Chapter Text
When I got to the living room, Chris was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, his stocking in his lap and mine right in front of him and a fresh cup of coffee on the fireplace hearth. Actually, the only stocking left on the mantle was Millie’s, and I looked over to see Dodger in his bed, doing his very best to retrieve the peanut butter from the hole in the center of the new toy Chris had put in his stocking a few days earlier. That explained why he hadn’t made an appearance during our bedroom picnic.
“Time for stockings!” He picked mine up and held it out to me as I approached him, taking it gingerly from his extended hand and sitting down to face him. “We’ll do the other stuff with the family, but I wanted to do this here. You go first?” Somehow, I doubted that he was normally an orderly, one-at-a-time gift opener. But something about his expression told me he really wanted to watch me open the stocking. It also made me a little nervous, because it made me think there was something big in there (not literally, obviously, but figuratively, or symbolically), and there was definitely nothing big in his. I hadn’t even realized before arriving a week earlier that he was going to have stockings for us. I should have, knowing him, but it hadn’t crossed my mind.
I reached in and started pulling things out. The first several were pretty standard stocking fare - candy, a silly little figurine of an owl that was somewhat of an inside joke that had started in my classroom and that he’d found amusing when I told him about it, and a set of what he knew to be my favorite pens for school, taken out of their original packaging and wrapped in a rubber band, I assumed so they would fit in the stocking better. After that came several pieces of tissue paper that eventually had me looking up at him questioningly.
“Keep going,” he nodded.
Finally, I got to the bottom of the stocking and my stomach flipped a little when my hand closed around what felt like a small, square, leather box. Now, I didn’t expect it to be a ring - I knew it was too soon for that, even if I was so happy with him, so deeply, purely in love with him, that it actually made my heart hurt some days, and I was pretty sure, mostly sure, that he felt the same way - but it was definitely a jewelry box of some sort, which meant it was far, far more than anything that was in the stocking I’d put together for him. I took my time pulling the box out of the stocking, stalling so I could try to prepare myself for what it might be.
The box itself gave nothing away. It was just a simple navy box, no branding or markings whatsoever that might give a hint as to what it contained. I kept my head down but looked up at him from under my brow and he just smiled softly at me. In my periphery, I could see his hands fidgeting in his lap, thumbs tucking into his palms and fingers closing tight over them, then opening to do it all over again. I looked back down at the box in my hand and flipped the lid up with my thumbs. When I saw the necklace inside, my right hand flew up to the hollow of my collarbone to finger the necklace I already wore. The one in the box matched it so closely it was uncanny. It was a dull, brushed gold, a small wavy square, similar to a flag waving or a piece of paper fluttering, hanging delicately from a dainty chain.
Chris’s fingers brushed mine when he reached to take the box from my hand. When he started to pull the card the necklace hooked into from the box, I looked up to his face. He was still looking at the necklace, working it carefully from the card, when he told me, “I had it made. I took some pictures of yours and sent them to my stylist, asked her to find someone who could make me one to go with it.” He stopped talking for a second, having worked the chain completely free from the card that held it and set the card and the box aside, and laid the necklace carefully in his palm so that the charm faced up at me and the chain hung, swinging gently, down his forearm. “I made sure to have it put on a chain longer than yours so you can wear them together.”
I finally snapped to and let my hand move from the necklace I was already wearing to trace the one in his hand with my fingertips. It was beautiful, and it was amazing how well the creator had done matching it to mine, based, apparently, just on some pictures Chris had sent.
“That was the point,” he told me, and I lifted my head to look him in the eyes, soft and loving and so, so sincere. “I wanted you to be able to wear both at the same time. I know you consider yourself to be a work in progress, and I think that’s awesome. I love that mindset. I love that you consider us to be a work in progress, and I plan to keep working and progressing for as long as you’ll keep me around.” I smiled, even as my lip quivered a little and my throat grew tight. I think he saw it happening, because he cupped my jaw softly with one hand and leaned in to kiss me, soft and gentle. He kissed me once more, on the cheek, then pulled back and went on. “But I want to make sure you know that you’re also an inspiration.” My eyes darted down to his palm, once again reading the word stamped into the metal. INSPIRATION “It’s just, everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve overcome, and then everything you continue to do, day-to-day - you don’t just get yourself through, you continue to be this incredible person for yourself and for everyone who gets to come into contact with you. And being a work in progress, seeing yourself that way, is part of what makes you so inspiring. So keep being a work in progress, keep seeing yourself as one, but don’t forget to see yourself as an inspiration, too. Because you are. To me, to your kids, to your niece, and to one very, very special little girl on the other side of town.” He brushed away the tears starting to slowly work their way out of my eyes with the pad of his thumb then reached down to loop his fingers through the necklace’s chain where it still hung from his other hand, shuffling it around until he held it carefully with both hands. He held it up a little higher between us and nodded softly at me. “May I?”
