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yoshistack · 4 months

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That's Why They Call It The Present

Surprise @leoriowithaknife! Twas I that did your @codesecretsanta present for this year!

They had many wonderful idea for prompts (some of which I may tuck into my back pocket to make at a later time), but the one that immediately jumped out to me the most was the idea of Aelita spending time with Jeremy and his family for the holiday! Giving me an excuse to write my favorite characters post one of my favorite episodes for S4? Sign me up! I had so many ideas in fact that I turned this into a series of vignettes chronicling some moments of their holiday together. It was super fun to do!

This is my first time being able to participate in this event, and I was thrilled to work on this this month. I hope you like it too!

Ao3 Version Link: Right here!

For a second time today, she finds herself standing in front of the main gate to Kadic saying goodbye to her friends before they disperse for the holidays (“For real this time!” Odd adds with a laugh at the ridiculousness of it all). Just like before, it’s a slow trickle of departures, starting first with Yumi heading back to her house; then Odd heads off in the opposite direction toward the airport, giving a quick wave as he disappears around the corner with Kiwi in tow. Ulrich stands beside her for a while in a comfortable silence until his parents eventually pull back up in front of them, and suddenly it becomes a lot more tense. His dad doesn’t get out of the car, but the glare he sends to them speaks volumes. Ulrich doesn’t seem phased by it, merely shrugging and making a snarky remark about lion dens before pulling himself inside with a brief farewell salute towards them. Then he’s gone too.

And then that just leaves her and Jeremy.

She shifts her weight from one foot to the other and tightens her fingers around the strap to her bag. It feels surprisingly light. Did she pack enough? Should she run back to the dorm? Does she even have time? She glances down the street.

No one in sight.

Maybe she should…

A hand on her shoulder makes her jump. “Hey, relax,” Jeremy tells her. He gives her a soft smile and, as if he can read her mind for once, adds, “They wouldn’t have insisted on me inviting you if they didn’t actually want you there too.”

She clicks her tongue in thought. That may be true, but she still finds it’s hard not to feel nervous at the prospect ahead of her. This is Jeremy’s parents after all; he’s one of her best friends. “I get that, I do. But I just…” She barely suppresses the urge to sigh. “I guess I just don’t want to make a bad first impression is all,” she admits to him.

“You? Make a bad first impression?” He lets out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a scoff. “I doubt that. Especially not with them. They’re pretty easy going.”

From what she remembers of her brief encounter with his dad, she believes him. He’d seemed very kind, and Jeremy’s always spoken positively about him (which is more than she can say about how some of their other friends feel about their parents). But even the most patient of people have to have their limits, and having to travel back and forth from their home to Kadic and back again several times all because of her seems like a good way of reaching them. Surely he must be at least a little annoyed with her?

The thought of him looking at her with anything close to the ire Ulrich’s dad had looked at them with pulls a frown back across her mouth.

“Besides,” Jeremy nudges her with his shoulder to pull her out of her thoughts. He nods toward an approaching car—slightly bigger than the one he’d originally been picked up in. “I think they’ve been looking for an excuse to get to meet you for ages anyway.”

As if on cue, the car slows to a stop in front of them. She instinctively stands up straighter when the driver's side door opens and Mr. Belpois steps out.

When he smiles down at her, it is warm. Not even a hint of irritation hidden within it.

And just like that she remembers how to breathe again.

The remaining tension frozen in her spine melts away as he approaches with a bright look in his eyes. “You must be Aelita,” he says, voice light. “It’s so nice to finally meet you properly. Jeremy speaks a lot about you, you know.” He offers her his hand.

She takes hold of it while glancing at Jeremy with a raised brow. “Does he now?” Jeremy rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and points his gaze everywhere but at her face. She bites back the laughter threatening to spill out of her. “Thank you for inviting me,” she says instead, turning back toward his dad. At the sight of the car behind him again, she starts, “I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother…”

Mr. Belpois waves the concern off before she can even get it all out. “Not at all,” he quickly reassures her. “We’re glad to have you.” He lets go of her hand and motions toward her bag instead, which she gives to him after only a slight moment of surprise. “Shall we head off then?”

