Unopened Gifts
A/N: Is anyone watching the Space/Syfy show, Bitten? I am! If you want to chat about it, feel free to message me. I hope you all enjoy and review! This is a short story set prior to Bitten, but the events are alluded to in the book.
Disclaimer: I don't own Women of the Otherworld series.
"She's going to be here," Clay insisted. "We've spent the past seven Christmases together, and it didn't matter if we were fighting or not. She'll be here." Clay had been in a foul mood since Elena left a few months ago. Nick was always surprised at how his best friend's moods became even dourer when Elena left. They dipped some when she was off doing business for Jeremy, but it was an entirely different level when she had taken off and didn't tell anyone where she was going or when she was coming back.
She always came back, though, eventually. It may take a few months, but she would always come back. If the past had set a precedent, she would be back soon.
Nick watched as Clay dragged boxes full of ornaments and various Christmas décor out of the attic.
"Has she called at all?"
Clay didn't answer.
"Right," Nick mumbled. "You sure you don't want any help? I'm fairly sure I know how to 'deck the halls'."
"You could drag yourself up here and help with grabbing the boxes out of the attic."
"I'll keep my supervisory role down here, thanks" Nick replied. He hadn't been in an attic since he was ten, thanks to Clay. It had been a simple game of exploring Stonehaven. He had never been up in the attic and Clay decided that was exactly where they should go. Nick climbed up first and Clay never followed. He had been called away by Jeremy. Antonio had wandered into the hall, saw the door was open and pushed it closed.
He was up there for hours before Clay remembered where he had left his best friend. He hadn't been up in the attic since.
Clay grunted. He seemed to be doing that more often than not these days. Nick considered it a victory when over half of Clay's part of the conversation was actual words and not just grunts or silences.
"Right, well, I'm going to grab some of these and take them downstairs. You can't say I wasn't any help either."
Nick thought he heard another grunt as he went down the stairs.
Clay rummaged through the boxes. He had been decorating a few hours now. Nick wasn't allowed to help. He merely sat on the couch, lounging, wistfully thinking of watching paint dry.
"When are you going to get the tree?"
"When she gets here," Clay repeated.
Nick licked his lips. It was already the fifteenth of December. "You sure you don't want to pick up an artificial one as a backup?"
"I don't need a backup."
Nick rolled his eyes. Clay was stubborn on most issues but Elena was a whole different level of stubbornness.
"Right, of course you don't."
"I don't because she is coming back. We'll pick out the tree like we do every year." Clay rummaged through another box, searching for something. "It wouldn't kill you to believe it."
"I'm not saying that she's not coming back. I'm just saying … it might be a good idea to have a backup plan."
"We celebrate Christmas here, we're Elena's family, and Christmas tradition dictates that you spend it with your family. So she'll be here. She has to be. Who else is she going to spend it with?"
Nick wasn't walking into that conversation trap. Elena might have friends where she was currently living. She could simply spend Christmas there or a dozen other places. Nick wasn't sure exactly how much was available event wise to those who didn't celebrate Christmas with their families. He had only started celebrating it the second year Elena was here. Before that, the Pack still gathered at Stonehaven but there weren't any sort of Christmas traditions they followed.
Nick simply didn't answer. He didn't have to. Antonio called him from the other room and he leapt at the chance to avoid more conversation landmines.
He walked into the kitchen, finding Antonio and Jeremy at the table.
"Can you run into town and pick up a few things at the post office," Jeremy asked. "Once you're back, give them to me."
Nick nodded and headed out to the garage.
He didn't have to search very hard to find Jeremy once he was back at Stonehaven. Antonio and Jeremy were waiting for him. It was easier that way. Nick had questioned what he had done to offend Jeremy the minute he stepped up to the counter and saw the massive piles of boxes addressed to Clay.
"Right, so all of this is just Clay being lazy about going into town?"
"A precaution, that is all," Jeremy said simply.
Nick got out of the car. He and Antonio were the first to arrive for the Pack's Christmas. Peter would be arriving on the twenty third, Logan on Christmas Eve. It was already the twentieth and Elena still wasn't back. As far as he knew – he definitely would have heard otherwise – Elena hadn't even called to tell them when she would be coming in.
They walked through the door. Jeremy was in his chair in the study. Clay was nowhere to be found. Nick noticed that there still wasn't a Christmas tree. The boxes of ornaments still sat where he had left them the previous weekend.
There was an uneasy silence throughout the house.
On Christmas Eve Nick found Clay holed up in his room, papers, books, and journals scattered the floor. He had been in his room ever since everyone started arriving on the twentieth. He hadn't expected to find him here but he had run out of places to look – minus the attic because he was not going up there again.
"Clay," Nick said, leaning in the doorway.
He received a grunt in response.
"You don't need to spend too much time with your nose in the books. Once everyone splits, we should go somewhere too. Europe. You can challenge your record for being the World's Worst Wingman overseas."
Clay scribbled something in his notebook.
"Switzerland is nice. There's lots of skiing, plenty of girls there simply looking for a good time and I would be more than willing to be hospitable to them."
Clay gave a grunt in response.
"Excellent. I'll set the entire thing up."
Nick left the room. If he was going to force his best friend into having a slightly less miserable time, he would do it. It would probably come at the expense of the overall mood in Switzerland dropping in response to Clay's general attitude, but sacrifices had to be made.
Clay didn't come out of his room on Christmas Day. Nick wanted to check in on him but Jeremy forbade it. Jeremy simply said he would talk to him.
Nick didn't like it. Clay always showed up for Pack meets. He was more than willing to drop whatever university stuff he had when there was an emergency meet.
He could barely remember not spending Christmas time with Clay.
It was a very quiet, somber day.
Peter tried his best to lift everyone's moods but the cloud would not budge. Logan was quiet too. He had been in contact with Elena, but she limited it to phone calls.
It was serious this time. Nick had never considered the possibility that Elena would never come back. He kept expecting her to waltz through the door and start yelling at Clay for something.
She never did.
Progress was made. Clay had emerged from his room and would at least sit in the same room with other people.
Everyone had taken their gifts they had brought for Elena back home. Not Clay. His sat where the tree would have been, if he had ever put one up in the first place. The candy cane wrapping paper stood out in the otherwise not decorated room. The rest of the decorations had been taken down and put away, but the gifts remained.
Nick hoped each time he went over that they would have disappeared or Elena would be there, opening them.
Instead they simply sat.
Nick tried his best to convince Clay that he needed to get out of the house, get away from everything and try to relax.
He received only silence. He didn't even receive a single grunt in response. Nick had never seen him this way. He remembered how Clay was when he first met him – how do you not remember meeting your best friend for the first time when you try to shake his hand and he tackles you? – and he was far from chatty but compared to this … it looked pretty damn chatty.
Nick knew that Clay didn't put the gifts away. He knew Jeremy did. Jeremy would never give Clay an order like that. They now sat on his closet floor. Clay would see them, ever y day, although he knew that Clay didn't need a reminder such as gifts to remember that Elena was gone.
Nick asked Jeremy repeatedly to relax the rules. Maybe if he could call her, she would realize how much everyone missed her. If they didn't call, she might think that they didn't care about her. Jeremy remained firm. No one was to contact her, besides Logan and that was only at Elena's terms. He said that it was her decision as to what her role in the Pack was or wasn't.
Nick didn't like it but he couldn't do anything about it. Jeremy had spoken and didn't leave any loopholes for him or Clay to exploit.
They would have to wait. They would have to be patient. They would have to hope she would come back.
Clay's broken promise would haunt him with images of candy canes.