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Christmas Day.
Catalina hadn’t thought she’d ever celebrate the day again, yet here she was, awake at 6am like an excitable child, eagerly waiting for the rest of the women she lived with to awaken.
Thankfully she didn’t have to wait too long as Jane appeared in her doorway at around half six, two cups of tea in her hands. Catalina accepted it gratefully, whispering a “Merry Christmas” to her, and the two sat cross legged on her bed, talking quietly.
“I think it would probably be best to go for the Christmas walk straight away while everything’s quiet, to come home, have breakfast, then open presents, and then lunch… say around half one? That should give us enough time to prepare it all.” Jane took a sip of her tea.
“Yeah, half-past-one should be good.” Catalina nodded, warming her hands with the hot mug. “Good luck with the waiting till after a walk and breakfast for presents though.”
Jane furrowed her eyebrows. “What?” Her face then brightened in understanding. “Oh, those three - we’re all grown women, Lina, they can wait a few hours. It will be fine.”
Catalina sipped her tea with raised eyebrows in lieu of a response. Jane frowned.
“No Lina I’m serious it will be fine-“
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE - PRESENTS TIME!”
Well, it seemed Boleyn had recovered from her concussion the night before.
After hearing what sounded like a herd of elephants stamping down the stairs, the two finished their tea then, after a moment of silent prayer, went to join the others.
Cathy looked half asleep, slouching into the sofa like it was going to swallow her up. Anne was led on her stomach across her legs, chin propped on her elbows as she watched Anna, who was going through the presents under the tree. She seemed to be on a mission to put all her own presents to the side. Every now and again she threw one to Kat, who was peering around her shoulder in interest, however she was mainly just throwing them hazardously around the room. Catalina surged forward.
“Anna! Some of those might be fragile! Are you stupid?”
“Merry Christmas to you too.” Anna rolled her eyes then dropped the present she was holding back under the tree.
Catalina bit back a retort and took a deep breath before putting on a smile. “Yes, Merry Christmas everyone.”
The other five women chorused back to her, then Kat clapped her hands together.
“Okay, so, presents?”
“We’re going for a walk first, and then breakfast, and then presents.” Jane very calmly and reasonably explained her plan for the day.
The other Queens were not very reasonable people.
“What? Why do we have to wait that long?”
“I don’t want to go for a stupid walk.” Anne grumbled, dramatically rolling to the side on Cathy’s lap.
Anna looked surprisingly serious. “We’ve been looking forward to this all week - do you know how many times I’ve had to drag the two of them away from under this tree in the past few days? Many times Jane. Many times.”
Jane sighed. “Look girls, this is the plan alright? You only have to come for this walk, then you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want after we have breakfast. Well, dinner is at half one, but apart from that you’re free.”
“Okay, we can go for a walk, but can’t we do the presents now and then go?”
Catalina decided to take pity on Jane and join her side in the unfair three v one team up.
“You’re like insolent children - I don’t care if you want presents now, you can wait two hours. Go and get your shoes on.” She spoke up, shaking her head.
They turned to stare at the new contender in the argument.
“No.” Anne replied simply, her face buried against Cathy’s leg. Anna and Kat nodded in solidarity in front of her.
It was way too early for this.
Lina opened her mouth to politely tell Anne to fuck off, when Jane interrupted her.
“Fine, you know what.” Their heads snapped to look at her, eyes wide.
“It is Christmas, yes, and it’s our first in hundreds of years and, well, a proper one in this modern century so…” She held up her index finger. “One. One present. Then we walk. And then we have breakfast. Then we do the rest.”
“I can live with that.” Anna whooped, excitedly patting Jane on the head as she scrambled back to the tree. Jane rolled her eyes.
“You are so soft.” Catalina shook her head fondly.
“Yeah well, I’ve learnt to pick my battles.”
After a few minutes of confusion and debate about who should get whose presents so it was fair, Jane loudly announced that they could each have their present from her. As they fought over finding their presents (Anna had absentmindedly placed a hand over Anne’s face and pushed her away whilst reading a present label, starting a war), Catalina turned to Jane.
“What present are you going to have?”
