Merry Christmas, beautiful aliens! Oh, and all you human people too, I suppose.

I don't own nuth'n. Abbie Dabbie owns all the corrections. Merry Christmas darling one!

Christmas Day

Christmas morning was when Nico finally shadow-traveled Will back to his mom's house and they exchanged badly wrapped gifts on the porch as the sun rose behind them.

And then they were somehow holding hands in the weak morning sunlight, frost crunching under their feet and their breath freezing in white clouds that streamed from their mouths; and then Will was pressing his warm lips to Nico's frozen cheek.

Nico stilled in surprise and after a long moment Will pulled back about three inches to look him in the eye. Then Nico leaned in and crushed the gap between them into nothing.

Christmas morning was frozen kisses like snowflakes and syrup and warm breath and mittened fingers clutching together.

Christmas morning was Will stumbling into his house at six A.M. with a stupid smile on his face that didn't wipe off for a week and Nico shadow-traveling to a remote snowy mountain peak and whooping as loud as he could, falling onto his back in the snow and laughing like Will could hear him.

Christmas day was Annabeth being startled awake by Percy jumping on her screaming for presents before dragging her out of bed and waking up Sally and Paul. When they were all up in bathrobes and yawning their jaws loose, Percy went through the rules: stockings first, and then they would go around from youngest to oldest opening their presents one at a time. He put himself in charge of handing out the presents and so spent half the time playing Santa and the other half comfortably squished next to Annabeth in the loveseat; that is, until she reached out with one long tanned leg ending in brand-new fluffy grey socks and drew Percy in for a kiss that left him too stupid to move around anymore.

Everyone got socks – Percy got blue and white striped, blue and yellow striped, and blue and blue striped ones. Everyone else got one color, but in the end they all had a game of sock hockey, at which Paul and Percy lost miserably. Percy also got a Nemo pillowpet, a surfboard, a skateboard and several new shirts. (Most of his had rips, burns and slashes, to the point where they were only held together by a few threads, and Sally was threatening to let him walk around shirtless until he could buy his own.)

All the stocking were stuffed with blue candy and funny shaped soaps. Annabeth immediately started reading one of her new books while Percy played with the ear puffs dangling down from the knitted owl hat he had arranged on her head. She called her dad when everyone took a break for blue blueberry waffles and Sally and Paul made use of their shiny new coffee maker that made the fancy Italian drinks with foam.

Christmas was Piper, Jason, Leo and Calypso crashed out on Piper's ginormous bed at her Dad's, with Festus in suitcase-mode warming their feet, sleeping until Tristan woke them up to watch A Year Without a Santa Claus and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer while the chef made them cinnamon rolls and hot mulled cider like he and Piper did when she was little.

Christmas was kissing in the snow and under mistletoe, it was warm food and warm friends and family; and presents and reindeer and sharing a precious moment with someone you love.

Reviews would make a lovely Christmas present.