A not-so-merry Christmas ficcie... *hangs head*
Title: Christmas Silences
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Eric/Orlando
Summary:“Merry Christmas,” he whispered to the silence that stretched on and on around them both.
Rating: PG13.
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, do you think I'd only be writing about them?
Warnings: *hangs head* Implied character death. Angst during the holiday season.
A/N: I'm a mean person. Bite me. It's Christmas and I wish to make you all cry... This comes after Coming and Dying and Leaving and Living. I did contine this story arc, which I'm officially going to call Vidae et Mors, which means Life and Death. Big table here. Words total to 2,395. Written for Christmas (92) prompt.
“You look good enough to eat, baby.”
“No! Get away from me! Be a good boy or Santa won’t be giving you any presents this year!”
“Baby, my gift came early and Santa deserves double-stuffed Oreos and chocolate milk for that. Although, I did tell him not to bother with any of the wrappings - I’m just going to tear it all off. It seems he forgot. Oh, well.”
“Stop! No! Stop it!”
“Can’t hear you…”
“It took me ages to figure out what to wear. For some odd reason, all my holiday festive shirts are missing.”
Silence.
“You bastard! You took them all, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I thought my gift for everyone this year would be not to subject them to the torture that is The Colorblind Fashion Criminal.”
“You’re going to pay for that remark.”
“Are you going to punish me?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I’d certainly like that, baby.”
“Oh, really? How much would you like that?”
“This much.”
“If you keep doing that, I’m going to have to close the lights and pretend we’re not home.”
“Do.”
“Can’t. They’d know it was a ruse and break in.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just to see us fucking, too.”
“That is a disturbing thought.”
“I don’t think so. We’re fucking hot together.”
“Ah. Now that is a good thought. A very good thought.”
*
Someone knocked on the door and he looked up, the shirt held tightly in his hands, creased and crumpled from being stuffed in some dark nook of the huge closet.
“Orli? What are you doing down there?”
Sean came to squat on the floor beside him, hesitating for just the briefest instant before placing his hand on Orlando’s leg, rubbing soothingly. “What are you doing?”
Orlando shrugged his shoulders, gaze on the red and green striped shirt with little Rudolph’s and Santa’s dancing around. He tucked his legs more firmly under him, fingers absently caressing the soft fabric. Thinking of nothing in particular.
He was getting good at that.
“Orlando?”
“I haven’t seen this shirt in ages,” he finally said.
“What?”
“Eric hid it. Last Christmas. He said he wanted to save everyone from The Colorblind Fashion Criminal,” he murmured quietly. “I completely forgot about it.”
“Lad… I’m --- ” Sean stopped himself from saying that one word Orlando had heard far too many times, squeezing his friend’s leg tighter.
“He was right. I don’t know what possessed me to buy this thing.” Orlando looked at Sean and smiled - a half-smile was better than none after all. Or was it glasses half-full rather than half-empty? He could never get those idioms straight. They were completely cliché and completely overused.
Out of sight, out of mind, wasn’t it?
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“It is hideous, isn’t it?” he asked Sean.
There was a pause before, “Completely.”
Orlando breathed in deeply, long fingers brushing at his cheek in this display of indifference too meaningful to be indifferent. “We should get back. Everyone must be looking for me.”
“They are, actually. But we could stay here if you wanted to.”
“No, no. I invited everyone here and what kind of host would I be if I didn’t host?” He tried another smile, another attempt at cheerfulness but Sean saw right through it - he always did - and gathered him into his arms, the scent of cigarettes and poppy seeds and coconut filling his nostrils. He breathed in deeply but it wasn’t the scent he wanted.
Pine and earthy musk and ginger.
Orlando held on for as long as he could, for as long as he felt he could before he wanted to never let go and letting go was something he was trying to get better at, but nobody ever taught him how. It was like riding a bike with no one there to catch you if - when - you fall, and you know you’re going to fall so you fall.
And Sean just kept holding him, rocking him gently, as he imagined Sean did for his girls when they woke up from nightmares, telling them it was okay and he was there.
But Orlando was still in the nightmare and it wasn’t okay and he wasn’t there.
“Orli?”
“Yeah?” he mumbled, face buried in the crook of Sean’s neck.
“Want to sneak out? Drive around for a while?”
