#the storm is coming ache of old wounds that is the holiday season

[mumblelard]

happy early solstice present to myself eleven inch nonstick sauté pan day imaginary constructs

for the holidays, i have been treating myself to small life upgrades that everyday mumblelard always talks me out of buying

[peridot-gladioli]

Daredevil Fan-fiction (First Draft)

(AN: This is a Daredevil Prompt Meme fill for the prompt: past Elektra/Matt, eventual Foggy/Matt: Elektra had Matt's child after their Columbia liaison.

Post-DD Season 2; AU---Canon Divergence; AU from Season 02; Not Defenders Compliant; Not DD Season 3 Compliant.)

Chapter One

Afterwards. Two weeks and two days after Matt had last spoken to Karen, two weeks and four days after he and Stick had stood in a snowy graveyard and buried Elektra, and five weeks after the dissolution of Nelson and Murdock (although that was still on-going, untwining two lives from each other—the lease on the office, the business account, the start-up loans, the half-dozen pre-Castle clients who still owed on their bills—not being as simple as walking away from Foggy and his box of stuff: who knew?)

Daredevil still went out at night but, in the daytime, Matt Murdock curled up on his couch under a blanket and tried to remember how living worked. Only alive when he was Daredevil? No, not even.

The Hand had scattered and gone to ground, the Punisher had disappeared; purse-snatchers and attempted rapists were hardly enough of a challenge to get his adrenalin flowing. It was like he was sleep-walking through his fights. And he knew that inattention made it more likely for even an unskilled opponent to get in that lucky shot, even with Melvin’s body armour, but he could not really bring himself to care.

January. Bleakest month. The holiday season over (for the first time in eleven years, Foggy had not dragged Matt off to Christmas with the Nelsons; for the first time in eleven years, he and Foggy had not seen in the New Year tipsily leaning into one another for the countdown; for the first time in eleven years, Foggy had not smacked an exuberant kiss against his cheek at the stroke of midnight) and spring was too far away.

Grey skies and short days did not make much of a difference to Matt, but the cold ate into his senses, and layers of coats, gloves, and scarfs insulated him from his usual feedback of the world as well as from the cold. Snow muffled both scent and sound and ice underfoot made it hard even for him to get around without accident. The despair of the occasional howling storm—blizzard or ice-storm—certainly did not help.

Matt was no stranger to loss or grief or depression and guilt was a permanent partner but now, in the space afterwards, the past six months stood out in all the clarity of hindsight: The Many Mistakes of Matthew Michael Murdock.

He had been wrong. Over and over again. And his mistakes had gotten Foggy shot, Claire attacked at work (and her friend killed), Karen dragged from her home and held hostage, and Elektra killed. Even Brett Mahoney had been beaten up because of him. It was an impressive tally.

He had been wrong to get Claire involved with those kids he rescued from the Hand. He should have known that if they were important enough to be used for whatever ritual required drugging them and draining their blood, the Hand would try to get them back, putting not only Claire and her colleagues but every patient at Metro General at risk—and Met Gen patients that night had included Foggy. He deserved her cutting ties and walking away—just as Claire deserved freedom from all the bullshit that clung to and followed him.

He had been wrong to date Karen—especially with Elektra back in New York, messing with his head and his heart and turning him all around as effectively as she had done when he had been nineteen. Karen deserved better and he had deserved the sharp sting of her palm against his cheek when he had finally come clean to her about Daredevil and about the woman she had found in his bed and about his disappearances. Karen deserved the space from him she asked for as she rebuilt her life and career for at least the second time he knew of.

He had wronged Karen with Elektra: it had been emotional, if not physical, infidelity (and, his guilt said, were you really being physically faithful as you sat around with Elektra in your underwear, touching each other’s scars?). He had wronged Karen with all the things he told Elektra she meant to him and only she could understand—he had never given Karen a chance to understand, hiding his abilities and his violence from her.

He had wronged Elektra—after a lifetime of being manipulated and controlled by Stick and the Chaste, he had attempted to save her, redeem her, free her, by manipulation and control, telling her who she was and how she ought to be and condemning her when she wasn’t who he wanted her to be (“Why do you see the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the beam in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ while all the time there is a beam in your own? You hypocrite!”)