Jeremy opens one of the car doors for her while his dad goes to put her bag in the back. He’s got another grin on his face when he climbs into the seat next to her a moment later, this one decidedly more cheeky than before. “I told you it’d be fine,” he says, only just a bit smugly.

She ducks her head to hide her own growing smile.

She’ll let him be smug. Just this once.

Jeremy’s mother greets Aelita the moment she steps through their front door with a hug that almost takes her off her feet. She lets out a startled sound—she’s much more used to giving those out than receiving them, but it’s not necessarily an unwelcome surprise. Jeremy laughs loud somewhere behind her, until he gets enveloped in one too the moment she lets go of Aelita. She takes a step back to get her bearings again. When she looks up, she briefly thinks she’s seeing double.

Jeremy looks a lot like his mom.

It’s clear to her where he gets his hair color from. His eyes too. In more ways than one, she notes to herself with a soft laugh as she watches them both adjust their glasses after they pull back from their long embrace. Different styles though—hers are a lighter tortoiseshell and more rectangular, as opposed to the simple black round ones Jeremy prefers.

His mother pokes and prods at him a bit, turns him around and looks him over. Has him spread his arms out to the side in a way that makes him resemble something closer to a Jeremy-sized bird spreading his wings while she notes how tall he’s gotten since he saw her last (Which, she’s not wrong; he’s gotten exceptionally lanky within the last few months alone). She both compliments him and dramatically laments over how mature he looks now. Just generally does all the things Aelita assumes must be normal for a mother to say about their son growing up.

Perhaps the most surprising part though is the way Jeremy takes it all in stride. He rolls his eyes a bit, but otherwise doesn’t at all protest any of the questioning or the way he’s being posed around like a doll on a shelf. At some point during it all he catches the look Aelita is giving him and flashes her a slightly tired smile that speaks volumes about how many times he’s gone through this before.

Something about that thought sends something warm spreading through her chest.

When she’s finally satisfied, Mrs. Belpois sends the two of them towards Jeremy’s room so they can both put their things away. Along the way she takes a look around—at the smaller, mismatched novels wedged between larger math and science books on the bookshelves, or the not quite hung straight photo of a much younger looking Jeremy’s parents hanging in the hallway. Practically every flat surface she passes has something piled on top of it, things that likely have a proper place somewhere out of sight, but were much more convenient to just keep laying around wherever they were set down last.

To her, it all speaks to the kind of people Jeremy’s family must be like. It's a different feeling than the one she gets from Yumi’s house, where though she never feels unwelcome, things look sometimes unnaturally clean and fragile, and at times she feels she’ll ruin it all just by walking through it. Here, it’s not as neat. It’s not quite messy either, but rather… it seems lived in. Comfortably lived in.

She hasn’t really thought about what Jeremy’s house must look like since a time when the thought of living on Earth at all seemed so overwhelmingly foreign to her, but if she had to have guessed, she never would have thought where Jeremy came from would seem so… normal.

His bedroom feels much the same way. Four blue walls lined up with shelves full of artifacts that speak to the kid Jeremy used to be. Mostly, she finds upon closer examination, space related things. There’s no shortage of rocket or astronaut figures carefully lined up in front of a row of space themed books that slowly shift into computer related ones the further the row goes. An old poster with a big crease in the middle of it, crunched corners and an image of the planets of the solar system circling around a graphic of the sun printed on it is taped up beside his bed in a way not unlike the one he has back in his dorm. In one of the back corners is a desk pushed up against the wall that’s clearly where his computer set up at Kadic used to sit. Now it just holds several piles of clothes on it instead.

The most interesting thing she finds though is a picture of a younger Jeremy on the nightstand of him with a muted smile on his face at what looks like… a swimming pool?

