The 12 Days of Christmas
Okay – I always write way too much so this got longer than I expected…so here are the first 3 days of x-mas, the other three will be updated later this evening. Thanks to Eyeon for the great suggestion, which I used for Day 3. This is harder than it seems so any fun ideas are more than welcome!
Also…had some mistakes/discrepancies in the first chapter so I updated that as well. Everything should work out time wise now…and there's also a viable explanation for why the 12 days are happening before Christmas instead of after.
R&R always appreciated!
Day 1
She woke to a noisy house. Living with three men was not something she thought she'd ever do, but over the past 11 months it had become home. They'd started off in a two-bedroom house, but Horace had been nice enough to have a small addition built onto the back of it, affording them each their own bedroom. In hindsight, she would have gladly shared a bedroom with any of her friends, trading hers for a second bathroom instead. But such was life. Three men, one woman, one bathroom. At least they attempted to keep things clean.
Juliet stretched and got out of bed. She threw on a light robe to cover her shorts and tank top. She made her way to the bathroom, and once done, walked into the kitchen. What she found was three men attempting to make pancakes. She realized that the word 'attempt' had taken up permanent residence in her vocabulary.
"That's what I get for the first day of Christmas?" she asked, bringing her entrance to their attention. "The Three Stooges?"
Miles rolled is eyes, Jin laughed and Sawyer glanced over his shoulder to give her a smile and a wink.
"I'd like to think I'm a little more creative than that Blondie," he chuckled, as he carried a steaming pile of pancakes over to the table.
She returned his smile and then lowered her gaze, which brought her to the quick realization that he was walking around the kitchen shirtless. She instantly blushed, thinking about his bronzed skin, wrapped around tight muscles – then blushed even more because she'd been thinking about bronzed skin and tight muscles much too much as of late.
Once they'd all become 'comfortable' with one another, he'd taken to walking around shirtless every morning. At first it didn't faze her, but lately – his comfortable state was slowly driving her crazy. The clinical side of her blamed hormones. He was a healthy, young male who was attractive. She couldn't help her physical response. But then there was the other side of her that just couldn't stop thinking about the man who had been nothing more than a blip on the radar, but now couldn't imagine her life without.
'How did that happen?' She wondered.
Shaking her head she focused on the task ahead. Take pancakes from stack, put on plate, butter, pour syrup, pick up knife and fork, cut, eat. It wasn't until she realized that she was counting the number of times she chewed each bite that she looked around at the men sitting with her. Miles was reading the back of a Dharma cereal box, Jin was doing a crossword puzzle, and Sawyer was looking at her like she had antlers growing out of her head.
"Whahpa?" she asked defensively, her moth full of pancakes. She started chew counting again - trying with all her might not to blush – or to lower her gaze.
He just shook his head and took another bite.
"Nothin' Blondie," he laughed. "Nothin' at all."
After breakfast she showered, dressed and left for work. She'd been working on one of the Dharma Buses all week. Something was wrong with the engine and she couldn't figure out what. The motor pool guys offered to help but she thought taking the engine apart would be a good learning experience for her.
She'd spent the better part of the morning under the bus, and decided a bit of fresh air was in order. She pushed out from under the bus, stood up and turned to pull the door open when she paused. A single daisy was stuck in the drivers side handle.
She laughed and smiled – pulled the flower from the handle and gave it a sniff. It was so simple, but so perfect. She opened the door to see if the engine would turn over and there were two more on the driver's seat, two on the passenger seat and one wrapped around the rearview mirror. Smiling and hopeful, she climbed in and turned the key but … nothing. Sighing she sat back and closed her eyes.
A minute or two later, after regrouping, she gathered the flowers and climbed out of the van – ready to tackle the pesky engine once again. Once out, she shut the door and went to climb back under the van. She stopped when she saw more flowers lying by the back tire.
"How did he…" she wondered as she scooped them up; 6 more by the tire - 12 daisy's in all she counted. She buried her face in them once more, before getting back to work.
He had the late security shift so by the time she got home he had already left for the night.
He got home in the dead of night and was as awake and excited as a kid on Christmas morning. His spirits faltered however as he scanned their small house and didn't see any sign of white daisy's. He brushed his teeth and headed towards bed. As he passed her bedroom, he noticed the door was open just a crack. Peeking in he saw a dozen white flowers in a mason jar on her nightstand. He smiled, and kept walking.
