Christmas Cheer
written for evergrnterrace - her holiday gift-fic!
Okay, I'm sorry in advance for any OOC-ness, and excess of fluff. Hope you enjoy:D
italics are flashbacks...they're my way of distinguishing between the present and the past.
If asked what her favorite holiday was, Kuchiki Rukia would immediately grin and proudly proclaim, "Christmas!"
The carefree spirit surrounding Christmas and New Year's just somehow seemed to fit the cheerful disposition that Rukia normally embodied. She was one to always get into he joyous spirit weeks before Christmas – in fact, as soon as the calendar was flipped to December, Rukia would start whipping up lists of presents to give to people, plans for decorating the spacious Kuchiki mansion in holiday cheer, and humming Christmas tunes not-so-subtly under her breath.
Kuchiki Byakuya had long grown accustomed to these sudden bouts of holiday cheer Rukia liked to spring on him without warning, whether it be hanging a wreath on the door of his study to abruptly propping a pair of reindeer antlers on his before dinner (effectively ruining his kenseikan, mind you). Byakuya had thought Rukia's suddenly good mood when Christmas started getting near was rather annoying, but her always-present grin and infectious laughter started getting to him as he watched the gloomy Kuchiki mansion get transformed into literally, a wonderland with garlands of tinsel and boughs of holly stretching down the hallways for as far as the eye could see.
"Why do you like Christmas so much?" Byakuya asked, eyeing with distaste the long string of blinking multicolored Christmas lights Rukia was valiantly attempting to string over the railing above the main staircase.
Byakuya took in the surroundings of the threshold of the Kuchiki mansion, from the glimmering garlands of tinsel and pine needles adorning the space above the front doors, to the sweet-smelling pine cones placed artfully on the tables next to the doors, to the evergreen tree branches tied to the banister of the staircase, all the fruit of Rukia's hard work.
At last, Rukia managed to loop the lights just so and connect them so they flashed various colors onto the grand marble staircase. She hopped down from the ladder and beamed at Byakuya. "I don't really know why I love this holiday so much," she admitted sheepishly. "It's just…it's just that this holiday cheer, and the carefree spirit floating around in the air gets to me, and it reminds me of the childhood I never really had, so I guess that's why I throw myself into it so much to make sure that I thoroughly celebrate it." She chuckled a bit sadly at her statement before returning to her usually-cheerful self, proceeding to pick up a wreath almost as big as her that had been lying on the floor and carting it over to the main door.
"Give me a hand, will you?" Rukia yelled from the front door amidst the mess of holly berries and pine needles. Byakuya thought that all of the Kuchiki ancestors must have been turning in their graves as he reluctantly stepped over to the doorway and helped Rukia pin up the obnoxiously large wreath on their front door.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Rukia murmured satisfactorily, before she picked up a box of tinsel and walked off, assumedly to go decorate more rooms that hadn't been graced by her holiday cheer.
Byakuya stood in the main entrance, shaking his head and thinking that Rukia truly was special.
"Ten more days until Christmas!" Rukia called out as she lugged a large evergreen tree down the hallway. Byakuya cocked his head at her as he looked up from the paperwork he had been reading.
"Is that our Christmas tree?" he asked in confusion, indicating the tree Rukia was struggling to push down the hallway (and making a mess of dirt down the pristine hallways of the Kuchiki mansion).
"No, of course not," Rukia replied airily, as if the thought of Byakuya thinking that this was their Christmas tree was too much to bear. "This is only going in the parlor – it's quite small, actually. I got a much bigger one to be our main Christmas tree!" With that, she flashed a grin at him and disappeared around the corridor.
Way back when, Byakuya didn't like Christmas all that much. He thought it was another stupid, useless holiday where gifts were exchanged (gifts that he didn't even really want or like in the first place) and people held long, extended parties that were really just a waste of time, and they celebrated the New Year just for the sake of celebrating.
Well, at least that had been his mindset before he had met Rukia.
Rukia tumbled into his dreary life in a mess of holly, cinnamon, pine cones, and tinsel. Byakuya all-too-fondly remembered that very first Christmas, when Rukia had ordered almost fifty boxes of Christmas decorations upon finding out the shocking news that Byakuya didn't own any.
