"CC," Niles began.
CC tilted her head and kissed the underside of his jaw. "Yes?"
"Do you know," continued Niles, "this will be my first real Christmas?"
CC pulled back to look at him. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I've never celebrated Christmas the way they do in movies. The way the Sheffields do. With the tree and caroling, and stockings and presents on Christmas morning. Christmas was always a… difficult time for me."
CC snorted. "Bet you it was worse for me."
Niles snorted. "Bet it wasn't."
"How much?" asked CC.
"How much what?"
"How much do you want to bet that my Christmases were worse than yours?"
Niles barked out a sharp laugh, then sobered when CC raised a stern eyebrow. "Are you serious?"
"Almost always," CC deadpanned.
"All right," replied Niles, smiling a little sadly. "You know the prank we're planning to pull on the Sheffields at Christmas dinner? If I win, I get to be the one to set it off."
CC whistled low. "That's a huge forfeit. That prank is going to be one for the ages."
"Are you in, Babcock?"
"Lay it on me, Butler Boy. How was Christmas so terrible for you?"
Niles eased CC's head back against his shoulder and settled their entwined bodies back into the cushions.
"I was always working," he began. "You know I was born on the Sheffield estate in England, where my parents were servants. My mother worked in the kitchens, and my father was an underbutler. The Sheffields were good and fair employers, but they loved to entertain, so Christmas was a busy time in their household. They threw lavish Christmas parties every year. You would have loved those parties, you elitist social climber," Niles added, pressing a kiss to the top of his wife's head. "They were full of pureblood aristocrats."
"Purebloods are my favorite kind."
Niles chuffed out a laugh. "Well. Servitude in England is much like aristocracy – you're born into your title, and you never really develop an identity outside of your position. My father was an underbutler, and his father was an underbutler, and presumably his father was as well. So when I was born, my fate was determined. I might as well have been a butler from birth."
Niles shifted slightly and held CC closer.
"I began serving as soon as I could toddle. My parents would send me into the Sheffield nursery to deliver toys to Jocelyn and Maxwell and their cousins, while the staff watched. Everyone was delighted – I was a natural." Niles smirked self-deprecatingly.
"So the Sheffields would throw these lavish Christmas parties, which meant that the entire staff – and especially my parents – were overworked and exhausted for a month before and afterward. I helped in the kitchens as a child, and when I was old enough to learn how to blend in, I held trays of hors d'oeuvres. The trick is to look refined enough to fit into the aristocratic environment, but generic and plain enough not to call attention to oneself. Like a piece of furniture."
CC smiled ruefully into her husband's shoulder.
"So that was it. The servants worked their fingers to the bone every Christmas, and since I can't remember a time when I wasn't a servant, Christmas has always meant exhaustion and anxiety and, well, anonymity. Trying to pretend that I was an automaton rather than a little boy, and trying not to let on that I saw the Sheffield children stuffing themselves with cookies on Christmas eve and opening mounds of gifts on Christmas morning, while I scrubbed their dishes from the night before."
CC tightened her right arm around Niles' chest and threaded the fingers on her left hand into his hair. "Did you parents remember to wish you a merry Christmas, at least?" she asked him quietly.
"They did," he replied. "They did. And they always managed to come up with some present for me, even when they really had nothing to give. One year my mother knitted a sweater for me, and one year my father borrowed a valet's bicycle and taught me how to ride it. I just… I couldn't help noticing the disparity between my childhood and the Sheffields', especially the year when old Mr. Sheffield gave Max his first car. That year, my mother gave me a tin of ginger snaps."
"Ginger snaps are your favorite," remarked CC, stroking her husband's hair.
"Ginger snaps are not a Rolls Royce," replied Niles. He turned his nose into CC's hair and pressed a kiss to her temple. "All right, witch. Your turn. How was Christmas so terrible in the wealthy, privileged world of Chastity Claire Babcock?"