sulli and Onew, observing their conversation but not joining it. "You making nice with the new girl?"
"Can't you tell she's lonely?"
Heechul raises his eyebrows. "Yeah. But what's it to you?"
"Nothing. Stray kittens are usually your specialty. But you were distracted, and," Hankyung shrugs, watching her. "Just picking up your slack, man."
"Then thanks for that, too," Heechul says.
"No problem."
"By the way," says Heechul, after a few seconds, "Em was looking for you a few minutes ago. I forgot to tell you."
"Right," says Hankyung. He stands up, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Got it."
"What happens now is," Zhou Mi announces the next day, and is met with unbridled waves of resentment thanks to a group hangover. "We work on the gallery's contest pieces. I was going to have Heechul do the second place piece, but I don't think he's coming in this morning--"
"He's not," Hankyung says. "He's out cold."
"Good," Zhou Mi says, and means it. Then he turns to his cousin. "Amber, want to give it a shot?"
Amber's mouth falls open. "Really? Because yesterday I was scrubbing batter off pans with steel wool."
Zhou Mi waves her over, hands her an apron. "You only learn by doing, right? Trust me, it's easy as -- well, cake."
The client is a local gallery who held an art contest over the summer. They were supposed to create replicas of the top three art pieces in the style of the winners' favorite artist, frames and impressionist swirls and all.
"So Taemin will take first place, Joan Miró. Amber will do second place, Alexander Kanevsky. Third--"
"I'll take it," Hankyung offers. "Help out those who only know how to use a deep fryer."
The cake itself doesn't require much shaping: a 20 by 30-inch sheet provided adequate working surface. Covering the cake with a layer of seamless fondant after icing it, the rest of the so-called art would be reproduced with conventional confectionary frosting.
Taemin, with at least five different brushes in hand, is clearly in his element. Hankyung's third place favorite is Roy Lichtenstein. "Maybe we should swap," he suggests to Amber, who is holding up a paintbrush with an expression that betrays the most extreme form of bewilderment.
"Why?" Amber asks faintly. "Does Lichtenstein do mostly stick figures?"
"No, but -- do you like comics?"
"Yes. So what?"
"Well, the lines are cleaner, for one, which makes it easier to visualize." He slides the paintbrush from her hand; her fingers hang loosely over nothing in the air. "I think you can handle this one--" And over the next few hours, he shows her how to colorstain precut pieces of hardened fondant, lay them on the drying board, then reassemble them again on the surface of the cake; how to use patterned rollers for the Ben-Day dots. Luckily, most of Ms. Third Place's piece seemed to be comprised of overlapping hexagons, so it isn't too difficult.
"Hey," says Hankyung, after a few hours. "This looks pretty good."
"Really?" Amber leans back a little, closes one eye and gives her work a onceover. At the right angle, it really did look like the back of a turtle. Or a honeycomb. Or whatever it was supposed to be. "It wasn't too bad, I guess. Most of it was so, geometric." Then she looks over at Taemin's. "Oh my god."
"Thanks," the other decorator smiles. Art school graduate, Amber has to remind herself. She watches as Taemin taps the end of a paintbrush absently against his cheek, tilting his head one way, then the other. He hesitates, then says, "You think the background is too dark on the top?"
"Argh," says Amber.
"It's the first thing I notice," Taemin clarifies, ignoring her.
"Try spraying the top with an opaque layer of a lighter shade," Hankyung suggests. "Then it won't stand out as much." Amber looks over at his work, and is dismayed to find that it's also dangerously close to being perfect.
"Stop it," he nudges her with his elbow. "It's seriously not bad, at all."
"Yeah, if you insist on being a perfectionist while working here,” Taemin carefully sprays the top few inches of his piece with paint, "it's all over for you. I mean, it's cake."
"It's still art," Zhou Mi says from behind them.
"That you can eat?"
"Which makes it the best," he replies, then asks, "How's it going?"
"Mine needs a layer of food lacquer after it dries," Taemin says. "Otherwise, I'm almost done."
"Not mine," says Hankyung. "But possibly Amber's."
"What's food lacquer?" she asks.
"It makes the cake shiny," Taemin tells her.
"Shiny?" Amber frowns. "And it affects the whole look of the cake?"
Zhou Mi smiles. "It's your call. But you can't take it off once you put it on."
"I'll leave it...what's the word. Matte," she decides, and feels pleasantly surprised to receive Taemin's nod of approval.
That week, there's orders for cakes shaped like a soccer ball, an octopus, the Batmobile, the local lacrosse team, a sleeping cat, James Bond, a roller coaster, and downtown St. Louis. With each new cake, Amber slowly adjusts to the time difference between coastlines. Still, most days, they don't wrap up until 8 or 9 at night. The bad thing -- or perhaps good thing -- about brightly lit spaces like the bakery, is how time passes by so quickly that you don't even notice.
On nights they stay past 10, they order pizza. Or Chinese. Sometimes sushi.
And gradually, Amber learns about the rest of the group. Even if it's over topping preferences.
"Sorry we didn't get to meet earlier," Kyuhyun says, a slice of cheese and olives inches from his mouth. "Lately I've been spending most of my mornings eating breakfast in my car outside of Kinko's."
"I ordered new promotional posters for the shop," Zhou Mi says beside him, by way of explanation. "Normally our PR people handle it, but they're on vacation. They work hard, unlike--" he slings a long arm around Kyuhyun, who stiffens instantly in annoyance, "this guy."
"I'm the baker," Kyuhyun looks incredulous that they're even arguing about this. "Without me, you have no cake. To shape, to decorate, to sell -- to shoot a television show on. To make, you know. Money."
"Please," Zhou Mi says, dropping his arm and rolling his eyes. "I went to pastry school. You have a degree in structural design."
"Which just proves that any idiot can bake a cake."
"Exactly," Zhou Mi smiles, victorious.
Amber catches Luna's eye from a few feet away. She nods to confirm what she suspects, rolling her eyes exasperatedly.
"You'll get used to their awkward flirting," she says, tugging her over to her desk, and gives an exaggerated shudder. "Their awkward, geeky flirting. How many Starcraft innuendos does Kyuhyun typically drop?"
"I refuse to know anything about Starcraft precisely for that reason,” Sulli says around a piece of pineapple, chicken and green peppers. Luna and Sulli are the type of totally secure, confident-looking girls who had majors in Art History and American Lit, respectively. Their nails always matches their outfits, but they buy copies of Real Simple instead of Nylon. Both of them took four years of French in high school, and don't mind occasionally sliding in a situation-appropriate adjective or exclamation into casual conversation.
Onew, who also speaks high school-level French, likes cheese, potato and spinach. "Frittata style," he says, biting off a piece and chewing rapidly. "But I swear you can ask for chicken soup on a pizza nowadays and you'll get it. Do you speak French?"
"I know a little Spanish," Amber says.
"Oh, right," says Onew. "California."
"Actually, that should mean I ought to speak better Chinese," and he grins apologetically.
"Hey," he says, "I know a little Chinese! Or at least, like, names of fruits--"
"He doesn't know a thing," says Taemin, plopping down in a chair next to them, clutching a slice of pepperoni. Later, Amber finds out that, unlike Chinese, Onew knows bad puns and how to compose a somewhat cheesy if still accurate haiku in under twelve seconds. He also owns a Vespa, which would naturally make everyone worried about him except for the fact that he, unexpectedly, has very dexterous reflexes.
Taemin, who earlier on displayed obvious superiority with portraiture and art media, has a ponytail and is the type of pretty that causes accidents between distracted drivers on the street. He also has an obsessive taste for pumpkin spice latte syrup, which he presents to Amber as a late welcome gift a couple weeks after the wedding.
"This stuff is amazing," he says, handing her the bottle. "This stuff is like, magic elixir. You can put it on anything. You can put it on steak." In the background, Onew is making gagging noises.
"Wow, thanks," says Amber. Meal accompaniment, says the label. The smell of pumpkin spice latte syrup is rich and thick; it reminds her of coffee houses and crackling fires to warm the chill of winter weather. Suddenly, she craves sunshine and cacti and really good Mexican food. "Man, I feel like guacamole," she says without thinking.
"There's a Chipotle a couple blocks down the street," says Luna, sympathetically.
The next day, an anonymously donated bag of guacamole chips and dip is sitting on top of her desk. It's definitely overkill, but she has it for lunch anyway.
"Why am I not surprised," says Heechul, as soon as he gets back. Zhou Mi's assigned him to do teacup cupcakes not unlike the spinning teacups ride at Disney World. Amber thinks that actually sounds kind of fun. Heechul, however, looks less than thrilled.
"You like electronics, California?"
"Me?" Amber asks, tagging along because he seemed to have, for lack of a better word, chosen her. "I like Thoreau. Which," she adds, as he blinks at her. "is nowhere near liking electronics."
"I almost flunked out of linear circuit analysis as an undergrad, so. Me neither."
"Really? But I thought you were an art major--" and Heechul scoffs.
"Please. Give a little more credit to my ambition. I studied EE first."
"That's...amazing."
"Still," he scowls down at the coils of copper wire and motors, "didn't seem to help me much, did it."
It turns out, it's not as hard as Heechul makes it out to be. Stripping the ends off the wires only required a couple pliers and some electrical tape to connect them to the motors. Slap on an on/off switch, drill some holes in the plastic teacups, screw them onto a base, and it actually looked pretty cool.
"That was almost--" he stops himself short, looks at her with a mixture of suspicion and surprise.
"What?"
Heechul shrugs. "The time went fast," he says, then gives her a mischievous grin and calls out over his shoulder, "Hey, Sulli! Mind if I borrow your Barbies?" He lowers his voice. "Every time I say her name, I feel like I should follow up with an order of potato salad at a deli or something."
Sulli comes over holding Journalism and Tennis Star Barbie and starts smacking him on the side of the head with them. "I use them for models for when we have to do figurines," she explains calmly, facing Amber. "Because it's not like he or anyone else here can sculpt worth a damn. If it was up to him," she clearly relishes hitting Heechul with Journalism Barbie's film camera, "we'd still be editing together endless loops of footage on espresso machines."
"Fuck off," Heechul growls, and makes a grab for Tennis Star Barbie. "Did I tell you about the time she wouldn't listen to anything but the Garden State soundtrack for an entire year?"
But Amber is confused. "Wait, why do we need Barbies?"
"For this," and Heechul places Tennis Star into a cup, then flips on the switch. She makes a good effort to stay in, but after about two and a half seconds, she goes flying, her body making a nice, clean arc in the air, before landing fifteen feet away.
After a moment, Sulli says, "First of all, cake is heavy, and sticky, and moist. You know, dense."
"Oh," says Heechul. "So, like Barbie."
"Barbie is not stupid," Sulli exclaims, and Amber leaves them to argue it out, slipping over to the other side of the bakery, where Hankyung is hammering together a structure for a diorama of the newly opened children's museum. Naturally, made out of cake.
She clears her throat. "Do you think, uh. I can finish by myself?"
