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lykegenia · 4 months

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Unicorns And Mistletoe

The Wayhaven Chronicles Nate Sewell x Leah Kingston No warnings except, as always, Rebecca being parent of the year

Read it on AO3!

She’s three, and old enough to know it’s part of the punishment. She still has yet to understand what the punishment is for, but she knows that if she can just work it out then her mummy will come back and everything will be alright again. The people she left her with – kind, smiling, smelling of gingerbread – are nice, and their warm house is nice, and all the Christmas lights twinkle together in a confusion of reds and greens and golds, and they told her the guest of honour gets to add a bobble – no, bauble – to the Christmas tree. They clapped and smiled when she picked the sparkly plastic reindeer from the box and hung it on the highest branch she could reach, and told her that was the surest way to summon Christmas magic.

They’ve left her alone now, though, because she said that she wanted to look out of the window, and they’re kind people so they set her up with a cushion and a cookie and milk in a plastic glass with a fairy on it. There’s a creeping feeling in her chest that it was the wrong choice, that she’s not doing what she’s supposed to, because every so often she hears footsteps and then a pause, and then they shuffle away again and murmur between themselves in way she’s come to learn signifies pity. But nobody stops her, so she doesn’t turn around. She sits by the window and stares out and eats the cookie slowly and puzzles over how to make the Christmas magic work so that everything stops being her fault.

She’s seven, watching the rush of her classmates burst out into the playground like a torrent of water from a leaky dam, straight for the line of parents waiting just beyond the gates. She herself goes at a steadier pace, the better to observe the crush of adults huddled under scarves and thick winter coats just in case there’s one she recognises. She’s a clever child, however – all her teachers say so – and she learnt quickly not to expect too much. The others are shouting and laughing, and holding up the Christmas decorations they made for proud inspection. Her own pinecone, dangling from one gloved hand like a talisman, has silver glitter and blue sequins to represent snow – like a glass one she saw on the TV – and has a length of silver ribbon that she tied around the top of it herself so it can hang on the tree. The other children needed the teacher to do it for them.

As she tears her gaze away, she notices an older couple all smiles as they wave at her, and suddenly it feels like she’s walking in treacle. The Wrights are nice. She has to repeat it to herself. Mrs Wright wears a woolly hat shaped like a Christmas pudding, complete with knitted holly leaves and two red pom-poms for the berries, and Mr Wright’s puffer jacket is unzipped over a green jumper decorated with snowflakes and reindeer.

“Where’s Mum?” she asks when she reaches them, although the answer doesn’t really matter beyond the obvious.

“We’re sorry, Leah.” Mrs Wright shakes her head. “Your mum tried to get back in time, but you know work keeps her very busy. She should be here tomorrow, and in the meantime, we can have a sleepover! I need your big strong arms to help me stir the Christmas cake.”

“Did you enjoy your last day at school?” Mr Wright asks.

She shrugs one shoulder, her eyes on a robin foraging for worms under the nearby hedge. There’s one in her garden that will come so close that she can sit next to it while it gobbles up the bacon fat she cuts into tiny pieces and sets on the wall, but she hasn’t yet persuaded it to eat out of her palm.

Mr Wright tries again and points to her hand. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

She stuffs the pinecone into her pocket. “Nothing.”

“Ah, well. Let’s get you home to pick up your night bag, and then we’ll get the magic started.”

“We haven’t put up our decorations yet, you know,” Mrs Wright adds. “Would you like to help?”

She shrugs again. “S’pose.”

When they get to her house, she sneaks away and puts the pinecone on the kitchen counter, balanced on its end with the glitteriest side towards the door so her mother will see it when she comes in.

She’s thirteen. Dusty, cold, but pleased with herself. She’s spent the day scouring the house, teetering on the ladder up to the loft and digging through the junk in the garage, and now there are three boxes lumped on the living room carpet. They read ‘XDecs’ in unfamiliar handwriting, and they’re so old that the tape on the edges is starting to disintegrate, but she found them.

