Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree. D< [ Staff Only~ ]

Didn't they have a housekeeping department for a reason? The last time he checked, the department still existed, so why the hell weren't they doing their job? Lovino shouldn't have to do this. It wasn't part of his job description and it wasn't something he particularly liked to do. ...And it was something he really didn't want to do this year. The other years...they'd been tolerable, but..this year... He just didn't want to do it. At all.

Yet, here he was, walking through the halls of the hospital, dragging a large box behind him. Nurses and patients stopped to watch him pass as he grumbled under his breath, a murderous look on his face. It was times like these where he felt abused. The higher-ups were just taking advantage of him...which...wasn't surprising when he considered who was in charge of the whole hospital. Really. Who the hell gave a man like that complete control over a place like this? ...Oh yeah. Him.

Sometimes, Lovino really had to wonder why in the world he was still working him. Most of the days he felt like shooting his coworkers. They were all loud and obnoxious. And no one seemed to want to do this but him. Goddamn it. The Italian kicked the floor in frustration, dragging the box rather nosily behind him. He did not want to do this. He really didn't.

The Italian sighed, glancing around the empty lounge. He was lucky it was later at night and visiting hours were over... That meant there was no one besides the other workers, and maybe a stray patient or two lurking about. Good.

With a huff, Lovino dropped the box and rubbed his hands together. It was now or never. He needed to put the damn Christmas tree up.

Kiku secretly loved christmas. He was non-religious, but living in Tokyo (albeit on the outskirts), he couldn't help but be subjected to the commertial wash of bright lights that was christmas in Japan. He remembered being a child and having a christmas tree, so there was somthing deeply nostalgic and nearly spiritual (though not in a religious way) about christmas for him.

However, a few years of experience had taught him that christmas in hospitals was not a pleasant thing. The emergency room was alway full, patients still died, families were torn apart, he still had to tell a young woman that she had an inoperal brain tumor and had about three months to live… he hated giving bad news.

Oh! Lovino was setting up the tree… one of the few festive retreats in this place… he went over a little shyly and bowed, “Konnichiwa, Vargas-San, may I help you with the tree?” He asked, kneeling down beside the box of decoration. They were so pretty! But durable, of course, needing to survive in a hospital.

((Sorry if that's short and crappy, I just couldn't think of any more to say OTL))

Roderich happened to be working late that night, as much as he didn't want to. He was obligated to head back to Austria to visit his family over the holidays, after all, and he certainly didn't want have to deal with a mess of files and paperwork upon his return as well as the inevitable jet-lag. He'd been sorting and typing and replying to emails well in advance whenever he had a free moment amidst the influx of patients that always seemed to show up around this time of year.

So it was that he happened to pass by the lounge and spot Lovino fiddling with (and likely cursing at) the tree. He stood for a moment, then stepped inside the room to watch, smiling a little bit at Lovi's obvious frustration.

"You don't look to be in a very festive mood, Mr. Vargas," he observed.

The Italian grumbled under his breath, curses mixed in with his words as he wrestled the tree out of the damn box. Well, part of the tree at least. The stupid tree came in three parts...that he was going to have to try to figure out how to put together himself. Goddamn it. His day just got better and better, didn't it? Nothing was going to go his way for a while now, was it?

With a huff, he managed to set up the bottom section on the tree and had just moved to the middle when a voice behind him startled him. ...And no, he didn't jump a bit and nearly drop the tree, thank you very much. He just...lost his grip and it started to slide.

It took him a moment to calm down, and when he did, the Italian rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he replied, not minding the help with this. The sooner they finished with the tree, the sooner he could check on Feliciano, and the sooner he'd be able to go home to his cold, undecorated apartment. "Just let me get the fucking tree up and you can decorate it a bit. The patients need some space to put their damn ornaments, but you can put a few things on." He didn't know why he bothered to say that to the Japanese man, but there was something in the back of his mind that needed to make it known. Probably because Feliciano had looked so happy when Lovino told him about this tradition earlier.

Another sigh escaped his lips as he went back to struggling with the tree only to hear yet another voice. This time from someone he didn't particularly like. His mood had been getting better with Kiku's arrival, but with the new person, Lovino found his foul mood returning. His eyes narrowed into a glare as he spun around to look at Roderich.

"Is it really that obvious, bastard?"

Kiku was mostly unphased by Lovino's snappy behaviour, he was used to it, both from the technitian and his patients, who were often in pain or brain damaged, so ended up lashing out. "Ah, I see," He said, "I'll help you put the tree up." He took the next piece of the tree, seeing Lovino had just finished the lowest level.

Roderich came up behind them, the infectious diseases specialist. Kiku found him nice, if a little demanding when he needed results of a test for a patient. Lovino snapped at him, but Kiku ignored them. Ah, he adored christmas, so he would ignore the snappy reactions.

"Ah, Vargas-san, will you be here for christmas?" He cut in, attempting to diffuse the argument somewhat, spreading out the branches of the plastic tree.

"Very," Roderich said dryly to Lovi, adding, if only to mess with him a little bit, "You seem to be filled with even more rage than usual."