He glances up, wondering why she's asking for his permission. "Heechul got sidetracked?"
"...she was an ambassador to the United Nations, she was an astronaut, do you even know what it takes to qualify to be an astronaut--" Sulli can be heard saying.
"She probably slept her way up," they hear Heechul reply.
"Yeah, he did," Amber says ruefully, and Hankyung laughs.
"Just place the order with Kyuhyun -- cupcakes, right? How many?"
"I think he said there are 172 people coming to the event--"
"Then make it an even 200. Do you know what flavor?"
"We have different flavors?"
Hankyung stares at her. "Are you kidding? Didn't you, haven't you tried the cakes yet?"
"Well, I ate some at the wedding."
"Amber," he says, shaking his head.
"What?"
Hankyung grabs her by the arm and pulls her over to the kitchen. "We have fifty different flavors."
"Fifteen?"
"Fifty." He pushes her through the doors.
Believe it or not, Zhou Mi is actually French-trained. Which means, explains Kyuhyun, that if it was up to him, he'd use butter all the time, and whole milk -- the entire, fatty, artery-clogging works. "Nowadays, customers are more health conscious and sometimes ask questions about this sort of thing." He takes out a few sample-sized cakes for her to try. "Still, the cakes can't just look good, they have to taste good too. So that's the first problem to solve: how to make it less heart attack-inducing but still keep in mind that this is something that people actually want to eat."
"You start," he points toward the rack of spices and oils located at the far end of the kitchen, away from the ovens, "with those. Always keep your spices and oils away from heat; otherwise they change in quality and taste, and don't last as long. The only thing you should keep near the stove is like, dry pastas and cereals."
"Then, you have a trial and error period. There's a classic set recipes, of course, but you always want a wow-factor piece for your shop. Experiment long enough, and you find things that work for you and things that don't. Like cardamom and orange zest. It's a perfect marriage. Two things that work together that you didn't think would."
"Like you and Zhou Mi?” Amber asks cheekily.
"Like..." Kyuhyun looks across the bakery, where at one end, Heechul is still arguing with Sulli, hands gesturing animatedly between their bodies, while on the other end, Hankyung has on a pair of earphones, humming while taking a pastry knife to a new stack of dulce de leche. "Hankyung and Heechul."
Amber starts to say something, then stops. "...oh."
"Anyway, like Hankyung said, we have fifty different flavors of cake. Some of them, because of their basic composition, can't be used for the shaped cakes. You cut into a blueberry muffin, for example, and then try to start icing the thing, it just gets too messy. But otherwise, that's what we've tried to aim for. Unique, tasty flavors, and not entirely -- well, it's not the worst thing you can eat."
"Mm," says Amber, chewing on the fork in her mouth. "Yeah, these are great."
"Sweet tooth?"
"Just a tiny one," she confesses.
"It'll grow." Kyuhyun points a thumb at the room in front of him. "It's the same with all of them. You ask anyone out there, they think they have the best job in the world. I mean, just think about it."
"What about you?"
"It's not bad," he says evasively. "I could use a little more time for Starcraft."
"Tell me about it," she smiles. "I used to surf whenever I wanted to avoid homework."
Kyuhyun looks at her, surprised. "Really? You'll have to teach us sometime. We're all pale and athletically compromised."
"Seriously?"
"Holed up in a cake shop all day does that. The closest we get to playing sports is by being Red Sox fans."
For the rest of the afternoon, Amber finishes making the cupcakes by herself. When the last one is settle into its teacup, Heechul comes over with a bag of piping. "Now this is the fun part," he tells her, and she finally realizes, he had done it on purpose.
Hankyung and Heechul met on the job. Hankyung was the only one who understood Heechul's reference to TFATF the sad, dark day he made a bad joke, and they've been best friends ever since.
"I've created a monster," Zhou Mi tends to say, and everyone else is usually too keen to agree.
It's not so much the display of unyielding friendship that can be so easily detected that makes them the group's most high profile, most made-for-television couple. Nor is it only the simple satisfaction of an evolutionary job well done at the visual compliments of height and stature and natural skin color. It goes beyond how Heechul is all scowls and sharp angles, while Hankyung is softer and more smiles. There is a quiet, automatic tolerance for each other's worst versions of themselves, and a steady, even quieter admiration that ties the both of them together, different as they are.
But they argue like nobody's business.
A steady flow of bickering will more likely than not begin mid-morning, starting with a jab at someone's bad taste in coffee coolers. Nothing is a forbidden topic, not hair nor clothes nor cologne nor exes nor music, not even choice of lunch. After a particularly loud outburst from Heechul that entirely screws up her piping on a cake she's been working on for hours, Taemin reassures her that, after a while, it sort of just becomes white noise.
Apparently, they even share an apartment.
Amber just can't see it.
A few weeks later, the city puts on their annual moonlight walk for breast cancer awareness. Zhou Mi is out of town promoting the show and takes Kyuhyun with him, so the upcoming weekend is the first time in a long while that most of the group hasn't had a big to-do list in the back of their heads for the following week.
"Going to drink myself into a stupor," Luna announces, dragging Onew along with her. "So count me out."
Sulli mentions a date, Taemin's going upstate to visit relatives, which leaves Hankyung and Heechul pulling on sneakers and multiple layers of clothing on Saturday night.
"Hey," Heechul says suddenly as Hankyung grabs a scarf off a hanger. "Maybe we should invite Buttercup."
"Who?"
"You know, the Powerpuff Girl?" Hankyung slowly shakes his head, and Heechul sighs impatiently. "Amber."
"Oh, right." Hankyung blinks. "Amber. Yeah, sure. But why Buttercup?"
"Because Buttercup," Heechul says, watching him carefully, "is the only girl in Townsville who can curl her tongue."
Hankyung frowns. "That's interesting." And Heechul gives up.
Amber answers the door in her pajamas, a vegetable peeler in one hand. "What do you want?" she looks first to Hankyung, then at Heechul. In the background, the television is turned to the Antiques Roadshow.
"You geek," Heechul says, barging past her.
"I like history!" she says defensively, then rounds onto Hankyung. "And if you guys are here just to--"
"We're here," Hankyung interrupts, "to see if you'd like to go for a walk. While it's cold, and dark. For three hours."
"And why--"
"For breast cancer awareness."
"But seriously," says Heechul, staring at the television, "anything's an adventure after watching this."
Amber glares at them both. "Maybe I won't go."
"I think there's going to be free Jamba Juice," Hankyung adds. "And Pizza Hut."
The vegetable peeler clatters to the floor. "You guys still have Pizza Hut around here?"
"Does she like everything that's antiquated?" Heechul asks, as she runs to her room to change.
The walk is held along the river, which means it's colder than they had anticipated. The three of them are forced to huddle together for warmth, a misshapen bulk of winterwear casting strange shadows as they pass under every streetlamp.
"Okay," Heechul pants as they pass another corner. "Impress me. Tell me something cool about history."
"I don't need to justify anything to you," says Amber, teeth chattering.
"Then how about to Hankyung," Heechul says. "He thinks history is even more boring than I do."
"I don't think it's boring," Hankyung says quickly. "I just think it's--"
"Unimportant," Heechul supplies.
"Well," Hankyung admits. "Yeah."
Amber stares up at him. "Are you even Chinese?"
"Okay," because that was a sore spot. "Not unimportant, but. Not relevant."
"The past is the present," Amber tells him. "Or whatever that profound shit is. It's true. History is one gigantic arrow pointing towards where we are today."
"Right," says Heechul, "which is freezing to death in the fair city of--"
"That's not what I mean," she says. "Or it does, but that's only part of it. It tells us why your last name is Kim, and yours is Han, and mine is Liu, and we can be standing here together, next to some river in the United States, and I'm able to talk to you, even though I'm a girl--"
"So maybe it's interesting to know," says Hankyung, "but what's the point in studying things that have already happened?"
"To learn why people think the way they do. Why they live the way they do. What conditions they are born into, and what are things they cultivate themselves. It's about environment, personal motivations, it's about millions of lives unknowingly affecting millions of others. You're male, and Chinese, which means you're probably kind of an asshole. Not," Amber looks pointedly at Heechul as he begins to laugh, "that it's any different for you."
"And you know that, thanks to history."
"In a way."
"Then history is wrong," says Hankyung. "I'm not an asshole."
Amber shrugs as best she can, restricted by her jacket. "History is subjective. So is the truth. Only the winners write the textbooks. But that's what makes it so interesting, and so complex. How you form opinions on anything at all is based on things that have been set in motion in the past. And that's why it's relevant. Because you are totally, totally living it. I don't think you're an asshole, by the way," she adds. "I was just trying to make a point."
The instantaneous surge of relief Hankyung feels upon hearing her say that surprises even himself. Over her head, Heechul mouths, Buttercup.
Almost like she had magical powers.
Once a year, to open up the holiday season, they forsake cake for something else entirely: pie.
This is Onew's area of expertise.
"The perfect pie dough," he begins, "is a difficult thing to accomplish."
Luna speaks up. "If something goes wrong, it's usually because your ingredients aren't cold enough, or you overworked the dough."
Onew frowns at her. "May I tell the story?"
Luna rolls her eyes, before turning back to her work. "Go right ahead."
"First of all, you have to keep everything room temperature, except--! The butter, Crisco, eggs and ice water. Those need to be taken directly from the refrigerator."
"Crisco?" Amber asks, and Onew shrugs.
"That's how my mom did it, half butter and half Crisco. More malleable, I guess. Okay, so now, after you put the ingredients in the mixer, turn it on long enough only until you start getting pea-sized lumps. You don't want a sticky, soft dough, because then it's flat, not flaky. Doesn't feel as good when you're eating it, right?"
"Uh," says Amber, "sure."
As they wait for the dough to cool, Onew asks her how she's adjusting.
"Adjusting?" Amber repeats. "You think I'm not well-adjusted?"
"I think," he says seriously, and she's surprised by his tone, "you've adjusted a little too well, and you're kinda just. Floating by."
"Well," says Amber, drawing random patterns in the flour on the table. "Yeah, I mean. It's not like I thought I'd be making cakes after I graduated."
"I don't think any of us did, but we grew to like it, I guess? I just hope," says Onew, "that you're having fun. And you don't, like, secretly hate us."
"I don't secretly hate you!" Amber's eyes widen at the accusation. "I just feel like, I don't know. Like this is a pit stop towards something else I'll eventually be doing. Something that's sort of...more useful."
"I get it," he says. "Societal conventions tug hard." He's quiet for a few seconds. "But you know what tends to make people happy? Not all the time, but most of the time?"
"Cake," she guesses, and he nods.
"Not such a bad calling."
They take out the dough as soon as it's chilled, a couple of hours later. Onew teaches her how to set the rolling pin the middle, then push out from there, instead of starting at the ends and working against your previous work. Rotate the dough on the board as you roll, he says, so it's even in width.
"Also," says Onew, as they stretch the crust over the pans, "instead of using vanilla extract, use vanilla bean paste. Lasts forever, and still has the natural black specks."
