Fiction: A Very Greek Christmas
Rating: G
Disclaimer: It's a rental.
Summary: Casey attempts to organize an all-Greek Christmas exchange. It goes better than expected. Just barely.
A/N: Written for loveyouallwrong's Yuletide prompt, originally posted here. It's my first time writing in this fandom, so hopefully I did it some justice.
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It started out as a grand idea, like most things Casey Cartwright set her mind towards. A Very Greek Christmas, a multi-house Christmas gift exchange. It was going to give those stuck at Cyprus-Rhodes over the holidays something to do. The clipboard and the elaborate tracking system in place were going to give Casey something to do, therefore keeping both her and her easily pestered housemates sane.
Once the third house had slammed their door in her face, however, her mood was considerably less cheerful and optimistic. No matter how much pep Ashleigh tried to infuse the situation with, Casey's frown grew more and more sullen.
Ashleigh tilted her head to the side, the white pom pom on her Santa hat dipped along with the movement. She sighed. "You can't have expected them all to be gung-ho about it. The rest of the Greek system doesn't exactly think like us, Case."
"Well they should! Or they should at least take a second to realize this isn't some scheme to steal gifts! We're not a bunch of Scrooges, for God's sake!"
"I think you mean Grinches. We're not a bunch of Grinches."
"Oh, yeah, Ash. 'Cause if there's one thing Scrooge loved it was Christmas and presents."
"That's two things. Either way …I think they both ended up liking Christmas fine, in the end."
"Can we skip to the end, then? Where the Gamma Psi sluts' hearts grow three sizes too big and they come racing down Greek Row with a sleigh full of presents and a great big apology?"
Ashleigh groaned and rubbed her mittens together for emphasis. "It's freezing, Case. Can we at least skip to the end of this list and call it a night?"
"But - "
"No buts! We're going in before you get hypothermia."
"If you were Leo, I wouldn't have issues letting go, right now," Casey ground out, eyes narrowed.
"Please. Kate Winslet wishes she looked as good in blue as I do." She tilted her head down at her matching teal scarf and boots and Casey shrugged in agreement, even as she rolled her eyes.
"Whatever, let's go."
"Thank God," Ashleigh crowed out and scuttled down the brick stairway, heading across the street. "So how many people do we actually have on the list, so far? You know, the ones that didn't tell us to shove it up our asses?"
"Um," Casey started uneasily, looked down and back up without meeting her friend's gaze. "Us and Omega Chi and Kappa Tau…"
"That's it?" Ashleigh's face dropped, her friend's sour mood finally affecting her.
"Well, plus Dale. He's not Greek, but I kind of felt bad. He usually goes home, I think. Something about a cancelled flight, I don't know."
"Dale? Like …half a chipmunk?"
"Dale, like Bibles and science, Dale. Rusty's roommate."
"Bibles and science? How does that even work?"
Casey gave a short laugh and pulled the door to the ZBZ house open. "For a while it didn't. Consider yourself lucky for having missed that."
They made their way into the kitchen, scarves unraveled and thrown over the kitchen stools. "So, do we just start pairing them off, now? Is it worth waiting for more people?"
Casey nibbled on her bottom lip, weighing the options. "Oh, screw it! Get the construction paper and a really cute hat!"
"Done and done!" Ashleigh bounced off and Casey eyed the list on her clipboard as she set the kettle on the stove, for hot chocolate.
"Casey, school's over," Rebecca's voice called from the kitchen's doorway. "Staring at your notes isn't going to change that. Let it go."
Casey sighed, head still turned down and only flicking her eyes over to where Rebecca was leaning. "This is for the A Very Greek Christmas. I'm not that sad."
Rebecca sauntered in further and peered at where the water was making crackling noises atop the back-left burner. "I saw you rereading that Betty Friedan book, yesterday. Don't lie."
Casey's mouth opened and closed a few times before she sneered and returned her attention to the list in front of her.
"What?"
"I just didn't know you knew who Betty Friedan even was."
"I can read."
"Also news," Casey sing-songed back and grinned at Rebecca's glare.
Ashleigh returned just as the kettle started to squeal and Casey started explaining just what the Very Greek Christmas Exchange would entail. It turned out to be a pretty blatant harbinger of doom.
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"Case, I don't think she'll like it at all. It's stupid."
"It's not stupid."
"It is stupid."
"It's not stupid."
"You'd tell me if it was really stupid, right? You're not just saying that to get me to shut up?"
"I would, I promise."
Ashleigh glanced suspiciously over towards her friend before she snapped and let out another growl of frustration. "This is pointless! You told me that skirt was cute, last week, and then we uploaded the pictures to Facebook and it looked hideous! We had to delete half the album!"
"It was not hideous. It didn't photograph well, maybe. That doesn't make it hideous," Casey replied, pouting a bit as she thought back to the incident in question.
"You and I clearly have very different definitions of what hideous means."
"Clearly." Casey pulled her lip to the side and furrowed her brow some.
"Which is exactly why I can't trust your judgment! Oh, god, it's so stupid. I should've gone with the cashmere Michael Kors. At least I know that's her taste. I should've gotten it. Maybe we can go really early tomorrow and get it? Are stores open on Christmas? They should be. I can't be the only one stuck with a stupid gift. Right? You gave us no time to prepare! This sucks!"
