All characters © their respective owners

-DECKTHEHALLS

KN: On the day after Christmas my true love wrote for me…

Warnings: LukeXEthan. Complete re-write, whoo-hoo!

-WITHBOUGHSOFNECTAR

The first time Ethan sees Luke again, it's Christmas, and the blonde had been reborn as a girl. He probably shouldn't have been as surprised as he was; trying to get into the Isles of the Blest didn't mean you'd be reborn the same way each time. And whoever said you got to keep anything from your previous life, after all? She had just looked so petite and delicate that it was hard to believe she was actually Luke until she had approached him of her own volition and addressed him by name.

"Can you imagine ending up in Elysium and finding out that you were a borderline villainous man in your past life?" Little girl Luke asked him in her tiny white dress with her tiny high-pitched voice. "It's traumatizing!" The big ribbon in her long blonde hair seemed to bob in complaint.

"You were more of a hero than a villain…" Ethan couldn't help but protest. "But I guess that's pretty traumatizing." It felt surreal, talking to her like this.

Little girl Luke had been born with a debilitating genetic disease that robbed her of a long life. As such, she was too young to have ever done anything bad. What little life she had, she had lived to the fullest and tried to make things easier for her parents. It was pretty tragic for her to have died on a holiday like this, though.

"I hope I live longer in the next life." She said as she fixed the hem of her dress.

"Yeah." Ethan smiled though he felt like he was dying on the inside. Well, more than usual what with being in Tartarus and all. He didn't enjoy having to wait for Luke in between rebirths, but the other certainly deserved better than short lives and deaths on Christmas. "If anyone can do it, it'd have to be you."

"Thanks, Ethan." Her smile was ridiculously cute, but he had to wonder how much of that was because she was Luke and not because she was a little kid.

Either way, she has to wait till next Christmas before she can file for another rebirth. It was a short year, but he enjoyed it all the same.

"I'm going to try harder in the next life!" She declared. Ethan sent her off with a smile.

"Good luck!" He called after her as she gave him a wave with her tiny hand.

The second time Ethan sees Luke, it's another Christmas, and the other is male again, with short red hair and darker skin. He's also in his thirties, so it looks like he's been able to live longer after all. Well, lived longer compared to demigod standards.

"I hope this isn't becoming a trend." Red-haired Luke said, referring to the date of his death.

"Yeah, it's kind of messed up to keep dying on Christmas." Ethan agreed. Luke then gives him this oddly stunning smile, and he's not sure if it's just because it's Luke or if he really is more attractive physically this way.

"Being a child of Aphrodite is weird, though." Luke nods. And Ethan is unsurprised that rebirth made him a demigod again. It doesn't seem fair to put him through that kind of misfortune, but no one ever said subsequent lives would be any fairer than actual life. "I've never had so much attention focused on me before. It's a little stifling."

"You were pretty popular in your first life too." Ethan points out. "And you didn't need to be Aphrodite's offspring to have admirers." Luke just tosses him a skeptical look; like he was unaware he actually had a lot of people vying for his attention back when he was a son of Hermes. Ethan had been one of them too.

"I know I seduced Silena once, but as a child of Aphrodite I barely have to lift a finger, and I'll get swarmed by people, demigod or otherwise. I wonder if Silena and the other offspring of Aphrodite felt that way all the time." Luke shakes his head. "I even got into a situation once because a lamia fell for me…" He pushed his hair back and groaned. Ethan is again unsurprised at Luke's popularity.

In this life, Luke was a fairly successful demigod up until he was betrayed by someone from Camp Half-Blood on one of his quests. A child of Ares had crushed on him pretty hard at first sight. The borderline stalker had killed him out of rage after he was rejected for maybe the hundredth time. Red-haired Luke had stopped counting all the times he had rejected him, but the stalker had asserted that it was a very agonizing five hundred and twenty-four times.

"I hope Nemesis balances his luck back hard." Ethan growled. He hated guys like that.

"Yeah." Luke agreed as he fixed his flawless red hair. "Well, hopefully I'll have better luck in the next life."

"…" the black-haired demigod remained silent. If Luke left Elysium now, he'd never see him again. He'd be in the Isles of the Blest if he succeeded in his next life. And he deserved that after all the crap he went through.

"Hey, Ethan." Red-haired Luke's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "How come you don't want to try for the Isles of the Blest?"

"Who, me?" he scoffed. "Sounds like a hassle."

"It IS kind of scary at first." Red-haired Luke admitted, a shiver traveling down his spine. "Living a whole other life in a new body with no memory of anything…" He then looked heavenward, as if seeing a sky somehow instead of Elysium's ceiling. "But isn't that what our first life was like too? And in the next life, you see things through a different lens. It's nice, you know. Learning what you couldn't before, fearing the future, and making new friends… It hurts to experience being abandoned by your demigod parent again, but it wasn't like they never tried. And experiencing death more than once is pretty terrifying, but if you've been good, you just end up here."

"But there's no guarantee." Ethan crossed his arms. "Just like how you came back once as a girl, and now as a child of Aphrodite, there's no guarantee I'd be smart enough to do the right thing and end up in Elysium again. What if I go another route and end up in the Fields of Punishment?"

"That won't happen." Luke said calmly.

"And how can you know for sure?"

"Well, I won't know for sure, but call it an intuition of someone who's about to live their third life." Red-haired Luke attempted to explain. "I've had enough of being pessimistic of gods and our fates. I'm going to hope for the best."

"…" Ethan supposed this was the normal way for someone who was on a winning streak to feel. It's still a pretty jarring change from the usual snarky and bitter Luke he had known in his first life.