He had wronged Foggy with making him an accessory after the fact to Daredevil; with secrets and lies; with the whole mess of the Castle case, especially effectively abandoning him to it; with flaking out on him and their responsibilities due to Elektra—just as he had done back in college, dear God; probably he had wronged Foggy by letting the other man befriend him back when they were still in their teens, though Foggy’s warmth and friendship had felt inescapable, like a gravity well or a magnet drawing iron filings.

He had wronged Foggy, too, with all the things he told Elektra about who he was and how only she got him.

In this Purgatorial space—working out his redemption by suffering, trying to make amends and trying do right by others by severing the ties that would drag them down with him and get them tainted, hurt, and killed by the poison and the violence he carried with him—he realised, at last, that Foggy’s friend was as important a part of him as Elektra’s lover. The fever and passion and excitement of the months he spent as one, did not negate the warmth and comfort and peace of the years he spent as the other. He was both. He needed both. Because if the loss of Elektra was an ugly gaping wound that would not stop bleeding, then missing Foggy was the loss of a limb or a sense.

In Foggy’s absence, he remembered the man who had taken care of him, who had run around Hell’s Kitchen trying to find him before the police did after Castle shot him. In Foggy’s absence, he remembered the friend who had tried to support him and understand him, even while he could not empathise with Matt’s need for violence. In Foggy’s absence, he remembered the friend who somehow forgave him for secrets and lies, and who left, but came back as soon as he had calmed down. In Foggy’s absence, he remembered the friend who had taken down Fisk with him—and put himself in danger. In Foggy’s absence, he heard Fisk saying “Franklin Percy Nelson” and the fear actually penetrated the clouds of depression and the numbness of too much pain.

Elektra was dead.

But Foggy was absent.

Stick had been right. Matt Murdock got people hurt and he got people killed and no matter how much it hurt him, he had to cut them loose, for their sakes. They were better off without him.

Foggy deserved the corner office and the good salary and assistants and recognition of his skills and Foggy deserved Marci (if she made him happy). Foggy deserved all the happiness.

Foggy had never deserved a “best friend” who was afraid to love him and could never acknowledge how much he meant to him and who had no experience or knowledge of how to be a friend. Matt had never deserved Foggy. And now Foggy was going to have his best life without the millstone of Matt Murdock tied around his neck.

But oh, God.

Matt had forgotten what loneliness felt like. Even those horrible few days after Foggy had found out about Daredevil, when they weren’t talking, had not felt like this.

The weeks After Elektra the first time (after Roscoe Sweeney, after coming face-to-face with his own violence and anger and their limits, after feeling as though he had lost his father all over again) had not felt like this. Because After Elektra had been Foggy, had been calm and comfort and encouragement and Foggy-hugs… Foggy had made him feel almost like his dad had made him feel. Like his dad putting a cool, damp washcloth on his forehead when he had been a kid and was ill.

Like someone holding his hand after a nightmare.

(Foggy had literally done that a few nights as Matt dreamed all over again of finding his dad’s body, the absence of breath or heartbeat, the smell of Old Spice and blood and gunpowder; or dreamed of smashing Sweeney’s face in until he killed him, blood and adrenalin lingering in his nostrils, hearing and smelling Elektra’s excitement beside him.)

Now, as then, Matt slept in the daytime—and as much and whenever he could—escaping into sleep, because he did not always dream about Karen or Elektra or Foggy, and even when he did, sometimes they were dreams of how things used to be and he dreamed he was happy, even if they were agony to wake from.

He tried to remember to eat once a day so he didn’t feel nauseous or pass out. (Though that was hard as he had no appetite.)

But there was no one to sit with him when the nightmares came and no one bringing him food that was easy or tempting.

He put on the suit and patrolled at night.

He tried to express his emotions through his fists: his anger, his grief. His love. His loss.

He wished he could cry but tears would not come.

He loved Elektra, passionately. Loved her still. Prayed for her. Bargained with God for her soul. Grieved for her, ached for her.

But he missed Foggy.

He missed Karen.

For the first time since Stick had taught him to compensate for his blindness, his life was defined by absence, defined by lack and he was lost.

He was pulled from his fugue on the couch by the buzzer. Someone being insistent on his buzzer. He got up and dragged his blanket over to it, answered, was surprised to find the guy on the other end actually did want Matt Murdock and wasn’t trying random apartments to get into the building.

Someone had sent him a Registered Mail package.

He let the—older, smoker, early stage bronchitis—man in, uncaring of whether or not it was true. Opened his door uncaring of the sweatpants and hoodie he had been getting in and out of every day for a week, uncaring that he had no idea about the state of his hair (his facial scruff was approaching full-on beard, he knew); the Matt Murdock who cared about these things was somewhere behind the fog.

