Chapter Text
As Bosco’s beat-up old car rounded yet another turn closer to Irene’s house in Snowy Pines, she felt struck by the overwhelming urge to turn around. Maybe there was still time for her to lie to Irene, tell her that her car had broken down thirty miles back, or that she had to work until the 23rd, or that she tripped over her cat and broke both of her legs and had to stay in Seattle. Not that Irene would believe any of that, and Bosco’s sure her sister has been tracking her through Find My iPhone since she left Seattle and already knows she’s only a couple of minutes away. But at this point, anything seems better than driving into the total Christmas hell she’s inching closer and closer to.
Bosco already knew Irene lived in a town that was straight out of a Hallmark movie; that’s why in the three years she’s lived there, Bosco has refused to come visit for Christmas. There are other reasons, of course. Irene loves and misses Seattle since moving away, and it’s nice to come visit her friends that still live there, plus it makes more sense for her to come see Bosco and Jane in the city they all adore rather than for Bosco and Jane to drive up to the middle of nowhere. But above all, if Bosco is going to do Christmas, she needs it to be as simple and unsentimental as possible. She’s self-aware enough to know she is a complete and total Scrooge. She loves her sisters and getting to see them, and the gifts are always nice, but anything beyond that makes her groan and roll her eyes. She’s always been that way, so when Irene told her that her fancy tech job was moving her to a Christmas-themed tourist town, complete with annual gingerbread house contests and a fifty-foot Christmas tree, Bosco knew she would never visit, especially not in the winter.
That was until Irene’s car broke down, and Jane had to spend the last half of December in New York for work.
Bosco tried to pitch every other option, including driving up to get Irene and turning right back around for Seattle and spending way more than she could afford to get Irene an Uber, but her sister shot them all down. She promised Bosco that Christmas in Snowy Pines “wasn’t that bad” and that she was “being dramatic”. But as soon as Bosco saw that stupid “Welcome to Snowy Pines!” sign, she knew that Irene was just lying to get her there. The sign marking the entrance into town was covered with enough Christmas lights to stock a Home Depot, and next to it was a clearly hand-crafted animatronic of Santa Claus, smiling and waving at Bosco. The whole thing was so sickly sweet and corny that it made Bosco nauseous, and she couldn’t help but scoff at that stupid Santa and his stupid blushed red nose and his stupid sparkly eyes that seemed to keep looking at her even as she rolled away from the stop sign.
The closer she gets to Irene’s address, the worse things become. The roads are lined with snowmen and other sculptures, most obnoxiously Christmas themed, like one someone had made that resembled Buddy the Elf, which Bosco has to resist the urge to run over with her car. Every pine tree, even the ones still growing in the fields, is covered in multi-color twinkly lights and ornaments, which has to be some sort of abomination to the natural biome. As she passes the first house she comes across, she notices one of the inflatables in their yard plays an awful cover of “Frosty the Snowman” on a loop, and she has to turn up the radio to max volume to drown it out. Once again, she wishes it wasn’t too late to just turn around.
By the time she pulls up to Irene’s house, Bosco is already Christmas-ed out for the next three years. At least. And Irene can tell as soon as Bosco steps out of the car. Before Bosco can even say anything, Irene shouts from her porch, “How are you already in a bad mood?”
“You know how,” Bosco scoffs, but still hugs her sister when she greets her, “You lied to me. You said it wasn’t that bad! It’s like Santa Claus threw up, and it’s disgusting. It's even worse than I could've imagined it to be.”
Irene just laughs, “I know, I know. I’m sorry. But you would’ve never come if you thought it was anything like this. I’m just glad you didn’t do too much googling.”
“It’s not too late to go back to Seattle. I can help you pack.”
Irene just rolls her eyes with a smile and ignores her. “Don’t be dramatic. It’s only a week. Come on, I’ll help you with your stuff.”