"What is that," Amber smiles, "the real moral of the story?"
He sticks his hand up for a high-five. She slaps it. "Exactly."
That weekend, the trees change colors. Something in the back of Amber's head acknowledges that they had to have been changing for weeks, because trees don't suddenly change from green to red like a traffic signal light. When she borrows Kyuhyun's bike for a ride around the city, she discovers that it's cold, really cold. Also something new. She comes back home with a runny nose, and Zhou Mi insists on taking her shopping for a new jacket, gloves, hat, scarf.
Leaves crunch under her feet as she treads along sidewalks. Wet wood and smoke permeates the scent of salt in the air. More bad weather means more staying in with movie rentals, good beer, even better conversation. Starbucks starts serving their annual holiday drinks, reintroducing flavors like peppermint and eggnog and gingerbread spice.
New England isn't just a place to make cakes, Amber realizes. It's more than cities on top of hills and civil disobedience. For her, it's a place to get used to.
They get another wedding, late December, their last job of the year. "Weddings typically means the classics compromising with new and different. Every couple likes to think they're doing something unique," says Hankyung, folding the batter over in the bowl. "So this time, we're going to make red velvet, almond, and spice three-tiered cakelets."
"Okay," says Amber. "How many do we need?"
"Let's see." Hankyung takes the pencil from behind his ear, marks something down on a piece of paper, does a couple seconds worth of rough calculations. "Three hundred."
"And when is the delivery?"
"The day after tomorrow."
She blows out her cheeks, balls her hands on her hips. "Yeah. Definitely a blockbuster-sized apocalypse."
"Hey, have a little bit of faith. This--" Hankyung pulls out a molded pan from under his desk, "is how we're going to do it."
She stares at it. "A mold? That sounds like cheating."
"But this is quality stuff! Double-casted aluminum." He flicks his fingernail against it; it makes a sharp ping. "Carême himself wouldn't be ashamed to use it. You know, if he was in a tight jam."
"Like us," she derives, and rolls up her sleeves. "Red velvet, you said?"
"It's such a cliche, but it's one of my favorites," he confesses, pulling out a few more of the pans.
"I like it too. What kind of glaze--"
"Nothing for the spice, but maybe we can mix a couple apples in there." He begins dousing the pans with a bottle of nonstick spray. "Vanilla glaze for the red velvet with a little lemon coloring, and lavender for the almond. Then we can have Luna dragee, pipe on a few ribbons, and they'll be good to go."
She grabs the bottle as he hands it off to her, going to the other side of the kitchen for more pans. "You know," she says, hesitantly, "You're actually really good at this."
Hankyung looks at her, surprised, then raises an eyebrow. "Well, the Gap wouldn't hire me, so." Then he smiles. "You're not so bad yourself."
Amber tries to ignore how her chest seems to fill up with some nonspecific emotion when he says that. Between mixing colors for the glaze and dragging Luna over to pipe on these complex, baroque designs, pretty soon it's a little after two in the morning. Luna turns down Hankyung's offer of breakfast, leaving Amber to zip up her coat as Hankyung closes up.
"Think of it this way," he says as they head over to Margaret, all alone in the parking lot. "Less work to do tomorrow."
The only place in town still open is a Denny's. Amber leans back in the booth after ordering eggs and toast, watches Hankyung stir sugar into his coffee with a spoon.
"Let me guess," she says. "This place is special. You took Emily here on your first date."
Hankyung gives her a strange look. "Absolutely," he says finally, too casually. "Nothing's more romantic than sharing a jumbo shrimp salad."
She deliberately stares at some unidentifiable point over his shoulder. "How is she doing, by the way?"
"She's fine. She's in New York for two weeks. Viviana Durante's in town. Couldn't miss her." Hankyung sets down his spoon. "Why do you like to talk about her so much? You have a crush or something?"
"What! No--"
"You wouldn't be the first."
"I don't," Amber says, almost scowling, and Hankyung breaks into a grin.
"That isn't any less convincing," he says, before lifting the mug to his lips.
"I hate it when you cook," Heechul says, later that week at their place.
"You love it when I cook," Hankyung scoffs, soaping off the counter top.
"No, because then I feel like -- there's a word for it. What's the word. Accretion. Like the universe expanding after the Big Bang."
Heechul closes the dishwasher, and they turn on the television. They watch a little bit of Everybody Loves Raymond.
"Someone told me once that this is exactly what married life is supposed to be like," comments Heechul. Barely five minutes pass before Ray makes yet another round of excuses as Debra blows her top.
"Yeah?"
"Guess we'll find out someday," says Heechul says, eyes on the screen.
In late January, they get a new hire, along with a replacement set of chairs from Matter. Choi Minho, twenty-three, their first legit culinary school graduate.
Onew falls head over heels.
"You know how, a million years ago, all those glaciers came in and plowed through the upper Midwest and flattened everything? Made the Great Lakes and stuff?" Onew jerks his chin at the conspicuous sore thumb of tall, dark and handsome across the room. "So he's like, the Wisconsinan. And I'm," he clicks his tongue in an all too natural tact of self-deprecation. "Alluvial dust."
"What's a Wisconsinan?" asks Luna.
"It was a glacier," says Kyuhyun gravely. "It was huge."
Luna frowns at Onew. "You and your metaphors." But Onew's too busy fluttering glances between Minho and his Maine lobsters cake to notice.
Minho's only contracted to work until the end of the wedding season in June, but the first thing Onew does after a week of heavily reinforced encouragement is to ask Zhou Mi if he can, somehow, work out a long-term deal.
"I need more time," Onew says, wringing his hands.
"Okay," says Zhou Mi. "But first, tell me your plan."
"Right," Onew nods. "First, I'll start by talking."
"Like, hey you want to go out sometime?"
"No, more like, hey I like your phone, I'm thinking about getting a new one, what type is it? Or, hey have you seen Inception?"
"Of course he's seen Inception."
"Most likely," Onew agrees.
"So you plan is, just. Pointless, redundant conversation?"
"Yes," Onew admits, "pretty much."
Later, on her way to get more fondant, Amber stops at Onew's desk. "Hey, you gave me advice, so let me return the favor -- don't worry, okay? You're a great guy. Just be yourself."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Onew begins, looking doubtful.
"I'm serious. If you hold yourself back, no one's going to fall for it. Least of all, the person that you actually want to pay attention."
"Is that working out for you and Hankyung?" Onew mutters, and Amber stares at him, shocked.
"What did you say?"
"Shit," says Onew, then widens his eyes, declaring innocence. "What did you say?"
"Lee Jinki, I swear to god--"
"Oh, hey, Minho!" Onew chirps nervously, and Amber whirls around, finds Minho standing less than three feet away.
"Onew," says Minho, "or is it Jinki?"
"Neither, it's Really Bad Liar," Amber tells him, scowling.
Onew laughs nervously as Minho looks between them, confused. "You can call me Onew," he says. "Do you need something?"
"Um, yeah. Zhou Mi said you can do some piping for me?"
"Sure!" Onew says, and bolts off before Amber can pin him again.
As if that wasn't enough to make her completely paranoid, a couple weeks before Valentine's Day, Emily and Hankyung break up.
He brushes off all offers of concern and sympathy -- all except for Heechul, who doesn't offer any -- and when pressed for details, only says that Em's moving to New York permanently, and he didn't feel like dragging his ass all the way up to the city.
"It's a heavy ass to drag," Heechul says acidly, from his corner.
There's a pause. "Also, the job market's still pretty bad," says Hankyung with a tone of finality, and they all go back to work.
"I don't get why Heechul's so pissed," Amber says, during lunch. "Did he seriously like her that much?"
Sulli gives her a considering look before answering. "It probably made things really simple." She takes a small bite out of her sandwich. "I think, whatever she couldn't do for Hankyung, Heechul made sure he could. But now that she's gone, the line's kinda blurred again. You know, between the two of them."
Amber has to ask. "So they really are--?" and Sulli raises an eyebrow.
"No one knows for sure. But it looks like it, right?
"I don't know," says Luna thoughtfully. "I mean, do you believe in platonic soulmates?" Across from her, Taemin snorts.
"As much as I do the tooth fairy."
"But what about, like, Sex and the City?" Amber asks, and then is distracted by Onew falling into the seat next to hers.
"I blame you," he tells her morosely.
Luna laughs. "What, exactly, do you have planned for Minho?"
Almost like he's horrified of his own daring, Onew pulls a heart-shaped box out from his backpack and take off the cover. Inside are a dozen white and milk chocolates molded into the shape of Bach.
"Is that...Johann Sebastian or Johann Christoph?" asks Luna, peering closer with morbid curiosity.
"Probably both," says Onew, and puts the cover back on. "But I mean, you get it, right?" he asks desperately. "A box of chocolates? Bachs of chocolates?"
Sulli almost falls off her chair, she's laughing so hard; beside her, Taemin's turning blue.
"She," Onew points to Amber, protesting, "told me to be myself!"
"Well, now you have to, right?" Amber says. "These had to have been special-ordered."
"Fifty bucks for your dignity, Onew," gasps Luna. "Think carefully--"
"Go for it," says Amber, grinning. "If he doesn't like them, you can tell Hankyung I like him."
For some reason, this seems to gives him the proper motivation. A Post-it with "lucky you" written on it is taped to her desk a few days later. But really, Amber thinks, it had been lucky Onew. She'd have killed him before he told anybody anything.
"I like her," Hankyung says, finally.
"I like her, too," says Heechul.
Neither of them elaborate on to what extent.
"Ugh," says Amber, then points her pencil at a tube of frosting. "Wingardium Leviosa."
"Nice try," says Taemin from across the table, and tosses it to her.
Mid-February, the bakery stalls briefly in production, and everyone settles comfortably into a newfound laziness. Enjoy it while you can, Kyuhyun warns, it's the calm before the storm before wedding season.
"After Valentine's Day, it gets crazy with orders that need gilded roses and fancy bride-and-groom toppers," he tells her.
"Great," she mutters, and swivels in her chair just in time to see Minho and Onew let go of their hands right before they enter the shop. She grins as Onew walks past her desk, a smile on his face that never left since last week.
"Not hiding anything, are we?"
"Not like you," he shoots back, and she makes a threatening noise from the back of her throat. Both of them are blushing, but her phone rings before he can say anything else.
"Hello?" she answers, waving Onew quiet. "Oh, hey, Mom..."
For the next ten minutes, her mother tells her about this wonderful research assistant opportunity she's found with an archeological group that's going to start a dig in the Middle East. As she listens, Amber doesn't check her replies, nor does she notice the rest of the bakery steadily growing quieter as she continues her conversation. When she hangs up, there's a dazed look on her face.
"But you like it here," Taemin says, at last. "You get to make cakes."
"Yeah, but..." Her eyes automatically go to Hankyung and Heechul standing in the doorway, back from their meeting with Zhou Mi just in time to catch the phone call. Then she shrugs, looking away. "History majors don't, exactly."
