Mistletoe Kiss (Two)
Stefan was jerked awake at five o'clock on Christmas Morning. He'd only managed to get to sleep a few hours earlier, having caught part of the Christmas Eve bug from the children, and had spent most of the night staring mindlessly at the ceiling before drifting off to sleep.
"Stefan?" A small voice asked quietly.
Stefan cracked open one eyes to see seven year old Jamie Webber standing there, clutching at his worn baby blanket. "Jamie." He yawned. "What's wrong?"
"Can we open our presents yet?"
"Huh?" He looked past the small boy to the doorway to find Aaron and Lisa staring in hopefully. He wondered vaguely why they were asking him of all people, until a stray memory passed through his consciousness. He vaguely remembered that everyone else barricaded their doors so that /this/ wouldn't happen to them. He'd forgotten, and had therefore been lumbered with a situation that was totally new to him. He wondered for a moment why they hadn't gone to Damon. They liked Stefan, yes, but they adored Damon. Probably because he knew how to deal with them. Stefan could only assume that Damon had decided to lock his own door the night before. He did that occasionally, especially when he went out hunting. Both of them preferred to keep that aspect of their nature as private as possible.
"So, can we?" Jamie asked again, a little nervously.
Stefan groaned, then pulled the blankets back after a moment or two of psyching himself up. It was going to be a long day, he guessed. "I guess you can open your presents from Santa." He yawned again, and couldn't help grinning as all three children yelled in triumph and rushed down to the family room, fighting with each other to get there first. Stefan shook his head, and followed them down.
Hazel and her husband, Sam, found him sprawled half conscious in the over-stuffed chair an hour or so later. He was awake enough to keep an eye on the children, but sleep had called to him, so he'd settled for a light doze.
"Merry Christmas. Welcome to the morning club." Sam grinned, pushing a mug of coffee into Stefan's hand.
"Uh. Yeah. Merry Christmas. Rather not be here at the minute, though." Stefan blinked, and accepted the mug. "Thanks."
"I have no idea if caffeine does anything for you, but you can hope." Sam chuckled, taking a mouthful from his own mug.
"It'll wake me up a little." Stefan replied, taking a tentative sip. Yet again he wondered why he was bothering with this food thing. Damon had said that it made him 'fit in' more with humans and made it easier to hide. Stefan had lasted the past five hundred years without eating on a regular basis, and had told his brother so. Damon just frowned and muttered about how amazing it was Stefan could accept that part of his nature and not the rest, to which Stefan had pointed out the fact that Damon hadn't given up /everything/ human himself if his eating habits were anything to judge by. The pair had sulked at each other for the rest of the day, and neither had given in. It was Jess sending him on a guilt trip that did it. She'd told him that it was when you /couldn't/eat certain nice foods that you appreciated what you were missing out on, and Stefan had felt more than obliged to try when he took into consideration the fact that Jess didn't have any choice in not eating some things. Which still begged the question of /why,/he was doing it. Jess did strange things to him, and he didn't like exploring those emotions, especially so soon after Elena.
"Earth to Stefan." Sam said, waving a hand in front of his face.
"Huh? Oh, sorry. Miles away there." Stefan mustered a smile.
"Maybe you should go back to bed?" Sam suggested sympathetically. "No one else will be up for a few more hours yet."
"No point, really. I've only had an hour or so of sleep. If I sleep now and get up then, I'll be even more tired."
"Sure?"
"Yeah. No big deal, I've had less sleep than this some nights." He winced a little as Lisa shrieked in delight over a Barbie doll. The pitch was a little too high for his tired and sensitive ears. "However, I think I'll go and help Hazel in the kitchen or something. I don't think my ears can take much more of this."
Hazel set him to peeling a bag full of potatoes when he offered his services. He sat at the large wooden table in the centre of the kitchen, deftly peeling away the potato skin and putting the creamy-coloured insides into a large pan of water. Stefan had been told in the weeks coming up to Christmas about the usual celebrations. Christmas dinner was normally held in one of three places, alternating between the Webbers, the Tates and the Thompsons. All the families were close friends, and getting together made it more of a party. Stefan had been surprised to learn that Cookie's mom hosted the Christmas dinner, until he learned that the Tates celebrated the Solstice and exchanged presents on the twenty-first. Christmas day was just an excuse for a party, and neither of the other two families particularly bothered with the religious angle of Christmas, preferring to concentrate on the family aspect. This year the Webbers were hosting the party, and the other two families were expected just before midday.
"How many of these do you want doing?" Stefan asked after a while.
"Do the whole bag." Hazel replied after a moment's thought. "That should be enough to feed nineteen people." She said. "Unless you're not eating?" She asked.
"I'll /try/ to eat." Stefan grinned.
"You shouldn't let Jess pressure you into this if you don't want to do it." Hazel commented. "She can be a stubborn bully at times."
"Really, I don't mind. Besides, Damon's as much to blame, and when he gets it in his head to pressure someone, they have no choice but to back down."
"Unless you're just as stubborn." Hazel laughed.
"Then he resorts to physical coercion."
"Do or die, eh?" Hazel shook her head in mock despair, still laughing.
"Yeah. You want these moving to the stove?" Stefan indicated to the peeled potatoes.
"Please, at the back."
"Anything else need doing?" He asked as he lifted the heavy pan with ease and carried it to the stove.
"There's probably plenty you can do. How about peeling the carrots?"
"Sure. How many?"
"Uh, the..."
"Whole bag." Stefan finished for her, grinning.
