A/N: Twilight drabble for Day 2 (Hot Chocolate) of the 25 Days of Fic challenge. Twilight is the property of Stephenie Meyer.
1
At 11:58 on Thanksgiving night, stomping her feet in the line at Best Buy to get Edward a Playstation 4, Bella wonders how many of the others braving the cold are vampires.
The hoodies under the pale boys' parkas could be a disguise, but no vampire would warm his hands on a snowflake-patterned Starbucks cup that smells of hot chocolate.
2
"Walmart again?" Emmett asks. He puts all the plaintiveness he can muster into his voice, but it's not enough. Walmart shopping on Black Friday requires strength as well as speed.
Anyway, all the Cullens know he'll be happy if he gets to play on the bicycle display.
3
Christmas decorating at the Cullens' house is done before Alice can finish the third chorus of the "falalalala" song.
The lights never tangle.
4
Esme loves the smell of baking gingerbread. Jasper draws icing uniforms on every one of the twenty-five dozen cookies that will be sent to soldiers.
5
"The emergency room's crazy on Christmas Eve," Carlisle says. "Go ahead and go caroling without me."
6
Edward's proud of himself for finding the Nativity scene on eBay. It's not just that it's complete, all two hundred pieces, including goose girls and geese. It's that this is the first year he's wanted one, the first time in almost a century that he's felt the Christmas story holds out hope for him.
It's Rosalie who insists on arranging it. She fusses over the Holy Family, switching the angle of the delicately carved pieces, setting Magi between Joseph and Mary, then taking them away to kneel outside the stable as if nobody has invited them in.
"It looks fine," Edward says.
"They have to adore the baby just right or it isn't what it's supposed to be."
She must have gotten it, finally, when she retreats to the corner of the sofa to cut paper snowflakes, fine and sharp as lace. The flashing scissors slip again and again, but skin like hers just makes them sharper.
7
As Renesmee runs to her, hands and tongue outstretched to the falling snow, Bella misses nothing about being human.
8
It's when she's watched all the Christmas specials so many times that she knows them frame-by-frame, when the beep-boop-bing of Edward's video games falls into a rhythm she can predict, when she's traced the path of each falling snowflake because she can, that Bella misses the warmth of hot chocolate.