Hankyung is quiet the rest of the evening. Not that they have much of an evening, anymore. With the two of them being the most senior staff at the bakery, they had ended up staying late to help Zhou Mi figure out the schedule for the next four months.
In a few hours, they'll have to get up again. And they haven't even gone to bed yet.
As much as he's not looking forward to this talk, Heechul is tired. And Amber is different, he knows that. Different from Emily, different from all the others before her. Different enough.
A consequence of the past, he thinks.
Finally, he speaks up. "Okay. So just because you dream about having a garden that works and listening to Lauryn Hill on your days off and naming your kids, I don't even know, Dorothy or Jeremy or something awful like that, doesn't mean I want the same thing."
"A garden that works?" Hankyung repeats, groggily. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Tomorrow is Valentine's Day," says Heechul. "You should do something for her."
"Are you serious?" asks Hankyung.
"I'm not going to, like, give you a hug," snaps Heechul, and Hankyung smiles.
"And I won't ask you to help me."
The catalyst is no longer a catalyst, but she still wears the Dodger's cap. A little bit of home, though according to her solitary heart-to-heart, it's really all she needs.
There's a little bit of a crushing disappointment, though, when she arrives to tell them she's staying, only to discover no one has come to work yet.
Except one.
"Hey," says Hankyung, without pretention, which just ignites a feeling of nervous anticipation in her stomach. He leads her over to a table in the back, where a sheet is covering what Amber presumes is a cake. "Take a look at this." He pulls off the sheet.
It's the weirdest cake she's ever seen. At an angle she didn't think possible was a mosaic of petit fours secured with butter cream frosting, all dusted over with a mixture of granulated honey and gold sanding sugar. In the middle of the makeshift cake was a mirror. Letters spelling out E-R-I-S-E-D is written on the top; Amber recognizes Onew's handwriting.
"Is this. What--" she turns to look at Hankyung, is caught offguard by how the movement is replicated right in front of her. "What is this?"
Slowly, carefully, he takes her hand. Their reflected images do the same thing. "Come on," he says, quietly. "You know what it is."
"...It's what you want."
He nods. "It's what I want."
Amber looks at their figures again, looks at Hankyung watching her.
"Don't go," he says.
"I wasn't going to," says Amber, throat dry.
"Oh," says Hankyung. Their eyes meet in the mirror. They both crack up.
"Heechul's right," Amber says, sobering at last. "Your ideas are lame."
"Heechul would say that," Hankyung says, "But he's usually right."
Amber smiles. "So does that make him Harry?"
"I'd say that's the most accurate," says Hankyung, and tilts her chin up.
Fandom: Super Junior/f(x)
OT3: Hankyung/Heechul/Amber
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9528
Summary: Now he makes cakes. They all do.
Warnings: American references to drug brands, jobs, cake-making tools, etc. Please ask if you have any questions!
Notes: Written for troisbang. Apologies again for the lateness! This is such a dilettante attempt at combining two things I love (three things, if you can spot it) into the same fic. Ace of Cakes is the obvious influence. The most charming details are stolen from the life of the fantastic Jay Grandin. Hope it works for you (aka this sucks and it's all my fault and I'm sorry)!
The catalyst wears a Dodger's cap.
Amber gets hired because she's a relation; otherwise the business is exclusive, friends-only, the baking foray that never ends. No one in their right mind would ever want to give up their job, because they make cakes. For a living! And cake, cake can be anything. Cake can be the perfect slice of heaven. Cake can be bravado as you get down on one knee and declare yourself forever committed. Cake can be a celebration of life.
Cake is also a lucrative five hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue plus a television show on basic cable. So why not?
Here's how it happens: In the spring, Amber graduates with a major in History, which means she's only about as useful as a paper on the midnight ride of William Dawes. Highly valued in today's job market. While she pursues unpaid internships, her mother sweats the extended family, ending with a lead on the east.
"Have you ever made a cake?" Zhou Mi asks over the phone.
"Um, I once worked at a Tea Garden," says Amber.
This makes her more qualified than most of the current employees, he tells her. "See you in a week," he says.
Amber hangs up, goes into the kitchen, turns on the radio and the tap for dishes. Her mother's voice sounds from the room next door.
"How did it go?"
"I got the job," she says.
"Really? Did he say what you were going to do?"
"I don't know." Amber shrugs, passing the sponge over a plate. "Make cakes, I guess."
Her mother pokes her head around the corner. They both stare at the sink, spilling over with dishes.
"Why don't I do it this time," says her mother, finally.
Hankyung comes home to a bottle of spilled pills and scattered twenties. He finds Heechul in the bathroom, vigorously brushing his teeth. "Planning your escape?"
"No, and I'm not--" A thick line of foam drips down Heechul's chin. "I'm not stressed out."
"Good," says Hankyung. He notices the tension in his roommate's arms, elbows locked, hands splayed against the countertop. "Because as far as I know, no one has ever died from brushing their teeth."
Heechul glares at him via the mirror. "You're home early."
"Em has to get up early for rehearsal."
Heechul groans through the toothpaste in his mouth. "I won't sleep at all tonight."
"Want me to split an Ambien?"
"No."
Hankyung unfolds himself from the doorframe, walks over, peers down at the sink. Plenty of pink.
"You have issues," he says, before leaving to change.
Heechul throws a tube of facial cream at the back of his head in response.
The slow, agonizing descent towards making a deadline is still the same, no matter what you do: The cake that stresses Heechul out is the one for his mother's second wedding. Four hundred guests, which means at least ten stacks of 20-inch rounds, carved into something fabulous. The wedding is in 36 hours.
Heechul still has to decide on a concept.
"What about a dolphin?" Taemin suggests.
Heechul rounds on him, eyes wild. "What does a dolphin have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, isn't that--" Taemin balks. "Isn't that popular at weddings?"
"I think that's for ice sculptures," says Onew, and steers him away.
"Heechul," says Zhou Mi from his desk, "stop scaring the kids."
"Heechul," says Hankyung, holding up a Post-it. "What does 'Heimie's Haberdashery, 11:30' mean?"
Heechul groans, collapsing at his desk. "Anyone got a toothbrush?"
"Come on," says Hankyung. He abandons the fondant he was rolling out and grabs his keys. "I'll drive you."
"Shit," Zhou Mi slaps his forehead. "That reminds me--"
"Reminds you of what?"
"Hankyung," says his boss. "While Heechul's getting fitted, can you swing by the airport for me? Guys," Zhou Mi raises his voice. "My cousin is coming from California to help us out for a few months."
The majority of the room gapes at him in shock. "How," says Sulli at last. "And when."
"She needed a job, so I talked to her last week," says Zhou Mi. "And...today."
Hankyung tries to remember how to rework his jaw. "Well," he sputters, "what's her name?"
"Text it to him," says Heechul, and pushes him out the door.
Thirty seconds later in the car, Hankyung's mobile screen lights up. "Amber Liu." Heechul reads.
"I don't even know how I'm supposed to--" Hankyung begins to shake his head, then twists around to check his blind spot before merging left. "I mean, how do I find her? Stop every girl in their early twenties and just, like. Thoroughly creep them out?"
"There's gotta be some paper in here," Heechul says, rummaging through the glove department. But all he can come up with is a Sharpie and a Free Energy t-shirt.
"This is bad," says Hankyung.
"It's not as bad as showing up to your own mother's wedding with a nonexistent cake," snaps Heechul, and uncaps the marker.
It could have gone better.
But it doesn't.
After getting off the escalator, Amber steps up to the man holding a t-shirt with her name on it like a kid at a carnival booth. "Hi," she says.
"Stop freaking out," Hankyung replies.
Okay, what. "I'm not freaking out."
He turns in her direction, and Amber notices the phone at his ear. "Oh," she says.
"I gotta go," Hankyung says into the phone, hangs up, then asks her, "Can I help you?"
"Um, you--" she points to the shirt. "I mean, that's--" She clears her throat, tries cracking a smile. "So you didn't feel like wearing it?"
He blinks at her. "You're Amber?"
"Yeah," she says, because why wouldn't she be.
"You're--" He takes in the short hair, baseball cap, big backpack. The Gamma Rho Lambda t-shirt and Swedish clogs. "Zhou Mi's cousin," he says, to make sure.
The double-take isn't lost on Amber. It's accompanied by a feeling of being mildly insulted. "Would you like to see some ID?"
"Of course not," Hankyung says quickly, crumpling up the shirt. "You have luggage, right?"
While they wait at the carousel, Hankyung keeps looking at his watch. It's a gorgeous steel Cartier, square face, self-winding.
Personally, Amber thinks that watches on guys who have cellphones is just an excuse for a bracelet. On impulse, she voices this opinion out loud.
He glares at her. "You ever get stopped outside the girl's bathroom?"
Thus, the ethos of their relationship is set.
When they pick up Heechul, trailing a garment bag and a two-foot long receipt, Amber takes one look at his face, laughs in disbelief. "You can believe he's a guy, and I can't be a girl?"
"Did I miss something?" Heechul looks at Amber, then back to Hankyung. "Who's the kid?"
Hankyung presses his lips into a thin line as he keys in the ignition.
Six years ago, Zhou Mi made a cake. It was for the one-year anniversary of Luna's twin sister beating cancer. On the cake, an anthromorphic figure of cancer as an insect was getting thrashed by a whip cream roll of newspaper. It was edgy and violent and totally won the hearts over of everyone who eventually ate it. So then Zhou Mi got an idea.
Luna, Kyuhyun, Onew and Zhou Mi had an acapella group back in college that blew minds at birthday parties and wedding receptions. But with the economic downturn, people would rather played Vivaldi by Sarah Chang on their portable boomboxes. So they became Zhou Mi's first employees.
Heechul and Sulli had a media company, which started off posing Sulli next to train tracks and taking mysterious pictures of her in the fog, and ended with them going to places like Tanzania and Ho Chi Minh City to shoot documentaries on street culture and government-run orphanages. When they were hired for logo design and promotion during Zhou Mi's move from his home kitchen to an actual bakery, they ended up staying long-term.
Taemin was a recent art school graduate whose philosophy towards baked goods was that it was only food pottery. Luckily, his interview was in person.
Zhou Mi recruited an old friend, Hankyung, because he had a 1968 blue canvas Toyota named Margaret. She has a Superman sticker on the front edge of the hood. Margaret's trunk is just wide enough for 36-inch sheet cakes. Hankyung, who had recently finished choreographing a ballet on fellowship in London at the time, seriously had nothing better to do, and was sleeping on Zhou Mi's living room couch.
Now he makes cakes. They all do.
Amber stands at the entrance of the bakery, feeling completely intimidated. "How can this many goodlooking people all be in the same place at the same time?"
Zhou Mi nudges her. "Hey, what about the cakes?"
She just shakes her head. "It's like being on the set of a CW show."
In the back, Luna is saying, "How about you give her," she pauses for dramatic effect, "the world?"