"How many boxes did you order again?" Byakuya asked testily as the deliverymen continued carting in boxes upon boxes of what Byakuya assumed were Christmas decorations.
"Um, I forgot," Rukia said. "Wait, I think it was…fifty- six?" She looked up hopefully at him, but Byakuya thought that his expression must have been dark enough because Rukia immediately looked away, and mumbled something that sounded like "No, it might have been fifty-four."
"What's the big deal about Christmas, anyways?" Byakuya asked, changing the subject when Rukia continued her mutterings, deviating between "fifty-three…?" and "fifty-two".
She perked up at the new subject. "I love Christmas!" she raved. "It's the fun of the holiday season, when it's cold outside, but in the houses it's always warm because of all of the celebrations going on…and you can feel good about giving gifts because during the Christmas season, it's always more about giving than receiving."
She paused to tell one of the deliverymen entering with a new box of Christmas decorations "No, no, no. Those are the Christmas lights; they go over there, not over here with the wreaths and boughs of holly."
Byakuya had chosen this moment to wearily rub his temple, pray to the highest being there was that he wouldn't get disowned by his family because he adopted a mental case, and leave the room as quickly as possible.
He had been awestruck when a few days later, he returned back home from a Hollow-hunting mission and saw that the entire mansion had been transformed into a glowing, shockingly cheerful atmosphere resplendent with flashing strings of Christmas lights, garlands upon garlands of tinsel running amok everywhere, holly and mistletoe strung from every corner, nook, and cranny, and large, bushy wreaths hung on nearly every door.
"It looks beautiful, doesn't it, nii-sama?" Rukia asked, sidling up to him in a Santa hat.
Byakuya didn't want to tell her that it looked amazing, because then she might degrade him even more. Instead, he chose to ask, "What the hell are you wearing?"
She looked affronted at this. "It's a Santa hat!" she replied indignantly.
His mind drew a blank at this. "…Santa?"
"…You don't know who Santa is? Dear god, what happened to your childhood?"
He looked amusedly at her. "I didn't have one," he remarked dryly.
"Well," she said, a surprised look on her face, "I suppose I'll just have to explain everything to you, then. Come on, let's go the kitchen—the cook can give you some of the homemade apple cider I instructed him how to make a few minutes ago—and I'll explain everything to you, okay?"
Byakuya opened his mouth to protest, to tell her that he had things to do and he wanted to rest a bit after that extremely tiring mission, but Rukia smiled at him, Santa hat and all, and surprisingly, Byakuya found himself nodding and following Rukia down the hallway to the kitchens.
Byakuya would never admit it unless under very dire circumstances, but he loved the perky, cheery Rukia that bustled around the mansion (trailing garlands of tinsel and all) during the impending days to Christmas. He was supposed to be stoic and strict as the Kuchiki head, but he found himself attempting to hide a grin as Rukia struggled to hang a large red velvet bow just right on a mirror, or resisting the urge to run over and help Rukia tie mistletoe from the archways in the mansion.
He remembered that Christmas, five long years ago after the first Christmas he had spent together with Rukia.
Byakuya blinked rather owlishly in the dim light. "What are you doing up so early?" he asked. The sun was barely up, but still here Rukia sat in the living room with the giant Christmas tree bedecked with ornaments and lights she had lovingly hung on its branches several days ago.
A fire roared merrily in the hearth (Byakuya couldn't remember the last time any occupant of the house had used the large fireplace in the living room). "I'm waiting to open the presents," Rukia replied solemnly without even turning around to look at Byakuya.
Byakuya had only gotten up at this rather ungodly hour because he had heard footsteps in the hallway that sounded suspiciously like Rukia's heading towards the kitchen/living room area. Naturally curious, Byakuya had very reluctantly left the warm cocoon of his bed and followed Rukia to where she was now, in the living room.
He stifled a yawn as he shuffled over to Rukia and took a seat on the sofa next to where she sat on the floor next to the Christmas tree. "There's a special time to open presents?" he inquired.
