Work Text:
Kendall POV
Me and Shelby are just sitting on my sofa, chatting about random things when she brings it up.
“So, when are you putting up your tree?” she asks.
Well fuck, not what I expected her to ask at all, I’ll admit. There are so many things that even she, as my girlfriend, doesn’t know. I expected something that wasn’t so general to come out tonight if anything. The answer itself is pretty simple, but the reasons why, though that can also be simple, are a lot more complicated if you dig deeper into them. Deeper into the life that caused them. Deeper into that trauma. Is it painful, not really, not anymore, but it’s still there. It still affects me. Things such as a christmas tree, which is so mundane and common, is another thing I missed out on due to my childhood being as it was. I know the whole thing isn't that hard, but I’ve never done it, and never saw the point of doing it on my own. Back when I lived with my pseudo family, aka coven, in Texas, I wasn’t really in the right mind space a lot of the time, so taking part in their festivities was the last thing I wanted to do. Part of me regrets not doing so, and that may be because I would be able to tell Shelby right now that I have done it before. However, that is the exact thing that I can’t tell her, because it’s a lie, and I promised her that I’d try my hardest not to lie to her for any reason, but especially about my past.
“I wasn’t going to, I don’t have one,” I tell her, not quite the whole truth, but not a lie. Besides, I know she will prompt me to tell her more, which I am happy to.
“How come?” she asks, genuinely curious.
“I’ve never decorated for Christmas before, past a few lights in my office anyway,” I admit.
“Really?” she asks, surprised.
“Yeah, my childhood didn’t allow me much time to do it,” I explain, looking down, almost ashamed. As much as I'm happy to share my past with Shelby, but I’m still not used to doing it. I’ve shared very little with most people for so long, with some exceptions that know a fair bit.
She places two fingers under my chin and gently tilts my head up so I’m looking her in the eyes.
“You don’t need to be ashamed, it’s not your fault,” she tells me, softly.
“I know it’s not, but I’m still not used to talking about these things to you,” I tell her.
“And that’s ok,” she comforts, then adds, “and on a lighter note, me and you are going shopping to get Christmas stuff to decorate with.”
“Why?” I ask, wondering why we should bother.
“Because it is fun,” she replies, a smile across her face. A smile crosses my own face. Fun, I should have a little more of that, and I get to spend time with her.
“Ok, we can do it, but tomorrow, cause it’s 10pm and you need to sleep soon,” I agree, “it could be fun.”
“I will make sure you have fun,” she says, excited, “we can decorate your house, then we can help with the base and the museum and-.”
“Shelby, how about we start with here and leave it at that, just for now,” I say, cutting her off. She smiles.
“Sorry,” she says.
“Don’t be, you’re excited, I just don’t want to move too quickly is all,” I explain, “it seems like something so small or simple, but it’s one of the many things I never did as a child, and is therefore a small thing I can use to take back my life from what has happened.”
“It’s ok, and I am happy that you are comfortable with me supporting you through things like this,” Shelby says, softly.
“Of course I am, I trust you Shelby, and I love you,” I say, taking her hands in mine.
“I love you too,” she tells me, smiling and gently squeezing my hands in support. I pull her in for a hug, moving closer to make it easier as I wrap my arms around her. She does the same. I feel myself melt into her arms, my body relaxing, her scent calming me. We stay cuddled up, just talking about random things again, like joking about my pseudo family and the team, for almost an hour until Shelby starts to fall asleep on my shoulder.
“Darlin’, you need to go to bed,” I whisper.
“In a minute,” she mutters, snuggling further into me. I chuckle.
“Come on, I’ll join you,” I whisper to her, “but we need to get changed.”
“Fine,” she says, “but carry me?” She looks up at me and smiles sleepily.
“You’re cute,” I say, then move her into my lap so I can pick her up easier. I lift her up, carrying her bridal style, and walk us into my room before sitting her down on the bed.
“Your clothes or mine?” I ask, though I have an idea of what she will say.
“My clothes, but I wanna wear your hoodie in the morning,” she says. Knew it. I pull out a pair of her pyjamas, a pair of shorts and a vest and pass them to her. She stands up and walks out to the bathroom. I pull out my own pyjama shorts and shirt and change into them. I am so glad she knows what I am, cause it means I haven’t been sitting with my contacts in or my glasses on so that she doesn’t see my red eyes.
“How’s stuff going across there Ri?” I ask, after turning on the microphone on my earpiece.
“Not bad, Chase and Tyler have been arguing about the videogame they’ve been playing for the past half hour, and Ivan is just confused,” he says.