"The world," Heechul repeats. "Like a globe? She's not, exactly -- it's not like she likes maps."
"No, I mean, like the saying, you know, give her the world--"
"But there's so much blue," says Heechul, and slides down in his chair until his face is pressed against the table. "It probably won't match her dress or something."
"How about a tree?" says Hankyung.
Heechul's voice is muffled. "Why a tree?"
"Because," says Hankyung. "It's what marriage is about, right? Extending the family, starting a new life. New growth. You can decorate it with the same flowers she picked for her wedding theme."
"A tree is hard, Kyungie," says Heechul, lifting his head up from his desk.
"A tree is impossible--" Zhou Mi interrupts, walking forward with Amber.
"Unless your tree is Grandmother Willow," says Onew.
"--unless your guests can eat PVC piping," Zhou Mi finishes. "You can't have a top-heavy cake."
Heechul and Hankyung look at each other. "Do we still have some flower wire left?" asks Heechul, grabbing a sketchpad.
"I think so," Hankyung smiles. He walks back to his desk. "But double-check with Kyuhyun when he gets back."
"Sulli, if you want to get started on the branches--"
"I love how you just assume," says Sulli, but she's already pulling out a mixing bowl.
"--can you do them with meringue? Luna, if you could get started on the trunk, start with, maybe, 12-inch rounds? Whatever you can do to make up for the volume of the supports. And, Onew--"
Onew, who has his hands buried wrist deep in a bucket of chocolate modeling clay, looks up. "What?"
"Flowers, dongsaeng."
"Is this your cake shop now?" asks Zhou Mi.
"I'm bringing you a five-thousand dollar order," says Heechul, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear. "I can afford to own it for a day."
"Can I help?" Amber speaks up.
Heechul eyes her skeptically. "What can you do?"
"I," she pauses, thinking. "I know how to make waffle fries."
"Really?" Hankyung asks, interested despite himself.
"So washing dishes it is," says Heechul, and pushes her towards the sinks.
"If anyone needs me, I'll be in the back making cream puffs," Zhou Mi mutters.
The tree cake is a hit. Just the right amount of cheesy for the 40-50 crowd, but it actually looks quite nice sitting among the table placements. Heechul's mother has a little trouble deciding how to cut it until Sulli takes the branches off the top, the fixture curling out in all directions like an arabesque. The girls did an amazing job. Onew's lilies, covered with sanding sugar and silver dragees, are unbelievable.
Amber hadn't expected to be invited to the wedding, but while they were finishing up the night before, Heechul had tossed a paper plane in her direction, smothering a yawn with his other hand.
"Your ticket in," he said, rubbing at his eyes as she opens it.
"But I didn't do anything."
Heechul shrugs. "There's gotta be some credit given for doing what no one else wants to do."
So there she was, standing at the far end of the yard, fifty million bobby pins holding her hair up, sipping an orange soda and watching couples dance under string lights stuffed into clear glass bottles. Amber still doesn't know how she managed to land in the one place on the east coast where everyone had just the right haircut to perfectly accentuate their fine-boned facial structures.
Within half an hour of the cake getting cut, she rejects an invitation to dance with a guy named Peter, bumps into an old high school acquaintance, Henry, on a music scholarship at BU, eats way too many cubes of pepperjack cheese, and is exchanging stories about old boyfriends with Luna, when Hankyung joins them.
"He wasn't that bad a guy," she's telling Luna, "but--"
"Speaking of bad guys," Luna says, and smiles as she spots him walking up with a woman Amber doesn't know on his arm. Her her legs easily go on for miles. Hankyung introduces her as his girlfriend, Emily.
"Nice to meet you," Amber smiles automatically, sticking out her hand.
Emily smiles back. "So are you having fun, making cakes?"
Amber shakes her head. "I haven't made any yet. Just the dishwasher for now."
"Don't worry," says Hankyung. "In a few weeks, Deathly Hallows is going to come out, and no one will show up to work. Then Zhou Mi will make you do everything."
Emily lets go of Hankyung's arm to link with Amber's instead. "They're all total fanatics," she faux-whispers. Her hair grazes the edge of Amber's cheek. She makes a note to turn off her Hedwig's Theme ringtone as soon as she can.
Soon enough, Emily is whisked off by Luna for some kind of impromptu karaoke session, and Hankyung sits on the table Amber is leaning against, his feet still able to touch the ground that she can't quite reach. "Holy shit," Amber tells him.
He looks at her, puzzled. "What?"
"What is with the water in this city?"
"Oh, yeah," Hankyung grins. "Yeah, she's--" He clears his throat. "I know."
"In high school," Amber says, "did she work at an Abercrombie or a Starbucks?"
"How totally presumptive," Hankyung comments. "Judgmental, even."
"Well?"
He coughs. "She worked at the Gap."
"Knew it," Amber mutters, draining the rest of her glass.
Hankyung stares at her for a second, then says, "Look, I'm sorry about the whole, identity crisis thing."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Amber says, "I didn't know you were having one."
"You know what I mean. I mean, tonight, you look -- I wouldn't have thought, if you had, like this--"
"Oh my god, stop," she says. Now they were both embarrassed.
"Ugh, whatever," says Hankyung. "I like your earrings. Is that okay?"
"Sure," says Amber, then squints up at him. "I like yours too."
He laughs at that, reaches to touch it self-consciously. Amber notices he's not wearing his watch.
"So," Hankyung says eventually. "Waffle fries, huh."
"Yeah. And tea."
"Really," he says. "Okay, what goes good with lavender?"
She thinks for a moment. "Taro."
"Close enough."
A screech of feedback interrupts them suddenly, and they both look towards the stage, where Emily is bending over to pick up a fallen microphone. "Sorry, everyone," she calls, straightening up and waving at the crowd, Luna laughing behind her.
Amber catches Hankyung smiling to himself. "How did you guys meet, anyway? Did you have to buy like, a dozen scarves before you could ask her out?"
"What, you don't think I can score by myself? And why do you assume I was a customer? You don't think I can merit an employment at the Gap?"
Amber snorts. "It's not possible."
Hankyung rolls his eyes, but he answers her question. "We actually graduated from the same dance academy -- it's what she does now," he adds. "Local theatre productions, occasionally goes up to New York for master classes. I actually waited tables while in London, but," he rubs at his chin, thinking. "When I came back, we met up again. Decided to give it a shot. Simple story, really."
"Lucky," Amber sighs.
Hankyung glances at her, then looks back at the crowd. "Homesick?" he asks, gently.
"I don't know." She raises one shoulder in a half-shrug, then turns around to set her empty glass on the table. "It still feels like I'm on vacation. I don't feel like I'm ready, you know? For this post-school, rest of my life, planting a tree--" she gestures behind her at the remaining stump of cake, "stuff yet."
"Jesus." He blatantly stares at her this time. "How old are you, exactly?"
"Twenty-two next September," she answers, and is surprised to see him visibly relax.
"Not too bad," he says. "Taemin's, like, five. Sulli's still a fetus. You should hear their problems."
"What are you saying? That unlike you, young people don't have real problems?"
"That's not what I'm -- are you calling me old?"
"I am definitely calling you old. What are you, thirty-five?"
"Why aren't you dancing?" Hankyung switches gears, and Amber's smile fades.
"I don't dance. Not much, anyway."
"It's a wedding," he says, and steps back out onto the dance floor. "There are certain customs you have to adhere to." At that exact moment, the DJ switches to Frank Sinatra's You Make Me Feel So Young.
Hankyung raises his eyebrows. "And if you needed a sign..."
"But I--"
"Get over here, Liu." He holds out his hand.
For the first time since she's arrived, Amber laughs. And she takes it.
"So is your mom happy?" asks Hankyung, as the reception winds down. He sits down in the chair next to Heechul, who is staring at the room at large in a sleep-deprived, wide-eyed stupor.
"Catatonically thrilled," Heechul says at last. "At least, I think so."
"I'll bet she is."
"I don't actually care," Heechul points out, "because I'm going to sleep for the next fifty years."
"Damn, Kim," says Hankyung. "I had plans, just the two of us."
"Your plans are lame."
"Mm." They sit in a comfortable silence, until Heechul speaks up again.
"Thanks, though."
"For what."
"Saving my ass. With the cake concept. With the tux. And, you know. General...transportation."
"Heechul," says Hankyung. "Shut up."
"Wait," Heechul says, as he starts to get up again. He nods in the direction of Amber, standing near Sulli and Onew, observing their conversation but not joining it. "You making nice with the new girl?"
"Can't you tell she's lonely?"
Heechul raises his eyebrows. "Yeah. But what's it to you?"
"Nothing. Stray kittens are usually your specialty. But you were distracted, and," Hankyung shrugs, watching her. "Just picking up your slack, man."
"Then thanks for that, too," Heechul says.
"No problem."
"By the way," says Heechul, after a few seconds, "Em was looking for you a few minutes ago. I forgot to tell you."
"Right," says Hankyung. He stands up, slipping his hands into his pockets. "Got it."
"What happens now is," Zhou Mi announces the next day, and is met with unbridled waves of resentment thanks to a group hangover. "We work on the gallery's contest pieces. I was going to have Heechul do the second place piece, but I don't think he's coming in this morning--"
"He's not," Hankyung says. "He's out cold."
"Good," Zhou Mi says, and means it. Then he turns to his cousin. "Amber, want to give it a shot?"
Amber's mouth falls open. "Really? Because yesterday I was scrubbing batter off pans with steel wool."
Zhou Mi waves her over, hands her an apron. "You only learn by doing, right? Trust me, it's easy as -- well, cake."
The client is a local gallery who held an art contest over the summer. They were supposed to create replicas of the top three art pieces in the style of the winners' favorite artist, frames and impressionist swirls and all.
"So Taemin will take first place, Joan Miró. Amber will do second place, Alexander Kanevsky. Third--"
"I'll take it," Hankyung offers. "Help out those who only know how to use a deep fryer."
The cake itself doesn't require much shaping: a 20 by 30-inch sheet provided adequate working surface. Covering the cake with a layer of seamless fondant after icing it, the rest of the so-called art would be reproduced with conventional confectionary frosting.
Taemin, with at least five different brushes in hand, is clearly in his element. Hankyung's third place favorite is Roy Lichtenstein. "Maybe we should swap," he suggests to Amber, who is holding up a paintbrush with an expression that betrays the most extreme form of bewilderment.
"Why?" Amber asks faintly. "Does Lichtenstein do mostly stick figures?"
"No, but -- do you like comics?"
"Yes. So what?"
"Well, the lines are cleaner, for one, which makes it easier to visualize." He slides the paintbrush from her hand; her fingers hang loosely over nothing in the air. "I think you can handle this one--" And over the next few hours, he shows her how to colorstain precut pieces of hardened fondant, lay them on the drying board, then reassemble them again on the surface of the cake; how to use patterned rollers for the Ben-Day dots. Luckily, most of Ms. Third Place's piece seemed to be comprised of overlapping hexagons, so it isn't too difficult.