“My dad thought getting me involved in swimming would help me make friends as a kid,” Jeremy answers the unspoken question when he finally notices her snooping. He moves some of the clothes and sets his laptop bag down on a newly made free spot on the desk. He winces at the small layer of dust that clings to his fingers. “Sorry about the mess. It’s just, well… you know…” He shrugs, thought going unfinished.

“I think it’s perfect,” she says. Jeremy looks at her curiously. “Your family and your home. It’s all… very you.” She turns toward him fully, speaks sincerely as she looks him in the eye. “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

His surprise turns to something more thoughtful. “Yeah,” he eventually agrees with a slow nod. “Neither would I.”

Two days into their break, and she doesn’t think she’s ever seen Jeremy look so relaxed in the entire time that she’s known him.

He’s sitting at a small table across from his mom in the living room, a game of chess laid out before them. His brow furrows in thought, hand lingers in the air above the board, until a light sparkles in his eye as a move suddenly dawns on him. In a flash, he’s moved one of his pieces and claimed one of his mother’s pawns for his own, letting out a triumphant laugh she didn’t think Jeremy was capable of in a non-XANA fighting context. While his mother contemplates her next move, he leans back in the tall wooden chair with a smirk.

Aelita can only stare. If not for the fact that his laptop (still safely nestled in its bag and tucked away around a corner just behind him) hasn’t let out so much as a peep since they got here, she’d have thought it was XANA playing some kind of longcon with her.

“Good book?” Mr. Belpois’ voice makes her jump as he enters the room holding two mugs—a hot chocolate for himself, and the one she’d requested as well.

She glances down sheepishly at the book laying forgotten in her lap. “Something like that,” she responds. She quickly sticks a nearby bookmark where she stopped (not that she made it all that far, but progress is progress) and plucks the mug with the whipped cream foaming at the top from his hand with a light, “Thank you!”

Mr. Belpois takes a seat on the old, faded sofa beside her as she takes an experimental sip. He chuckles at the delighted hum she lets out. “Good to have your approval,” he says, then follows her gaze over to the ongoing chess match. “Do you play too?” he asks after taking a sip of his own.

“Ah… no.” She admits with a wince.

Spending a year of your life believing yourself to be a computer program makes chess seem like such an incredibly boring game (no matter how much Jeremy has tried to convince her otherwise).

Mr. Belpois nods sagely. “Me either. Was always more of a checkers kind of guy myself.” He shrugs, setting his mug down onto the coffee table in front of them. “It’s nice to see them get to play again though. It’s been ages since their last match.”

She lets out another hum, this one more muted, as she watches. They both sit there in silence like that for a few minutes. That’s something Jeremy seems to have in common with his dad then: the ability to sit comfortably in silence together.

She thinks it’s a useful skill to have.

(One a ‘cousin’ of hers could stand to learn at times).

Eventually though, she speaks again. “I’m not used to seeing him this way,” she admits, still watching Jeremy as he adjusts his glasses in contemplation of his next move. “So… laid back.”

“Is he not that way at school?” Mr. Belpois asks, though the look on his face tells her he probably has an idea already.

“He’s very…” She hesitates, trying to think of the right word. “...focused, on the things he works on. It’s a fight to get him to actually take a break most of the time.”

Not that she’d believe that, seeing him right now. If she didn’t know any better, at least.

“That sounds like Jeremy alright,” Mr. Belpois agrees. “He’s always been very dedicated to his projects. His mother and I would catch him staying up at night with a flashlight trying to read just one more chapter of a book when he was younger. I was actually expecting him to be like that this time too, so this is a nice surprise.” He glances over at her, seeming to give her a once over, before he says, “I think it might have to do with you, actually.”

She blinks. “Me?”

“Well, you and the rest of your friends in any case,” he clarifies, an amused look on his face. “You all seem to be a good influence on him. Who knows? Maybe that’s what finally got through to him.”

