My Own Personal Yuletide
Dec. 23rd, 2009 04:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thessalianSo last night, after grumbling about wanting to finish chapter 18 of Birth Rites before the new year rings in, I had it suggested to me that perhaps a little Christmas short would tweak my imagination. I had my doubts about this - really I think that it was just a ploy to get something HIPPIE-related to read, preferably something of the 'silly HIPPIE cracky chaos' variety - and as it turns out ... no, it hasn't helped at all. But all the same, there is a little short story for your perusal - HIPPIE's first Christmas with Mike in the mix.
At the beginning of December, Emma turned up at the breakfast table with a top hat, which she sat in the centre of the dining table. She reached into it and dug out five scraps of paper and five pens, which she handed out around the table without a word. As the others scribbled on their paper scraps and dropped them into the hat, Mike looked at his in confusion and not a little wariness before he asked, “What's all this?”
Annette answered with all due good cheer. “It's secret Santa!”
“It's the easiest way of exchanging presents in this house,” Rachel explained with a wry little shrug. “We pick a name out of the hat and buy presents for that person.”
Mike blushed. “I … kind of figured that much; I've done secret Santa exchanges before. Just … we don't buy a present for each of the others?”
“Can if you damn well feel like it,” Carl replied, sawing off a chunk of sausage. “Rache and I, we exchange presents every fuckin' year and have since we were bitchy teenagers.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow at him and picked up her teacup. “I wasn't entirely bitchy when we first met, first of all. And second of all, we get each other the same thing every year. It's less a gift exchange and more a tradition. Sort of like leaving milk and biscuits for Father Christmas. Anyway, Annette instituted the secret Santa tradition a couple of years ago. It's surprisingly fun.”
Mike hesitated for a moment, then wrote his name on the scrap of paper and dropped it into the hat with the others. On the one hand, he was pleased at being potentially liberated from having to buy for people whose tastes he didn't know. Watching his housemates open their secret Santa gifts from people who knew them well would teach him what to get for birthdays and so forth. On the other hand, he had been racking his brain for a present for Annette and, while he had not come up with anything yet as such, he reasoned that if Rachel and Carl were exchanging gifts despite secret Santa obligations, he could get Annette something too if he wanted. Then he realised that getting her something on his own without getting anything for the others would be pretending at an intimacy that did not at this point exist, and that doing so would constitute a big neon sign of his affection for her, and decided to reconsider the notion of getting her a gift … unless he was fortunate enough to pick her name out of the hat.
They selected names in alphabetical order, and Mike stirred the papers around before pulling out a name. He unfolded the paper, read it and bit his lower lip, trying to hide the consternation on his face. ...Crap.
“It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas!”
Annette Dodd, last of the cheerful morning people, bounced around the entry foyer clad in candy-cane print boxer shorts and a tank top printed with Hello Kitty in a Santa hat. Apparently, Annette never outgrew the tendency of small children to wake up at an ungodly hour on Christmas morning and proceed to wake the household with enthusiastic squeaking so that the present-opening and other exciting business of Christmas could begin. Despite subscribing to a wide-ranging paganism, or perhaps because of it, Annette adored Christmas, though she celebrated it more as a shiny sparkly winter solstice festival than as a 'birth of Christ' thing. She cheerfully explained her love of the holiday season to any carollers who passed by, particularly if they associated themselves with Christian groups or sang particularly Jesus-themed carols, handing out candy canes even as she explained that Mary likely gave birth in springtime because shepherds only sat up with their sheep in the fields during lambing season, how early Christians considered celebrating birthdays to be a pagan custom and that Christmas only started being celebrated hundreds of years after Jesus' death and the date was chosen to coincide with Saturnalia. “It's actually really only fair enough,” she said to the visitors. “I mean, Satunalia is the birthday of the unconquered sun, which would be a totally good way to describe one who lived and died and lived again and will ever return, you know? And anyway, the whole Passion thing is just another way of looking at the seasonal cycle and the winter solstice is about the turning of the seasons towards the light and warm and--” That was usually around the point when a housemate – generally Emma or Rachel, as Carl approved of Annette's message and Mike just liked to listen to her talk – dragged Annette away, smiled in apologetic thanks and shut the door on some very bemused carollers. Rachel said that she was just glad that trick-or-treaters were not a regular occurrence in the UK, as if that was Annette's reaction to Christmas, her handing out candy at Samhain would leave some very confused youngsters in the wake of Annette's enthusiasm and sophistry.
Emma, however, was not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, even on Christmas day. She peered out from under her duvet at Annette's joyful cry. “There'd better be coffee,” she said, half grumbling and half yelling to be heard from her first-floor room. “If there isn't coffee, someone dies. What time is it?” To answer her own question, she peered at the clock radio on her bedside table and groaned. “Oh, Annette, really. It couldn't have waited until at least nine in the morning?”