“I can wait until later.”
“Oh, well I’ll wait with you then. We’re not children. ” She said loudly to the others, receiving a middle finger in response.
The three of them found their presents (Cathy had fallen asleep again) and sat down to open them. Anne in particular reacted very positively to the magic set she received.
“Fuck yes, I’m going to be witchy as fuck.” She muttered, examining the box with a worryingly serious look on her face. Kat and Anna seemed similarly content with theirs, and there was little argument when Catalina told them to get their shoes on again.
“It honestly feels like we’re raising children, Jane. Children. These women are 500 years old.” She complained, reaching out to gently wake Cathy up. That particular plan went out of the window when Anne vaulted over the armrest and landed heavily on top of her again. The sixth queen shot up with a cry, her eyes wide, but she still reached out to grab Anne as the movement almost toppled her to the floor.
“Why? There’s just no need is there? No need to do it.” She grumbled, pushing Anne and her grin away and getting up.
Five minutes later they were all walking down the road, most of them complaining about how cold it was. After a few sharp words from Catalina they lapsed into silence.
It was extremely quiet, probably due to the combination of it being both 7am and Christmas morning.
“Everyone’s probably at home opening presents.” Anna commented drily.
The city was eerily peaceful and quiet. A light frost covered the grass in the park as the group trekked through it, making it rather beautiful, but the streets were abandoned. All the shops were closed, heavy metal shutters lining the streets, and there wasn’t a single car driving in sight. Catalina quite liked it, if she was being honest - it was a nice change from the modern frenzy that she was usually hit by when she left the house.
The others seemed to be enjoying it too. Cathy had a content look on her face as she sipped from the flask of coffee Jane had made for her before she woke up, and Kat slung an arm around her and Jane’s shoulders and started to tell them about different types of ducks. Jane nodded her on encouragingly as Cathy listened in silence. Catalina had no doubt she probably knew most of the facts already.
Anna hoisted Anne onto her back and zoomed along the empty roads in some kind of frenzied zig zag - a ‘Naruto run’, Kat explained to her upon seeing her confusion over the strange affair. She eventually got tired of piggybacking the other queen and unceremoniously pulled Anne’s arms away from her neck then dumped her into a bush, grinning at Kat’s cackle and Anne’s surprised ‘oof’.
Catalina really wished Anna had just dropped her onto a bench - or even the floor instead - because, as funny as she found it, the action was not worth the series of complaints about twigs and holly being stuck in Anne’s hair for the rest of the walk, nor the headache that had formed by the time they returned home.
She hoped she could get back into the Christmas spirit upon arriving at the house, perhaps relax with a cup of tea, but of course fate only intended for her day to get worse, because the second they got through the front door the affectionately dubbed (affectionately from Jane, aggravatedly from Catalina) ‘Gremlin Trio’ started whining about wanting presents once again.
The pain in her head upgraded into a hammering thrum.
Jane's mouth twitched to the side.
“We’re doing presents after breakfast.” She looked to Catalina for back up as her words were decidedly not well received. Unfortunately for Jane, Cathy looked as if she would rather go and sit alone in her room than spend any more time with them - and would most definitely do so if given the opportunity - something Lina was not going to allow on Christmas Day.
“It can’t hurt to do them first.” She shrugged.
Jane sighed. “Who’s the soft one now?”
Catalina rolled her eyes in response and quickly moved out of the way as Anna and Kat rushed towards the tree. Anne, despite getting what she wanted, suddenly looked apprehensive, a common demeanour that she displayed when she was being difficult for fun and hadn’t actually expected to win what she was arguing for.
Catalina made shooing motions at her.
“Go on then, you wanted to open presents, go to the tree.”
Anne glanced at her then wordlessly did what she said. Lina shot her a strange look as she walked past, but was quickly distracted as Jane waved her over and motioned for everyone to settle down to open the presents, an excited smile now on her own face. As she sat down, Kat turned on some Christmas music with a grin.
Each of them took it in turn giving their presents to the others as ‘It’s the most wonderful time of the year’ blared in the background. Jane was very happy with the orbeez foot spa she received from Kat and Anna, commenting on how she was going to need a spa day after dealing with the two of them over Christmas.
