A/N: With Christmas just a few days away, I thought I'd publish this fluffy little one-shot to get all of Andith shippers in the holiday spirit. Many thanks to the beloved Dr. Seuss for providing a little context for this!
I hope you enjoy it, dear friends, and Happy Holidays to you all!
Although he didn't fancy himself a Grinch, sometimes, Anthony Strallan just couldn't help himself. Perhaps it was the excessive Christmas music piping through shopping centers, all cheery and poppy and annoying; maybe it was the traditions of old that seemed to be unceremoniously usurped by commercial desires; perhaps it was insane pressure on just about everyone to make this Christmas "special," to make magical memories that would a lifetime.
Or maybe it was just that his heart was two sizes too small.
But what Anthony loathed most of all were the office holiday parties. The spiked eggnog and the drunken coworkers that followed, the Secret Santa with people he had never heard of, the mandatory "ugly" sweaters: all of it added to his displeasure for the season and often prompted him to wait out the storm in a spare cubicle until the festivities died down enough for him to sneak away unnoticed.
It was how he spent every office holiday party since he started at Grantham Publishing a decade ago as their senior nonfiction editor. Alone. Bitter. Very much a Grinch in the flesh, though certainly not as green.
This year, however, held a promise past Christmases didn't seem to possess. It was wrapped tightly in a box on his otherwise organized and orderly desk, adorned in a red and green paper with a plump, silver bow affixed to it. The whole was stupid, really, just luck of the draw. It held no meaning. Just the annual office-wide Secret Santa gift exchange. Nothing more, old codger, he'd remind himself.
But he had drawn Edith Crawley and that had made all the difference.
The young woman had intrigued him from the moment she set foot in Grantham Publishing four months ago as a junior editor, specializing in feminist and historical fiction, all bright-eyed and bookish and eager to impress. To others in their large office, she was just another young face in a crowd of literati, blending in seamlessly with her peers, insignificant to many in this world of books and words and deadlines.
But to Anthony, repressed old codger and reluctant Grinch, she was wonderful. He had noticed the delicate, almost effortlessly feminine way about her, from her gauzy blouses and pencil skirts, to pumps she felt inclined to wear but never seemed to master. She was quiet, he noticed, too, seldom saying much at all.
Yet, he could tell that there was a great monologue going on behind those alert, dark eyes of hers, perhaps a habit learned all those years ago in her childhood, reading book after book after book. Though the two of them hadn't spoken much in her short time at the company, aside from the occasional office pleasantries they exchanged, she had a way of communicating that didn't involve mere words.
Anthony watched Edith from time to time, enamored with the way she would nibble on her pencil during particularly challenging edits, with the way she would barrel into the office carrying half a dozen manuscripts, her purse, keys, and a large coffee in an armful before throwing it all onto her desk, and with how she spent her breaks secretly working on a novel of her own, a fact he discovered once by accident when passing by her desk for the ninth time one morning.
He was rather smitten by this young woman, tried though he did not to admit it. After all, wasn't his heart two sizes too small?
And yet, the extravagantly wrapped box on his desk told a different story. It told of a man who went to great lengths to find this young woman a fitting gift, going to dozens of shops through London until he found what he was looking for, of a man who brushed off old skills his mother had taught him decades ago about proper gift-wrapping etiquette in order to wrap the present himself, of a man who, for the first time in his adult life, had counted down the days until the Christmas party so that he could give it to her.
Perhaps, just perhaps, his heart wasn't too small at all…
The party was in full swing. As jazzy Christmas music piped throughout the festively decorated office, debauchery took hold of the editors at Grantham Publishing. True to form, the eggnog had most certainly been spiked and nearly everyone had partaken in its thick, frothy goodness, getting themselves thoroughly drunk in the process. The chatter was loud, the giggling and hollering abundant, and an old Grinch could not take it a second longer.
It had been two hours since the party began and there was still no sign of Edith. With each passing minute, Anthony felt his embarrassment grow, the utter foolishness of buying into this ridiculous notion that perhaps this Christmas could be different from all of the others.
It was childish, he mused grumpily as he retreated to his office, loosening his tie and throwing himself into his swivel chair.
This year, like all Christmases past, Anthony would sit in his office, his own personal Mount Crumpit, and listen on as his coworkers enjoyed themselves, all jolly and festive and cheerful. It was so supremely annoying.
Swiveling around in the chair, he caught sight of his box, of Edith's gift, and scrunched his nose. Well, this is unpleasant, he thought to himself. Just as he was about to reach for the present and toss it in the waste bin, Anthony heard a timid knock on his office door.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," came Edith's soft voice. As per office party rules, she was wearing a truly heinous Christmas sweater over her dark jeans and boots, nothing less than a plump snowman with a felt carrot nose protruding from her chest. It was hideous, but in an ironic way that only the young can pull off, he thought.
Anthony stood out of a mix of instinct and upbringing, offering his swivel chair to her. "No, no, by all means, come in. Please, have a seat," he rambled, sitting on the edge of his old, creaky desk next to her.
She sat down in a rather ungraceful motion, her knees brushing against his shins briefly before the swivel chair swung her away from him, the blasted thing.
"It's Edith, isn't it?" Anthony asked, feeling rather daft for feigning ignorance where Edith Crawley was concerned. Of course he knew her name; he knew all sorts of things about her, far too many to be appropriate for coworkers who weren't on a first-name basis. He knew that she preferred coffee to tea, black with no sugar, that she secretly wanted to be a writer, and that her hair always smelled of lavender, perhaps from her shampoo or something like that.