“Oh, come on!” Annette bounced up the stairs, knocked on Emma's door and then poked her head into Emma's bedroom, giggling at the lump of duvet that was her housemate. “Emma, seriously, it's Christmas! Christmas day! It's a very pretty day and there's presents to open and there'll be breakfast and then Rachel will do her goose and she'll make a nut loaf for me and extra stuffing and roasted potatoes and parsnips and all kinds of nibbles and everything and we'll watch cheesy Christmas movies and there's always the Doctor Who special and I know Mike at least will like that...”
Emma reached down and picked up a slipper, which she tossed at Annette's head. Annette swung the door shut just enough to deflect the flying slipper as Emma grumbled, “You were almost selling me on it until you brought up the Christmas movies. Are you getting dressed at all?”
After a pouty squeak, Annette insisted, “But unwrapping presents in pyjamas is, like, tradition and stuff! Come on! Just throw on a robe or something and come downstairs, okay? It'll be fun and there'll be coffee, I promise! Please please please?”
When Emma sighed in resignation and reached for her slipper in a non-combative way, Annette squeaked in glee and charged over to the next room. Rachel, in baggy blue checked flannel pyjamas with matching bathrobe and slippers, padded down the stairs and watched as Annette pounded on Carl's door and received a sleepy snarl for her pains. “You'd make a fantastic town crier, it suddenly occurs to me. 'Christmastime and all's well', and all that sort of thing. Though six in the morning is a little early for most of us on a holiday.”
Annette bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, her gleeful smile showing her to be undaunted by the reactions of her housemates. “But it's Christmas!”
“You have said, you know,” Rachel pointed out with a slightly indulgent smile.
“But I'm going to make French toast and stuff! And there'll be the secret Santa presents! I want to open the secret Santa presents! And I want to see the one I bought opened and everything! It'll be fun! That's the whole point! People can, like, nap in front of the telly later and everything when we've had breakfast … well, I guess except for you if you're doing the cooking and--”
Rachel raised a hand to silence Annette, chuckling under her breath. “All right, please, settle down. Is the coffee on?”
Annette gave a cheerful nod and shooed Rachel towards the stairs. Then she leaned up the stairs and cried, “That just leaves Mike! C'mon! Good morning! Happy Yule! There's coffee, I promise! C'mon c'mon c'mon! I'm making French toast and there'll be present-opening and breakfast and coffee and--”
Emma stepped out of her room in black satin negligee and black silk robe, which went a bit oddly with her cow-print furry slippers. “We know. We're up. And if you'd told me there was coffee in the first place, I might not have chucked a slipper at your head.” After a moment's thought, she added, “Emphasis on 'might'. Annette, it's six in the morning.”
“A little past, now,” Annette pointed out. “C'mon! Downstairs! Go have coffee and then we can open presents! C'mon c'mon c'mon shoo shoo shoo!” Then she turned back towards Carl's door and banged on it again. A prodigious roar that may have had some passing acquaintance with English words shook the door in its frame, and Annette giggled as Emma rolled her eyes and thumped downstairs to avail herself of the coffee. Annette giggled some more and went back to her self-appointed task of waking the rest of her housemates.
Annette laced the morning coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, in honour of the season. The men and women of HIPPIE curled up in their various favourite spots around the living room in varying states of wakefulness. Annette sat closest to the Christmas tree, still gleeful and hyperactive and rattling every present with her name on the label, both the gift from her secret Santa and the ones from her various colleagues in the spellcaster community. (The one from Stiggy Lancer was obvious in that it was wrapped in old stained newspaper.) Emma and Carl curled up on opposite sides of the sofa, both clad in black silk and looking equally tired and grumpy about being awake at this time of morning. Mike, tousled and slouchy in ratty track suit bottoms, heavy socks and a T-shirt that read “GRUE REPELLENT”, slumped in his beanbag chair in the far corner of the room and tried not to stare too hard at Annette, grateful that her sleepwear involved boxers rather than the cute little underpants she normally favoured. Rachel watched the proceedings indulgently from the armchair near the door. The air smelled of coffee, French toast with cinnamon and wood smoke from the fireplace, and the whole setting screamed of an ideal Christmas.
Rachel ran a hand over her hair, trying to smooth it down a bit, and asked, “So, who's to be first in the gift unwrapping? I suppose we should leave Annette in charge of passing them out, as she's so conveniently situated.”
Annette's only response at first was a joy-redolent giggle and commencement of 'eenie-meenie-miney-moe', and Emma, grumpy as she was, couldn't help but smile in a wry, rueful sort of way. “I suppose the early wake-up call is almost worth it. At least the coffee's good.”
Carl grumbled incoherently for a moment, then went on to say, “Yeah, well, Monsoon Malabar un-fucks most bitch-ups you care to name. Even first thing in the gods-damned morning.” He swigged at his coffee, sighed and slumped back onto the sofa.