Bosco doesn’t really need the help; she only has one suitcase and then a smaller bag, but she appreciates Irene’s offer and is still in a funk over being bombarded by Christmas cheer, so she lets her sister pull her big, heavy suitcase out of her trunk and carry it. Bosco does a mock gasp when she steps onto Irene's porch, “What is that?”
“A wreath and some lights.”
“You’re a traitor. I can’t even have a safe space from festivity in my own sister’s home.”
Irene snorts out a laugh, “If you think I’m too festive, you’re in for a long week, Bosco.”
Unfortunately, Irene is right. Despite not being a hater of the holiday season, Irene was still probably the least festive person living in Snowy Pines. Bosco was informed over cups of coffee that basically everyone there eats, sleeps, and breathes Christmas. Partly because the November and December season was where they had the most visitors (with a small spike in the summer for their annual “Christmas in July” festivities), so the people there had to be dedicated to making their tourist traps and profitable as possible, but Irene also explained that it went even deeper than that. She said everyone she has met truly adored the holiday season, for more than just the financial benefits it brought them, and that they wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Snowy Pines was a community built on generations of people who loved Christmas, and the traditions they had built were genuinely special to them. Bosco thought it sounded like hell on Earth.
“I can’t believe you moved to Whoville.”
Irene loudly laughs, “Shut up! It’s really not that bad. It’s kind of nice sometimes, and I got used to it pretty quickly. I think you’ll find you like it more than you expected to.”
Bosco shakes her head and takes another sip of her coffee, “No way.”
“I mean it, you’ll probably drown it out after a few days. And the people here are really nice, you'll like them. And they talk about things and have lives outside of Christmas. Well, maybe except for Daya.”
“Who’s Daya?”
“Well, everyone here is into Christmas, but Daya is on a whole other level. She helps plan and run a lot of the events, she does a lot of the decorating, she single-handedly organizes a town-wide Secret Santa gift exchange every year, and she owns one of the largest Christmas tree farms in Washington. Sometimes when I talk to her, I get the impression that she might actually think she’s Santa Claus.”
“She sounds like a nightmare,” Bosco says, lip upturning in disgust at just the idea of this woman.
Suddenly, there’s a mischievous glint in Irene’s eye, “Hey, are you hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Let me take you to lunch.”
Bosco cocks a brow. “Why are you so excited to do that?”
“Well, Daya also runs a bar and grill, and I would pay any amount of money to watch you two interact.”
“How does she have enough hours in the day to do all this stuff?”
Irene mockingly gasps, “Maybe she really is Santa Claus!”
“Shut up. I’m gonna tell her all I want for Christmas is a new sister.”
“It’s not going to work. You’re obviously on the naughty list.”
Bosco laughs, “This is so stupid. Why do you want me to go and fight with this woman?”
“You don’t have to fight her. You can be civil. I just want to see you be all grumpy and uncomfortable and try to maintain any semblance of conversation with her. I think it’ll be funny. Plus, they have really good buffalo wings.”
So despite Bosco’s lack of enthusiasm about meeting a woman so obsessed with Christmas that she lived on a literal Christmas tree farm, she found herself bundled up in her coat, hat, and scarf, walking the ten minutes with Irene to the town square. Irene was right, her house with its meager decorations was really nothing compared to the rest of the town, completely decked out in garland and lights.
But nothing else compared to Daya’s bar. It was like nothing Bosco had seen before (or wanted to see again). Outside the door are four completely decorated Christmas trees, complete with ornaments, garland, lights, and at least three packs of tinsel each. The awning of the building and the windows have thick, green garland made of the boughs of pine trees, which Bosco knows has to be real because she can smell pine from twenty feet away. The garlands are decorated as abundantly as the trees, with multicolored shiny baubles and strands of paper chains and popcorn garland, which, after hearing what Irene had to say about Daya, Bosco is sure she made them herself. Star garland and fake icicles hang from the inside of the awning, so it seems no space is safe from decoration. Bosco can see the building is somehow covered in even more lights that aren’t on yet, and she’s thankful Irene brought her for lunch and not dinner, so that she did not have to be subjected to the complete potential of the eyesore she was looking at.
