It was at about three in the morning when Shiro texted me. I was still awake, reading a lengthy novel when some time or another, I heard him typing on his phone through our apartment's thin bedroom walls. I had already been anticipating Shiro's text when my phone buzzed seconds later.

'Hey are you still awake?'

'yeah. are you okay?' I texted back.

I bookmarked my novel with a teal piece of card and set it down next to me on my bed. When I heard Shiro's generic 'fwoosh!' ringtone I sat up straight in my bed, cracking my back in the process. I then pressed my ear up to the wall separating Shiro and I. Sure enough, the familiar click-clacking of the touchscreen keyboard made its way to my ears, the three dots at the bottom of our texts popping up as soon as I heard so.

'Actually I'm using my data so is it alright if we go to a room and talk?'

'mine or yours?'

'I'll be in your room in 5 mins.'

I smiled.

After taking a deep breath, I wriggled myself out of bed. I loosely threw on a red, oversized jumper over my sports bra. In the dim, yellow light of my bedroom, I could barely find the jumper's head hole and initially put it on upside-down. Nice.

I sat on the edge of my bed, dangling my legs off of it. My feet didn't even touch the floor. Shiro's definitely would, though. He's a tree—well, at least, to me he is. Every time he walks through the doors in our apartment he risks bashing his head on the door frames. If he does that again, we're actually going to have to pay for it, not sweet-talk our landlady into letting it 'slip under her radar' again.

True to his word of five minutes, I soon heard two consecutive knocks on my door.

"Emelia?" Shiro pushed open the door slightly, poking his head through it. "Permission to enter?"

I nodded, pushing myself back up on my bed so I could cross my legs. "Access granted…as long as you don't hit anything."

Shiro closed the door and waved his hands around, squinting. "I'll try, but the lighting in here's pretty…dull," he said, moving towards the bed.

"I think you'll manage."

As Shiro plopped down on my bed, my mattress dipped at the shift in weight. I raised one of my sleeve-clad hands up to my lips and grinned from underneath its shelter. I couldn't see him all that well in the dark, but I could tell that he was probably grinning, too. He ran a hand through his hair, trying to keep my eye contact. I looked down at my duvet, breaking it before it even had the chance to begin.

"So," Shiro started, "Lance texted me."

"Ah, yeah. I heard your ringtone go off."

"Aha…" His low voice trailed off sheepishly. "You heard that?"

"Well…I mean, you never put your phone on silent when you go to sleep…and the ringer itself is really loud…and our rooms are right next to each other, so…"

There are times that I wish I didn't ramble. Nobody wants to hear me mumbling on about things as small as whether or not I heard a phone go off at three in the morning. Nobody asked me to justify myself; I didn't need to make an excuse. I could have just said 'yes' and he would've taken that as a valid answer. Shiro's Shiro; he understands and listens to me, no matter the length of my spiels.

"Gotcha." He paused for a moment. He cleared his throat, covering his mouth with his prosthetic right arm. I watched as his metallic fingers curled up near his mouth, then unfurl when he brought his arm back down to his lap. "Anyways," he continued, "Lance asked me to come to the city with him and Keith tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow as in the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth?"

"Twenty-fourth."

It was my turn to pause. I clasped my hands together down in the centre of my crossed legs, twiddling my thumbs. "Isn't that Christmas Eve?"

"Yeah." Shiro shifted slightly closer to me on my bed. "Well, uh, actually, Lance didn't really ask me if I wanted to come with them; he just…told me I had to."

"Oh." My response may have been mundane, yet it was also perfectly acceptable. I looked back up at Shiro, whose head was no longer tilted in my direction. "Why?" was the only other word I managed to say.

Shiro sighed, leaning back on both of his hands. "They got stranded at a hotel and lost their Mykis. They need someone to pick them up." He grinned again. "Plus, you know how it's been forever since they've last seen each other?"

I nodded in reply.

"Well, I dropped Keith off at the train station today to pick up Lance, and then he texted me that he would be spending the whole day with him—not surprisingly."

"How're they going? Is the long-distance thing working out for them?"

"From as far as I can tell, they're doing great. I mean—" Shiro chuckled (which was, to say the least, absolutely adorable), "—I couldn't even separate them the last time I saw them together…And they did also just spend a night together in a hotel, so…"

No more needed to be said for the both of us to get the picture. I nodded and went back to looking down at the duvet. I really didn't want any unnecessary images about a pair of lovey-dovey boyfriends invading my head.

Shiro once again coughed into another balled fist, sitting up straight. "As Keith's guardian, I have to take care of him, so I have to pick them up from the hotel and take them wherever they need."

I swallowed thickly. "Right." Then, it clicked with me. "Shiro, are we…I mean, are you…Christmas…"

Shiro said something incomprehensible from behind his hand. Along with his mumbling, I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying.

"Ah…pardon?"

"Would you…like to spend Christmas with me—us?"