She unboxes the tree first, brushes the dust off the plastic branches and works out how the pieces fit together, then fishes about for lights and tinsel. The longest garland she takes to wrap around the stair banister, the second longest drapes over the mantle, and then – through trial and error and a lot of sideways squinting to make sure it looks right – she daubs the tree with ornaments in what she hopes is a tasteful array of festive cheer. The pinecone she made when she was little isn’t among the baubles, but it doesn’t matter. It probably would have spoiled the aesthetic anyway.

There’s just enough time to clear away the empty boxes and vacuum stray bits of tinsel of the floor before an engine growls to a stop on the slushy driveway.

“Leah?” her mother’s voice calls from the back of the house.

“In here!”

She stands in the middle of the room with fists bunched, waiting for the big reveal. The crisp click of her mother’s high heels slow as they reach the hall. When she appears in the doorway, her face is drawn into a frown as she watches her daughter sidestep awkwardly to one side with a vague gesture to the lit-up Christmas tree.

“Surprise!”

A pause.

“Where did you get all this?” her mother asks.

She shifts under the scrutiny. “… Found it.”

“Where?” When there’s no answer, her mother sighs. “From the loft? Leah, you know you’re not allowed up there. It’s dangerous. What if something had happened?”

“Well it didn’t,” she counters. “And I knew you wouldn’t have time to decorate, so I thought…”

She scuttles backwards as her mother strides into the room, glancing to the tree and back again as if it’s an unruly pet one accident away from being sent to the rescue shelter. The critical eye her mother casts over the decorations makes her sullen, but there’s something else there as well, a wistfulness as a slow hand reaches up to cup a sphere of clouded blue glass etched with the words Baby’s First Christmas in elegant gold cursive.

“It’s very… thoughtful.” Her mother sighs again and drops the memory. “It’s been a long day, and there’s shopping in the car. I need a shower – can you fetch it in?”

“I guess.”

Her mother gives a prim nod of acknowledgement and slides from the room like snow off an overladen branch, only to pause in the doorway. “Don’t forget, you’re going to the Wrights tomorrow, so make sure you have everything ready – and make sure all of this is unplugged so there’s not an accident. Those lights are far too old to be safe.”

She deflates, and doesn’t bother to answer, and after a moment lunges for the socket to cut off the lurid glitter of the Christmas lights.

She’s nineteen, and ignoring half-drunk texts from her friends asking why she isn’t at the campus party. She’d turn her phone off completely if not for the unlikely case of an emergency, but she’s not even bothering to open the messages anymore. Instead, she hunkers down in the armchair, annoyed to find that the hot chocolate at her elbow hasn’t magically refilled itself. She’ll have to buy another one soon or the café owner might throw her out. She decides it can wait until the end of the chapter she’s reading.

“No way – Leah?”

She looks up. The boy smiling at her is in her class. He’s handsome in a roguish sort of way, but they’ve never really talked.

“Couldn’t be bothered with the party?” he asks. “Shame. I hear WelSoc managed to get a boost for the budget.”

“Why aren’t you there, then?” she retorts, confused. She doesn’t hear about the antics of the Welfare Society – the university’s main student organisation – all that often, and she would have thought Bobby would have been there to report on it for the student newspaper if nothing else.

He shrugs and flops down in the armchair on the opposite side of the table. “I might go later. It’s always more fun to be fashionably late. Besides, by that point people will be nice and drunk and happy to spill all their secrets.”

“What secrets?”

“Oh, you know, gossip and stuff. Why aren’t you there?”

“I’m not really a Christmas person,” she answers, turning back to her book.

“Oh?”

“It feels like wasted effort most of the time.”

To her surprise, he smiles. “I’ve never looked at it that way, but you have a point. All that excess just to roll around with indigestion for a week.”

“Putting up decorations just to take them down again,” she agrees, wrinkling her nose. “And most of them are tacky anyway.”

“Ah, you’re a woman of taste, then.”

She doesn’t quite know how to respond to that, but he waves her away with a private laugh and jumps to his feet.

“I’ll not inflict my presence on you any longer, in that case, but if you do decide to go to the party I hope you’ll say hello.” He winks. “Merry Christmas.”

“Oh, yeah – Merry Christmas.”