Cathy sent Lina a massive grin as she opened a copy of the book she herself had received for her birthday a week before, which her goddaughter hadn’t yet had the opportunity to read. The sixth queen then turned to present Jane with a book of her own in the form of a baking cookbook, something her face lit up at as she thanked Cathy and flicked through the pages.
In the spirit of Christmas, Catalina put a hand on Cathy’s shoulder to hold her back as Jane started to excitedly dog ear the pages she found interesting. She wasn’t going to let anyone break that happiness, no matter how much Cathy hated book pages being ruined.
Anna smirked as she opened the new PlayStation game that Anne had no doubt bought for them to ‘share’, and Catalina was tackled in a hug by Kat and the massive animal crossing plush that had been an absolute pain in her arse to wrap.
Catalina was pleasantly surprised to receive several flowers and a new set of gardening equipment, along with some alcohol and a pair of dance leggings for her Friday morning class. The leggings were for the class, not the alcohol. Though perhaps the alcohol would be making an appearance if Melanie from Zumba didn’t learn to shut up and stop giving her headaches over her kids learning how to do their two times tables.
Her Christmas themed headache was cured by this point, as she sat and fondly looked around at them all, her gaze pausing on the headaches' cause.
Anne had been as joyful as the others throughout the present opening, cackling with glee at the dinosaur onesie she had received from Anna which she was now wearing as she nervously stared down at the green wrapped parcel in her hands. Catalina noticed it as the present she had placed Cathy’s necklace in the night before, a large brown wicker hamper with several small packages wrapped inside.
The sound of excited exclamations and laughter in the room died down until everyone was looking at Anne, the last present that yet to be given still clutched in her hands.
“Anne?” The second queen looked up at Kat’s voice, startled as if she had forgotten there were others in the room. She went slightly red and stood up, avoiding everyone’s gaze as she marched across the room. She stared somewhat intensely into Cathy’s eyes as she held out the present to her, as if trying to communicate some kind of secret message.
“Happy Christmas Cathy.”
Cathy accepted the present, her eyebrows slightly furrowed at Anne’s antics. The hamper was full of all of Cathy’s favourite things but in blue, and she smiled as she unwrapped them all, leaving the small black necklace box - which Catalina noticed now had a small rolled piece of paper attached to it, until last.
“Thank you, Anne.” She said softly, setting her second to last present - a blue limited edition bottle of her favourite shower gel - to the side. Anne barely seemed to have heard her, nervously biting at her nails as watched the last present in the hamper as if it was going to run away.
“Oh uh yeah, it’s fine.”
Cathy raised her eyebrow slightly with a small smile at Anne’s response as she reached for the box.
“The note!” Anne blurted out suddenly. “Read the note first.”
“Okay.” Cathy looked slightly nervous herself now, and Catalina and the others leaned forward curiously as Cathy’s nimble fingers shakily undid the ribbon around the note.
She read the note for a long time. And then she reread it again. Catalina got bored watching her after a while and chose to instead look at Anne whose leg was bouncing aggressively against the floor as she stared at Cathy, looking like she was going to be sick.
When Cathy finally looked up from the note she had tears in her eyes, and Catalina’s heart dropped before clenching in annoyance. She watched as she opened the box and her eyes flickered shut, a tear streaming down her face. Just as Lina snapped and turned to beat up Boleyn, Cathy jumped up and surged forward, throwing her arms around Anne’s neck. Anne was quick to tightly hug her back.
Catalina watched them dumbfounded. She looked at Anna who just shrugged and turned back to eating a box of chocolates she’d received. Jane was busy setting up her foot spa, mainly ignoring the scene in front of her.
As the two broke apart, Lina was startled to see Anne wipe tears away from her eyes, letting out a shaky laugh.
“Okay what the hell was that?” Kat, who had been watching next to Lina, broke the silence, her mouth full of the chocolate she kept stealing from Anna. “Was that your will or something? You better not have left everything to Cathy.”
“What? No I - why the fuck would it have been my will, Kit Kat?”