She snorts into her drink. “Somehow, I doubt that,” she says. She can’t imagine this will last once they go back to school in a few weeks

Still, for now though…

Deep in thought, Jeremy scans over the board several times, a hand to his chin. Eventually, he spares a glance over toward her and his dad and raises a brow at the sight of them whispering to one another. She waves back, giggling at the confusion still plastered across his face.

…she’ll enjoy the peace while it lasts.

(Later that night, she takes a quick peek at the superscan when Jeremy’s not looking. Just to be absolutely sure it’s really him. She can appreciate the peace while still being safe, after all.)

“Aha! Found ‘em!” Jeremy calls out.

Aelita abandons the cabinet she was rummaging through, letting the door swing shut behind her with a soft bang, and wanders over to the drawer he’s just pulled open and looks inside. A small hoard of brightly colored cookie cutters stare back at them—some older and made of plastic, others quite a bit newer looking with rubber grips on top of metal. For as small as the drawer looks, it’s deceptively deep.

“Wow,” Aelita breathes out. “That’s… a lot.”

Jeremy tries and fails to hold back a snicker when he looks up at her again. “I told you cookies were serious business around here,” he says, which, true, that is something he warned her of this morning. But she thought he’d been joking! “Help me take these over,” he says, grabbing a few.

She follows, and soon there’s a small stack of them carefully balances in her hands as they move back to the other side of the kitchen just as Mr. Belpois reenters wearing a festive looking, dark green apron. “Ah, you found them. Good,” he says with an approving nod.

She sets them down next to where the rest of the baking supplies have been sectioned off too. Jeremy sets the few he’s carrying down next to those.

One light blue one in particular catches her eye. “Ok, I understand the candy cane, the stocking, and the reindeer. But… why is there one of a rocket ship in here too?” She asks, holding the plastic cutter up.

Jeremy’s face starts to go red and reaches for it. “Oh that one isn’t–”

Mrs. Belpois beats him there and gingerly takes it from Aelita’s grasp with a soft gasp. “Oh, this one used to be Jeremy’s favorite!”

Jeremy whines. “Mom… She doesn’t need to hear this.”

“Oh no, do go on,” Aelita counters encouragingly, a grin spreading across her face as Jeremy sputters more.

“He used to insist on a space theme,” his dad helpfully supplies as he sorts through the ingredients. “We’d made gingerbread men astronauts and planets along with everything else, because ‘Space should have Christmas too!’” His dad pitches his voice up as he says that last part, and in such an impassioned way that she imagines it must be based on a memory.

One Jeremy must remember based on the groan he lets out. “Dad…”

“The rocket shape was always his favorite one though,” Mrs. Belpois trudges on, placing a hand on his shoulder even as he covers his face and tries to shrink away from the conversation. “He always had to be the one to decorate them though. And the lines had to be just right! Because otherwise they wouldn’t fly, right Jeremy?” She shakes his shoulders.

Mr. Belpois starts, “Remember the year he couldn’t get any lines straight? He was so upset he–”

“I was five!” Jeremy sputters out in protest before he can say anymore.

Aelita’s smile splits her face as she doubles over from laughter. His parents soon join in too. Jeremy’s shoulder sag in defeat and he covers his face with his hands, muttering between his fingers. It’s hard to make out most of it, though she swears she hears a “Please don’t ever tell Odd…” somewhere in there.

His secrets are safe with her…

(…Probably.)

When the time for decorating comes a few hours later, there’s a wide array of shapes to pick from. Snowmen, reindeer, and candy canes abound. Mixed in with some stars, planets, and of course, a handful of rocket ships.

Jeremy huffs when his parents insist he decorates one of them, for old time’s sake, practically shoving the icing bag in his hand. He makes a show of rolling his eyes over the whole idea. But he doesn’t ever back out of it, and Aelita catches him smiling when he thinks no one is looking at him.

Jeremy’s parents busy themselves with turning the gingerbread men into a slew of tiny astronauts. Jeremy’s dad fills in one of them with green and declares it a martian, while his mom makes a couple that look suspiciously like her and Jeremy.

