A/N: EXCESSIVE KANERA FLUFF. And it's AU, obvi, since there's no Christmas in space. You've been warned. I hope everyone has a blessed day! Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
This Year
Kanan Jarrus woke to the sound of a hand slapping rapidly and repeatedly on his bedroom door. He cracked one eye open to look at the clock on his nightstand. It was two in the morning. He groaned, but he'd downed some Ny'Quil and gone to bed very early in anticipation of this. He rolled out of bed and shuffled to the door. He took a breath, steeling himself for the onslaught of boundless energy he was about to encounter. With one hand, he yanked the door open and with the other, he grabbed her wrist to make. the banging. stop.
She smiled at him, radiant even in the middle of the night. "It's Christmas!"
"No," he countered blackly, "it's December the first. Not the same thing, Hera."
Her free hand offered him a steaming cup of coffee, and the hand he'd captured wriggled free to pat his cheek. "Yes, love, but it's now December first in all forty-eight contiguous states. I kept my promise."
He snorted and rolled his eyes. "Thank you so much."
Kanan was staunchly opposed to any sign of Christmas before December first and always had been, so Hera always held her holiday spirit in check until precisely midnight on that date. He rolled with that for about three years until he realized that if they were awake at midnight, it was still ten o'clock on the West Coast, and therefore it was not December first until it was December first across the entire contiguous forty-eight states; he hadn't been able to get her to make allowances for Hawaii and Alaska.
"Are you ready?" Her eyes danced, and he found it hard to stay annoyed. He answered her by taking a long sip of coffee, letting it scald his tongue and throat. Then he leaned down and kissed her forehead. She shivered at the contrast between his lips, coffee-warm, and the coolness of her skin. He noticed a soft flush color her cheeks.
"Now I'm ready," he said with a grin. "Lead the way, Captain Hera."
She took him by the hand and marched him down the hall to the living room. Boxes of decorations lay scattered everywhere.
"Hera," he groaned, "I thought you were going to wait for me to help you drag all this out?" He eyed the Christmas tree in its box, very well aware of where it had been stored, how heavy it was, and how difficult it must have been for her to move alone. "Did you sleep at all?"
She shrugged, tossing her head. "Time and tide wait for no man."
Translation: No, she had not slept.
He folded his arms across his chest smugly. "I'm calling it. Eight o'clock. You'll be crashed out right there on the couch."
She threw him a sardonic look. "You should be so lucky." She grabbed her car key from its hook on the wall and expertly used it to slice through last year's packing tape on the Christmas tree box. She threw open the flaps and a cloud of glitter and artificial snow puffed in her face, much to Kanan's amusement.
"Last year you said we could get rid of the flocked tree," he laughed. "Remember that?"
She was coughing and sputtering, trying to wipe the stuff out of her eyes. "I didn't mean it," she managed finally. She peered at him through glitter-dusted lashes. Some had settled in her hair too, Kanan noticed. She smiled. "Just think how pretty it'll be when we're done."
"Yeah," he grunted, trying not to find her insanely attractive. (Trying and failing.) "Just think what a mess we'll have to vacuum when we're done."
"It won't be so bad." She fished in the box and pulled out the top section of the tree, holding it out to him. "If you put the tree together, I'll do the lights."
He wanted to protest, but it was too late, because she was already ben over a plastic tub, shoulders-deep in strings of lights. Kanan grumbled a sigh and set to work. The tree wasn't hard to assemble; the real trick was arranging all the branches just right so that there were no "holes," as Hera called them. Kanan's thinking was that if you could look at the Christmas tree and see straight through to the wall, then you should just stick a decent-sized ornament to fill the gap and problem solved. Hera preferred the tree to look nice and robustly full before putting ornaments on. Her way was much more work-intensive, but, he had to admit, more aesthetically pleasing.
He wasn't going to tell her that, though.
"It's dark outside," he grumbled. "I should still be in bed sleeping, not having my hands poked to death by thousands of malicious tree needles. It itches, Hera."
"Then you can use some of my good lotion when we're done," she said absently. He glanced over to find her engrossed in her task: untangling a string of lights and going nearly cross-eyed doing it. "There!" She straightened out a series of complicated knots and snarls, looping a length of lights around her shoulders. Her brows knit together in concentration as she checked for loose bulbs and exposed wires. "Now we'll see…" She trailed off as she leaned over to plug the lights in, smiling exultantly when they all lit up.
Kanan found himself dumfounded by the way the soft light glowed on her skin and seemed to make her hair a richer auburn. "Hera, have I told you you're beautiful?" He blurted, unable to stop himself.