Things returned back to normal as the cousins started arguing, leaving Catalina slightly disappointed. What the hell had Anne written in that note?
She tried to sneak a glance as Cathy brought the box over to her and asked her to help put the necklace on, but couldn’t make out more than the words ‘blue skies’. Peculiar.
The rest of the day was, well, probably perfect by their standards. No one started any arguments - not proper ones anyway, just a few squabbles between Anna and Anne over whether or not Anna had taken too many potatoes (Catalina had taken Anne’s side on that one for once), and the rebirth of the weird little rivalry Cathy and Kat had when Jane said that she thought Cathy could down her glass of Buck’s Fizz faster than Kat could.
“You’re seventeen for goodness sake.” She had repeated tiredly as Kat pestered her over her reason for ‘betraying’ her for Cathy.
They all helped to wash up after dinner, ending in a water fight and Jane kicking everyone out of the kitchen, then spent the rest of the day using their new presents. Anna set up monopoly which was a terrible idea, and had ended very badly when Kat flipped the board. She hadn’t been angry, she had just read online that people do that a lot and wanted to know what it looked like.
Catalina got into bed that night, her heart warm with the memories of the day and also perhaps from the baileys she had downed before bed.
She decided she likes Christmas. Peace on earth, love and joy. She could get used to having all that for another week up until New Years.
But alas, it appeared, unsurprisingly, that peace on earth didn’t apply to the Queens’ household, because rather than becoming more cheerful than usual, it became a war zone.
Kat and Cathy’s rivalry had spiralled into a full on frenemy situation over the week, which seemed to be pretty one sided from Kat who had taken to throwing snide comments every time Cathy said something. Which wasn’t very often, or rather, she didn’t say anything to any of them very often, as she was always upstairs with Anne.
There was something… weird going on there, that Lina couldn’t quite figure out. They seemed ridiculously peaceful and happy, instead of rising to Kat, Cathy took to ignoring all of her comments and giggling about something with Anne instead, something which always caused the youngest queen's face to darken.
Catalina didn’t know when the two of them had become best friends, and she was happy they were happy and had each other and everything - but they also had the rest of them. And at the moment the rest of the Queens weren’t very happy with the situation.
There was Kat, who was very obviously jealous of the time the two queens were spending together and understandably missing her cousin, but the rest of the Queens also hadn’t been acting themselves. Anna would send faces like a kicked puppy across the table to the two of them sat together talking in low tones when Jane forced them to come down to dinner, and Catalina had heard her mentioning something to Kat about how she also missed them when Kat was ranting about the situation.
Jane hadn’t said anything to Lina, but she could tell that she was upset by the fact their dynamics were changing and they weren’t spending as much time together. The six of them were… well, a family, Catalina supposed, and it’s alright in a family when you’ve got best friends like Kat and Anna who still hang out with everyone else, but there was no reason for Anne and Cathy to be spending so much time together. It just wasn’t working.
And Catalina, well.
She just wanted the two of them to start showing the rest of them the same affection they were showing each other.
She missed her goddaughter. And she was jealous, okay? It wasn’t like she was the only one.
This behaviour continued the entire week, and by New Year’s Eve Catalina was completely sick of it.
It was five minutes until midnight. They’d all been drinking - Kat was over 500 years old so they weren’t going to deny her alcohol, especially after having to sit through her PowerPoint explaining this fact and also the UK laws on children over the age of five legally being able to drink in their own home.
Anna stood on a dining room chair, pouring Prosecco into Jane’s mouth like a water-fall as Kat clapped along. The beads from Jane’s footspa were strewn across the floor and trodden on, but no one in the house was in their right mind to care.
Catalina had perhaps drank a bit too much of her birthday present from Anna, but it was New Years, right? It was fine. Though it was probably the reason why she was about to yell at Cathy and Anne.
The two were snuggled up on the sofa together, Anne wearing her dinosaur onesie (which Jane had stolen in the middle of Tuesday night to clean when it had been made apparent from three dinners in a row that Anne had no plan to take it off). Cathy was absentmindedly playing with one of the green spikes on her head as they both watched a video on Anne’s phone.
