OT12 - Xiumin, 1166 words. Thanks to saranghae-29223 for the story plot submission! :D

“I have an idea.” Lay giggles as he crawls forward towards Luhan, who’s sleeping, and Chen. He reaches over Luhan to  poke Chen on his upper arm and giggles uncontrollably. “I have an idea.”

The mastermind of all schemes, Chen, looks up in surprise from his cheesy joke book.

“Is this for Minnie’s birthday?" He flops down onto Luhan and buries his chin in his gege's soft, bouncy hair.

Luhan groans and shifts a little, but remains otherwise deep in slumber.

"We can make him a cake!" Lay stands and starts poking Chen's shoulder. "All of us, come on!"

Chen wraps his arms around Luhan and rolls both of them over without much effort. He yawns as Luhan makes little cat-like noises and shifts as best as he can so that Luhan isn’t lying on all the places that are uncomfortable for them both. "Five more minutes." Chen slurs under the limp body. Lay huffs in annoyance and now starts nudging Chen's side with quick, sharp jabs to his midriff.

"Come on!" Lay soon abandons the nudging and throws one leg over the two and seats himself  firmly on Luhan's stomach. "Minnie's sleeping, so he won't wake up!"

Luhan coughs a little from the pressure and starts squirming in a failed attempt to get Lay off him. Miraculously, he still remains asleep. Chen sighs and loops his arms around Luhan like a giant stuffed toy.

Lay huffs as his plan thoroughly flops and he resorts to the lowest of the low, the Plan B, the worst.

Blackmail.

“If you don’t wake up…” He pauses for dramatic effect and looks loftily down at Chen as the other cracks an eye open and squints at him like he’s a king sitting on a throne.

“…I’ll tell daddy about that time you spoilt Taozi’s panda and blamed it on the neighbour’s cat.” Lay smirks and crosses his arms over his chest triumphantly. It always works. Chen has so many unknown bad deeds he practically invites people to blackmail him.

“You wouldn’t.” Chen hisses and looks around him carefully, in case someone’s managed to magically sneak their way in during the time they were talking.

“Oh, I would.” Lay cackles in a sing-song voice. “But if you come and make cakes with me, I won’t.”

Chen ‘hmphs’ and abruptly stands, causing Lay and Luhan to collapse and fall onto one another.

“Fine. But you guys have to stop blackmailing me!”

Lay burrows himself into Luhan’s warm neck (because his neck is really comfortable) and nods.

“Ok. Let’s go.” Chen starts going around, waking up the others except for Xiumin, so that they can all contribute to the cake-making.

There’s a bit of silence, save for Tao’s complaining and Sehun’s whining, then Luhan sighs. “You are never going to stop, are you?” Luhan mumbles sleepily into the crook of Lay’s neck.

Lay grins. “Nope.”

***

“Does anyone know how to bake a cake?” Chanyeol sceptically asks as he inspects the fridge for anything that looks remotely like a cake. He comes up with nothing, so he just takes a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and breaks it into half to share with Baekhyun.

“I think you have to mix stuff.” Lay scratches his head as he pulls out a cupboard filled with books, none of which he can read, because of the overly-elaborate fonts on the spines and cover.

“This one has a picture of a muffin on it.” He chucks it at Luhan, who’s the best at reading, mostly because he spends his time looking over Kris’s shoulder with Tao while he’s doing his work.

The only difference is that while Tao just looks at the pretty pictures and symbols on the side, Luhan actually reads. Or at least, he tries to.

“Well, we obviously need a bowl.” Luhan proudly announces, pointing to the picture of the bowl on the front cover which contains some gloopy white, lumpy mixture.

“And then just mix stuff until it looks like this.”  He waves in an uncaring manner towards the lumpy mess on the book cover that looks strangely appetizing. Strange.

“You sure, gege?” Lay scratches his head and flips open the book. “There’s a lot of stuff here too. Hey, we need eggs!”

“Eggs!” Everyone exclaims and there’s a mad rush towards the fridge.

“Stop!” Luhan wails. “You’re gonna break all of them if you all run.” He slams the book on the kitchen table and points to Kyungsoo. “Get the eggs, Soo.” He waves his finger around for a while, as if finding the right words to express himself.

“Thanks.” He adds finally, with a big grin.

After that, Kyungsoo weaves his way through his brothers with little ‘sorry’s and ‘whoops’ every now and then as he steps on some toes and feet. He reaches the fridge soon enough without coming to harm and carefully hovers his fingers above the row of the bald tops of the eggs. Biting his lip, he looks back at Luhan.

“How many?”

Lay immediately snatches away the book from Luhan, completely ignoring his previous plan to let him lead the group. Sticking out his tongue at his gege, he flips open to a page where a whole entire tray of steamy, golden-brown cupcakes are nestled warmly in their own little floral paper cups.

Lay squints at the mostly unfamiliar words printed on the plasticy-papery pages.

“Five…I think.”

“Hey, no fair!” Luhan protests and reaches wildly for the book.”I’m the oldest!”

“Let me explain you a thing.” Lay waggles his finger in front of Luhan’s face. “You’re the stupidest, too.”

Sehun gasps. “Gege said a bad word! Gege said a bad word! I’m gonna tell daddy!” He nearly trips over himself in an attempt to run out of the kitchen to get to Suho, or Kris. Preferably Kris because he’s the one who scolds them, and Sehun really wants to get Lay into trouble.

“Whoo! Yeah! Go Sehunnie!” Luhan whoops. Apparently, everyone wants Lay to get in trouble, even Chen.

“Guys!” Lay wails. “Cake!”

“Go Sehunnie!”

“Guys, what’s all the-”

Kyungsoo shrieks and drops the five eggs he was holding. They smash onto the ground, splattering egg white and gooey yellow stuff everywhere.

Suho stands in the doorway, mouth open in shock as he stares as the crushed mess of egg shells and other debris collected in front of a sniffling Kyungsoo.

“-noise.” Suho slowly takes in the whole setup, carefully thinking of something that will benefit everybody, because Kyungsoo looks like he’s about to have a mental breakdown and Sehun seems to have something extremely important to tell him while Lay’s being held back by Luhan as he tries to get to Sehun.

They rest of them are just sharing Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups amongst themselves.

Suho makes a quick head count and immediately realises that Xiumin’s missing. Automatically, he scans his inner calendar and connects the dots.

“Uh, guys.” He scratches his head and all of them look to him.

“Minnie’s birthday is next week.”

************

hAHhHAhah plot twist hHAAh

i finally included lay yay

So, b/c I missed Xiumin's birthday (I'm horrible with deadlines oh gawd I'm so sorry D:) This will turn into an Exo-anniversary-hunhan-birthday-type thing. Actually, i'm not sure about Hunhan's birthday, but I'm definitely gonna do something special about that :D

I've also been thinking of doing some other fluff stories that are somewhat like these, stuff like different s between the members (like Luhan as an over-enthusiastic primary school kid who idolizes Sehun, the uncarish secondary student or something), them as animals (bunny kaisoo!), their awkward teen years and stuff idk u feel me??? I'll be posting them here if no one violently objects.

so yeah, I hope you liked this chapter, and feel free to tell me below if you hate my idea or anything :D Thank you all so so so much for subscribing! I love you all (>^_^)>

Also, thank you Pufooka, Heebum, VisualVolume and IAmShosho for upvoting!