Her mouth quirked. "Not lately," she said softly. "But that doesn't mean you can't start now."
He rolled his eyes, fighting a grin. "We could put the Christmas tree decorating on hold and I could flirt with you. If you want."
"Mmm." She pretended to consider. "Pass."
"Your loss." He stepped back from the tree, finally finished with the branches. "Ready for lights."
"Perfect." She extended a hand and he hauled her out of the floor. She stood on tiptoe and brushed their lips together in a barely-there kiss, smiling when his face turned red. "Let's get this party started."
The party wasn't a party at all, but five thousand hours—give or take—of arranging the lights, garland, ornaments, and star to Hera's specifications. Then came the various other decorations around the apartment: stockings, Hera's steadily-growing collection of winter-themed snow globes, mistletoe (under which they rendezvoused several times), etc., etc. They stopped around sunrise, nestled on the couch with fresh cups of coffee. Kanan, having slept at least some, was holding up well, but Hera was slowly fading. She barely seemed to notice when he rescued her mug, tipping precariously in her hands, and set it on the coffee table.
"What's on the agenda for the rest of the day?" He asked hopefully. "A nap?"
"Huh-uh." She shook her head. "It's Saturday and December and the first of the month. The Christmas flea market will be open in a couple of hours and it'll be nuts, so we'll want to get there as soon as possible. And then I thought—" She stopped, yawning violently. "I thought we could go skating downtown tonight."
He snorted. "That all sounds very Hallmark."
"'Tis the season." She yawned again and lay her head on his chest. She was still and silent for long enough that he thought she'd dropped off to sleep. "I know you're not big on holidays," she murmured after a while.
"They've grown on me." He thought of life before Hera, when he'd found it hard to enjoy anything at all, let alone a consumer-driven holiday he'd had no friends or family to spend with.
"I—I hate Christmas Day, you know." She said it quietly, like she was ashamed. His jaw fell open.
"You?" He brushed her hair aside, peering down into her face. He frowned. "I feel like that's exhaustion talking."
"No, I mean it. I love the Christmas season—the warmth and bustle and nostalgia of it all. I just—Christmas day is sad, that's all."
"Let me get this straight. You—Hera 'Put Up the Christmas Tree at Two in the Morning' Syndulla—don't like Christmas day."
"I just don't like when it's all over," she explained with a sigh. She tapped her fingers on his leg, pensive. "There's this whole season of waiting and anticipating Christmas magic and then it's just kind of…over and you have to put it all away. That sense of…Christmas magic dissipates and leaves the bleakness of January in its wake. December twenty-sixth comes and it's just kind of flat, that's all."
"I mean…yeah." Kanan didn't know what to say. He forgot sometimes that there existed a starry-eyed idealist beneath Hera's order and practicality. He shook his head; whenever he started to feel he knew her inside and out, she threw him for a loop. It never failed. "But listen—we have almost a whole month to enjoy all that Christmas…stuff, right?"
She tipped her head back to fix him with a mock-glare. "Kanan Jarrus, if you think my sudden admission of holiday blues is going to get you out of doing all our December stuff, you are dead wrong."
He held up his hands. "Hey, I'm not trying to get out of all the 'December stuff,' and I'll have you know that I've been looking forward to the drink-hot-chocolate-and-walk-around-fancy-neighborhoods-looking-at-rich-people-decorations thing for months."
"Yeah?" A slow smile lifted her mouth.
"Yeah. And who knows—maybe this year the magic will stick around after the twenty-fifth."
"Maybe." She paused before she added slyly, "You'll be my New Year's kiss, won't you? It might help my post-Christmas pessimism, knowing I have at least that to look forward to."
"Hmm." He traced her lips with a thumb. "I could be your right-now kiss, if you really think it'd help. Wouldn't want you in a slump before Christmas, either."
Her breath caught in her throat when his fingers brushed her collarbone and she nodded. "It couldn't hurt."
He drew her close and kissed her then, long and slow, until they were both flushed and breathless and hopeful that maybe, maybe this year would be the year with the kind of Christmas magic Hera dreamed about. Of the two of them, Kanan was a little more hopeful; he had some very specific plans for this Christmas.
When December twenty-sixth came, Hera was wearing a simple engagement ring on her finger and Kanan was wearing a near-permanent grin. The season had turned out to be just as magical and memorable as they hoped it would be, and the promise of many more to come kept their hearts joyful long into the new year.
A/N: Fluff overload and I'm sorry if it was cheesy or too much, but I just needed to see these babies happy, y'all. Especially at Christmas.