[Lost] The Night Before Christmas

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

A Christmas gift for viking42, although this is an hour, not a year. It also falls under the general Christmas challenge and family. Apologies, as always, for any liberties taken.

His feet falling silently on the snow floor, Gehenna moved about the hotel room, preparing. He looked about at his work, determined that everything be perfect when she woke. He looked up at the clock; five to eleven, and she would not sleep past midnight, he was certain of that. Even now she was probably awake, eyes closed and a lazy smile on her lips as she listened to him prepare, letting him pretend to surprise her.

Her gift was wrapped and placed beneath the small tree that the hotel had provided. It looked to him a poor thing, but it was the best that his means would stretch to and he believed that she would like it. He had taken days over the choosing, days over the making, putting a little of himself into its creation. She would like it and it would be a surprise, he was sure of that.

He lit the last few candles, dropped the last satsuma into the stocking - he was fairly sure that tradition had drifted, but satsumas were still pretty exotic to him - and then let himself out onto the balcony to wait. A discreet sign cautioned him to wear outdoor clothing on the balcony, but he lit his mantle from within with summer fire and the cold of the Swedish night barely touched him, just prickled pleasantly on his skin like the scratch of fingernails.

The aurora flickered in the sky above him. It had scared him at first; he could scarcely believed that anything so magical, so beautiful, could be real. Only the heat and solidity of the woman in his arms had reassured him that he was here, in the waking world, and not in Theirs.

There was no sound of the balcony door behind him, just a soft tread, then cool arms reaching around him, clasping him tight around his waist, and a soft form pressing close against him, agonisingly familiar and yet not the form of his companion.

"Hello, Kitten," she whispered.

He closed his eyes as her breath tickled his ear.

"No hello?" she asked, her voice teasing. Her hands slid from his waist to his shoulders, the down along his arms, nails teasing gently along the lines of his scars until they reached the one on his bicep. "You've been in the wars, my love," she sighed, breath warm on the back of his neck. "I see you still have my mark though."

Gehenna gasped softly as she pinched him. Not a dream then, although he wondered if he hadn't messed up the contract and was dying of hyperthermia on the balcony of the snow hotel.

She slid around him and put her arms about his neck, leaning back against the balcony rail, letting her auburn hair cascade into the night, auroral light playing from her skin. He reached out and drew her close, wondering, disbelieving, but accepting, for now, this waking dream. She bent her head to kiss his collar bone, teeth scraping another scar; shadow of a bite from small, sharp teeth, barely six months old.

"Nasty," she commented.

"You should see what she did to my back," he replied.

"My you've changed," she said, and he couldn't tell if she were disappointed or not. But then, it's inevitable, I suppose. She turned in his arms and leaned against him, looking up at the sky.

"I've never seen anything like it," he admitted.

"I have," she replied. "From the deck of a ship on the North Atlantic. Well, ship; more of a boat really. Just the two of us, sailing her from Cornwall to Boston."

"Two of you?" he smiled.

She chuckled and her diaphragm rumbled softly under his hand. Not a ghost then, or a warm and solid oe if she was. "There were often two of me," she said. "Are you disappointed?"

He kissed the top of her head. "Glad," he replied. "More glad than you can know."

"Oh, I don't know about that," she laughed. "Sometimes I hoped to make it three."

"Oh?" he asked.

"Yes. And no, your first two assumptions are wrong."

"Not another man and not another woman?" he asked.

"Alright, first three. You were always broad-minded, but you seem to have become a veritable psychic savannah. Have you been to the savannah?"

"We may have burned one once," Gehenna said sadly. He slid a hand across her belly. "You never wanted another child?"

She shook her head. "One - that one - was enough. I knew that that wasn't something I was capable of and I didn't want to ruin..." She broke off as his hold on her tightened just a little. "Well, you know. No; I wanted to take Penelope with me, when she was old enough. But when she was, she stopped talking to me."

"That wasn't her," Gehenna insisted.

"Oh, I know," she replied. "She said she'd been thinking things over in the woods. I found the application form, you know; she wanted to go to university, not marry that pissant..." She broke off again. "Anyway, I knew that wasn't her. I looked for her in the woods, but never found her, and of course no-one believed me. She was right there and doing what they all expected her to do.

"I had some hopes when she poisoned the little rat bastard," she added, "but it still wasn't her. I saw her when you showed her to me," she added. She laid her head back against his chest. "You're right; she's magnificent."

"She takes after you," he insisted.

"And you." She turned again, leaned up and kissed him.

In the hotel suite, the clock gently chimed midnight.

"Merry Christmas, Bess," he whispered.

She smiled. "Happy birthday, Kitten."

The door slid open, his arms were empty. A moment later there was heat on his back, then soft curves and hard muscle and strong arms clasping him excitedly.

"Grattis på födelsedagen, min Älskling," she whispered.

He put his hands over hers and clasped them tightly. "Merry Christmas, Hjärta."