“Secret santa presents first!” Annette leaned over and handed Mike a mid-sized rectangular box wrapped in somewhat battered paper printed with Christmas trees. “You, like, go ahead first, Mike. You won the eenie-meenie-miney, and anyway, this is totally your first Christmas with us and everything so it's probably just as well anyway!”
When Mike leaned forward to take the gift, a sudden drift of cold air caught his attention and he looked up to see a sprig of mistletoe suspended over his and Annette's heads. “Bixby...” The tone was an embarrassed whimper more than anything else; he wasn't about to turn aside the opportunity to kiss Annette, but neither was he going to show how much the idea pleased him. “Who gave him mistletoe? I mean, I didn't see any in the h—“
Annette cut him off by kissing him lightly on the lips – a nearly sisterly peck, but an actual lip-kiss nonetheless. For a moment, Mike forgot to breathe, tearing at the wrapping paper around his present more out of stress and jitters than anything else. Rachel, perhaps as a way to distract the others from Mike's total flusterment, topped up everyone's coffee and asked Carl, “Would you prod the fire a bit? Possibly throw on another one of those fir branches for the pine smell?”
Mike finally got over his first shock by dint of a second shock, and he held up his secret Santa gift with a freaked-out sort of pleasure. “The Twilight Zone box set? I … I mean … wow, thanks!” Then he bit his lip and asked, “Do … we find out who was whose secret Santa when we open things?”
“Yep! I mean, like, see, what happens is this: someone opens their secret Santa present and then the person who bought it for them opens theirs and so on down the line, you know? I mean, it sort of gives the game away at the last but you know, it's totally fun anyway. So go on; fess up so I can give the next pressie and stuff!”
As Mike hid a sigh at the knowledge that Annette had not been responsible for the thoughtful gift, Carl gave a self-deprecating snort and said, “You're fuckin' welcome. Just watch it on that bloody 'puter of yours, all right? Life's full of enough weird shite without watching it on the fuckin' tube. Don't get how the hell you still like that bollocks.”
“You?” Again, Mike forgot to breathe for a second, and then he blurted out the first question that came to mind: “How did you know?”
Carl gave him a slightly incredulous look and reminded him, “You have a fuckin' wish list on Amazon, shutterbug. Wasn't a bloody hardship to find.”
“...You paid attention?”
By this time, Carl had his own gift in hand, and as he unwrapped the oddly-shaped, somewhat malleable present wrapped in snowflake-print silver paper, he shrugged and made no further comment on the matter. Instead, he turned his attention to the sixteen-plait six-foot leather bullwhip nestled in the wrapping paper. “Fuckin' A! These bitches are bloody brilliant for a fighting whip.”
Emma smirked a little and murmured, “That's not a whip's only use, you know.”
“Aw, wyvern-shit. Emma, I'm not cracking a fuckin' six-foot bullwhip in a bedroom, all right? That's the kind of shite that leads to big bloody breakage.” Still, Carl couldn't quite help but smile a little at the promising note in Emma's tone when she said it, and the entire thing prompted Bixby to hover over them with the mistletoe. He leaned over and drew Emma closer to him to take advantage of the mistletoe's proximity.
After a long moment of that, Rachel rolled her eyes and chuckled out a simple request: “Let's try to keep it PG-rated, if you don't mind too terribly. Besides, Annette seems to want to go on with the present-opening and I'd rather not have our little bundle of Christmas cheer explode with anticipation.”
Carl broke off the kiss and looked over at Rachel with a half-sheepish, half-smug smile. “Yeah, all right, what the fuck ever. Fuckin' killjoy,” he teased.
Annette handed Emma a good-sized box wrapped in sparkly red wrapping paper, and Emma opened it and gave an appreciative noise at the contents. “Platform saddle shoes; very nice. Someone who knows my shoe size well, I see.”
“You're so totally welcome,” Annette told her with a shiny proud beaming sort of smile. “I thought it'd go well with a couple of your outfits and I know how you are for shoes and everything--”
Emma chuckled and added, “Also, you hope to borrow them because they will go with a couple of your outfits as well.” When Annette blushed, Emma shook her head. “Hey, mis zapatos es su zapatos. So long as I get first dibs at all times.”
“Well, totally, you know?” Still blushing, Annette reached for her own present – a small box wrapped in gold paper. She rattled it next to her ear for about the third time in the last half-hour and then examined the box from all sides before opening it. The squeal of delight that ensued nearly deafened Mike, who was trying to look over her shoulder at what she had received. “BPAL! The Yule limited editions! This is awesome! I mean … is this all of them? In imps? Really? So totally wicked!”