"You must be psychic." Hazel laughed, and turned back to making the stuffing for the turkey, humming quietly as she worked. She had a good voice. Mike had inherited his musical talent from his mother, and it was obvious Jess had, too, when she could be enticed to sing, which wasn't often. Hazel Webber was the owner and director of a small music company. Although not in the big league, it made plenty of money. Sam Webber was an architect, working in a small office in Redditch, a branch of a bigger company in the city. Stefan grinned, and set to work, enjoying the sound.
***
Jess crawled out of bed at nine o'clock, roused by music blasting from Damon's room. She stomped out of her room, scratching her head and raking her fingers through her messy hair.
'/There's a Victorian tin
I keep my memories in.
Found it up in the attic,
After looking inside
I find the things that
I'm hiding.
The leaves saved from a mistletoe kiss,
Only nostalgia has me feeling like this,
Like I miss you,
It must be the time of year.
Do you remember December,
It's like a winter green
Beside a diamond stream.
Remember, December,
How does it make you feel inside./'
"Damon!" She yelled, banging on the door. "It's too early!"
The door clicked open, and revealing a grinning Damon, waist wrapped with a towel, hair damp. He was obviously fresh out of the shower.
"Merry Christmas to you, too, Jessamyn." He said cheerfully.
"Yeah. Whatever. Turn the damn music down." He had a nice body. A /very/ nice body. Lean and muscled, flat stomach and a firm chest. Most women would die for that body, Jess might have died for that body. If she wasn't thinking about Stefan instead.
"I swear you're worse in the mornings than I am." Damon rolled his eyes, but turned the volume down a notch anyway. "Besides, everyone else is up. Don't you want to open your presents from Santa Claus?"
"He probably avoided this place in case he ran into you."
"Moi? But I've been /good/ all year." He said, an innocent hurt look on his face.
It didn't wash with Jess. "He's probably scared he'll leave with a few pints less than he came with."
"Too old for my tastes." Damon shrugged, then grinned evilly. "Then again, with the amount of sherry kids around the world leave him, the alcohol level in his blood could have some very /interesting/ side effects."
"You're incorrigible." Jess smiled a little.
"Of course." Damon bowed, and Jess had to make a conscious effort not to look at what was revealed when the towel moved as he did it. She blushed a little, and Damon flashed a huge smile, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. *He probably does.* She thought grimly.
"I'll leave you to it, then." Jess said, coughing a little in embarrassment.
"Thank you kindly." He replied. "Close the door when you leave, if you please." He was still smiling at her. She hastily shut the door behind her, and breathed a sigh of relief as she headed for her room.
((And don't go back to bed. You might as well stay up now.)) Jess winced. She hated it when he did that. It left her ears ringing, and it annoyed her because she couldn't reply. She could /sometimes/ do it with Mike, but the twins operated on a different level to the vampires, and neither of them were psychic like Cookie. So the pair of them suffered in relative silence.
When Jess finally emerged in the family room it turned out that not everyone was up after all, and it was a good half an hour before Paul roused himself from his attic and crawled down to join them. During that time Jess kept shooting Damon annoyed glances for making her get up, while the children became impatient for presents, the ones from 'Santa' earlier on having lost some of their novelty. Jess's initial grumpiness had worn off as the morning went on, and her enthusiasm perked up as the presents were handed out.
The sweaters knitted by Great Aunt Emma were a standing joke amongst the Webber family, and they hadn't escaped them this year. Sleeves were often too long, collars too wide and the colours tended to clash horribly, but everyone wore them for at least that day, just for the humour of it.
The twins' present that Christmas had been a car of their own. They'd been given it a week or so before, having been with their father to pick one out. Mike had been overly impressed with Damon's Ferrari, and had spent the months following his arrival by badgering his parents for a car. They'd finally given in on the condition that the twins shared it. Jess had agreed simply because she thought a car would be handy, and she couldn't think of anything else that she wanted for Christmas. Ferrari it wasn't, but it was still a nice car, metallic grey, on Jess's insistence, to reduce the amount of cleaning it would need. Grey hid dirt well.
"So how's the sweater?" Stefan asked, sitting on the floor next to her.
Jess laughed, flapping a sleeve that was a hand or two too long. "I'm drowning in it."
"Thank God I escaped it, then."
"Ha. I bet she'll remember you guys next year, then you'll be forced to wear them with the rest of us." Jess teased.
"I think I'll develop an allergy to wool, then."
"Vampires don't have allergies."
"Sunlight. That's a definite allergy."
"Good point. Just don't let Aunt Em know, or she'll knit you extra to keep you warm out of the sun."
"How old is she, anyway?"
"Uh, a hundred and seven I /think/."
"A mere child." Stefan joked.
"Don't tell her that, either. She'll batter your ears for lack of respect."
"Maybe I won't meet her then."
"Yeah. She won't measure you up for a sweater then, and you might end up with one the right size."
"I think I can live without." He said, pulling at the sleeve of hers. "You think this thing stretches?" He asked, tugging a little harder.
"No!" She shrieked. "I'll be lost in it if it gets any bigger, and you'll never find me again. After a few years, explorers will find my little skeleton hidden away in the fibres."
"I dunno. I could just unravel it to get to you if it came to that."
"My knight in shining armour." She laughed, and attacked him with a torn strip of wrapping paper. He attacked back, and they dissolved into laughter on the floor.
===
Note: The song 'December' is by All About Eve.
It was pointed out to me that the sherry comment Damon makes might confuse some Americans, as it's apparantly a tradition you don't have. In the UK, it's traditional to leave a glass of sherry and a mince pie by the fire for santa claus (and a carrot for Rudolph for some people).