He scribbled something with the stylus on the touch screen of the delivery guy’s scanner, took a sealed cardboard document wallet in return, shut the door and wandered back to the couch while pulling the seal-tab open and dipping his hand inside. Two envelopes within the outer one: a small padded one and a Legal-size open end. High grade paper: laid bond—rag, not wood-pulp.

Curious, he opened the Legal envelope first, fingertips finding the first line of braille on even higher-grade paper: The Last Will and Testament of Elektra Maria Natchios.

He nearly dropped the whole lot. May have staggered on his feet a little.

That cut through the fog.

Who would send him a copy of Elektra’s will? Why?

And the pain, like a knife to the chest, of the sharp reminder that she was dead. It did not reawaken his grief--that was a still-unhealed wound, raw and bloody and weeping--but it was a harsh touch against that wound. An added pain that made him shrink away.

He collapsed onto the couch, setting the paperwork in his lap, fingertips skimming the legal preamble of the will… And Evander Matthews, being my only child, a minor…

His mind exploded. Too many tracks, too many trains of thought.

Elektra had a child? Elektra had been a mother? Had she just left this child—boy—Evander—with staff in some property of hers, or boarding school, the way she had joked back in college about doing with their children?

Elektra had a son and she had killed a teenage boy without a second thought.

Did Stick know? When he dragged her into his war, when he had tried to have her killed, did he know he would be orphaning some young boy?

Jesus. Did the Hand know? Was the child of a Black Sky… something? To them? Would they be seeking this child out for their dark purposes?

Would Stick try to use this boy as he had used Elektra, or try to kill him, as he had killed that other boy, the one he said was a Black Sky?

Over Matt’s dead body…

And who was the father? Matthews? A coincidence, surely.

Why send Matt a copy of this will?

He felt down the right edge of the document and found what he was looking for—index tabs, presumably marking out the sections relevant to him. Followed the first one, and yes, there was his name… named as Guardian to this Evander.

He wanted to shake Elektra and explain that usually you told someone you had a child and asked them if they were willing to take care of him, before you named them as Guardian in your will.

And the next clause named him as one of the trustees of Evander’s trust fund.

And then left him money—fifty thousand US dollars, cash, plus stock investments worth as much again. A hundred thousand bucks. Dear God.

And property—the deeds to a house in the Hamptons. Jesus.

When did Elektra do all this? Why did Elektra do all this?

He put the will aside and felt for the padded envelope, nearly laughing when his fingers discovered “OPEN THIS FIRST” written on it in heavily indented ballpoint pen. The sort of thing that would have been instantly visible but which he had not noticed because he had not felt more than the edges of the envelopes before opening one.

Inside the padded envelope, a piece of cardstock—a password and bank details written on it, a safety deposit box key taped to it—and a thumb drive.

He got up, fetched his laptop, booted it up for the first time in days, inserted the thumb-drive and entered the password when prompted.

One file, audio, his laptop informed him.

Open.

“Hello, Matthew,” Elektra said.

Close.

He couldn’t catch his breath. He couldn’t. He just couldn’t. He could not sit here and listen to Elektra’s voice. Especially not talking about… this. Her son. (His son?) Her will. Why she wanted him to be Evander’s guardian. Why she left him money and stock and a house and a child. Not when he would never hear Elektra’s living voice again.

He needed a drink. He needed his questions answered. He needed Elektra here, with him, telling him this stuff in person and not leaving him to read it in a legal document and hear it in an audio file after her death.

He needed Foggy: his sharp mind, his generous heart, his clarity of vision. Foggy could help him make sense of this. But he had lost that right. He had driven Foggy away and Foggy had gone—and he had to remember that it was what was best for Foggy.

Matt was being selfish.

There was still something else he could do. The safety deposit box, the key, the address of a bank branch in Manhattan.

Probably not a good idea to go dressed like this.

So. Shower. Shave. Suit and tie.

Find out what else Elektra had left him. (Oh God.)

He could do that.

[inkykate]

It’s time for the @asoiafrarepairsanta exchange and, as their secret santa, I would like to wish a very special holiday season to @lucife56 with ‘The Wasting Crown’ on AO3, a Ned/Cersei Get Married AU. And, because I’m not sure any story that begins with a plague entirely fits the spirit of the thing, please enjoy a silly bonus drabble of Jaime/Elia too!