Orlando pulled away, wiping away unimaginary tears for an unimaginary ache. Too real. Too there. Too…tangible. “What about the party? What about everyone else?”
Sean was already pulling him up, grabbing two coats from the open closet and pulling him out of the hallway, down the backstairs and through the kitchen door that led to the garden covered in snow, snow, snow.
“Sean? The party.”
His friend shook his head and guided him to his car - their car - unused and sitting idly in the driveway for months because ---
Just because.
Just because explained a lot.
Bundling him in and turning on the heater, Sean reminded him of how his mum used to take Sam and him to Hyde Park, to watch people make snowmen and snow angels and snow castles that stood for ages and ages before the sun melted them back to water and puddles in the ground.
“Sean?”
He felt a soft kiss on his chapped lips and turned to look at Sean, face half in shadow and half not from the lights inside the house full of people they were all leaving behind.
“They’ll understand.”
They drove in silence for a while, Orlando shaking his head when Sean tried to turn on the radio. They looked out through the windshield, through the car windows, saying nothing and just watching people as they celebrated with family and friends and loved ones.
The houses all pretty with twinkling lights and wreaths, and some had snow figures in their front yards - a snow fort still standing heroically after some great, epic snow battle between the factions of good and evil.
Orlando couldn’t help but wonder who won.
As they turned the corner at Tolver, Orlando saw a mother crossing the street, a child in each hand, the father holding a mountain of shopping bags and gifts in his arms as he lumbered on behind them
He smiled.
It was genuine one and of course, Sean would notice. Sean was like that.
“I missed your smiles.”
He reached out and laid a hand on Sean’s knee. “I missed them, too.” He left his hand there as they drove through the city.
“I’ve always loved Christmas,” Sean murmured after some time.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Scrooge? The Grinch?”
“But Scrooge reformed his ways and it wasn’t the Grinch’s fault he had a heart two sizes too small.”
Sean laughed and briefly squeezed his hand back before returning it to the wheel. “I missed that, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you always loved Christmas?”
“Always, always and always. Mum used to say that I lived for Christmases more than I did for any other time of the year. More than my birthday even. There’s just something about it that makes it so --- ”
“Magical.”
“Yeah. That.”
“What are your favorite things about Christmas?”
“It’s a long list.”
Sean smiled at him, too old in that one moment that Orlando just had to reach out and caress his face.
Maybe it was the light. Yeah. It had to be the light.
“I don’t have anywhere to be,” his friend said quietly, that unspoken I’m not going anywhere lingering between them because Orlando couldn’t believe in certain promises anymore.
“Well… There’s snow. I love snow. And there’s Christmas trees that smell so glorious every morning you can’t help but stand next to them and just breathe deeply. Um… The presents are nice but I like shopping for them even more.”
“What? Are you mad? Shopping for Christmas gifts is like to going to war.”
Orlando laughed at the truly incredulous tone in Sean’s voice. “No, no. I never see it that way. I see it as finding that right thing for someone you love. It could take me ages to find that one gift.” His smile was bittersweet now. “Eric whinged on endlessly because our shopping trips never seemed to end. I told him he could stay at home but he said that being with me was always the best thing.”
“He braved the Christmas holiday rush just for you?”
“Yeah. Just for me.”
It was quiet in the car again before Sean spoke up, saying, “I love stockings on the chimney and seeing my girls’ faces light up in joy when they see their gifts. I love mistletoe.” Winking at Orlando, “I’ve gotten a few kisses that way.”
He tutted. “Naughty. But I have to admit that I’ve done the same.”
“All food created for Christmas, except fruitcake. I hate fruitcake.”
“What? It’s really good!” Orlando stuck his tongue out when Sean just mock scowled at him. “Sledding and ambushing people with snowballs,” he added.
“Toddies.”
“Hot cocoa sipped through a cinnamon stick.”
“Carolers, but only good ones.”
“How do you know if someone’s good or not, you utter elitist?” Orlando asked, but before Sean could answer he began to sing, loudly and rousingly, his voice seeming to echo happily in the confined space, “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen. When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even…”
“Orlando. Orlando! Stop! For heaven’s sake, lad, just stop! You can’t hold a note to save your life!” Sean exclaimed, trying to cover his ears and drive at the same time, Orlando’s singing dissolving into laughter, the silence that followed afterwards more lighthearted and just like it was before.