“Oh my god,” she can’t help but say. Bosco wants to lean over and wipe the stupid smirk off Irene’s face, but instead she can’t tear her eyes away from the bar. It’s like a bad car wreck, she wants to stop looking at it, but she can’t.
As the two sisters walk closer to the door, Bosco’s irresistible gawking causes her not to pay attention to where she’s walking, and she trips on something in front of her and completely loses her balance, unable to regain proper footing in the ice and snow. As she attempts to ignore Irene’s loud squawks of laughter, she turns over to see what caused her to stumble, only to find it was one of the extension cords leading towards Daya’s bar to help power her incredibly tacky display of lights. She rolls her eyes as she stands up. Of course, this dumb bar was not only the ugliest thing Bosco had ever seen, it was also trying to kill her.
“You know, for a dancer, you’d think you wouldn’t be so terribly clumsy.”
“I’m not used to having to perform with such a hideous view distracting me. It’s only ever this bad when you’re in the audience, but I just have you sit a couple rows back,” Bosco says, noticing that suddenly her ears are very cold. Her hat slipped off her head during her fall, and of course, with her luck, fell into a terrible puddle of partially melted snow. “Ugh, let’s go inside. It’s freezing out here and now my hat’s all wet.”
Somehow, it is possible for the bar to be even uglier on the inside than it is on the outside. If it wasn’t so visually overstimulating and upsetting to Bosco, she would almost think it’s impressive. There’s not a single area that is not covered by some sort of Christmas decor. “I don’t know how I’m going to eat here, Irene, I’m already sick to my stomach.”
Her sister laughs even though Bosco’s not really sure if she’s joking, “Oh shut up,” she says, approaching the bar and sitting at a high-top chair with an oversized Santa hat covering the back. “Hey Lux, is Daya here?” Irene asks the girl polishing glasses behind the bar.
“Oh yeah, she’s just working on something in the back. What’s up?”
“I just wanted her to meet my sister, but it’s not a rush.”
Lux looks Bosco over and smiles, “No, it’s ok. She’s not busy. I’ll go grab her.” Bosco gets a sneaking suspicion that Lux and Irene know something she doesn’t. She shakes it off and sits next to Irene, laying her hair out on the counter so it can dry, although it’s sort of a lost cause. There’s no way all the water will be out before they leave; it’ll probably have to sit on the heater overnight, and she just hopes that it won’t ruin the fur.
“She seems nice,” Bosco says, mostly just to say something with the hope that Irene will reply with a hint at what she’s hiding.
She nods, “Lux is great. She works here a lot to help Daya out. I think she might help her with the business stuff too, but I’m not sure if they own it together or not. She’s Daya’s younger sister.”
Bosco furrowed her brows. She expected Lux to be hired to help, “Really? I guess she must be much younger.”
Irene just smirks again, which Bosco is starting to get sick of, and starts to say something before she is interrupted.
“Irene! You’re still here! And you brought a guest!”
