Author's Note: Mild slash and romangst, Christmas holiday themes.
Disclaimer: Halo belongs to Bungie and Microsoft, Red vs. Blue story and characters belong to the masterminds at Rooster Teeth Productions.
I was feeling Christmassy in early November (Yes, I know. I need a life), so I broke out my 'Maybe This Christmas' CD. A remake of that old Elvis song "Blue Christmas" is on there, and it fit this random plot bunny so well I was on the floor laughing until the song ended, then I jumped up and wrote this immediately. I know this is about as likely as Sarge and Tex announcing their engagement and asking Crunchbite to be best man, but it was too cute not to do!
12-16-10 Did some minor editing to fix a few discrepancies. :)
Donut sighed and pushed his scraggly honey blond hair back out of his face, glaring moodily at his teammates, who were bouncing happily around the room, from his vantage point in the corner. Sarge, Simmons and Grif took no notice. They were busy merrily setting up for Christmas.
They had some meager homemade decorations, clumsily put together from paper and food wrappers, and the three senior members of the squad were putting them up all around the base.
Simmons had even taken the time to gather up every scrap of green that he could find and put them all together to make a paper-and-plastic tree. After finishing the tree, he started cutting snowflakes out of white paper and shiny silver snack wrappers. He was now sitting in the middle of the floor with a neat stack of white and silver material in front of him and a pair of scissors in his hands, deftly snipping the paper, plastic, and foil into the shapes. Several finished snowflakes were already strewn about him on the floor.
Sarge was gleefully crumpling all the red construction paper into balls and sticking them on the tree, using paper clips, tape, glue, maple syrup, and just about anything else adhesive he could find. While Simmons had still been putting the tree together, Sarge had made himself useful stringing together bullet shells and hanging the shiny chains pretty much everywhere. Unfortunately, they were too heavy for the tree; when he tried to hang a chain on the 'branches,' the whole thing almost collapsed.
Grif on the other hand was busy attempting to find a way to make something at least semi-alcoholic to celebrate the holidays. "Hey Sarge, are you sure we're out of rubbing alcohol?" he yelled over his shoulder as he tossed stuff behind him out of the storeroom.
Donut sighed again and shook his head in exasperation, turning his head away and paying no attention to Sarge's response. He could not care less about decorations, or alcohol, or anything else at the moment.
Then again…he wouldn't say no to getting smashed, if Grif figured out a way.
Donut had always loved Christmas. When he was a kid back home, his dad would always go out and drive the whole family to the nearest tree farm, where they would cut down their own tree. Donut would have to help him tie it down to the roof of the car so it didn't fall off on the way home. Once the tree was home, put up, and decorated, he and his older sisters would argue over who got to turn the tree lights on every morning.
Then on Christmas morning, he would sit with his sisters in the living room, fidgeting on the couch while they waited for their parents to wake up. They would try so hard not to peek at the stockings crammed full of goodies, and instead would watch the sparkling ornaments on the tree, all of them white, the way his mom liked it.
He had loved Christmas.
However, this year he just knew he was going to be miserable. And not only because his family was not there to spend it with him. Oh no. He had spent the last couple of years away from home at Christmas, first for boot camp, then for his first couple of posts before joining Sarge, Simmons, and Grif at Blood Gulch.
No, this Christmas would be lonely and horrible. All because of him. Because Donut was head-over-heels in love. With one of the Enemy. Proceed head-smashing-in now.
He was not entirely sure when it had started. Maybe he had loved him from the time they first met, right when he had just been posted here. Grif and Simmons had sent him to the store, and he ended up at the Blue base instead. Right from the first, he had caught Donut's eye. Yes, the Red rookie believed in love at first sight, and he was quite certain that's how this mess had begun.
It had not helped that the feelings had grown almost exponentially every time he saw the blue. There was the incident with the tank, and the time he had been captured by the Blue Team. Not to mention all the time travel. Each time he was put in his company, it drove Donut a little crazier, drowning him in feelings that he could never allow to be shown, thanks to the thrice-damned war.
Donut was startled out of his thoughts by a red paper ball that hit him on the head and bounced off again. He looked up to see Sarge smirking at him. "Lost in thought, princess?" the homicidal Southerner asked sarcastically.
Numbly, Donut blinked and nodded. "Well, come back to base!" Sarge barked, "Don't want to have to send out a search party. Now come help me hang all these extra red thingies from the ceiling."
Silently, Donut gathered up the crumpled up pieces of red paper and some string and tape, and started helping Sarge to suspend them from the ceiling. Soon there were red paper balls hanging all over the room right in their faces, so they had to watch where they were going or risk getting a face-full of red crumpled up paper.
Donut could not have cared less.
"Hey Donut," Grif called from across the room, "Come try this and tell me if it tastes okay!"
Donut sighed and stretched his shoulder muscles. They were sore from constantly reaching up to the ceiling for the past twenty minutes. "Coming, Grif!" he called, and walked over to take the offered paper cup from Grif.
Donut stared at the contents, tilting the cup back and forth a bit to check out the viscosity. The cup was full of a sparkling reddish brown liquid that Donut was positive was not going to taste good. He grimaced, shrugged, and sipped it cautiously. His expression changed to one of surprise. For once, Grif managed to make something that did not taste like alien piss.
"What's in this?" Donut asked the other private, taking larger sip of the strange liquid.