Orlando looked down when Sean’s hand covered his and stayed there, and for the first time in along while, he didn’t feel so alone.
He didn’t know how long they had driven around before he saw ---
“Stop!”
The car came to a sudden stop, the seatbelts they wore jerking them back and forth like wooden dolls.
“Christ, Orlando! Are you utterly insane?”
Orlando ignored Sean’s angry yell, eyes fixed on something behind his friend’s head, outside his window, outside of the car and he quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and got out.
He could hear Sean cursing behind him but ignored him again, pushing open the iron gate freezing to the touch and walking quickly to the sight that transfixed him so, feet sinking in the untouched snow that lay like a carpet ahead of him, almost welcoming him.
It was welcoming him.
“Merry Christmas,” he said quietly, when he reached it, breath puffing out as little clouds that drifted upwards almost lazily. In the silence of the little park he now stood in, he liked to believe that there was an echo - someone saying it right back.
“Orlando?”
Sean’s voice was quieter, more tentative, probably realizing where they were a touch too late but it was always better late than never, right?
Right?
He reached out, fingers trembling and gloves forgotten at home, brushing the frost off the plaque that was nearly two months old.
Or was it three?
He was horrible with dates.
For Eric who was loved. From Orlando who loved him. Some loves are not meant to be - they just are. And will always continue to be.
Orlando mouthed the words silently. He didn’t actually need to look to see what it said. He knew it. He knew it just as well as the face he saw every time he closed his eyes and every time he opened them.
“It took me ages and ages to think of something to put on the plaque. Elijah said I should just put a date or something but I… I just couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
He looked at Sean and was glad for the warm arms around him, holding him close because he felt so cold. Cold inside and out and the stupid coat he wore that cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds didn’t help at all.
It was a stupid coat.
And it was stupid to cry when he was trying so hard not to anymore.
Burrowing his head deeper in, Orlando breathed in, throat closing up tight when the familiar, beloved, such a missed, missed, missed scent filled him and left him all over again.
Eric’s coat.
Belatedly, he realized that Sean had taken both coats from his closet and wouldn’t have stopped to check who they belonged to, and his friend couldn’t have possibly known that Orlando still hadn’t thrown out anything of Eric’s because he was still hoping.
Hoping and hoping and hoping.
If anyone needed a Christmas miracle, it was him. But after standing in the cold, snow beginning to fall lightly around them and on them, Sean warm but shivering already ---
There was no Christmas miracle.
Stupid Christmas movies.
“Orlando?”
“Eric loves Christmas, too.”
A deep sigh. “I know, Orli. I know. We all love Christmas.”
“Sean?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you just --- ”
“Sure, Orli. Sure.”
And they stood there for a while longer, Orlando’s head tucked under Sean’s, warm breath stirring his curls, tears turning into little ice crystals on his flushed cheeks.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered to the silence that stretched on and on around them both.
*
“Thank God.”
“I know. I thought they would never leave.”
“Our friends are mad. Utterly, completely, bouncing off the wall, permantly monged mad.”
“Most of the people here were your friends.”
“And by association, yours.”
“Please. You’re not fobbing off that hippie artist on me.”
“Viggo’s completely harmless!”
“And completely mad. My point has been made. They’re your friends.”
“All right. But you’re all mine.”
“Oh, baby. I’d have it no other way.”
“Me neither.”
Silence. The good kind that meant lips were preoccupied with other things.
“Was the party any better this year?”
“At least nobody stole the couch this time.”
“Sorry. That was the Hobbits. They couldn’t help themselves.”
“Couldn’t they afford a new couch? One that we haven’t…you know…all over.”
“I think that’s why they took it.”
“I’m not going to think any further on that.”
“Good. Let’s think about next Christmas then.”
“Baby, the only Christmas I want to think about is this one because I haven’t had a chance to enjoy my pressie yet.”
“Oh, you want to enjoy your pressie?”
“Most certainly.”
“Oh, look. Mistletoe.”
“Hmm…”
Another soft, sweet silence.
“Merry Christmas, baby.”
“Merry Christmas.”
Author: Sel selene_vidae
Pairing: Eric/Orlando
Summary:“Merry Christmas,” he whispered to the silence that stretched on and on around them both.