The woman who comes out of the back is the exact opposite of who she expected. Bosco almost doesn’t believe that this is the same Daya that Irene was talking about. There has to be some sort of mix-up. Bosco expected the Christmas-obsessed, highly festive woman who ran Christmas like the Navy to be at least fifty years old. She thought she’d have graying hair and round, fat cheeks and smell like cookies in a way that Bosco found annoying because who smells like frosting all the time? She thought she’d be old and probably someone’s mom, or even grandma, and when she pictured her in her head, she was knitting a set of small green and red baby mittens. Instead, Daya is perhaps the most attractive woman that Bosco has ever met. She had dark, curly hair that fell down her back and was wearing more chunky silver necklaces than Bosco (which she rarely encountered). Along with her necklaces, her face was also pierced with a myriad of silver studs, decorating her eyebrows, her nostrils, her lip, and the skin right under her eyes. Besides all the studs, there is also a set of silver spikes that pierce the bridge of her nose. She wears thick black eyeliner and smoky black shadow that draws Bosco into her ice blue eyes. She has a big, kind of dopey smile that Bosco couldn’t help but find instantly charming, and when she noticed she was staring, she looked down to the bar top, only to be captivated by Daya’s hands and forearms. Her nails are short, painted with chipping black nail polish, her fingers are home to multiple silver rings each, but Bosco can still see peaks of ink, along with stars tattooed on the fingers of her right hand. The green sweater she’s wearing is pushed up to the elbow, showing off the black and gray tattoos that decorate her right arm and extend onto her hand. For a second, Bosco forgets this is the big Christmas fool that Irene was telling her about. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to think about it.
“Yes! My sister Bosco decided to finally come visit me for Christmas this year since Jane had to be in New York for Christmas, so I’m staying in town this year.”
Daya gasps with glee, “How exciting! Another person to share the magic of Snowy Pines with! Especially because Crystal won’t be here this year.”
“Oh no, really?”
“No,” Daya’s cheery demeanor drops a little bit, but Bosco hardly notices. She’s not really paying attention to the words coming out of Daya’s mouth, too distracted by watching her pretty hands fly around while she talks. “She decided to go to California with Gigi this year. But that’s ok!” Daya perks right back up again, smiling, “It’s still going to be the best Christmas ever. Especially now that Bosco is here!”
Bosco starts paying attention again, now that Daya says her name, but she caught exactly zero of the conversation Irene and Daya were having, and has no idea how to contribute, “Um, yeah!” she says, finding herself strangely wanting to match Daya’s enthusiasm, even if it was over Bosco’s least favorite thing in the world.
Daya smiles even bigger, then notices the hat sitting on the counter. “What happened to your hat?”
“Oh, um. I tripped in the snow outside and it fell in a puddle.”
“I’m so sorry! Are you not used to all the ice outside yet? It can be difficult to adapt to.”
Irene laughs and interrupts, “No, Bosco’s lived in Seattle for years, just like me and Jane. She just decided she was going to be a total clutz.”
Bosco can feel the tip of her ears get hot from embarrassment, but luckily, Daya seems entirely unaffected by Irene’s teasing. “Oh, I get it. I’m a total ditz sometimes. And maybe it’s a gift! This way you get to show off your pretty hair.” Bosco blushes, subconsciously reaching up to smooth out her ginger curls, realizing at that very moment she probably had terrible hat hair.
Lux came up at the moment after checking on her tables around the restaurant. “Did you guys want anything to drink?”
“Oh, I can take care of them, Lux. You’re probably busy.”
Bosco looks around the place. It’s a little past two pm, kind of a weird time for lunch, and the bar reflected that. Lux only has a few tables, and everyone that Bosco can see already has their food. Lux smiles, “You’re right. I’m totally swamped,” she says, clasping her hand on Daya’s shoulder before heading for the back.
“So what can I get for y’all!” Daya asks, “Did you want to try one of our specialty cocktails for the month of December? The jingle bells is my favorite, it’s cranberry orange-”
Bosco’s face twists a little. Right, this is the one woman in town Irene thought Bosco wouldn’t be able to get along with because she was that obsessed with Christmas. How can someone so beautiful have such a fatal flaw?
“That’s ok,” Irene interrupts. “We’ll just take two Modellos.”
Daya nods, pouring the beers. She puts Bosco’s in a cup that resembles Santa’s boot, and it takes every muscle in Bosco’s face to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Here you go! These are on me, as a gift for the newcomer,” Daya says, winking at Bosco.
“Thank you, this is a very... interesting glass.”
