Procrastination, thy name is me.
This was supposed to be gift-fic for wuweii for Christmas. However, after scouring lj for POTF fic (I found a grand total of one) and the internet as a whole for POTF info (I found a lot; apparently the boys are semi-famous), I somehow managed to miss the deadline by two months.
>:|
Let this be a lesson to me: RESEARCH DOES NOT EQUAL WRITING.
December 23, 2010
No matter how they decorated it, what music they piped in, what kind of meals they put on the room service menu, or how friendly the staff were, Marko concluded, there was no way to make a hotel feel like home. They’d been on the road together for years, and while they’d had some really good times in some incredibly nice hotel rooms, they’d always been glad to get back home again.
Especially at Christmas. Even when bedecked with tinsel and garlands and all the trappings of the yuletide season, the hotel lobby was joyless and lonely, a depressing reminder that this year, they wouldn’t be home for the holidays.
It was all thanks to the weather. The freakish cold in California hadn’t seemed like much of a problem when they were playing in Los Angeles, though Olli had complained that they’d booked LA to get away from winter. But now that they were trying to fly out, the freakish cold was suddenly very important indeed. They’d been lucky to get out of LAX, so sure that the snow would keep them trapped in California. But their relief was short-lived - their connecting flight out of Heathrow International was first delayed, then cancelled completely as nearly the entire airport shut down.
Captain had cursed and said that this was why they shouldn’t book dates so close to Christmas. Marko had just sighed, and started calling hotels.
And that was how he came to be standing in front of a plate-glass window looking down onto a maze of streets covered in ankle-deep slushy whitish-brown stuff that could be generously described as ‘snow’, and watching Londoners panic as more of the white stuff fell from a sky that was slowly shading to black. He half-wished that they had the tour bus with them, but the bus had made it home, even if they weren’t going to. A solitary pair of headlights whizzed by, into the gathering darkness, some daredevil braving the icy roads and the sludge that snow became in the city. Marko tried to squish a twinge of jealousy - whoever the driver was, he was probably headed home. He’d be spending Christmas with his family and friends, eating good food and exchanging horror stories of how close he came to not making it home at all.
And the Poets were trapped in a crowded hotel with several hundred other people, all stranded, all cursing the weather and their regrettable decision to fly this winter, through this airport. It seemed monstrously unfair.
“What’s eating you?”
Marko didn’t bother to turn away from the window. He knew Olli would be looking out the window as well, probably smiling that annoyingly perky smile of his. He didn’t actually need to see it to know it was there - they’d known each other for so long that each could tell how the other was feeling merely by the tone of their voice. And, Marko decided, Olli was being unwarrantedly cheerful.
So he merely shrugged, and kept his eyes fixed on the distant lights of the airport, barely visible through the haze of snow.
“They say there hasn’t been a white Christmas in London in over a decade,” Olli said, a little too chirpily. “We’re lucky we were here for it.”
Marko couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
Olli looked slightly sheepish. “Well, yeah. But it’s really not so bad.”
“Not so bad? The whole situation’s a nightmare.”
It was Olli’s turn to shrug uncommunicatively. “We’ve been through worse. Remember when we were working out of the car?”
“But we weren’t living out of it or anything. We all had roofs over our heads. And besides, we were doing what we love.”
“Exactly.” Olli nodded.
“I think I may have missed your point,” Marko said. “You said it wasn’t as bad as those first few years, and now you’re saying those years weren’t so bad either?”
“Well, no. You were the one who said those years weren’t so bad. And they weren’t,” Olli added hastily, as the vocalist leveled a glare at him. “I wouldn’t want to relive them, but they weren’t as bad as all that. Because we had -”
“If you say ‘each other’ I’m going to puke,” Marko warned the guitarist.
Olli looked suitably embarrassed, and turned back to the window without another word.
There was a long moment of silence before Marko finally, grudgingly, admitted, “But you’re right. Even if it is the most ridiculously cliché and horribly Christmas-special-esque sentiment ever uttered by man, you’re still right.”
Olli laughed. “And don’t you forget it.”
Outside, the thickly-falling snow swirled into patterns which broke up again moments later. The lights from the airport were completely obscured by the blizzard outside. It was a disheartening sight to anyone hoping to get out of London by the next day.
Then again, they all had a roof over their heads, and enough to eat, and a whole hotel full of other stranded travelers who would probably be only too happy to grumble with them. And, as Olli had said, cheesy though it may be, they had each other.
Maybe this wouldn’t be as awful as he’d worried it would be.
Marko pulled the curtains shut, blocking out the blizzard. “Let’s go grab some dinner.”
wuweii , I hope this is all right. And a merry disgustingly cold March to everyone!