There had been a summer, when his father and sister were at court and he was home from squiring Crakehall, that his Uncle Kevan had sent him down to his cousins in Lannisport to bend his energy and attention to seafaring. At the time, even resentful as he was without Cersei, Jaime Lannister had felt that sailing and navigating and all the activity that went with it was a bit of a lark, and he did not so much learn a craft but play at it in the noble way of a future lord paramount. In the height of summer, with a fully manned ship to attend him, sailing had seemed the easiest and most pleasurable thing to accomplish.

In the moons since the fall of the Targaryen dynasty, he had long since reconsidered his youthful view. All manner of voyaging the seas was treacherous work, and made only slightly more so by the fact that he and his charges were fugitives of the crown.

On that first panicked trip to Myr, his hands had burned under the pull of the ropes and there hadn’t been a muscle that hadn’t ached. And, while his body had learned the motions and the strength needed to earn his keep on any vessel, he lacked entirely the instincts that could bring a ship from port to port, around storm and pirate.

Jaime could not say what it did for his pride that it was Princess Elia who proved the better sailor and the more valued companion for the crew, even having shed their titles and nobility to book passage in the chaos surrounding the sack of King’s Landing. Elia was a quick hand at repairing sails and nets, at mending torn vestments and soothing wounded men. She knew better and raunchier stories (though Jaime suspected that these were borrowed from her brother) and could tease the entire ship into singing on windless days when tempers blew hard. If the sellsails suspected a higher bearing for either of them - and on the first ship, they almost certainly did, if for no other reason than that they found him gratingly unskilled - Elia’s charm and beauty were enough to stay their tongues.

Where Jaime had boarded a ship for Myr a disgraced kingsguard with the supplanted princesses and prince of the Targaryen reign, it was Lann and his wife Nym, and their two children Rhae and Dunk, who set sail for Lys. And it was Joff and his son Davos, with hair cut so short their scalps gleamed in the sunlight, who befriended Mariah and her child Ash, delicate featured but styled as a boy, on the way to Qarth. In Astapor, Yunkai and Meereen, he had been a sellsword guarding a merchant’s daughter as she toured the cities with her children. He had been husband again by Volantis, and through Tyrosh to Pentos, and now, hunting for a ship to Braavos, he was beginning to fear that he had either completely exhausted his repertoire for aliases and professions or could no longer tell the difference between lie and truth.

His middling talent for fiction aside, Jaime found that he was quite unable to pretend away the closeness that came with pretending to be a husband, and, whatever name she wore, Elia had become as familiar to him as Cersei had ever been. Which is why he knew to be suspicious when Prince Aegon, nearly four name days, was not there to greet him with endless questions about the ships in the harbor, and when Elia’s face was too carefully serene, and when Princess Rhaenys burst into giggles when his greeting gave way to a grumpy frown.

“Any luck on booking passage?” Elia plated a selection of sweet meats and fruits for him, the rewards of their earlier market trip, setting it in front of the chair he favored in their rented house.

“A few possibilities,” Jaime rolled a grape between his fingers, observing the graceful courtesies that Elia extended naturally and noting that there was something sharp and stubborn in her eyes that he knew was going to be a source of trouble. “I will ask around about the captains tomorrow, and see if I can spot any familiar faces in their crews.”

“We’ve been lucky so far,” Elia commented, handing Rhaenys a sliver of melon before tiding up the remains of dinner to be served again at breakfast.

“I know I’m not always the best at identifying times to be cautious, but this seems a reasonable safeguard,” His stomach growled and, as much as he wanted to be focused on what Elia had yet to tell him, hunger won out. The simple meal, unpreserved and unsmoked and likely grown in a garden less than a day’s ride from their rooms, was something to be treasured when faced with weeks of hard tack and fish at sea.

“Why do we need to be cautious Papa?” Rhaenys asked, brazenly stealing another bit of melon from his plate.

“Why Rhae, it’s because you are too beautiful and too clever and all the world would like to have you for their very own,” Jaime’s heart no longer wrenched at being called father, though he still could not escape the itching memory of fleeing everything he had ever known in clothes borrowed from a dead man with his wife and children.

Rhaenys no longer knew she was a princess, no longer knew that she was anything more than a sailing sellsword’s daughter with a seamstress mother, but her disbelief was near imperious. “Be serious Papa!”