Being taichou of the sixth division, Byakuya wasn't required to work on Christmas (unlike the poor lesser shinigami in his division that still had to report to work on Christmas – the Gotei 13 had to be operating at all times, of course) which was why for all the other years he had always awoken at six or seven in the morning (considered quite late already for him, who had been drilled into waking up at five in the morning by his father since the age of eight) and wandered into the dining hall to see Rukia already seated there, usually with her customary mug of eggnog (he couldn't see why Rukia drank up eggnog so much like it was the best drink on Earth – the one time she had gotten him to try a sip, he had promptly spat it out and effectively bruised his dignity with Rukia's ensuing raucous laughter).
"Of course," Rukia replied, looking a bit scandalized because Byakuya didn't know that there was a special time to open presents. "It's either when the sun comes up or when everybody in the house has woken up and gathered around the tree," she explained. She pulled on a strand of hair, still unruly from when she had rolled out of bed. "Of course, it's better if the whole family is gathered around the tree when the sun comes up," she added thoughtfully.
Byakuya stretched out languorously on the sofa, his kenseikan-free hair spilling around his shoulders in a mussed-up mess. If it hadn't been Christmas, Byakuya wouldn't even have dared to go out into the open from the safe haven of his room until his kenseikan had been adjusted to perfection and his scarf wrapped securely around his neck, as befitting the status of the head of the Kuchiki clan. "Do you do this every year? Waking up this early, I mean."
Rukia slowly swiveled her head around to meet Byakuya's eyes before she quickly looked away again. "Yeah," she said softly. "It's kind of become habit for me, and anyways, I can't sleep much on the night before Christmas."
Byakuya immediately felt guilty because while Rukia had been "waiting for the whole family to gather" since approximately four in the morning (too early for Byakuya's likes, even if he was one to wake up at five mostly every morning), Byakuya had been sleeping in until seven o'clock.
"After the sun comes up, I get a bit bored of waiting," Rukia continued conversationally, "And the presents get too tempting to look at, so I go into the kitchen and make a cup of eggnog." She peered at him through the slim rays of the rising sun cutting in through the window. "This is the first time you woke up to accompany me."
"Well," Byakuya remarked, "it's the least I can do, right?"
Rukia turned her head away, back to staring out of the window at the sun rising above the hills beyond the Kuchiki mansion, but Byakuya still caught the small smile that spread across her face.
A few hours later, they sat amongst a pile of wrapping paper, shiny new presents, and mugs of hot chocolate Rukia disappeared and then brought in (Byakuya let out a very pronounced sigh of relief upon peering into the mug Rukia handed him and discovering that it was merely hot chocolate and not the dreaded eggnog).
The sun was up and it cast bright, golden rays of light through the window, bouncing off the large ornaments that adorned the tree.
Byakuya didn't know what happened just then, but he found himself moving closer to Rukia and gently cupping her face in his larger hand.
She looked up at him in mild puzzlement and surprise. "Byakuya?" she asked hesitantly, as she had long outgrown the habit of calling him "nii-sama".
No words were exchanged except the little puff of air from Rukia that was most probably a muffled gasp as Byakuya leaned forward even more and captured her lips in his.
She tasted like the hot chocolate they had just been drinking, and her lips were still sticky and sweet. The wrapping paper that she had been clutching limply in her hands fell from her grasp as he small hands then slowly moved up and fisted in Byakuya's hair.
Looking back on their very first kiss, Byakuya's and Rukia's, Byakuya decided that what made that particular Christmas so important and special wasn't the fact that Byakuya kissed Rukia, but the fact that she kissed him back.
From his study, as he pored over another stack of paperwork that was due tomorrow, Byakuya could just see from his half-open door the form of Rukia, singing another holiday tune and affixing frames of pine and holly to the ancient calligraphy scrolls hung up on the wall.
"Hey, Byakuya," she called out from the hall. "If you go to the kitchens, I just made some hot gingerbread that smells delicious, and I'm sure there's still some spiced apple cider left."
He stood up from his desk, abandoning his paperwork to sweep out the door of his study and regard Rukia for a few moments as she added the last finishing touches to the frame of pine needles around a long scroll. Rukia let out a rather ungainly squeak of surprise as Byakuya suddenly pulled her flush against his body and gently kissed her. It was all in a whirlwind, and Byakuya noted as he walked off in the direction of the kitchen to investigate the gingerbread Rukia had been talking about (leaving a rather shell-shocked Rukia in his wake still holding a few boughs of holly), that she smelled like cinnamon and nutmeg.