“What are they playing this time?” I ask, as I sit down on my bed and get under the covers.
“Mario Kart,” he deadpans, then bursts out laughing.
“Why am I not surprised?” I say to him, laughing too. That’s when Shelby walks back in.
“What’s going on with the boys now?” she asks, placing her dirty clothes in the corner where she usually does, then walking over to get in bed next to me.
“Just Chase and Tyler bickering about Mario Kart again,” I answer.
“Of course they are,” she laughs.
“Goodnight you two,” Riley says. Then I can hear nothing from his side.
“Night,” I say to him.
“Night Ri,” Shelby says. Then I turn my own microphone off.
“Microphone is off,” I tell her.
“Mkay,” she says, and lies down on the bed, pulling me down with her. I pull her in too and she places her arm over my stomach, and lies her head on my chest, cuddling into me. She quickly falls asleep, and that’s how we spend the night. I spend half of it just there, happily cuddling her, then I spend the rest just reading my book which was on my bedside table. Sometimes I wish I could sleep, because I would get to wake up next to her. However, I can’t sleep, because of the vampirism, so I just lie here, which is more than enough. Especially since it’s more than I ever thought I’d get at points in my life.
Shelby wakes up at just a little before 10am, having slept for probably about 10 hours in the end, and very peacefully, which makes me happy.
“Morning K,” she murmurs.
“Mornin’ Darlin’,” I mutter, “sleep well?”
“Mhmm,” she replies, then asks as she starts to sit up, and I let my arm fall from her waist so she can, “you been reading?”
“Yeah, for some of the night anyway, I’ve almost finished it now,” I answer.
“The sapphic reading an iconic achillean book,” she teases, sleepily.
“Well, Red White and Royal Blue is iconic, and they are amazing,” I tell her, smiling.
“I’ve heard,” she says, smiling too.
“I will get you to read it,” I say.
“Probably,” she agrees, “or I’ll watch the movie.”
“The movie is great too,” I agree.
Then we get up and ready for the day. I make Shelby food while she showers and gets dressed. When I say make her food, I’m not cooking her a 3 course breakfast, I’m making her an omelette, so I did get dressed before starting. I’m wearing a pair of black leather pants and a black vest with a dark purple knit jumper. It’s an outfit that I rarely wear, cause it’s not always cold enough here, or back in Texas really, only during the winter, cause it’s quite a thick jumper. She comes into the kitchen only a couple minutes after I finished the food, wearing a pair of light blue jeans and a pink t-shirt of her own, with one of my light purple hoodies that she loves.
“Nice hoodie,” I tease.
“Course you’d like it, possessive bastard,” she laughs, as she sits down on the stool at my breakfast bar. I was already sitting down after having finished cleaning and cooking only minutes ago.
“Only for you Darlin’,” I say, a smile on my face, “now eat your food before it goes cold.” She does start eating.
“You know, for someone who doesn’t eat human food, you cook pretty well,” she says after eating a few bites.
“I was human for longer than I’ve been a vampire, remember,” I say, simply.
“True,” she agrees, then adds, “by the way, we’re going Target, cause I usually go there and I know where we are going in there.”
“Cool,” I say, “you do know I go there too?”
“I never thought about it,” she says.
“Fair enough,” I say, then ask, “so, what are we buying?”
“At least a tree, some lights, baubles and tinsel to decorate the tree, past that, it’s up to you and how much you want to decorate the rest of your house,” she answers.
“I don’t know, but I don’t want lights in my window cause it brings focus to me since I live so far away from most things, and I don’t want people drawn here,” I explain.
“That makes sense,” she agrees.
After that we once again talk about random things for a while before we leave. Usually when we go anywhere we go on my bike, cause we both love to ride on it, or rather, I love to drive it and she loves to wrap her arms around me while we’re on it. This time though, we’re using my car, so we can take things home. My car is fairly simple, but still quite expensive so I don’t always drive it anywhere. There are some cases, such as today in which the car will be used.
We walk into the garage and I climb into the drivers side, and she into the passenger side of my dark purple convertible. Then we buckle in a drive the 10 minutes to Target. I park up, and we get out. Shelby has been practically vibrating with excitement the entire drive here. She’s more excited than me, and I'm getting pretty excited now too. I do like doing new things, especially the things I know are safe and fun.
We spend, quite literally, almost 2 hours in there. She led me around the shop, and let me choose decorations, with her guidance when I needed it. I chose a bunch of things to decorate my house, and even a few things for the museum and base. My favourite decoration is the lights, they’re all just so pretty when they’re lit up. We got a fake tree, tinsel, lights, baubles, bells, a couple small signs, some fake snow that I can put on my window and some room ornaments like reindeer and snowflakes.
