england / december 1951

word count: 1,161

au in which the train crash never happened. eustace and jill are eighteen.

xXx

"Oh, and by the way, what do you want for Christmas?" asked Jill as she ducked into the cab beside Eustace, shaking the snow from her hair and slamming the door behind her as they pulled away from the train station.

He laughed. "I've been home for three minutes and that's what you're thinking about?" He propped one boot up on the heap of university luggage in his footwell and pulled his gloves off, collar still turned up high around his ears as sandy hair fell nearly down to his jaw, snow-specked from the storm outside.

"Oh, I've been agonizing over it for weeks, you're so difficult to buy for!"

He shrugged. "I don't really want anything."

"That's the problem," she whined, and he laughed again.

"Just don't get anything, then, I don't mind."

"Oh, Scrubb, I couldn't." She shot him a scandalized look and leaned ahead to the cabby. "Take us to the shopping district, please."

"Yessum."

Eustace shook his head, but he could not escape Jill's enthusiasm as the snow blanketed Cambridge and she tipped the cabby threepence to wait outside, dragging him by the hand into a massive department store.

"What about these?" She held up a decorative pair of gold-rimmed spectacles and tried them on her own face for size.

Eustace glanced over her focused expression with amused uncertainty. "I think I'll look as batty as the Professor."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"I don't even wear glasses."

"Well, you could put them to the side of your desk or something, make people think you're classy and intelligent."

He pursed his lips. "I like to think I can do that without implying I'm blind."

"Hey, Peter wears reading glasses!"

"Nobody ever said he could see."

Jill huffed and put the spectacles back on their rack, marching off down the aisle, and Eustace followed with a tiny smirk.

"What about this jumper?" She leaned over a display to peer at the price of a maroon knit.

He wrinkled his nose. "Looks like the one Mother got me last year."

"Oh, definitely not that, then." She kept walking, and Eustace jogged to catch up, wandering through aisles and turning sharply every few minutes when something new caught her eye, the pattern repeating endlessly through a pair of fluffy socks, a deeply uninspired paperweight, an array of hats that Eustace insisted only made him look like a homeless paperboy, and lastly Jill's desperate attempt to sell him on gingerbread cookies, though he'd never particularly picked up a taste for them.

"Ugh, it isn't as if I can get you peppermints, I bet you've got a pocket full of them right now."

His sheepish smirk gave him away without words.

Jill sighed and gazed hopelessly over the sweets display, brown fur coat tucked snugly up to her ears, hair fixed back with a tiny red bow, lips tinted just the faintest shade darker than usual. Her honey-brown eyes fixed on a box of assorted holiday chocolates and she sighed again very softly to herself.

Eustace reached past her and snatched it up, tucking it under his arm. "We may as well go now, if you're done."

She looked up at him and furrowed her brow. "You want that?"

"No, but you do."

"I— when did this become about me?"

He grinned. "At least one of us is easy to buy for."

"Well, that doesn't help me find anything for you! I've only got a week left!"

"You'll come up with something. You can think over chocolates." He led the way to the register before she could protest, and paid before she could argue him out of it.

They stepped back out onto the blustery sidewalk, taxi still waiting at the curb as other pedestrians bustled past them, and she huffed.

"Where else am I supposed to go? You already have all the books I can think of, and you don't listen to music."

"I listen to some music."

She crossed her arms. "Like what?"

He opened his mouth to answer, but second-guessed himself.

"See? You don't even know."

"You didn't give me a chance!"

"Come on, Scrubb, you must want something."

"I'm gonna toss you into that snow drift if you keep asking." He grabbed her by the waist and she squealed, hands flying up to clutch his shoulders and anchor herself to him as the shopping bag swung from his arm.

She choked out a giggle in spite of her whining tone. "Hey, that's not fair! I'm only trying to be a good friend! You're the last one left on my list, I've already bought for the Pevensies, and—"

"You got something for Edmund?"

"Of course I got something for Edmund."

"What is it?"

"Well, I can't tell you!"

He tightened his grip in mock threat. "You have to."

"Eustace Clarence Scrubb," she laughed, "are you jealous?"

"What? Of course not, what's there to be jealous about?"

"Well, he is tall, and handsome, and very smart—"

"I'm all those things too!"

Jill rolled her eyes. "That's bold, coming from someone so stubborn and obnoxious that he can't even tell me what he wants for Christma—"

He cut her off with a kiss.

Jill's heart skipped a beat and she would have stumbled back had he not already been clutching her waist; had she not already been gripping his neck as their lips interlocked with a burst of heat in the frigid cold.

Her mind went blank.

A second later Eustace pulled back with a tiny gasp, snowflakes fluttering into pale hair overhanging clear grey eyes as they flicked up into hers, and a furious blush rushed into her cheeks.

She stammered wordlessly, heart hammering, lost in a daze for an instant as the world bustled on around them.

All at once she became aware of the heat of his neck under her fingers, the strength in his arms clutching her tight, the distinctly Narnian look of his hair hanging loose over sharp freckled cheekbones. She'd always known him so well by his mind, it seemed strange that he had a body, too.

She breathed for what felt like the first time in a thousand years, and he watched her earnestly as she choked at last "But seriously though, what do you want for Christmas?"

Eustace barked a sharp laugh and Jill smiled involuntarily at the grin that flashed over his face, the faintest dimple peeking out from his pale cheek, the corners of his sparkling eyes crinkling just as they always had, though she thought suddenly that she'd never paid nearly enough attention.

And she stood on tiptoe to close the distance between them again, and kissed him as his cold fingers threaded up through her hair against her scalp.

And neither of them cared that they stood in the middle of the busiest sidewalk in Cambridge just a week before Christmas for all the world to see.

In fact, they rather forgot about the rest of the world altogether.