"And…if you do decide to be reborn and try for the Isles of the Blest, I'll be waiting for you there." Luke offered. "It's the least I can do since you've waited for me, after all." The radiant smile he was giving him did not deter the other demigod from feeling cynical.

"…I hope you're prepared to wait forever then."

"You won't keep me waiting that long." Red-haired Luke assured him. "You're better than that."

"And what if you do end up waiting for someone who'll never come?" Ethan persisted. "Isn't that too sad? Wouldn't you be…?"

"It is too sad." Luke gave him that damned stunning smile again. "That's why I know you won't put me through something like that."

The black-haired demigod sighs. The things he'd do for the sake of someone he loved as much as Luke…

Ethan files for rebirth that day. When he actually does get reborn is anyone's guess. Wiping the slate clean is unannounced until it actually happens. All he knows is that Luke has to wait a whole year to file for his, so Ethan'd be going on ahead without him.

It's a shame he didn't get to say good-bye.

In the next life, Ethan is a jaded eighteen year old now, with black hair covering a half-blind eye, and it's Christmas. He doesn't know why, but this time of year always makes him feel uneasy. Mostly he's irritable and smokes more than usual, but there's also this stealthy pleasant feeling. A comfortable peace.

He's certainly not feeling any of that right now, though.

"St-stop…" a small voice whimpers. Ethan sighs and walks toward it. Sounds like he'd have to step in and stop another creep.

"What do you mean 'stop?' You've been giving me signals all day, kitten." An older voice says. Ethan reaches an alley where he finds what seems to be an adult pinning a younger boy against a wall.

"N-no…please…" the boy protests, trying to pry the other guy's hands off him. Now that he's closer he can see the older guy's most likely in college, and the blond boy pinned against the wall was probably fifteen years or so. The boy also had a scar below one of his eyes. Ethan felt his blood boiling at the possibility of this dick being responsible for that injury on the kid. He hated guys like that.

"Cut it out!" Ethan ended up barking, cigarette nearly falling out of his mouth. The two turn their attention to him, the college student in irritation and the boy in surprise.

"And what's wrong with a guy giving his boyfriend some love?" the college student asks. There's certainly no way this guy isn't older than Ethan, and he thinks he can date a minor… Ethan was going to end up punching someone's lights out by the end of the day, he was sure of it.

"He didn't tell you to stop because 'someone might see' or 'not right now,' he said 'no.' I'm pretty sure he wasn't giving you an option here." The cigarette fell out of Ethan's mouth at this point, but he didn't care.

"Tch." The college student scoffed. Ethan got himself ready to fight. "Lay off, and mind your own busi-!" he was promptly cut off by the little blond kneeing him in the groin. The kid then followed that up by hitting him in the back of the neck and knocking him out cold.

'What the…?' Ethan just stared in silence, fighting instinct vaporized.

"Thanks for distracting him, mister." The kid gave him a big smile. He couldn't help but find it pretty cute.

"I'm not all that much older than you to merit being called 'mister.' " Ethan glanced at the unconscious body the kid was responsible for. "Well, let's report your boyfriend here to the police for attempted statutory rape. That way he won't be giving you trouble for a while." He was going to pull out his cellphone, but got his cigarette pack instead. He shrugged and lit one of the cigarettes anyway. "Oh, and I should probably escort you to your parents or something."

"I don't have parents." The kid told him. "I live in an orphanage." Ethan paused at that.

"Oh, sorry about that, then." He pulled out his cellphone properly this time to call the police.

"It's fine." The blond assured him. Ethan found that a little disturbing. Did the kid not know his own parents well enough to be sad over them? Well, not that it mattered now.

"I'll walk you to your orphanage then." He offered. The kid gave him a smile and nodded. As he reported the incident to the police, they ended up just around the block of the orphanage.

Ethan had expected this to be his last encounter with the blond as he put away his phone. He was not expecting the little blond to yank the cigarette out of his mouth and stand on his tiptoes to give him a quick kiss on lips.

"Wha-?!" Ethan quickly pulled away, blushing hard. The kid just gave him an innocent smile while he crushed the life out of the cigarette under his heel.

"It's a 'thank you' for all you're doing for me." He explained before heading off to the orphanage. "Also," he turned back to look at Ethan, "you're my type, mister." He winked with the eye that had the scar below it.

"H-hold it." Ethan stopped him. "Look, kid, even if I am your type, you don't go around kissin' other adults that aren't your family until you're an adult." He sternly lectured. "And even then, you need consent before you do any of that." The kid laughed, and Ethan felt ashamed to admit the kid was ridiculously cute.

"Then I can't wait till I turn eighteen." The way he said that made Ethan's throat go dry. The kid seemed satisfied, a mischievous smile gracing his expression as he left for the orphanage.

Something told Ethan that this kid was going to be annoyingly persistent… Though, he'd have to admit that the kid would make a very attractive eighteen year old. Heartbreaker in the making, that one. He touched his lips and blushed a little.

Weird…there was that stealthy pleasant feeling again… A comfortable peace.

-FALALALALALALALA

KN: Wow, I'm kind of amazed at what I can come up with when I've got more time…and when I'm not sleep-deprived. Though, it's still not great, but I was never that great of a writer anyway. Oh, and for realism's sake, they're not actually named Luke and Ethan in all those lives; they have different names, but I kept referring to them as such 'cause it was simpler that way for a short story.

Holiday moral: Whatever you're planning to do, you should probably do it soon because you never know when life is going to throw you a planet-sized meteor.

KN: And yes, that was Luke's third life as a flirtatious little fifteen year old trying to convince eighteen year old Ethan to quit smoking and do unspeakable things to him. Mmm…AU ideas…