Daya smiles as if Bosco just told her it was the prettiest thing she had ever seen. “Thanks! It’s my favorite.” Bosco smiles a little at that. Maybe the glass wasn’t so bad. Even if it was difficult to drink from and Bosco felt like an idiot holding it. It was Daya’s favorite, and Daya wanted her to drink her beer from it, so how bad could it be?
Bosco racks her brain to think of anything she could talk to Daya about, but all she knows about her is how much she loves Christmas and how it’s all she can talk about. She would look to Irene for assistance, but Irene looks like she’s having the time of her life watching Bosco struggle, and she would rather limit Irene’s involvement as much as possible. Plus, she’s not positive Irene wouldn’t intentionally sabotage her.
“So, um. Irene told me you have a lot of jobs.”
“Oh yeah! Well, I have this one, and then the farm, and then everything else I kind of pick up when I get bored. What about you? What do you do?”
“I’m a burlesque dancer,” Bosco says. Usually, she’s not sure whether she should tell strangers she meets about her career, but with Daya’s piercings and tattoos, she has a feeling that she won’t care.
She’s right, in fact, Daya seems incredibly excited about Bosco’s job. Although from what Bosco’s seen so far, Daya gets incredibly excited about everything. “That’s so cool! Are you in a show right now?”
“I just finished a Christmas show in Seattle, we were doing that for a while so-”
“Woah!” Daya interrupts, “That sounds awesome! What was your number?”
“Um, yeah,” Bosco starts, ignoring Irene’s snorting laugh beside her. “I did ‘Smooth Operator,’ but that’s not very Christmas-y, and then I did ‘Santa, Baby’.”
Daya grabs Bosco’s beer from the counter, which is already almost empty, and fills it up to the top again. “Well, I’m sorry they didn’t let you do anything more Christmas-y. I bet that was disappointing. I’m sure you were incredible, though.”
Irene laughs again, “They had to beg Bosco to even do the ‘Santa, Baby’ number. She hates Christmas. She’s a total Grinch.”
Daya gasps, “Really? I didn’t know anyone hated Christmas.”
Bosco frowns a little and curses Irene in her head. She was making progress with Daya and Irene just completely ruined her chances. “Yeah, it’s just never been my thing.”
“Hm,” Daya says, then smiles again, slightly more mischievous this time. “Well, that’s ok! I guess it isn’t for everyone. And I’m sure both your numbers were amazing anyway, festive or not.”
“Well, after Christmas, we start a new show. It’s more unthemed than the Christmas one, so I tend to like it better, even if it wouldn’t be your favorite.”
“Well then, maybe I have to make the trip down to Seattle sometime,” Daya says.
Irene clears her throat, surprising Bosco, who, in that moment, had forgotten her sister was even here. “Daya, can you please stop flirting with my sister and take our order? I’m starving. I’m about to eat the popcorn garland.”
The rest of lunch is… weird. Daya is nice and beautiful, but the longer Bosco spends with her the more she understands Irene’s semi-serious joke about her being Santa Claus. Everything she does digs under Bosco’s skin just a little. They order wings to share, and the plate they get brought out on is in the shape of a reindeer head, which Daya thinks is just adorable. The wings are delicious, but Bosco hates the stupid, gaudy plate so much she almost doesn’t want to finish them so she doesn’t have to look at it. The only music that plays is of course, Christmas music, and by her third beer Bosco wants to take her knife and pierce her own eardrum so that she doesn’t have to listen to it anymore. At one point, Daya goes outside with another box of decorations, telling Bosco and Irene that the garland above the door needs more green and red bauble ornaments, and Bosco tells Irene that Daya must be blind or insane or both because there is no way anyone in their right mind could believe that.
Irene just laughs. When Daya comes back in and shows Bosco a picture, she asks her what she thinks. Bosco must not do a good enough job keeping her face in check, because Daya can tell she hates it.
“It’s ok, you can be honest,” Daya says.
“Honestly, I think it’s hideous,” Bosco replies and Daya laughs, not a trace of malice in her face or voice.