Noting Kiku's presence, he gave the asian man a nod of greeting as their gazes met. He did like Kiku, after all--he had a mild-mannered, patient air about him that Roderich envied somewhat, being unable to achieve such a consistent calm himself. Lovino, of course, he didn't outright hate, but...he'd always felt that the man needed an attitude adjustment. He'd tried to give Roderich orders a few times, and that of course had rubbed Roderich the wrong way completely.

He lingered in the doorway, not volunteering to help--though it was tempting, after working fervently all day--content for the moment just to watch and be a tad annoying.

Having the help wasn't bad, Lovino decided. But having the conversation wasn't. Lovino wasn't in much of a talking mood, his mind too preoccupied with other things to think about his words. ..So why the hell was his mouth open and words coming out? He didn't want to talk, damn it! What the hell didn't his mind understand about that?

"Where the hell else would I be?" he growled. "It's not like I have anything better to do with my damn time." The tree was taking the brunt of his anger as the Italian tried to part the branches without making the tree look too weird. Was there a way to get this done and over with without taking too long?

Oh yeah. By getting some more help. The Italian rolled his eyes, turning to glare at Roderich. "I just don't have any time to spend dealing with you. Now, you can either help with this damn tree, or get the fuck out. I don't care which one you choose, but choose one."

(Fff, sorry for late reply, thought I had to wait for Kiku ^^; )

Hmm, maybe he would help. He could use a break, after all, and he wasn't inclined to quit trolling Lovino just yet. It was mildly entertaining, watching Lovino get all up in arms over the smallest remarks, and Roderich did find him unpleasant enough to think at times that he deserved such treatment. Roderich himself normally wasn't the sort to pick on people, but he did have his instances where he felt like being a bit nasty--especially when he was tired and kind of in an icky mood himself from working so hard.

"Fine," he said, stepping forward to help fluff out the branches. "I'll help you. You don't seem to be doing a very effective job on your own, after all."

Kiku hunched his shoulders over and awkwardly continued to prise apart the branches in a way that made it look like a real tree. He could just ignore them, he had become good at it as a child. He mother and father fought a lot when he was young, either as a consequence of his annorexia or his or his father's workaholic tendancies. His mother had always supported him, but held the firm belief that he could be a normal boy if he just relaxed a bit more.

Something amused him about the fact that Roderich was touching the tree, when it had probably been used last year, then put away in its box and put in a warm, slightly damp storage cupboard until now. He wouldn't mention it, or Roderich wouldn't stop washing his hands for a long time. Sometimes ignorance was best.

Perhaps he should diffuse the situation, but he wasn't sure how why. "Eddlestein-san, I have the results for your patient... positive for herpes. It was a shame nobody caught it before the onset of ensephalitus." He said. Not a paticularily happy was to distract them, but it worked well enough, he believed, and none of them were paticularily cheerful in the first place, and being so would just aggravate Lovino, thus giving Roderich more cause to goad him. Nearly done on the layer...

It didn't really occur to Roderich where the tree might have been until his fingers alighted on a small spiderweb stuck to one of the branches. He gaped at it for a moment, trying to determine when it might have been spun there, and then the mental images of arachnids creeping in and out of a box sitting in storage for a year prompted him to pull out his hand sanitizer and quickly rub it across his hands. He hastily silenced his imagination before it could go even further into what kind of bacteria might have ended up there, thankfully failing to note the slightly damp, musty odor about the tree and the possibility of mold spores.

"I knew it," he muttered. "Had to be herpes with those lesions and the meningitis cultures coming back negative. I'm just disappointed that it took so much time for his usual doctor to get past the epilepsy diagnosis and refer him to me..." He shook his head. "Well, I'll have to start him on antivirals tomorrow. Perhaps something for the seizures, too..."

He trailed off, frowning, pondering as he clicked a few branches down into place on the tree. It was easy for him to get lost in such issues, and he remained successfully distracted for a few moments, ignoring Lovino.

It seemed to have worked for now, at least, Roderich wasn't making Lovino in an even more foul mood by goading him. He watched Roderich quickly get out his sanitiser and rub his hands as if some one had told him tuberculosis colonies had been found on the tree. Kiku preffered to finish setting up the tree before nearly stripping a layer of skin from his hands with bleach. Figuratively speaking, of course. He wasn't going to actually pour bleach over his hands.

“I told him that it didn't look like epilepsy, but sometimes people don't listen to me…” He looked down and bit his lip awkwardly. He was used to being sidelined and dismissed because he was 'the baby' of the hospital, being younger than the interns. “Still, that's why I called you.” Because your word is more trusted than mine. Of course, he didn't say that.

“Ah, Vargas-San, how is — are you?” Had he nearly asked him how his brother was? That wasn't smart if you wanted Lovino in a palatable mood. At least he had the excuse that he was foriegn and as such, occasionally mixed up his tenses, though he wasn't sure if Lovino would buy it, being Italian himself, and everyone knew Kiku's English was slighly accented but perfectly fluent. He ducked his head down in embarassment and proceeded to begin to set up the next part of the tree.

» Christmas Shopping [Heracles & Toris]
» I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas [ Tonio and Feli~ ]
» Staff Jobs
» Notice for new staff members.
» Merry Christmas and happy new year!