Rachel smiled with quiet pride. “Direct from the manufacturers. They don't normally do the limited editions in imp form, but one of the naiads who works there owes me a favour. Not sure why one wants to go around smelling like butter cookies, but to each her own.” She set aside her coffee quickly, a moment before Annette tackle-hugged her with a variety of squeaky sounds that, when dissected, could about be identified as being in the vicinity of 'thank you'. “Oof! You're welcome, you're welcome, you're very, very welcome! Now please … oxygen is becoming an issue...”
Annette blushed and disentangled herself, heading back to the Christmas tree and rummaging through the presents underneath even as she babbled cheerily. “I guess the rest of us should start opening our own presents although I also guess that maybe Rachel should have a moment in the spotlight--”
“Oh, please, no. You know I'm not fond of the spotlight. Never got used to it.” Rachel sipped her coffee and looked sidelong at Mike, who looked exceedingly nervous. Everyone now new that he was the one responsible for Rachel's gift, and he wasn't looking forward to being in the spotlight any more than Rachel was, and she must have known it. He gave her a small, grateful smile and then looked over at Annette to assess the small piles into which she sorted the various gifts. He tried to quell his nerves as best he could – it was the best gift he could think to give someone on whom his tendency to think too loudly inflicted constant migraines.
For the uninitiated, Rachel was notoriously hard to shop for. She listened to her choice of music exclusively over headphones and kept her books tucked neatly away in her handbag or in the bookcase in her bedroom. Her taste in films was tricky to get a handle on, as much so as her taste in literature, and she never took a fannish, enthusiastic view of anything in the hearing of others. She had limited interest in clothes even if he had been able to gauge her size, and she never wore makeup or jewellery. It was early days for Mike, so he had no real clue how to proceed, so in terms of gift-giving, he could only go with what he knew and hope that it was appropriate.
His parcel was a little lumpy, clumsily wrapped in paper printed with gift-giving zombies. When Rachel opened it, she blinked at the contents and then looked up with a small, confused smile. “Eight bumper-sized boxes of Migraleve … and a Jamie Oliver cookbook?”
Mike shrugged, blushing miserably. “I … know you like to cook, and that you get headaches a lot. So … I thought … this might be a good idea...”
Rachel's smile lost its confusion and became quite kind. “It was very thoughtful, Mike. Thank you. The cookbook will take pride of place in the kitchen.”
Carl raised an eyebrow at Rachel and shook his head slightly. “Rache, come on, what the fuck? I thought you said you thought Jamie Oliver was a--”
Annette interrupted by the simple expedient of throwing one of the softer parcels at Carl's head. “She doesn't have to, like, think he's a good person or anything to think that he can cook and stuff, you know? I think it's kind of awesome, really – I mean, everybody needs cookbooks and stuff around the place, right? Seriously, new ideas in the kitchen are good, I'm thinking.”
“And you're thinking quite right,” Rachel said as she stood and picked up the book and the empty carafe from the coffee maker. “I'll go tuck this away so it doesn't get spilled on before I even use it, and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Go on and do the rest of the unwrapping; I won't be but a moment.”
When Rachel was out of earshot, Mike looked at Emma, as she always split the difference between Carl's brutality and Rachel's diplomacy. “Tell me, honestly – how badly did I mess that up?”
Emma shrugged. “Rachel's difficult to shop for at the best of times, until you get to know her. You put thought into it – really tried to think of what she would want and need. That counts for more than you'd expect.” Then she thought a moment and went on with all due honesty. “However, she does think that Jamie Oliver is a prat, and that celebrity chefs in general are attention-seeking freaks of nature … well, I paraphrase, but you get the idea. The Migraleve was a nice touch, though. Overall, good effort but the execution needs work.”
“So, like, why didn't you ask one of us to start with if you were having trouble or whatever?” Annette blinked up at him from a stack of gifts meant for Emma, face a picture of bewilderment. “I mean, I've shopped for Rachel for Christmas once and birthdays and everything so I could have helped and so could Emma and Carl's been buying presents for her for, like, twelve years – okay, the exact same present for twelve years, at least at Christmas, but at least he knows...”
Mike shrugged miserably. “I liked the challenge?” It was better than admitting that he was afraid that he would get laughed at if he asked for advice. “Besides, it's secret Santa. You'd have known who I was shopping for and that would narrow down the guesses for who was shopping for you. I just … didn't want to spoil it for anyone, that's all.”
Emma and Carl looked at each other, and Annette smiled, leaned over and ruffled his hair. “That's totally sweet, Mike. And like Emma said, it was completely obvious that you put all kinds of thought in it and everything and that counts for a lot and she totally appreciates it and stuff. It's just that she's really chilled out about stuff and doesn't show it much. You're good, seriously.” Then she smiled and handed him a parcel. “This one's for you from your … great aunt Emily, says on the tag and everything. I think it's something knitted.”
“Yeah, it's a scarf.” Mike chuckled and took the parcel. “She knits one every year. It's always stripes. Bright, colourful stripes.” He thought a moment and then tossed the parcel back to Annette with a little smile. “Here. Compliments of my great-aunt Emily. I've got a closet full of them.”
