Serendipity Hills Animated Special: Catsmas is Ruined WHO: Cat!Yao, Cat!Mingjue, and Lan Xichen WHAT: Disaster WHEN: Airing today, after Lan Xichen's disastrous attempt at a love confession WHERE: Lan Xichen's house in Serendipity Hills WARNINGS: Woe. Cat fights. Broken ornaments and a little associated blood.
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What a day.
Xichen sighed as he came up the walk to his house, too emotionally drained to even notice that none of his cheery Christmas lights were on. He’d finally confessed his love to Will only to be ever-so-gently rejected, and now he had an evening to get over it before resuming life as normal. He was pretty sure this was when most people would drink several drinks of alcohol. For him, however, even one beer could send him into…mercy, he didn’t even know what would happen in his current state. In college it had been loud enthusiasm, giggling, and a dramatic performance of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” directed at Song Lan that everybody who knew him then still laughed about. With the way he was feeling tonight, he could only imagine the disaster he’d be.
Little did he know the disaster that awaited him inside the house. It wasn’t until he opened the door that he paid enough attention to his surroundings to realize something was wrong. When he did, though…
The presents, so carefully and lovingly wrapped and adorned with beautiful bows: shredded.
The stockings hung on the mantel: pulled down and vomited upon.
The lights he strung along the crown moulding: half pulled down, dangling awkwardly down the wall.
And his tree, his real live perfect Fraser fir bought from school children having a fundraiser, the tree he and Will had spent an evening drinking hot cocoa and decorating with gorgeous vintage ornaments as they did every Christmas, was sideways on the floor.
The charming little glass ornaments were smashed.
The lights were dragged halfway across the living room floor.
The sparkly star Will had bought for him the first year he had the house was in pieces.
And on top of the knocked-over tree, yowling in fury, ears pinned back, Mingjue was advancing on a terrified Yao.
“Mingjue!”
Xichen acted quickly, without thinking, rushing forward heedless of the shattered glass and tripping hazards to scruff Mingjue and pull him away from Yao. Given this opportunity, Yao scampered for the bedroom, where he was sure Xichen would come for comfort after tragically throwing Mingjue and Huaisang out in the snow.
“Did you do all this?”
Mingjue wriggled and scrambled away, diving under the sofa, and that just made Xichen feel even worse. He wanted to be angry, he really did, but he was just too tired for it. Besides, this was his fault anyway; he should have solved the problem of his cats’ refusal to get along ages ago, but he’d dismissed their occasional scraps as typical feline drama. Yao cowering in the bedroom and Mingjue hiding under the sofa and his destroyed Christmas decorations were just the natural result of his own idiocy, like every other miserable feeling in his stupid life today.
Xichen stepped back to let the cat have his space - and of course, of course, right onto the jagged edge of some festive broken glass. He yelped, jumped back, ran into the arm of a chair, and bounced like a pinball to land, his foot bleeding rather terribly, lying on his back on a pretty blue area rug. His ceiling fan needed dusting, he thought numbly, before slowly closing his eyes against the dust, the blood, and the tears that threatened to spill over if he didn’t take several deep breaths and find his center.
And probably call someone to help get the glass out of his foot. Which would usually be Will.