Rating: PG13.
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, do you think I'd only be writing about them?
Warnings: *hangs head* Implied character death. Angst during the holiday season.
A/N: I'm a mean person. Bite me. It's Christmas and I wish to make you all cry... This comes after Coming and Dying and Leaving and Living. I did contine this story arc, which I'm officially going to call Vidae et Mors, which means Life and Death. Big table here. Words total to 2,395. Written for Christmas (92) prompt.
“You look good enough to eat, baby.”
“No! Get away from me! Be a good boy or Santa won’t be giving you any presents this year!”
“Baby, my gift came early and Santa deserves double-stuffed Oreos and chocolate milk for that. Although, I did tell him not to bother with any of the wrappings - I’m just going to tear it all off. It seems he forgot. Oh, well.”
“Stop! No! Stop it!”
“Can’t hear you…”
“It took me ages to figure out what to wear. For some odd reason, all my holiday festive shirts are missing.”
Silence.
“You bastard! You took them all, didn’t you?”
“I’m sorry, baby, but I thought my gift for everyone this year would be not to subject them to the torture that is The Colorblind Fashion Criminal.”
“You’re going to pay for that remark.”
“Are you going to punish me?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“I’d certainly like that, baby.”
“Oh, really? How much would you like that?”
“This much.”
“If you keep doing that, I’m going to have to close the lights and pretend we’re not home.”
“Do.”
“Can’t. They’d know it was a ruse and break in.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, just to see us fucking, too.”
“That is a disturbing thought.”
“I don’t think so. We’re fucking hot together.”
“Ah. Now that is a good thought. A very good thought.”
*
Someone knocked on the door and he looked up, the shirt held tightly in his hands, creased and crumpled from being stuffed in some dark nook of the huge closet.
“Orli? What are you doing down there?”
Sean came to squat on the floor beside him, hesitating for just the briefest instant before placing his hand on Orlando’s leg, rubbing soothingly. “What are you doing?”
Orlando shrugged his shoulders, gaze on the red and green striped shirt with little Rudolph’s and Santa’s dancing around. He tucked his legs more firmly under him, fingers absently caressing the soft fabric. Thinking of nothing in particular.
He was getting good at that.
“Orlando?”
“I haven’t seen this shirt in ages,” he finally said.
“What?”
“Eric hid it. Last Christmas. He said he wanted to save everyone from The Colorblind Fashion Criminal,” he murmured quietly. “I completely forgot about it.”
“Lad… I’m --- ” Sean stopped himself from saying that one word Orlando had heard far too many times, squeezing his friend’s leg tighter.
“He was right. I don’t know what possessed me to buy this thing.” Orlando looked at Sean and smiled - a half-smile was better than none after all. Or was it glasses half-full rather than half-empty? He could never get those idioms straight. They were completely cliché and completely overused.
Out of sight, out of mind, wasn’t it?
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
“It is hideous, isn’t it?” he asked Sean.
There was a pause before, “Completely.”
Orlando breathed in deeply, long fingers brushing at his cheek in this display of indifference too meaningful to be indifferent. “We should get back. Everyone must be looking for me.”
“They are, actually. But we could stay here if you wanted to.”
“No, no. I invited everyone here and what kind of host would I be if I didn’t host?” He tried another smile, another attempt at cheerfulness but Sean saw right through it - he always did - and gathered him into his arms, the scent of cigarettes and poppy seeds and coconut filling his nostrils. He breathed in deeply but it wasn’t the scent he wanted.
Pine and earthy musk and ginger.
Orlando held on for as long as he could, for as long as he felt he could before he wanted to never let go and letting go was something he was trying to get better at, but nobody ever taught him how. It was like riding a bike with no one there to catch you if - when - you fall, and you know you’re going to fall so you fall.
And Sean just kept holding him, rocking him gently, as he imagined Sean did for his girls when they woke up from nightmares, telling them it was okay and he was there.
But Orlando was still in the nightmare and it wasn’t okay and he wasn’t there.
“Orli?”
“Yeah?” he mumbled, face buried in the crook of Sean’s neck.
“Want to sneak out? Drive around for a while?”