Day 2
He had the day off and they'd decided to meet up for lunch in the cafeteria. By the time he got there, she was already seated with a tray of food. He hopped in line, grabbed a sandwich and went to sit across from her.
"Hey there Sunshine," he greeted as he sat down.
"Hey yourself."
She smiled and blushed slightly, the blushing made him smile – it was something she'd only recently started doing. Before that … he didn't think the woman was even capable of blushing. But whatever it was that was making her blush, he hoped it kept happening, because along with the blush always came that wide smile he'd become particularly fond of.
"Thanks for the flowers, they were perfect."
"Any time," he easily replied.
"Just one question though," she continued.
"What's that?"
"Why 12?" she asked. "Wasn't yesterday the first day of Christmas?"
He smiled and took a bite of his sandwich.
"I told you I wasn't good at doing things the right way," he replied. "Plus, I think when this all ends you'll be happy you waited 'til Christmas to get your partridge in a pear tree."
She laughed, "fair enough."
They continued eating and talking about their day.
As they finished up Sawyer leaned over the table, "Hey I hate to spring this on you last minute but Horace asked me to swing by his house tonight on my way home and I think I might be there awhile. So I'm sorry to say it'll just be you and Larry and Moe for dinner tonight."
She really was living with the three stooges! "That's okay," she replied. "Jin is cooking tonight and he's not half bad at it so I'm not too worried."
"Sorry to leave you high and dry just the same."
"Don't worry," she replied with a mischievous smile. "I'm sure you can make it up to me somehow!"
"We'll see about that darlin'" he laughed as they got up from the table.
He walked her back to the motor pool and headed over to Horace's house.
Later that evening, she walked in the door and found Jin and Miles hard at work in the kitchen. It actually smelled pretty good, which rose her spirits considerably. She walked into her room to change and stacked on her dresser were a bunch of books.
"That's odd," she thought.
But upon closer inspection she realized that they weren't books from the shelf in the living room, they were new books – well, new for the 70's anyway. 11 in all, brand new off the sub, and a few of them she hadn't even read before.
After dinner she settled into 'his' chair with one of the new titles. He found her that way an hour later, so engrossed she hadn't even heard him enter.
"Guess those will keep you busy for awhile," he said.
She jumped, the sound of his voice pulling her out of the book.
"At least a few days," she replied with a smile.
He returned the smile and headed towards his room.
Day 3
Sunday brought a reprieve from work for all, so they decided to get the tree up and decorate the house. Sawyer trimmed the branches off of the bottom of the tree, Jin strung the lights and Miles and Juliet were hard at work stringing popcorn and berries.
Juliet and Jin went to the rec room where they were handing out more decorations, upon returning, she noticed something out of place on the tree. Hanging from the branches were Polaroid pictures. She inched up for closer inspection and saw they were all of… "Radzinsky?" she questioned out loud. Each picture was different and in each picture he was PISSED!
Miles and Sawyer burst out of the kitchen laughing.
"You should have seen him man!" Miles exclaimed. Sawyer just shook his head and kept laughing.
"He stormed into the security station, ranting and raving about god knows what, and all of the sudden, LaFleur picks up the camera and just starts taking pictures." The two were laughing hysterically – they had tears running down their cheeks.
Miles couldn't talk, he was laughing so hard so Sawyer took over. "Each picture I took he got madder 'n madder."
"He tried to attack you!" Miles shouted.
Each picture she looked at got funnier and funnier because Radzinsky's face got redder and redder.
"So eventually he just stormed out, screaming Horace's name," James finished.
"Is that why you had to go to his house yesterday?" she asked.
"Well…" he paused, wiping a tear off his cheek. "It was one of a few reasons. But no big deal if you're worried about it."
"So why did we decorate our tree with them?" she asked.
"Count'em Blondie," Sawyer responded.
One by one she counted the pictures, until reaching a total of, "10?" she asked.
Sawyer laughed. "Yeah, I figure there's no better way to update 10 lords a leapin' than with 10 Radzinsky's a screamin'"
She stared at the tree for another minute then turned towards her friends with a huge grin on her face.
"It's perfect!"
TBC