"I don't cook," were the first words Byakuya blurted out when Rukia started tugging him towards the kitchen to "make a gingerbread house!" "Or bake," he hastily amended.
"No, no, no," Rukia said, pushing open the door to the kitchen. I already baked the gingerbread, we just have to stick all the pieces together and add all sorts of candy to make the house beautiful."
She took one look at Byakuya's blank face and lapsed into another one of her mutterings about how Byakuya's childhood must have been horribly, horribly twisted.
"See, it's really quite simple," Rukia chirped as she made a perfect line of icing down one wall of the house and stuck it to another gingerbread wall.
Byakuya sat next to her at the counter, taking in this new experience with wary eyes. "And this is all…edible?" he asked cautiously.
"Oh, yes," Rukia assured him, showing him by picking up a piece of gingerbread and popping it into her mouth.
"Didn't you need that piece?"
Rukia shrugged noncommittally. "It was only the chimney, anyways."
Many years ago, if somebody had asked Byakuya what his favorite holiday was, he would have fixed them with an icy glare and proceeded to say that he didn't have a favorite holiday, and most holidays were stupid, anyways. He hadn't been one to believe that a person could throw themselves into a holiday so passionately because they truly loved it – well, at least that had been what he thought before he met Rukia.
It had been three years, and two Christmases past since that first kiss, and their relationship had blossomed into a romance. It was hard to believe that this Christmas morning, Byakuya and Rukia lay sprawled on the floor after a friendly race to see who could get to the tree first (and sadly, Byakuya had lost, but the compensatory kiss Rukia had given him afterwards seemed to make up for it). Rukia shifted so that she lounged more comfortably against Byakuya's muscled chest, and Byakuya lazily wrapped an arm around Rukia.
They breathed in silence for a while, and Byakuya felt Rukia pulse beating through his arm, and she smelled like pine needles and cinnamon.
He knew that now, it would be as good a time as any.
When the sun finally peaked and threw a golden sheen over the room and the Christmas tree, Rukia tackled the pile of presents that had slowly accumulated over the course of the days leading up to Christmas.
"Here, this one's yours," she said, chucking a box wrapped up in green paper to Byakuya.
Slowly, they worked through the presents, Rukia as enthusiastic as ever, and Byakuya trying to hide a grin but eventually failing. At last, Rukia flopped backwards, covered in a mess of wrapping paper and ribbons.
"I think that's all of them," she remarked, rolling over onto her stomach.
"No, not quite yet," Byakuya said softly, and he reached under the Christmas tree, right next to the trunk, and withdrew a small box wrapped up in gold paper with only Rukia's name printed plainly on it. "This one's yours, from me." He had purposefully hidden the small box way under the branches so that Rukia wouldn't see it and he could give the gift to her.
Rukia reverently took the box from Byakuya's palm and gently tore open the paper. A dark blue velvet box tumbled out and she let out a small gasp. "Byakuya…" Her hands trembled as she pried open the box, and Byakuya suddenly felt extremely nervous as she took in the dazzling diamond ring.
"Rukia…I think we bonded over Christmas, and I…really think that you might be the one meant for me." Byakuya started panicking, because this wasn't really the way he had planned for his proposal to do. He couldn't believe the sap coming out of his mouth, and he decided that he might as well be blunt and hope that Rukia would say yes.
"Rukia…will you marry me?"
Tears that had welled up in Rukia's eyes overflowed and fell down her cheeks as she launched herself into Byakuya's arms. "Yes," she murmured into Byakuya's shoulder. "Yes, yes, yes!"
Byakuya enveloped Rukia in his embrace, breathing in the sharp spicy smell of cinnamon and allspice and all those other good things that had woven themselves into Rukia's hair.
Outside the window, far away from the warmth exuded by the crackling fire, it started to snow.
Now, if somebody asked Byakuya what his favorite holiday was, all he had to do was look over at Rukia, his wife, who was probably up decorating again with holly and tinsel and attaching bells to every other railing.
Rukia would beam at him, and Byakuya would smile back (a rare smile, mind you), and he would say simply, "Christmas."
-fin-
A/N: Hee. Christmas makes me happy, too. Review and I will love you:D