“You’re lucky to be so funny and so pretty too,” she says, and somehow Bosco thinks that now the picture looks a little better. Maybe it did need those extra ornaments after all.
When they leave lunch, Irene leaves Daya a hefty tip since she refused to let them pay for anything. Bosco still has no idea what opinion to form of the girl she’s just met. She knows she’s incredibly attractive, and exactly her type, which her bitch sister Irene totally knew before going in, but she also knows that she is perhaps one of the most infuriating people she’s ever met.
“So,” Irene starts as she puts her gloves on under the awning, “what did you think of Daya?”
“No one should be that obsessed with Christmas,” Bosco says, “It’s unnatural.”
“Well, you seemed to enjoy talking to her, or at least you seemed to enjoy looking at her.”
Bosco rolls her eyes and gives Irene a little shove, but before she can come up with a rebuttal, they’re interrupted by the door opening. Standing in the entryway is Daya, looking even taller than she did behind the bar. “Oh hey! I’m glad I caught you.”
Irene smirked, “I’ll let you guys talk,” she said, and walked over to speak to someone she recognized who was decorating one of the trees on the square.
Bosco looks up at Daya, face to face now, and tries to remain normal. Daya has to duck a little to get out the door, her platform boots adding to her already ridiculously tall frame. She’s not wearing a coat, or anything besides what she was inside, so as soon as she steps outside the cold chill turns her cheeks and the tip of her nose red, and Bosco fights with the urge to boop it with her finger.
“I felt bad about your hat, so I ran to the back to grab these for you,” Daya says, holding out a pair of earmuffs, white fur with dyed black tips. “Whenever I see something I really like, I buy two of them because I’m always losing my stuff or forgetting where I put it. And I thought that I could pass these along with you for your walk home and in case you need another cover for your ears. I thought you’d like these because they match your sweater.” Bosco’s wearing her favorite black and white striped V-neck sweater, which is currently completely covered by her black leather coat, which flatters her even more because that means Daya had already thought about what she was wearing when she grabbed these for her.
“Are you sure?” Bosco asks, unable to think of what else to say.
“Of course,” Daya replies, then after a moment of hesitation, places the earmuffs on Bosco, taking the care to tuck her hair behind them. She smiles, “They look really nice on you.”
“Thank you.” Both the girls just stare at each other for a second. “I’ll see you around?” Bosco asks, and surprisingly, she finds herself actually hoping she will, and not just to see Daya’s perfect face, but maybe to actually talk to her, just hopefully not entirely about Christmas.
Daya smiles her big dopey smile again and nods, “I’m looking forward to it,” she says, before heading back inside.
Bosco looks back at the door for a moment, thinking about what just happened. Sure, maybe Daya was obsessed with Christmas in a way that Bosco could only describe as insufferable, and sure, maybe she owned the ugliest bar with the ugliest cutlery, but maybe she wasn’t so bad. She was pretty and nice, and she smelled like mango and floral perfume. Perhaps Daya wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe Bosco could look a little past her gaudy Christmas theming, maybe they have more in common than she thought-
At that moment, something small and heavy hits Bosco square in the back of the head, entirely missing the band of her new earmuffs and instead just knocking her right in the skull. She clutches it in pain, certain it is going to leave a bruise, maybe even a massive bump on her head. Once her ears stop ringing and the sun doesn’t feel too bright, she opens her eyes and looks down at the snow, trying to see what just hit her.
Down in a pile of white, Bosco sees a flash of shiny metal. She picks it up to find one of Daya’s stupid green Christmas baubles. It’s shiny and glittery and made of glass instead of plastic for some reason, so it was way too heavy to be supported by the garland branches. Bosco scoffs and turns around to throw it in the gift box shaped garbage can by the door.
Never mind, she thinks. Daya and her dumb obsession with Christmas is just as intolerable as Irene warned her she would be.