Upon getting home, she runs to my TV and starts messing with it.
“What are you doing Darlin’?” I ask, putting the bags down that I was carrying.
“Putting on some music,” she says.
“Ok, just please not ‘All I want for christmas is you’, cause, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great song, but I hear it too much every year cause it’s played at the museum,” I request.
“But you can’t hear the speakers in your office,” she says, confused, putting on a random playlist.
“Vampire hearing, remember, I can hear a lot more than I need to,” I remind her.
“Oh yeah, I forget,” she says, slightly embarrassed.
“It’s ok, I’m sure you’re not the only one to forget, even vampires forget sometimes,” I tell her, coming up behind her and wrapping my arms around her waist, hooking my chin over her shoulder. I turn my head towards her neck, and place a single kiss on it, just above the pulse point.
“Hey, none of that, we have a tree to decorate,” she teases, lightly slapping my hands. I pull my head up.
“You sure, I have a couple of other ideas,” I whisper into her ear. I feel a shiver go down her spine.
“Yes, My Love, as much as I love you and those little ideas you’re having, this is a day for a new experience,” she says, spinning round to face me, a smile on her face.
“Fine, where do we start?” I ask.
“With the tree, we gotta put it up, then decorate it,” she answers, then laughs, “but first, I need to move.” I laugh too, but release her. She makes her way over to the pop up christmas tree we bought and moves it into a corner.
“Come help,” she prompts me. I walk over and bend down to help her after taking off my shoes, a pair of black dr martens.
Together we pull out the tree, put it up and decorate it, covering it in baubles and lights. Does it look organised? Not at all, but that’s not the point of this, the point is for me to learn and have fun with this new experience. I am enjoying it, and it’s made even better by doing it with Shelby. We both enjoyed it. We did it together, her prompting me to continue everytime I hesitated, her reminding me that it doesn’t have to look perfect and that I’m doing well. It helps, to know I’m doing it right, to know she’s proud of me. I can tell by the smiles she’s giving me everytime our eyes meet. She’s proud I’m doing something new. She’s proud I’m doing it well. She’s proud I chose to do this and that I’m enjoying it.
Once the tree is done, we move on to the rest of the house. Covering it in tinsel and lights and ornaments.
It’s fun, and she keeps prompting me, and complimenting me. It continues to make me feel better about myself and what I'm doing. By the time we’re finished, the house is looking very sparkly and pretty.
“So, did you have fun? It looked like you did,” she asks, as we walk into the kitchen after finishing packing up. I open the cupboard and pull out the hot chocolate to offer to Shelby.
“Yeah, I did, it was fun, I enjoyed the tree especially,” I answer, then offer, “hot chocolate?”
“Yeah, do you have marshmallows and cream?” she answers/asks.
“Naturally,” I reply, “get them out, same places as normal.”
“Why do you always make me food and stuff, even though you don’t eat or drink yourself?” she asks. It’s a fair question, cause I rarely actually eat food, since I can’t digest it, and it just tastes weird now, but I can make food, and I like to.
“Because I like to take care of you, and I like to make it, plus, it smells nice,” I answer.
“Makes sense, and I’m glad you like taking care of me, you are my girlfriend,” she says, smiling at me, as she pushes herself up onto the counter next to me, while I start the kettle to boil the water.
“As are you mine,” I say, and turn to face her. She leans down, and I meet her in the middle. We kiss for a short time, just enjoying the feeling, the connection, until we are rudely interrupted by the kettle finishing. I pull away, laughing when she tries to follow my lips, almost falling off the counter. She would have if I hadn’t caught her by her waist, before gently moving her back up. She bursts out laughing once she is resituated. I then pour the water into the cup, and mix in the powder, which was already in there. Once it was mixed in, I walk to the fridge to grab the milk, before walking back over to pour some milk into the cup to top it up. I place the bottle on the counter to put back away when the cream is in a minute.
“You wanna do the toppings, or should I?” I ask her. I know she likes to do them sometimes.
“Yeah!” she replies, hoping down from the counter and reaching for the whipped cream. She does the toppings, putting on so many marshmallows it rivals Chase’s obsession with them. He has been known to have hot chocolates which are like 70% marshmallow, and to just sit snacking on as big a bag of them as he could find.
We move into the sitting room so we can sit and cuddle on the sofa. We then spend the next half an hour simply cuddling and admiring the decorations. And if I admire how ethereal Shelby looks in the dimmer light of the room, with the only light coming from the fairy lights, then that’s for only us to know. And if she does the same, then it’s also only for us to know.