A/N: Some of the incidents in this story actually happened to me a couple years ago. xD It was great fun, but hurt like hell afterwards. And now I have almost three feet of snow to go sledding in. Yay! I've noticed that my oneshots seem to be getting shorter... D: But I think the shorter ones are better than the longer ones. Also, I always seem to miss the deadline by a few minutes. Gah. Anyway, I hope you all like this one! :) If you have any requests, please tell me. I don't know what I'm going to do for the next few pairings anyway.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harvest Moon or any of its characters or plots. This fanfiction is merely for recreational purposes.
Sleigh Ride
December 21, 2008
Jack x Claire
I was cleaning up my kitchen when someone knocked on the door. Outside, Jack was standing in the snow with a couple sleds, and without waiting, he invited himself in and plopped down onto the couch. "Morning, Claire."
"Hi, Jack," I greeted and went back to the kitchen. Jack owned a farm in Forget-Me-Not Valley, and we'd been seeing each other for a few years. It had become just a normal routine of visiting on the weekends, and this just happened to be his weekend to come over to Mineral Town. After pulling off his scarf, coat, and hat, he got up and walked to stand behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist as I scrubbed away at some dishes.
"So, I noticed that you never gave me a proper 'hello'," he murmured in my ear, and turned me around to face him. I looked up at him with a smile and stood up on my tiptoes; he leaned down to close the gap between our lips.
Pulling away, he grinned and mussed up my blonde hair in his normal cocky manner. "So, what say you and me go sledding today?"
"Sledding? Oh, I don't know, Jack," I said doubtfully. Not only was the walk up to Mother's Hill a long one, but I had memories of some bad sledding incidents as a kid. Specifically, ones concerning crashing and trees.
"Aw, come on, Claire," Jack begged. "It'll be fun, I promise."
There must have been something about the way he said it because I agreed. That, or his big brown eyes and auburn hair were so adorable that I spaced out and nodded absentmindedly. Crap.
So I eventually found myself standing hand in hand with Jack at the top of Mother's Hill. Before all this, I had never realized how tall Mother's Hill was, and holy cow was it tall. "Um, Jack? Maybe this wasn't such a good idea…"
"Nonsense!" Jack whipped out a sled made of foam and plastic and placed it on the snow in front of us. "Do you want to sit on the front or the back?"
I sighed and mumbled, "Back."
Trying to get ourselves on the sled proved to be rather difficult. More than twice, the sled decided that it wanted to leave without us, but Jack managed to catch it before it went too far.
We were almost positioned on the sled when I accidentally leaned forward a little too far, and it all went downhill from there – pun intended. Jack was sitting almost cross-legged in the front and I was hanging onto him for dear life as we raced towards the bottom on our flimsy piece of plastic.
Too scared even to scream, I watched with wide eyes as we missed trees by millimeters and flew off bumps in the snow, almost flipping over. To sum it up, this was a ride of death. I even heard Jack yell a couple times.
And then one of the edges hit a tree and we were gliding backwards on the snow. I heard Jack curse under his breath and he looked over his shoulder to see where we were going.
All of the sudden, the snow leveled out and I thought it was over. Hah. What a nice ending that would have been. A few seconds later, we were flying through the air, all going in different directions and shouting at the top of our lungs. The snow had merely been a plateau of sorts, and dropped again, sending us into the air.
I landed with a thump in the snow, all the breath knocked out of me. Luckily, the snow was deep enough to cushion my fall – to an extent. I heard Jack land somewhere nearby and I waited for my breath to come back. "Holy shit," I said, loud enough for Jack to hear.
He was kneeling over me in a few seconds, helping me up and brushing the snow off of my face. "Man, that was one hell of a ride. Are you okay, Claire?"
I looked at him blankly for a while and then he waved a hand in front of my face.
"Claire?"
"LET'S GO AGAIN!" I yelled, grabbing the sled and starting to make my way back up the mountain. Jack stared after me in shock and followed not too soon after.