"Hey," says Hankyung, after a few hours. "This looks pretty good."
"Really?" Amber leans back a little, closes one eye and gives her work a onceover. At the right angle, it really did look like the back of a turtle. Or a honeycomb. Or whatever it was supposed to be. "It wasn't too bad, I guess. Most of it was so, geometric." Then she looks over at Taemin's. "Oh my god."
"Thanks," the other decorator smiles. Art school graduate, Amber has to remind herself. She watches as Taemin taps the end of a paintbrush absently against his cheek, tilting his head one way, then the other. He hesitates, then says, "You think the background is too dark on the top?"
"Argh," says Amber.
"It's the first thing I notice," Taemin clarifies, ignoring her.
"Try spraying the top with an opaque layer of a lighter shade," Hankyung suggests. "Then it won't stand out as much." Amber looks over at his work, and is dismayed to find that it's also dangerously close to being perfect.
"Stop it," he nudges her with his elbow. "It's seriously not bad, at all."
"Yeah, if you insist on being a perfectionist while working here,” Taemin carefully sprays the top few inches of his piece with paint, "it's all over for you. I mean, it's cake."
"It's still art," Zhou Mi says from behind them.
"That you can eat?"
"Which makes it the best," he replies, then asks, "How's it going?"
"Mine needs a layer of food lacquer after it dries," Taemin says. "Otherwise, I'm almost done."
"Not mine," says Hankyung. "But possibly Amber's."
"What's food lacquer?" she asks.
"It makes the cake shiny," Taemin tells her.
"Shiny?" Amber frowns. "And it affects the whole look of the cake?"
Zhou Mi smiles. "It's your call. But you can't take it off once you put it on."
"I'll leave it...what's the word. Matte," she decides, and feels pleasantly surprised to receive Taemin's nod of approval.
That week, there's orders for cakes shaped like a soccer ball, an octopus, the Batmobile, the local lacrosse team, a sleeping cat, James Bond, a roller coaster, and downtown St. Louis. With each new cake, Amber slowly adjusts to the time difference between coastlines. Still, most days, they don't wrap up until 8 or 9 at night. The bad thing -- or perhaps good thing -- about brightly lit spaces like the bakery, is how time passes by so quickly that you don't even notice.
On nights they stay past 10, they order pizza. Or Chinese. Sometimes sushi.
And gradually, Amber learns about the rest of the group. Even if it's over topping preferences.
"Sorry we didn't get to meet earlier," Kyuhyun says, a slice of cheese and olives inches from his mouth. "Lately I've been spending most of my mornings eating breakfast in my car outside of Kinko's."
"I ordered new promotional posters for the shop," Zhou Mi says beside him, by way of explanation. "Normally our PR people handle it, but they're on vacation. They work hard, unlike--" he slings a long arm around Kyuhyun, who stiffens instantly in annoyance, "this guy."
"I'm the baker," Kyuhyun looks incredulous that they're even arguing about this. "Without me, you have no cake. To shape, to decorate, to sell -- to shoot a television show on. To make, you know. Money."
"Please," Zhou Mi says, dropping his arm and rolling his eyes. "I went to pastry school. You have a degree in structural design."
"Which just proves that any idiot can bake a cake."
"Exactly," Zhou Mi smiles, victorious.
Amber catches Luna's eye from a few feet away. She nods to confirm what she suspects, rolling her eyes exasperatedly.
"You'll get used to their awkward flirting," she says, tugging her over to her desk, and gives an exaggerated shudder. "Their awkward, geeky flirting. How many Starcraft innuendos does Kyuhyun typically drop?"
"I refuse to know anything about Starcraft precisely for that reason,” Sulli says around a piece of pineapple, chicken and green peppers. Luna and Sulli are the type of totally secure, confident-looking girls who had majors in Art History and American Lit, respectively. Their nails always matches their outfits, but they buy copies of Real Simple instead of Nylon. Both of them took four years of French in high school, and don't mind occasionally sliding in a situation-appropriate adjective or exclamation into casual conversation.
Onew, who also speaks high school-level French, likes cheese, potato and spinach. "Frittata style," he says, biting off a piece and chewing rapidly. "But I swear you can ask for chicken soup on a pizza nowadays and you'll get it. Do you speak French?"
"I know a little Spanish," Amber says.
"Oh, right," says Onew. "California."
"Actually, that should mean I ought to speak better Chinese," and he grins apologetically.
"Hey," he says, "I know a little Chinese! Or at least, like, names of fruits--"
"He doesn't know a thing," says Taemin, plopping down in a chair next to them, clutching a slice of pepperoni. Later, Amber finds out that, unlike Chinese, Onew knows bad puns and how to compose a somewhat cheesy if still accurate haiku in under twelve seconds. He also owns a Vespa, which would naturally make everyone worried about him except for the fact that he, unexpectedly, has very dexterous reflexes.
Taemin, who earlier on displayed obvious superiority with portraiture and art media, has a ponytail and is the type of pretty that causes accidents between distracted drivers on the street. He also has an obsessive taste for pumpkin spice latte syrup, which he presents to Amber as a late welcome gift a couple weeks after the wedding.
"This stuff is amazing," he says, handing her the bottle. "This stuff is like, magic elixir. You can put it on anything. You can put it on steak." In the background, Onew is making gagging noises.
"Wow, thanks," says Amber. Meal accompaniment, says the label. The smell of pumpkin spice latte syrup is rich and thick; it reminds her of coffee houses and crackling fires to warm the chill of winter weather. Suddenly, she craves sunshine and cacti and really good Mexican food. "Man, I feel like guacamole," she says without thinking.
"There's a Chipotle a couple blocks down the street," says Luna, sympathetically.
The next day, an anonymously donated bag of guacamole chips and dip is sitting on top of her desk. It's definitely overkill, but she has it for lunch anyway.
"Why am I not surprised," says Heechul, as soon as he gets back. Zhou Mi's assigned him to do teacup cupcakes not unlike the spinning teacups ride at Disney World. Amber thinks that actually sounds kind of fun. Heechul, however, looks less than thrilled.
"You like electronics, California?"
"Me?" Amber asks, tagging along because he seemed to have, for lack of a better word, chosen her. "I like Thoreau. Which," she adds, as he blinks at her. "is nowhere near liking electronics."
"I almost flunked out of linear circuit analysis as an undergrad, so. Me neither."
"Really? But I thought you were an art major--" and Heechul scoffs.
"Please. Give a little more credit to my ambition. I studied EE first."
"That's...amazing."
"Still," he scowls down at the coils of copper wire and motors, "didn't seem to help me much, did it."
It turns out, it's not as hard as Heechul makes it out to be. Stripping the ends off the wires only required a couple pliers and some electrical tape to connect them to the motors. Slap on an on/off switch, drill some holes in the plastic teacups, screw them onto a base, and it actually looked pretty cool.
"That was almost--" he stops himself short, looks at her with a mixture of suspicion and surprise.
"What?"
Heechul shrugs. "The time went fast," he says, then gives her a mischievous grin and calls out over his shoulder, "Hey, Sulli! Mind if I borrow your Barbies?" He lowers his voice. "Every time I say her name, I feel like I should follow up with an order of potato salad at a deli or something."
Sulli comes over holding Journalism and Tennis Star Barbie and starts smacking him on the side of the head with them. "I use them for models for when we have to do figurines," she explains calmly, facing Amber. "Because it's not like he or anyone else here can sculpt worth a damn. If it was up to him," she clearly relishes hitting Heechul with Journalism Barbie's film camera, "we'd still be editing together endless loops of footage on espresso machines."
"Fuck off," Heechul growls, and makes a grab for Tennis Star Barbie. "Did I tell you about the time she wouldn't listen to anything but the Garden State soundtrack for an entire year?"
But Amber is confused. "Wait, why do we need Barbies?"
"For this," and Heechul places Tennis Star into a cup, then flips on the switch. She makes a good effort to stay in, but after about two and a half seconds, she goes flying, her body making a nice, clean arc in the air, before landing fifteen feet away.
After a moment, Sulli says, "First of all, cake is heavy, and sticky, and moist. You know, dense."
"Oh," says Heechul. "So, like Barbie."
"Barbie is not stupid," Sulli exclaims, and Amber leaves them to argue it out, slipping over to the other side of the bakery, where Hankyung is hammering together a structure for a diorama of the newly opened children's museum. Naturally, made out of cake.
She clears her throat. "Do you think, uh. I can finish by myself?"
He glances up, wondering why she's asking for his permission. "Heechul got sidetracked?"
"...she was an ambassador to the United Nations, she was an astronaut, do you even know what it takes to qualify to be an astronaut--" Sulli can be heard saying.
"She probably slept her way up," they hear Heechul reply.
"Yeah, he did," Amber says ruefully, and Hankyung laughs.
"Just place the order with Kyuhyun -- cupcakes, right? How many?"
"I think he said there are 172 people coming to the event--"
"Then make it an even 200. Do you know what flavor?"
"We have different flavors?"
Hankyung stares at her. "Are you kidding? Didn't you, haven't you tried the cakes yet?"
"Well, I ate some at the wedding."
"Amber," he says, shaking his head.
"What?"
Hankyung grabs her by the arm and pulls her over to the kitchen. "We have fifty different flavors."
"Fifteen?"
"Fifty." He pushes her through the doors.
Believe it or not, Zhou Mi is actually French-trained. Which means, explains Kyuhyun, that if it was up to him, he'd use butter all the time, and whole milk -- the entire, fatty, artery-clogging works. "Nowadays, customers are more health conscious and sometimes ask questions about this sort of thing." He takes out a few sample-sized cakes for her to try. "Still, the cakes can't just look good, they have to taste good too. So that's the first problem to solve: how to make it less heart attack-inducing but still keep in mind that this is something that people actually want to eat."
"You start," he points toward the rack of spices and oils located at the far end of the kitchen, away from the ovens, "with those. Always keep your spices and oils away from heat; otherwise they change in quality and taste, and don't last as long. The only thing you should keep near the stove is like, dry pastas and cereals."
"Then, you have a trial and error period. There's a classic set recipes, of course, but you always want a wow-factor piece for your shop. Experiment long enough, and you find things that work for you and things that don't. Like cardamom and orange zest. It's a perfect marriage. Two things that work together that you didn't think would."
"Like you and Zhou Mi?” Amber asks cheekily.
"Like..." Kyuhyun looks across the bakery, where at one end, Heechul is still arguing with Sulli, hands gesturing animatedly between their bodies, while on the other end, Hankyung has on a pair of earphones, humming while taking a pastry knife to a new stack of dulce de leche. "Hankyung and Heechul."
Amber starts to say something, then stops. "...oh."
"Anyway, like Hankyung said, we have fifty different flavors of cake. Some of them, because of their basic composition, can't be used for the shaped cakes. You cut into a blueberry muffin, for example, and then try to start icing the thing, it just gets too messy. But otherwise, that's what we've tried to aim for. Unique, tasty flavors, and not entirely -- well, it's not the worst thing you can eat."