She nodded with a grin. "And you're Anthony, isn't that right?"
"That I am," he mumbled drily. God, he was awful at this, socializing or flirting or what have you. "Are you enjoying the party?"
"It's not really my cup of tea," Edith shrugged noncommittally, the sort of shrug people give when they don't want to appear too invested in anything. Her fingers then ran along the present sitting in her lap wrapped in brown butcher paper and tied with a string. "Actually, I only just got here, mostly to give you your present. I'm your Secret Santa, as it turns out."
A nervous chuckle escaped his lungs involuntarily and he immediately wished he could suck it back in. "I'm yours, too. Your Secret Santa, I mean!" he coughed abruptly at his blunder. I'm yours? Good god, man, get a grip!
"Well, would you look at that," Edith retorted kindly, ignoring his slip out of politeness. "What are the odds? Would you like to go first or should I?"
All of a sudden, Anthony felt sweaty and daft and utterly foolish. His gift was so completely inappropriate, so forward, so unfitting of a man who had basically just introduced himself to this young woman. His gift was made with her in mind, with little details in it about who she was and what she wanted to be, all of it terribly personal and in hindsight, completely stupid of him to purchase. Because even though they had become properly acquainted just a few moments prior, Anthony had been pining for Edith Crawley since she set foot in Grantham Publishing. His thoughts comfortably drifted to her quite often and nowadays, he wasn't surprised by where they led him. But for Edith, who probably knew little about him and thought about him even less, he was just some pervy old man who was about to give her a very strange gift.
"Actually, I, uh, left your gift at my flat," he lied, praying that his computer monitor blocked the gaudily wrapped gift from Edith's view.
"That's a shame," she said, her dark eyes falling to the precise place where Anthony wished they wouldn't. "Well, then perhaps I could open that one instead? It does have my name written on the tag, after all."
Bugger. Relenting to the cosmic curse of irony that plagued him, Anthony mumbled, "Oh, yes. Must've forgotten that I brought it with me. By all means…"
He handed the gift to her in a slow, almost painful motion, hoping to prolong these last few moments of non-embarrassment. Edith accepted it gratefully and pulled the bow and paper away. As she lifted the lid away from the box, Anthony realized that he was holding his breath tightly in his lungs.
"Oh, my goodness," Edith murmured softly as she reached into the box and pulled out a thick leather journal. Seared into the cover was a monogram of her initials and as she opened it to reveal its crisp white, blank pages, she noticed a stock of lavender tucked into the spine, pressed flat in that lacy, old Victorian manner. It was evident that Anthony had put some thought into this, Edith realized, knowing her love of writing and her middle initial and her fondness for lavender.
"For that book I know you're writing…" came Anthony's hoarse whisper after a moment of painfully suspended silence. "If you don't like it, I can exchange it for something else."
"No!" Edith blurted out. "It's…it's perfect. I love it. Thank you, Anthony."
Relief swept over him at her reaction and for a moment, he didn't feel as foolish. Oh, he was still a right old fool, mind you, getting such a personalized gift for a practical stranger when a gift card would have done the trick. But Edith's reaction was worth whatever mild embarrassment he had felt before.
"Now, it's your turn!" she exclaimed, setting her new journal aside to hand Anthony's present to him.
Delicately, he tugged at the string, his blue eyes glancing up at Edith for a brief moment, and pulled away the paper and lid to reveal a long, rectangular book.
"It's a farm ledger from the early 1900s," Edith explained as Anthony opened it to reveal long lines of flowing cursive and figures. "I know that your specialty is agricultural books, but I thought it might be neat to have a real artifact. I found it at a shop a few weeks ago when I was in Ripon for my mother's American Thanksgiving dinner. Apparently, it belonged to some baronet in Yorkshire all the way back when. I hope you like it…"
Anthony tore his eyes away from the ledger and caught Edith's dark gaze, her eyes looking at him as if willing him to like it, as though he needed to be persuaded. It turns out, Anthony realized, that Edith knew a bit about him, too.
"I love it, Edith. Truly," he told her sweetly, his mouth forming that crooked grin of his.
Inhaling a deep breath, Edith added, "There's more, just at the bottom of the box."
Taking his cue to sift through the tissue paper once more, Anthony's fingers brushed against something prickly. It felt strange and foreign to him, but when he pulled it out of the box, he instantly knew what it was.
"Mistletoe," he whispered with reverence. How could this possibly be? This young woman, so endlessly fascinating and wholly good, couldn't possibly want to kiss…him. Could she?
But Edith's dark gaze convinced him otherwise. They both stood as Anthony raised the mistletoe above their heads, each of them staring up at it before their eyes met. Just as Edith's mouth began to form a nervous smile, Anthony's lips found hers.
It was a shy kiss, not unlike each of them. Neither knew what to do with their hands or their feet and barely even with their mouths. But as Anthony discarded the festive plant above them and wrapped it, instead, around Edith's waist, settling on the small of her back, they both seemed to forget nerves and propriety and all other such nonsense, those things instead replaced with stolen tastes and hands roaming through hair and whispers of more ardent feelings.
It was a Christmas unlike any other, completely unique in every way, for Anthony Strallan's heart grew three sizes that day.