The squeak of joy and thanks and the tackle-hug he received from Annette once she determined that Mike was serious was by far his favourite gift of the season.
At the beginning of December, Emma turned up at the breakfast table with a top hat, which she sat in the centre of the dining table. She reached into it and dug out five scraps of paper and five pens, which she handed out around the table without a word. As the others scribbled on their paper scraps and dropped them into the hat, Mike looked at his in confusion and not a little wariness before he asked, “What's all this?”
Annette answered with all due good cheer. “It's secret Santa!”
“It's the easiest way of exchanging presents in this house,” Rachel explained with a wry little shrug. “We pick a name out of the hat and buy presents for that person.”
Mike blushed. “I … kind of figured that much; I've done secret Santa exchanges before. Just … we don't buy a present for each of the others?”
“Can if you damn well feel like it,” Carl replied, sawing off a chunk of sausage. “Rache and I, we exchange presents every fuckin' year and have since we were bitchy teenagers.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow at him and picked up her teacup. “I wasn't entirely bitchy when we first met, first of all. And second of all, we get each other the same thing every year. It's less a gift exchange and more a tradition. Sort of like leaving milk and biscuits for Father Christmas. Anyway, Annette instituted the secret Santa tradition a couple of years ago. It's surprisingly fun.”
Mike hesitated for a moment, then wrote his name on the scrap of paper and dropped it into the hat with the others. On the one hand, he was pleased at being potentially liberated from having to buy for people whose tastes he didn't know. Watching his housemates open their secret Santa gifts from people who knew them well would teach him what to get for birthdays and so forth. On the other hand, he had been racking his brain for a present for Annette and, while he had not come up with anything yet as such, he reasoned that if Rachel and Carl were exchanging gifts despite secret Santa obligations, he could get Annette something too if he wanted. Then he realised that getting her something on his own without getting anything for the others would be pretending at an intimacy that did not at this point exist, and that doing so would constitute a big neon sign of his affection for her, and decided to reconsider the notion of getting her a gift … unless he was fortunate enough to pick her name out of the hat.
They selected names in alphabetical order, and Mike stirred the papers around before pulling out a name. He unfolded the paper, read it and bit his lower lip, trying to hide the consternation on his face. ...Crap.
* * *
“It's Chriiiiiiiiiiiistmaaaaaaaaaas!”
Annette Dodd, last of the cheerful morning people, bounced around the entry foyer clad in candy-cane print boxer shorts and a tank top printed with Hello Kitty in a Santa hat. Apparently, Annette never outgrew the tendency of small children to wake up at an ungodly hour on Christmas morning and proceed to wake the household with enthusiastic squeaking so that the present-opening and other exciting business of Christmas could begin. Despite subscribing to a wide-ranging paganism, or perhaps because of it, Annette adored Christmas, though she celebrated it more as a shiny sparkly winter solstice festival than as a 'birth of Christ' thing. She cheerfully explained her love of the holiday season to any carollers who passed by, particularly if they associated themselves with Christian groups or sang particularly Jesus-themed carols, handing out candy canes even as she explained that Mary likely gave birth in springtime because shepherds only sat up with their sheep in the fields during lambing season, how early Christians considered celebrating birthdays to be a pagan custom and that Christmas only started being celebrated hundreds of years after Jesus' death and the date was chosen to coincide with Saturnalia. “It's actually really only fair enough,” she said to the visitors. “I mean, Satunalia is the birthday of the unconquered sun, which would be a totally good way to describe one who lived and died and lived again and will ever return, you know? And anyway, the whole Passion thing is just another way of looking at the seasonal cycle and the winter solstice is about the turning of the seasons towards the light and warm and--” That was usually around the point when a housemate – generally Emma or Rachel, as Carl approved of Annette's message and Mike just liked to listen to her talk – dragged Annette away, smiled in apologetic thanks and shut the door on some very bemused carollers. Rachel said that she was just glad that trick-or-treaters were not a regular occurrence in the UK, as if that was Annette's reaction to Christmas, her handing out candy at Samhain would leave some very confused youngsters in the wake of Annette's enthusiasm and sophistry.
Emma, however, was not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination, even on Christmas day. She peered out from under her duvet at Annette's joyful cry. “There'd better be coffee,” she said, half grumbling and half yelling to be heard from her first-floor room. “If there isn't coffee, someone dies. What time is it?” To answer her own question, she peered at the clock radio on her bedside table and groaned. “Oh, Annette, really. It couldn't have waited until at least nine in the morning?”