Aelita, meanwhile, paints a wobbly, but familiar looking bullseye symbol across one if the planet shapes, much to Jeremy’s parents' confusion. When he catches a look at it though, he shares a knowing smile with her.

They split that one when they’re done with decorating.

They both agree: victory never tasted so sweet.

Snow rolls in not too long into their holiday. When the clouds finally start to slither away a few days later, it leaves a world covered in a fluffy blanket of white in its wake. It’s not uncommon weather for the time of year, but she still finds herself absolutely enamored with it.

Jeremy humors her enthusiasm by going on walks with her when the wind doesn’t blow too badly. There’s a park a few blocks from his house they go to and people watch. Often times they see younger kids laughing and playing in the snow—sledding down hills and getting into snowball fights with each other. Sometimes they see older people grumbling to themselves as they slide around the sidewalk trying to take shortcuts to where they need to get to.

Today they pass by someone walking their dog. A husky, big in stature with bright blue eyes, trying to eagerly bound down the way and only being held back by a firm grip on its leash by its owner.

And she finds herself staring after them long after they leave; until Jeremy calls her name. “Aelita?”

“My mother disappeared in the snow,” she finds herself saying before she can think to stop herself. Jeremy stops, guides them over to a nearby bench that’s been cleared of loose snow, and sits with her before she continues. “Around the holidays, actually. I think I got Mister Puck just before…” she trails off, frowning. She thinks that's what happened, but she can’t be sure.

Her memories are blurry like a mirror after a hit shower: clearly containing movement, but impossible to discern the details of. She can’t be sure where one thought begins and another ends.

Then remembers who she’s talking to and shakes her head. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

Jeremy hesitates. “Sort of,” he eventually admits, rocking his head side to side in a so-so kind of motion. He rolls his shoulders in a shrug. “Your… Hopper’s notes sort of allude to it a few times, but he never went into heavy details about it. I… kind of got the sense he didn’t want to talk about it. More than he really had to, at least.”

She hums, breathing deeply into the pink scarf he gave her back in her dorm just before they left. For once, Jeremy doesn’t have more knowledge than her about something that happened in her old life. She’s not sure whether that fact should make her feel happy or like she should cry.

“…Was it a good holiday at least?”

“What?” The sudden sound of Jeremy’s voice again startles her out of her thoughts.

“The holiday you had. Was it a good one?” He asks again. Then, he makes a face. “Well, before… you know…”

She blinks. That’s not a question she’d ever expect to hear from him of all people.

But if she thinks about it…

“Yes…” she says slowly, then nods, more certain. “Yes, I think it was.” She leans back against the bench, ignoring the chill seeping into her back, and furrows her brow. “I remember building a snowman. I think she helped with it…” She’s not certain on that, but the thought is nice at least, so she doesn’t challenge it.

Jeremy hums. She thinks that’s going to be the end of it. But then he’s on his feet again and holding a gloved hand out toward her. “I know it’s not the same… but do you want to try building another?”

She stares at him with wide eyes. Is he serious? She waits a moment, but he doesn’t waver, and never rescinds the offer.

“Who are you and what have you done with Jeremy Belpois?” she asks with a low chuckle.

She reaches out and puts her mitten covered hand into his own.

They build it behind the bench. It doesn’t end up being very big—the ground is covered but they still don’t have a lot of snow to work with. The snow is hard to pack together, and the snowballs end up being pretty misshapen. They make its face with what few mismatched pebbles they can find scattered around.

It’s not a very pretty thing to look at. But Jeremy’s laughing throughout the whole process, and she’s smiling so wide that her face hurts when they’re done.

And that’s good enough for her.

Christmas itself winds up being a pretty low key affair in the Belpois house. There’s no rush to get things moving by a certain time, no flurry of activity, no expectation of any kind of timeline. Things remain calm, even after they all sleep in a little.

When they do eventually get up, things are… peaceful, for lack of a better word.