I placed a hand on my chest. My heart allegedly missed several beats.

At first, it didn't fully register with me.

Christmas? Shiro? Me?

Together?

"I—we'll be with Keith and Lance," Shiro sputtered before I could say anything. He quickly put both of his hands up, waving them around. "That's—that's the reason why he texted me: he wanted me to be their chauffeur around the city for Christmas—well, Christmas Eve. They told me I could bring someone with me, so…"

Even in the dark, I could tell that Shiro was searching for my eyes. I tried my best to not disappoint him.

"You don't have to, of course," he continued. "It's Christmas, of all things, and your first one without any strings attached. Plus, I know you prefer to stay at home most of the time, and crowds aren't really your thing…"

"But…I think that if I stay with you, then I'll be okay."

Panic. Panic. Panic.

Alarms bells and sirens immediately went off in my head. Flashes and vivid images of people yelling 'Don't panic!' whilst wildly throwing papers around their offices were the only things my mind played on repeat. I tore my hand away from my chest and threw it back into my lap.

"I—I, uh…I didn't—"

A warm hand gently placed itself atop of my right thigh. The back of my scalp began to tingle, and the sensation spread to the rest of my head and face like wildfire. I was forever grateful that I could hide behind the thick curtain of darkness, for if I wasn't, I'd never be able to live my facial expression nor presumed redness down.

"Relax, Emelia. I know what you mean," Shiro somehow said calmly despite the crack in his voice. I weakly bit down on the insides of my cheeks, furrowing my eyebrows. His lingering touch and low voice sent a shiver down my spine.

How long had his hand been there for?

"So, you…would like to spend Christmas with m—us?" Shiro asked once more.

I nodded. "Y-Yeah."

"Great!"

Shiro finally took his hand off my thigh, and I didn't know if I was relieved or disappointed. He spun himself around and planted his feet on the floor.

"I'll set an alarm for ten in the morning," he explained. "If our walls are as thin as you say, then you should be able to hear it just fine."

I giggled. My sleeved hand flew to my mouth in response.

"Okay. What time are we leaving?"

"Let's see…"

Standing up, Shiro let out a groan. He then began to hum in thought, stretching his back. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the back of him despite the only things I could see were a pair of sweatpants and a huge, oversized sweater that was of an indistinguishable colour. I could only imagine his muscles contract and release with each of his movements, and—

Before I could get ahead of myself, Shiro interrupted my thoughts.

"Keith and Lance should be ready to go at any given moment, but there's a lot of other things they want to do, too." He exhaled, then turned towards me. "How does eleven thirty sound?"

I nodded, smiling. "Great."

Shiro walked towards the door and opened it. "Good. I'll see you tomorrow—or, rather, later today."

"Yeah. Oh, by the way…what do I wear?"

I immediately wanted to kick myself for asking such a shallow thing. 'What do I wear?' Only truly superficial people ask that sort of thing to another person.

"Whatever you'd like," Shiro answered predictably. He slid himself into the gap between the door and doorframe, poking his head out so that it was all I could see of him. "But I did hear that it's going to be colder than usual tomorrow, so…maybe something warm."

I chuckled. "Shiro, I'm basically immune to the cold."

He cleared his throat again. He looked down at his feet, then back at me. "Yes, I know that, but I don't want you getting sick—especially not during Christmas week."

"Yes, Dad," I teased.

In the bright white light of the hallway, I could finally see Shiro smile for certain. My dim lamp light didn't do it justice. His eyes – charcoal-black yet warmer than the sun – crinkled at the corners and seemed to dance along with his lips. The white portion of his fringe fell over his eyes adorably, resembling the face of a newborn puppy. Gorgeously, his lips curved upwards, the right side a tad higher than the left.

"Goodnight, Emelia," he said softly.

"Goodnight, Shiro."

After he closed the door, I reached for my book and threw it on the floor. I crawled underneath my duvet and snatched a nearby pillow from its spot, hugging it as tight as I could. I buried my face into it, smiling uncontrollably. It took all of my strength and self-control to suppress the thoughts I so desperately wanted to vocalise whilst he was there before me—a hard feat, it turned out to be.

I began to wish myself to fall asleep as quickly as I could so that the better part of Christmas Eve would come as soon as possible. But before I did so, as soon as I heard Shiro's socked feet pad down the hallway and back into his room, my lips moved on their own and my voice acted against my will.

In the dark, I quietly mumbled, "Love you, Shiro," secretly hoping that he'd hear me and smile.

Author's Note: This chapter was fun to write, as I got to play around with how much Emelia and Shiro stuttered when they were flustered. (Now that I think about it, that sounds quite sadistic, doesn't it?) Oh, and by the way, Mykis are Australia's train passes, kinda like how England has their subway passes and all that. I decided to set this in Australia because that's where I live, therefore I can write without the worry of trying to convert our lingo into other cultures'.

See you in the next update! 'Till then.