At Christmas time,
it's hard, but when you're having fun,
There's a world outside your window,
And it's a world of dreaded fear,
Where the only water flowing is a bitter sting of tears.
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom,
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you.
Do they know it's Christmas? Band Aid.
Esme busily flitted around the Cullen's rarely used, until recently, kitchen. She juggled various baking trays full of mince pies, gingerbread men and festive shaped cookies from the oven to various cooling racks around the room. Whilst elbow deep in yet more dough, the timer on the oven beeped, earning a groan from Esme. It was then that she spotted Jasper leaning idly in the doorframe, a lazy smile on his face.
"I'll get it," With a role of his eyes, Jasper strode over to the oven and retrieved the baking tray and adding the contents to the growing mountain of festive treats. "Esme, seriously, who are you cooking for? The whole population of Washington? I know Renesmee's growing fast but..." Jasper sniffed a cookie "eugh," he tossed it aside.
Esme shot him a look, "Are you just gonna stand there and insult my cooking or are you going to help me?"
"Gutted dude!" Emmett shouted as he sped past the kitchen door, en route to the TV.
"Yeah, I hope you had fun dressing up as the Sugar-Plum fairy for Rosalie!" He shot back, earning a snigger from Rosalie upstairs.
"Edward! Get out of my head!" Emmett harrumphed onto the sofa, flicking inhumanly fast through the channels before settling on a cheesy Christmas movie.
Jasper smirked and Esme didn't fail to notice. It wasn't so often this side of Jasper got out; she was sure the festive spirit was affecting him as much as it was her. Whatever it was that brought out this side of Jasper, she wanted to keep it alive as long as possible.
"Jasper, why don't you go and pick up the shopping for me? Get some fresh air? The list is on the table," Esme suggested, not really giving Jasper room to object.
Jaspers eyes bulged at the list, although honestly he wasn't surprised and glided out to the car.
Jasper pushed the overfilled trolley round the supermarket, ticking off the obscene amount of food that he was required to buy. As he declined another cup of mulled wine – not quite his drink of choice – and mince pie, he approached the butcher counter. The hanging joints of meat always made Jasper uneasy, although up there hung some of his usual prey; Venison, the smell of the stagnant blood tended to put him off. Nevertheless, Jasper put in his order, collected the turkey and placed it in the trolley without so much as a second glance from the surrounding humans who did not seem to notice the lack of breathing on his part.
As he rounded the corner towards the frozen section, Jasper was hit but a familiar wave of emotions; unhappiness, hunger and... was that indecisiveness? Jasper navigated through the hoards of people towards the freezers, where he spied a familiar head of raven black hair. She must have come straight from work, Jasper thought - not many people tended to wear red and green striped tights and curly toed shoes shopping.
He approached her, watching as she compared two roast dinner-for-one dinners from the supermarkets' discount brand. She looked at each in turn, then their price tags before closing her eyes and sighing resignedly.
"Why don't you just buy both?" Jasper joked, while noticing the skip in her heart beat as he made her jump as he began talking.
"My paycheck isn't exactly the largest," Alice replied sheepishly. Jasper felt the embarrassment rise up inside her before she pushed it back down again.
"So Santa isn't taking good care of his elves?"
"So it would seem," she murmured, placing both meals back into the cabinet. Intrigued, Jasper followed Alice down the aisle, trying to maintain light conversation. He watched as she ended up placing a small plain pizza and a packet of turkey ham into her trolley. Jasper started to feel guilty about the amount of food he had in his trolley just for one girl (and the usual drop in werewolf...) Alice stole a look into his trolley and he felt a longing and a slight hunger, but again she pushed the emotions away.
"My mum always buys loads – it was my turn to shop this year," Jasper tried to explain the army-sized rations he was buying. He felt a pang of jealously from her which she quickly pushed away.
"That's nice,"
"Well, all this food will probably go to waste," Jasper felt an emotion from her he couldn't even recognise; was it hunger? Jealously, sadness? Either way he was impressed at how well she handled them, it seemed as if she had grew accustomed to her strong emotions.
"Turkey sandwiches all round then," she replied with a slight smile, but he could sense that she was uncomfortable. Jasper was again taken aback – inside her emotions were in such turmoil yet she replied so light-heartedly!
At just the wrong moment, the tannoy announcement declared the approaching closing time to the late shoppers.
"Well, I'll see you soon then?" Jasper asked hopefully – he couldn't believe how attached he was getting to this human. He didn't think of her as just 'another human' anymore and he couldn't believe it.
"Um, ok, yeah, er, Merry ... Christmas?" She ducked her head shyly and scuttled away with her small basket.
"And Alice?" She turned, her face slightly reddened as people turned at the sound of her name being called down the aisle. Jasper walked forwards and handed her a small piece of paper with his phone number on it.
"Call me if you need anything. Anything," She mumbled an embarrassed – yet grateful – thankyou and dashed away to the checkout.
Jasper felt the small amount of hope within her from their previous meeting grow; he was determined to one day make it overcome the other emotions that were whirling away inside her.
As he caught a small smile from her over the checkouts, Jasper decided that he was beginning to like this human facade of Christmas just a little bit more.
Merry Christmas Eve Eve! I have no idea why this took me like... 2, 3 years to update? Whatever. I would love to finish this in time for Christmas (2011) but then again I said that for the last update, last Christmas so...
I'm useless, I know. Real life's being a bitch and there's not much we can do about that...
Yeah, will reeaalllyy try to update but yeah.
Merry Christmas!