It’s not always like this, Jeremy tells her as they eat breakfast later—cinnamon rolls, warm and delightfully gooey. “Most years we end up going to my aunt and uncle’s house for the holidays and meet up with extended family. And it gets really chaotic with that many people. Especially my cousin.” The face Jeremy makes at the mention leads her to believe there’s a story there, but he doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he smirks a bit and says, “But they’re out of the country this year, and some others are sick, so it’s just us this year.”

Mr. Belpois nods as he takes a sip of his coffee. “Spending time with family is nice. But there’s nothing wrong with having a quiet holiday every now and again too.”

Jeremy’s dad, she decides, is a very wise man.

They move onto opening presents afterwards. Jeremy is hesitant at first, admitting he’d wished they’d waited now to open their gifts to each other instead of letting Odd convince them back in her dorm. But she waves it off.

“I’m just happy to be here at all. Now…” She picks up the wrapped box sitting beside him on the couch and thrusts it toward his face with a grin. “Get to opening already.”

He does. Most of what he gets are clothes—more sweaters, a new coat to replace the navy one he’s been wearing that doesn’t quite fit his arms all the way anymore. Probably the most exciting thing (based on his reaction at least) is a new brown laptop bag, looking much sturdier than his threadbare green one now. He’s ecstatic, voice pitch higher as he thanks his parents earnestly.

His parents exchange gifts with each other too. She doesn’t think she’ll ever see anyone as excited about a novelty mug as Jeremy’s mom is when it’s presented to her.

Aelita watches it all. She’s more than happy to.

…And then suddenly Mrs. Belpois holds out a small stocking stuffed with small sweets and treats out to her. “Here. It’s not much, but…”

Aelita’s at a loss for words. There hasn’t been much time to prepare something like this. When did they do this? “You really didn’t have to-”

“We know,” she interrupts her kindly, smiling. “But you’re a part of our holiday this year. And we wanted you to feel included.”

And how is she supposed to say no to that?

Most of the rest of the day playing board and card games. She dominates in Uno, Jeremy manages to spell out the word ‘supercomputer’ in a game of Scrabble, and Mr and Mrs. Belpois outlast them both in a game of Monopoly that stretches well into the evening.

(Suddenly she completely understands why Ulrich has forbidden it from ever appearing in their game nights back at school)

His parents are still duking it out over a multitude of properties when they both excuse themselves back to Jeremy’s room and decide to give the others a call.

It goes… Well…

Yumi doesn’t get much out, just a few brief words about how her holiday is going before Hiroki bursts into her room demanding she play with him in the new game he got for Christmas and drags her away. Ulrich, similarly, doesn’t say much, and based on the sound of his voice she thinks they woke him up from an attempt at going to bed early.

Odd answers, but they can’t hear him at all. Everything is completely drowned out by a cacophony of sound Aelita eventually discerns as holiday music blasting at what she assumes has to be max volume. For a brief moment Odd’s manic cackling rings out over the sound of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, and then the line goes abruptly dead.

…So it all goes about as well as can be expected.

“Well, at least we know they’re all alive,” Jeremy notes dryly, earning a giggle out of her. “Sorry if all this wasn’t as exciting as…” He waves vaguely.

“She shakes her head. “I think I like the energy level exactly where it’s been at today,” she tells him. “It’s been a much better way to spend the holiday than all alone in my dorm room.”

“Well, that’s not entirely true. You wouldn’t have been all alone,” Jeremy says. At the confused look she gives him, he adds with a snicker, “You would’ve had Kiwi.”

“Oh, well then in that case!” She throws her head back with a laugh. “I think I much prefer the company of you and your family.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy gets a soft look in his eye and glances at the door, the sound of his parents' voices still trailing through as their game still goes on in the background. “They’re pretty great people.” He looks back at her, smiling. “Merry Christmas, Aelita.”

She returns it. “Merry Christmas, Jeremy.”

#code lyoko #code secret santa #aelita schaeffer #jeremie belpois #COME GET YER FLUFF

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