I nodded and scooted forward, unfolding my legs when he set the necklace down carefully on the floor and hooked his hands behind my knees. He unfolded his own legs then, stretching them in front of him on either side of me, and pulled, carefully and slowly so I didn’t go flying backward, until my legs rested on his thighs and wrapped around his hips. I closed my hands around his t-shirt over his stomach. He picked the necklace back up off the floor, studied it to make sure he had it facing the right direction, then open the clasp and leaned forward to reach around my neck, craning to watch his hands as he closed the clasp again at the back of my neck. He carefully lifted my hair and pulled it from under the chain then let it fall down my back again. He pulled away from me and hooked his fingers under the chain, lifting and pulling gently until he’d worked it all the way up to rest against the back of my neck, then finally smoothed it down, over my collarbone and a couple inches past the one I’d already been wearing. He nodded a little, seemingly giving his approval.
“Do you like it?” He finally asked when he sat all the way back up and let his hands go to rest on the outsides of my thighs.
I closed my eyes for a second and willed my throat to loosen enough that I could speak normally. “I think you already know the answer to that question,” I told him, quietly, tugging at the front of his shirt a bit. “Which is a good thing, because I honestly don’t think I have the words to tell you how much I love it.” He blushed then, a little, and let his head fall to look down into our laps, his thumb tracing back and forth over the creases at the tops of my thighs.
“Okay then,” he finally said, nodding emphatically. “My turn.” He reached for the stocking he’d set aside much earlier in favor of watching me go through mine.
My moment of serenity and joy came to an abrupt end and I felt something akin to panic. My hands flew up to his shoulders, “Oh god, Chris, can you not?” I tried my best to plead with him with my eyes. I had never exactly been proud of what I’d put into his stocking, but at that point I was downright humiliated. I hadn’t gotten there expecting to make a stocking for him, but even if I had, it wouldn’t have compared to the one he’d done for me.
One the one hand, there was the financial aspect. It was no secret that he was in a much better position than I was, and I’d made it clear very early on that it would make me uncomfortable if he was always spending large amounts of money on me, amounts that I couldn’t come close to reciprocating. He’d made the point that he’d been in his current financial situation for several years by that point and that he was far from the most extravagant celebrity out there, but also that his lifestyle was just that, his lifestyle , it was what he had become accustomed to over time. So while he certainly wanted to respect what I wanted and avoid doing things that would make me uncomfortable, he couldn’t promise to not go overboard sometimes just because he was doing what he was used to. I’d had to admit that it had made sense. So we compromised. When he came to visit me, we did things my way. I picked the places we went, I even paid more times than not. We ended up spending most of our time at a few local restaurants I loved, my favorite breweries, hiking my favorite trails with Millie, and just being together at my house. He swore he loved it that way, and I believed him. But, when I went to visit him, which was far less often than he came to visit me, we did things his way, which meant, in his words, that he got to spoil me. He still promised to try not to go crazy, but every trip to stay with him meant at least one or two things that I’d never have experienced on my own. More than anything, I didn’t want him to think that his money or his celebrity had anything at all to do with why I was drawn to him, though there was also the part of me that didn’t want to feel like I was never giving him as much as he gave me. He promised me that neither of those thoughts ever crossed his mind, and besides, since the vast majority of our time together was spent on “my turf,” the scales were somewhat tipped in my favor, and that helped me feel a little better about things overall.