"Mm," says Amber, chewing on the fork in her mouth. "Yeah, these are great."
"Sweet tooth?"
"Just a tiny one," she confesses.
"It'll grow." Kyuhyun points a thumb at the room in front of him. "It's the same with all of them. You ask anyone out there, they think they have the best job in the world. I mean, just think about it."
"What about you?"
"It's not bad," he says evasively. "I could use a little more time for Starcraft."
"Tell me about it," she smiles. "I used to surf whenever I wanted to avoid homework."
Kyuhyun looks at her, surprised. "Really? You'll have to teach us sometime. We're all pale and athletically compromised."
"Seriously?"
"Holed up in a cake shop all day does that. The closest we get to playing sports is by being Red Sox fans."
For the rest of the afternoon, Amber finishes making the cupcakes by herself. When the last one is settle into its teacup, Heechul comes over with a bag of piping. "Now this is the fun part," he tells her, and she finally realizes, he had done it on purpose.
Hankyung and Heechul met on the job. Hankyung was the only one who understood Heechul's reference to TFATF the sad, dark day he made a bad joke, and they've been best friends ever since.
"I've created a monster," Zhou Mi tends to say, and everyone else is usually too keen to agree.
It's not so much the display of unyielding friendship that can be so easily detected that makes them the group's most high profile, most made-for-television couple. Nor is it only the simple satisfaction of an evolutionary job well done at the visual compliments of height and stature and natural skin color. It goes beyond how Heechul is all scowls and sharp angles, while Hankyung is softer and more smiles. There is a quiet, automatic tolerance for each other's worst versions of themselves, and a steady, even quieter admiration that ties the both of them together, different as they are.
But they argue like nobody's business.
A steady flow of bickering will more likely than not begin mid-morning, starting with a jab at someone's bad taste in coffee coolers. Nothing is a forbidden topic, not hair nor clothes nor cologne nor exes nor music, not even choice of lunch. After a particularly loud outburst from Heechul that entirely screws up her piping on a cake she's been working on for hours, Taemin reassures her that, after a while, it sort of just becomes white noise.
Apparently, they even share an apartment.
Amber just can't see it.
A few weeks later, the city puts on their annual moonlight walk for breast cancer awareness. Zhou Mi is out of town promoting the show and takes Kyuhyun with him, so the upcoming weekend is the first time in a long while that most of the group hasn't had a big to-do list in the back of their heads for the following week.
"Going to drink myself into a stupor," Luna announces, dragging Onew along with her. "So count me out."
Sulli mentions a date, Taemin's going upstate to visit relatives, which leaves Hankyung and Heechul pulling on sneakers and multiple layers of clothing on Saturday night.
"Hey," Heechul says suddenly as Hankyung grabs a scarf off a hanger. "Maybe we should invite Buttercup."
"Who?"
"You know, the Powerpuff Girl?" Hankyung slowly shakes his head, and Heechul sighs impatiently. "Amber."
"Oh, right." Hankyung blinks. "Amber. Yeah, sure. But why Buttercup?"
"Because Buttercup," Heechul says, watching him carefully, "is the only girl in Townsville who can curl her tongue."
Hankyung frowns. "That's interesting." And Heechul gives up.
Amber answers the door in her pajamas, a vegetable peeler in one hand. "What do you want?" she looks first to Hankyung, then at Heechul. In the background, the television is turned to the Antiques Roadshow.
"You geek," Heechul says, barging past her.
"I like history!" she says defensively, then rounds onto Hankyung. "And if you guys are here just to--"
"We're here," Hankyung interrupts, "to see if you'd like to go for a walk. While it's cold, and dark. For three hours."
"And why--"
"For breast cancer awareness."
"But seriously," says Heechul, staring at the television, "anything's an adventure after watching this."
Amber glares at them both. "Maybe I won't go."
"I think there's going to be free Jamba Juice," Hankyung adds. "And Pizza Hut."
The vegetable peeler clatters to the floor. "You guys still have Pizza Hut around here?"
"Does she like everything that's antiquated?" Heechul asks, as she runs to her room to change.
The walk is held along the river, which means it's colder than they had anticipated. The three of them are forced to huddle together for warmth, a misshapen bulk of winterwear casting strange shadows as they pass under every streetlamp.
"Okay," Heechul pants as they pass another corner. "Impress me. Tell me something cool about history."
"I don't need to justify anything to you," says Amber, teeth chattering.
"Then how about to Hankyung," Heechul says. "He thinks history is even more boring than I do."
"I don't think it's boring," Hankyung says quickly. "I just think it's--"
"Unimportant," Heechul supplies.
"Well," Hankyung admits. "Yeah."
Amber stares up at him. "Are you even Chinese?"
"Okay," because that was a sore spot. "Not unimportant, but. Not relevant."
"The past is the present," Amber tells him. "Or whatever that profound shit is. It's true. History is one gigantic arrow pointing towards where we are today."
"Right," says Heechul, "which is freezing to death in the fair city of--"
"That's not what I mean," she says. "Or it does, but that's only part of it. It tells us why your last name is Kim, and yours is Han, and mine is Liu, and we can be standing here together, next to some river in the United States, and I'm able to talk to you, even though I'm a girl--"
"So maybe it's interesting to know," says Hankyung, "but what's the point in studying things that have already happened?"
"To learn why people think the way they do. Why they live the way they do. What conditions they are born into, and what are things they cultivate themselves. It's about environment, personal motivations, it's about millions of lives unknowingly affecting millions of others. You're male, and Chinese, which means you're probably kind of an asshole. Not," Amber looks pointedly at Heechul as he begins to laugh, "that it's any different for you."
"And you know that, thanks to history."
"In a way."
"Then history is wrong," says Hankyung. "I'm not an asshole."
Amber shrugs as best she can, restricted by her jacket. "History is subjective. So is the truth. Only the winners write the textbooks. But that's what makes it so interesting, and so complex. How you form opinions on anything at all is based on things that have been set in motion in the past. And that's why it's relevant. Because you are totally, totally living it. I don't think you're an asshole, by the way," she adds. "I was just trying to make a point."
The instantaneous surge of relief Hankyung feels upon hearing her say that surprises even himself. Over her head, Heechul mouths, Buttercup.
Almost like she had magical powers.
Once a year, to open up the holiday season, they forsake cake for something else entirely: pie.
This is Onew's area of expertise.
"The perfect pie dough," he begins, "is a difficult thing to accomplish."
Luna speaks up. "If something goes wrong, it's usually because your ingredients aren't cold enough, or you overworked the dough."
Onew frowns at her. "May I tell the story?"
Luna rolls her eyes, before turning back to her work. "Go right ahead."
"First of all, you have to keep everything room temperature, except--! The butter, Crisco, eggs and ice water. Those need to be taken directly from the refrigerator."
"Crisco?" Amber asks, and Onew shrugs.
"That's how my mom did it, half butter and half Crisco. More malleable, I guess. Okay, so now, after you put the ingredients in the mixer, turn it on long enough only until you start getting pea-sized lumps. You don't want a sticky, soft dough, because then it's flat, not flaky. Doesn't feel as good when you're eating it, right?"
"Uh," says Amber, "sure."
As they wait for the dough to cool, Onew asks her how she's adjusting.
"Adjusting?" Amber repeats. "You think I'm not well-adjusted?"
"I think," he says seriously, and she's surprised by his tone, "you've adjusted a little too well, and you're kinda just. Floating by."
"Well," says Amber, drawing random patterns in the flour on the table. "Yeah, I mean. It's not like I thought I'd be making cakes after I graduated."
"I don't think any of us did, but we grew to like it, I guess? I just hope," says Onew, "that you're having fun. And you don't, like, secretly hate us."
"I don't secretly hate you!" Amber's eyes widen at the accusation. "I just feel like, I don't know. Like this is a pit stop towards something else I'll eventually be doing. Something that's sort of...more useful."
"I get it," he says. "Societal conventions tug hard." He's quiet for a few seconds. "But you know what tends to make people happy? Not all the time, but most of the time?"
"Cake," she guesses, and he nods.
"Not such a bad calling."
They take out the dough as soon as it's chilled, a couple of hours later. Onew teaches her how to set the rolling pin the middle, then push out from there, instead of starting at the ends and working against your previous work. Rotate the dough on the board as you roll, he says, so it's even in width.
"Also," says Onew, as they stretch the crust over the pans, "instead of using vanilla extract, use vanilla bean paste. Lasts forever, and still has the natural black specks."
"What is that," Amber smiles, "the real moral of the story?"
He sticks his hand up for a high-five. She slaps it. "Exactly."
That weekend, the trees change colors. Something in the back of Amber's head acknowledges that they had to have been changing for weeks, because trees don't suddenly change from green to red like a traffic signal light. When she borrows Kyuhyun's bike for a ride around the city, she discovers that it's cold, really cold. Also something new. She comes back home with a runny nose, and Zhou Mi insists on taking her shopping for a new jacket, gloves, hat, scarf.
Leaves crunch under her feet as she treads along sidewalks. Wet wood and smoke permeates the scent of salt in the air. More bad weather means more staying in with movie rentals, good beer, even better conversation. Starbucks starts serving their annual holiday drinks, reintroducing flavors like peppermint and eggnog and gingerbread spice.
New England isn't just a place to make cakes, Amber realizes. It's more than cities on top of hills and civil disobedience. For her, it's a place to get used to.
They get another wedding, late December, their last job of the year. "Weddings typically means the classics compromising with new and different. Every couple likes to think they're doing something unique," says Hankyung, folding the batter over in the bowl. "So this time, we're going to make red velvet, almond, and spice three-tiered cakelets."
"Okay," says Amber. "How many do we need?"
"Let's see." Hankyung takes the pencil from behind his ear, marks something down on a piece of paper, does a couple seconds worth of rough calculations. "Three hundred."
"And when is the delivery?"
"The day after tomorrow."
She blows out her cheeks, balls her hands on her hips. "Yeah. Definitely a blockbuster-sized apocalypse."
"Hey, have a little bit of faith. This--" Hankyung pulls out a molded pan from under his desk, "is how we're going to do it."
She stares at it. "A mold? That sounds like cheating."
"But this is quality stuff! Double-casted aluminum." He flicks his fingernail against it; it makes a sharp ping. "Carême himself wouldn't be ashamed to use it. You know, if he was in a tight jam."
"Like us," she derives, and rolls up her sleeves. "Red velvet, you said?"
"It's such a cliche, but it's one of my favorites," he confesses, pulling out a few more of the pans.
"I like it too. What kind of glaze--"
"Nothing for the spice, but maybe we can mix a couple apples in there." He begins dousing the pans with a bottle of nonstick spray. "Vanilla glaze for the red velvet with a little lemon coloring, and lavender for the almond. Then we can have Luna dragee, pipe on a few ribbons, and they'll be good to go."
She grabs the bottle as he hands it off to her, going to the other side of the kitchen for more pans. "You know," she says, hesitantly, "You're actually really good at this."