"Oh, nothing much. Old coffee, root beer, chocolate sauce…pretty much anything with caffeine that we've got is in there. I also added what was left of the maple syrup from Sarge's sticking-spree. I call it 'man-soda'."
Donut nodded, thinking as he drank some more. Suddenly Simmons, who had abandoned his snowflake-making a while back to go outside for some air, popped his head in the door. "Hey Sarge, the Blues are here!" he said.
Donut, who had been in the middle of another drink of the 'man-soda,' choked and ended up spraying Grif with the beverage.
"Aw man, Donut! That's disgusting!" He yelled in surprised anger, wiping his face on the hem of his white t-shirt, spreading a huge brownish stain across it.
Sarge stood up quickly, ignoring the swearing Grif and pale Donut. "Good. The dirty Blues showed up on time for once."
"And they even brought the food they said they'd bring for Christmas dinner!" Simmons added.
"Good. Let's go meet them outside so we can make sure they stick to their end of the deal."
With that, Simmons and Sarge quickly exited.
"Wha…buh…we…huh?" Donut spluttered, "What's going on?"
Grif blinked at him. "Didn't Sarge tell you? He and Simmons had a talk, and Simmons managed to convince Sarge that Christmas is a time for love, and peace…and booze, but that's not the point. So anyways, they went to talk to the Blues and they made a deal with them to have a cease-fire for Christmas. They're coming over for Christmas dinner and everything. He even got them to supply the dinner. And anything with free food and not having to do anything is fine with me," the lazy soldier flashed a grin at Donut and went back to perfecting his drink.
Donut sat frozen. The Blues were coming over for Christmas dinner. He was coming over for Christmas dinner. He was here for Christmas dinner. This could be his chance to try to talk to him. To get to know him, and find out if maybe he would want to try for a relationship, enemy or no. Donut wanted to try.
But how?
The two teams had a strict relationship of attempting to kill one another (only to have the ones that died come back anyway). The fate of the war hung in the balance. But more than likely, they would not care if he and Donut were together, so long as this did not affect their battles overly much. Grif would not care one way or another, and Simmons, weirdo-nerd that he was, would probably find it romantic. Sarge might even find it amusing to have two lovers on opposite sides of the war. He was a bit of a sadist that way. Donut was not too sure about the other Blues, but he was pretty good at reading people, and from what he had seen, they would probably be okay with it.
The only real worry was his reaction. Would he be interested? Would he maybe reciprocate Donut's feelings? Would he reject him for being Red? Or worse, for being gay? Oh god, was Donut nervous.
The rookie stiffened further when he heard voices overhead, coming from the top floor of the base. Any minute now, they would be coming into the underground level. He would be coming.
Quite suddenly Donut couldn't be there. His insecurities about admitting his feelings and uncertainty of how to go about it swallowed up his desire to offer his heart to the Blue.
So he got up and started to leave. He headed over to the doorway to exit the building…but too late. Here they came.
Sarge and Simmons walked into the underground level of Red Base, followed by the Blues. Donut stepped back and off to the side. He would wait until they were all inside, then make his escape before anyone saw him.
He had to bite back a sob. He was such a coward. He ducked his head down and stared at his feet until he was certain they had all passed before leaving out the door…only to walk straight into the last Blue coming in.
Donut looked up from the floor into bemused blue eyes looking up at him out of a freckled face and froze. It was him.
"Caboose…" he said startled.
The slow-witted Blue blinked and smiled hesitantly up at him at him. "Happy Fourth of July, Captain Bear Claw!" he said cheerfully.
Donut stood rooted to the spot, staring at the slightly shorter man. What should he do? What could he say to him?
A voice calling from one of his teammates solved his dilemma for him. "Hey, Donut, Caboose! Look up!" Donut glanced over at Grif, confused, before doing as he was told.
Taped to the top of the doorframe was a scrap of paper with a hastily drawn sprig of mistletoe on it.
The other team members took notice of this and began whistling and catcalling at the two standing in the doorway, teasing, but not having a hissy fit. That at least was good news for Donut.
He blinked and looked back at Grif. The other soldier grinned knowingly. Donut blinked again, then smiled, relieved, and mouthed back, "Thank you." Grif just winked, and the other soldiers just laughed a bit before falling silent, waiting in gleeful anticipation for what the pink-armored soldier would do.
Taking a breath, Donut turned back around to look at Caboose. The Blue was staring up at the drawing with the cutest puzzled expression on his face, his head cocked to the side.
Donut put a hand on the other soldier's cheek, tilting his head back down so that Caboose was looking up at Donut instead of up at the ceiling. Caboose smiled uncertainly, and before he lost his nerve, Donut leaned down and kissed him, gently and sweetly. He paid no mind to the whoops coming from his teammates, nor to the 'aww's they got from the Blues, as Caboose gasped at first, before shyly kissing him back. Donut moaned softly and deepened the kiss. This was heaven.
Slowly, the two pulled apart, staring into each other's eyes as their teammates clapped and cheered and laughed in the background. Donut smiled gently at the enemy soldier in his arms.
"Merry Christmas, Caboose."
The End!
Like I said, highly unlikely, but cute all the same. ;) I couldn't help myself! Thanks for reading!
Happy ChristmaHanaKwanzaka everybody!
-Happycabbage