Beyond that, though, his gift to me had been so perfect, so thoughtful, and I was almost ashamed for him to open his and find the silly things I’d put inside. I’d always loved giving gifts, putting thought into the perfect thing for someone I cared about and watching them open it. To think that this man who had become the love of my life and meant more to me than nearly anyone else might think that the stocking I’d put together for him was some indication of my feelings was practically unbearable. “Seriously,” I pled with him, “it’s really terrible. I’m embarrassed for you to open it.”
He only rolled his eyes, probably thinking I was just being self-deprecating and overly dramatic. “Stop. I’m sure it’s great.”
“It’s really not.” I reached for the stocking, but he was faster than I was, shooting his arm up over his head. “Chris,” I whined.
“Baby, seriously,” he shook his head a little and wrapped the arm not holding the stocking up in the air around my back. “I know you, and there’s no way it’s terrible. And besides,” he shrugged, “it’s a stocking. They’re supposed to be silly and fun.” My face went slack and serious and I tilted my head to look up at him from below my brow, my expression screaming, Oh really . “Okay, fine,” his voice was low and silly and his head tilted side to side as his eyes rolled up to the ceiling, “so I bent the rules a little. Doesn’t mean I expected you to.”
I didn’t say anything in response, just looked back at him through narrowed eyes for a second before pulling my legs from around his hips to shift my weight onto my knees and lunge up to grab for the stocking. Again, though, he was faster than I was, and he leaned back and away from me so I still couldn’t reach, laughing the whole time. The problem was, my sudden movement and the way he bent back caused him to lose his balance, and he tumbled backward onto the floor, stretching his legs out in front of him as he went. And instead of letting me go as he fell, he tightened his grip on me so that I went down with him. We landed with him flat on his back, his legs long and splayed a little to either side, one arm wrapped around me and the other extended past his head, still gripping the stocking, while I sprawled atop him, gripping his shoulders. I shifted a little to get off him, but he only tightened his grip on me, so instead, I just settled myself better, pulling my knees up so that they rested on either side of his waist and my legs supported some of my weight. I pushed myself up with my hands just enough to look down into his grinning face.
He continued to smile up at me for a few seconds until he must have realized that I wasn’t joking the way he was. “Hey,” he used the arm around me to pull me tighter against him, “it’s really totally fine. The whole reason I didn’t tell you I was putting up the stockings in the first place is because I didn’t want you to go all nuts trying to build the perfect stocking.”
“Okay, but you-”
“Yeah, I know what I did. And like I’ve told you a million times, I like being able to spoil you now and then. It’s not about the money or the actual physical gift, I just like doing things for you, seeing you smile, surprising you.” His hand began to drift over my back. “ That makes me happy. And if everything was always even, it wouldn’t be spoiling you, now would it?” I didn’t answer him and when he cocked his head to one side and lifted his eyebrows, doing his best to imitate my ‘teacher look,’ I just rolled my eyes in return. He wasn’t wrong, but I didn’t want to admit that. He smirked. “I rest my case. Besides,” something in his voice told me he was about to be a brat, and his smirk deepened as he lifted his head off the floor to look me in the eye, “my house, my rules,” he paused, grinning cheekily at me, “my stocking.” He grinned far too wide at his own joke and I only huffed out a breath.
“You know what, Evans?” His hand had fallen to the outside of my thigh as he laughed, and I pushed myself up so that I straddled his legs, sitting on his thighs. “Eat shit.” His head fell back and I would have been scared by the way it hit the floor, except he kept laughing, loud and boisterous, so that I knew he couldn’t possibly have been hurt. Even Dodger looked up from his peanut butter filled toy for a second to see what was going on.
As Chris continued to laugh, I moved off his legs to sit beside him. Finally, he quieted, pushing himself up to sit in front of me, laying the stocking across his lap and bringing his hands to rest on my knees where I’d once again folded my legs in front of me. “Okay,” I sighed, “open it.” He grinned and pumped one fist at his side. “Just remember!” I held up a hand, first finger up in the air, and he calmed himself - a little - and nodded to show that he was paying attention, “Everything in there was meant to be just sort of tucked in with a real gift. None of it was meant to stand alone as its own gift.”