Still confused, she watches him saunter back outside, only pausing briefly to pick up something from the barista before the clipped view from the café window cuts off the sight of him. A little while later, when she gets up for another hot chocolate to go with her book, the woman smiles and waves away her bank card.

“That guy you were talking to already paid,” she explains.

“What do you mean?”

“He paid for your drink – it’s on the house.”

She snaps her gaze to the window, as if Bobby might be standing there staring in, with a big sign informing her that it’s an elaborate prank. But all she can see are the indifferent shadows of passing shoppers hurrying about in the last of the daylight, wrapped up in their own concerns.

“Oh,” she says, and smiles at the barista because it’s polite, and takes the hot chocolate back to the rest of her things.

She’s twenty-six and alone in her apartment. Tina thinks she’s with the Wrights, and she told them she’s celebrating with Tina. She hasn’t even needed to invent an excuse to fob off Rebecca. In front of her is a spread of ingredients for homemade tacos, and a stack of DVDs that are old favourites. There’s not a bough of holly or the twinkle of a fairy light in sight.

She decides that she’s content.

She’s thirty-one. Staring at the monstrous fir Felix has somehow managed to sneak into the warehouse.

“How did you even get it in here?” she blurts. She has to crane her neck upwards to take in the full might of the thing.

“I didn’t,” Felix replies, proud. “I got some delivery people to do it while we were out – for the extra surprise factor.”

The rest of Unit Bravo sidle forward, as awed by the presence of the tree as she is, though the levels of enthusiasm vary.

“I thought we could decorate it together,” he continues, flinging open the first of several boxes that have been left at the foot of the tree, “you know, since we get so little time to do things as a family.”

That appears to be the magic word. Adam answers Mason’s pleading look with a minute shake of his head, and Nate is already striding forward to help unpack the ornaments. It leaves her with an uncomfortable itch between her shoulder blades, as if she’s suddenly wearing clothes that belong to someone else. Years of memories come bubbling up like rising damp under paint, phantom emotions she’s tried for so many years to bury and which now burrow so easily through her flesh.

“Leah?” Nate asks, with his hands curled around a string of coloured glass beads.

She smiles. It feels wooden. “Are you sure we can reach the whole way up?”

“I’m sure we’ll manage with us all working together,” he says, and beckons her to his side with a chaste kiss to her cheek.

Felix has already draped a length of tinsel around his neck like it’s a feather boa, and grins wide as he turns to her. “Where do we start? I bet you’ve had loads of practice.”

It stings.

“Put the lights up the centre of the tree,” she suggests, grateful for Nate’s touch. “That way they’ll reflect off the baubles.”

“Great!”

The vampires take to their task rather well. The military precision with which Adam lays the lights is matched by the haphazard way that Mason – obviously unhappy with the glow – drapes the outer branches in tinsel to hide as much of it as possible. Nate, meanwhile, is trying to bring a bit of coordination to the chaos that is Felix’s method of flinging baubles on the tree with no care for size or colour.

“But it’s festive,” the younger vampire protests, as a shiny green chilli pepper is swapped with a more tasteful globe of frosted golden glass.

“I just think it will look better up here, because it’s smaller.”

“You mean because it’s somewhere I can’t reach to move it somewhere more fun. I can get a stepladder, you know.”

She smiles at that, content to watch the banter. The variety of ornaments that have been procured cover a dizzying array of styles, from traditional to psychedelic to things like the chilli pepper that she knows Felix bought because he found them amusing. It’s not quite the same as the Wrights’ collection, which they’d once told her had been built up over years gathering trinkets on holiday or been gifted from friends and family, but the effect is similar.

“Leah, you agree with me, don’t you?” Nate pleads, his eyes wide and helpless.

She smiles. “A little disorder gives it personality, don’t you think?”

“But…”

“Ooooh I think that counts as a top ten anime betrayal,” Felix cackles.

“What’s anime?”

“Never you mind,” comes the haughty reply as the younger vampire holds out his hand. “I’ll be taking my pepper back now, thank you.”

There’s a groan as Nate passes it over, and she gets the feeling his defeat is not as final as he’s pretending, but before she can voice the suspicion, he comes to fold his long legs down next to her on the carpet.