“Oh, come on!” Annette bounced up the stairs, knocked on Emma's door and then poked her head into Emma's bedroom, giggling at the lump of duvet that was her housemate. “Emma, seriously, it's Christmas! Christmas day! It's a very pretty day and there's presents to open and there'll be breakfast and then Rachel will do her goose and she'll make a nut loaf for me and extra stuffing and roasted potatoes and parsnips and all kinds of nibbles and everything and we'll watch cheesy Christmas movies and there's always the Doctor Who special and I know Mike at least will like that...”
Emma reached down and picked up a slipper, which she tossed at Annette's head. Annette swung the door shut just enough to deflect the flying slipper as Emma grumbled, “You were almost selling me on it until you brought up the Christmas movies. Are you getting dressed at all?”
After a pouty squeak, Annette insisted, “But unwrapping presents in pyjamas is, like, tradition and stuff! Come on! Just throw on a robe or something and come downstairs, okay? It'll be fun and there'll be coffee, I promise! Please please please?”
When Emma sighed in resignation and reached for her slipper in a non-combative way, Annette squeaked in glee and charged over to the next room. Rachel, in baggy blue checked flannel pyjamas with matching bathrobe and slippers, padded down the stairs and watched as Annette pounded on Carl's door and received a sleepy snarl for her pains. “You'd make a fantastic town crier, it suddenly occurs to me. 'Christmastime and all's well', and all that sort of thing. Though six in the morning is a little early for most of us on a holiday.”
Annette bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, her gleeful smile showing her to be undaunted by the reactions of her housemates. “But it's Christmas!”
“You have said, you know,” Rachel pointed out with a slightly indulgent smile.
“But I'm going to make French toast and stuff! And there'll be the secret Santa presents! I want to open the secret Santa presents! And I want to see the one I bought opened and everything! It'll be fun! That's the whole point! People can, like, nap in front of the telly later and everything when we've had breakfast … well, I guess except for you if you're doing the cooking and--”
Rachel raised a hand to silence Annette, chuckling under her breath. “All right, please, settle down. Is the coffee on?”
Annette gave a cheerful nod and shooed Rachel towards the stairs. Then she leaned up the stairs and cried, “That just leaves Mike! C'mon! Good morning! Happy Yule! There's coffee, I promise! C'mon c'mon c'mon! I'm making French toast and there'll be present-opening and breakfast and coffee and--”
Emma stepped out of her room in black satin negligee and black silk robe, which went a bit oddly with her cow-print furry slippers. “We know. We're up. And if you'd told me there was coffee in the first place, I might not have chucked a slipper at your head.” After a moment's thought, she added, “Emphasis on 'might'. Annette, it's six in the morning.”
“A little past, now,” Annette pointed out. “C'mon! Downstairs! Go have coffee and then we can open presents! C'mon c'mon c'mon shoo shoo shoo!” Then she turned back towards Carl's door and banged on it again. A prodigious roar that may have had some passing acquaintance with English words shook the door in its frame, and Annette giggled as Emma rolled her eyes and thumped downstairs to avail herself of the coffee. Annette giggled some more and went back to her self-appointed task of waking the rest of her housemates.
* * *
Annette laced the morning coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg, in honour of the season. The men and women of HIPPIE curled up in their various favourite spots around the living room in varying states of wakefulness. Annette sat closest to the Christmas tree, still gleeful and hyperactive and rattling every present with her name on the label, both the gift from her secret Santa and the ones from her various colleagues in the spellcaster community. (The one from Stiggy Lancer was obvious in that it was wrapped in old stained newspaper.) Emma and Carl curled up on opposite sides of the sofa, both clad in black silk and looking equally tired and grumpy about being awake at this time of morning. Mike, tousled and slouchy in ratty track suit bottoms, heavy socks and a T-shirt that read “GRUE REPELLENT”, slumped in his beanbag chair in the far corner of the room and tried not to stare too hard at Annette, grateful that her sleepwear involved boxers rather than the cute little underpants she normally favoured. Rachel watched the proceedings indulgently from the armchair near the door. The air smelled of coffee, French toast with cinnamon and wood smoke from the fireplace, and the whole setting screamed of an ideal Christmas.
Rachel ran a hand over her hair, trying to smooth it down a bit, and asked, “So, who's to be first in the gift unwrapping? I suppose we should leave Annette in charge of passing them out, as she's so conveniently situated.”
Annette's only response at first was a joy-redolent giggle and commencement of 'eenie-meenie-miney-moe', and Emma, grumpy as she was, couldn't help but smile in a wry, rueful sort of way. “I suppose the early wake-up call is almost worth it. At least the coffee's good.”
Carl grumbled incoherently for a moment, then went on to say, “Yeah, well, Monsoon Malabar un-fucks most bitch-ups you care to name. Even first thing in the gods-damned morning.” He swigged at his coffee, sighed and slumped back onto the sofa.
“Secret santa presents first!” Annette leaned over and handed Mike a mid-sized rectangular box wrapped in somewhat battered paper printed with Christmas trees. “You, like, go ahead first, Mike. You won the eenie-meenie-miney, and anyway, this is totally your first Christmas with us and everything so it's probably just as well anyway!”