“Hey,” he leaned forward to kiss me quickly on the lips, “isn’t that what stockings are?” I just glared at him again when he pulled back and he at least had the decency to look sheepish. He leaned back in and murmured against my lips, “You know I’m not good with rules.”
He distracted me with kisses, and by the time he finally pulled back, he’d reached into the stocking and pulled out the top two items - two of those large plastic candy canes filled with candy. “Starburst jelly beans!” He practically yelled when he looked down at the candy in his hand. “These are the. Best. Jelly beans.”
“I know,” I agreed, nodding softly, “and they’re all red.”
“Fuck,” he grinned and ripped the top off one of the candy canes, dumping nearly half the jelly beans out into his palm. “So. Good,” he said around a mouthful of the chewy candy, his eyes rolling back into his head. I smiled in spite of myself. If it were anyone else, I would think he was exaggerating to make me feel better, but, for an actor, he was a terrible liar. According to him, anyway. I just thought of it as him being too sincere a person to be dishonest. “Alright,” he went on once he’d finally swallowed down the candy, “let’s see what else we’ve got in here.” He wiggled his eyebrows and I couldn’t help but get at least a little caught up in his excitement. He reached back into the stocking and pulled out two quart-sized ziploc bags. He looked down to study them for a second then his head shot up, his eyes wide. “Are these?”
I nodded. “Chess squares.” The cream cheese and sugar cookie bars went by many names, but the one I’d known them by since I was a kid was ‘chess squares.’ They were more sugar than anything else, and beloved by pretty much everyone who’d ever tried them. I wish I could say it was because I was some incredible baker, but it was a basic recipe that revolved around a boxed cake mix. Still, I knew how much he loved them, and that’s what really mattered.
“But,” his brow furrowed then, and he separated the bags, holding one in each hand and looking down at them, confused, “this isn’t a whole pan. Where are the rest?”
I let out a quiet giggle. “No, that’s almost half a pan. I actually made two and split them four ways - you, Scott, and your sisters. Your big sis got a few extra, for the kids.”
“Okay, that’s not fair. You don’t love the rest of them as much as you love me.”
“Chris!” I smacked his arm.
“What? It’s true.” He made his face as cute, as innocent as possible, and I had to draw my lips between my teeth to keep from smiling and letting him see how well his little game was working.
“Yeah, well, in a few weeks you’ll be in Virginia, and I’ll make you as many as you want. I’ll make a pan every day, if you want.” Obviously, I didn’t plan to do any such thing, though I would of course make him some if he wanted them.
He put the bags of the cookies beside him on the floor with the jelly beans and his hands found their way back to my legs as he leaned forward. “I’m gonna hold you to that,” he told me, then leaned in for a quick kiss. He sat back again and picked the stocking back up. “Okay,” he said, reaching into the soft, red fabric, “let’s see what else we’ve got in here.” The chess squares had taken up quite a bit of space, thankfully, so he had to reach almost all the way to the bottom to get to the last couple gifts. I could tell by the way the stocking moved that he was opening and closing his hand, feeling the next gift between his fingers, and I knew which one it was. He kept going, giving me silly, inquisitive looks as he did, and I reached out to yank the stocking off his hand, exposing the navy socks between his fingers. His eyes grew comically large and he flipped the long socks over in his hands then pulled them apart, one sock in each hand, but the pair still attached by the tag at the top. “Babe! Babe .” He surged forward to kiss me again, the socks still in one hand even as he wrapped it around my neck, holding my jaw with the other. The kiss was quick and a little sloppy, his teeth clashing against mine as I laughed into it. “Okay,” he started once he’d finally settled back in front of me, still staring down at the socks in his hands, “how much actual pain did it bring you to buy these?”
The socks were a dark blue, with little Patriots logos and helmets scattered across the top portions, which were long enough to run about halfway up his calves. On the soles, they read, “Don't bother me” on the right and, “I'm cheering on the Patriots” on the left. Now, I was very aware that no one would ever be able to read them while he was actually cheering on the Patriots, because he wasn’t exactly a ‘kick up my feet and watch the game,’ kind of guy - he was more a ‘sit on the very edge of the couch and get up to pace around the room while yelling at the game’ kind of guy - but that was beside the point. I’d also special ordered them to have his last name printed so that it would run down the outside of each foot. In the same font that is used on the jerseys, of course. They were meant to be a novelty, something to make him laugh and that I had planned to tuck in with the Julian Edelman memoir I’d gotten him. (The memoir wasn’t exactly up to his normal reading level - Edelman was certainly no Herman Hesse or Yuval Noah Harari or Malcolm Gladwell - but it did speak to the strength of the human spirit and hard work, both things Chris could certainly relate to, and besides, it was related to his Patriots .)