“Mama and papa have to work, little Rhae,” Elia’s voice was firm as she sidestepped the question, though he could hear in it the echoes conversations they’d been having since Tyrosh. The children were getting too old to be fooled and heard more than they should — and that was dangerous for keeping secrets. “That is why we will go and live in Braavos.”

Jaime distracted Rhaenys with a slice of orange. There was time enough to explain the dangers of the world to her when she was older. “And where’s Maron hiding?” The false name the rightful king of Westeros believed to be his own.

“Why, Tom,” And, as always, it took him a moment to remember this was the name he had settled on. “I am ever a dutiful wife and I noticed how you adored the fashions of Tyrosh.”

“How thoughtful,” He remembered no such thing, had thought theTyroshi disturbing and gauche in truth, but Rhaenys was giggling again. “Did you trade Maron for some pear brandy and jewel toned silks?”

“No, no Papa,” a voice burst from the courtyard, followed by a mass of pale limbs and bright, bright blue. “Mama would never trade me away.”

Prince Aegon smiled up at him, teeth flashing, and looked so much like Prince Rhaegar in the lines of his face that it took a beat to realize that his fine silver hair was blue.

Seven hells, his hair was blue.

“It’s always so silly that people comment on Maron’s hair,” Elia’s phrasing was obviously for the children’s benefit, as her direct gaze was for his. “And the children and I thought it would be even sillier if we gave them a better reason to look.”

“Mama bought the dye in Tyrosh,” Rhaenys added, dancing around her brother. “So it will last for a really long time because the Tyroshi are experts. Mama said.”

“Except,” And Elia gave the sly smile that always preceded an embarrassment for him of some sort. “I think it looks quite silly for my son to do this alone, don’t you, my dear?”

This was worse than he had thought, far worse. “Perhaps you or Rhae -“

“Our hair is too dark,” Elia shook her head in mock sadness, though Rhaenys’ pout as she held out the ends of her dark braid at least gave the farce some measure of truth. “Come children, let’s get ready to dye Papa’s hair.”

The children were a blur as they ran in search of buckets and whatever else they deemed necessary for inflicting this horror on him. He kept his voice low, just in case. “Elia, I don’t want to dye my hair.”

The smile she gave was truly sympathetic, even if her eyes promised that she would have no nonsense. “Dark hair is common enough in Braavos, Jaime. Rhaenys and I could walk down the streets in Martell colors and no one would think of it overmuch. But Aegon’s coloring is all Valyrian and even in Essos that is increasingly rare.”

“Robert thinks you dead,” Jaime murmured. “Every rumor we’ve heard on the way back from Qarth has agreed on that.”

He can hear the excited banging of buckets as the children prepare to play this new game that seems all strange silliness to them and that is all strategy to Elia. She thinks little of his vanity, Jaime knows, but he wonders if she is as aware of their intimacy as he is. When she walks over to him, propping her hip against the table, all he can think of is how soon he will be pressed against her in their berth on the way to Braavos and of her holding him close after he woke from yet another nightmare of Aerys’ court last night.

“Targaryen silver, Lannister gold. Enough rumors with both and Robert may change his mind.”

This too is a discussion that they have had more than once. Jaime’s father would surely welcome him back. Jaime’s twin, his other half, is Robert’s queen. Elia’s brothers had raged when there was no sign of her or her children. He has to believe that they could find a way home, to trade a dead king and future heirs and a returned kingdom for their safety.

“Viserys and Daenerys are in Braavos as well,” Elia adds, reaching out to card one hand through his hair and, he hopes perversely, enjoying the shade of it.

“Too many Targaryens in one basket,” Jaime winces. “I know you Elia. You intend to meet with them, yes? If it is too dangerous to return to your brother’s household, then you really shouldn’t be chasing after the Targaryens that Robert knows about.”

“Viserys is ten. His sister is two. They shouldn’t be on their own.”

Jaime had been ill prepared to venture out into the world at seven and ten without the safety of his father’s name; he couldn’t imagine doing so at eight. “Her Grace protected Viserys, but there wasn’t anyone in the Red Keep that didn’t know he could no more take pressure and stress and failure than Aerys could. He’ll have broken under it.”

“Children are resilient. There may be hope yet,” Elia’s delicate features danced with warmth and kindness and good humor. Now that he knew her plotting, it was easier to be in her company.

“And to keep our children -“ The feeling of being a fraud was fading more every day. “- safe and amused I need to have blue hair.”