Orlando pulled away, wiping away unimaginary tears for an unimaginary ache. Too real. Too there. Too…tangible. “What about the party? What about everyone else?”
Sean was already pulling him up, grabbing two coats from the open closet and pulling him out of the hallway, down the backstairs and through the kitchen door that led to the garden covered in snow, snow, snow.
“Sean? The party.”
His friend shook his head and guided him to his car - their car - unused and sitting idly in the driveway for months because ---
Just because.
Just because explained a lot.
Bundling him in and turning on the heater, Sean reminded him of how his mum used to take Sam and him to Hyde Park, to watch people make snowmen and snow angels and snow castles that stood for ages and ages before the sun melted them back to water and puddles in the ground.
“Sean?”
He felt a soft kiss on his chapped lips and turned to look at Sean, face half in shadow and half not from the lights inside the house full of people they were all leaving behind.
“They’ll understand.”
They drove in silence for a while, Orlando shaking his head when Sean tried to turn on the radio. They looked out through the windshield, through the car windows, saying nothing and just watching people as they celebrated with family and friends and loved ones.
The houses all pretty with twinkling lights and wreaths, and some had snow figures in their front yards - a snow fort still standing heroically after some great, epic snow battle between the factions of good and evil.
Orlando couldn’t help but wonder who won.
As they turned the corner at Tolver, Orlando saw a mother crossing the street, a child in each hand, the father holding a mountain of shopping bags and gifts in his arms as he lumbered on behind them
He smiled.
It was genuine one and of course, Sean would notice. Sean was like that.
“I missed your smiles.”
He reached out and laid a hand on Sean’s knee. “I missed them, too.” He left his hand there as they drove through the city.
“I’ve always loved Christmas,” Sean murmured after some time.
“Who doesn’t?”
“Scrooge? The Grinch?”
“But Scrooge reformed his ways and it wasn’t the Grinch’s fault he had a heart two sizes too small.”
Sean laughed and briefly squeezed his hand back before returning it to the wheel. “I missed that, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Have you always loved Christmas?”
“Always, always and always. Mum used to say that I lived for Christmases more than I did for any other time of the year. More than my birthday even. There’s just something about it that makes it so --- ”
“Magical.”
“Yeah. That.”
“What are your favorite things about Christmas?”
“It’s a long list.”
Sean smiled at him, too old in that one moment that Orlando just had to reach out and caress his face.
Maybe it was the light. Yeah. It had to be the light.
“I don’t have anywhere to be,” his friend said quietly, that unspoken I’m not going anywhere lingering between them because Orlando couldn’t believe in certain promises anymore.
“Well… There’s snow. I love snow. And there’s Christmas trees that smell so glorious every morning you can’t help but stand next to them and just breathe deeply. Um… The presents are nice but I like shopping for them even more.”
“What? Are you mad? Shopping for Christmas gifts is like to going to war.”
Orlando laughed at the truly incredulous tone in Sean’s voice. “No, no. I never see it that way. I see it as finding that right thing for someone you love. It could take me ages to find that one gift.” His smile was bittersweet now. “Eric whinged on endlessly because our shopping trips never seemed to end. I told him he could stay at home but he said that being with me was always the best thing.”
“He braved the Christmas holiday rush just for you?”
“Yeah. Just for me.”
It was quiet in the car again before Sean spoke up, saying, “I love stockings on the chimney and seeing my girls’ faces light up in joy when they see their gifts. I love mistletoe.” Winking at Orlando, “I’ve gotten a few kisses that way.”
He tutted. “Naughty. But I have to admit that I’ve done the same.”
“All food created for Christmas, except fruitcake. I hate fruitcake.”
“What? It’s really good!” Orlando stuck his tongue out when Sean just mock scowled at him. “Sledding and ambushing people with snowballs,” he added.
“Toddies.”
“Hot cocoa sipped through a cinnamon stick.”
“Carolers, but only good ones.”
“How do you know if someone’s good or not, you utter elitist?” Orlando asked, but before Sean could answer he began to sing, loudly and rousingly, his voice seeming to echo happily in the confined space, “Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen. When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even…”
“Orlando. Orlando! Stop! For heaven’s sake, lad, just stop! You can’t hold a note to save your life!” Sean exclaimed, trying to cover his ears and drive at the same time, Orlando’s singing dissolving into laughter, the silence that followed afterwards more lighthearted and just like it was before.