“Honestly?” I prompted. He kept his head down but looked up at me through his lashes as he reached for my legs again, “I made Victoria click ‘purchase.’” His chin dropped all the way to his chest as he laughed. “And then I cleansed my soul by ordering Broncos footie pajamas for Baby Beau.” That made him laugh a little harder and dig his fingers into my thighs.
“Well,” he finally lifted his head when he’d mostly stopped laughing, “I love them.” He leaned forward to kiss my right cheek. “And I very much appreciate that you put yourself through that.” I rolled my eyes and he grinned as he leaned in to kiss my left cheek. “And most of all, I love you .” He kissed me softly on the lips.
“I love you back,” I told him as he pulled away to sit up and look down at the socks again. He studied them for so long that I began to think he’d forgotten about the stocking altogether. The last gift in it was another that I had planned to just put in with one of his other gifts, it didn’t really matter which one, but I was actually a little bit proud of it, more than the other things in the stocking, at least. “Hey,” he looked up when I quietly interrupted his musings, “there’s one more in there.” His eyes lit up a little as he reached for the stocking that still lay on the floor where I’d dropped it when I pulled it from his hand before.
He didn’t take his time with that one, reaching in quickly and pulling out the box. It was a simple box made of sturdy cardboard and wrapped in thin twine, tied in a neat bow on the top, and there was a foil star embossed on the lid. He shook it next to his ear and I could hear the gift, nestled on its little pillow of cotton stuffing, rattle. He narrowed his eyes and looked across at me, “Hmm, do I get jewelry too?”
I scoffed. “Not quite. Just open it.” I tangled my fingers together and tucked my hands into the space between my legs as I watched him pull the string to untie the bow. I wasn’t nervous, exactly, but I don’t know that excited would be the right word either. I was just full of anxious energy as he lifted the lid off the box and reached in, gingerly.
“Baby,” he started, staring down at the pewter keychain in his hand, “this is adorable.” I leaned forward and saw that it rested face down, so that all he was seeing was a vaguely dog-shaped silhouette with Dodger’s name and the date he’d adopted him engraved in the center. I pulled my fidgeting hands from where they’d worked their way under my crossed ankles and unclasped them, resting the left one on his right leg and reaching with the right one to flip the little metal dog over. His eyes went wide then shot over to where Dodger lay on his bed, tired or frustrated by trying to get all the peanut butter out of his new toy and resting with his head on his paws. It was almost as if he’d forgotten what his dog looked like. From the front, the keychain was very clearly modeled after Dodger. The miniature version of Chris’s best buddy was depicted in a sitting pose, all of his features and the outline of all the white markings on his face and chest etched into the metal. Chris’s eyes flew back to the keychain in his hand, “This is,” his head darted up again, first to look back over at Dodger then at me, “this is my bubba.” He looped the key ring over his middle finger then pushed everything else, the box, the twine, his stocking, off his lap and leaned forward to wrap his hands around my waist. He dragged me forward until my knees sat atop his, then I helped him out, pushing myself up onto his lap so that I sat sideways on one thigh and my legs draped across the other. His arms slid to wrap around my waist and I looped mine over his shoulders. My shirt rode up when he wrapped his arms around me and I could feel the metal of the keychain, cool against my side.
“You like it?” My thumb drifted softly over the back of his neck.
“I fucking love it.” His response made me giggle, and when my eyes closed he leaned in to press his lips to the side of my neck. “Now I get to take the two of you with me wherever I go.”
“The two of us?”
“Well, yeah. Dodger, obviously, but there’s no way I’ll ever look at it without thinking about you, either.”
I grinned playfully, “Well then I guess that means you’re kinda stuck with me.”