Jaime didn’t know when it had ceased to be a question that he would give in to Elia’s demands.

“I am pleased we understand one another ser,” Elia leaned forward to brush a kiss across his forehead, lingering a measure that was either familial or loving, before disappearing to marshall the children to strip him of his golden crown.

Alone with the rinds of his dinner, he felt her touch like a brand, and he wanted to ask if she ever wondered which Lannister and Martell siblings their mothers had hoped would marry, and he wanted to ask if she still thought of Rhaegar and if she mourned him or cursed him, and he wanted to tell her of how betrayed he felt by Cersei’s marriage and how wretched he thought he should be now that she was with Robert’s child. He wondered if her appreciation of his glibness and irreverence was just another way she made do, and if he was still a knight of the kingsguard, and if she thought of him as a king slayer. He wondered, above all, what she thought and what she felt when her children called him father.

Jaime wondered who he could ask if it was a virtue and a sign of honor that he asked her none of this as the children laughed him to the buckets of water, scraps of linen, and dispiritingly large bottle of dye to turn his hair from gold to hues of blue.

But then Tom the sailing sellsword knew his wife Mariah loved him, even if he did like the Tyroshi custom of brightly colored hair. And it was Tom and Mariah, and their children Rhae and Moran, who would settle in Braavos to ply their trades and build their lives. And any answers that Jaime Lannister could gain would be lesser truths than those.

[cryptydmatt]

Nearly Christmas

Keith isn’t sure how long he’s been laying in bed, staring at the snowfall through the window and trying to ignore the empty space yawning huge and lonely across the sheets next to him.

Eventually, he can’t take the quiet anymore, and sighs as he folds the blankets back over the space that’s cold where it should be warm.

He shivers a bit as his bare feet hit the chill of the wooden floor, and pulls a sweater over his head before leaving the room, a hint of comfort piercing its way into his chest as the hem of it settles against his bare thighs. 

He tries. Making hot chocolate to soothe during sleepless nights has become such a tradition that his hands know the motions of it better than nearly anything. 

His hands curl around the warm mug, breathing in the sweet smell of it and watching the mini marshmallows start to melt. Some of the tension drops from his shoulders. 

The thoughts spinning in his head are dull and mild and he’s only half-aware of them as he stares blankly at the counter in the kitchen. 

He presses a hand gently to his forehead, trying to pull everything back into focus.

This is ridiculous, he tells himself. This is not the first Christmas Eve you’ve spent alone. 

He wanders into the living room, still feeling lost, and sinks onto the rug in front of the fireplace, legs crossed, letting the hot air wash over his face and fill him with a sense of peace. It’s A Wonderful Life plays quietly on the TV behind him, black and white pictures and deep-voiced characters doing their part to softly pull the weight off of his back as though it were a coat. 

The heat from the fire starts to make his skin feel dry and prickly, being so close to it, so he moves to the couch, absentmindedly pulling a blanket over his lap to keep his legs from getting cold. Blue jumps into his lap, bell jingling as she kneads his thigh through the quilt with a quiet mrow, purring as soon as his fingers touch the top of her head. 

Their tree sits in the corner, all lit up and perfectly brilliant, a mess of tinsel and mismatched ornaments that make him smile every time he sees them. It fills the room with the smell of pine, and the needles make a mess on the floor, and Blue has broken at least three of the glass baubles by batting at them where they were placed within her reach. 

He loves it. 

Lance had gotten so excited about the holidays this year. The day they’d decorated the tree had been hours and hours of breathless, giddy exhilaration, glitter everywhere, tree a mess while they argued over whether or not it was symmetrical (it wasn’t). Lance wrapped silver tinsel around his neck like a scarf, and Keith had used it to reel him in for a kiss more than once. 

“Okay, but hear me out. These ornaments are way better.”

“They don’t even match,” Keith pointed out, eyebrow raised. Lance made a face at him, turning to hang them on the tree anyway.

“Matching is overrated. And they’re glittery, Keith! Glitter beats everything.”

Keith shook his head, smile on his lips, and didn’t move to stop him from hanging the ornaments--pink, glittery animals that seem more suited to decorating a kid’s room than a Christmas tree. 

“There! See, they look great,” Lance proclaimed, stepping back and beaming as he inspected his handiwork. 

Keith steps up next to him and wraps an arm around his waist, pressing a kiss to his rosy, wine-reddened cheek before settling his chin on his shoulder and whispering, “You ready to put the topper on the tree?”