Orlando looked down when Sean’s hand covered his and stayed there, and for the first time in along while, he didn’t feel so alone.
He didn’t know how long they had driven around before he saw ---
“Stop!”
The car came to a sudden stop, the seatbelts they wore jerking them back and forth like wooden dolls.
“Christ, Orlando! Are you utterly insane?”
Orlando ignored Sean’s angry yell, eyes fixed on something behind his friend’s head, outside his window, outside of the car and he quickly unbuckled his seatbelt and got out.
He could hear Sean cursing behind him but ignored him again, pushing open the iron gate freezing to the touch and walking quickly to the sight that transfixed him so, feet sinking in the untouched snow that lay like a carpet ahead of him, almost welcoming him.
It was welcoming him.
“Merry Christmas,” he said quietly, when he reached it, breath puffing out as little clouds that drifted upwards almost lazily. In the silence of the little park he now stood in, he liked to believe that there was an echo - someone saying it right back.
“Orlando?”
Sean’s voice was quieter, more tentative, probably realizing where they were a touch too late but it was always better late than never, right?
Right?
He reached out, fingers trembling and gloves forgotten at home, brushing the frost off the plaque that was nearly two months old.
Or was it three?
He was horrible with dates.
For Eric who was loved. From Orlando who loved him. Some loves are not meant to be - they just are. And will always continue to be.
Orlando mouthed the words silently. He didn’t actually need to look to see what it said. He knew it. He knew it just as well as the face he saw every time he closed his eyes and every time he opened them.
“It took me ages and ages to think of something to put on the plaque. Elijah said I should just put a date or something but I… I just couldn’t. I couldn’t.”
He looked at Sean and was glad for the warm arms around him, holding him close because he felt so cold. Cold inside and out and the stupid coat he wore that cost hundreds and hundreds of pounds didn’t help at all.
It was a stupid coat.
And it was stupid to cry when he was trying so hard not to anymore.
Burrowing his head deeper in, Orlando breathed in, throat closing up tight when the familiar, beloved, such a missed, missed, missed scent filled him and left him all over again.
Eric’s coat.
Belatedly, he realized that Sean had taken both coats from his closet and wouldn’t have stopped to check who they belonged to, and his friend couldn’t have possibly known that Orlando still hadn’t thrown out anything of Eric’s because he was still hoping.
Hoping and hoping and hoping.
If anyone needed a Christmas miracle, it was him. But after standing in the cold, snow beginning to fall lightly around them and on them, Sean warm but shivering already ---
There was no Christmas miracle.
Stupid Christmas movies.
“Orlando?”
“Eric loves Christmas, too.”
A deep sigh. “I know, Orli. I know. We all love Christmas.”
“Sean?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you just --- ”
“Sure, Orli. Sure.”
And they stood there for a while longer, Orlando’s head tucked under Sean’s, warm breath stirring his curls, tears turning into little ice crystals on his flushed cheeks.
“Merry Christmas,” he whispered to the silence that stretched on and on around them both.
*
“Thank God.”
“I know. I thought they would never leave.”
“Our friends are mad. Utterly, completely, bouncing off the wall, permantly monged mad.”
“Most of the people here were your friends.”
“And by association, yours.”
“Please. You’re not fobbing off that hippie artist on me.”
“Viggo’s completely harmless!”
“And completely mad. My point has been made. They’re your friends.”
“All right. But you’re all mine.”
“Oh, baby. I’d have it no other way.”
“Me neither.”
Silence. The good kind that meant lips were preoccupied with other things.
“Was the party any better this year?”
“At least nobody stole the couch this time.”
“Sorry. That was the Hobbits. They couldn’t help themselves.”
“Couldn’t they afford a new couch? One that we haven’t…you know…all over.”
“I think that’s why they took it.”
“I’m not going to think any further on that.”
“Good. Let’s think about next Christmas then.”
“Baby, the only Christmas I want to think about is this one because I haven’t had a chance to enjoy my pressie yet.”
“Oh, you want to enjoy your pressie?”
“Most certainly.”
“Oh, look. Mistletoe.”
“Hmm…”
Another soft, sweet silence.
“Merry Christmas, baby.”
“Merry Christmas.”