When Mike leaned forward to take the gift, a sudden drift of cold air caught his attention and he looked up to see a sprig of mistletoe suspended over his and Annette's heads. “Bixby...” The tone was an embarrassed whimper more than anything else; he wasn't about to turn aside the opportunity to kiss Annette, but neither was he going to show how much the idea pleased him. “Who gave him mistletoe? I mean, I didn't see any in the h—“
Annette cut him off by kissing him lightly on the lips – a nearly sisterly peck, but an actual lip-kiss nonetheless. For a moment, Mike forgot to breathe, tearing at the wrapping paper around his present more out of stress and jitters than anything else. Rachel, perhaps as a way to distract the others from Mike's total flusterment, topped up everyone's coffee and asked Carl, “Would you prod the fire a bit? Possibly throw on another one of those fir branches for the pine smell?”
Mike finally got over his first shock by dint of a second shock, and he held up his secret Santa gift with a freaked-out sort of pleasure. “The Twilight Zone box set? I … I mean … wow, thanks!” Then he bit his lip and asked, “Do … we find out who was whose secret Santa when we open things?”
“Yep! I mean, like, see, what happens is this: someone opens their secret Santa present and then the person who bought it for them opens theirs and so on down the line, you know? I mean, it sort of gives the game away at the last but you know, it's totally fun anyway. So go on; fess up so I can give the next pressie and stuff!”
As Mike hid a sigh at the knowledge that Annette had not been responsible for the thoughtful gift, Carl gave a self-deprecating snort and said, “You're fuckin' welcome. Just watch it on that bloody 'puter of yours, all right? Life's full of enough weird shite without watching it on the fuckin' tube. Don't get how the hell you still like that bollocks.”
“You?” Again, Mike forgot to breathe for a second, and then he blurted out the first question that came to mind: “How did you know?”
Carl gave him a slightly incredulous look and reminded him, “You have a fuckin' wish list on Amazon, shutterbug. Wasn't a bloody hardship to find.”
“...You paid attention?”
By this time, Carl had his own gift in hand, and as he unwrapped the oddly-shaped, somewhat malleable present wrapped in snowflake-print silver paper, he shrugged and made no further comment on the matter. Instead, he turned his attention to the sixteen-plait six-foot leather bullwhip nestled in the wrapping paper. “Fuckin' A! These bitches are bloody brilliant for a fighting whip.”
Emma smirked a little and murmured, “That's not a whip's only use, you know.”
“Aw, wyvern-shit. Emma, I'm not cracking a fuckin' six-foot bullwhip in a bedroom, all right? That's the kind of shite that leads to big bloody breakage.” Still, Carl couldn't quite help but smile a little at the promising note in Emma's tone when she said it, and the entire thing prompted Bixby to hover over them with the mistletoe. He leaned over and drew Emma closer to him to take advantage of the mistletoe's proximity.
After a long moment of that, Rachel rolled her eyes and chuckled out a simple request: “Let's try to keep it PG-rated, if you don't mind too terribly. Besides, Annette seems to want to go on with the present-opening and I'd rather not have our little bundle of Christmas cheer explode with anticipation.”
Carl broke off the kiss and looked over at Rachel with a half-sheepish, half-smug smile. “Yeah, all right, what the fuck ever. Fuckin' killjoy,” he teased.
Annette handed Emma a good-sized box wrapped in sparkly red wrapping paper, and Emma opened it and gave an appreciative noise at the contents. “Platform saddle shoes; very nice. Someone who knows my shoe size well, I see.”
“You're so totally welcome,” Annette told her with a shiny proud beaming sort of smile. “I thought it'd go well with a couple of your outfits and I know how you are for shoes and everything--”
Emma chuckled and added, “Also, you hope to borrow them because they will go with a couple of your outfits as well.” When Annette blushed, Emma shook her head. “Hey, mis zapatos es su zapatos. So long as I get first dibs at all times.”
“Well, totally, you know?” Still blushing, Annette reached for her own present – a small box wrapped in gold paper. She rattled it next to her ear for about the third time in the last half-hour and then examined the box from all sides before opening it. The squeal of delight that ensued nearly deafened Mike, who was trying to look over her shoulder at what she had received. “BPAL! The Yule limited editions! This is awesome! I mean … is this all of them? In imps? Really? So totally wicked!”
Rachel smiled with quiet pride. “Direct from the manufacturers. They don't normally do the limited editions in imp form, but one of the naiads who works there owes me a favour. Not sure why one wants to go around smelling like butter cookies, but to each her own.” She set aside her coffee quickly, a moment before Annette tackle-hugged her with a variety of squeaky sounds that, when dissected, could about be identified as being in the vicinity of 'thank you'. “Oof! You're welcome, you're welcome, you're very, very welcome! Now please … oxygen is becoming an issue...”