Christmas had never been something Keith had enjoyed, before Lance. The holidays for a foster kid meant loneliness and a pit of longing in his chest so wide and dark he thought it’d swallow him whole. With Shiro, he slowly learned how to remember this time of year as something that wasn’t darkness and hurting and tears, but they hadn’t really celebrated. They’d just sat, quiet, and learned how to find peace in the empty spaces between falling snowflakes. 

And then Lance crashed into his life. Everything has been different since then. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

They’d been friends before they were ever anything else. Their first holiday season together had been...an experience.

“Christmas is lame,” he complained, feeling old wounds throb with a quiet sort of ache in his chest. Lance sputtered, hands waving dramatically in the air as his eyes widened in offense.

“You’re lame! You, you, you grinch!” he’d shouted, smacking Keith in the shoulders with a tube of wrapping paper. 

“Ow!”

Keith finishes his hot chocolate, setting the empty mug on the coffee table, unwilling to get up and take it to the kitchen when it means disturbing Blue, still curled up on his lap. 

The movie ends. He watches George Bailey embrace his family and welcome a house full of friends to sing Christmas carols and laugh and love, and he maybe feels more than a hint of the old loneliness. 

But Blue is warm on his legs, and there’s the crazy mess of a gingerbread house on the table, and the mismatched, lopsided Christmas tree in the corner, and a fire in the fireplace. 

He’s alone, but it’s not the same.

He must fall asleep, or something like it, because the next thing he’s aware of is the click of someone pressing the front door gently closed behind them, and the jingling of keys as they’re dropped into the bowl on the table in the front hall. 

A cold hand presses against his cheek. “Hey, baby. Hey, Keith, wake up, sweetheart. I’m home.” 

Keith blinks awake slowly, still drowsy and heavy with warmth. “Lance?”

Lance grins, bright and brilliant and wonderful. His cheeks are flushed from the cold, snow still clinging to his hair and dusting the shoulders of his coat, and there are bags under his eyes from lack of sleep. 

He’s the most beautiful man in the world.

Keith launches himself upwards, letting the blanket fall from his legs, noting with a distant sort of apathy that Blue must have already left his lap or she would’ve been yowling with displeasure, and wraps his arms around Lance in a hug, nearly knocking them both to the ground.

Lance laughs, eyes crinkling, and easily pulls Keith even closer, pressing his cheek against Keith’s. “I guess someone missed me, huh?”

Keith pulls back, just enough to look him in the face. “What are you doing here? I thought you couldn’t get a flight home until Tuesday because of all the storms?”

“I hitched a ride,” Lance replies, easy, casual, as though that’s anything but extraordinary. “A few different rides, actually. Seventeen hour drives aren’t that bad if you don’t mind bad Christmas music and the dad humor of overworked truckers.”

“Lance,” Keith says, voice cracking, and he can tell that Lance sees what he’s trying to say without saying it out loud, because his whole face softens, smile turning into something small and soft and secret.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you wake up alone on Christmas morning, did you?” 

Keith kisses him. It tastes like chocolate and mint and snow, and he never wants it to end.

When they break apart to catch their breath, they rest their foreheads together. Lance’s thumb strokes along Keith’s jaw.

“It’s nearly midnight,” he whispers.  

“We better go to sleep, then, or Santa won’t come,” Keith tells him, holding him tighter. They shuffle to their bedroom, exhaustion seeming to finally fall on both of them now that the anxiety of being apart from each other isn’t there to keep their muscles taut and tense. Keith pushes Lance’s damp coat from his shoulders, letting it fall carelessly to the ground, and pulls his shirt--also damp--over his head, replacing it with a sweater.

“Are you wearing pants?’ Lance asks suddenly, apparently just noticing Keith’s bare legs. 

“Boxers,” Keith answers. Lance shakes his head, smile curling at the edge of his mouth, and tugs on the hem of Keith’s sweater before stepping back to peel off his jeans. 

They climb into bed together, too tired to do anything but kiss lazily, legs tangled together under the covers. 

Keith notices the time on their digital alarm clock before Lance does, bright red numbers that read, ‘12:01′.

“It’s after midnight,” he whispers, unwilling to disturb the bubble of peace they’re in with loud words. “Merry Christmas, Lance.” 

Lance’s eyes are half-closed, and he’s halfway asleep, but he pulls Keith closer for one last soft kiss and murmurs, in the gap between breaths, “Merry Christmas, Keith.”