"Ash, if you don't shut up about the picture and that vest, I'm going to help you shut up. Okay?"
"Okay, okay." Ashleigh fiddled with the shimmery, curled ribbons on her carefully wrapped gift. "We didn't all luck out and get our ex-boyfriends. It's way easy to buy something for someone who you used to get gifts for on a regular basis. Like riding a bike."
"Not what they say that about." Casey grinned and set her gift bag under their tree.
She sniffed and smiled. The house smelled strongly of chocolate and peanut butter. The boys had been assigned Christmas cookie detail but with the Kappa Tau's oven not having worked since 1977, Rusty and Dale's heating bill almost enough to bankrupt them both, and Omega Chi's kitchen as the only other option, Casey had opened up ZBZ's doors without much protest.
It had seemed like a horrible idea, at the time. Now, besides hearing their bickering escalate into small shouting fights over the chocolate morsel content and proper dispersion thereof, it wasn't so bad. Cappie had shown up around the third freak-out and was playing extremely laid back referee as he licked the spoon and bowl clean.
Rebecca floated down the stairs, already feigning annoyance at the sound of Cappie barking out instructions for the coin toss to decide who would choose the next dish they were to prepare.
"Aren't girls supposed to be the ones camped out in the kitchen during the holidays?" She pulled her legs up to her chest and sat down, glancing at where Casey and Ashleigh had settled on the bottom step.
"You want to borrow my Betty Friedan book? Looks like you should give that whole reading thing another shot," Casey answered flatly, smirk plain on her face.
The Christmas lights strewn down the banisters, across the fireplace, and around their tree all blinked warmly back at her. It was hard to put much bite into her words, no matter how hard she tried. Even Rebecca seemed oddly pleasant. Casey nudged Ashleigh and nodded in the direction of the gift in her lap, hoping she'd take advantage of their other friend's surprisingly light mood while she could and give her present a few hours early.
"Oh, yeah," Ashleigh hedged, her gaze suddenly anywhere but the others. "Here." She tossed the carefully bundled gift backward into Rebecca's hands, stood up and walked away.
Rebecca stared down in confusion at the delicately wrapped gift for a few seconds before it clicked. Even though Ashleigh had left the room, the house was relatively quiet, so her question could still be heard from living room. "You're my secret Santa?" If her voice faltered, she made sure that her posture remained stiff and her facial expression stoic.
Casey gave a brief, awkward smile as she darted off to the kitchen and left her to open her gift in private. When all three boys greeted her loudly enough to hear from the stairs, Rebecca couldn't even sneer. She was still that taken aback at the gesture. It was all planned, sure, but she wasn't used to receiving gifts from anyone other than her parents' personal shopper or her J. Crew catalog.
Taking her time, she carefully loosened the tape on the underside of the small rectangle and pulled the paper gently out from where it had been tucked down. A dark mahogany picture frame with a simple photograph of Ashleigh and herself smiling at a table in Dobler's rested lightly in her hands.
She looked up to see Ashleigh preoccupied with straightening the dozen or so stockings hung by the large fireplace. She crossed the room and couldn't help her words from sounding a little accusing, since the situation seemed to be a figment of her imagination for all the likelihood she would've considered it to happen, just hours before. "It's a picture. Of us."
"Yeah, look, I'm sorry. I know it's lame, but Casey sprung this on all of us last minute and the only place left open was Macy's," Ashleigh started, her arms crossed at Rebecca's hard stare. "They had a really crappy selection so it was between this and the Michael Kors' vest and I was really going to just get it, even though red on you this time of year really just makes you look like an elf, or something. Blame Casey, she told me that you'd like something more personal. It wasn't cheap though. The frame, I mean. If you want I can find the vest online, show it to you, if you'd rather me get that. It's still Christmas Eve, so this doesn't even have to count - "
Ashleigh's rambling was cut short as Rebecca rushed forward and pulled her into a fierce hug. Since she was caught off-guard, she barely had time to return the tight squeezing before Rebecca had let go and backed away.
"Thank you," the shorter of the two added, quietly. The warmness of the moment seemed to linger for only a few seconds before Rebecca's eyes twinkled with her trademark glare. "And if you tell anyone about that, they won't find your body for days."
A laugh bubbled up from Ashleigh in response, as she rolled her eyes and directed a tight-lipped grin downward at her friend. "So."
"So," Rebecca repeated.
"Who did you get?"
"For secret Santa?" At Ashleigh's nod, she tilted her chin up, smiling evilly. "Beth."
"What did you get her?"
"Well, she broke my curling iron when she tried to use it as a regular iron. So, I spray-painted a rock from outside black. I'm going to tell her it's coal."
Ashleigh laughed and replied with a sarcastic, "Merry Christmas."
Rebecca sighed and looked down at what would soon be the first picture taken with someone other than her family or her Big to grace her desk. She smiled. Her gaze shifted upwards, again, as the lights' blinking pattern changed and she squinted a bit while they flickered playfully in the otherwise dim room. "Actually, yeah. It kind of is."