Annette blushed and disentangled herself, heading back to the Christmas tree and rummaging through the presents underneath even as she babbled cheerily. “I guess the rest of us should start opening our own presents although I also guess that maybe Rachel should have a moment in the spotlight--”
“Oh, please, no. You know I'm not fond of the spotlight. Never got used to it.” Rachel sipped her coffee and looked sidelong at Mike, who looked exceedingly nervous. Everyone now new that he was the one responsible for Rachel's gift, and he wasn't looking forward to being in the spotlight any more than Rachel was, and she must have known it. He gave her a small, grateful smile and then looked over at Annette to assess the small piles into which she sorted the various gifts. He tried to quell his nerves as best he could – it was the best gift he could think to give someone on whom his tendency to think too loudly inflicted constant migraines.
For the uninitiated, Rachel was notoriously hard to shop for. She listened to her choice of music exclusively over headphones and kept her books tucked neatly away in her handbag or in the bookcase in her bedroom. Her taste in films was tricky to get a handle on, as much so as her taste in literature, and she never took a fannish, enthusiastic view of anything in the hearing of others. She had limited interest in clothes even if he had been able to gauge her size, and she never wore makeup or jewellery. It was early days for Mike, so he had no real clue how to proceed, so in terms of gift-giving, he could only go with what he knew and hope that it was appropriate.
His parcel was a little lumpy, clumsily wrapped in paper printed with gift-giving zombies. When Rachel opened it, she blinked at the contents and then looked up with a small, confused smile. “Eight bumper-sized boxes of Migraleve … and a Jamie Oliver cookbook?”
Mike shrugged, blushing miserably. “I … know you like to cook, and that you get headaches a lot. So … I thought … this might be a good idea...”
Rachel's smile lost its confusion and became quite kind. “It was very thoughtful, Mike. Thank you. The cookbook will take pride of place in the kitchen.”
Carl raised an eyebrow at Rachel and shook his head slightly. “Rache, come on, what the fuck? I thought you said you thought Jamie Oliver was a--”
Annette interrupted by the simple expedient of throwing one of the softer parcels at Carl's head. “She doesn't have to, like, think he's a good person or anything to think that he can cook and stuff, you know? I think it's kind of awesome, really – I mean, everybody needs cookbooks and stuff around the place, right? Seriously, new ideas in the kitchen are good, I'm thinking.”
“And you're thinking quite right,” Rachel said as she stood and picked up the book and the empty carafe from the coffee maker. “I'll go tuck this away so it doesn't get spilled on before I even use it, and put on a fresh pot of coffee. Go on and do the rest of the unwrapping; I won't be but a moment.”
When Rachel was out of earshot, Mike looked at Emma, as she always split the difference between Carl's brutality and Rachel's diplomacy. “Tell me, honestly – how badly did I mess that up?”
Emma shrugged. “Rachel's difficult to shop for at the best of times, until you get to know her. You put thought into it – really tried to think of what she would want and need. That counts for more than you'd expect.” Then she thought a moment and went on with all due honesty. “However, she does think that Jamie Oliver is a prat, and that celebrity chefs in general are attention-seeking freaks of nature … well, I paraphrase, but you get the idea. The Migraleve was a nice touch, though. Overall, good effort but the execution needs work.”
“So, like, why didn't you ask one of us to start with if you were having trouble or whatever?” Annette blinked up at him from a stack of gifts meant for Emma, face a picture of bewilderment. “I mean, I've shopped for Rachel for Christmas once and birthdays and everything so I could have helped and so could Emma and Carl's been buying presents for her for, like, twelve years – okay, the exact same present for twelve years, at least at Christmas, but at least he knows...”
Mike shrugged miserably. “I liked the challenge?” It was better than admitting that he was afraid that he would get laughed at if he asked for advice. “Besides, it's secret Santa. You'd have known who I was shopping for and that would narrow down the guesses for who was shopping for you. I just … didn't want to spoil it for anyone, that's all.”
Emma and Carl looked at each other, and Annette smiled, leaned over and ruffled his hair. “That's totally sweet, Mike. And like Emma said, it was completely obvious that you put all kinds of thought in it and everything and that counts for a lot and she totally appreciates it and stuff. It's just that she's really chilled out about stuff and doesn't show it much. You're good, seriously.” Then she smiled and handed him a parcel. “This one's for you from your … great aunt Emily, says on the tag and everything. I think it's something knitted.”
“Yeah, it's a scarf.” Mike chuckled and took the parcel. “She knits one every year. It's always stripes. Bright, colourful stripes.” He thought a moment and then tossed the parcel back to Annette with a little smile. “Here. Compliments of my great-aunt Emily. I've got a closet full of them.”
The squeak of joy and thanks and the tackle-hug he received from Annette once she determined that Mike was serious was by far his favourite gift of the season.