He tightened his arms around me so that I fell a little against him, situating myself so that my forehead rested against his. “Am I supposed to see that as a bad thing?” he asked me, and I just shook my head. He tilted his chin forward to catch my lips in his. It started soft, sweet, but before long he was pushing his tongue past my lips and his hand was coming up to tangle in my hair. I found myself digging my short nails into his shoulders, pulling myself as tight against him as I could manage. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was aware that we’d slept in and that we had to be at his mom’s by lunch, which meant we didn’t have all the time in the world.
“We should …” I breathed against his lips, voice trailing off and all thought leaving my head when his mouth moved to just below my ear.
He nodded, “Shower.” But instead of stopping, he kept going, peppering kisses down the side of my neck. I forced myself to pull away, pressing a kiss to his forehead then standing. “Together,” he added, his hands landing on my ankles then sliding up the backs of my legs, dragging the hem of my pajama pants with them.
Obviously, I wanted to say, but I just nodded and watched him pull his hands from my legs to put the keychain back in the box, securing the lid back on top. When he stood, he rested his free hand on the small of my back and turned to place the small gift box on top of the mantle before turning back to me, stepping in close and moving both hands to hook around the backs of my thighs, just below my ass, so he could lift me up. I clung to him, legs around his waist and arms wound around his shoulders, and closed my mouth around his earlobe as he walked us toward the bathroom.
We somehow, miraculously, managed to make it to Mrs. Evans’s house on time, coffee maker, gifts, and Dodger - both living and pewter - in tow. We weren’t even the last to arrive. (Granted, we didn’t have three kids to wrangle, but still.) After the previous day, and the whole week leading up to it, really, I hadn’t needed anything more to make it a perfect family Christmas. But, in true Evans fashion, that’s exactly what they gave me. By the time we made it back to Chris’s house that night, I was exhausted, far too full from Mrs. Evans’s Christmas lunch and way too many cookies and other treats, and happier than I could remember being in a long, long time.
Our Christmas pajamas had gone straight into the hamper after our shower that morning, so while Chris was pulling a pair of sweats from his dresser drawer, I stole a tshirt to wear to bed. When we got back downstairs, Chris set up It’s a Wonderful Life on the tv and I grabbed a beer for him and a glass of red wine for me, then we snuggled down into the couch - all three of us - Chris draping a blanket over my bare legs. We hadn’t made it 20 minutes into the classic film before I’d abandoned my wine on the coffee table and was struggling to keep my eyes open.
“Hey,” he murmured, running his hand lightly through my hair where his arm hooked around my shoulders, “you wanna go to bed?”
I shook my head. “I like it here. The tree’s pretty.”
He kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, it is.” He rested his cheek on my head before going on. “Did you have a good Christmas, sweet girl?”
I nodded against his shoulder. “It was perfect.”
“Promise?” I nodded again. “Good. I love you, baby.” His fingers continued to drift lightly over my hair. “Can I be really cheesy for a second?”
I giggled, “Please do.”
“You know I love Christmas, and I can be like a little kid,” I nodded, “but the best part of this Christmas, the best gift I could have asked for,” he tightened his arm around me and pulled me a little closer to him, “is this. Merry Christmas baby, thank you for being here, and just for being you, and sharing that with me.”
He was right, it was cheesy. It sounded like a line from a Hallmark Christmas movie. But it also sounded sincere, and it made a little lump form between my chest and my throat. I waited a second for that knot to loosen. “You’re welcome. And thank you for everything, for my perfect family Christmas, for making me smile until my face hurts. And I love you too, more than you know.”
He took a long drink from his beer bottle, emptying it, then set it on the end table at his elbow. “Hey,” he turned a little, pressing his back to the arm of the couch and looking down at me, “you wanna just sleep here? Camp out by the tree?” I grinned and nodded, and he smiled back at me before standing to start pulling the cushions from the back of the couch, stacking them in the chair on the other side of the room. “Go ahead and lay down,” he told me while moving the second and third cushions. I did, and once he’d finished he climbed over me to spoon me, wrapping his top arm tight around my waist and tucking the bottom one under the pillow I’d laid there for him. “Best Christmas ever,” he whispered into my ear once he was settled, and those words, running through my head on repeat in his voice, were the last thought I had as I drifted off to sleep minutes later.