Hankyung looks at her, surprised, then raises an eyebrow. "Well, the Gap wouldn't hire me, so." Then he smiles. "You're not so bad yourself."
Amber tries to ignore how her chest seems to fill up with some nonspecific emotion when he says that. Between mixing colors for the glaze and dragging Luna over to pipe on these complex, baroque designs, pretty soon it's a little after two in the morning. Luna turns down Hankyung's offer of breakfast, leaving Amber to zip up her coat as Hankyung closes up.
"Think of it this way," he says as they head over to Margaret, all alone in the parking lot. "Less work to do tomorrow."
The only place in town still open is a Denny's. Amber leans back in the booth after ordering eggs and toast, watches Hankyung stir sugar into his coffee with a spoon.
"Let me guess," she says. "This place is special. You took Emily here on your first date."
Hankyung gives her a strange look. "Absolutely," he says finally, too casually. "Nothing's more romantic than sharing a jumbo shrimp salad."
She deliberately stares at some unidentifiable point over his shoulder. "How is she doing, by the way?"
"She's fine. She's in New York for two weeks. Viviana Durante's in town. Couldn't miss her." Hankyung sets down his spoon. "Why do you like to talk about her so much? You have a crush or something?"
"What! No--"
"You wouldn't be the first."
"I don't," Amber says, almost scowling, and Hankyung breaks into a grin.
"That isn't any less convincing," he says, before lifting the mug to his lips.
"I hate it when you cook," Heechul says, later that week at their place.
"You love it when I cook," Hankyung scoffs, soaping off the counter top.
"No, because then I feel like -- there's a word for it. What's the word. Accretion. Like the universe expanding after the Big Bang."
Heechul closes the dishwasher, and they turn on the television. They watch a little bit of Everybody Loves Raymond.
"Someone told me once that this is exactly what married life is supposed to be like," comments Heechul. Barely five minutes pass before Ray makes yet another round of excuses as Debra blows her top.
"Yeah?"
"Guess we'll find out someday," says Heechul says, eyes on the screen.
In late January, they get a new hire, along with a replacement set of chairs from Matter. Choi Minho, twenty-three, their first legit culinary school graduate.
Onew falls head over heels.
"You know how, a million years ago, all those glaciers came in and plowed through the upper Midwest and flattened everything? Made the Great Lakes and stuff?" Onew jerks his chin at the conspicuous sore thumb of tall, dark and handsome across the room. "So he's like, the Wisconsinan. And I'm," he clicks his tongue in an all too natural tact of self-deprecation. "Alluvial dust."
"What's a Wisconsinan?" asks Luna.
"It was a glacier," says Kyuhyun gravely. "It was huge."
Luna frowns at Onew. "You and your metaphors." But Onew's too busy fluttering glances between Minho and his Maine lobsters cake to notice.
Minho's only contracted to work until the end of the wedding season in June, but the first thing Onew does after a week of heavily reinforced encouragement is to ask Zhou Mi if he can, somehow, work out a long-term deal.
"I need more time," Onew says, wringing his hands.
"Okay," says Zhou Mi. "But first, tell me your plan."
"Right," Onew nods. "First, I'll start by talking."
"Like, hey you want to go out sometime?"
"No, more like, hey I like your phone, I'm thinking about getting a new one, what type is it? Or, hey have you seen Inception?"
"Of course he's seen Inception."
"Most likely," Onew agrees.
"So you plan is, just. Pointless, redundant conversation?"
"Yes," Onew admits, "pretty much."
Later, on her way to get more fondant, Amber stops at Onew's desk. "Hey, you gave me advice, so let me return the favor -- don't worry, okay? You're a great guy. Just be yourself."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Onew begins, looking doubtful.
"I'm serious. If you hold yourself back, no one's going to fall for it. Least of all, the person that you actually want to pay attention."
"Is that working out for you and Hankyung?" Onew mutters, and Amber stares at him, shocked.
"What did you say?"
"Shit," says Onew, then widens his eyes, declaring innocence. "What did you say?"
"Lee Jinki, I swear to god--"
"Oh, hey, Minho!" Onew chirps nervously, and Amber whirls around, finds Minho standing less than three feet away.
"Onew," says Minho, "or is it Jinki?"
"Neither, it's Really Bad Liar," Amber tells him, scowling.
Onew laughs nervously as Minho looks between them, confused. "You can call me Onew," he says. "Do you need something?"
"Um, yeah. Zhou Mi said you can do some piping for me?"
"Sure!" Onew says, and bolts off before Amber can pin him again.
As if that wasn't enough to make her completely paranoid, a couple weeks before Valentine's Day, Emily and Hankyung break up.
He brushes off all offers of concern and sympathy -- all except for Heechul, who doesn't offer any -- and when pressed for details, only says that Em's moving to New York permanently, and he didn't feel like dragging his ass all the way up to the city.
"It's a heavy ass to drag," Heechul says acidly, from his corner.
There's a pause. "Also, the job market's still pretty bad," says Hankyung with a tone of finality, and they all go back to work.
"I don't get why Heechul's so pissed," Amber says, during lunch. "Did he seriously like her that much?"
Sulli gives her a considering look before answering. "It probably made things really simple." She takes a small bite out of her sandwich. "I think, whatever she couldn't do for Hankyung, Heechul made sure he could. But now that she's gone, the line's kinda blurred again. You know, between the two of them."
Amber has to ask. "So they really are--?" and Sulli raises an eyebrow.
"No one knows for sure. But it looks like it, right?
"I don't know," says Luna thoughtfully. "I mean, do you believe in platonic soulmates?" Across from her, Taemin snorts.
"As much as I do the tooth fairy."
"But what about, like, Sex and the City?" Amber asks, and then is distracted by Onew falling into the seat next to hers.
"I blame you," he tells her morosely.
Luna laughs. "What, exactly, do you have planned for Minho?"
Almost like he's horrified of his own daring, Onew pulls a heart-shaped box out from his backpack and take off the cover. Inside are a dozen white and milk chocolates molded into the shape of Bach.
"Is that...Johann Sebastian or Johann Christoph?" asks Luna, peering closer with morbid curiosity.
"Probably both," says Onew, and puts the cover back on. "But I mean, you get it, right?" he asks desperately. "A box of chocolates? Bachs of chocolates?"
Sulli almost falls off her chair, she's laughing so hard; beside her, Taemin's turning blue.
"She," Onew points to Amber, protesting, "told me to be myself!"
"Well, now you have to, right?" Amber says. "These had to have been special-ordered."
"Fifty bucks for your dignity, Onew," gasps Luna. "Think carefully--"
"Go for it," says Amber, grinning. "If he doesn't like them, you can tell Hankyung I like him."
For some reason, this seems to gives him the proper motivation. A Post-it with "lucky you" written on it is taped to her desk a few days later. But really, Amber thinks, it had been lucky Onew. She'd have killed him before he told anybody anything.
"I like her," Hankyung says, finally.
"I like her, too," says Heechul.
Neither of them elaborate on to what extent.
"Ugh," says Amber, then points her pencil at a tube of frosting. "Wingardium Leviosa."
"Nice try," says Taemin from across the table, and tosses it to her.
Mid-February, the bakery stalls briefly in production, and everyone settles comfortably into a newfound laziness. Enjoy it while you can, Kyuhyun warns, it's the calm before the storm before wedding season.
"After Valentine's Day, it gets crazy with orders that need gilded roses and fancy bride-and-groom toppers," he tells her.
"Great," she mutters, and swivels in her chair just in time to see Minho and Onew let go of their hands right before they enter the shop. She grins as Onew walks past her desk, a smile on his face that never left since last week.
"Not hiding anything, are we?"
"Not like you," he shoots back, and she makes a threatening noise from the back of her throat. Both of them are blushing, but her phone rings before he can say anything else.
"Hello?" she answers, waving Onew quiet. "Oh, hey, Mom..."
For the next ten minutes, her mother tells her about this wonderful research assistant opportunity she's found with an archeological group that's going to start a dig in the Middle East. As she listens, Amber doesn't check her replies, nor does she notice the rest of the bakery steadily growing quieter as she continues her conversation. When she hangs up, there's a dazed look on her face.
"But you like it here," Taemin says, at last. "You get to make cakes."
"Yeah, but..." Her eyes automatically go to Hankyung and Heechul standing in the doorway, back from their meeting with Zhou Mi just in time to catch the phone call. Then she shrugs, looking away. "History majors don't, exactly."
Hankyung is quiet the rest of the evening. Not that they have much of an evening, anymore. With the two of them being the most senior staff at the bakery, they had ended up staying late to help Zhou Mi figure out the schedule for the next four months.
In a few hours, they'll have to get up again. And they haven't even gone to bed yet.
As much as he's not looking forward to this talk, Heechul is tired. And Amber is different, he knows that. Different from Emily, different from all the others before her. Different enough.
A consequence of the past, he thinks.
Finally, he speaks up. "Okay. So just because you dream about having a garden that works and listening to Lauryn Hill on your days off and naming your kids, I don't even know, Dorothy or Jeremy or something awful like that, doesn't mean I want the same thing."
"A garden that works?" Hankyung repeats, groggily. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Tomorrow is Valentine's Day," says Heechul. "You should do something for her."
"Are you serious?" asks Hankyung.
"I'm not going to, like, give you a hug," snaps Heechul, and Hankyung smiles.
"And I won't ask you to help me."
The catalyst is no longer a catalyst, but she still wears the Dodger's cap. A little bit of home, though according to her solitary heart-to-heart, it's really all she needs.
There's a little bit of a crushing disappointment, though, when she arrives to tell them she's staying, only to discover no one has come to work yet.
Except one.
"Hey," says Hankyung, without pretention, which just ignites a feeling of nervous anticipation in her stomach. He leads her over to a table in the back, where a sheet is covering what Amber presumes is a cake. "Take a look at this." He pulls off the sheet.
It's the weirdest cake she's ever seen. At an angle she didn't think possible was a mosaic of petit fours secured with butter cream frosting, all dusted over with a mixture of granulated honey and gold sanding sugar. In the middle of the makeshift cake was a mirror. Letters spelling out E-R-I-S-E-D is written on the top; Amber recognizes Onew's handwriting.
"Is this. What--" she turns to look at Hankyung, is caught offguard by how the movement is replicated right in front of her. "What is this?"
Slowly, carefully, he takes her hand. Their reflected images do the same thing. "Come on," he says, quietly. "You know what it is."
"...It's what you want."
He nods. "It's what I want."
Amber looks at their figures again, looks at Hankyung watching her.
"Don't go," he says.
"I wasn't going to," says Amber, throat dry.
"Oh," says Hankyung. Their eyes meet in the mirror. They both crack up.
"Heechul's right," Amber says, sobering at last. "Your ideas are lame."
"Heechul would say that," Hankyung says, "But he's usually right."
Amber smiles. "So does that make him Harry?"
"I'd say that's the most accurate," says Hankyung, and tilts her chin up.