To be fair, the two hadn’t been ‘obnoxious’ all day. They had spent the day with the rest of them, playing a few games of cards against humanity which Anna had received as a Christmas present, until Jane had decided that the game was inappropriate for a festive day and it had to stop.
Everyone had all been talking, Kat had been attached to Anne by the hip, and it had been, well, normal again.
The two of them cuddling up together was ‘normal’, thinking back to movie nights together, but Catalina’s jealous side, along with the alcohol in her system and the niggling fear at the back of her mind that Cathy would forget about her, meant that she didn’t really care. Surely tomorrow they would be back to ignoring the rest of them again.
Of course they would.
Fuelled by her fear of that happening, she spoke up.
“Hey, you two.”
Her drunken self had been watching Jane and Anna, deep in thought, when she had said it, and when she turned to face the sofa she found it empty. She whipped around, inducing a bout of vertigo and nausea, to see their backs as they left the room.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She said loudly in disbelief. The other three were still blissfully aware of what was going on around them, and Catalina shook her head.
“That’s it.” She muttered.
She stormed across the room just as a squeal erupted from Kat behind her, and the three loudly started to countdown.
“SIX!”
Catalina was not going to lose someone else.
“FIVE!”
Especially not to Boleyn.
“FOUR!”
She reached the door.
“THREE!”
“Boleyn! Cathy - I need to talk to you both.”
“TWO!”
She stepped into the hallway.
“ONE! HAPPY NEW YEAR!”
And there she found Anne and Cathy, wrapped up in each other so closely that she couldn’t work out where one started and the other ended.
They were kissing.
Passionately.
Oh… oh.
The realisation of the events of the last week hit her like a ton of bricks.
“Oh my god! Lina!” The two broke apart suddenly and stared at her in fear, Cathy hastily stepping away from the dinosaur clad woman.
“I… sorry we were just uhh…”
Both girls looked terrified and she quickly softened her face.
“It’s… it’s fine it’s… unexpected is all.” She scratched her nose slightly. “I guess this explains why you’ve been ignoring us all for the past week.”
Anne’s face fell. “What? We haven’t been… oh god we’ve totally been ignoring everyone… Kat...”
The girl looked incredibly guilty and Cathy reached out to her. Catalina stared down at their joint hands.
“Lina?” Her head snapped up to look at Cathy. “Are you… okay, with this?”
Catalina looked deeply into her Goddaughter’s eyes.
“I… well I’d rather it was literally anyone else on the planet rather than that thing-“
“Hey!”
Cathy smirked.
Catalina continued seriously. “If you’re happy Mija, then that’s all that matters to me. You deserve to be happy, we all do.” She looked at Anne.
“Even you.”
“Gee thanks.” Anne rolled her eyes, but the two women moved closer together.
“GIRLS WHERE HAVE YOU GONE? IT’S A NEW YEAR AND ANNA WANTS TO KISS YOU ALL!”
Cathy’s eyes widened in horror and Catalina grimaced at the thought of a sloppy drunk Anna.
“I guess we’d better go back in.”
She turned away, but a hand grabbed her arm.
“Don’t tell them, please.” Anne looked uncharacteristically vulnerable and serious. Catalina maintained eye contact.
“Of course not.”
“We’ll tell them soon, just not yet - and we’ll spend more time with you all to make up for this week, we’ve just been all… ‘lovey dovey’ I guess because it’s the start of the relationship.” Cathy said.
“Is that what the note was on Christmas? Anne’s feelings for you?”
“Yep.” Anne smiled proudly. “I wrote a killer poem. Quotes and everything. Literature nerd loved it.”
“It was alright… it was about 40% girl in red lyrics though.”
“ Quotes babe - and I wanted it to be very explicit that it was a love poem, when you ran to hug me I did worry for a second that you were just immensely proud and shocked that I had written an Italian sonnet in proper form.”
“Sonnets are love poems, Anne.”
“THAT'S WHY I DID IT!”
Catalina started to laugh.
“What?” Cathy looked at her in bewilderment.
“Nothing I just - I guess I actually really don’t want the two of you to show the same level of affection that you show each other to the rest of us.”
“…What?”