“You haven’t put anything on the tree yet,” he notes, brushing a loose strand of hair back from her face.

She shrugs. The ornament turning in her hands is a tiny wooden reindeer with a bell around its neck. It’s not sparkly like the one when she was three, but it’s similar enough for a wave of guilt to wash over her for all the years she turned down the invitation from the Wrights because she didn’t want to be reminded of that pitied, unwanted little kid who was once dropped on their doorstep.

“Hey…”

“I’m not a big Christmas person,” she murmurs, though she knows the other vampires could easily listen in if they choose to. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I have horrible memories, but part of me always felt left out of that holiday magic, you know?”

With the Christmas tree lights reflecting off the sympathy in his brown eyes, he curls a gentle hand around hers and lifts her knuckles to his lips. “I’m sorry your past experiences weren’t what they should have been… though I hope you don’t feel left out now?”

It’s impossible to feel anything but dizzy with him so close, and yet as her gaze falls to his lips she wants nothing more than to be closer still.

“I’ve never felt more at home,” she tells him, smiling at the way confession makes his breath stutter.

The pad of his thumb brushes her cheek.

“You have no idea how much it delights me to – what are you doing?”

He pulls away to frown at Felix, who snuck up from behind to stretch out a bunch of mistletoe above their heads, the white berries and green foliage made richer by a ribbon of deep maroon.

“It’s Christmas,” the younger vampire explains. “Kissing under mistletoe is tradition.”

“You really think they need mistletoe to be going at it?” Mason calls from the other side of the room.

“Is that sort of language really necessary?” Nate demands.

“Not denying it though, are you?”

Mortified, he rubs a hand across his brow, and though her own cheeks are surely crimson by now, she keeps her fingers tangled into his to make sure he won’t pull away for good.

“You were so close you were practically on top of each other,” Felix offers, though whether he’s trying to be helpful or embarrass them both further is difficult to say.

“I was merely…” Nate clears his throat, tries again. “Why don’t you finish decorating the tree?”

Felix rolls his eyes, discarding the mistletoe on the sofa as he goes. The moment of heat has passed, but with attention gradually sliding off them, Nate inches close enough to wrap an arm around her waist. She snuggles into his side, ear over his heart, content to soak in the atmosphere of the room. Crackling fire, twinkling lights, and the good-natured bickering between Mason and Felix. She can feel Nate wince with every tacky bauble added to the tree, but torn as he is between protecting his décor and keeping her company, not even the glittery unicorn with the neon-pink mane and glowing horn stirs him to fully intervene, and she presses a kiss to the back of his hand to show her sympathy.

It's later, when the fire has burned down to embers and even the wind outside has fallen quiet, that she approaches the tree with the little wooden reindeer. There’s no ribbon loop to hang it on a branch, but she finds a bare spot in between a garish purple raspberry and an intricate crystal snowflake, and jams its legs on either side of the stem, like it’s leaping through a forest.

“It looks good there,” Nate murmurs, coming to stand at her back. He presses a kiss to the top of her head as his arms wind around her waist. “Are you sure I can’t just –”

“I’ll tell Adam it was you,” she warns. “Is it worth it for the wounded, puppy-dog look Felix will give you when he notices you’ve moved them?”

A sigh heaves through him that ruffles her hair. “For you, I suppose I can live with it, but I may have to stage a disappearing act in time for next year.”

“Even for the unicorn?”

“Especially for the unicorn.”

Chuckling, she turns in his arms. “It sounds like you could use a distraction.”

“What did you have in mind?” he asks, though with the way his voice lowers and his fingertips toy with the hem of her shirt, he already has some ideas of his own.

She licks her lips. His own part in response.

Instead of indulging him, however, she dodges the kiss and steps around him to where the mistletoe lies in a crumpled heap on the sofa. The room is warm, the lights in the Christmas tree like the glitter of a galaxy in the void of space, the weight of his gaze heavy enough to send a shiver across her shoulders as she plucks up the greenery with nimble fingers.

#the wayhaven chronicles #twc holiday magic #nate sewell #twc detective #unit bravo #n sewell #nate sewell x detective #detective leah kingston

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